This is what we have wrought,she told them. Do you want your salvation to come at such cost? Is this the legacy you wish to leave your children?

Silence echoed back. If they were deliberating among themselves, they were not sharing their feelings with her.

Finally: We will meet with them [wariness/unease]. After that, we shall see.

Thank you,she told them—and Tuvok was saying it too.

Riker rushed toward sickbay, so swiftly that even Qui’hibra’s determined stride was hard-pressed to keep up. After Dr. Ree’s message, nothing could have stopped him. “Captain,”he had reported, “the star-jellies…are here. In the person of your wife. They are asking to speak with you and Qui’hibra.”

Imzadi?he called to her as he strode through the corridors. Yes!came her reply, but there was something more there, something he could barely sense. Come to us!

That sense of joyous anticipation intensified as he neared the doors to sickbay, and as soon as they slid open, there she was, hurling herself into her arms. “Imzadi!”She kissed him passionately. “We have missed you.”

“Uhh…‘we’?”

Tuvok rose to face him. “Apologies, Captain. This is an unanticipated side effect of the mind-meld. Counselor Troi’s unshielded mind is serving as a conduit for their communication.” His manner was distracted, distant, and Riker realized he was still joined in the meld, himself a conduit for…whatever was happening here.

He grasped his wife’s shoulders, looked in her eyes. “Deanna, are you still there?”

She laughed. “Deanna is with us, Imzadi. She feels with us that it’s a useful way to communicate. And exciting, too! All these strange senses.” She looked around her with awe, breathed in the air, stroked his arms and chest as though it were all new.

Blushing on behalf of them both, he took her wrists and stepped back a bit. “Deanna, you did agree to this, then? It’s consensual?”

“How else could it be?” She shook her head in puzzlement, still smiling. “You poor little ones, so apart from each other, so reserved.” She threw a look at Tuvok. “All of you, you hide so much away from each other, from yourselves.” Then to Ree. “You fight your urges for fear of not being accepted.” Back to Riker. “It keeps you from truly knowing one another, leaves you lonely and unsure of one another.” She moved close to him again. “You and Deanna, we have a hint of true communication, but still so much is held back, so much deferred. Why did we wait so long to share such joy?” She stroked his cheek. “Why haven’t we made a child?”

He just stared at her for a while, then became aware that everyone was staring at him. “Um, right now I think there are other things we need to discuss.” He stepped aside. “Uh, this is Qui’hibra, elder of the Clan Qui’Tir’Ieq of the Pa’haquel. I’m sure you two—or however many—have quite a bit to discuss.”

Qui’hibra had been standing in the doorway, unexpectedly quiet. Now he strode slowly toward Deanna, who watched him warily. Hostility and suspicion showed on her face. “You are one of those who prey on us, and infest the bodies of our dead.”

“I am a Hunter, yes.” The elder spoke with a humility Riker had never heard from him. “My people do what we must to survive. Now that you know of us, you have done no less to us.”

“True,” Deanna said, lifting her head proudly and taking a confrontational step toward him. “And we will do it again if we must.”

“To die at your will would be an honor, revered ones. But perhaps it will not be necessary. We are no longer in a position to threaten you, so you have no cause to prey on us.”

“Perhaps. You would be wise not to test that.”

“We have never sought to test your wrath, mighty ones. We owe you our very existence. We owe you our ability to defend the balance.” The elder had not fully lost his clipped, businesslike delivery, yet it came now with a quiet poignancy Riker had not anticipated. He had believed Qui’hibra to be hardened, cynical, relentlessly practical—an old warhorse who had outgrown the idealism of youth and no longer believed in anything but the job. Riker had seen too many Starfleet officers become like that during the Dominion War and after, and he strove not to become the same way himself. But now he saw there was a sincere core of faith to the elder, and it brought him reassurance. “Please know,” Qui’hibra went on, “that we have always conducted our hunts for you with the greatest of reverence. We believed that success in the Hunt was a sign of your favor and forgiveness.”

“It was not. We didn’t even know it was a hunt. We couldn’t understand what had happened to our dead, that they would turn on us and break the cycle. You were a disease to us, a terror, unnatural.”

Qui’hibra was chastened. “I truly regret that. It was our own folly—you could not forgive what you did not understand.” He pulled himself to attention and spoke formally. “On behalf of the Pa’haquel Clans, I hereby ask your forgiveness for the taking of your lives and your bodies. Know that we pledge each of our kills to the holy balance. That we have taken your lives, not for malice or for greed, but for the preservation of life, within our clans and among all those whom we protect. Accept our thanks for your lives, and for the boon of your bodies. We have sought to let your deaths serve life, and thus maintain the balance as the Spirit wills.

“That is our sacred prayer, passed on from father to son since the beginning. Now these words are mine. Forgive me if they lack grandeur. I am no poet, and to be truthful I have never had much time for the niceties of religion.” He paused. “But every day of my life, I have had a full stomach thanks to your bounty and have slept securely in your warmth. I have raised dozens of children, seen them grow into strong hunters and leaders, nourished by what you gave them. Your strong hides and potent stings have kept most of them safe, and enabled the others to die meaningfully in defense of other lives. And so every day of my life I have given you my thanks, and my reverence, and my love. I have always hunted you with that in mind. My clan has never taken more than it has needed, or inflicted more pain than was unavoidable.

“And I am just an ordinary Pa’haquel. My life has been no different from any other’s. So what I feel for you, what I owe to you, is the same for all. When I give you my thanks, and my reverence, and my…very belated plea for your forgiveness, I believe I can fairly speak for all Pa’haquel.”

Deanna—or the star-jellies speaking through her—studied him intensely as he spoke. By the time he finished, many feelings showed on her face, but tears were among them. “That was truly felt, and well-said. We are willing to forgive you.”

Qui’hibra was visibly relieved. “Thank you, mighty ones.”

“But we do not want to go on being prey. Nor are we comfortable with you infesting the bodies of our dead, no matter how reverently. We want it to stop.”

“At the moment, we have no other choice. But if we do as Riker suggests, if you allow us to exist inside your living bodies and join us in the Hunt as partners, then it might become possible to return your dead to you in time.”

She frowned. “Deanna thinks that’s a good reason to try this, and we tend to agree. But it still hurts us to see our dead in limbo, not returned to the soil that spawned them, unable to feed new life.”

“If I may,” Tuvok interposed. “Your dead are still serving the cycle of life. They feed Pa’haquel life, and defend other life that would otherwise be destroyed.”

Riker picked up on that. “Maybe that doesn’t directly support your own people’s lives…but my people believe that all life is equally precious, that all of it is connected. And we have found that working alongside other life forms strengthens those connections, and makes us all stronger for it. It usually requires making compromises, and changing the way you think about certain things…but in the long run you’re usually better off for it.”