Caretaker (17 page)

Neelix spared a stiff smile for the silent girl. “Maybe she could help these good people find a way down.”

“You’d be wasting your time with her,” Jabin told him. “I’ve used every method of persuasion I know to get her to help us.”

He scowled at her darkly. “She won’t.”

Neelix transferred his smile just as readily to the Kazon. “Then she’s worthless to you. Let us trade you water for the scrawny little thing.” He waved his fingers at the girl, as though she were too distasteful to consider touching.

Jabin peered from Neelix to the Ocampa, and Janeway got the impression he was trying to decide which one he hated more. “I would be more interested in acquiring this—” Suddenly, his keen eyes locked on Janeway, and he smiled coldly. “—technology that allows you to create water.”

Janeway shook her head. “That would be difficult. It’s integrated into our ship’s systems.” She was definitely never, ever going to let Neelix establish the grounds from which they negotiated again.

Jabin barked a command to a handful of the Kazon who still immersed their arms in the now half-empty water vats, sucking down great handfuls between their laughter and coarse comments.

They broke away instantly at his call, and Jabin drew them into a huddle around him so they could growl back and forth among themselves without Janeway’s people hearing. Janeway drummed her fingers impatiently against one leg. He wasn’t a stupid man, this Jabin. His danger lay in the fact that he still wasn’t as smart as he believed himself to be.

A warm, certain thought sprang to the forefront of Janeway’s brain without warning. (Do not trust them. They will never let me go.) She blinked, startled, and glanced at Paris and Chakotay for some sign that they had heard it, too. She found the Indian staring in amazement at the girl, while the Ocampa looked back with frank intensity, not at all intimidated by his attention.

Jabin broke apart his impromptu council with a wave of his arms.

“I have decided to keep the Ocampa female,” he announced loudly.

Two of his companions brought their weapons to bear on Janeway, and the Kazon leader followed up with a greasy smile. “And all of you.”

It wasn’t as if Janeway hadn’t expected some sort of treachery from this Kazon Maje. It just irritated her when small-minded dictators started acting like they could push everyone else round as easily as they did their terrorized subjects. She sighed and crossed her arms.

“Tell them to drop their weapons!”

Janeway would never have guessed Neelix could move so fast. One instant, he was glued to Tuvok’s side, his eyes on the lovely Ocampa girl—the next, he was practically clinging to the front of Jabin’s tunic, a small hand weapon that Janeway hadn’t even known he’d carried shoved under the Maje’s chin. She didn’t know whether to be amused at his audacity, or alarmed at his capacity for deceit.

“Drop them, my friends,” Neelix commanded again, looking around meaningfully at the Kazon who still brandished weapons. “Or he dies in an instant.”

The pure loathing pouring from Jabin’s face could have fused neutronium. Still, he jerked a stiff wave at his followers, and one by one the rifles lowered. Janeway waited until the last of them had clattered to the ground before signaling Tuvok and Paris to retrieve their phasers and whatever other equipment the Kazon had taken.

Neelix darted a nervous look back toward Janeway, chewing his lower lip. “Come on!” She scowled at him, not appreciating his attempts to hurry her, then bit off whatever she might have said when the Ocampa girl broke away from the Kazon crowd to clasp Neelix’s open hand.

He pushed Jabin back with as much roughness as his little body could muster, then dragged the Ocampa with him as he hurried to cluster with Janeway. “I strongly suggest you get us out of here!” he gasped as he ducked in behind her.

She decided to twist the details of his reasoning out of him later.

She slapped at her comm badge. “Six to beam up!”

The transporter beam whisked away the desert bleakness before Jabin had even clambered to his knees.

Voyager’s clean gray walls rippled into being around them on the scent of fresh, humidified air. Janeway had never realized how much she had taken such a simple thing as moisture for granted.

Turning, she fixed Neelix with a stern glower, prepared to tell him-she didn’t know what. All semblance of anger bled from her mind the moment she saw Neelix wrapped around the slim Ocampa, her face buried against the side of his neck as she clutched herself against him.

“My dearest!” Neelix sighed, pulling back to gaze at her in naked adoration. “Didn’t I promise I’d save you?”

Kim sat with his head in his hand and watched Torres pace from one end of the stark courtyard to the other, too tired to join her, much less put effort into making her sit down. She’d been roaming between the food dispensers and anemic sculptures ever since the Ocampa doctor left them with the remains of their half-eaten lunches. Looking for a way out, Kim assumed. Still, she hadn’t strayed beyond even the closest walkway so far, and if her quick, angry mind was busy working on some sort of elaborate escape plan, she hadn’t bothered to share it with Kim.

Maybe, like him, there was part of her that realized that searching an underground metropolis for something the natives said didn’t even exist probably required a fairly massive time commitment. And, at the moment, Kim wasn’t confident that either of them should be making long-term plans. He didn’t think he’d be able to walk from the eating courtyard to his bed in the infirmary, much less hike all the way to the distant surface.

I’ll feel better in a little while, he told himself as Torres stalked past again. I’ll sit here until my stomach settles, then we’ll figure out how to get back to the others. He was really sorry he’d eaten everything the doctor had insisted on earlier, though.

He followed Torres’s progress with his eyes, not lifting his chin from his hand. “I’m sure Captain Janeway is doing everything she can to find us,” he offered the next time the Maquis passed within earshot.

Torres made a noise that fell somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

“What makes you think any of them are still alive?”

Because the prospects otherwise were too frightening to consider just now. Because if he allowed himself to believe that everything and everyone he knew on this side of the galaxy were gone, then he’d have to admit that his chances of ever seeing home again had vanished with them. Because he didn’t think he could make himself escape if there was nothing left worth escaping for.

He didn’t know how to tell Torres all that without somehow making it all real.

Torres paused at the edge of the plaza, her back to him, and Kim thought for a moment that she was contemplating another frantic bolt.

Then she swayed sickly and made a blind grab for one of the tables as her knees began to go. Kim lunged from his seat without thinking. He reached her only an instant ahead of his own nausea. “Should I call for some help?” he asked, clinging to her and half-hoping she’d say yes.

Instead: “No!” Torres clung to his arm in turn with fingers that Kim knew would leave bruises for weeks—assuming they both lived that long.

“Are you in pain?” another voice asked worriedly from behind them.

If Kim hadn’t expected Torres to whirl the instant he heard the stranger’s voice, the Maquis’s violent reaction might have knocked him to the ground. As it was, they collided as they both turned, and Kim ended up mostly in front, his arm thrown out to herd Torres behind him—more for fear of what she might do to their unexpected visitor than because he harbored any illusions about protecting her.

“Are you watching us?” Torres pushed against him from behind, but made no real effort to muscle past him. The Ocampa woman who’d startled them recoiled a step all the same, as though sensing how much trouble the bigger Maquis could cause. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be your prisoners.”

Kim saw the Ocampa blink and shake her head slowly, and realized that she didn’t have to imagine how Torres could be if she went out of control. This was the same nurse who had smiled down at Kim on that first morning—the one who’d watched Torres nearly tear apart every attendant in the infirmary on her way toward the door. She knew exactly what she was dealing with.

“I wasn’t watching you,” the nurse said softly, taking a step onto the plaza. “I was coming to give you something.” She glanced nervously left and right, then minced the rest of the way toward them as though speed would somehow hide her actions.

Caught by the earnest anxiety on her waiflike features, Kim came forward to meet her halfway. She took his hand and pressed a small green vial into his palm. “I don’t know if it’ll help,” she admitted in a near whisper. “It’s a medicine.” She glanced over Kim’s head with an uncertain smile as Torres moved up to join them. “There are people who have broken from tradition and left the city. Their colony grows fruit and vegetables. They discovered quite by accident that the moss that grows on certain fruit trees has healing properties.” She touched the vial with one finger, and a fearful unease settled over her face again.

“I’m … sorry for what’s happened to you.”

It was the first time any of the Ocampa had indicated that this illness, these growths, had somehow been done to them, and weren’t just something they’d arrived already carrying. Kim was intrigued by the significance of this changed attitude.

“We appreciate this,” he told her, closing his fingers gratefully around the vial. “But the only way we’re going to survive is if we can get to the surface and find our people.”

An expression that was almost bitterness pressed the nurse’s mouth into a line. “The elders would say that’s against the Caretaker’s wishes.”

“What do you say?” Torres pressed. Her voice was challenging, but surprisingly gentle.

The nurse looked abruptly away, and Kim saw her easy skepticism of a moment before give way all too quickly to childlike confusion. “The Caretaker …” She shook her head slowly, biting her lower lip. “The Caretaker has been behaving strangely for the past several months …”

She shrugged uncertainly. “… abducting people, increasing the power supply …”

Kim exchanged a glance with Torres. “Power supply?” he asked the nurse.

The Ocampa looked at him as though surprised he had to ask.

“He’s tripled the energy he sends us. They say we have enough stored now to run the city for five years.”

The thought reminded Kim too much of the Armageddon hideaways from the crazy days at the end of the twentieth century. It wasn’t a pleasant image. “Nobody knows why?”

“When we ask, we’re told to trust the Caretaker’s decisions.”

She fell silent suddenly, turning away with her hands folded thoughtfully beneath her chin.

Silence, Kim’s mother was fond of saying, was persuasion’s greatest ally. What crying, ranting, and threats might fail to accomplish, a few well-placed minutes of silence could usually bring about. Over the years, Kim had seen the power of silence win his mother a registered Pekingese, secure his father’s permission for Kim to attend Youth Orchestra summer camp, and convince an entire crowd of rowdy teenagers that they didn’t really want to shout obscenities at passing drivers.

Kim couldn’t wield silence with quite the mastery his mother displayed, but he practiced it from time to time, and had faith he’d someday get better. “Remember,” his mother had told him.

“If you stay silent long enough, people will talk themselves into doing what they already know is right. There’s nothing you could say or do that would possibly work any better than they will on themselves.”

So, with those words ringing in his memory—words spoken by a voice his heart now despaired of ever hearing again—Kim waited in dutiful silence while the nurse paced four steps away from them, then turned and slowly made her way back.

“One person I knew,” she said carefully, “did get to the surface. We never saw her again.”

Kim felt Torres’s hand clamp hard on his shoulder. “How?” he asked the nurse.

She looked up with a certain tense bravery. “The ancient tunnels that brought us here still exist. Over the years, small breaches in the security barrier have appeared, just large enough for someone to get through. But it still requires digging through meters of rock to get out,” she added quickly, her eyes flicking up to Torres as though reacting to something in the Maquis’s face.

“Can you get us tools to dig with?” Torres asked, undeterred.

The nurse was already shaking her head. “It would take days, maybe even weeks, to break through. You have to rest—conserve your strength.”

“Please …” Kim squeezed her hand, and tried to let her see the very real pain and urgency that had been gnawing at him ever since waking up so far away from his people. “It’s our only chance.”

The nurse stared down at their entwined hands, and Kim gave her as long as she needed for silence to do its work. When she finally sighed and looked up in frustrated reluctance, Kim knew the battle was won.

Still, he only nodded mute thanks, and let the silence say whatever else was needed.

Janeway had never met the emergency medical program before. She wasn’t sure she had met it now. Flashing from place to place in the still half-damaged sickbay, it concentrated on its alien patient with a single-mindedness that Janeway suspected few flesh-and-blood doctors could rival. Given the amount of heated discussion boiling among the half-dozen people crammed into the little space, she envied the computer its concentration. Still, it would have been nice to see it smile, or interact with the delicate Ocampa in some manner other than a strictly mechanical one. When we get home, she promised the snippily busy program, I’m going to talk to somebody about installing some bedside manner into your next upgrade. Although she wondered if such a thing really mattered when the program only hung around for an hour or so, pending the arrival of new medical personnel.

Probably not enough to justify the cost of retooling the whole program.

Which, she thought as she watched the hologram manipulate the Ocampa’s arm into a new position with businesslike abruptness, was really too bad.