Akaar shook his head, his iron-gray hair crowned in a nimbus of fog-shrouded city lights. “No, it belongs with someone who will tell its stories. It belongs with you,Frane. You should keep it, and pass it along to your children, and they to theirs.”
Frane saw the man hesitate, then reach out to grasp the bracelet. He brought it over to the Neyel and held it out to him.
It was probably the first time that someone other than a Neyel had touched the bracelet since the time of Burgess. And yet somehow it seemed right for Akaar to be handing it back to him. Akaar had knownBurgess, had worked alongside her, and more recently, had helped to save the Neyel and the other M’jallanish native races from oblivion.
Frane took the bracelet and slipped it back onto his arm, then turned and began picking his pathway across the sprawling graveyard.
Akaar quickly caught up with him, but said nothing. They walked on in silence as the winter shadows lengthened farther.
“What will you do now that you are no longer aboard Titan?” Frane asked eventually.
“Oh, I was never formally assigned to Titan,”Akaar said. “In fact, I have not had a permanent shipboard posting for many, many years. I sometimes think the fact that I am unwelcome on my homeworld keeps me from putting down roots of any sort elsewhere. Even on a starship.”
“I gather that there were…complications regarding your actions on Oghen?” Frane asked. He wasn’t certain how—or if—he should even bring up the subject.
Akaar stopped and looked skyward, into the gathering night. Frane also paused to look up, and saw that a smattering of unfamiliar stars, constellations he knew only from ancient drawings and photographs, was becoming steadily more visible. The gentle wind had intensified enough to send the fog into retreat, though enough of the haze remained to smear the lights of the city into a colorful wash across the southeastern sky.
“ ‘Complications’ would be putting it mildly,” Akaar said at length. “But I shall weather whatever storms may come. I have been doing this for far too long to do otherwise.”
The admiral looked back over to Frane. “And what of you, Frane? What are yougoing to do next? You are considered something of a hero among the Oghen survivors now.”
“When Starfleet secures a permanent home for my people, I may settle there,” Frane said.
“That could take months. Perhaps years. What of the meantime?”
Frane sighed, and his tail switched back and forth in a classic Neyel expression of indecision. “I don’t know.”
Akaar’s mien grew serious. “If I were you, I would not stay away from the Vanguard habitat for too long.”
That piqued Frane’s curiosity. “Why?”
“Because you could wield considerable influence over the people there. If you wanted to, that is.”
“The people aboard Vanguard are safe from the Sleeper,” Frane said, shaking his head. “That’s the only influence I wish to wield over them.”
“Is it? Once you wished divine retribution upon them.”
Frane lowered his gaze to the carpet of greenery that blanketed the cemetery. He absently picked at it with the fingers of his right foot.
“Much has changed since then.”
“Yes. And things will go on changing, whether you wish to pay attention to them or not. Whether you want it to happen or not.”
Frane was quickly growing uncomfortable with the subject at hand. “What are you trying to tell me, sir?”
“Only that you have earned a certain degree of celebrity among your countrymen. You could use it to lead your people.”
Frane began to laugh then, and found it difficult to stop. “I am no leader. Just a seeker who has failed at just about everything he has ever tried.”
Akaar shrugged. “Maybe you are. It does not matter. Your people perceive you as a savior right now, and thatis all that matters.”
“Leadership is something my father was good at, Admiral. But it is not a talent I share. I am no drech’tor. Perhaps such gifts skip a generation.”
“Whether you understand it or not, you have already led your people this far. But I caution you: fame is a fickle mistress.”
Frane shook his head, confused. “I do not understand.”
“You have a narrow window of opportunity, Frane. If youmiss it, I guarantee that others will not.And some of those might grasp the mantle of leadership with far less altruism and probity than you have demonstrated.”
A queasy sensation settled deep in the pit of Frane’s stomach. “You speak of Subaltern Harn.”
“He is no longer a mere junior military officer, Frane. He was as visible as you during the evacuation of Oghen. Your people will listen to what he has to say. Perhaps even follow his leadership.”
Gods,Frane thought with a shudder that had nothing to do with the chill winter evening. “Harn is a throwback to a much crueler age.”
He recalled how contemptuously Harn had treated his aboriginal coreligionists and traveling companions. “Kaffirs,” he called them. They were just colonial wogs to him. Just like my father.
Such men were indeed throwbacks to a horrible, formative period in Neyel history—paranoid, violent times that Aidan Burgess had spent her life working to help Frane’s people outgrow. The influence of such men on frightened, dispossessed people could well undo all the progress toward peace that had been achieved since the bloody Devil Wars of the previous hundred cycle.
But maybe it really doesn’t have to be that way.
Frane looked up and saw that Akaar was studying him carefully. He had no idea how long they had both been standing there in the glow of the nearly full moon that had just risen into the eastern sky.
Akaar chuckled gently. “Sometimes the best leaders are the most unwilling ones, Frane.”
He felt the future coming down on him, giving him far too many things to think about at once.
“Do you recall Nozomi?” Frane asked.
Akaar nodded tentatively. “The female Neyel who was part of your religious sect?”
“Yes. I am considering formally asking her to become my partner.”
Akaar clapped a hand on Frane’s shoulder. “Good for you. Marry. Start your own family. You will build a future that you may even be willing to fight to protect.
“And you will have someone to tell your family’s stories. Someone who will carry them forward.”
Nozomi.One of the Starfleet audio texts he’d heard aboard Titanhad explained that the name meant “hope” in the Terran language known as Japanese.
Frane raised his arm and looked again at the story bracelet. For the first time in years—perhaps since he was a child himself—he began to feel some genuine hope for the future. He still wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of pursuing a leadership role in the rebuilding of his society. But he knew that the uncertain and tumultuous process of establishing a new life and a new home for himself and his people was a journey worth taking.
One of the rocks on the bracelet glinted as he turned his arm, and Frane lifted his gaze from that speck of brilliance into the evening sky, where billions of stars beckoned and promised the future.
Coda
U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57072.4
Deanna Troi stood just inside the doorway and watched Mekrikuk. The huge Reman was dressed in the plain black Reman military jumpsuit that Nurse Ogawa had replicated for him, and he turned to face the transporter stage. He exchanged courteous nods with his escorts, Lieutenants sh’Aqabaa and Sortollo. The security officers—Andorian and Martian-human respectively—were already standing in at-ease positions on two of the rear transporter pads.