By evening, I'm mobile enough to eat supper in the mess hall. I've been sitting at the end of a large table near the windows for about an hour now, and a fair number of crewmembers have stopped by to welcome me. They seem genuine, but no one has joined me at the table yet. I can't tell if they're just not used to having a stranger on board, or if it's an artifact of my rank, but for now it doesn't matter. I'm just happy to be among the living again.
" … not like you can hide from her forever, Tom." Initially, the voice catches my attention because I recognize the name of its owner. I lock in and stay with it because I seem to be the subject of the conversation. "You're a nurse; she's a doctor. You're going to run into her in sickbay sooner or later."
"Not for another two days." I file the voice away as belonging to Tom Paris, the EMH's nurse. "Come on, Harry."
"You're kidding me," Torres says, although I'm not sure what she's responding to. "Not you too."
"B'Elanna, she's an admiral. I'm sure she doesn't want the company of the lowest ensign on the senior staff."
"She said ranks don't usually matter."
"Easy to say when you're an admiral."
When I made that comment in sickbay, I meant it as a basic philosophy, but in the limited context of the moment he does have a point. With the highest rank on the ship, and in the twilight of my career, it's easy for me to decide when rank does and doesn't matter. But for an ambitious ensign stuck on a starship with no chance at promotion, constant reminders of his low position undoubtedly do mean that rank always matters.
Since Torres and the young man both seem to be facing my direction, I smile and hold up a hand in hopes of him reading it as an invitation. If he would come over, he'd find that shattered career plans are something we have in common. Restarting a psychotherapy practice and cohabiting with an artificial intelligence aren't how I planned on spending my golden years.
"She can't see you waving, Harry. You have to say something to her."
"Oh. I mean, I knew that. I just—" Embarrassed and self-flagellating are presumably not the first impressions that Harry wanted to make, but it's too late. That's the voice my brain files away under the name Harry, last name still pending. "B'Elanna, how can I be so smart and so stupid all at the same time? That's why I'm still an ensign, isn't it?"
"No, this is." She starts to move in my direction, only to stop within a meter of where she started. "Seriously, Harry. You and Tom both need to get over yourselves. Did either one of you ever stop to think that maybe this isn't about you at all?"
"B'Elanna?"
She snorts, then walks away. "No, I didn't think so." After that, I lose her until she sets her tray down on my left and pulls out the associated chair. "Sorry about those two."
"It goes with the rank, I'm afraid."
"Which is why you're trying not to use it."
"If I insist long enough, eventually everyone will get the message." One of the rights of the admiralty is that I set my own tone, apart from the tone of the ship's captain. I learned to de-emphasize rank from the likes of Bob April, Chris Pike, and my Gabriel Lorca, all of whom cared more about the content of a person's character than about his or her rank. For Bob, Chris, and Gabe, to address a person by rank was a matter of respect, not hierarchy, and I tend to use it the same way.
"That could take a while."
All three men also had very laidback command styles. Based on the reaction of Voyager's crew to me, and also on the way the Doctor initially had my chair programmed, I get the distinct impression that Janeway has a much harder-driving personality. Rank matters here, especially within the senior staff. "I seem to have time. So did you figure out what was wrong with your gel pack?"
"Yes. It was just like you said: the junction was bad. Once we replaced it, the gel pack quit attacking us."
"Lucky guess. You realize that, right?"
"Doesn't matter. If I woke up 117 years ago and had to diagnose a problem with your—what did you call it? a spore drive?—I wouldn't be making lucky guesses like that." She prods at something, utensil clinking against her tray, but doesn't eat. "Leola root coleslaw. This is a new low, even for Neelix."
I assume she's referring to the untouched bed of shredded tuber left on my tray. "I'm sure it's fine. My stomach is just hypersensitive right now. The squash and the pudding went down all right. I'm just taking the rest slowly."
That makes her laugh. "Trust me, it's not your stomach. Neelix's cooking does it to everyone at first."
"Oh?"
"You should've been on board when he first set up the kitchen. Your stomach should adapt in a few days."
I try again, but the pain-induced tightness in my chest kicks it back out again, in the form of a violent coughing fit that momentarily quiets the rest of the mess hall. "Good to know." The coughing leaves my voice hoarse and my diaphragm sore. "What did you call it?"
"Leola root. He puts it in everything; apparently it has nutritional value. And, no, your taste buds never get used to it."
"Fair warning." For the moment, I'm not sure that there's much point to trying again. It's distracting everyone else and making my pain worse. "All the same, I think I may need to hold off for tonight."
Just inside the viable portion of my visual field, she jabs her utensil toward the bulkhead I'm facing, and its metal catches an overhead light. "Use your replicator rations to order something you can actually eat. That's what they're for."
Replicator rations: something else I know nothing about—although the purpose of rationing anything seems obvious, given Voyager's circumstances. "Pardon?"
"You're kidding me." Before I can clarify what I'm asking about, she jumps up and flags someone over. "Chakotay!"
That name belongs to Voyager's first officer. I know that. But since he hasn't introduced himself yet, I couldn't begin to guess which red shoulder she's waving at.
"Welcome to Voyager, Admiral." A tray sets down on my right, and the man behind it offers a handshake. His hands are large, which corroborates what my eyes tell me about his size, and his grip is sturdy without being overpowering, although I can feel that he's holding back. "I was planning on stopping by sickbay once the Doctor let us know that you were mobile, but I never got the message. My apologies."
"That's my fault." The Doctor mentioned that was the plan, but our first few hours together were rough and I wasn't ready to pretend that they hadn't been. I needed space, and this was the only place I could think to find it. "We were talking shop, and when I mentioned being hungry, he brought me down himself. It's Katrina for now. I'm pleased to meet you."
The moment he sits down, B'Elanna starts in on him. "Chakotay, she doesn't even have replicator rations."
"Of course she has replicator rations, B'Elanna. She also has quarters, whenever the Doctor releases her to them. The better question is whether she even knows what a replicator is."
The one definitive thing I know about the replicator is that it's so ubiquitous they take it for granted. Everyone has mentioned it, from replicating food here in the mess hall to replicating my mobility chair, but no one has thought to explain it. "Based on context, I think it's similar to a matter synthesizer. I assume you're rationing it to preserve power."
"We've given you a few extra rations to help you get settled in. You would definitely be excused for wanting a meal that doesn't include leola root. I would say it's an acquired taste, but it's more that your body has to build up a tolerance. If you'd like, I can help you replicate something edible."
When I first collected my tray, the chef tried to tell me what he was putting on it, but I didn't recognize most of what he said and people were piling up behind me. I wasn't ready to hold up the line with questions, so I figured I could just wing it. What I didn't take into account was my hyper-aroused nervous system. "I appreciate the thought, both of you, but I really am fine. I don't know what it was that I got down, but I am sure I won't starve before morning."
Chakotay points with his fork toward his own tray, and I catch just enough of the motion to try and follow it but not enough to succeed. "It looks like you got down most of the steamed chadre'kab. That's what was sitting on top of the leola root."
As an ingredient, it had promise. It actually had the mild taste and soft texture of a cooked winter squash, a little too bland as prepared but at least inoffensive. "Sorry, I missed that. What kind of cobb?"
"Chadre'kab. It's some kind of Talaxian gourd."
I'm most likely going to keep running into these conversations for a long time, the kind where I have to strip away my ignorance like peeling back layers of an onion. "Talaxian?"
"Neelix's species. At any rate, chadre'kab is usually safe no matter how he fixes it, and I'm told his puddings are usually edible, if you're into that sort of thing."
Now I'm starting to make sense of what Neelix tried to tell me when he was serving up my tray: steamed chadre'kab on a bed of leola root slaw, spiced berry pudding, and one other thing. I touch the end of the vegetable I tried and failed to bite into earlier. "I didn't catch what he called these. Something about a stalk?"
"Agrazza stalks," Torres says. "Don't. Unless you're descended from a beaver, they're almost as bad as the leola root. Chakotay, the captain isn't coming down to dinner tonight?"
"Not tonight. She's trying to clear a stack of PADDs off of her desk. But she sends her regards."
With a huff, Torres takes a bite of something that sounds like a twig cracking, which I assume must be an agrazza stalk. "Katrina, you only ate half your dinner. You should go back for seconds of what you can eat."
The last decent meal I ate must have been sometime significantly prior to the torpedo; I think it may even have been while we were still en route to Xahea. Going back for seconds is tempting. But the mess hall is crowded now and I'm not sure how to find my way through all the bodies to the kitchen. I haven't negotiated a large communal dining space as a blind person since I was a first-year cadet, and even with every resource available to me I still hated it. Without my two most powerful tools, I feel stuck.
Chakotay pushes back from the table. "Let me get it for you."
"Thank you. Once I learn the layout of the mess hall and update my crowd management skills, I should be fine."
"Of course. I imagine you have a lot to figure out. I'll be right back with this." Chakotay collects my tray, then merges into the crowd to my left. I track his uniform for a few meters, then lose him to a wall of multicolored shoulders.
I'm afraid I may be too old to figure this out. The need to see, with either my eyes or my ears, is so intense that it's almost physical, like the need for food or water or air. As a child, I discovered the intricate world of reflected sound even before I lost the last of my eyesight. The effect is that I've been visual, in one sense or another, my entire life. By the time I was school-age, I had two primary means of accessing that soundscape: the taps from a mobility cane that I got from my surrogate mother the first summer I stayed with her, and clicks from my tongue, which predated the cane by several years. Together, they became an extension of me, and I don't know how to be a blind person without them.
The Doctor tells me this chair has a navigation system that's vastly superior to both the cane and my own echolocation, and also less obtrusive, so I'm trying. But to use the system would require me to aim directly toward who- or whatever is blocking the aisle and trust the chair's embedded microsensor array and onboard computer to navigate around them. What happens if it fails, I'm not sure; I have no alternative tools at my disposal. I suppose I'll eventually learn to work with it, but I don't want to experiment this close to furniture and crowds of people. Until then, my mobility has very definite limits.
"Katrina?" Torres touches the back of my hand.
I turn my head toward her and make an effort to focus. "I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't be allowed to think that much. What did you say?"
"You don't have to apologize. I just asked if you were okay; I guess that's my answer."
Chakotay's voice emerges near Neelix and the kitchen, muffled by the wall of bodies. He asks for a clean tray with more chadre'kab and pudding.
"Thinking is probably a bad idea right now. All of my 175 years are threatening to catch up with me at once."
"Would you rather me distract you?"
Who would have imagined that the first hand of friendship extended to me here would come from a Klingon, especially one who's probably young enough to be my daughter? The universe clearly has a sense of humor. "If you would, just for tonight. Thank you."
"Sure." She dips her agrazza stalks in pudding to soften them, letting them sit long enough that they sound more like celery than tree branches. "It may take a while for people to figure out that you're nothing like Captain Janeway."
"What makes you say that?"
"She would've gone hungry rather than let anyone get food for her. She's too stubborn."
Still watching for a large pair of red shoulders to cut back through the crowd, I shrug. "One of the perks of being an admiral is that you get used to delegating tasks you'd rather not handle. I've never been fond of navigating crowds."
"Me either. I thought you liked people."
"One at a time or in small groups, yes. Crowds have an altogether different effect on me. I tolerate them better when my nervous system isn't already overloaded."
"You could've eaten in sickbay."
"No, I needed this. It's a lot, but it's been good for me."
Although there is movement heading in our direction, too many colors moving in the intermediate distance make it impossible for me to tell whether I'm seeing Chakotay or someone else. He just appears next to me and sets my tray down. "Here you are. Just chadre'kab and pudding this time."
"Thank you."
"Of course. So has the Doctor officially released you?"
"Not yet. Call it being released on my own recognizance. I told him I could find my own way back to sickbay when I was done." No matter how I've tried to convince myself to overlook the fact that the Doctor is a form of artificial intelligence, I can't do it. I'm still struggling with it. Until I make my peace, the best thing I can do is stay away.
Chakotay laughs. "And he believed you?"
Admittedly, I don't play fair. My ability to quickly isolate and exploit psychological vulnerabilities is one reason I was in such high demand during the war. The Doctor was evidently programmed with only rudimentary psychological subroutines. Since then, he's learned more than enough to manage this crew and the occasional unruly visiting patient, but he knows how much he doesn't know. That's his weakness. "He hasn't figured out what to do with me yet."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, my knowledge of psychology is far more advanced than his, and he's insecure about it. He's not used to being outclassed." Given that he was designed to act as a supplement to an organic medical staff, I suspect that his program must contain a subroutine that's never had reason to be activated before, one that makes him defer to qualified organic physicians. My own training is outdated, so I'm not entirely qualified, but it's causing enough of a conflict that I can manipulate him. "He also admitted that he's never dealt with an organic doctor."
"Outclassed." Chakotay stops eating again and lays his utensil aside, resting on the edge of his tray. "Voyager's plenty big enough for the two of you without making it a competition."
"Who said anything about competition? Those are facts. My knowledge of humanoid psychology far eclipses his; his knowledge of humanoid medicine far eclipses mine. Those balances will most likely never change. Our strengths are complementary, not competitive."
The most disturbing fact of all is that I need him. If I hope to bring my psychiatric skills up to modern standards, I need to know what he knows. I also need his rehabilitative subroutines in order to be able to function with my body as it is now. I'm dependent on an artificial intelligence, and that scares me.
Possibly sensing that I'm holding back, Chakotay uneasily concedes and goes back to his food. He offers a bare-bones apology.
"What you're hearing is the two of us feeling each other out, testing where the boundaries are. Right now, he's extending me a professional courtesy by letting me have freedom." At some point tonight, I'll have to go back down to sickbay and try again to deal with the Doctor. But I haven't reached that point yet. "At the moment, I'm more at home in sickbay than I am here, so he knows I'll go back eventually. I'm just not in a hurry to do it."
"You said it earlier, when you told him to back off." B'Elanna sounds excited again, the same as when she bolted out of sickbay with the gel pack. "The two of you speak the same language."
I nod at her. "Go on."
"Back in sickbay, I said that not everyone on Voyager was Starfleet. When the rest of us came on board, you can imagine there was initially a lot of friction between the two sides within departments." She stops to fiddle with the food on her tray, although she doesn't seem to be eating it at the moment. "I caused most of what went on in engineering. It took all the Maquis, and especially me, time to figure out how to coexist with Starfleet."
"Then you understand where I'm at. That's all this is. It'll pass." With my tray emptying again, I turn my attention to the drink. I hate coffee. It lies; it tastes nothing like it smells. So I aim to finish as much as I can tolerate and distract myself from the bitter aftertaste with a question. "This is the second time you've mentioned that this crew isn't all Starfleet, and now that you've mentioned a name—the Maquis?—it's time for me to know the details."
So while our meal period winds down, she and Chakotay both take turns filling me in on the political situation back home and how it brought Voyager's current crew together. It involves a lot of names that I'm sure I'll have to ask again, but at least now I understand the crew's history.
"I'm not the same person I was," B'Elanna says eventually. "At least, not on the surface. But underneath I'm still the same. Even if I wanted to stop fighting, I couldn't; it's in my blood." She hangs her head. "And I hate it."
A year ago, more or less, I stood in Discovery's brig and listened to L'Rell tell me that the Klingon war against the Federation would never end as long as Klingons existed. She ended the war shortly after. And now, 117 years later, I'm sitting with a Klingon who's running a Starfleet engine room and wearing a Starfleet uniform. "Even Klingons can change. The impulse to fight can be controlled, channeled. It's a question of motivation."
"You sound so sure."
"Because I've already seen the impossible happen once. The Federation-Klingon War was never supposed to end, but it did. Any living creature can change, if sufficiently motivated and given the necessary resources. The challenge is finding the resources and motivation."
She lets that one sit for a moment without an answer, then redirects the conversation. "You don't seem too motivated to finish your coffee. Not your thing?"
Admittedly, it's nice to shift to a lower-stakes conversation. "Makes me too jittery, especially when my adrenal glands are already in overdrive."
She laughs. "Either you have one hell of a poker face, or you must be really low-key when you're not amped up."
"The only thing amped up right now is my nervous system, but that's more than enough. Makes it hard to think clearly." The wall of bodies has thinned enough that I think I've spotted an opening to the door. That means it's time for me to go. "If you'll both excuse me, I'm going to leave while I can get to the door without running people over. Thank you both for your honesty. And, B'Elanna, thank you for keeping me distracted. That helped more than you know."
"Yeah, sure. What are friends for, right?"
I need one hand to control my chair, but I'm used to needing a second hand free to help negotiate tight spaces. That would mean laying the tray on my lap, which at the moment would cause burning pain. So maybe this is a good time to use the chair's navigation system. Assuming that it works, it would allow me to keep the empty tray in my free hand and off my lap.
"Why do I feel like I should be wishing you luck?"
I laugh. "Let's hope I don't need it."
Once I make my way through a gauntlet of what I presume are chairs and reach the kitchen counter, Neelix hurries out to collect the tray from me. "How was the meal, Admiral?"
"My stomach is still a little sensitive, but what I was able to eat was very filling. Thank you. And I especially appreciate the second helping."
"It's my pleasure. I—" He looks toward the door, as if checking that no one else is listening. "I confess, I don't really know what the protocol is for serving an admiral. I hope I did all right."
I suspect that a lot of the uneasiness I'm sensing from the crew is due to my rank. Most members of the admiralty are royal pains in the ass, and their reputations have a tendency to precede me. Evidently that hasn't changed in the last 117 years.
Hoping to put him at ease, I smile. "You made me feel welcome. That's the only protocol I know of. And, at any rate, I haven't really earned my admiral's hat in this century, so for now I'm just Katrina. I'll see you at breakfast?"
"Bright and early. I'll be here."
Voyager's bulkheads and lighting are visually difficult, and trying to see and make sense of anything just gives me a headache. I need to quit trying. Following the curved and segmented corridor walls is easy, but the air pressure on the side of my face is strong enough to set my overstimulated nerves on fire. Also, moving at this pace is gratingly slow even for me. I feel like a rat groping its way along the walls of a maze, too blind to venture any farther out.
I'm trying to cooperate with the Doctor's rehabilitation plan, but either he's overestimated my ability to adjust to a non-visual existence or he doesn't understand that that's what he's asking of me. Although it's far more compact than what I had as a child, this chair's technology is mostly familiar to me. I understand that microsensors can keep me moving straight and that the camera in my prosthesis can help me find the turbolift door. And those programs do have their place. The problem is that, as a child, I was taught not to be reliant on technology. I was taught to use my own senses and to let other people help when I needed it, and that's how I learned that most people are fundamentally good. Mostly, technology was what I used to survive my time with Daddy.
"This is ridiculous." Maybe I am too old to be a 24th century blind person, and Voyager is stuck with an anachronism. They'll adjust. And if they don't, I'm sure the Delta Quadrant has inhabited planets where they can leave me. "I'm too old to start over."
Generating an echolocation signal with my tongue illuminates the entire corridor for a split second. A picture emerges, familiar in its properties if not its exact contents. My occipital cortex starts processing the new auditory images, and the feeling of groping along a wall vanishes. Hearing the breadth and length and direction of the corridor allows me to look ahead, adjusting my position more toward the center of the hall and picking up to a more reasonable speed. The pressure on the side of my face eases, and with it the pain.
That's better.
I start scanning the bulkhead for doors. The first two sound like they lead to rooms, but the third has the bright, hollow sound of a small shaft. That'll be a turbolift. I stop to skim the side of the door for a call button and find it around what's now head level. So far, so good.
An empty car arrives, and I get on. "Bridge."
