stood on the brink of accomplishing that which had
driven her for so long. She would confront the
Borg. She would defeat the Borg.
And after that, who knew? Perhaps she would return
to Picard. Anything could happen. She was living
proof of that. The universe was an infinity of
maybes.
She held her breath. The pain was gone.
Just a few more minutes ...
Chapter Twenty-five
Sweet Picard was gone.
Delcara understood. Sometimes, for those you love,
you have to let them go. None of it mattered
anymore. He had his life, and she had hers.
The Enterprise was long gone now,
unable to keep up. Delcara had reached and
exceeded speeds that had been thought to be
impossible. But nothing was impossible if the will and the
drive and the need were strong enough.
Her life. Her vendetta. A journey of
years would instead be a journey of minutes. She
stood on the brink of accomplishing that which had
driven her for so long. She would confront the
Borg. She would defeat the Borg.
And after that, who knew? Perhaps she would return
to Picard. Anything could happen. She was living
proof of that. The universe was an infinity of
maybes.
She held her breath. The pain was gone.
Just a few more minutes ...
Chapter Twenty-six
Sweet Picard was gone.
Delcara understood. Sometimes, for those you love,
you have to let them go. None of it mattered
anymore. He had his life, and she had hers.
The Enterprise was long gone now, unable
to keep up. Delcara had reached and exceeded
speeds that had been thought to be impossible. But
nothing was impossible if the will and the drive and the need
were strong enough.
Her life. Her vendetta. A journey of
years would instead be a journey of minutes. She
stood on the brink of accomplishing that which had
driven her for so long. She would confront the
Borg. She would defeat the Borg.
And after that, who knew? Perhaps she would return
to Picard. Anything could happen. She was living
proof of that. The universe was an infinity of
maybes.
She held her breath. The pain was gone.
Just a few more minutes ...
Chapter Twenty-seven
Riker watched in approval as Picard slid
off the biobed and tested the strength of his leg.
"You'll be limping for a couple of days," said
Dr. Crusher. "So be sure to take it easy."
"Yes, Doctor."
"Oh, so he listens to you, does he?" said
Katherine Pulaski, taking a few minutes
to visit from the Repulse, which was cruising at
warp one next to the Enterprise, en
route to Starbase 42. The surviving crew
members of the Chekov were all stable. In fact,
Captain Korsmo was positively obnoxious,
and she welcomed the opportunity to take a
brief respite back aboard the Enterprise.
"Well, it's not easy," said Crusher. "He
does have a tendency to have a mind of his own."
"That can so get in the way. By the way,
Beverly, I heard about Wesley being accepted
into the Academy. Congratulations." She shook
her head. "So much to catch up in the half hour
or so I can spare here. I hear Worf had a
son? Data had a daughter?"
"Not with each other," said Riker dryly.
"Data as a father." She shook her head. "I
don't usually underestimate individuals I
meet, but when I do, I don't do it in half
measures."
"And how are you doing back on the
Repulse?" asked Riker.
She shrugged and smiled. "You know me. The
moment I got there, I just laid down the law, and
everything was fine."
"I can just imagine," said Picard. "Doctor
Crusher, now that you're done treating me, you might
want to give O'Brien a sedative. He's still
jumpy after his rather miraculous split second
transport of me at warp nine-point-nine."
"He said the scrambling signal just stopped,"
said Riker. "The moment it did, he locked on
and beamed you out. Closer than we like to call it."
At that moment Geordi entered, his arms
folded. "Captain, I was hoping you had a moment
to fill me in on what you saw when you were over in the
planet-killer. I have a theory or two about
what happened with--"
And at that moment the alarmed voice of security
guard Boyajian called out through the sickbay
intercom, "Dr. Crusher! Emergency medical
team to the brig! Immediately!"
Immediately Crusher bolted out, followed
by Pulaski, Geordi, Riker, a limping
Picard, and a medtech with a crash cart.
They weren't all able to fit into one
turbolift, so the medical personnel took the
first one that came, and seconds later Picard and
his officers were on the other. He found himself
automatically leaning on Riker's and
Geordi's shoulders for additional support.
Seconds later they emerged on the
lower deck, where the brig was situated. But before
they saw anything, they heard something.
It was laughter. Loud, raucous laughter, coming
from the area of the brig.
Dantar of Penzatti.
They got there and saw Dantar, leaning just
inside the forcefield of the brig, laughing and
pointing and laughing once again. Boyajian was
shouting at him, furious, face almost purple.
Picard, Riker, and Geordi came forward and
saw the disturbance was in the brig directly across
from Dantar. Before they could get there, Boyajian
was standing in front of them, addressing Picard.
"I'm sorry, sir!" he kept saying, over and
over. "I had no idea! She was just lying there so
quietly, I thought she'd cried herself to sleep!
I just left her alone! And then I saw the
blood dripping down, and it was too late--"
"What?!"
Geordi pushed his way through, suddenly knowing and
sensing with hideous certainty. He looked into the
brig. Riker and Picard were just behind him and, when
Riker saw, he put a steadying hand on
Geordi's shoulder.
Crusher was passing a tricorder over
Reannon's body, but it was merely a formality.
She was shaking her head in dismay.
Reannon was lying still on the bunk, as a pool
of blood collected beneath her. She had been
half turned over now and Geordi could see her
eyes staring out at nothing, just as they had for so long
before. Now, though, there wasn't even life behind them
--because of a long, perfect incision across her
throat, dark and encrusted with blood.
Pulaski was removing something from the palm of
Reannon's limp left hand. She held it up
for Crusher to see.
"A scalpel?" said Crusher in astonishment,
taking it. She held u
p the laser device.
"How in the hell did she get this? She must have
sneaked it out of sickbay. Stuck it in her
clothing."
"Worf didn't exactly have time to frisk her
when he brought her here," said Riker
regretfully. "But why--?"
And the word hung there.
Chapter Twenty-eight
And after that, who knew? Perhaps she would return
to Picard. Anything could happen. She was living
proof of that. The universe was an infinity of
maybes. She held her breath. The pain was
gone.
Just a few more minutes ...
Sweet Picard was gone.
Delcara understood. Sometimes, for those you love,
you have to let them go. None of it mattered
anymore. He had his life, and she had hers.
...
Chapter Twenty-nine
"I feel her. In here. And out there.
Everywhere," she sai d.
In the Ten-Forward lounge, Guinan sat
opposite Riker, Geordi, and Picard. The
men had full glasses of synthehol in front of
them.
"That's fine for you, Guinan, but it doesn't
help us. Where is she?" said Riker. "Is she
in Borg space? Is she dead? Is she--"
"There is an old paradox," said Guinan,
"that says that if you are standing, say, a meter
away from your destination, and then you travel only
half that distance, and then half of that new distance, and
half of that and so on ... you'll never reach your
destination. That you become infinitely closer, but
never attain your goal."
Now Geordi spoke up, but he was very quiet
and restrained. Usually in this type of conversation he
was positively bubbly. "And there's another
theory," he said, "that applies the same concept
of becoming infinitely close to warp ten. The most
you can reach is warp nine-point-nine-nine with an
infinite number of nines repeating infinitely.
And as you become infinitely closer to warp ten
... subjective time slows down."
"I've heard of this," said Riker. "Time
distorts infinitely around you as you get infinitely
closer to warp ten."
"You wouldn't even know it was happening," said
Geordi. "It's like, if the universe were shrinking
and all units of measurement were shrinking
proportionately. You have nothing to compare it to, and
you don't realize that, for the rest of the
universe, time is continuing normally. But for you there
is no more normality. What is a second to us
becomes eternity to someone who is trapped in an
infinite time distortion. It's like the old line,
"The hurrieder I go, the beher I get."."
"But where is she?" demanded Picard. "I
understand what you're saying, and I certainly know the
theories, but ... where is she? Is she trapped
in warp space?"
"She's in warp space," said Guinan very
quietly. "And subspace."
"What?"
"And she's here in Ten-Forward, and throughout the
Enterprise," continued Guinan. "And throughout our
galaxy, and throughout the cosmos. Don't you see?
She's travelling eternally through time as the
universe passes through her, for the universe keeps
expanding. She's occupying all points of the
universe simultaneously. To her, the stars will
hurtle by, and she will look forward to endless tms
and an infinite stream of yesterdays. She'll
continually pass through her own immediate past, and have no
future. And she'll never know," she finished
quietly. "I can't reach her. I can feel her
here," and she touched her heart, "but that's all. And
that's all that will ever be ..." She looked down.
"I don't think I wish to discuss it any
further."
Guinan stood and walked away from the table.
After a moment Riker did likewise, and headed
for the bridge to keep an eye on things. Data was
fully repaired from the brutal injury he'd
taken, but he would be under close observation for the
next twenty-four hours. Just to play it safe.
La Forge and Picard sat alone at the table,
staring into their drinks.
"She always said she had all the time in the
universe," said Picard slowly. "And now she
does. And her vendetta, which ruled her life, will
be her life. Forever. It will drive her on and
on, and be the only thing in her existence, and she will
never be able to accomplish it." He shook his head
and, in one shot, drained his glass. "How
disgustingly ironic."
"What was she to you, Captain? If I may
ask."
"She was ..." He paused, trying to find
words. "She was a concept. A symbol. The
idea of her came to mean more to me than the
actuality of her. What she represented was so
pure, but the reality was far from that. In the end I
tried to make her into what I envisioned her to be,
and what she could never be. And yet, in a way,
she is. Was. She was everything I could have asked
for. Unreachable. Untouchable. Always out there,
guiding me onward. I seek to touch the stars,
Mr. La Forge. To brush my fingers across them,
and search out the mysteries they hide. She was all
of that. All of that, and more."
"You contradict yourself, Captain."
"Very well then, I contradict myself,"
replied Picard, the edges of his mouth crinkling
slightly. "I am large. I contain
multitudes."
"Shakespeare?"
"Whitman."
"Oh." He paused. "He could have been
writing about Delcara."
"Yes," said Picard. "Yes, he could."
He took another sip.
"I was the same way with Reannon,"
Geordi said after a moment. "I wanted to reach
her. I wanted to do things on her behalf. And in
the end, I never was able to."
"The woman was destroyed before you ever got to her,
Geordi," said Picard softly. "Reannon
Bonaventure died years ago. You also had an
image you were striving for, that could never be achieved.
Which simply proves that lieutenants and
captains can both share a blindness for simple
reality."
"Kind of a brutally hard knock against a
quixotic view of life, isn't it,"
admitted Geordi. "The Borg are pretty
damned big windmills to tilt with."
"But they are giants, Geordi," said
Picard after a moment. "And in being caught up in
the great turning arms of the Borg, we can be thrown
down into the ground, or hurled upward to the stars.
We all have our quests. And we do what we must,
because it's expected. Because we need to. Because we
want to. Because--"
"Because of Dulcinea," said Geordi, raising
his glass.
Picard raised his in response.
"To Dulcinea."
"To more giants," said Geordi. "And to more
&n
bsp; misadventures."
"More adventures, old friend,"
Picard gently corrected him, and smiled as they
clinked glasses.
But the smile did not reach his eyes.
Chapter Thirty
The universe was an infinity of maybes.
She held her breath. The pain was gone.
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ...
Just a few more minutes ..
Just a few more minutes .
Just a few more minutes
Just a few more minute
Just a few more minut
Just a few more minu
Just a few more min