A long pause from the other side forced Chakotay to look to Seven.
“The channel remains operative, Captain,” Seven said evenly.
“Mister Jobin?”
OMEGA CONTINUUM
“Get out of here, all of you!”
“Please, Mister Tallar, control yourself.”
“This is my garden and I want all of you the hell out of it now!”
“Xin, Waverly, Johns, remain where you are.”
“Yes, Captain Itak.”
“Yes.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Mister Tallar, you know as well as the rest of us that Omega’s progress into our universe will continue unless we remove all of the matter and energy we have brought here.”
“I know. And I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t. I was fine until you showed up. You made it worse. You can fix that. But leave me alone.”
“Do you believe your daughter would concur with your present choice?”
“Leave her out of this.”
“Sadly, I cannot. She is my commanding officer and a model of Starfleet’s ideals. If confronted with this reality, she would surely make the same choice we have. It is a necessary sacrifice, to ensure the survival of countless other life-forms.”
“That’s only because I let you bastards educate her. I should never have let her go!”
“You wanted to save her.”
“Yes.”
“You have the power to do so right now.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Tell me what it is that I do not understand.”
“She’ll come anyway. And if I’m not here when she does . . .”
“If we are successful, our actions here will seal this area of Omega. She will not be able to access the continuum from her present location.”
“You think that will stop her? You don’t know her very well, do you?”
“I know that she will see that her highest duty is the preservation of life, even at the loss of her own.”
“Of course she will. But she doesn’t understand that it’s not that simple. Omega must be returned to its original orientation. If any portion of it remains accessible through the multiverse, the threat still exists. Afsarah is the only one who can right the wrongs I’ve done. But I won’t stand for it. This isn’t her fault.”
“It isn’t yours, either. You did not call Omega into our multiverse.”
“And I never found the monsters who did. I never figured out what they did to break it in the first place. If I had . . .”
“Your regrets are understandable, but they are no longer of consequence. The immediate threat must be dealt with.”
“Then go.”
“Without your cooperation, our sacrifice will be meaningless.”
“I just can’t. Not yet.”
“You want her to return. You want to explain. But only by eliminating any cause for her to return can you hope to spare her. You must join our efforts. . . . Mister Tallar?”
“I can’t believe it’s come to this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
“No. None of us are responsible for the present circumstance. That does not change the only course open to us.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Then you will join us?”
“Forgive me, Jobin. I’m so very sorry.”
“Mister Tallar?”
“Let’s get on with it before I change my mind.”
QUIRINAL
“Damn it, Afsarah, talk to me!”
Cambridge was within a hair’s breadth of grabbing his commanding officer and shaking her senseless when she said softly, “Tallar?”
Eden stepped around the counselor and closer to the barrier. This time, Cambridge didn’t hesitate. Grabbing her firmly around the waist, he said, “Do you see Tallar?”
“Tallar, please,” Eden pleaded as fresh tears flowed over her cheeks. “Hear me.”
Cambridge wondered if this was possible.
The captain stood in silence, straining against him, but he held her firmly in place. Finally, she relaxed and quite abruptly turned. The expression on her face clearly communicated how inappropriate she considered his actions.
“Afsarah?”
“Yes, Counselor,” Eden replied, hurriedly wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.
At this he released her and asked, “What did you see?”
“They were all standing in the garden, speaking to one another. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Waverly and the ensign were clearly frightened. And Tallar was furious.”
“Then what happened?”
The captain turned back to the barrier, as if it might hold further answers for her. “I don’t know. They all vanished.”
“Well, at least we’ve been able to confirm part of our theory. Somehow, your uncle did return to the anomaly from another access point.”
Eden grew still again, her gaze drawn into the darkness. “I don’t like this,” she said softly. “Something’s wrong.”
VOYAGER
“Mister Jobin,” Chakotay called again.
“I’m still here,” he finally replied. “I’ll tell you what I saw. You won’t believe it, but that’s not my problem. When you see Afsarah again, promise me you’ll tell her it wasn’t her fault. It was ours.”
“You have my word.”
“The first time we entered this . . . thing, I thought we were goners. We’d tried everything else, and Tallar had a feeling it would work. I’d have done anything for him. Gone anywhere. I guess I did.
“One minute we were on our ship with our course plotted. The next, we were standing in this garden. It was like nothing you’ve ever seen. The grass was too green, even the dirt was vibrant . . . the trees were drooping under the weight of this luminous fruit. It felt like the beginning. It was all so new and fresh. We didn’t belong there. No one did.
“But Tallar was like a kid, romping around, smelling everything. ‘Wasn’t it beautiful? Didn’t he tell me?’ And all I could think was, Get me the hell out of here. Every moment we spent in the garden, I felt like my mind was about to pull itself apart. But Tallar took my hand and led me. As long as I could feel him, I could hold on.
“Right in the middle of the garden, there was this tree. The fruit was bigger, more beautiful, more tempting than the rest. Tallar reached for one. I tried to tell him no, but I could never tell him anything.
“He touched it. It fell to the ground, and then I knew I was losing my mind. It got brighter and then it vanished. But it hadn’t. It had transformed. It was her . . . Afsarah. She was a baby, so small, so perfect. She looked just like Tallar, except for her being a girl. The little girl he always wanted.
“I don’t know how long we stood there, a second or a day or a year. Afsarah grew and grew. I was terrified. Tallar was in love. Finally she stood up. Now, she was three, maybe four. She looked right into his eyes and reached up for him. He was gone. Hell, so was I. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“He picked her up and held her close. I grabbed both of them and wished with everything I had that we could all just get out of there.
“The next thing I knew, we were all back on our ship. Afsarah was there with us.
“But Tallar was never the same. He said the garden had told him its secrets. He said Afsarah got us out because I wanted it so badly. He said the garden needed her back, but he was never going to let her go. We both wanted a child so much, but I never seriously considered the possibility that it could happen. We could have applied for an adoption—lots of children needed good homes. But we didn’t have a home. We had a ship and a longing to explore. It was no life for a child, and we weren’t going to be able to convince anyone otherwise. But that thing answered our prayers. It gave her to us. I named her, you know. The crown of paradise.”
“Afsarah Eden,” Chakotay murmured.
“It was easy to run. Tallar said someone had been there b
efore us. He thought we could find them. Maybe they knew a way we could keep her with us. We looked and looked. We followed every path Tallar could think of. And she seemed like any other child. We knew she wasn’t, but we didn’t know how different she was until she got a little older. Afsarah was always quick, smart, she remembered everything you told her. We discovered that she knew stuff we didn’t. Tallar said the garden knew everything. It knew the history of the entire universe. It watched all of space-time, it remembered all the things we forgot of our pasts. But it knew because it was the end. It had already seen everything. And Afsarah was the garden, brought to life.
“We knew it was always hanging over us. The longer we were away, the more she grew, and we knew it would call to her. We knew we had to find a way to close it, so she could never go back. We didn’t dare tell her the truth. We left her on Earth, told her it was time for her to get a proper education. We went back with a better ship, determined to do whatever it took to seal that thing off forever.
“I sent messages to her from time to time, just so she wouldn’t worry. I told her we were heading to the Gamma Quadrant. I figured if she ever went looking for us, she’d end up as far away from our actual position as possible. I guess I—”
The connection was abruptly terminated as Voyager lurched beneath Chakotay’s feet.
“Seven,” Chakotay demanded.
Seven’s hands furiously worked the control panel. “We’ve lost him. Attempting to restore the signal.”
“Bridge to Captain Chakotay,” came Paris’s harried voice.
“Go ahead, Tom.”
“The anomaly is splintering again. We need to move.”
Chakotay turned to Janeway. “If Seven gets Jobin back, keep him talking.”
QUIRINAL
Eden stood before the barrier, willing it to show her what she wanted to see. All the while, a roar in her head demanded that she run.
She couldn’t.
He’s there.
Tallar! Tallar! It’s me. See me.
See me.
A bright light assaulted her. It illuminated the hulls of five ships. Eden’s heart caught in her throat as she recognized the smallest of the five.
Tallar, no.
He was there because his ship was there, trapped like the others.
In a blinding flash, the Hawking was engulfed in roiling flames.
From behind her, B’Elanna’s voice called urgently, “Captain! Counselor!”
“What is it?” Cambridge asked.
“We’re leaving. Now!”
Cambridge grabbed both of Eden’s hands. “You heard the fleet chief. Come on.”
Tallar!
And then his face was there before her. The rest had vanished. All she saw, all she knew, was her father.
Desperately she reached for him.
Don’t! she pleaded.
And this time, she knew he heard her. His own hand reached for hers, and the agony of his torment became hers.
Her fingers had barely grazed the barrier when Cambridge roughly pulled her from behind, lifting her off her feet, propelling her out of engineering and toward the waiting transporter pattern enhancers.
Eden no longer needed to see the barrier to know what was happening. The Esquiline, Curie, and Quirinal were following Hawking’s lead. One by one, each of the vessels exploded in her mind.
Only Tallar’s face remained, poised on the precipice between life and death.
VOYAGER
“Have we got the away team?” Chakotay demanded of Lasren. He was seated in his command chair, holding tight to the armrests. Ensign Gwyn was doing her best to maneuver around the new fractures that were opening from within the anomaly.
“Transport complete,” the operations officer advised. “They’re back.”
“Aytar, get us clear of the new fractures, best possible speed,” ordered Chakotay.
Gwyn didn’t reply, so intent was she on making sure Voyager didn’t slip into a small slice of oblivion.
“Ensign Gwyn,” came Kim’s voice from tactical, “a new fracture is opening, dead ahead.”
“Got it,” she replied through gritted teeth.
Chakotay experienced a momentary sense of free fall before the inertial dampers cut in. The ensign had forced the bow down, clearly intending to pass under the new obstacle. Checking the subspace scans for himself, Chakotay knew it was the best maneuver possible, but it probably had only a fifty-fifty chance of success.
They were less than a thousand kilometers from it when the blackness was consumed by a light so bright it looked like a star had just gone supernova. Chakotay had to raise a hand to shield his eyes. This time, Voyager wasn’t going to beat the odds.
As suddenly as the light had appeared, it vanished. Darkness yawned before them. He felt an uncertain jolt as the ship came to a halt.
“Ensign Gwyn, what are you doing?” he asked.
She sat at the conn, holding to the front of it with both her hands, her breath coming in short bursts.
“It’s gone, Captain,” Kim reported.
“What?” Chakotay asked, checking his own readings. And sure enough, the fracture had vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
“Let’s keep moving,” Chakotay ordered, thankful of the reprieve the universe had granted him. “Helm, continue on a trajectory away from the anomaly. Full impulse.”
Kim reported, “No, Captain, not just the nearest fracture. The entire anomaly has vanished.”
“I don’t think so,” Lasren countered from ops.
“Lieutenant?” Kim asked.
“Check sensor grid sixty-three delta, the anomaly’s original position,” Lasren suggested to Kim.
“What do we have?” Chakotay asked.
After a moment spent checking their readings, Kim nodded to Lasren.
“The anomaly has not disappeared,” Larsen reported. “It has resumed its original configuration. The fractures that captured our ships are gone, and it is reduced to a hundred thousandth of its former size.”
“What’s the status of our ships?” Tom asked.
Lasren shook his head. “They’re gone too, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
ERIS
Q sat cross-legged on the floor of the vault. The prism rested dull and lifeless in his palm. As he began to consider all it had shown him, he rolled it back and forth between his hands.
His biggest regret was not forcing Amanda to bring him here when she’d first spoken of it. He could have saved her.
Might have, he corrected himself.
Or he might have just delayed the inevitable by a few precious days.
His father should have been here by now. It couldn’t have taken this long for him to figure out where his son would have gone.
Or maybe he just doesn’t care.
That thought should have made him angry. Instead, it left him cold.
“So, you found it,” his father’s voice murmured from the shadows.
There were so many questions Q wanted to ask his father now. Only one really mattered.
Why didn’t you tell me?
His father emerged from the shadows, masquerading in the human form Q had always believed was his favorite, though he would never admit it. He wore a simple black tunic over gray pants. He paused a few feet from him and knelt on one knee, his hands hanging low and loosely clasped before him.
“Why didn’t I tell you about the prism? It’s an amusement, nothing more. And I did tell you about most of the better ones.”
“Don’t,” Q commanded.
“Why didn’t I tell you how your godmother’s death became a fixed point in time?”
“You had to know I’d find out on my own.”
“I honestly didn’t. Most of your life you’ve run from one diversion to the next, pleading innocence, adolescence, the right to follow in my footsteps—whatever you could come up with to excuse your poor judgment. How was I to know that you’d suddenly develop a conscience when I wasn’t looking?”
“It wasn’t my conscience that led me here, Father.”
“Then what was it?”
“Fear.”
At this his father was taken aback. “You’re a Q. You have nothing to fear.”
“Not even the wrath of the Continuum?”
“They’ll come around. They always do.”
“Always. That’s funny.” Q grimaced.
“Your mother told me you’ve been having difficulty moving beyond this point in time.”
“Do you know why?”
His father’s face registered a brief struggle. To his credit—and his son’s surprise—the truth won out. “Yes.”
“And all this time . . .”
“All this time,” his father interrupted harshly, “I’ve been looking for a solution.”
Q searched his father’s face. “I don’t believe you.”
“Son?”
Q rose and began to pace the floor of the vault. “There’s only one solution, and you forced me to find it, rather than simply preventing Aunt Kathy’s death in the first place.”
Q rose, accepting the criticism with uncharacteristic grace. “Is that what you truly believe, even now?”
“You allowed Amanda to go searching for an answer that ended her existence,” Q said, his voice rising.
“A price I was only too willing to pay.”
“How could you?”
In a flash, Q stood directly before him and grabbed his upper arms. “How could I not? You’re my son.”
“Then why haven’t you helped me?”
Q dropped his hands and shook his head slowly. “Your godmother is not the solution. If I thought for a moment she was, I’d have brought her to the Continuum before she ever learned about that stupid cube. I’d have opened the entire cosmos to her fragile consciousness while offering her intravenous coffee to sustain her.”
“But you know as well as I do that she fought the darkness once and beat it.”
“As soon as we’re done here I’m going straight to your teachers and demanding that they completely revise their curriculum. How they passed you in spite of your incomprehension of the most rudimentary principles of your Q-ness, let alone the inverse relations of cause and effect when temporal matrices have been corrupted, is a crime beyond my ability to adequately express.”
Star Trek: Voyager - 041 - The Eternal Tide Page 31
