“I see. Still, for his ... her ... its ... ?”

“Hir.”

“... hir ... attributes ... that shouldn’t be sufficient, in and of itself, for hir to perceive you. Is there some other link ...” Then he paused and a slow smile spread across his face. “Were you and this individual ... intimate ... at some point? Yes, yes, I see by the look of chagrin. You were indeed. Were you at the time of your ... mishap?”

“No,” said McHenry quietly. Even though Burgoyne was less than a foot away, s/he seemed ever so much farther. “No. That was over quite some time ago. S/he was interested in someone else. I was more of a ... a diversion, really.” Then, just as quickly, he shook off the somber mood. “But I don’t understand. I’ve been in hir sight line before this. Why now? Why is s/he perceiving me now, even if only for a moment?”

“Because,” said the Old Father with grim satisfaction, “you’re getting stronger. There are forces, energies, available to you. You do not consciously know how to tap into them, but nevertheless you are gradually developing the ability to manipulate them.”

“S/he’s not seeing me now.” He waved his hand in front of Burgoyne. S/he stared right through him.

“Because s/he does not believe you are here. S/he has dismissed the notion from hir mind. If hir mind is closed to you, then s/he will not see you.”

“My God, how many rules does this ... this whole thing have?” he asked in frustration.

“Only one, actually,” the Old Father told him. “One that was best articulated by a human being named Descartes many centuries ago. Cogito, ergo sum.”

“I think, therefore I am?”

The Old Father nodded.

“Believe it or not,” said McHenry dryly, “that isn’t as helpful as you obviously think it is. These energies ... do the Beings manipulate them as well?”

The Old Father again nodded slowly. “Yes. With far greater sophistication and skill than you, but yes.”

McHenry laughed, but there was a bitter tinge to it. “That’s just perfect, isn’t it. Artemis wanted me to become like you people. I said no. So what happens? I have my ‘mishap,’ as you call it, and I wind up becoming like you anyway.”

“No. Not like us. You have far too much conscience. The Beings care only for themselves. But your growing strength is one of the things I’ve been waiting for.”

“And what else?” McHenry suddenly felt a surge of anger. “What else have you been waiting for? How many layers are there to this? What haven’t you been telling me? How do I know that you aren’t working with them somehow? Maybe ... maybe you’re just part of some master plan to keep me distracted or in check, to stop me from—”

“From what?” asked the Old Father, eyebrow cocked in curiosity. “Left to your own devices, what would you do? Precisely? If I’m holding you back from some action that you’d rather pursue, then let me be the first to tell you to go to it. Best of luck to you. I’ll wait here.”

Stuck for some sort of concrete strategy to pursue, McHenry rallied as best he could. He circled the bridge once more as he spoke, this time walking carelessly through crewmen at their stations. “Why arewe waiting here?” he demanded. “Captain Calhoun is on the surface. The Beings are on the surface. What the hell are we doing in the Excalibur?Can’t we just go down there, and—”

“Yes. We can,” said the Old Father brusquely, suddenly seeming less avuncular than he had before. “Directly into the source of power of the Beings. Perhaps we elude the perceptions of your crewmates, but the Beings will detect the both of us immediately ... and put an end to you.”

“Not to you?”

The Old Father shrugged. “They can try. They would not succeed. You, on the other hand, are far more vulnerable, and they would make short work of you. Or else they might actually convince you to join them. Honestly, I’m not certain which would be the worse fate.”

“So we continue to just wait?”

“And you build power, yes.”

“Until ... ?”

“Well ... until that, for one thing.”

The elder guard was pointing at the viewscreen, and McHenry turned to see what he was indicating.

There was a glowing, triangular-shaped vessel approaching. McHenry could see the ripple in space which indicated where it had just dropped out of warp space.

It was at that moment he realized that the ripple effect shouldn’t have been visible to him. For normal human sight, it was visible for perhaps half a heartbeat before a ship settled into normal space. But McHenry could still perceive the energy surges and space-fabric disruption long seconds after the ship had already dropped into “real” space. It underscored for him the steadily deteriorating impact that faster-than-light travel had slowly had upon the environment of space. It also made him realize that his senses were expanding in ways he hadn’t been aware of, or even thought possible.

He didn’t know whether to be pleased about it or frightened, and settled for both.

His pacing around the bridge brought him to a halt near Burgoyne. He stretched out a hand and allowed it to “rest” upon Burgoyne’s shoulder, then “stroke” hir face, knowing that Burgy didn’t feel it. He wondered if, at night, in the recesses of hir sleep, hir innermost private dreaming, Burgy ever gave any passing thought to their time together.

McHenry had stepped aside willingly and immediately upon understanding that Burgy’s attentions had lain elsewhere. For a moment, he wondered if somehow his life might have turned out differently if he hadn’t been such a good sport about it. Very quickly, though, he set aside the notion. There was no point in dwelling on it. What was done was done. Burgoyne had truly wanted Selar, despite overwhelming differences in their personalities and odds to the contrary. And no power had been able to come between them.

Except ...

Well ... McHenry had power, didn’t he. He just hadn’t used it.

And wouldn’t it have been interesting ... if he had?

And as he mused on such things, the Old Father regarded him with a very worried air.

DANTER

CALHOUN ARRIVED OUTSIDE the Danteri Senate several minutes before Ambassadors Spock and Si Cwan, but didn’t enter immediately as he was busy attending to a rather worrisome communication from the Excalibur.From within the Senate house he could hear the voices of the various senators discussing and debating this, that, or some other damned thing. The specifics were of far less interest to him that what he was hearing from his ship.

“The Tholians?” he said worriedly in response to Burgoyne’s voice over his combadge. “Well, that’s exactly what this situation needed. Estimated time of arrival?”

“Five minutes, Captain. Shall we beam you up?”

It was certainly his first impulse.

But then he began to do something that he very rarely, if ever, did: He started to second-guess himself.

It wasn’t as if he was leaving Burgoyne hanging for an extraordinary amount of time. In point of fact, the entire decision process occupied fleeting seconds. And what it dwelt upon was Captain Elizabeth Shelby.

The truth was that Calhoun was still smarting over the way he’d handled the Excalibur’srescue by the Trident.It had less to do with Shelby than it did with his own infernal pride. He doubted he’d have felt any better about the situation if it had been Jean-Luc Picard himself to the rescue. Nevertheless, he was sure that Shelby had taken his frustration as some sort of commentary on the fact that it was his own wife who had come riding to his rescue. That the true sting came with being beholden to her. That somehow, in his way of looking at the universe, she wasn’t worthy to be the one to bail him out.

He didn’t feel that way. At least ... he wanted to believe he didn’t feel that way.