your mind that held a sense of the dramatic," she
said. "A breezy night, in your dreamlike
haze, became a virtual hurricane."
"You touched me." His fingers brushed against his
forehead, as if a mark were visible. "You kissed
me. It felt like ice."
"That," she said darkly, "was an unfortunate
indulgence on my part. I have since learned what
happened to you. A kiss from me brushes your
forehead. And a death sentence from the Borg--a life
of living as they do, or what passes for living--that
living death sentence brushes against you. Had I
followed my heart's dictates ..."
"I'd be a Borg to this day? Or dead? What
utter nonsense," he said sharply.
"Picard is right," said Guinan. "Sister, the
years of isolation, the pain, the loss--they've
taken their toll on you. You're not speaking as one
who has thought out what she's saying."
Delcara passed through the desk and crossed the
room. "And you, Guinan, refuse to see the
obvious. That is a mistake that I have ceased
making. Once I realized the truth of
it--once I realized the fate that had been
inflicted upon me--only then was I capable of
taking steps so that my fate would be in my hands
once more. And it is. Look at it," and she
gestured out the window and toward her vessel.
"Look at the fruits of my labor."
It hung out there, carrying with it an almost
obscene beauty in the amount of destruction that it was
capable of causing. There was a somewhat hypnotic
effect about it, and it was with effort that Picard tore
his gaze from it. "You found it--?"
"Because of you," she said. "It took me years
to acquire a vessel capable of piercing the energy
barrier around the galaxy. I traced the path of the
doomsday machine, and took its point of entrance
into our galaxy to be an indicator of its
origin. I hoped, prayed, that I would find
something there to use against the soulless ones. What I
found exceeded all possible expectation."
"What is it?" asked Guinan, in spite of
herself.
Delcara paused a long moment, as if trying
to determine the best way to phrase it. "What would
you say, dear Picard," she asked finally, "are
the limits of human imagination?"
"None," said Picard firmly. "The human
imagination has brought us to the stars and will someday
carry us beyond."
"Imagine then," she said, "a ship powered
by imagination, fueled by will. A ship driven by an
overwhelming, undying need for vengeance."
"I would think," said Guinan dryly, "that
considering much of what you've said, such a ship and
yourself would be well matched."
"True," said Delcara. "And so we are.
Within that great vessel you see hanging there in
space are the hearts, minds, and souls of the
greatest of a once-great race. A race that once
strode across the galaxy the way that you would step
across a brook. A race that believed in peace--
in the spreading of life--with every fiber of its
collective being. A race that was in tune
completely with itself and with the galaxy. And when they were
confronted by the soulless ones--by the Borg--they
tried to reason with them, to understand the Borg.
To love the Borg, as they loved all life.
They did not comprehend that the Borg are the
incarnation of anti-life, and their compassion was the end
of them. By the time they tried to fight, it was far too
late, but they fought nevertheless. And as they
fought, there were some who created the great war machines.
As you surmised, the doomsday machine was one such
device. A model, really, for the more
magnificent and deadly one that was to follow.
"But the Borg were even more destructive than was
imagined possible. The prototype was completed,
but the final model was not. The planet-eater had
been launched on a trial run, when its
creators suddenly sensed that their efforts had taken
too long. They felt, deep within them, the final
death screams of their fellows thousands of
light-years away, and they knew that they were now the
last of their race. The knowledge settled on them like a
"They died?" whispered Picard, amazed in
spite of himself. "The rest of their race was wiped
out by the Borg, and they simply--ceased to exist?"
"They did not die in the way that you understand," she
said. "They simply languished, becoming more and more
shadows, beings of no substance at all. Time lost
meaning to them. They knew, in a distant and
oblique manner, that the prototype was continuing
on its course, and what had been intended as a
test run was now the final statement that they would
make. The soulless prototype was achingly slow,
but eventually--centuries, mos t likely--it would
cross the galaxy and reach Borg space. There,
they felt, the Borg would be destroyed. But their
hearts were not in the notion any longer, for they had
always been givers of life, not death. Their
mightiest weapon was left uncompleted, sitting
outside the galaxy, in its great dock.
"They died all together, all at once, like a
great rush of air, or the death rattle from
hundreds of throats. And yet ... and yet
..."
Her voice trailed off a moment, as if she
were lost in thought, and then she continued, "... and yet
they could not completely die. They were too
wondrous a race, more so than they would have
imagined. Just as you, dear Picard, and your people, are
capable of greatness beyond that which you expect--so were they.
Their collective consciousness refused to die.
Their bodies and minds may have given up the ghost,
but their essence--their essence would not go quietly.
Their essence roiled and seethed with the cosmic
injustice of it all, and it occupied the remarkable
weapon that had been created with the skill of their hands
and the strength of their intellects. You would say that
they haunted it. They occupied the great
ship that had remained behind, and there they stayed."
"You offer stories laced with fantasy and
fable," said Picard. "Metaphysical, instead
of physical, science. Technology was discovered
decades ago on Camus II amidst the
ruins of a long-dead civilization."
"Was it, indeed?" said Delcara with an air
of barely held patience. "And perhaps the Borg were
responsible for that race's assassination?"
"Or perhaps that race was a colony or offshoot
of the race that developed your planet-destroyer,"
said Picard. "The technology on Camus
II was capable of mind transference. Also, the
denizens of Arret were able to store their consciousness
in mi
nd-encasing globes. Isn't it far more
likely that some rational, scientific explanation
exists to explain whatever was done to--"
"Why do you persist in this!" Her voice was
filled with fury, her eyes snapping and wrathful.
"I speak to you true, of glories of spirit and
desire beyond human ken, and you wish to drag it
down into mundanities! I tell you the ship was
haunted by homeless spirits, lost and alone ..."
"Until you came," Guinan said.
"Until I came," agreed Delcara. Her
ire seemed to have passed as quickly as it appeared.
"They cried out to me and I heard them, once I
was close enough. I was drawn to the magnificence
of their creation. They loved me, welcomed me,
saw me as their salvation and ally, their rescuer,
their goddess. The ship needed someone to complete the
work. I did so. And then it needed a physical
host to guide it, and that I did willingly.
Throughout the years of loneliness they faced before I
came, they dwelled on their miserable state and, more
and more, contemplated revenge on the soulless ones.
I became the vessel of that revenge."
"Is it what they wanted," said Guinan, "or
what you wanted?"
Delcara went to Guinan and for the first time actually
looked her straight in the eye. Guinan stood with
her hands invisible, tucked deep into the
respective sleeves of her garment. She
seemed--to Picard--to be in a vaguely
defensive posture.
"Every so often, bond sister," said Delcara,
"there is a union that is the perfect meshing of
desires. Such was mine and my vessel. We are
as one. My ship protects my physical
body, keeping it safe from all harm.
It protects and gives a channel to my
desire for revenge against the cursed Borg. And
I, in turn, provide the drive to supplement
the dream of the vessel. The souls of the damned
inhabit that ship, my beloved Guinan. My
sweet Picard. The damned reside there. And
I am their guardian angel."
"The guardian angel of the damned," said
Picard icily, "was Satan."
"Why, sweet Picard ... how
Judeo-Christian of you."
"This isn't a joke, Delcara!" said
Guinan impatiently. "We trusted each other.
We told each other secrets that we swore
to keep forever. I thought you cured of your hopeless
hatred for the Borg."
"Cured? No, Guinan. Never cured," and as
she spoke, it almost seemed as if the lights were
dimming. "Am I supposed to simply live with the
knowledge that the Borg are out there and can continue to do as they
please, where they please? Am I to accept the
misery they have caused me and millions of others?
Perhaps for a time I was able to tolerate that knowledge. Perhaps
I was able to hurl it away, to try and
reconstruct a life and pretend that it was a
life worth living. But I was disenchanted with that
notion, Guinan. I was shown the folly and
futility," and with each word her voice became
louder, angrier. "Hopeless hatred, Guinan?
No. No, not hopeless. That," she said, pointing
out the window with quivering finger, "that gives me
hope. That gives me strength. That gives me
might."
"And might makes right?" said Picard.
She looked at him with dark amusement. "Of
course might makes right."
"But the Borg were mightier once. Did that
make what they did right?" he demanded.
With a raised eyebrow she replied, "The
Borg were mightier. Not anymore."
And with that pronouncement she turned, walked through
the bulkhead, and vanished into space.
Guinan leaned forward, hands on Picard's
desk and she looked as though she were fighting
to compose herself. He put hands on her shoulders
to steady her, and she said, waving him off, "It's
all right. I'll be fine."
"In all the time I've known you, Guinan,
I've never seen you quite as discomfited as you were just
now."
She eased down into a chair and looked up at
him with curiosity, even a touch of admiration.
"Discomfited. Oh, yes. I've seen a good
friend--a dear friend--reject rational explanations in
favor of--how would you put it--?"
"Metaphysical claptrap," offered
Picard.
She nodded slowly. "Yes. Her fixation on
that alone would be enough to discomfit me. The fact that
she's backed up by a weapon powerful enough to lay
waste to a galaxy makes it doubly
intimidating. You, on the other hand," she said,
"faced with the woman of your dreams--you were utterly
in command. You never fail to surprise me,
Captain."
He stared out the window of his ready room at the
powerful ship that was mere kilometers away.
"Occasionally," he admitted, "I even
surprise myself."
Delcara merged back into the oneness of the ship and
felt the cool oneness of the many welcoming her.
"Hello, my children," she said. "I trust you
did not miss me overmuch."
We missed you completely, they sang within
her. We love you, Delcara. We need you,
Delcara. Never leave us.
"I cannot promise never, my children," she told
them.
And she felt something even as she said this, a
sort of ... resentment. A bright, slivering
shard, white-hot next to the coolness that was the
normal state of the oneness. She found it disturbing
and unsettling. "What is wrong?"
You love someone else. They sounded
petulant, their song hitting a discordant
note.
"How I feel for others does not matter,"
she said. "Whatever other feelings I may have had
pale in comparison for how I feel about you and about
our mission. I have given myself over to you,
willingly and gladly. You question that now?"
You listened to the things they said. You thought of
going back to them. And to him.
She was quiet for a long moment.
"I thought of it," she admitted, for there was no
point in denying it. "It could not be helped."
If you love us ... if you value our
mission of vengeance ...
"You are not alive, except in your
determination not to let the great injustice of the soulless
ones go unpunished. I share that determination. But
I have a living mind, a mind that is accompanied
by flesh and blood. And those ... inconveniences,
if you will ... prompt me to consider other
avenues. To dwell, for a few flittering moments,
on the might-have-been's, and the never-will-be's. I
cannot help that. When I see Picard again, and I
relive those comparative few moments we had together
..."
You loved the Picard?
"I love no one anymore," she said. "I
dare not. But there is much in him that reminds me of
loves past. I see some of my life mates
within him. They had much of his spirit, his determination.
There is a blazing glory of life in him that
draws me to him, like moth to flame. But I will not
allow the curse that pursues to destroy him. I
cannot help how I feel, my children. But I can
help what I do."
We want no one else to have you. You must be
ours. You are needed for the great mission of vengeance,
and in performing that mission, you have our devotion. But
we must have yours. For if we are the will, you are the
way.
"I know," she said. "And I will be as one with you.
That is what we both wish."
And that is how it shall be. For eternity, and
beyond. And do not, the voices added darkly, do not
think of leaving us. It upsets us. It threatens the
vendetta, and the vendetta is all.
"I would not upset you, my children, for all the world.
You know that."
We know. But we wish to hear it again ... and
remind you. You are ours, and we are yours.
Forever.
Guinan had long since departed, at
Picard's request. But the captain had remained
in the ready room, lost in thought. So lost, in
fact, that at first he did not hear the buzz at this
door. This led to a more urgent summoning, and finally
he did look up and call out briskly,
"Come."
The door hissed open and Deanna Troi was
standing there. "Captain--?"
Through the open door he caught a glimpse of
Riker and Worf at their stations,
surreptitiously looking in the direction of the
ready room. When they realized that the
captain had noticed them, they quickly snapped their
heads around and gazed at the front viewscreen
intently, as if embarrassed that they'd been
"caught in the act."
"Yes, Cou nselor," he said, and gestured for
her to enter. The doors closed, blocking the
bridge from view. Inwardly, Picard smiled,
calling up an image of Riker and Worf leaning
against the door with drinking glasses against their ears.
She took a seat opposite him and said, "I
sensed you were disturbed, Captain."
"I can't say I'm surprised,
Counselor," he said, forcing a smile. "The
appearance of this ... woman was something of a shock
to me."
"What sort of shock? A pleasant one?
Unpleasant?"
"A shock," he said simply. "I don't
know if I've really digested all the
ramifications just yet."