Fur and Fathers

Chapter Ten

“Would anyone mind explaining to me exactly why we had to fly half way around the system to come in at this angle?”

Shran spoke with the air of one who has little expectation of receiving a satisfactory reply.  He was therefore not particularly surprised when he didn’t.  It did not escape him for a moment that the strange trajectory the Hath had adopted on its approach to the third planet in this remote little system had kept the maximum distance possible from the fifth planet; he was becoming accustomed, however, to being little more than a glorified taxi driver on whom nobody bothers to bestow more than the minimum necessary information.  He eyed the scanner readouts of the fifth planet with interest.  At this distance the sensors could pick up little detail (even less than usual since the ‘adjustments’ Tucker had seen fit to make), but what detail remained was strange.  Doubtless the pinkskins had their reasons for giving it a wide berth, even if they weren’t prepared to share them.  Archer was too impulsive for his own good sometimes; it didn’t take much imagination to guess that they’d had a run-in with the place that had taught them a hard lesson.

“You don’t wanna know,” said Trip shortly, from his place just at the rear of the captain’s chair on the bridge.

“I do, but I dare say I’m not going to.”

“Take it from me.  You don’t.”

“Maybe we could schedule a visit on the way home.”  As a matter of fact he had no intention of it; if Enterprise had learned respect the hard way, the much less formidable Hath certainly wasn’t going to risk it.  Nevertheless, there was no harm in a little provocation.  He’d been good for far too long, and Tucker was a promising victim: much less accustomed to controlling his reactions than Archer had been, though even Archer had been fun to rile at first before he wised up to the game and became boring.

“Not if you wanna get home at all.”

“You did.”  His antennae signaled piqued curiosity.

“We were lucky.”  The dark glance Trip shot at his wife was a telling one.  Obviously the Vulcan was the better able of the two to disclose details.  Unfortunately, Vulcans weren’t noted for their inclination to gossip, and T'Pol certainly didn’t look inclined to deviate from the norm on this occasion.  “Lucky we got out of there at all, if you want the truth.”

“You actually landed there?”

“Took a shuttle down for a look,” said the engineer briefly.  “Didn’t get anywhere near landing.  We damn near didn’t get it back.”

“Hostile inhabitants?”

“You could say that.”

It was obvious that Tucker had now said all he was going to say on the subject – at least for the present.  He crossed his arms and looked almost as Vulcan as his wife.  Perhaps it was catching.

Grimacing at that thought, Shran turned his attention to the third planet, which they were now approaching.  It was standard Minshara-class in Starfleet terminology; almost a fifty-fifty split between ocean and land masses, if first impressions didn’t lie.  The land was heavily forested except for a couple of swathes of desert near the equator.  The atmosphere bore quantities of cloud.  A fertile, blue and green planet: too warm for his tastes (though the polar ice caps would be homelike), but humans would find it attractive.  He wondered again what it was about it that was so valuable.  What were they were so desperate to keep secret?

His second-in-command ran standard checks with the scanners, caught his eye and shrugged.  The crew was already aware that their captain’s meddlesome guest had interfered with the ship’s equipment.  As a result, they were able to tell virtually nothing about the planet as they established a high orbit around it.  What they could glean from a visual inspection, they were welcome to.

At that moment the door on to the bridge hissed open, and there stood one of their less voluntary passengers.  It was the first time since that memorable evening at Starfleet Headquarters that Shran had seen Archer on his feet.  He’d spent much of the voyage sleeping and most of the remainder withdrawn and silent, refusing to be drawn into conversation on the rare occasions when he actually seemed to know who and where he was.  Even his own crew-members seemed to have little luck in getting him to communicate.  Every attempt at conversation was a walk onto the thinnest of ice sheets, sheets that could crack underfoot without warning, plunging him back into the freezing icy depths of withdrawal.  They’d tried talking to him about their ship, relaying reports of how the repairs to Enterprise were going; Trip had contrived to keep open a line of strictly unofficial communication between himself and the ship, since even at this remove he took the keenest interest in the progress of her restoration.  Sometimes Archer listened, expressionless, as though they were speaking a foreign language in which he had no interest, and at other times he turned away, physically rejecting them all by curling up into a ball.  The sheer lifelessness of him was appalling; like him or loathe him (and even now Shran wasn’t at all sure which he did), Archer had always worn his heart on his sleeve, and there had always been more than enough of it to go round.

It was obvious now how the lack of food and the emotional battleground he’d been in had worn him.  He’d lost a considerable amount of weight and with it some of his strength.  He not so much stood as swayed in the doorway, supporting himself with one arm on the side of the frame.  His face was gaunt, wasted.  His eyes were dull hazel in shadowed hollows, fixed with painful intensity on the viewscreen in front of him.

“You … brought me back?” he rasped at last.

“It was all we could think of, Jon.”   The faintest stumble betrayed that at the last instant Tucker had remembered not to use the other man’s title in front of others.

“You shouldn’t have bothered.  I’m not going down there.”

“I have news for you, Pinkskin.  After we’ve come all this way, you’re going down there whether you like it or not.”  Shran glared at him.  “You can go in a shuttle or you can go through the airlock, it’s up to you.”

The captain’s face contorted.  In another life he’d have argued, but he seemed unable to marshal an effective reply.  For one horrible minute the Andorian thought he was going to cry again; this was something they’d tried to keep from the gaze of the ordinary members of the crew.  Even though they knew him only as Jon Tucker, he was still a starship captain and as such should have his dignity preserved as much as possible in the circumstances.  As a fellow captain, Shran had strict views on such matters.

Then it happened.

Even Shran’s antennae stood up straight in astonishment as Archer’s eyes widened and his gaze went away from the bridge into distance.  He looked as though he was listening to a message through an invisible earpiece from someone dear to him who he’d believed dead; joy and incredulity swept over his face like a banner of sunshine across a storm-battered landscape.

“Oh, thank God, she’s still alive,” Tucker said softly.  The relief in his voice was palpable.

Shran swung around to stare at him in amazement.  “She knows he’s here already?”

“Oh, yes.”  The human grinned ruefully.  “She knows all right.”

A narrow-eyed frown.  “I’m looking forward to seeing this amazing person for myself.”

“You have no idea how amazin’ she is till you meet her.”  His gaze too had become abstracted, but he was now looking at his wife, and if Shran had been in the habit of using human idioms he would have described Tucker’s expression as ‘mushy’.  He glanced at T'Pol, and she was returning her husband’s gaze; Vulcans didn’t do ‘mushy’, or anything even remotely approximating it, but there was no doubt about it, there was a particular intensity in that wide brown stare that said that something was being exchanged between the two of them. 

Given the fact that they shared a cabin and were wearing the identical rings that humans customarily wore to indicate that they were in a quad – he revised that to a ‘pair’, remembering that humans had less complex familial arrangements – the Andorian had already surmised that the two of them were in a relationship that almost certainly didn’t have the blessing of the Vulcan High Council, or probably Starfleet’s either.  They hadn’t made much of a show of it to date; their daily behavior had in fact not been that much different from what he’d noticed when he’d known them only as fellow crewmembers on board Enterprise, but you’d have to be blind not to see and understand the significance of their expressions now.

Great.  His ship was turning into a love-fest, and Jhamel was back on Andoria.

He just hated being the odd man out.

*                 *               *

His advent brought Shiránnor from sleep, fully awake, hissing with pity and horror.

He had changed so much!

So much pain, so much guilt.  His God had asked too much of him.  Finally he had broken, had fallen back inside himself, seeking out the one core of comfort that had remained intact.

When your loneliness becomes too great….

It had saved him from madness.  But it was not enough.  They understood that – those two who had finally found one another; in the midst of the sorrow, she sensed it and was glad.  They were bringing him back, for the third time and the last.  He did not belong here, but he could find what he needed to enable him to return to his own place and his own world.  She could do this for him, and then at last she could take away his memory of her, as a thing he would no longer need till they met again beyond the Endless Ocean, where all friendships would be renewed and brought to perfection.

The sky ship was coming closer.  Curiously she examined the others who flew in it.  One in particular was strong and strange; her whiskers flirted as she considered him.  He and his kind were different from the humans.  Their emotions were loud, turbulent.  It would not be well if they came down to Kerriel and met the people here; they would disturb the peace, though that one would indeed fit in well with the Venel Warrior Class.

And the other?

She blinked and frowned.  Her hackles shifted.  There and not-there.  Here and not-here.  Something was very wrong.

She slipped from her couch and went outside.  The sun was shining; it was a beautiful day.  Although there was always a regretful tinge to the autumn sunshine and it was hard to see the days shorten, this was a time of plenty, when kills were fat from a summer’s feeding and fruit and ear ripened to harvest.  Soon would come the time of gathering, so that the store-rooms would be filled to sustain them during the lean months to come.  Truly the Temple Complex in the shadow of Vanreil was a wonderful place to live!

Nevertheless, she did not pause to enjoy the view as she ordinarily would have done.  Instead she hurried towards the foot of the Great Way.  She needed to set herself at the Mother’s very Paws now.  She had never before sensed anything so dreadfully awry.

Anxiety did not make her neglect the due courtesy.  The duty priestess keeping vigil would not have noticed anything amiss as she arrived, though a soft note of warning thrummed through the wall of the Seer’s cell as she passed, so low it was hardly audible even to one whose ears were stretched for it. She paced over and couched in front of the Image.  Her hearts were beating fast.  The crystal eyes gazed down at her, wise and terrible.

“Mother, with Your guidance,” she breathed.  Then she exposed her wrists and opened her mind, seeking him.  She found him almost at once. 

The cool air brushed against her face, smelling of seaweed and salt; the sand was soft under her paws. A small boat was resting, empty, in the sand at the edge of the tide, rocking a little as the wavelets lifted it.  She knew whence it had come and why; only this vessel had the power to cross the Endless Ocean and reach the far shore in safety.  It was made of pale smooth wood, with a high carved prow and stern and two thwarts, in the rearmost of which the mast was stepped.  The prow faced out to sea and the dark blue sail was ready to set, but there was not yet enough breeze to fill it.  On the horizon lay a faint light, like that of the dawn, but above her arched the measureless dome of starry space.  The breath caught in her throat at the beauty of it all.

And he was sitting on the sand.  He was facing the boat, a bare body-length away from it.  He knew it had come for him, and he was flatly refusing to get into it.

She knew that what she was seeing was what she expected to see, the imagery of her culture and her faith.  Doubtless he would see things differently.  But whatever he was seeing, he knew exactly what he was doing.

Mutiny.

The awe of the place calmed her.  She padded forward and couched down beside him, but at a little distance so that he should not feel threatened by her presence in any way.

They knew one another too intimately to need any acknowledgement; their minds joined seamlessly as though the intervening years had never happened.

“I can’t go,” he said at last.

“You must,” she said gently.

“I know.  But I can’t.  She needs me.”

“That is not your decision.”

“It is if I decide not to go.”  But as she glanced sideways she saw that the grey eyes were full of the dawn light, and the longing for it was breaking his heart.

“Do you remember, when we were together – before?” he asked presently, after a long silence.

“I remember.”  Skaira remembered in detail everything that was important to them.  They had phenomenal memories.

“I forgot about a lot of it, but since I’ve been here I’ve remembered things.  And one thing you told me… that I would find someone special and marry her.  That was something I was afraid wouldn’t happen.”  He blinked.  Even now, speaking of such personal matters was hard for him.  “It wasn’t long afterwards that Hoshi and I… I’ve always been grateful to you for that.”

“Your marriage was your doing.  It was none of mine.  If you were not worthy of love, you would not have earned it.”

“But if it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I’d ever have believed in myself enough to try.”

She smiled faintly.  “I did only what was put into my hands to do.  If it brought you joy, I am glad.”

There was another long pause.  The sound of the wavelets was infinitely soothing.  The dawn light beckoned.  Even she, for whom the boat would not come for many years yet, could feel the calling of it, summoning him home.  And yet he still sat, legs crossed, arms folded defiantly across his chest.  He was wearing the blue uniform he had worn when he came back to meet with her on his last visit; the emblem on his left sleeve was faintly lambent.  Its presence on him here was significant.  Duty before everything.

“It is she who will not let you go.”

If he’d been a Skair his ears would have flattened instantly against his skull.  He would not hear a word of criticism of his wife.  His profile was rigid with pain and anger, but however much he wished for it, self-incriminating lies would not come to him here.

She contemplated that certainty in silence.  If he had been determined enough, selfish enough, he could have broken free.  The only thing that was holding him here was love.  Because his wife could not bear his loss, and because he could not bear to cause her pain.

“You cannot return,” she said gently.  “Until you go, she cannot begin to grieve.  And until she grieves, she cannot begin to heal.”

That hit.  And hurt.  His mouth flinched.

“Your child will need her.”  Her voice was even quieter.  She hated the awful necessity of it, even as she went on cutting into him.  “Your friends are not enough.  Your princess will need her mother.”

“She’ll need her father too!”  Suddenly his voice was shockingly loud.  He screamed his grief at her, his eyes blazing with a pain too intense for tears.  “But I can’t be there for her!”

“That is a truth for which there is no consolation possible on this side of the Ocean.  But you still hold her heart in your hands.  You gave her existence.  Then you gave her life a second time.  Now you must give her her mother back.”

“I can’t!” he shouted.  “Don’t you understand, I can’t!”

He jumped to his feet.  His fists were clenched.  He stared at the boat, and then with a helpless expression he turned and looked back over his shoulder.

“How can she let me go?” he asked softly.  “We never even said goodbye.”