At the time, I was bitterly disappointed in Tom, and very angry with him. All his hard work, it seemed to me, was in danger of being thrown away; the huge strides he had made controlling his impulsive streak… This was, so it seemed, a serious regression. I am so very glad that this turned out to be a momentary lapse. I had nothing to complain about after this incident. But I understood Tom better as a result. He would always, I had to recognize, rail against certain Starfleet strictures. The usual frustrations that we all have with the chain of command were heightened by the fact that they also represented his psychological struggle to separate from his father and to earn Owen’s respect. Over the years, Tom seemed to find a working solution to this, and I guess I can forgive him his mistake. Nevertheless, I am extremely grateful that I was able to restore his lieutenancy before we were in real-time contact with home. And, in retrospect, I can see now that this marked the end of the old Tom, the last gasp, in some way, before a more mature version became fully established.
My other most impulsive crew member, B’Elanna Torres, had her own parental demons to deal with—almost literally, in this case. Returning from an away mission and hitting an ion storm, B’Elanna had a near-death experience in which she believed she was travelling on the Barge of the Dead to Gre’thor, the home of the dishonored dead, with her mother. Returning to consciousness, B’Elanna was completely convinced of the authenticity of her experience, and that her mother was on board the Barge of the Dead as a result of her actions. Against my better judgement, I authorized the Doctor to induce an artificial coma in B’Elanna, to allow her to learn more. That was a frightening time, but, when B’Elanna finally awoke, I could see from her eyes that the risk had paid off. When we talked about her experiences later, B’Elanna told me that she offered to take her mother’s place on the barge and go to Gre’thor, but that this was shown to her as a version of Voyager—a metaphor for stasis, perhaps, of being stuck somewhere. B’Elanna needed to move on. I cannot comment on the truth or otherwise of these experiences. But they were true for B’Elanna, and whatever happened to her during those hours of unconsciousness, something had plainly been released in her. There were many more bumps along the way, but she was beginning to let go.
We had an entirely unexpected encounter with an old friend whom we had believed had long since outgrown us. Out of the blue, we were contacted by Kes—but this was someone to whom the intervening years had not been kind. She was weary, aged—and angry, stalking through the ship and attacking engineering. Many of these events are hazy to me, part of the local time distortions Kes created in her fury; suffice to say that I found memories returning to me that I did not know I had. She had come back in time, right back to her initial days on Voyager, and told us about her sense of loss after leaving us. That her powers were out of her control. That she had been a child when we’d allowed her to leave—and we had failed in our duty of care. As my memories returned, I remembered this encounter—and what we had done to stop it. As we came again to the moment when Kes approached us after her long absence, we evacuated engineering, and, when she arrived there, showed her the message she had left for herself. Her young self, begging her to remember what it had been like, and to leave us in peace. It helped, a little. It was sad to see Kes like that: that gifted and sensitive being that we had sent on her way with such love in our hearts. I hope that whatever happened next, she found a way back to that essential part of her: her clear sight, her curiosity, her courage.
* * *
It seemed a long time now since we had received those messages from Earth, and yet it turned out that we had an ally back in the Alpha Quadrant, a man whose tendencies toward obsessive behavior could only work in our favor: Lieutenant Reginald Endicott Barclay III, Reg to his friends, and he will always have friends among the crew of Voyager. Barclay had become obsessed with our story, spending more and more time in holosimulation with the crew, and convincing himself that he could establish communications with us. He was working on the Pathfinder Project, which, as we were to learn, was a project spearheaded by Owen Paris trying to contact us and bring us home. It sure helps to have friends in high places—and an admiral’s son on board. I knew I was right to bring Tom Paris along.
I’ve heard various accounts of the lengths Reg Barclay went to make his dream of communicating with us a reality; suffice to say that while I might not want to be his direct superior, I am eternally grateful for his devotion to our cause. The first we knew of his efforts was when we detected a microwormhole and then a communication signal which Seven identified as Starfleet in origin and transmitting on an official Starfleet emergency channel. Well, the speed with which we moved to clean up that signal! And then, blissfully, almost unbelievably—nearly a full minute and a half of two-way communication with home… Just time for a few words (expressing a multitude of emotions), to transmit our logs, reports, and navigational records back to Earth, and to receive some technical advice on modifying our comms to keep us in more regular contact. And Owen Paris, bless him, letting us know that they were doing everything they could to bring us home.
You can bet there were more than a few tears that day. I felt mostly joy. I’d hit rock bottom in that encounter with the Equinox; I’d nearly lost myself entirely. Now I knew I was going to find my way back home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ENDGAME—2377-2378
LOOKING BACK, ONE ASPECT OF OUR JOURNEY THAT I HAD certainly not anticipated was how many children would fall into our care. A Starfleet captain should be prepared for anything, however, and anyone who cannot manage to organize their ship to help their people with caring for their offspring is in the wrong job. Naomi Wildman, my fine assistant, had slotted right into our ship. My heart was naturally in my mouth on her behalf whenever we met with hostiles (and whatever agonies I went through were surely nothing compared to how Samantha must have felt). But her presence on board gave us perspective, and reminded us of why we kept on going; we all lightened up around her, we all wanted to bring her home to her other parent.
In the latter stages of our journey, moreover, some wholly unexpected charges fell into our care. When the Delta Flyer was intercepted by a Borg cube, we went to bring home our away team, and found the cube using an odd attack strategy. There was a reason for this: the entire crew consisted of five children, neonatal drones, as Seven explained, assimilated young. We found a baby too, in a maturation chamber, tiny implants on its little face… Truly our encounters with the Borg brought some terrible sights, but those lost children, wandering in the void, loyal to a Collective which, it transpired, had long since cut them loose, are among the worst. The eldest of this group, whom we only knew as First, cut off from the Collective, was now feeling the full effects of his reemerging adolescence, making him dangerous and erratic. He intended to keep our away team until we gave him Voyager’s navigational deflector. I was not inclined to bargain, not least as giving them the deflector would have allowed them to communicate with the Collective. I had enough Borg on my hands. I asked them to come on board Voyager instead, invited them to become individuals.
First was unpersuaded, and it fell to Seven to inform this little group that they were indeed completely abandoned, cut loose. The Borg do not tolerate imperfection—and they were imperfect. The shock was enough for the younger children to turn to Seven for aid; not First, though, who died insisting that the Collective would come for them. We brought the four surviving children on board, of course. The Doctor started to remove their implants, and Seven began the process of locating their real homes and families. The elder boy was Icheb, a Brunali; the younger twin Wysanti boys were Azan and Rebi; the little girl, Mezoti, was Norcadian. We put out calls to their people and their worlds, letting them know that we had found their strays. And while Seven thought that Neelix would be a better carer, I knew it had to be her. Who else could help them through these changes they were experiencing? Who else on the ship understood? I sometimes wonder what bedtime stories she told them. I should not forget tha
t we had a baby to look after—if only for a little while. We were very quickly able to locate her home planet and return her to three relieved parents. Yet again, Voyager had found itself acting as a nursery in space. We might not have anticipated this extension to our responsibilities, but we carried it out with great success.
I am so proud of Icheb, and I know that Seven of Nine too became deeply attached to this unusual and gifted young man. It was therefore a significant wrench to us to discover the world from which he had originally come, and to learn that his parents were still very much alive. I could see no good reason for Icheb to remain on board: at first, he was deeply hostile toward this change in circumstances, not least when confronted with the realities of his home world. This was a rather isolated and technologically backward place where the local population had to work hard to make the land produce enough for them. Both Seven and Icheb were concerned about the impact this would have on his ability to further his studies in astrometrics, for which he had real talent. But Icheb’s people, the Brunali, turned out to have hidden depths: they had developed sophisticated techniques in genetic engineering, in part to assist their farming efforts. After some initial missteps, I watched with relief as Icheb began to move from hostility toward his parents to an acceptance and beginnings of trust. But I could only feel regret for Seven of Nine, whose attachment to Icheb had been a serious bond for her, and who was now going to have to say goodbye.
She struggled significantly with this while we were in orbit over the Brunali world, and so I must forgive myself for initially doubting her when she came to me to express misgivings about the account given us by Icheb’s father, Leucon, about his son’s assimilation. She told me that Mezoti had spotted discrepancies in Leucon’s story, and while it seemed to me that both of them were looking for reasons to bring Icheb back to us, she argued in return that if there was the slightest chance that Icheb was in danger, we had to go back and make sure. I looked deep into the eyes of my most unusual crew member then, and I saw how much she loved this boy—and that she would not remain on board Voyager if I denied her the chance to find out for sure. I took the ship back.
And only in the nick of time. Seven’s instincts had proven correct. The Brunali’s genetic-engineering skills were not only to help their food production: they had created a weapon to infect the Borg. The problem was in the delivery mechanism—Icheb. He had been infected with a pathogen, and sent out to meet the Borg, infecting the first probe that encountered him. A truly sickening use of this boy. There was no question over whether or not we would intervene. We took Icheb back on board (it was a close shave; a near miss with a Borg cube) and learned the whole truth—his parents had not simply infected him. He had been genetically engineered to carry the pathogen, made to be a weapon, born to be a sacrifice. I remembered the old Greek tale, about the tribute sent from Athens to King Minos of Crete, of seven young men and seven young women, offered to the Minotaur to save their city. Not this time. We had Icheb back, more precious to us now than ever before, because we’d come so close to losing him. I’m glad that I was willing to listen to the instincts—the hunches, if you like—of one little girl, and one young woman, who could tell when something was not right.
Seven of Nine’s educational techniques initially left something to be desired (if I never hear the words “punishment protocol” again, it won’t be too soon); the children, however, took matters into their own hands, and I eventually observed a relaxation in her disciplinary strategies. She would often say that she was not suited to this task, but when the time came for Rebi and Azan to go home, taking Mezoti with them, we all felt the loss, and Seven most of all. Was there a tear? Seven insisted that her ocular implant was malfunctioning, and, indeed, this proved to be the case, and a manifestation of a very serious problem. Seven’s cortical node was breaking down, causing symptoms such as dizziness and convulsions, and preventing her from being able to regenerate. In simulation after simulation, the Doctor was unable to perform a procedure that would not result in Seven’s death.
My crew rallied around her, of course: Neelix came to see her in sickbay and, when she left there, I understand she had a conversation with B’Elanna Torres about the afterlife. Severed from the Collective, she could see no way that her unique experiences would live on. B’Elanna had her own wisdom to impart here. None of us would forget Seven. I was glad to think of these two women, under my command, turning to each other in friendship, at this difficult time. I myself went to speak to Seven, to assure her that we would do everything we could, and found her viewing images of Earth. I promised to take her to Bloomington when we got home—and learned that she had no expectation of surviving that long. Worse, she seemed to think that she had disappointed me, that she had failed to meet my expectations in her journey toward establishing her individuality. Oh, Seven! As if that was the case! In all ways, you have exceeded my expectations.
In the end, it was Icheb who saved her, donating his own cortical node, and relying on his comparative youth and genetic resequencing to coax his own body into surviving without the node. It was a risky gambit, and Icheb was ill for a while afterward, but it paid off, and Icheb was able to return to his studies and work toward his dream of sitting the entrance exam for the Academy. I gather there was a moment, talking to Icheb as he recovered, when Seven believed her ocular implant was malfunctioning again: this time the explanation was much simpler.
* * *
Surely the most important feature of the final year of our voyage home was the establishment of regular, direct face-to-face communication with the people at the Pathfinder Project. It had been a great and continued relief to me, since our first contact with the project, to know that there were so many people back on Earth working to bring us home. And while a solution to this was, according to their reports, a long way off, they had also been working hard to establish communications with us. At first, we only had the letters: those first tiny contacts with our families and friends that so rocked our little worlds. Then we were able to receive recordings. And now—miracle of miracles!—the people at Pathfinder believed they had worked out a new method to speak to us in real time.
Again, we should acknowledge the work of Reginald Barclay, our great advocate in the Alpha Quadrant. How strange to think we had met him as a (quite inaccurate) hologram before most of us spoke to him face to face! The real Barclay was far less confident, much less a raconteur (and, not incidentally, not hijacked by Ferengi for a quick profit). Since returning to the Alpha Quadrant, I have had many conversations with Deanna Troi about Reg Barclay, and I understand a little more about the obsessive tendencies and various oddities that made him so devoted to our cause. What can I say? There’s a place in Starfleet for everyone, and oddities are right at home on Voyager. We made him an honorary member of our crew right back when those first messages from Pathfinder arrived, and he still remains a part of the crew, as far as I am concerned. The breakthrough he made that let us all speak to each other directly for the first time in years was a hugely significant piece of work for which he has been rightly honored.
You try to be conscious, in a situation such as this, that you are participating in a historic moment. The first transgalactic two-way communication! In truth, we were all very close to being overwhelmed by our emotions. How I felt for Tom, seeing his father on-screen for the first time—seeing what was completely, undeniably, and unconditionally, sheer relief and pride on Owen’s face. And how could we not have been moved by that most precious sight—those real-time images of Earth, our home, straight from McKinley Station, so white and blue and familiar. I could see North America; I could almost fancy that I saw Bloomington, my home, the country lanes and the white picket fences. So close I could almost reach out and touch… Still thirty thousand light-years away. God, that moment will remain forever in my mind. I knew without doubt that it had all been worth it: all the long years, the fears, the losses. I was bringing my ship and my people home.
With the connection made, we
now found ourselves able to communicate with Earth for eleven minutes every day. Sounds like nothing, doesn’t it, but it was an embarrassment of riches to us. Naturally we had to devote part of this to official communications with Starfleet Command, but I argued (and won my case) that, in particular during these early days, we should turn over the bulk of the time to letting my crew speak at last to their loved ones. Of course, that’s not much time to spread across one hundred and fifty people, and Neelix organized a lottery and then the rotation. When my turn came up (of course I didn’t pull rank; I was about thirtieth, which was pretty good, all things considered), I stood nervously waiting for the communication to start. I was a little conscious of Seven of Nine standing behind me, but the moment my mother’s face appeared on-screen, everything around me was forgotten.
“Mom,” I whispered.
“Oh Katy,” she said. “Oh, my darling girl!”
I thought I was going to cry. Nearly seven years of keeping myself under such tight control, knowing that I was the one who always had to be strong… Well, we are all susceptible to the sight of our mother, aren’t we? I’m only human, after all.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said. “I can’t begin to say…”
She looked only a little older. Some more silver in her long hair; a few more worry lines around her eyes. “I knew you weren’t dead,” she said. “Owen Paris came to see me. I said to him, ‘Owen, I’m not giving up, and neither should you.’ He was trying to persuade me, and I ended up persuading him!”
The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway Page 20
