Strange New Worlds 2016 (11 page)

As the child lay in Data’s arms, her gray skin slowly began gaining color. But not
the bright pink of the rest of her species. A cool purplish gray, with hints of the
color of the moss on the ground inside and the grass outside. The color grew slowly,
as the helon in the air reacted with the girl’s blood, reviving her from her nutrient-starved
state. She began to stir, squirming in Data’s arms until he could no longer restrain
her safely. He set her gently on the ground, and the girl swooned for a moment in
the stark blue light, placing a hand to her head, then she stood steadily, bare feet
on white rock. When she opened her eyes, they sparkled brilliant gold.

Every person in the courtyard was watching now, frozen in awe. Crusher could guess
what they were thinking. A Shar-Mi’lan was standing outside. In the sunscape. Without
a suit. And she was
glowing
—

As Beverly watched, the girl’s skin began to faintly luminesce, the same bluish-white
tint of the light from Vakor II. Nah’Tren gazed through the barrier of the shield
that had been harming her for so long and smiled at her mother. Bel’Narr turned and
wept into Crusher’s shoulder.

Ro’Kell turned to the Starfleet doctor who had just broken every rule of Shar-Mi’lan
medicine he’d ever learned. She could see the disbelief on his face.

“A mutation,” he said softly, realizing now what Crusher had realized just in time
to save a life. “Their systems had changed to require the helon.”

Crusher nodded, relieved that someone finally understood her actions, which had likely
seemed like madness.

“And we were keeping it from them. Protecting them. We thought it would kill them,
but look.” Ro’Kell motioned out to where Nah’Tren was skipping around Data and laughing,
reaching her small hands up toward the sun. She was a tiny beacon of light. “Look
what we were missing.” He stood silent for several seconds. “Do you have any idea
what this will do to our society, Doctor?”

She did. And some part of her was glad. She smiled, hugging Bel’Narr closer. “It seems
your species was meant to walk in the sun after all, Keeper.”

The little couch in the captain’s ready room creaked slightly as Picard sat down beside
her. Crusher knew it was his favorite place to talk—private, serene, with the bubbling
fish tank in the bulkhead and the streaking stars outside adding a mesmerizing ambiance
of steady motion to the room.

“You realize your course of action on the surface could have ended very badly,” Picard
said, “for yourself, the child, and the Federation. We were guests on this planet,
offering comfort and aid, not terrorizing hospital workers.” The captain’s tone was
honest, yet not angry. Crusher knew how he felt about the situation. She would take
the formal reprimand as procedure dictated, but was glad to serve under a man who
could see the value of lives through the web of protocol. “Nevertheless,” he continued,
“Commissioner Cal’Sohn tells me that the young girl Nah’Tren is recovering, as are
the other children. Thanks to your timely intervention, Doctor.”

She shook her head. “I almost didn’t catch it in time. None of us thought to consider
that what we saw as an illness was simply the effects of an advancement in their species’
genetic evolution.”

“Hmm, yes.” Picard ran his fingers along the left side of his jaw, in an action that
appeared to Crusher to be both strong and reflective at the same time. “There’s something
rather poignant there, I think. This idea that sometimes, our best efforts at improving
a situation, though noble, are the very obstacles that impede our progress.”

That was one of the things she loved about Jean-Luc. He not only commanded missions
but also recognized the irony, the flaws, and the beauty in the human condition—indeed,
in the condition of all life in the galaxy.

“I’m curious about something, though, Doctor,” the captain said. “Are such sudden
leaps forward in the evolutionary process common? I know my experience is rather limited,
but I cannot recall observing anything else quite like this event.”

“There are recorded instances, though most that I have read about were more gradual
in nature, or involved the realization of a trait that had been nascent for quite
some time. The Shar-Mi’lans will most definitely attract some interested researchers
from Starfleet Medical.”

“In light of that reality, and the inevitable involvement of other interested parties,
protocol will need to be developed to protect the rights of these individuals. Luckily,
the Federation can help with that.” Picard paused. “When I spoke with him earlier,
Commissioner Cal’Sohn was explaining some of his people’s plans to help the ‘sunwalkers,’
as they are becoming known, to smoothly transition into a new way of life on their
homeworld.”

“Yes, Ro’Kell mentioned it as well,” Beverly said. “They have begun setting up a temporary
structure outside their shields to allow the affected young people to transition and
still be able to interact with their families. Eventually, once they adapt to their
new physiology, they will no longer need such support. The opportunities that are
now available to them are staggering. Just imagine it, Jean-Luc, an entire planet
to explore, where once there was only death.”

“Indeed. The stuff of legend. It will be a long process for them—one that will require
patience and acceptance on all sides, no doubt. But I suspect the Shar-Mi’lan people
will be better off in the long run for encountering such an extraordinary phenomenon
within themselves.” Picard paused again, watching Crusher. She felt his gaze on her
features, intent but kind, as always. “And what of the parents of these remarkable
children? How have they responded?”

“As good parents ought to: with love and support. Bel’Narr approached me as I was
getting ready to leave. She thanked me for helping her daughter to find her
so’quen.
”

Picard ventured a guess. “A native word that denotes life? Or happiness, perhaps?”

Crusher shook her head. “In Shar-Mi’lan,
so’quen
means ‘bright self.’ ”

“How . . . appropriate.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. “You know, Jean-Luc, I—” Crusher laughed in
embarrassment. “It sounds so silly now.”

“No, please do go on.”

“Well, I—I asked him for help. On the surface, when I wasn’t sure that I was in time.
I said something like a prayer, as if Wesley was some incorporeal being who could
hear me and intervene.”

The captain smirked and leaned back, folding his hands behind his head. “You know,
what has happened to Wesley is not at all dissimilar to the religious myths of many
cultures. From Earth’s Hindu principle of enlightenment to the ancient Chokti’s belief
in Divine Coalescence, many peoples have aspired to shedding this reality in exchange
for a higher plane of existence. I think young Mister Crusher can now claim such an
experience.” Picard chuckled. “Though, I must admit, a part of me will always remember
him as the precocious youth whose zeal for this ship and for these vast starry heavens
somehow managed to outstrip my own. That part of Wesley, that childlike wonder, I
believe, will always stay the same.”

Crusher believed it too. And for the first time since she had hugged Wesley goodbye,
she felt nothing but pride for her son and his strange transcendent purpose. She knew
her chances of ever seeing him again were slim, yet she was content that Wesley had
finally found his
so’quen.
Doctor Crusher glanced out the port, at the far black reaches of the universe, and
silently wished him a lifetime of fulfillment, wherever the celestial winds might
take him.

She would hold on to the sweater, though. Just in case.

T
HE
S
EEN AND
U
NSEEN

Chris Chaplin

Y
OU REMEMBER
that gray, gravelly field, Yalu—boulders in wrinkled patches like tough, crackling
skin. Rows and rows of two-man tents spread atop those muscular boulders. We slept
in those tight tents with our rusting disruptors between us. Luxury compared to the
Jem’Hadar weapons’ fire carving craters around us during the morning’s campaign.

But in the cool night, those chilled boulders beneath our backs, we’d slip our heads
out the flap in the tent and look up. The sky! It hung speckled and deep—the endless
direction of a sky was alien to us. Columns of smoke seemed to reach out and dissolve
into that black ocean. It crashed on the shores of our imagination, tempting us with
a silent roar.

Beneath that sky you smiled, always smiling. While I wrestled the question that we
were born to bear as sons of two worlds, Remus and Romulus: Does the galaxy mean anything
to a slave born in a dark hole? Or do we mean anything to the galaxy?

“You might be right.” You always acknowledged my perspective.

I was always wrestling—a violent word for my violent hunger—and your attention validated
me. Even when we were little boys in the mines, sifting debris from crystal in the
dilithium refinement plant, I’d chatter away for sixteen hours. Stories and theories
and rumors—each aimed beyond Remus. Lavish palaces and hulking starships and adventures
made me itch. We grew, and so did the itch. But eventually that itch became something
else. Something in me began to decompose, then burn—as if life could flourish on Remus’s
dark side. And when that frustration twisted across my face, you never trivialized
those feelings.

“They’re afraid,” I repeated, “the stars would lure us. Yalu! They can’t have slaves—”

“—slaves hungry for more than food,” you said. You knew my words as if they were scripted.
And maybe they were. But you listened, and I kept talking, working to understand who
we were and why—what my words meant, if they were real. They compelled me to speak
them; they freed me from silence. You thrived in quiet; you learned from it, drew
strength from it. But for me, in it, the itch festered.

Before the Romulan military plucked us from the Reman mines to fight their war, the
Romulan administrator of Remus’s mining colony, a man named Jun cha’Ral, hired us
to write and transmit status reports concerning dilithium quotas and supply requests
back to Romulus. I never understood why he gave us that opportunity. He simply appeared
at our cell one evening after our sixteen-hour shift. He knelt down; our mother laid
in her cot, her face pressing against the grimy walls.

“The Senate’s slashed our budgets,” he explained, his broad, oafish body tangled in
a lattice of shadows. “So, you’re both going to live in the big office. Suppose I
have to get your reading and writing up to standard.”

We were speechless.

“A couple of fatherless mutts like you don’t belong here anyway.”

We looked back at our mother. You smiled: our lives as grunting slaves had ended!
My wet eyes clung to our mother, the frayed folds of her old shirt. Back arched toward
us, her head still, as if she were asleep; I knew she couldn’t’ve been. How could
she be? A Romulan was here to take us! She would not even look at us. You saw opportunity;
I cursed everything: our paralyzed mother, that Romulan slaver.

The stories she told us about our Romulan father crippled me then. Heart stopped.
Lungs tight, fiery. How he would skulk into her cell, her aching body spread weak
on her cot after an eighteen-hour day in the mines. He’d want her. And we resulted
from those exhausting nights. How could she let her boys leave like this without a
tremor of anger or resistance?

You see, I hated Romulans. The hate wasn’t pure, though; the comfort and education
in the Romulan administrator’s office sculpted that itch into a burn. I felt suffocated,
trapped in that mining pit.

“Genius!” I’d exclaim, lost between sarcasm and admiration. “They plant their slaves
on a planet that doesn’t rotate, sealing generations into darkness. What’s hidden
in the dark doesn’t dirty the morality of their shining empire, I suppose!” And you’d
nod, laughing gently, for this epiphany weeded up through my thoughts weeks before
and would undoubtedly sprout again.

When we monitored the colony’s transmission array, chatter from Romulus filled our
ears. And we found that few on Romulus even knew that we existed. As far as the public
knew, Remus was a prison mining colony for their worst criminals. Those criminals,
we figured, were our Romulan guards who beat us, kept our people hungry, and used
our women. Even our savior, Administrator cha’Ral, glowed dimly in light of this revelation.

You cried silently, but my arms shook at my sides as we walked to our room. Something
cracks and splinters in a man when he doesn’t see himself in another’s eyes. The guards
barely acknowledged a Reman, except as cattle. We pass in the tunnels; their eyes
bounce away. Would anyone on Romulus see me to even bounce their eyes?

“These poor men,” you said. I hated you for sympathizing with the criminals.

“Poor men?”

You nodded, wiping tears across your face with the backs of your hands. “They’re forgotten,
like us.”

“They
exist
,” I mumbled. “We can’t be forgotten, because we don’t exist!” And my burn flamed
into bitterness.

“Not true.” You always steadied me in truth. “That Vulcan man’s speech.”

I sighed, frustrated. I hated being challenged, especially with truth. “Spock?” Before
today’s transmissions cut out, the one Vulcan voice on Romulus filled a lecture hall.

“He’s from the Federation. I believe he knows about us,” you assured me. “A just society,”
you said, wearing a playful, deep voice, “can’t thrive on the forgotten backs of disposable
people; eventually the foundation crumbles into what’s hidden—that’s what he said.”

I folded both arms across my chest and growled something at you about those being
empty words that’ll fade. But you knew differently. You knew that if that Vulcan could
speak those words over and over again, we’d be dragged into the light.

Before we left for war, my bitterness tricked me into unlacing the opportunities that
I had—changing everything I saw into an impediment. I would actively confront Administrator
cha’Ral, and, for a while, he tolerated my insubordination.

“You’re just a lousy criminal,” I charged. “What gives you the right to lord over
me? I’ve done nothing immoral.” I had just discovered the vocabulary of moral philosophy
while eavesdropping on another university lecture transmission. “The only natural
law I’ve broken is being born on this sunless rock. I should be the administrator.
You should be out there in the dirt.”

Usually, he smiled and assigned me a day in the mines. You hated when I became so
combative, but we both knew punishment was mere theater. He protected us.

But I finally crossed the line after he found me trying to transmit some juvenile
letter I wrote to expose the “villainy” of the empire to the whole galaxy.

He threw me, personally, out of the administration building, shouting, “I gave you
this opportunity! I thought that the Romulan half of you could become more.” There
was something quivering behind his words, almost disappointment. And now the guards
saw me, but only as cha’Ral’s discarded Reman pet. But I wasn’t really Reman. I had
become more.

The next night, a hooded figure walked passed our cell’s door, dropping a bundled
package. A package meant ownership. Someone meant for me to have something other than
ragged clothes and a dim cell. Honestly, I always thought you, Yalu, sent the books
that sagged heavily in the bundle. Our mother curled toward the wall, again cradled
in her cot, sleeping or weeping, I wasn’t sure. But suddenly power trembled through
me. I felt unmoored, ready to explode from the room, even the planet, by the thrust
of this feeling. I anticipated the words.

While you continued working in the administration building, eating three meals a day,
I would devour those books. Their bindings frayed. Flowering stains colored most pages.
Cold, wet dirt in a fresh pit—that’s what they smelled like. I actually found the
smell oddly soothing. I felt rooted in something real. In those pages, dozens of people
spoke directly to me about things that mattered. Some books even had miscellaneous
scraps and torn pamphlets forgotten between their pages.

Spock, the Vulcan man we heard, wrote one of those pamphlets. It seized me.

As I write to you, my elbows lean against an old bar. Imperfect, scratched gloss smears
its surface. Gray haze snakes around me and the patrons. A few graying Romulans congregate
in the corner. Clanking glasses and low, calloused voices rumble.

I came here to write this letter to you because there were whispers, rumors, that
this establishment’s owner sympathized with Spock’s underground movement on Romulus.
It is a dangerous thing these days to associate with the movement, especially with
the breakdown of the government after Shinzon’s
coup d’état
and the power vacuum filled chaotically by factions of military and Tal Shiar commanders
who grope at their beloved empire’s corpse.