“Okay,” he said. “That’s not what I meant to say. What I meant was, there are better ways to assert your individuality than deliberately provoking others. Maybe that kind of, I don’t know, activism has its place, but not on a Starfleet vessel. I can’t sanction deliberately disruptive behavior no matter what its motives. And that’s still true regardless of my Borg issues. I admit I don’t exactly have warm and fuzzy feelings about cyborgs, but I’m not letting that affect my work. You should know that. I’ve dealt with those issues.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
Haaj shook his head. “Haven’t.”
“Look, we’ve been talking about it for the past few weeks!”
“Talking about what?”
“About…about Oghen. About T’Lirin.”
“T’Lirin was a Borg? Imagine my surprise.”
“No, no!” He reined in his frustration. “About having to leave her behind. Having to admit that, that sometimes you have to make that choice. Like Worf did with Sean.” For years, Keru had resented the Klingon for what he’d done, for killing Keru’s lifemate rather than trying to save him from Borg assimilation, as Picard had been saved, as Tuvok’s former shipmate Annika Hansen had been. The events during the evacuation of Oghen, in which Keru had been forced to leave Lieutenant T’Lirin to die in order to save the rest of his team and a number of refugees, had forced him to reconsider those beliefs, and to reevaluate his bitterness toward Worf.
At first, he had been reluctant to seek help in this from Titan’s counseling staff. He had chosen instead to talk it out with his best friend, Alyssa Ogawa. But Alyssa was a medic, and had insisted that she wouldn’t serve him as well as another professional, one trained for such services. “If your leg is broken, you don’t go to your friend, you go to a doctor,” she’d told him. “This is no different. The mind needs maintenance and care just like any other part of the body, and if you’re smart, you’ll get it from someone who’s qualified to provide it. The best way I can help you, Ranul, is by sending you to them.” She had convinced him, but he hadn’t been sure which counselor to talk to. Deanna Troi, having been Worf’s former lover, was too close to the issue. And Keru had trouble taking the toylike Huilan seriously. He realized that was a prejudice in itself, a hangup he needed to overcome, but dealing with that could get in the way of his other problem. So he’d chosen Haaj. After the first session, he’d wondered if he’d made a mistake; yet he’d kept coming back regardless. There was something draining yet refreshing about his contentious sessions with Haaj, not unlike sparring in the gym.
“So you’ve dealt with that, have you?” Haaj said now, in his usual skeptical tone.
“Yes, I have.”
“You’re all right with having to leave someone behind to die.”
“If I have to, yes.”
“And when do you have to?”
“When it’s for the greater good. When it has to be done to save more lives.”
“Ahh, I see. So you’ll sacrifice the individual for the good of the whole.”
“If necessary.”
“Oh, so that’swhat you mean by dealing with your Borg issues! You’ve decided that the individual really is irrelevant after all, that only the collective matters. Well done, lad, you’ve convinced me. Where do we sign up to be assimilated?”
Keru gaped at him. “No! God, no! What I’m saying, it’s entirely different! What happened on Oghen—I didn’t just casually throw T’Lirin’s life away like some cog in a machine. I agonizedover that decision.”
“But you made it anyway.”
“Yes,” he said, wincing.
“After swearing to yourself that you’d never, ever contemplate such an act, because that’s the way the Borg do things. Well, that tells us what your word is worth, doesn’t it?”
“I—” Keru realized he had no ready answer. He sat silently for a time under Haaj’s querulous stare, contemplating what had been said. “So…you think I’m taking my own guilt out on Torvig? Treating him like a Borg because I’m afraid I’m turning into one myself?”
“Don’t ask me. We’ve been talking about what you think.”
Again Keru was slow to answer. “Maybe…I don’t know. I guess that’s something I need to think about.”
“Finally. Something penetrates that thick skull. I was starting to wonder if you could hear me from way up there.”
“But it doesn’t change my job. Torvig is a discipline problem. He violated numerous regs, and I offered a recommendation on how to penalize him. But it was just a recommendation. The final decision was up to Riker and Vale, and they went with a lighter discipline. So whatever biases I may have…they’re just my problem, because they don’t determine the kid’s fate.”
“I see. So because you don’t make the decisions, it’s all right for you to project your self-loathing onto him. Well, I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that.”
“I didn’t say that! I said it isn’t about how I do my job.”
“So? Why should I care how you do your job? Do I look like the first officer? You came here to deal with what’s going on in your mind.”
“But you were the one who brought Torvig up!”
“And you were the one who gave me reason to.”
Keru glared at Haaj, forced to admit that, as usual, he had a point. He had let his state of mind influence his discipline recommendation, and that was what had brought it into Haaj’s purview. “All right. So I have a problem, and I need to deal with it. Where do I start?”
“Well, that’s not my problem. Not till next week, anyway. Your hour’s up. Go on, shoo! I’ve got other patients waiting, and with you in here there’s barely room enough for me.”
Once the door shut behind Keru, he had the realization that it hadn’t been a full hour. And he was fairly sure he was Haaj’s last patient of the day. But after a moment, he realized there was method to Haaj’s meanness. Now that he’d made a discovery about himself, Haaj was giving him time to process it. The wiry Tellarite had taken the action that helped his patient the most, just as he always did.
Keru smirked, realizing how much he liked the guy.
Aili Lavena swam beneath a star-jelly, feeling more alive than she had in months. Kestra II’s hydrothermal lakes were warm and comforting, rich in oxygen, and just alkaline enough to lend an interesting tartness to their water.
And at last Aili was able to do her job without needing that horrid hydration suit. She didn’t have the pleasure of being nude, though; she was on duty, and thus wore a minimal uniform, a halter-style swimsuit held on by shoulder straps so as to leave her dorsal crests free. But it was still a delight, at last being able to join an away mission that made use of her species’ particular gifts.
And the realm in which she swam was amazing, too. This sessile young jelly was less than half-grown, and maybe about a century old. The eight nodes that made up its body at this age formed an island half a kilometer across, atop which had grown a lush ecosystem. The rest of Commander Troi’s away team was surveying it now, with its consent; though still young, the jelly had reached full sentience and learned much of the universe from its starfaring elders. But Aili alone was getting to see its underside. Eviku, who descended from aquatic ancestors, was also doing his part to survey the lake, but he couldn’t dive as deep or last as long without oxygen as she could.
Well, perhaps “underside” was an exaggeration, for the true underside floated only slightly above the lakebed, and the space underneath was choked with thousands of tendrils in addition to the eight immense geothermal taproots that bored deep into the magma flows below. Aili was exploring more off to the side, though still within the bounds of what the creature’s ultimate size would be. Indeed, she could legitimately say she was within the jelly itself. Extending from the island, forming the framework of its ultimate saucer shape, were eight radial vanes of staggering size. The vanes consisted of a dense lattice of tendrils of all sizes, catching matter from the winds as well as providing a framework for vines, small animals and avians to climb on. Between them grew a tangle of fibers and struts, growing out across the water’s surface and down below it, further anchoring the growing creature and extending the reach of its self-sustained ecosystem. Beneath the water, the network of its growing body had become the basis of a complex ecology like that of a coral reef or a deep-sea thermal vent on Pacifica or Earth. Schools of fish darted among its tendrils, and Lavena playfully chased after some of them, leaving her wrist-mounted tricorder to work on its own. They proved elusive, though, and darted through a narrow gap which she couldn’t swerve in time to avoid. Her shoulders wedged into it, and she struggled to break free.