“That thing with wings and a Cardassian face, the one with tentacles?”
“That’s it. First of all, that creature hovers above the planet, like a sun god, just like what we saw. Second, those tentacles radiate down to the people on the planet and then through the people intothe planet. I think the official interpretation is that this refers to this Overmind, or something, binding the people together, anchoring them to the planet. Only what if that’s a reference to the Hebitians? To something down deep, in the planet, like what we found?”
“Interesting idea.” McCoy pulled thoughtfully at a wattle of flesh beneath his chin. “Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it, but it would answer why the Cardassians look on the Hebitians as gods. Go on.”
“Mac, don’t you get it? Those tentacles, they’re metaphorical references to the Hebitians’ telepathic capabilities. Over time, the Cardassians develop resistance to psi influence. The Hebitians lose control, and then, like all gods, they fall. Except for the Cardassians, it’s a disaster because the planet’s in chaos, and they’re still rebuilding, getting stronger. But here’s the real mystery.” Stern leaned on her knuckles and eyed McCoy through her viewscreen. “Mac, those telepaths on that planet, how did the hell did they get there? Who was smart enough to know how to capture their neural signatures in a magnetic containment field?”
McCoy pooched out his lips. “The Hebitians themselves?”
Stern ducked her head in agreement. “Or somebody equally, if not more advanced. And they had to be a spacefaring species, Mac. So who were they?”
“Beats me. Like all mysteries, just opens up more questions, stuff we can argue about over drinks. So.” He clapped his hands together, gave them a good scrub. “When you going to happen back my way?”
“Soon.” Stern straightened, tugged down on her tunic. “Sooner, if you give me a good mystery. You know I love a good mystery.”
“Will do.” Then McCoy pulled his face closer, squinted. “My God, woman, are you wearing lipstick?”
Stern laughed out loud. “Mac, I toldyou. It’s a party.”
The doors opened to the ship’s arboretum, and Garrett stepped into the soft, sweet scent of roses and Asian lilies. The air of the arboretum was damper than the rest of the ship, and Garrett listened to the splash of water cascading over a tiny rock waterfall to a pool where the green discs of lily pads and Denebian watertrumpets floated. The sound of the water reminded her of Qadir’s riyad, and that made her think of Halak, and she wondered where he might be at the very moment.
Not now. With an effort, she tore her thoughts away from Halak. Later—she checked the time because she’d wanted everyone convened at 1900 on the dot—she had plenty of time to think about Halak later. Right now, she had to find Jase.
That didn’t take long. She wandered down a path that began with the spiny, squat desert wahmlatsthat studded Vulcan’s arid plateaus and ended in a small grotto of tropicals—bromeliads and orchids—native to Earth.
Jase slouched on a slate stone bench next to a tiny pool stippled with the stalks of musk-scented butterfly wands. He held a drawing pad in one hand, a pencil in another because, as he told his mother, he was a purist. A collection of Matrayan blueglows ducked and weaved over a profusion of wide, splayed petals of hot pink and deep purple.
“Can I sit down?” she asked.
Jase nodded without looking up. Garrett slid onto the stone bench, feeling how cool the rock was beneath her thighs. She cocked her head to study Jase’s drawing: the half-finished portrait of a man. Her heart squeezed. There was no mistaking the high cheekbones, the fall of that raven-colored hair.
She touched a finger to the drawing. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not done,” said Jase. His voice was thick with unshed tears. “It’s only been two weeks, but I can’t remember his eyes. I try, but the more I try, the more he gets blurry, like I’m looking through fog.”
Garrett wanted to point out that they had pictures; there were archives and records. But she held her tongue. She was always in such a rush to fix things, provide false reassurances that everything would be all right. Sometimes the best thing was to allow space for pain. God knew she’d had her share of grieving before, and after the divorce. But at that last moment, when she’d knelt beside Ven Kaldarren, her grief had crashed through the barrier she thought she’d erected. Grief was still fresh in her heart, with anger at her own stupidity—her own stubbornness—not far behind.
She knew, too, that Jase had lost something infinitely precious: his father. Conceivably—though she couldn’t imagine it—she might come to love again. But Jase would never have another father, and there were experiences Jase had with Ven Kaldarren that Garrett wouldn’t ever be a part of because she simply hadn’t been there.
She ached to brush the boy’s hair from his forehead, but she wasn’t sure she should touch him just yet. In the two years since the divorce, how he’d grown. No longer a little boy but teetering on the brink of adolescence.
Time’s tricky that way. You’ve got your memories, but time flows all around you and you’re always thinking you have so much more time than you really have. Really, all you have, in the end, is time for regret.
That niggling little voice of conscience? Or was it her, accepting herself? Maybe, she conceded, it was both.
Jase traced the angle of his father’s jaw with one gray-smudged finger. “Do you remember what he looks like?”
Garrett inhaled the scent of wet earth and damp leaves. “Sometimes…no. And then sometimes, like here,” she nodded at the pond, the flowers, the blueglows, “I’ll smell something and then I’ll remember a picnic by Lake Cataria, what I wore, how your father made a joke and I spilled a glass of Potroian punch all over his shirt because I was laughing so hard.” And, so, why do I feel like crying?
“I can’t do that,” said Jase miserably. “I can’t think about him much without remembering what happened and how he looked when those things…”
Jase’s eyes pooled, but no tears came. “Why? Why didn’t they take me? Why Pahl and Dad? I felt them; I sawthem.”
Acting on impulse, Garrett put her arm around her son. She felt him stiffen, and for an insane moment, she thought that he was going to scream at her to get away; that she could never be like his father; that she’d left them both behind for her ship and people she loved better. She almost pulled away.
Stop running. You ran from Ven, and now you’re trying to run from him. You’re so ready to be rejected you’ll do the rejecting first.
She squeezed his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. She thought back to the mind-cry she’d heard—Ven, calling—how strong that momentary connection had been. Fading now. Receding into memory.
“All I doknow is that, for a brief instant, I heard your dad calling. Up here.” She tapped her left temple. “Inside.”
“Yeah,” said Jase. “Me, too. Only it went both ways. Dad never talked to me that way. Said I needed my privacy. But sometimes he leaked.”
“Leaked. Thoughts?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I could hear him and Nan yelling, only not in words. You know? The air got,” he cupped his hands, “heavy. So I figured out how to make my head go gray. Like the way the sky looks just before it rains.”
An empath…or something more.Garrett felt an electric thrill tingle through her limbs. She wasn’t sure if it was from apprehension or excitement, and then decided it was a little of both. She’d always known Jase might inherit some of his father’s abilities. But what Jase described was so eerily close to telepathy, she wondered if she should have Stern, or maybe Tyvan, spend some time with Jase, maybe test him.
No. She reined in her natural desire to try to find an answer, close a loop. She had to let this go for now. The important thing now was to be here for her son, to be with him, and to let him talk about his father, and what would happen next.