It made her angry.
She brought her padd down against the top of a low table, hard. In the silence of the room, the noise sounded like a thunderclap.
Dizhei started as though she’d been dealt a physical blow. She turned toward Ro, glowering. Ro could hear Shul and Hava moving in behind her, ready to react. But Dizhei did not rise to her feet.
“Is this intrusion a sample of what we can expect from Bajor after it enters the Federation?” Dizhei said, fairly hissing the words. Gone was the veneer of amiability Ro had noted when the Andorian first came aboard the station several weeks ago.
Ro picked up her padd, ignoring the comment. “I apologize for barging in, Dizhei. But I had reason to suspect that Anichent might be in danger.”
Dizhei laughed, a harsh sound that contained no humor. “Because we Andorians are such a violently emotional lot, no doubt.”
“I never said that,” Ro said. She clutched the padd in a death grip.
Dizhei’s gaze softened as she seemed to consider her next words carefully before uttering them. “You didn’t have to, Lieutenant. We both know it’s true.”
Anichent lifted his head then, as though it were supporting an enormous weight. Still kneeling, he gazed up at Ro, who felt her legs and shoulders tensing in an involuntary fight-or-flight reaction. Her pulse quickened, and she heard a sharp intake of breath from Hava, who now stood beside her.
“She saw it so clearly,” Anichent whispered, the despondence behind his words almost palpable. “More clearly than any of the rest of us ever could have.”
Ro knew that he could only be referring to Thriss. “What did she see?”
Before Anichent could respond, Dizhei cut him off with a harsh Andorii monosyllable. Anichent lowered his head and closed his eyes once again, as though lost in prayer or meditation.
Dizhei fixed her eyes on Ro’s. “Your men can lower their weapons,” she said quietly. “Anichent can barely move, let alone attack you.”
“Stay alert,” Ro told Shul, who grunted an acknowledgment. To Dizhei she said, “I really hate to be indelicate, but without an autopsy, station regulations require me to log an official statement from Thriss’s closest available family members. Councillor zh’Thane doesn’t qualify, but as members of Thriss’s bondgroup, either of you does. I’m sorry, but this is the only way I can officially close the matter. It’ll take maybe ten minutes. Then we’ll be gone, and won’t bother you anymore.”
Dizhei looked incredulous and angry. “Surely you have more important things to do with your time right now than to harass us.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Ro said, feeling her own pique beginning to rise with the inevitability of gravity. “This station is going to be swarming with Federation and Bajoran VIPs over the next few days. I’ve got to stage-manage the Federation signing ceremony, and it’s going to be a security nightmare as it is. I can’t afford to have a case like this still open and unresolved here with all of that going on.”
“I see,” Dizhei said, her ice-blue eyes narrowing, her antennae moving forward as though searching for something to impale.
Tamping down her anger, Ro raised a hand in supplication. “Look. I know this is a terrible time for you. But surely two weeks has been time enough—”
“Time,” Anichent said in a voice rough enough to strike sparks, his speech slurring as he raised his head again. “What is time when there is no future?”
Ro approached Anichent more closely, watching as the candlelight flickered in his gray eyes. Gone was the upbeat, sharp-witted intellectual she’d observed weeks ago. ThisAnichent was a mere husk. A vacant, hollowed-out revenant.
“You’ve drugged him,” Ro said to Dizhei. It wasn’t a question.
Dizhei nodded. “To save his life.”
“We’ve got to get him to the infirmary.”
“No. I know the Andorian pharmacopoeia better than your Dr. Tarses does. Anichent is far safer here. Where I can watch over him.”
All at once, Ro understood. Anichent wouldbe safer in a place where he wasn’t likely to come out of his drug trance at an inopportune time. In a place where he couldn’t succumb to the temptation to throw himself willfully into death’s jaws. A semantically twisted phrase she’d encountered once during a Starfleet Academy history course sprang to her mind.
Police-assisted suicide.
The remainder of Ro’s anger dissipated as she considered the likely source of the Andorian people’s violence. It wasn’t innate, as with the Jem’Hadar. Or indoctrinated, as with the Klingons. Instead, it was born of pain.
I understand pain.
“Stand down,” Ro said to the guards. “Dismissed.” Hava didn’t need to be told twice, but Shul required a moment’s persuasion before he, too, departed.
“Do you truly believe that you understand now?” Dizhei said after she and Ro were essentially alone. Anichent had retreated once again into his drugged stupor.
Dizhei rose to her feet and approached Ro, who managed to keep from flinching, but steeled herself against the possibility of another violent outburst.
Ro nodded cautiously. “He’s lost hope.”
Dizhei responded with a barely perceptible shake of the head. She spoke softly, as though fearing that the oblivious Anichent might overhear. “No. It’s more profound than even that, Lieutenant. He believes that hope itself no longer exists. That Thriss’s death is merely an augury for our entire species.”
“There’s always hope,” Ro said, without convincing even herself.
“Looming extinction has a way of snuffing out hope,” Dizhei said.
My son has also ravaged the lives of Anichent and Dizhei,zh’Thane had said. Ro recalled the councillor’s explanation of how Andorian marriage quads were groomed for their unions from childhood, and how few years the young adult bondmates had to produce offspring. It came to her then that the odds of Dizhei and Anichent finding a replacement for Thriss might be remote—perhaps impossibly so.
She saw it so clearly,Anichent had said. Ro knew that utter, bleak despair was what Thriss must have seen. Not just for herself, but for her entire world.
And here I am, barging in and interrogating them about her. Good job, Laren.Ro felt as though she’d just kicked a helpless Drathan puppy lig.
Dizhei resumed speaking. “Anichent truly believes that we are dying as a species because of our complicated reproductive processes. I tell you this only because I know that Shar considers you a good friend. He trusts you.”
Ro felt the warning sting of tears in her eyes, but held them back by sheer force of will.
“It’s mutual,” Ro said. “We have a number of things in common.” We’re both outsiders who don’t share our secrets with very many others. And especially not our fears.
Dizhei’s antennae slackened once again. She studied Ro in silence, obviously waiting for her to make the next move.
“Do you believe that Anichent is right?” Ro said softly.
Dizhei closed her eyes and sighed, composing her thoughts before speaking. “There are times when I’m not at all certain that he’s wrong. But I can’t afford to let myself think that way often. If I do, then the rest of us will be lost, along with whatever tiny chance remains of finding another bondmate to replace Thriss in time to produce a child.”
Dizhei straightened as though buoyed by her own words. Her bearing suddenly became almost regal. This is how Charivretha zh’Thane must have looked thirty years ago, Ro thought.
“I will watch over Thriss until Shar returns, as our customs demand. And I will do the same for Anichent, to keep him from following her over the precipice. Even if doing so occupies every moment of every day until Shar returns. Even if it kills me.”
Ro considered the despair that had stalked so many of her friends and loved ones. Few, if any, of her intimates had ever had such sound reasons for despondence as bond-sundered Andorians. These were people for whom complex reproductive biology was the single defining attribute of their lives. After suddenly losing that capability, how could one notsuccumb to hopelessness? Ro felt an uncharacteristic but irresistible urge to get a drink. Or perhaps several.