STAR TREK - VOY - Flashback

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CHAPTER 1
"ANTHRAXIC CITRUS PEEL, ORANGE JUICE, WITH JUST A hint of papalla seed extract. It's an
experimental blend."
"The success rate of your culinary experiments has not been high."
Lieutenant Commander Tuvok squared his shoulders despite the fact that he was sitting down. He
consistently resisted Neelix's offers to find some combination of live growth and replicated fruits and
vegetables that a Vulcan would find palatable. Consistently resisted, yet continually returned.
The plume on Neelix's head caught the unforgiving lighting of the starship's mess hall and virtually
flickered its pastel colors, making the Talaxian's mottled skin appear almost yellow as he tilted a bit to
one side and poured his brew.
"Ensign Golwat tried some yesterday, and she thought it was delicious. In fact, she had a second glass.
And she never has seconds."
"Ensign Golwat is Bolian," Tuvok pointed out with some irritation at the comparison. "Her tongue has a
cartilaginous lining. It would protect her against even the most corrosive acids."
Taking on the attitude of a sad monk, Neelix requested, "All I ask is that you try it, Mr. Vulcan."
Tuvok eyed him, then eyed the coffee, sniffed it, took a tentative sip, and waited for his tongue to
dissolve.
Coffee, with a flavoring of fruit. And a few other added aromas for which there was no complementary
flavor.
"Impressive," Tuvok offered, registering a certain satisfaction through the stoicism of his Vulcan nature.
Neelix rocked on his heels and smiled. "I'll start squeezing that second glass. Breakfast is coming right up.
Porakan eggs."
"Porakan . . . ?"
"The most flavorful eggs in the sector!" Neelix threw over his shoulder as he moved off. "Scrambled with
a little cream cheese, dill weed, and a touch of rengazo. A galactic favorite."
In the galley, he began some orchestration that involved sizzling and popping sounds, and spoke through
the portal.
"Now, these eggs were not easy to prepare. After we picked them up on Porakas Four, I had to sterilize
them in a cryostatic chamber for three days.
And then each and every one of them had to be parboiled inside the shell with a-"
"Neelix," Tuvok interrupted, wondering how each and every egg was somehow different in the vernacular
from each egg or every egg, "I would prefer not to hear the life's story of my breakfast."
"On Talax," Neelix went on, unfazed, "it's traditional to share the history of a meal before you begin
eating. It's a way of enhancing the culinary experience. My mother was brilliant! She could make every
course, every garnish, come alive like it was a character in a story. My favorite was the one about the
crustacean who-"
His words were consumed in a tongue of flame that burst from his stove. Neelix jolted backward, arms
flailing, then immediately recovered and snatched a towel.
Tuvok pushed out of his chair and hurried there, but by the time he arrived, Neelix had put the fire out.
"What happened?" Tuvok asked.
"Some sort of power overload," the Talaxian said, staring curiously at his stove as if it would explain if
they remained patient. "I'm afraid it decimated your breakfast. This is what my mother would call a tragic
ending."
Tuvok eyed the stove, but saw no other explanation. "Engineering has been making adjustments to the
plasma conduits to accommodate a new energy source. It may have created a thermal surge in the galley
systems."
"Janeway to Tuvok," the comm system said with a
faint crackle, implying there was indeed some problem in the systems. "Please report to the bridge. Mr.
Neelix, I'd like you to join us as well."
"Aye, Captain," Neelix responded before Tuvok had a chance. He looked up. "What do you think is
happening? Why would the captain want me to come to the bridge? Do you suppose she could've heard
about my new coffee?"
"Possibly," Tuvok said, "although doubtful."
"Then something exciting must be happening!" Neelix chirped, gasping. "Let's hurry! A new discovery,
perhaps! A way to get you and all your crew-mates back to your own people! I do hope that happens
for you all someday, Mr. Vulcan, I really do."
"Thank you." Tuvok realized his response was cool and rote, and immediately also realized that
emotional beings required more sustenance for their empathy if it were to be nurtured. "Your enthusiasm
for our hopes is most appreciated, Mr. Neelix. Of course, if we ever find a way home and you come
with us, that will mean that you will then be seventy years at high warp away from your own people."
"Mr. Vulcan," Neelix said as they left the mess hall, "you are my people now. Let's go see what the
captain wants, shall we? Do you think it will be something wonderful?"
CHAPTER
2
VOYAGER.
Of all ship's names, in all the oceans of the populated planets in the galaxy, of all fleets in all spacefaring,
had there ever been a name so fitted to the vessel bearing it?
Kathryn Janeway had heard the name in her own mind and from her own lips so often that the sounds
were part of her, living inside her clothing, as much within her as she was within the ship, and as
dependent upon her as she was upon the vessel itself. She and it were symbiotic, islands nourishing each
other, with no other land in sight.
And her crew's voyage was a long one, showing little hope of growing shorter. Thrown across the galaxy
by some form of scientific magic, they were
seventy years from home space. And that was at full warp.
Continually waylayed by searches for energy, for food, for ways to survive, and by the quirks of strange
territory burgeoning with its own life, both mild and threatening, their journey grew longer and longer by
the day.
Janeway settled back in her command chair and tried not to think about this, but that never worked.
Now she was thinking about it even more. She'd made a vow to keep and pursue the Federation edict
for Starfleet personnel-"to go boldly where no one had gone before, to seek out new life and new
civilizations . . ."
But every time she did that, giving her crew a short-term goal with a chance for challenge and
satisfaction, she set back their long-term goal of just getting home.
That was her dilemma. Let them grow old heading home as fast as possible, without challenge or mission,
or give them the missions and the challenges and let them have some form of a life here, in the Delta
Quadrant, with their goal of home just a backdrop from which she hoped they could be distracted?
She was on her own personal voyage that way . . . could she captain their lives as well as their duties?
Oh, well.
She tapped her chair's comm panel and forced herself back to business.
"Captain's log, stardate 50126.4. Long-range sensors have detected a gaseous anomaly that contains
sirillium, a highly combustible and versatile energy source. We've altered course to investigate."
The last word echoed again and again. Every time they stopped to "investigate" something, they shaved a
little more off their chances of reaching home before dying of old age.
But they had to get halfway there before they could get all the way there. Before the next seventy years
would come the next five.
That was what she was looking at on the forward screen-an energy source for the next five years.
First Officer Chakotay moved aside as Janeway left her command chair and moved to join her
department heads, who were clustered around a couple of monitors.
"Sirillium," Neelix uttered in his modified court-jester tone. Neelix was their resident resident of the Delta
Quadrant. Native to this space, no one on board had tried harder to plunge into the daily life of the
foreign ship's crew than he had. The crew didn't even take as active an interest in themselves as he took
in them and their well-being. Sometimes he was the best thermometer of how they were doing, physically
and mentally.
"Yes," Janeway responded. "And possibly large amounts of sirillium at that. If so, we're going to need to
stockpile as much as we can. I'd like to convert Storage Bay Three into a containment chamber."
Neelix turned the banded pastel colors of his plumed head to her and looked quite like a disturbed
chipmunk. "My pantry?"
"I'm sorry, Neelix," the captain told him. "You're going to have to make other arrangements."
"Of course, Captain." Clearly disappointed, Neelix complied, but not without mentioning, "You know, if I
injected sirillium gas into my thermal array, it might improve cooking time."
"Yeah," Engineer B'Elanna Torres said with her Klingon rasp barking, "and blow up half your kitchen in
the process. Sirillium is far more useful as a warp plasma catalyst."
She brushed back her straight brown hair and seemed to think she'd made the only reasonable case. Just
as she was about to preen her technical victory, she was overridden by Lieutenant Tuvok's ever-precise
enunciations.
"The gas can also be used to boost deflector shield efficiency," the ship's chief of security said, his stiff
Vulcan demeanor giving particular substance to his words. Straight as a board, his posture alone insisted
that his use of the sirillium would be best.
Amused, Commander Chakotay leaned toward his captain and murmured, "The vultures are circling ..."
Janeway smiled. "Well, there's certainly no shortage of good ideas." She turned to Chakotay, and with
that movement signaled an end to bridgeside debate. "Have all department heads submit proposals for
sirillium usage."
Tuvok responded as his console beeped, then reported, "The anomaly is within visual range."
Janeway faced the main screen with anticipation. "On screen," she said.
A pretty section of space, the Delta Quadrant. Small comfort, but welcome. In her career she'd seen
upward of a thousand gaseous formations, nebulae, thermals, clouds, spurts, novae, elephant trunks, and
toxic soups, most up close and personal, and found that no two were alike enough to take casually. The
privilege of seeing one of those had never been lost on her, until now.
Today she would gladly have tra ded the haunting blue cloud on the main viewscreen for a picture of
Earth's marbled globe. As gas rolled, plasma boiled, and energy crackled within it and vibrant Bahama
tide pools surged inside it, the blue of the nebula made her wish to see the blue of an ocean.
A pretty sight, yes, but barren of the life they all needed to see. It would help keep them alive and
moving, but that was bare sustenance to a crew so very alone.
She sighed, then hoped no one noticed. To hide it, she glanced at her command crew. Chakotay seemed
unimpressed. Torres and Neelix were inwardly fighting for control. That made her glance at Tuvok.
Yes, he too was hooked on that blue mass, staring with uncharacteristic attraction, almost as if held by
some magnetic power. She almost commented, then forced herself not to. Vulcans didn't like to have
their inner thoughts exposed, or let it be known that they had feelings down deep under the plaque of
restraint. No sense embarrassing him just for a chuckle.
Well, not usually.
She looked at the screen again. "Analysis, Mr. Kim?"
Tactical Officer Harry Kim flinched as if she'd asked him to run out there and scratch the cloud with a
fingernail to see if anything came off. He pulled his attention from the screen to his console. "It's a
class-seventeen nebula. I'm detecting standard amounts of hydrogen and helium . . . and seven thousand
parts per million of sirillium."
He seemed relieved to be able to confirm their find, and glanced at Janeway.
She turned away from him so he wouldn't see her accommodating grin, and found herself looking again at
Tuvok.
He was looking down at his hand.
She looked there too. His hand was trembling.
A muscle spasm? Or was she seeing something else in his face? Was there expression in his eyes?
Worry?
She'd seen him experience those before and instantly fight them.
He didn't seem to be fighting right now.
Again she walked the line of whether or not to call attention to his momentary lapse. She wouldn't want
anyone calling attention to hers, but. . .
"That's the highest ratio I've ever encountered," she mentioned, just to hear her own thoughts aloud.
Torres stepped forward. "Captain, I recommend we use the Bussard collectors to gather the sirillium.
They'll cut through that nebula like an ice cream scoop."
Gazing at the screen, Helmsman Tom Paris frowned in his pedestrian way. He was the only one
who balked at the temptation of sirillium. "I'm reading a lot of plasmatic turbulence in there. It could be a
bumpy ride."
Janeway forced herself to give that her attention for the moment. "Can you modify the shields to
compensate?"
An automatic, normal question. Instantly she realized that the person who would be answering that
wouldn't be Paris, but Tuvok.
When he didn't answer, everybody turned to look at him. Janeway realized she'd blown his cover.
"Tuvok?" She turned to face him. "Tuvok!"
His lips were parted, his dark skin pasty, and there was confusion in his eyes. Terrible confusion, laced
with fear-Janeway knew that look. She'd seen it in the mirror. But never from Tuvok.
No, there was more. He looked ill.
Chakotay moved to Janeway's side and looked at Tuvok.
"Are you all right, Lieutenant?" he asked.
A tremor racked Tuvok's body. A glaze of perspiration struggled to the surface-witness to the stress he
was under, because Vulcans rarely reached a point of physical stress enough to make them sweat visibly.
"I ... do not know," he responded. "I am experiencing dizziness . . . and disorientation ..."
Unable to clarify what he was feeling, Tuvok seemed embarrassed that he couldn't provide any answers.
He struggled for a few more seconds, then requested, "Permission to go to sickbay."
Janeway almost reached out to him, but held back "Granted."
She almost ordered an escort for him, but knew that would be impolite, though probably prudent. He
wanted to get away from their prying eyes, she knew.
She made herself hold back until Tuvok maneuvered stiffly, shakily, toward the turbolift.
The lift would do most of the work. Janeway found herself ticking off the actual number of physical steps
Tuvok would have to take from the lift door to the door of sickbay. In her mind she walked every step
with him. An ill Vulcan ... no good.
"What was that all about?" Chakotay asked.
"Mr. Kim," Janeway said, turning. "Contact Kes in the sickbay and have her confirm when Tuvok
arrives. I want to make sure he gets there all right."
"Yes, Captain," the young man said, but his hand was already on his comm panel.
Janeway was grateful for that, and heartened. They were beginning to really act like a bridge crew,
anticipating each other's thoughts. That could only be good in the long run.
The long, long run.
"Very well," she said as if in agreement with herself.
Janeway stepped closer to the forward viewscreen, until she could feel the blue cast of the gaseous
nebula coloring her cheeks.
"Mr. Paris, plot us a course into that nebula, right through the highest concentrations of sirillium," she
said. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Shields up."
Lieutenant Tuvok clung to the side of the moving turbolift as if riding one of those carnival structures on
some hedonistic planet, the kind upon which life-forms allowed themselves to be yanked about and
driven at terrific speed until nausea arrived.
He didn't see the attraction. At the moment, even riding the lift was sickening.
"Help me. . ."
He snapped his head back and bumped the wall of the lift. He looked around-not his own voice. No one
was here-
A female voice. Young. A child.
There was no child aboard this ship. Yet he knew he had heard a voice just now. The certainty, though,
gave him no ease.
Anxiety crushed upward inside him-a terrible physical thing, as real as the nausea.
"Help me!"
He stared at the turbolift doors before him, at the straight seam where the two doors met, but the clear
image began to blur before his eyes. Fighting for control with the fingernails of his mind as if clinging to a
sheer rock wall-
Sheer rock wall. . .
Rock.
He saw his own hand out before him, but it was an image from years upon years ago. His childhood.
"Tuvok!"
The girl's voice screamed plaintively, suffering in his mind.
But now it was before him, and he heard it physically, felt the open land around him, the outstretching
mountains and plateaus.
Whump-ump . .. whump-ump . .. whump-ump ...
Heartbeat. His own. The girl's. Faster and faster, he heard the sound of his own metabolism reacting to
the rising anxiety, to the desperate screams of the girl.
Tuvok flinched to the core of his being as a face flashed before his eyes-a young girl, a Vulcan girl,
staring at his eyes from a distance of no more than a meter-terrified. All Vulcan reserve had flushed from
her eyes, and he couldn't help but react to that. Eight years old, nine ... no more.
His knees flexed slightly as the lift eased to a halt and Tuvok heard the turbolift doors whisper open
before him. He knew he had arrived at the sickbay deck. The Vulcan girl's face flickered and peeled
away as the doors parted. The corridor before him seemed dark, cloying, as if carved from rock.
Rock . . .
Flushed with terror, he tipped his body forward as he let the ship's artificial gravity pull him out of the
turbolift. It was as if this were his first walk down a starship's corridor, before he had ever gotten used to
the unplanetlike, unequal tug of artificial gravity. After the first few weeks, such a tug became second
nature, a thing to be ignored, like the slightly rich scent of artificially produced atmosphere, but at this
moment he could feel and taste both as if he were a
visiting plebe. His stomach roiled, and his legs were like tinder in wind. The corridor undulated before
him like the gullet of some hungry animal.
Symbolism . . . nonregulation . . .
No logic in this. No female Vulcan child on board. No rock, no plateau. Still on board, corridor,
sickbay. Forward, go forward.
Just as he thought he could regain control, a blanket of dizziness caught him as if by the throat, and he
drifted sideways. If he stumbled, he would go over the cliff! He would die with her!
Panic tore through him as balance was knocked from his feet and he staggered. He crashed against
something solid-the corridor wall had stopped him. He hovered there with his shoulder pressed against it.
No cliff. . .
But there was a cliff, there is somewhere. A cliff on board. The ship could fall off.
"Tuuuuvok!" A scream seared his mind. He heard it as clearly as the red alert klaxon.
He reached out and caught her hand, made a quick pull, and got her by the wrist. She was small, but her
weight was too much in spite of that. Stones and slabs of shale cracked under her feet as she scratched
desperately at the sheer rock wall. Dust plumed away, downward, spiraling in a rising thermal, forming a
ghastly frame around the narrow body, the tribal clothing. Her pointed ears caught the rosy Vulcan dawn
over the plateau. Her eyes were wide with panic on so intense and base a level that not even a Vulcan
could bury a reaction. Death
was final and frightening, and not even Vulcans could discipline it away.
He was too young to save her, too young to accept transfer of her katra-that was for her parents to do,
but they weren't here. They were in the city, on business. She was entrusted to him, supposedly safe on
this trail, on this plateau.
He willed all his strength to his hand, but his body would not give up his own grip on the plateau's edge.
Self-preservation shot in and made him lean back just a few centimeters.
Enough-enough that the girl's weight shifted and bumped against the cliff face. Startlement and pain
rippled through her body, up through her arm and into Tuvok's. Their Vulcan telepathic minds shared the
terror she felt. If he could only keep moving against the turbolift wall, he could reach the security alarm
and get help. A security team could pull the girl back over the top. Starfleet Security . . .
Please-
His hand cramped, knotted, began to hurt. He felt the girl's moist fingers slip into his coiled palm, then on
through it.
Her feet flashed back and forth beyond Tuvok's sight of the girl's frightened face. She was kicking,
panicking-
Don't kick-please don't kick.
Her weight yanked back and forth against his straining arm. Her fingers were wet and small in his hand.
Then a rare breath of wind came to caress his
wrist and take him by the hand, and his hand was empty.
Peeling away as he watched, the girl's face blanched with pure grisly dread as she fell away from him,
growing small against the rocky abyss.
And all he could do was watch her go, clutched by the unkind emotions that thrived upon what had just
happened.
His lips hung open, sucking in and gushing out the hot arid atmosphere of Vulcan, but now his teeth
began to ache with the fresh chill of starship-controlled oxygen mixture. His clothing clung to his skin as if
baked on by the plateau sun.
His hands ached, his shoulder throbbed, his stomach lurched, and gruesome fright chewed at his mind
until he no longer could control the reaction of his body and he shuddered viciously.
His hands-his hands-empty.
He staggered forward, and the gush of an en-tranceway whispered in his ears. He fell forward, over the
edge of the cliff.
CHAPTER
3
KES REACHED OUT TO TUVOK AS HE STAGGERED INTO
the sickbay entrance, though she was small enough that he nearly knocked her over with his solidly
muscular form.
As the ship's medical trainee, she knew nothing was supposed to surprise or shock her-the Doctor had
told her over and over about maintaining distance and a certain medical coolness.
But Mr. Tuvok was shuddering with some kind of trauma, and Kes felt the trauma plunge into her own
mind.
She was no Vulcan and could not use her mind's power to push away what she saw-a Vulcan boy
leaning over her, his face pasty with terror, and she felt the terror fill her own chest and begin to pound
and throb. The deck was gone under her feet. Her
tiny slippers dangled pitifully as she kicked and kicked.
Tuvok!
She cried for help. Her voice was so high and thin! A child's voice . . .
One arm stretched out over her head, and he had a grip on that hand, but the grip was growing painful
and weaker. He couldn't hold her! He was going to drop her!
She couldn't turn to look, but she somehow knew what lay below-unforgiving thorn bushes and jagged
rocks. She'd pricked herself on those thorns before and scratched herself on those rocks. If she fell from
this high plateau, the rocks and bushes would shatter her small body.
She was losing composure. A patient had come to her for help, and she was letting a vision take over.
She had to help Tuvok-he was collapsing. His breathing was erratic, his heartbeat skipping, his eyes wide
with the same terror as Kes saw on the boy's face.
She cramped her eyes closed and forced her semi-telepathic mind to refuse the image. She had never
been on Mr. Tuvok's planet, so she couldn't be seeing it in her mind. She couldn't be hanging from a cliff.
Something was wrong with Tuvok's telepathy, and it was encroaching on hers.
Please don't let me fall!
The commbadge on her tunic-if she could touch the commbadge, she could summon the holographic
medical program, and the Doctor would appear and
help her. Or she could call the captain for help, or Mr. Chakotay . . .
Neelix, help us! I love you, and you'll help me if you can. Come find us here and help Mr. Tuvok. . .
please. . .
She raised her trembling hand, not the one that was clinging to the Vulcan boy's hand on the precipice,
but the other one. She brought it to her chest and tapped the commbadge.
Something about the small movement within the cuff of reality shook her free of the terrible vision on the
plateau's edge. Her eyes cleared as she opened them, and she saw Tuvok before her, on his knees,
shuddering with effort and glazed with perspiration.
"Doctor!" she called.
Instantly the emergency medical holographic program popped into physical reality in the form of a
studious and approachable man with a clipped, efficient manner, who didn't like unanswered questions.
"Kes! What's wrong with Commander Tuvok?" he said after seeing Kes kneeling on the deck with the
Vulcan.
"I ... I don't know ... he came in the door and fell," she stammered. "I had a ... he's having a ... seizure of
some kind. Doctor, we have to help him!"
"Of course," the Doctor said bluntly, taking Tuvok's weight as the Vulcan went suddenly limp and
slumped into their arms. "Kes, what's wrong? You look deeply stressed."
She gazed at the helpless officer, who at any other
time was so strong and intimidating, and said, "I felt... I saw ... no, nothing, nothing's wrong with me. It's
just so awful for Mr. Tuvok."
"Kes," the Doctor said, flattening his lips, "you really must take more care to develop a medical
composure if you intend to advance in the field. Professional distance is critical, especially in an onboard
situation, where all of our patients will be people we know and work with on a daily basis."
"Yes, I know," she told him softly. "I'm sorry. I'll help you put him on the bio-bed. There's something
terribly wrong, and it's hurting him."
"Obviously. I'll begin an examination. You notify the captain."
"Yes, I will. I'll do it right away, Doctor."
Tuvok! Don't let me fall!. . .
CHAPTER 4
"CAPTAIN!"
As the ship bumped to port, shuddered, then recovered, Kathryn Janeway plunged for the comm unit on
her command chair as soon as she heard the medical trainee's voice burst through the link. That didn't
sound good, and she knew just whom it didn't sound good about.
She suddenly felt as if she'd dumped her responsibility on someone else, and on such a gentle, delicate
girl-shameful. She should've seen to Tuvok personally. Studying a gas cloud just didn't demand her
personal custody.
Not even a cloud with an attitude, like this one seemed to have. As her hand hit the comm, she glanced
forward at Tom Paris, who was dipping and
ducking with the surges of the ship as he piloted through the unhappy gases.
"What is it, Kes?" Janeway asked.
"Captain, it's Mr. Tuvok! He staggered into sickbay and barely made it in the doorway! He's having
some kind of physical reaction, and it's very intense. I just happened to be standing there and I managed
to break his fall, but I couldn't hold him. I activated the Doctor's program, and he helped me lift Tuvok
onto a diagnostic bed, but now he refuses to tell us what happened. He insists on speaking to you. I'm
sorry-"
"Not at all. Tell him I'll be right there. And, Kes, don't pressure him for answers until I get there. Have
you administered any medication? Sedatives?"
"No, not yet. The Doctor prefers to, but only after you arrive. Mr. Tuvok is very agitated, Captain . .. I'm
frightened for him."
Janeway felt as if there were two hundred decks between the bridge and sickbay and she'd have to hike
every one of them. "I understand, Kes. Try to stabilize him, and don't do anything else."
"Yes, Captain."
Janeway clenched her jaw. That sweet, small-boned, big-hearted girl down there, faced with a shook-up
Vulcan-how patently unfair. Since the ship's entire medical staff had fallen victims to the accident that
threw Voyager into the Delta Quadrant, the ship had been depending on a holographic medical program
and the goodwill and decent intentions of one Ocampa girl with a painfully short life
span. Kes's short life span allowed her to learn very quickly-what choice did an Ocampa have?-but
sometimes even a whiz had to handle things beyond her scope. An agitated Vulcan was way beyond
almost anybody's scope, including another Vulcan's.
Certainly beyond mine, Janeway thought as she pushed away from the command center and caught
herself on the helm. "Chakotay, I'm going to sickbay. You can take care of this sirillium collection, can't
you?"
The tall first officer gave her his reserved, half-devil grin, as if there were something hiding under the
surface. "I imagine I can handle it, Captain. I don't envy you your choice of duties at the moment."
A vicious bauble sent the ship slamming to starboard as if it had struck a solid object. Janeway was still
holding on to the helm, and Chakotay managed to stay on his feet, but at the upper console Harry Kim
was caught with his weight in the wrong place and careened sideways into the subsystems console. He
rolled from there to the deck, and lay sprawled for an embarrassing few seconds.
Chakotay looked to the upper deck to make sure Kim wasn't too badly bruised, then turned back to
Janeway and added, "I hope Tuvok's all right."
"I'll pass that along to him. Keep me posted. And somebody pick up Mr. Kim."
"It was a chaotic experience, but my chief impression was one of... desperation. I was holding a young
girl by the hand . . . trying to prevent her
from falling into a precipice. I was unable to keep my grip . . . and she fell to her death."
Vulcan or not, Tuvok was still struggling.
He looked better now than Kes had described him when he staggered through the entrance to sickbay.
The image wasn't very comforting as Kes told it, and Janeway believed her. Kes was gentle and
sensitive, but she was accurate, too. Working with a holographic doctor all the time, she pretty much had
to be.
Janeway stood beside Tuvok's bio-bed. Kes stood beside her. On the other side, the Doctor was
running a medical tricorder along Tuvok's body and looking one hell of a lot more human than any
computer-generated quick-fixer should look.
On the bed, Tuvok looked well enough, but only well enough. Few others might have noticed, but
Janeway picked up on the tension he was working to bury, and though he often didn't meet the eyes of
others unless he was making a report or an accusation, he now looked up at her and clung to her steady
gaze as if it were a lifeline.
"And there is more." He struggled on. "I had an emotio nal response. Anxiety . . . fear ... an almost
irrational anger at myself for letting her fall."
"How do you feel now?" Janeway asked him.
He frowned unhappily. "It is a ... distasteful but rapidly diminishing image."
"When did that happen to you?" Kes asked, probably not realizing how very stressful this turn of events
really was for Tuvok.
She was a mild-voiced girl who, despite growing
old at warp speed, seemed never to change in her spritelike innocence. She even looked like a sprite,
with puffy platinum hair and elfin ears. Add wings, and she could be a Flower Fairy.
"You said you were a young man," Kes continued, trying to help, "kneeling on a precipice. Did that ever
happen to you?"
"It never happened," Tuvok answered, his brow furrowing with troubled thoughts. "The girl was
unfamiliar . . . and I have never been in that situation." He paused to think, for the first time taking his eyes
off Janeway and staring forward as if looking for something. "It was me as a child . . . and it did seem like
a memory. But I do not recall such an incident."
He was frustrated, Janeway knew. The complexities of the mind weren't supposed to be a mystery to
Vulcans, and when a dark cubbyhole opens up, it could be as disconcerting as recurring dreams to a
human. Anxiety and fear were bad enough to those who were used to them. For a Vulcan, they were a
vicious and punitive assault from within.
Janeway couldn't help but wonder about the little girl. Someone, somewhere, sometime had died. A child
who never had a chance at the kind of life she herself sometimes bemoaned, and suddenly she didn't feel
so very unlucky merely to be seventy years from home.
She wanted to put out her hand again to calm him, let him know she understood at least what he felt, if
not why, but the Doctor completed his scan and lowered the tricorder.
"Well," the Doctor said, looking at Tuvok, "it was definitely a traumatic episode. Your heart rate
accelerated to three hundred beats per minute, your adrenaline levels rose by one hundred thirteen
percent, and . . . your neuroelectrical readings nearly jumped off the scale." The Doctor paused, then
looked up from his tricorder. "If you were human, I'd say you had a severe panic attack."
"I am not human," Tuvok pointed out priggishly, with that sting of typical deprecation that Vulcans
seemed to think was obligatory.
"No kidding," the Doctor said blandly. "I don't know what happened to you, but there can be any
number of explanations." As Janeway tipped her head to listen carefully, the hologram went on.
"Hallucination . . . telepathic communication with another race . . . repressed memory . . . momentary
contact with a parallel reality . . . take your pick. The universe is a strange place."
Considering that this computer-graphic mock-up was walking around giving a diagnosis, Janeway had to
agree.
"I'll have Mr. Kim examine the sensor logs," she said, looking down again at Tuvok. She felt obligated to
say something, and since there was a handy gas cloud, why not start there? "Maybe our proximity with
the nebula is affecting you somehow."
"In the meantime, Lieutenant," the Doctor said, "you're free to go. All your vital signs have returned to
normal, and I don't see any residual systemic damage."
Tuvok tightened his body as if to get up, but the
Doctor moved in with some kind of small monitoring device and implanted it behind Tuvok's ear. The
Vulcan didn't wince, but that didn't necessarily mean there wasn't a pinch or two involved.
"But," the Doctor went on, "I want you to wear this neurocortical monitor. In case you have another
episode, it'll record a complete encephalographic profile, and alert sickbay at the same time."
"A wise precaution," Tuvok agreed. "Thank you, Doctor."
Tuvok stood up and seemed stable enough, but Janeway watched him custodially. She saw trouble
behind his expression, just a wash of duskiness beneath his complexion, a crimp of worry behind his
eyes.
Yes, he was deeply affected. Not having the memory evidently hadn't prevented him from living the
experience, and now having to live with the aftershocks. Somewhere in the past a child had died, and
Tuvok held himself responsible.
Had it happened? Had something so ghastly occurred in his past that he had buried the moment and
forgotten the child? Was this one of the many mysteries of Tuvok that Janeway had yet to uncover,
despite their long years of trust?
Someone else's past was always a strange zone to wander, and a Vulcan's was particularly private. Did
she dare ask? Pursue the pain for him if he couldn't do it for himself? Would that do more harm than
good?
Just how close friends could a human and a Vulcan even hope to become?
"Do you think you're all right?" she asked him after the Doctor and Kes moved away. "I can relieve you
of duty for a day or so, if you think the rest would help you."
"I would prefer not to leave you shorthanded," Tuvok said, fighting down the strain he was under.
She smiled. "I don't think I'm shorthanded for scooping ice cream out of a gaseous anomaly."
He looked at her curiously. "I beg your pardon?"
"Just something B'Elanna said." Despite the protocols about not touching a Vulcan unless it was
necessary, Janeway clasped his arm reassuringly, because he seemed to need that. "You're almost
through with your watch shift. If you go to your quarters now and rest, you'll have till zero seven hundred
hours tomorrow before anyone, including myself, will miss you. Take it as an insult if you like, but part of
being in a Starfleet crew, or any crew, is to make sure you're not too indispensable. So get some rest and
don't feel guilty."
"Guilt is an emotion," he curtly pointed out. "Vulcans do not experience emotion."
Tell that to the little girl on the cliff.
"Oh, yes," Janeway said. "I forgot."
Kes was young, she was alien to this crew, she was gentle and unassuming, but she was no fool. The
episode in sickbay with Mr. Tuvok had somehow established a link, however momentary, while he was
distressed. Somehow this link still remained.
She didn't know whether or not Tuvok had been aware of her connection. He had said nothing,
hadn't looked at her with any more than the most elusive of glances, as if embarrassed. Could a Vulcan
be embarrassed?
Now she was heading for Tuvok's cabin to make adjustments on his cortical monitor, knowing that she
had volunteered too quickly, with perhaps too much anxiousness in her voice. Perhaps the Doctor hadn't
noticed.
Vulcans were very private people, she had come to discover, and she promised herself she wouldn't
mention the episode of the mind link, or tell him how it felt to be slipping and kicking, dangling over a cliff
hundreds of feet from the ground. The memory of it sent a shiver down her arms.
And the terror began once again to creep through her mind.
Candlelight soothed his psyche. Perhaps this was the one concession Vulcans made to the idea that
romance was comforting.
Dozens of tiny fiberglass rods caught the light and refracted it along the tabletop. Each rod was cool in his
fingers, attracting the attention of his troubled mind.
Before him, the keethera grew rod by rod. The goal was to create a structure, but never the same
structure twice. His mind was being organized moment by moment by the architecture of the house of
little rods.
A simple device, remarkably effective. He had heard that humans tended to construct puzzles and
miniatures of vessels for the same kind of mental result.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then slowly let the breath out.
"A house cannot stand without a foundation," he murmured. "Logic is the foundation of control . . ."
He placed another rod on the keethera, without opening his eyes, forcing his mind to see the structure's
details without physical vision.
"Control is the essence of function ... I am in control."
His fingers found another rod, and he raised his hand toward the structure. A nerve in his palm flinched-a
child's hand in his, slipping-
The rod clicked on two others. The keethera shuddered and collapsed with a startling crackle.
Tuvok's eyes shot open, his concentration snapped. So many hours . . . failed.
The distraction of his door chime sounding was actually welcome. Visitors rarely came here, and the
sound perplexed him for an instant, before he finally said, "Enter."
The door hissed, and Kes came in, holding a small medical device.
摘要：

CHAPTER1"ANTHRAXICCITRUSPEEL,ORANGEJUICE,WITHJUSTAhintofpapallaseedextract.It'sanexperimentalblend.""Thesuccessrateofyourculinaryexperimentshasnotbeenhigh."LieutenantCommanderTuvoksquaredhisshouldersdespitethefactthathewassittingdown.HeconsistentlyresistedNeelix'sofferstofindsomecombinationoflivegro...

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