“Pick it up,” he said, and watched the little shiver that ran through the startled soldier. Tik’ik did as she was told, hefting Modan’s body with surprising grace up into the cradle of her four arms.

  “Follow,” he said, and she did. Apparently the isolation suit’s scent-masking properties needed work.

  Modan woke about a minute into her stay on the shuttle’s medical table. The lacerations and breaks she’d sustained fending off the two soldiers were uglier than Jaza’s had been but also less severe. She healed fast under normal conditions and even faster under the restorative beams.

  She rose to her elbows to see what he was up to and found him bent over the computer and the sensor controls. Sensing her motion, he turned to her and held his finger to his lips.

  She rolled quietly onto her feet and joined him at the console. He was inputting massive amounts of code into several systems. Some she understood to be navigational algorithms, but the rest were incomprehensible, even to her cryptographer’s eyes. She could tell the math was incredibly complex, but that was all.

  Motioning again for her to stay still and silent, he reactivated the stealth harness, disappearing from her sight. Presently the rear access hatch opened and closed again.

  Modan activated the exterior monitor and saw, to her surprise, one of her attackers standing just outside, engaged in conversation with the empty air. Jaza was talking to the creature.

  Presently the Orishan soldier prostrated itself briefly and then disappeared into the jungle.

  The rear access hatch opened again, and when it was closed and secure, Jaza reappeared. He had the queerest expression on his face, and she wasn’t sure it was one she liked.

  “Najem,” she said.

  “Najem,” he repeated slowly, as if tasting it for the first time. “Yes. Please say that. I think I’d like to hear someone say my name for a little longer.”

  She watched as he began selecting items from various storage lockers-the class-two medical kit, the remaining stealth harnesses, two phasers with replacement power packs, the poison analyzer, and various other survival equipment that was designed for extended stays in hostile locales.

  “Najem,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sending you back, Y’lira,” he said. Then, turning on her with that same unsettling expression, “And I’m staying.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending, as her mind failed to process what he had said.

  “You will have to explain that,” she said eventually.

  In response he leaned past her, activating the astrometrics station. A schematic of a rotating, undulating globe appeared on the monitor.

  “That’s the Eye,” he said. “At least, it’s the part of it that exists here. I mapped it while you were healing. With a little bit of luck, you can use the sub-x-11 vertex there to slide back to our era.”

  “I can?”

  “Yes, Ensign,” he said. “I’d say it will put you within a few days of Titan’s arrival. Hopefully a few days before rather than after.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Modan, staring at the construct on the screen. “What?”

  “And you have to go fairly soon, I think,” he said, making a minor adjustment to the figures on the screen. “I’m not sure how stable that thing is.”

  “I failed to return with the flux regulators, Najem,” she said. “I don’t think the shuttle is going anywhere.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, plugging a tricorder into the download cradle. All Titan’s accumulated data about Orishan history and culture began to transfer itself into the smaller device.

  The proximity alarm pinged, automatically activating the external viewers. The Orishan soldier was back, carrying both of the flux regulators that Modan had dropped during her attack. She watched as the creature set the components down on the turf outside the shuttle. It knelt again in that same abbreviated way and then disappeared once more between the leaves and vines.

  The sounds of the battle outside had diminished somewhat, but periodically, a fuel bomb exploding or the report of projectile weapons firing could be heard.

  “I wish she’d stop doing that,” said Jaza, removing the tricorder from the cradle and shoving it into the pack he was building. “This hierarchical clan system is going to be a problem.”

  “Commander-”

  “Najem,” he said.

  “Najem,” she repeated, fighting to stay calm. “Please tell me what’s happened.”

  “I’ve told you,” he said.

  “You haven’t,” she replied. “Nothing you’ve said has made me consider leaving you here in this planet’s past.”

  “If I tell you I finally understand the vision the Prophets showed me, will you accept my decision?”

  “I’m sorry, no,” she said. “That is irrational.”

  “All right,” he said, sitting down beside her. “Rationally, then.”

  In soft reasonable tones he explained his thinking to her, how Titanmight yet be saved from destruction and their fellows on the away team as well.

  He talked about coincidence and the need to prevent paradox. Someone had to take the information about the tesseract’s exact contours back to their own time. Those contours couldn’t be mapped in their era by the tesseract’s very nature.

  Lastly, but most important, someone had to stay here to ensure that the Orishans continued to develop as their history required.

  “That person has to be me,” he said. “You don’t have the necessary background in the sciences to handle any trouble that might arise from Titan’s wreckage. Stabilizing the warp core was primary, but there are all sorts of tech and chemicals that might show up to plague these people. I have to be here for that.”

  “But that creature,” said Modan. “It was kneeling. To you. Does it believe you are a god?”

  He laughed. “She thinks I represent their god,” he said. “Like an Oracle.”

  “Or a Prophet?”

  “I doubt I’ll be quite so cryptic.” He smiled. “But I’ll disabuse her of that notion in time.”

  She digested it. Most of it made a certain kind of sense, except for the bit where he stayed behind.

  “Won’t you pollute the timeline if you stay?” she said. “Isn’t that why we both have to go?”

  “It’s already polluted,” he said. “The crashed starship alone has already done catastrophic damage. I have to stay and make sure the society gets as close to its proper track as possible.”

  “Starfleet will never condone this,” she said.

  “This is bigger than Starfleet.”

  “Then send the shuttle back on autopilot,” she said after some consideration. “I will stay also.” He shook his head. “I can be of help to you.”

  “No, Modan,” he said. “Autopilot won’t work if there’s any trouble on the other end. This takes a living mind, and luckily, we have one to spare.”

  She was silent for a time, still weighing arguments, still searching for the one that would compel him to leave with her or force him to let her stay.

  “Najem,” she said slowly. “These beings, the Orishans, they are nothing like you, nothing at all.”

  “That’s true.”

  “How can you imprison yourself here, with them, forever?”

  He smiled that familiar smile, the one that lit up his face when he was on the verge of some new and exciting discovery.

  “Because I can help them,” he said.

  “You will be alone,” she said, feeling the despair over his choice that he wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t. “All alone.”

  “It’s my fate,” he said, taking her shoulders in his strong gentle hands. “I thought the vision meant I would die, but maybe it wasn’t meant to be a literal death, Modan. Everything that was Jaza Najem is dead in our time. It has been for hundreds of years. Here I’ll be something new. An ending and a beginning.”

  They spent an hour fitting Titan’s flux regulators to the shuttle’s much smaller warp core, and then it was time to go. Modan had not been gifted with tear ducts, so her parting from him, while emotional for both, was a parched affair.