She gasped when she saw him. He lay sprawled, unmoving save for tremors, his breathing shallow. “Captain!” she cried, running to his side. At her touch, he moaned, but that was all. He was burning with fever. She registered an unpleasant smell; gingerly pulling his leaf-blankets aside, she saw that he was lying in his own filth, unable to move enough to tend to his basic needs. Two of the squales’ helper creatures were nearby, but they were agitated, keeping their distance. Aili realized the disruption in the Song was throwing them off, preventing them from fulfilling their duties. The others must have wandered off or perhaps been taken by predators.
Aili winced in sympathy at the sight of Riker, and though her kind did not shed tears, she keened for him. She cradled his head in her lap, stroking his hair. “Sir, can you hear me?” she said softly. “There’s a way to save you. Please, I need to tell you about it.”
But he gave no response beyond another feeble groan. Aili’s first thought was to take him to the squales. She pulled at him, trying to lift him up enough to lead him to the water. He was practically a dead weight, but swimming kept her strong and he’d lost several kilos, so she was able to pull him mostly upright and drag him forward, his weight on her shoulders.
When she reached the shore, however, she didn’t summon the squales. Instead, she simply lowered Riker into the water to cool his fever and cleanse his skin of sweat and other things. She hurried back inland to get some fresh water from the small pond, soaking it up in a spongy leaf. ( Idiot! You could have brought him here!she thought, before responding to herself, Idiot! And foul his drinking water?) Returning to Riker, she dribbled it into his mouth. Once he’d been rehydrated, she used the leaf to clean him. It was embarrassing to do this with her captain, but it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with many times with her eight children. Though at the time, she had retreated from such duties whenever she could finagle a relative into taking them over for her.
But not now. At first, she wasn’t sure why she was tending to Riker in this way instead of letting the squales remake him and remove the need. But the more she tended to him, the more she understood. “I’m sorry, Captain,” she told him as she wrapped him in new leaf-blankets, this time near the shore so she could stay close. “Sorry I left you to go through this alone. I was selfish, and childish.” The truth was, she couldn’tsimply fob him off onto others as she had so often done with her own children. She’d been the one to let him deteriorate into this state. And so it was her responsibility to help him through it.
And so she took care of him. Over the next several hours, she kept him hydrated, fed him what he could keep down, wiped away what he could not, kept him wrapped in leaves to stay warm, changed his leaves, and cleaned him when the need arose. When he awoke halfway, he ranted in delirium about being locked in a pit in the darkness. He screamed curses at “Kinchawn,” and Aili realized he was flashing back to an ordeal on Tezwa before his promotion to captain. The curses soon gave way to pleas; he begged to be allowed to see his wife and his baby girl. “My girl,” he sobbed. “Deanna! I’m with you! Please, tell me you know I’m with you. I should be there, I should…hold…hand…be there to…see her…come out…help you…I’m sorry!” He broke down sobbing, and Aili held him and stroked his hair. She eased him closer to the water, lay with her back to it, her gills trailing in the shallows, so she could continue to comfort him.
Why did I ever run away from this with my own children?she found herself wondering. Why did I think I couldn’t do this?She had rarely felt such a sense of purpose. Rarely been so fulfilled.
In time, Riker became lucid again—still weak, but able to respond coherently. “Thank you” was the first thing he said to her.
“I’m sorry” was the first thing she replied.
“Unhhh…forget it.” He tried to roll around to face her. She helped him to sit up at the water’s edge and stepped back a few paces to crouch in the shallows, resting on the submerged outer curve of the islet, while she faced him. “What’s…the situation?” he asked her.
She filled him in on the basics, including the squales’ offer. “I see,” Riker said when she was done. “You think we should take it?”
Aili lowered her eyes. “I did. But not now.”
“Why not?”
It was several moments before she spoke. “You remember what you asked me before? Why I joined Starfleet if I was so ashamed of my affairs with offworlders?”
He showed no confusion at the non sequitur, perhaps simply being too weak to muster it. “Uh-huh.”
“I always told myself it was about responsibility. That it was a way to make up for being so irresponsible as a mother. I’d used the galaxy as a distraction from my duties, so maybe giving something back to the galaxy would even the scales. Or something like that.”
“But that’s not it?”
She gave a small shake of her head. Again, a long silence preceded her next words. “When I was young…my sister Miana was out swimming with our mother and Miana’s father when…she was taken by a sea predator. Such things still happen on Pacifica…even with modern technology, an ocean is a big, wild place, hard to tame. It’s one reason we need such large families.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So was I. And I was angry. I loved Miana so much, and I blamed Mom for letting her die. For not protecting her like she was supposed to.” She winced at the memory of the pain in her mother’s face as she’d cursed her—the grief, as strong as her own, that she’d ignored. “So as I grew up…when she tried to teach me the values of good parenting that are so important to amphibious Selkies…I didn’t find it credible, considering the source. I tuned them out, rebelled against her lessons. Miana’s father left, of course, and other fathers came and went, but I wasn’t willing to trust any of them either.
“I didn’t even want to become a mother, but I’d tuned out my parents’ lessons in responsible sex too, so I kind of ended up getting parenting thrust upon me. And I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know how to cope. And…” She leaned back in the water, immersing more of her gills—in essence, taking a deep breath before going on. “And I was afraid. I didn’t admit it, but I was afraid of being just as bad a mother as I thought my own was. I didn’t trust myself to take care of my children. So I retreated. As often as I could, I left my kids in the care of relatives, friends, anyone. And I lost myself in the kind of self-indulgence we’re supposed to save for our aquatic phase—that’s supposed to be a well-earned reward for two decades of devoted parenting. I played, I danced, I drank, and I had sex with aliens who didn’t know our customs or didn’t care.”