Blind Man's Bluff

U.S.S. Excalibur, En Route to New Thallon Minus Her Captain

i.

Kalinda’s red skin turned several shades of pink when Tania Tobias met up with her at Ten-Forward and informed her of their newly dictated mission from Starfleet.

Tania had hoped that, by telling Kalinda about it in a public place, it would minimize whatever negative response she might have. The reasoning was that, once Kalinda got over her initial shock and had time to listen to what Tania had to say, she would have a more measured reaction.

“You can’t be serious!” the normally soft-spoken Kalinda shouted at the top of her lungs. “Are they out of their minds?!”

Whatever conversations were being held in Ten-Forward came crashing to a halt. All eyes were instantly upon the two of them, and Tania felt as if she were withering under the collective, curious stare of the rest of the crew.

So much for that idea, thought Tania.

Kalinda slid off her chair and headed for the door. “Where are you going?” Tania called after her.

“I need to get off this ship!” said Kalinda, and she sprinted into the hallway. Tania quickly ran off after her.

One crewman muttered in her wake, “There are days I know exactly how she feels.”

Meanwhile Tania caught up with Kalinda as she was barreling down the corridor. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“You already asked me that.”

“I know, but ‘off this ship’ is kind of vague.”

“It seemed pretty specific to me.”

“Will you for God’s sake listen to me?” She grabbed Kalinda by the wrist to try and stop her.

Kalinda spun, yanked Tania forward, and brought her own leg up, tripping Tobias and sending her face-first to the floor. Tania grunted as she hit and Kalinda, abashed, immediately released her grasp. Her hands fluttered to her face and she said, “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

“I was better when I wasn’t getting slammed to the floor,” said Tania.

Helping Tania to her feet, Kalinda said hurriedly, “I think Si Cwan must have left behind some of his fighting reflexes from when he was possessing my body.”

This comment also drew strange looks from passing crewmen, and more and more, Tobias was regretting that she hadn’t conducted this entire conversation in the solitude of their quarters. “Look, Kally… could you please keep your mouth shut until we can get somewhere private?”

“You’re the one who brought it up in public in the first place.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Acceding to Tania’s request, Kalinda promptly silenced herself until they were safely in their quarters. Kalinda stood there with her hands moving in vague patterns, clearly nervous, and Tania put her arms around her and tried to steady her. “You have to listen to me, Kally. You have no reason to be scared.”

“I have every reason,” said Kalinda. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like, and you don’t know what happened.”

“I know how they treated you there. I know about the attacks. And it was awful and brutal, and I totally understand. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be in any danger once we get there. You don’t have to go down to the planet’s surface if you don’t want to. They only want to talk to the captain…”

“They want to talk to him about me. About me and Robin and Cwansi. This is going to lead to bad things, Tania, I swear.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Thallon and New Thallon are where bad things happen,” she said matter-of-factly. Gently but firmly she pushed Tania away from herself and turned her back. “Lots of bad things. And they stay there. And they’ll be waiting for me there.”

“I don’t understand. Are you… is this something to do with the spirits again?” That had been an extremely difficult aspect of Kalinda for Tania to fully comprehend. This entire business that Kalinda was able to see ghosts or spirits or lost souls or whatever you’d want to call it. That she was somehow in tune with the netherworld. None of that made a great deal of sense to her.

Then again, it wasn’t as if Tania was completely free herself from abilities that were not readily measurable by anything having to do with normal science but instead were firmly rooted in the realm of the paranormal. So who was she to judge?

Kalinda looked at her over her shoulder. “They’re stronger there,” she said. “Where the bad things happen… that’s where they’re the most potent. I can’t shut them out. They like me because they see me as a link to the world from which they’ve been torn, and they… they won’t leave me alone. They make it difficult to ignore them, Tania, so very, very difficult.”

“Does it happen if you keep off the planet?”

“It can. It’s harder for them, unless it’s someone with a very strong will and a personal connection, like my brother had to me.”

“Then, like I said, we’ll just make sure you stay up here. And if they try to come up here, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” said Kalinda, turning fully to face her. She sounded frustrated. “What can you possibly do that will be of help?”

Tania considered it and then said with a lopsided smile, “I’ll get you really, really drunk and then do all sorts of fun things to you. So even if the ghosts are watching you, you’ll be in no condition to care.”

Kalinda stared at her blankly for a moment, and then she laughed. It was very soft and even a bit uncomfortable, but at least it was something. “I would like that a lot.”

“Then it sounds like we have a plan,” Tania said approvingly. She put out her arms and Kalinda went to her. She held her tightly and closed her eyes and kissed her, and for that moment, everything seemed as if it was going to be fine.

If she could have seen Kalinda’s face, however, she would have thought differently.

ii.

“Captain?” said Burgoyne, standing outside Calhoun’s quarters. “Do you have a moment?” When there was no answer, s/he rang the chime again, and then started to turn away when a voice came from within, instructing hir to enter.

Burgoyne did so, to see Calhoun lying leisurely on the bed. His boots were on, which seemed a bit odd to Burgoyne, but nothing that was worth dwelling on.

“What’s up, Burgy?” said Calhoun.

“Everything all right, Captain?”

“Sure. Why do you ask?”

“Well, this mission we’ve just received orders for—the one to New Thallon—it seems a bit strange, don’t you think?”

“Not really.”

Burgoyne was a bit surprised at the response. “No?”

“Not at all.” Calhoun turned over onto his side and propped his head up with his hand. “The Thallonians know they’re in a bind. They have a major political snafu that they’re trying to deal with, and they’ve come to the conclusion that I’m the only person who can possibly help them get it done. As far as I’m concerned, this is the most sensible decision I’ve seen them make in ages.”

“And you don’t think there might be some sort of ulterior motive for it?”

“Of course there might be,” Calhoun admitted readily. “But I’ve been doing this a long time, Burgy, and so have you. Do you seriously think that if something isn’t the way it appears to be, you and I won’t be able to keep one step ahead of them?”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Burgoyne. “But even so—”

“How’s your son?”

Burgy was confused by the abrupt change of topics. “What? You mean Xy?”

“Do you have another son that I’m unaware of?”

“No.”

“Then yes, obviously I mean Xy. How is he responding to the medication?”

Burgoyne knew what Calhoun was referring to. Selar, Xy’s mother, had obtained a formula for a medication that would counteract Xy’s unfortunate genetic makeup. Instead of speeding through his aging cycle and living no more than four years, Xy would have close to a century of life ahead of him, thanks to Selar. The tragic cost of that discovery had been Selar’s life. But she had died willingly in order to extend her son’s life, and Burgoyne was content in that knowledge.

“He’s… doing fine. The prognosis is excellent and it appears that the cure is working exactly the way his mother was hoping,” said Burgoyne. “Thank you for asking. Now about New Thallon…”

“You don’t find it odd?”

“Odd?” s/he echoed.

“Well, I haven’t seen you mourn the loss of Selar. You loved her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what? It doesn’t bother you that you seem disconnected from what happened?”

“I’m not… disconnected,” said Burgoyne. “I just respect her decision—”

“That’s not the way it works, Burgy,” said Calhoun easily. “Not in my experience. I mean, you haven’t so much as shed a tear. At least not to my knowledge. Have you, and I just didn’t know about it?”

“I…” Suddenly feeling helpless, all Burgy could manage was a slow shake of hir head.

“Then that tells me one of two things: Either you’re in shock, or you just didn’t give a damn about her.”

“Captain, I don’t quite see how—”

“If it’s the first option, I’m not entirely sure that you’re capable of carrying out your duties,” Calhoun went on, his voice sounding almost implacable. “If it’s the second… what does that say about you, Burgy? It says to me that you need to spend some time with the ship’s counselor. Do you disagree?”

“When…” Burgy cleared hir throat. “When you put it that way…”

“Then I suggest you attend to your own needs, and stop worrying about our mission to New Thallon. It’s all in hand, Burgy. Have a little faith.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry to bother you.”

Calhoun rolled over onto his back and interlaced his fingers behind his head. “No bother at all, I assure you.”

Burgoyne left Calhoun’s quarters, feeling somewhat dazed. S/he was unsure of what had just transpired in there, but s/he was so distracted by the things that Calhoun had said about Selar that s/he wasn’t able to give it much thought. Instead all hir concerns were self-directed, rather than pondering anything having to do with Captain Calhoun.

Which was exactly what Calhoun had wanted.





Daystrom Institute

Shortly Thereafter


Seven had fallen asleep, much against her will. The fact that she had been awake for thirty-two hours straight would have been a sufficient excuse as far as anyone else was concerned, but Seven was determined to tough it out. Unfortunately, her body was in conflict with her on that point, and even though she intended to rest her eyes only for a few seconds, she was unconscious before she knew what hit her.

She was sitting in a chair in the computer lab, and she had slumped back in it with her head tilted to one side. There was a bit of spittle drooling from the corner of her mouth.

The Doctor stood in front of her, watching her for a moment, and then he reached over and wiped away the spittle with his finger.

“You have a sample of her DNA right there,” came Soleta’s voice from behind him. “You planning to clone her?”

Looking slightly embarrassed, the Doctor wiped his hand on his shirt and then straightened up in that way that people do when they feel they’ve been caught at something. “I have plenty of her DNA on file if I were interested in doing that,” he said haughtily, and then he frowned. “That didn’t come out exactly the way I planned it.”

“My sympathies,” said Soleta, not sounding especially sympathetic. “Come. I need your opinion on the growth rate of the virus.”

The Doctor followed her into the adjoining lab. The technicians of the Daystrom Institute had been particularly generous in providing use of their facilities, especially considering that the Doctor had refused to tell them to what use they were being put. He simply assured them that it was a matter of Federation security, and that he would do nothing to blow up the lab. They took him at his word and cleared out.

Growing a nano-virus was a tricky endeavor. It had to be monitored constantly, and extreme vigilance needed to be exerted lest the virus find a means of escaping. Were that to happen, the results could be catastrophic. There was one race of would-be conquerors, the Cineen, who attempted to develop just such a virus, but they lacked the facilities to properly control it. The virus escaped and, instead of becoming the dominant race of their system, the Cineen wound up practically back in the stone age, with their planet under quarantine for a hundred years—the projected amount of time required for the virus to run its course. As a result, growing a nano-virus was not something undertaken lightly. Indeed, had the heads of the Daystrom Institute known about it, they might have thought twice about permitting the Doctor to develop one in their facility.

Once in the lab, the Doctor went straight to the kinetic simulator and studied the readings. “The nano-molecular mechanisms are performing exactly within the anticipated parameters.”

“Yes. And I believe the gp1 promoters have moved from class 1 to class 2,” said Soleta.

“I concur,” said the Doctor. “Faster than expected, actually.”

“I managed to expedite their development.”

The Doctor looked at her with interest. “How did you solve the ordinary differential equations?”

“I used a fourth-order Runge-Kutta algorithm. It enabled me to translocate the T7 nano-DNA.”

“Of course.” The Doctor was suitably impressed, and he let it show. “That was very innovative of you. You should be a science officer. Oh wait, you were. Before you walked away from Starfleet.”

“I hardly walked away. I was shoved out the door.”

“For not being forthcoming about your background.”

“For not telling anyone in Starfleet about something in my personal life that wasn’t any of their damned business.”

The Doctor “harrumphed” over that. “Hard for me to envision,” he said. “I would think that Starfleet has a good reason to be concerned about such things. It would seem rather arbitrary if they just picked some aspect of someone’s nature and designated that that, and that alone, made them unfit to serve.”

“Believe me, sometimes it is just that arbitrary, and just that foolish.” She shook her head. “I doubt you’d understand.”

“Why?” he said primly. “Because you think I’m not truly alive?”

“That’s not what I ‘think,’ Doctor,” said Soleta. “It’s just a matter of demonstrable fact, no matter how many books you may write about the subject.”

“As far as I’m concerned—”

Soleta put up her hands, looking tired. “Do me a favor, if you wouldn’t mind? How about you spare us this discussion? A discussion that I assure you is going to go absolutely nowhere.”

“Very well.”

“Thank you.”

“Except to say—”

“Oh God,” she moaned.

He continued on the thought, ignoring her weary reaction. “—that if I feel alive, who are you to say that I’m not?”

“Someone who actually is alive.”

“Except anyone who didn’t know of my origins would be unable to discern any difference between the two of us.”

“It’s not about what other people say…”

“I agree. So why should your opinions as to whether or not I’m alive be anything that I should pay attention to?”

Soleta smiled tiredly. “Well, you’ve got me there. You shouldn’t pay attention. Glad we had this discussion. So how soon do you think we’ll be ready to translocate the virus into a containment field in order to—”

“I assume it’s because you believe you have a soul.”

She had been leaning against a wall, her body sagging with exhaustion. She had been up for as long as Seven, but she had been able to prevent herself from succumbing to slumber. That didn’t mean she was any less tired, though, and now she started thudding the back of her head against the wall. “You are like a damned dog with a bone between its teeth. You’re just not going to let this go, are you?”

“I am simply trying to understand…”

“No. You’re not,” and she moved away from the wall and toward the Doctor. “You’re trying to convince me we shouldn’t do anything to shut down Morgan.”

“There is only one crime punishable by death according to Starfleet, and she has not committed that crime.”

“We’re not killing her! She’s already dead! We are simply exorcising a ghost!”

“It’s going to feel the same to her.”

“She can’t feel! At most, she only thinks she can!”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

“Because she doesn’t have a soul! All right?” she said in exasperation. “I know it’s an insanely unscientific yardstick to use for a measure of being alive, but sometimes the ephemeral is all we’ve got. There is no molecular difference between a dead body and a living one, so there has to be something that is beyond scientific quantification, and considering how little sleep I’ve had, that’s the best I’ve got right now. She’s not alive because she doesn’t have a soul, and oh, by the way, I hate to be the one to tell you, but neither do you.”

Anger flickered on the Doctor’s face and then he pointed out, “You’re the one who referred to her as a ghost. What else is a ghost but a discorporated soul?”

“She’s not an actual ghost. That’s just the closest convenient word to describe her.”

“And isn’t it possible that the closest word to describe me is ‘alive’?”

Soleta rubbed her eyes in a desperate fight to keep them open. “You could just go on talking about this all day, all night, couldn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” he said immediately.

“Someone who is really alive couldn’t do that. Only something’s that not alive never needs rest.”

“I consider it to be merely a perk of my particular status,” he said, but there was a touch of uncertainty in his voice.

They stared at each other for a time, and then Soleta said, “How much of this is about her? And please,” she added quickly before he could reply, “do not insult my intelligence by asking ‘What her?’ because we both know perfectly well which ‘her’ I’m referring to.”

“I…” Then with renewed determination he said, “These are strongly held beliefs that I’ve formed over a lengthy period of contemplation and self-exploration—”

“How much? Of this? Is about her? Or more accurately, her and you?”

He was about to continue to protest, but then he stopped. Soleta watched him warily, curious as to what he would say.

“There is no her and me,” he said flatly.

“And yet you hold out hope.”

“I do not. Whatever ‘moment’ we may or may not have had is long past. We are simply friends now. Friends and colleagues.”

“That may be what you believe. Or it may be what you’re convincing yourself you may believe. Or it may be that if you were truly alive, you might have a better chance with her than if you were not.”

“There are wider issues at stake than my love life or lack thereof,” he informed her, reacquiring some of the archness of his tone from earlier.

“Fine. There are wider issues.”

“Thank you for acknowledging that. Nine hours.”

She shook her head. “Excuse me?”

“In answer to your question. Nine hours before we are ready to—”

“Translocate the virus, yes, right, of course.” She tapped the side of her skull. “Should have remembered that.”

“Soleta…”

“Yes?”

“You realize that I am putting myself at tremendous risk here. I could wind up dying in the attempt to accomplish something, the ethics of which I am still uncertain of.”

The way he said that made Soleta nervous. If they didn’t have the Doctor squarely in their corner, the entire operation could go entirely off the rails. “What are you saying, Doctor?”

“I’m saying that—should that occur—I would be most appreciative if you mourned my passing, just as you would with someone who is alive.”

Inwardly, so that the Doctor couldn’t see it, Soleta laughed.

Outwardly, she nodded and said, “It would be my honor to mourn you.”

“And mine,” and he bowed slightly, “to be mourned by you.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“It was my understanding that ‘hope’ was something typically reserved for those who are alive.”

“I think we can afford to stretch the definition a bit in this case.”

“That’s very generous of you.” He looked her up and down. “You need to get some sleep.”

“Is that your medical opinion?”

“It is.”

“Then who am I,” she said, each word laced with fatigue, “to argue with a doctor?”

Short minutes later, she was sound asleep. Whereas Seven was sagged in a chair, Soleta simply stretched out on the floor, preferring the hardness of the surface beneath her. Her chest rose and sank slowly.

A bit of spittle started to trail down the side of her face.

The Doctor scooped it up for his collection.