“Amen to that.” Stern smoothed stray hairs back then keyed in for her holomirror to show alternate views: back, front, each side of her head. She twiddled with her ponytail, centering it snugly against the nape of her neck. “Rogue telepaths, right?”
“Or just common criminals. So how do you control a telepath gone sour? You can either kill him, and that doesn’t seem to have been the Hebitian style, or you can exile him somehow, put him on ice, like stasis only telepath-style. Here, they reduced their neural patterns somehow and put them into a containment field.”
“Like a genie in a bottle.”
“Only these genies got out. Probably an accident: one of these rogues figuring out that a person with a certain genetic makeup could act as a receptacle. So breed a select line of those people but make it mystical, like a state religion, and these rogues get their chance, now and again, to go free. Except you’d dilute the stock over time; happens when there’s a large population. And genetics is funny business. Too much inbreeding, you make the stock weak, and too much mixing with the rest of the gene pool and your chances of getting exactly what you want go down.”
“Makes sense.” Stern replaced her brush and then popped open another drawer and began affixing her pips to her uniform collar. “It would explain the need for the mask.”
“Yup. So here’s the kicker and where you have to use your imagination, take a couple leaps of faith here. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that these rogues were Hebitian and the Hebitians, as a species, were telepaths. Some were good; some were bad. The Cardassians say they’re descendants of the Hebitians. But Vulcans can’t mind-meld with Cardassians and there are no Cardassian telepaths. None. Zip. Not a one. Okay, your turn.”
“Oh, Mac, that’s a gimme.” Stern turned and ticked off her conclusions on her fingers. “It’s obvious. The Cardassians aren’tdescendants of the Hebitians, but they may have evolved parallelto the Hebitians. Only the Hebitians were the stronger, master race. The Cardassians revered the Hebitians, maybe not like gods, but they build up this religion around access to a higher spiritual Oversoul, Overmind, whatever you want to call it. You know those murals they have around Lakarian City?”
“That thing with wings and a Cardassian face, the one with tentacles?”
“That’s it. First of all, that creature hovers above the planet, like a sun god, just like what we saw. Second, those tentacles radiate down to the people on the planet and then through the people intothe planet. I think the official interpretation is that this refers to this Overmind, or something, binding the people together, anchoring them to the planet. Only what if that’s a reference to the Hebitians? To something down deep, in the planet, like what we found?”
“Interesting idea.” McCoy pulled thoughtfully at a wattle of flesh beneath his chin. “Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it, but it would answer why the Cardassians look on the Hebitians as gods. Go on.”
“Mac, don’t you get it? Those tentacles, they’re metaphorical references to the Hebitians’ telepathic capabilities. Over time, the Cardassians develop resistance to psi influence. The Hebitians lose control, and then, like all gods, they fall. Except for the Cardassians, it’s a disaster because the planet’s in chaos, and they’re still rebuilding, getting stronger. But here’s the real mystery.” Stern leaned on her knuckles and eyed McCoy through her viewscreen. “Mac, those telepaths on that planet, how did the hell did they get there? Who was smart enough to know how to capture their neural signatures in a magnetic containment field?”
McCoy pooched out his lips. “The Hebitians themselves?”
Stern ducked her head in agreement. “Or somebody equally, if not more advanced. And they had to be a spacefaring species, Mac. So who were they?”
“Beats me. Like all mysteries, just opens up more questions, stuff we can argue about over drinks. So.” He clapped his hands together, gave them a good scrub. “When you going to happen back my way?”
“Soon.” Stern straightened, tugged down on her tunic. “Sooner, if you give me a good mystery. You know I love a good mystery.”
“Will do.” Then McCoy pulled his face closer, squinted. “My God, woman, are you wearing lipstick?”
Stern laughed out loud. “Mac, I toldyou. It’s a party.”
The doors opened to the ship’s arboretum, and Garrett stepped into the soft, sweet scent of roses and Asian lilies. The air of the arboretum was damper than the rest of the ship, and Garrett listened to the splash of water cascading over a tiny rock waterfall to a pool where the green discs of lily pads and Denebian watertrumpets floated. The sound of the water reminded her of Qadir’s riyad, and that made her think of Halak, and she wondered where he might be at the very moment.
Not now. With an effort, she tore her thoughts away from Halak. Later—she checked the time because she’d wanted everyone convened at 1900 on the dot—she had plenty of time to think about Halak later. Right now, she had to find Jase.
That didn’t take long. She wandered down a path that began with the spiny, squat desert wahmlatsthat studded Vulcan’s arid plateaus and ended in a small grotto of tropicals—bromeliads and orchids—native to Earth.
Jase slouched on a slate stone bench next to a tiny pool stippled with the stalks of musk-scented butterfly wands. He held a drawing pad in one hand, a pencil in another because, as he told his mother, he was a purist. A collection of Matrayan blueglows ducked and weaved over a profusion of wide, splayed petals of hot pink and deep purple.
“Can I sit down?” she asked.
Jase nodded without looking up. Garrett slid onto the stone bench, feeling how cool the rock was beneath her thighs. She cocked her head to study Jase’s drawing: the half-finished portrait of a man. Her heart squeezed. There was no mistaking the high cheekbones, the fall of that raven-colored hair.
She touched a finger to the drawing. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s not done,” said Jase. His voice was thick with unshed tears. “It’s only been two weeks, but I can’t remember his eyes. I try, but the more I try, the more he gets blurry, like I’m looking through fog.”
Garrett wanted to point out that they had pictures; there were archives and records. But she held her tongue. She was always in such a rush to fix things, provide false reassurances that everything would be all right. Sometimes the best thing was to allow space for pain. God knew she’d had her share of grieving before, and after the divorce. But at that last moment, when she’d knelt beside Ven Kaldarren, her grief had crashed through the barrier she thought she’d erected. Grief was still fresh in her heart, with anger at her own stupidity—her own stubbornness—not far behind.
She knew, too, that Jase had lost something infinitely precious: his father. Conceivably—though she couldn’t imagine it—she might come to love again. But Jase would never have another father, and there were experiences Jase had with Ven Kaldarren that Garrett wouldn’t ever be a part of because she simply hadn’t been there.
She ached to brush the boy’s hair from his forehead, but she wasn’t sure she should touch him just yet. In the two years since the divorce, how he’d grown. No longer a little boy but teetering on the brink of adolescence.
Time’s tricky that way. You’ve got your memories, but time flows all around you and you’re always thinking you have so much more time than you really have. Really, all you have, in the end, is time for regret.