Cybersong (3 page)

“That part is about being Rhiellian, of course. He had lost his corda.

Maybe we should have let him die. They can’t exist without their group minds, and his own people would put him to death. It’s shameful for them to be left alone, to have survived their entire hive.”

Janeway raised her eyebrows quizzically.

“Their cordas are group minds linked up somehow with an AI.”

“Like the Borg?” Janeway asked, her attention riveted.

“Borg?” Neelix asked.

“They’re also a linked group mind with an AI,” the captain said.

“We’ve been at war. They want to assimilate all the sentient races they find, bring them into their mental collective. We think the Borg came from the Delta Quadrant. Be thankful you haven’t encountered them yet.”

“Oh no,” Neelix said quickly. “The Rhiellians are very peaceable.

I’ve never heard of them ever being in a war. No, they stay to themselves and don’t bother anyone. So finding any of them in space is unusual to start. They don’t have many trading ships. If you want their products, you go to them. And finding one alone—well, no one’s ever found a Rhiellian alone.”

Neelix sighed heavily. “That’s all I know, Captain. Except that obviously something terrible happened, and the vector and the tachyon field readings match. But precisely what, well, no one can say.

“The Rhiellian talked about old gods and being seduced and music and all kinds of things that didn’t make sense. But without the rest of the corda, no one expects a Rhiellian to make sense anyway.”

They sat for a moment. Janeway didn’t like having to rely on Neelix for information. It was worse when his knowledge came from some painful experience. She wouldn’t have had to dredge personal memories back in the Alpha Quadrant, where every race was well documented and all she had to do was access the computer files. Even large parts of the Gamma Quadrant were getting familiar due to the wormhole.

Here she had no choice. Much as she would prefer to leave Neelix’s personal life untouched, she knew that his information was necessary.

“Sounds like a good place to avoid,” she agreed. “Thank you, Neelix.”

“Lunch will be a little late, Captain,” he warned her as he left.

“I had a lot of chopping to do and now it’s going to be behind schedule. But I’m using the rest of the Grolian flour to make cookies.

No more fancy desserts, just cookies. Mr. Kim’s Cookies. I love it when the sounds go so well, and they were his idea. That way people can take their desserts with them.”

She smiled as the door closed behind him. There was something likable in the way he took to the role he had created. As if cooking were on the same level as engineering.

Janeway left the calm retreat of her ready room, decorated with relics of her scientific past, to return to the bridge of her ship.

Chakotay’s face was drawn and tense as she strode to her place.

“Captain, we have a problem,” Chakotay told her. “The navigational readings say we are headed around the tachyon field, but the tachyon readings have increased dramatically. And the increase is consistent even when we change headings.”

“Have you checked the navigational systems and the console connections?” the captain asked. Her eyes flickered over the forward screen, the consoles under control, and all the monitors she could sweep with a single turn of her head.

“We’ve checked out everything we could think of and the readings remain consistent,” Chakotay told her.

Kathryn Janeway took her central seat on the bridge and leaned back, aware that all eyes were on her. She studied her own personal readout discreetly nestled deep in the arm of the command chair before she spoke. “Cut all engines,” she said.

“All power cut,” Paris replied, his voice tinged with surprise.

The captain smiled. “If we don’t know which way we’re going, it’s better to stay put than to run at full speed in the wrong direction.

Reverse impulse.”

She waited until Paris announced, “We’re coming to full stop,” before she spoke again.

“What is the tachyon field reading now?” Janeway asked.

“Still increasing, Captain,” Harry Kim replied, the surprise evident in his tone.

Janeway touched her commbadge. “Janeway to Engineering.

B’Elanna, what’s going on down there? Are we still generating warp speed?”

“Yes, Captain,” Torres’s voice sounded firm and a little confused.

“Everything is on line and we’re at warp six as ordered.”

“I just ordered our speed cut,” the captain replied.

“I’ll check the connection, Captain,” Torres replied, “but there wasn’t any warning that there had been a change in course or speed. And that system shouldn’t be out.” The entire bridge could hear the chief engineer fuming at her boards as if they had somehow defied her on purpose.

“Get the warp drive off line and slow us to impulse,” the captain ordered the engineer. “Then get up here immediately. And bring the engineering log for the past hour.”

Few things made Kathryn Janeway really angry. But a threat to her ship or to her crew was a personal affront. And whatever was going on here was trying to wrest the ship from her command, and that was something she would not tolerate.

She stared out into the void depicted on the forward screen as if she could sight her enemy. “Not my ship, you don’t,” she muttered under her breath.

“Captain,” B’Elanna Torres’s voice came over the comm. “I’ve tried to cut the drive, but the warp coil isn’t responding to the controls. I tried the override and everything behaves as if the boards are disconnected. We’re checking the connection now, Captain, but it doesn’t make sense that every station in Engineering is out.”

“I’m on my way down,” the captain replied. “Chakotay, take the bridge.

Mr. Tuvok, come with me.”

The security officer dropped in behind her and said nothing until they were in the turbolift. “Why did you require my presence in Engineering?” the Vulcan asked.

“Because, Mr. Tuvok, this doesn’t look like something natural to me,” the captain replied. “This is starting to look very ugly.

And I can’t rule out sabotage.”

“Kes, I told you two cc’s of the arelethyne, not the tridonal.

Now this will all have to be done over again,” The Doctor fumed.

Kes looked down and apologized. She studied the magnified display of the genetic material they were culturing and comparing. The intricate linked rings that appeared on the screen were meaningless to her, though she knew that she ought to know what they meant. She just was too distracted, and the experiment didn’t feel important enough to command her full attention. Maybe she would concentrate better if there were some minor injuries from that holodeck program, or a couple of mashed fingers from the gym.

“It’s just a good thing we don’t have any patients here now,” the hologram continued. “This isn’t like you at all. You’re usually very efficient.”

Kes thought about that. Usually dreams, even nightmares, stayed at home. By the time she was into a day’s work, any shred of the night was gone.

This time it was different. She felt lonelier and more afraid as the hours passed, as if the dream had somehow settled into her waking life.

Its effect on her work was embarrassing. She was proud of what she was learning with The Doctor, pleased to make a valuable contribution to the ship that had become her life. She had never felt herself to be particularly valuable before, and there was deep pleasure in being able to do something important.

“Remember, I am programmed with as much psychoanalytic data as physical therapy,” The Doctor told her.

Kes sighed. “It’s just that I had a very bad dream, and I can’t seem to shake it off,” she said simply.

“A dream?” The Doctor asked, interest filling his face. “Dreams can be important.” He sat at his desk chair and gestured to Kes to sit across from him. She took his suggestion readily, turning from the experiment and data as if it weren’t even there.

Kes smiled. “I don’t think so, really. This was just about being a prisoner in the mines, and being so lonely and afraid.

And even though I know I’m here on Voyager now, I’m still aware of the feelings. I can’t decide whether it’s from the dream or from memory.

Though dwelling on that memory isn’t very helpful,” she admitted. She got up and turned toward the work they had been doing as if she wanted to check the status. Her narrow fingers brushed the experimental containment fields that would have to be started all over again.

“I don’t have any information on the typical dream life of the Ocampa,” The Doctor admitted. “But every intelligent species has considered dreaming important. Among humans it’s often considered to indicate a psychological state and condition.

Chakotay’s people think that some dreams are messages from the spirit realms. And among the Betazoids, dreams with powerful emotional content are often markers of empathic episodes, though given a familiar form by the dreamer who doesn’t know that the underlying emotions of the dream began elsewhere. Do any of these sound applicable?”

Kes hesitated, considering the possibilities The Doctor had outlined.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “But it is still hard for me to think about that time, to remember it all.”

“That’s normal,” The Doctor reassured her perfunctorily. “Trauma is often forgotten, at least in part. It’s a survival mechanism.”

“Yes, I suppose it would be,” Kes answered.

“Perhaps it’s time for you to remember now, now that you are in a safe environment,” The Doctor said, his tone interested.

The Doctor may well be right though, she acknowledged. She had never been so secure, so valued, in all her life. And so many of her memories were a blur. Even her rebellion before she had left her people was not really clear.

She could remember her parents just a little, and a few days of schooling. There must have been more. She remembered Lezen sitting in the square telling them that there was a time before the Caretaker, when the Ocampa were free people who had lived above the surface.

She tried to remember meeting Neelix. He had rescued her, and she had known him then. But she couldn’t remember what it was, or why Neelix had been in the mine before.

She couldn’t picture her Ocampa clothes; she couldn’t even recall what color they were. And yet she knew the colors of everything she wore now, the violet and peach and pink dresses, the soft complex colors that she loved.

All she could recall plainly was the mine, the driving thirst and the grit in her throat. The chalky taste of dried rations and the red sand that got into every crevasse, every pore, that she thought she would never be able to scrub clean. She remembered this all so clearly it was more real than The Doctor sitting before her.

And then she held up one hand to her eyes. Was it reality she remembered so very clearly, or was it the dream?

Finally, Kes took her hand down and turned her eyes back to The Doctor.

He was a hologram, she knew that. But he was also her friend and her mentor, and he was as fully a person as herself.

She trusted him.

“Do you have an idea of how to recover my memory?” Kes asked quietly.

“There are several methods used by different schools of theory,” The Doctor said. “Hypnosis is always popular, the idea being that the individual never forgets anything, only represses it.

There is talk therapy, discussing different aspects until things start to make sense. That can take a long time. And then there’s reenactment, where the patient confronts the realities of the past and acts them out again, but this time changes things to effect the outcome. Taking charge of the past and rewriting it.”

“I don’t know that there’s anything to rewrite,” Kes said quietly.

“But how is this reenactment done?”

“Well, we could certainly do it on the holodeck,” The Doctor said.

“You would have to create the program, and then you go and live it out.”

“I don’t know how to make a holodeck program,” Kes said. “I haven’t been on the holodeck much, except for a picnic with Neelix. He wouldn’t like me going with anyone else.”

“Well, I’m sure someone would help you with the program,” The Doctor said. “All you would have to do is to describe your memories to the best of your ability. Then as you reenact it, you can change things as you remember, to make them more realistic.”

“I would like you to come with me,” Kes said.

“What?” The Doctor asked. He blinked. He had gone to the holodeck before. In fact, it was one of the few places outside of sickbay he could go and retain his full integrity. After all, the holodeck was set up for holograms.

“Why?” he asked, bemused.

“To explain it as we go along,” Kes said. “Isn’t it true that you’re not supposed to try therapeutic techniques alone?”

The Doctor was silent. He couldn’t refute her, not when he himself remembered saying that to her in one of their very few discussions of psychotherapy.

“Well, of course a patient isn’t supposed to be alone throughout the process. But breakthroughs happen all the time, not just during the therapeutic hour. That time is reserved to reflect and understand new insights.”

Kes smiled softly. “And do you believe that, Doctor? Or do you just want more encouragement to return to the holodeck?”

“It might be nice to get out of sickbay,” he grudgingly replied.

“But where you’re going isn’t where I would choose.”

“And what would you choose?”

The Doctor cocked his head to one side. He had to think for a moment.

“There are a lot of places and times before direct download was possible. Galen, Hippocrates—it would be interesting to talk to Hippocrates. But if I had to choose only one, I think it would be Louis Pasteur. You remember who he was?”

The question was rhetorical. Kes never forgot anything. “The first human to create a vaccine,” she answered promptly.

“Preventing disease is better than curing it,” The Doctor acknowledged.

“Not that we’ll have any time for any research here.” He sighed at the remains of the ruined experiment. Kes turned away and hung her head.

“Not as long as they keep playing with that ski program,” Kes agreed.