Caretaker (18 page)

The girl’s name was Kes, and what she saw in Neelix was a mystery to Janeway. On the other hand, what Neelix saw in Kes wasn’t at all hard to figure out. She was tiny and slight, with eyes as blue as colored glass and as big as a full moon. A simple, angelic beauty cloaked her like a silken robe, and the sheer innocence of her smile lent it a brilliance even Janeway found hard to ignore. Neelix hadn’t released her hand since the planet’s surface, and Janeway didn’t think Paris had remembered to blink since right around the same time. Even Chakotay seemed embarrassed every time he found himself staring—which was apparently more often than he would have liked, judging from the recurrent darkening of his high-boned cheeks. Only Tuvok and the medical program seemed completely unaffected by Kes’s beauty, and Janeway wasn’t placing any bets on what kind of thoughts really went on beneath the surface of Tuvok’s Vulcan calm.

For now, though, the security chief seemed more concerned with the etiquette of Kes’s rescue than with the girl herself. “If you had told us what you had planned,” he was explaining for perhaps the fifth time to Neelix, “we might have anticipated your irrational behavior—” “Irrational?” Neelix sniffed with an indignation that didn’t suit his cuddly appearance. “We got out of there, didn’t we?”

The Vulcan lifted one eyebrow as though inclined to comment, but the Ocampa girl interrupted before he could actually speak.

“Excuse me …”

Every male in the place—Tuvok included—fixated on her with stunning suddenness. So much for Vulcan control. Janeway smothered a smile behind one hand.

“Don’t blame Neelix,” Kes pleaded, stroking the alien’s head almost absently. “It’s all my fault. I—” “That’s enough.” The hologram stepped back from her to angle a stern glare at the rest of the room.

“This is a sickbay, not a conference room.” It locked a particularly irate scowl on Janeway. “Visiting hours are over. Everyone except my patient is to leave immediately—” “Computer.” Janeway never broke the hologram’s gaze. “End medical holographic program.”

The doctor got as far as opening its mouth to protest before blinking out of existence. Janeway stepped away from the wall to retrieve the medical scanner the hologram had dropped upon its exit, and nodded that Kes should continue as she came across to stand beside her bed.

The girl offered Janeway the same lovely smile as she’d given the men.

You just don’t know what you have over them, do you?

Janeway wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh.

“I never should have gone to the surface,” Kes said, looking among all the faces standing around her. “I’m too curious. I’m told it’s my worst failing—” “No, no,” Neelix cooed against her hand. “It’s a wonderful quality, your most endearing.”

Kes looked down at him in obvious appreciation of his kindness.

“But it does get me in trouble. I knew the Kazon might find me—” “Those brutes—kidnapping you!”

Janeway waved Neelix into silence, then felt immediately guilty when he stared at her in amazement, as though completely unaware that he’d been gushing out loud.

“But if they hadn’t,” Kes went on, “I’d never have met you.”

Still smiling lovingly at Neelix, she explained to Janeway, “Neelix stole water from the Kazon and gave it to me.”

Which, given the situation on the surface, was no doubt the greatest act of love anyone could ever hope for. “Is it possible our crew members are being held captive by your people?” Janeway asked. She’d explained to Kes what they’d learned from Neelix and the Kazon on the way from the transporter room, but hadn’t been able to get past Neelix’s fretting enough to get much in the way of answers before now.

Kes tucked an errant strand of hair behind one ear, and frowned consideration. “We would never hold anyone captive. But the Caretaker has sent aliens to us who are sick and need care.”

“Sick?” Chakotay came a few steps closer, open concern on his face.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“I’m not sure.” Kes shrugged; then her face melted into an expression as purely sad as her contrition had been sincere.

“But none of them has ever survived.”

Never a good sign, that. Janeway thought again about Kim’s mother, waiting patiently for her only son to return, and she had to force the image angrily out of her head. “Would you be willing to take us underground to look for our missing crew?” she asked.

Kes shook her head sadly. “Jabin was right.” She sounded like she was apologizing for the fact. “There’s no way to get down.

The tunnel I came out has been sealed.”

It seemed a ridiculously small obstacle, considering everything else that had happened of late. “We don’t need a tunnel,” the captain explained. “We have the ability to transport there directly.”

“Captain …” Tuvok turned his attention pointedly away from the girl when Janeway looked to him. “Our sensors did not pick up any indication of an underground civilization. The subterranean barrier Jabin described may be responsible. It might also block our transporter.”

Janeway cursed quietly. Why could nothing be as simple as it sounded?

I’m not asking for the world here! Just the life of one boy on my crew. It made her long for the days when you could force cooperation out of the gods through something as straightforward as physical combat.

“There are breaches in the security barrier,” Kes offered eagerly, “where it’s begun to decay. That’s how I got out.”

A start, at least. “Have the transporter room begin a sweep for any breaches we might be able to beam through,” Janeway told Tuvok.

The Vulcan nodded, heading for the door, and Janeway turned back to their visitors to find Neelix blinking after the security chief as though worried about what Tuvok had gone to do. He caught Janeway looking at him, and jumped slightly, his face growing dark with embarrassment.

“Kes can tell you where to go,” Neelix said—but carefully, his hands still firmly clasping both of Kes’s. “But now that she’s free, we’re leaving this system together.”

Kes looked down at him, obviously surprised. “These people rescued me.”

Neelix pouted up at her. “I rescued you,” he protested, and Kes made a disapproving face.

“With their help. It would be wrong not to help them now.”

Janeway couldn’t help but wonder what sort of thoughts went through Neelix that made him deflate so at Kes’s disagreement, only to swell with love and wonder an instant later when he looked up into the Ocampa’s eyes. “Isn’t she remarkable?” he said with a sigh, to no one in particular.

Janeway shook her head, struck again by the easy willingness with which men let themselves be enslaved, only to smile privately to herself when Paris answered Neelix dreamily, “Yes … She is.”

Janeway sensed the weight of rock above her the instant the transporter beam released them. Not claustrophobia—tight spaces and enclosed rooms were her venue and lifeblood on board starships—but, rather, a maddeningly acute awareness of the meters and tons of living planet that hovered above her like a precariously balanced sword of Damocles.

She’d discovered this sensation the first time she let Mark talk her into an overnight caving expedition. He said it would be fun. While he slept blissfully through a night of whatever underground wonders so entranced him, Janeway lay through that eight-hour stretch of total darkness with the ominous pressure of a ten-meter-thick ceiling only a handspan above her face, keeping her awake and adrenaline-powered until their subterranean guide reinstated the lights and announced it was time to move on. Mark accused her later of being scared of the dark; she hadn’t been able to convince him that it wasn’t the dark that made her uncomfortable, but the huge, capricious geology that held the dark inside. Just because it had chosen to hold its shape for something like three and a half million years seemed little reason to believe it would continue to do so over the next three hours.

They never went caving again.

Now that same feeling came rushing back on her, although nowhere near as strongly as before. Having a ceiling so tall it almost masqueraded for sky helped, as did the gentle, indirect lighting that seemed to cast delicate shadows in all directions. Still, not even the absence of walls in the immediate vicinity or the dramatic view of a distant city against the glowering horizon could completely distract her from the lack of a true sun blazing overhead, or the lank, clammy stillness of the air. A cave, by any other name.

A small group of Ocampa looked up as the transporter’s chime died away, looking interested but hardly terrified at the prospect of strangers appearing out of nowhere into their sheltered world.

Short rows of anemic plants climbed trellises strung between banks of flowstone, while brilliant white lights had been erected every dozen meters or so to substitute for the reality of a native star. Janeway wondered how the people patiently hauling water to each of the tiny rows had managed to hack out of the growing troughs, much less find the dirt to fill them, and wondered, too, if the presence of the green growing things made any real difference to the starkness of their cave-born lives.

“Captain …” Tuvok moved alongside her, his tricorder aimed upward and singing faintly. “The pulses from the Array continue to accelerate. The intervals between them have decreased another point-eight seconds.”

And was that good or bad? Janeway tried to listen for the deep thrum of the energy beam’s arrival through the muffling layers of stone, and wasn’t sure if what she heard was the Array’s pounding or her own heartbeat in her ears.

“Kes!”

One of the farmers recognized the girl still clinging to Neelix’s hand, and suddenly a burble of excitement swept through the other workers at the sound of Kes’s name. They each took a moment to carefully set aside their crocks and tools, then descended on the landing party with cries of delight that sounded like children heading out for recess as much as anything else. They were all young and pleasantly thin, Janeway noticed as they gathered into a babbling knot around Kes to exchange hugs and brotherly kisses.

It was like being surrounded by a crowd of half-finished adolescents who had only just started to be good at mimicking their parents’ adultness.

“Hello, Daggin.” Kes smiled when the man who’d first called out to her swept her up in his arms. Neelix, on the other hand, looked considerably less pleased.

Still grinning, Daggin pushed Kes away from him to hold her at arm’s length, shaking his head as though unable to believe she were real.

“We never thought we’d see you again! How did you get back?”

“These people rescued me from the Kazon,” Kes told him, flashing a shy smile up at Janeway. “I’m trying to help them find two of their crewmen.” She turned in a half-circle to call to the other Ocampa around them, “Does anyone know where the aliens are kept?

The ones the Caretaker sends here?”

Silence smothered the joyfulness of a moment before as swiftly as a hand over a candle flame. Janeway wondered if it was the mention of off-world aliens that made them so cautious, or the mention of their own Caretaker.

“I think they’re at the central clinic,” Daggin said after a moment.

Janeway touched Kes’s shoulder with quiet hope. “Can you take us there?”

(No.) A new, deeper voice that was somehow both spoken and yet not quite heard seemed to come from nowhere. (She cannot.)

Kes had no difficulty turning to find the speaker behind the farmers to her right. Janeway was startled to see two Ocampa males as round and grounded as the others were fairylike and young. The older of the two, his pale, clear eyes squinted in a frown of unhappiness, pushed gently through the crowd to stand just in front of Kes as the girl explained, “They can’t speak telepathically, Toscat. Please talk aloud.”

The concept of Toscat—or anyone—slipping his words so casually inside her mind gave Janeway a chill. At least the Vulcans had the decency to ask permission before opening any sort of contact that might expose whatever random thoughts happened to occur to either party. Living in a race of telepaths must make keeping secrets a serious challenge.

Janeway decided it might be best to keep Tuvok’s inherited abilities to themselves, at least for the time being. No telling when the captain might decide they needed an informational edge, and Tuvok’s willingness to attach himself to an Ocampa’s thoughts would be worthless if the Ocampa already knew to protect themselves from the Federation visitors.

Toscat pursed his lips as though displeased with the idea of words passing through them, then nodded stiffly toward Janeway without actually meeting her eyes. “I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said, his voice too loud, and stilted with non-use. “But you should not be here.”

“We’ll be glad to leave,” Janeway told him, “once we find our crewmen.”

He looked up at her somewhat sharply then, and Janeway met his gaze firmly. He wasn’t the first person who’d tried to interfere with her duty to her crew, but he was hardly the most threatening. She held him pinned with her stare until he glanced aside again, ostensibly gathering Paris and Chakotay into the discussion although Janeway could plainly see the smears of red darkening on his translucent cheeks.

“That won’t be possible,” Toscat said, addressing the landing party as one large whole. “We cannot interfere with the Caretaker’s wishes.”

Chakotay snorted. “Maybe you can’t, but we can.”

The elder Ocampa shook his head. “You don’t understand—” “That’s right.” Kes touched Toscat’s arm and made him look at her again.

“They don’t understand,” she said, softly but with strength. “They have no way of knowing that the Ocampa have been dependent on the Caretaker for so long, we can’t even think for ourselves anymore. They don’t understand we were once a people who had full command of our minds’ abilities—” “The stories of our ancestors’ cognitive abilities are apocryphal.” Toscat aimed the explanation at Janeway, as though it were important that she understand. “At the very least, exaggerated.”

“We lost those abilities,” Kes said over him, more loudly, “because we stopped using them.”

Toscat waved his hands in front of his face as though to banish her words from his sight. “We should not dwell on what’s been lost, but on all that’s been gained.”