Sanctuary
A Prologue to "Altruistic Motives"
by jamelia
Spoiler: Meanwhile, back in the Delta Quadrant...An uneasy spirit attempts to better the lives of her people. Takes place during the same time as Reconstruction Blues.
Ocampa:
Earthdate March 20, 2380 Stardate 56079.7
Swirls of color, planets and suns and exploding stars, gradually coalescing into galaxies...then into glittering crystals of rock which flowed through fault lines of sediments that dated back to another time, a time when Ocampa's surface sparkled with shallow seas of azure waters and was seen from space to be flecked with drifts of fluffy white, nucleogenic-rich clouds of life-giving weather systems. Her perceptions were sharp. She tasted the tang of copper, caught a whiff of precious, time-fracturing, quartz-like dilithium crystals hidden deep within a far-off vein of amethyst. Only when she was prepared to give up her search did she recognize at last what she had been seeking: the chiming-bell sound of paragithium- -flowing like an underground river inside the bowels of Ocampa.
Bright light reflecting from bouncing molecules of air almost blinded her when she finally emerged from the rock wall. She took on a ghostly, misty form in front of the young man who was standing before the wall watching for her. He shivered as Kes pieced myriad bits of subatomic particles back together into a body.
After several seconds when both stood there in silence, he raised his left hand in the air and waved it near her shoulder, as if he wanted to pat her on her back to comfort her but wasn't quite sure she was solid enough for him to do so. Instead he lowered his hand back to his side, asking solicitously, "Does it hurt?"
"No, not really," Kes replied, her voice croaking deeply with the effort of speech. "Some days it takes a little more work gathering myself back together." A flicker of amusement crossed over her face as she took in several quick gulps of air and completed the transformation back into a being with a body. Some mornings it took a little more work to get herself together now when she'd remained perfectly solid all night long. 'You're not the dewy-eyed young thing you were when you first climbed to the surface, Kes,' she thought to herself.
Shaking her head as if to clear it of the last vestiges of its other state, she continued aloud, "The vein of paragithium runs deep, and it widens within the rock face at an eighty-five degree angle to the right, sloping down at a twenty-five degree angle first, then more steeply after fifty-seven meters to a forty-five degree angle."
He pulled a small computerized recording device from out of his pocket and punched in the figures. "You're amazing. How do you know so precisely when you're flowing through it like that?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know how I know, Josan. I just do..."
"Well, I know enough to believe you. Whenever we dig into the wall, you've been always right! "
Kes smiled wearily at the young metallurgist. "So far, anyway."
"Are you ready to walk back now?" Josan asked.
"I think I can manage, as long as you're willing to lend me a hand if I get a little shaky every now and then. I *am* an old lady now, you know!"
"You don't seem to be an old lady to me," Josan said graciously, bowing slightly and offering his arm to her in an elaborate motion.
Kes tucked her hand beneath his elbow and smiled at him, but she didn't continue the conversation. She knew very well what she looked like; she looked into the mirror every day, at least once. Right now, tired as she was, she must look positively ancient.
The pair walked slowly down the dimly-lit corridor cut into the rock during Kes' absence from Ocampa. Originally it had been an exploratory tunnel, earmarked to be used for homes, but the population balked about having to live in the narrow configurations the geologists recommended to insure the rock would remain strong enough to support their roofs. Kes could accept the scientific reasons underlying the recommendation, but she could also understand the reluctance of her people to build homes here.
Space in the Ocampan caves was growing scarce, and living underground really wasn't that bad, when all the alternatives were considered. Still, burrowing into solid rock and living in tiny warrens didn't seem to be the answer for her people either. The proposed homes seemed more like tombs to Kes, tombs where the ceiling could collapse upon one's head any time. Of course, the presence of the corridor had made it easier to explore for the paragithium Josan was extolling as they walked down it.
"...since you found so much, we'll be in really good shape now! Filaments for light and hard wiring for devices will be so much more efficient! In fact, I think the resonance of the mineral may increase our energy efficiency to 99.6% -just shy of perpetual motion!.
"Yes, but that's still shy of perpetual motion," Kes agreed. "I wish we could achieve that somehow. With the way the population is growing, we need all the power we can get."
"Not to mention room for homes. At least the mining operation may provide another corridor for apartments."
Kes smiled at the young man's echo of her own musings. "That's what they were supposed to be initially, remember? But no one wanted to live there."
"Well, no, but if we hollow it all out into another cavern when we're mining, maybe the apartments would be a better size and people wouldn't mind moving there."
"Perhaps," sighed Kes. "At the rate the population is exploding, people may not be able to be so picky about how big their apartments are in the future. It's not as if they're so big right now anyway." Her brow furrowed as a thought came to mind, one she'd considered and rejected before. Now it didn't seem so absurd a risk, but it still seemed too iffy to pursue.
As they walked, Josan commented casually, "You know, when you come out of the rock like that, you look the way I imagine one of those jennies you told us about must when coming out of..."
"Jennies?" Kes said in a puzzled tone as she turned her attention back to their conversation. A vision of the Delaney twins came to mind, but Josan knew nothing of them.
"Yes, you know. The jennies in the bottle. From the Earth stories you shared with us when you first came back."
"Oh! You mean *genies* in a bottle, from the 'Arabian Nights'! I'd forgotten all about that." She smiled slightly, reminiscing about her welcome home, when she was pumped for every memory she had of Voyager and her life and all the people and cultures she'd met "on the outside."
Just before they exited the corridor, Josan stopped short. The murmur of many voices working in the hydroponics gardens outside could be heard. Their ability to speak privately would soon be at an end. Facing her, Josan asked solemnly, "Kes, how are you, really? Our crew has been working you very hard lately. You look so tired and..." He paused, apparently reluctant to complete his thought.
Kes completed it for him. "Old. I look old, don't I? Like I'm twenty years old, instead of only 10?"
Her companion shuddered. "I can't imagine anyone that old."
"You will soon," Kes said, smiling enigmatically at the impossibly young man before her. He could easily be her grandson. Had she ever really been so young? Yes, she had been that young-far younger, even, when she'd first met Neelix and the crew of Voyager all those years ago on the surface of Ocampa. Giving his arm a squeeze she reassured him, "There will be a time when we reach the natural life span as ordained for us by our genetics, not the brief one the Caretaker imposed upon us with his 'sustenance,' along with his suppression of our fertility."
"Your theories haven't been accepted by the Council yet," he observed quietly.
"They haven't met the Ocampa I encountered on the outer space station. They reached the ages of fifteen and sixteen, and sometimes were even older. How many of our own people are living to eleven or twelve since the Caretaker died? And multiple births are the rule now rather than the exception. I'm sure he had the best of intentions, and maybe he just tried to stabilize the population and overdid it, but ..."
Their conversation was interrupted by the shouts of a young woman bursting out of the hydroponics cavern and into the corridor.
"Kes! Josan! I thought you would have been back long ago!" Lyrial gasped as she reached them. "Tyeris just had her triplets, Josan. A little boy and identical twin girls. She wants their Uncle Josan to be one of the first to meet them."
"That's wonderful! Is she all right? Are they all right?" he asked.
"They're all just fine, Josan. And Kes, can you come see them, too? Tyeris wants to show them off to everyone, I think, but especially to you."
"Tell her I'll come by later to see her wonderful new family. Right now I need to rest. I'm too tired to 'oo' and 'ah' over them as much as they deserve."
"Do you need help getting home? See, I knew turning into a jennie and sifting yourself through rocks is too hard on you," Josan said, in some alarm.
"I'm not so tired I can't get home. I just need a nap, that's all! Now go 'Uncle Josan'! Shoo!"
At Kes' urging, after she reassured the couple once again she would be able to return home just fine without them, Josan left with Lyrial to pay homage to the most perfect nephew and nieces ever born. Kes walked slowly back to her apartment, taking a short detour to pass through the potting area where she had spent so many happy hours as a child helping her mother and father.
Life was so different then. Predictable. Confining. Yet Kes was sure that had her parents lived longer lives, she would never have become so dissatisfied by her life and curious about the "outside" to risk everything by climbing to the surface to see for herself if the stories about its lifelessness were really true. And if she hadn't, where would she be right now? Dead, possibly. Without the intervention of Species 8472 or Tuvok's help, Kes would never have developed the ability to control her mind and physical being to the extent that she could help her people find what they needed to extend the power supplies bequeathed them by the Caretaker.
Somehow, knowing that wasn't enough to satisfy her. While she knew she was being of service to her people, there was even more she should do for them. She simply needed to find the courage to do it.
What Kes called her "apartment" was merely an alcove in one wall of the living space she shared with Josan and Lyrial, not a separate housing unit. Cut out of the rock across the cavern from one of the hydroponics farm bays, Kes' share of the dwelling was little more than a hollowed out area, barely big enough to contain a sleeping shelf, with a couple of small trunks tucked beneath it to hold her meager possessions, a chair, and a small desk with a box of PADDs she'd kept from her days on Voyager sitting on top of it. Small as it was, she was happy to have it. Many three- and even four-generation families made do with little more. Without husband or children, Kes had no true family members who could offer her a place to live, one of the bitter side-effects of the "one Elogium/one child per couple" days, when the only relatives one could expect to have were parents, direct descendants, or in-laws. Kes had none.
Kes lay down upon her bed without bothering to cover herself with a blanket or changing into clothes that were not sprinkled with dust particles captured when she began to reassemble into solid form during the last few seconds of her passage through mineral deposits. If she really wanted to, Kes could dematerialize and recoalesce her body, reconstituting her clothing at the same time so it would be nice and fresh and clean. She could even take away most (but not all) of the lines of her face and replace the faded, yellowed gray hair with a younger version of herself, although the young, dewy-eyed Kes she had been when she'd first encountered Neelix was gone forever. She'd tried to reassume that form in the past but found she could not maintain it long without draining her energy to such an extent it was hardly worth the trouble.
It was just as well. She was no longer that Kes. She was another kind of Ocampan female, one who knew what the Morelogium felt like, who had learned to control it so that she could move from one state to another at will. It took so much out of her, though! Energy conversation, she thought ruefully, wasn't only something the Ocampan people had to practice-it was something she herself needed to keep in mind, lest one day she dissipate into the air, unable to retrieve her body from sheer fatigue.
As she lay there, her thoughts turned to her daughter Linnis-or rather, to the daughter she and Tom would have had if things had turned out differently in linear time. The pang she usually felt when she thought of her lost future wasn't quite as unbearable as it used to be. Hailed as the marvel of her people and revered as the savior who was helping them eke out an existence within the bowels of Ocampa by providing the means for stretching their energy resources, Kes had learned to deal with the pain of never bearing a child of her own. Her actual Elogium was spent so far from Ocampa that no one compatible to mate with her was near when her time came. The memories of Linnis and Andrew Kim, who would have been Kes' grandson, would have to be enough for her.
Now that they no longer had the Caretaker's artificial food to consume, containing all the nutrients a nice little Ocampa needed for life-including the fertility suppressant that would have ensured the Ocampa would have died out in a few dozen generations more had the Caretaker survived as long as he'd thought-plenty of Ocampa children were being born to a people who were living longer and longer before slipping away into their Morelogiums. Although none yet had learned how manipulate the energy and matter of their own bodies to "come back" the way Kes could, she was sure the lessons would take eventually.
Until then, Kes could tolerate being called "Auntie" by her people. Perhaps someday she might be considered an Ocampan version of Earth's Eve, once they accepted what she had learned about the true nature of her people's life spans. Or perhaps Eve wasn't the right reference. Maybe she was a Prometheus, bringing to the Ocampa the knowledge that the Morelogium brought not death but a transformation into a different form of life, a non-corporeal state which could be reversed back to the corporeal when one was prepared and able to use the proper mental techniques to accomplish it.
Yes, if she were to delve into her memories of Earth mythology, Prometheus was the better reference. After all, she'd never found an Adam on her journeys, never experienced the bond Tuvok had felt for his T'Pel. She supposed it really was too much to expect to find a love like that. She had been so passionate to travel that the chances of meeting a person who might have been the great love of her life had been greatly reduced, although she cherished memories of her time with Neelix. He may have loved her jealously, almost too well, but her relationship with the Talaxian was the only time in her adult life she had been truly intimate with another person-in this time line, of course. Although her recollections of building a family with Tom Paris were of a time that had never really happened, she treasured them, too.
Kes shook herself, resolving to quit moping over romantic liaisons she now would never have. She was done with that sort of thing. She had a new role, a new vocation, and she took it seriously. Since she still felt shame over the way she'd once lost her way and the selfish way she had tried to deal with it, this was something she had to do. There was no more time for bitterness over what could not be.
She tossed and turned a few more times before arising from her bed and retrieving her lamp from the shelf above her desk. Seating herself on her chair, the lamp centered upon the desk before her, Kes concentrated upon the wick for a moment. It burst into flame. She smiled a little as she adjusted the degree of brightness downward, to just high enough a level to aid her in meditation. Staring into the dancing bit of fire, Kes sent her spirit outwards, expanding her mind until she felt the velocity of the powers of her mind stretch towards what she always thought of as Warp 10. Unlike when Tom Paris had experienced the phenomenon, Kes had no fear of evolving into a lizard (unless she chose, for some inexplicable reason, to assume that sort of body).
But her mind sped along, accelerating until, Q-like, she could feel the entire galaxy enclosed within her perceptions. She wasn't concerned with most of the galaxy, of course, nor did she even attempt to sense what was going on in the rest of the universe. She was only interested in a small corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, the part located about 70,000 light years from Ocampa-the corner of the Beta Quadrant not far from the Sol System, where a warm, dry planet circled around the star 40 Eridani A, where a close friend now dwelt. She touched his mind lightly, gaining strength from the knowledge that he was finally at home, back within the circle of his spouse and family, content with his life.
Using the skills he had taught her long ago, she meditated, considering carefully all of her options. Kes knew she had a decision to make. Were her journeying days truly over, as she had hoped the last time she had encountered her friend and mentor, just before she had traveled back home? Or did she still have tasks to do off her own planet, tasks which would change her life and those of all who lived beneath the barren crust, the dry shell that was Ocampa?