SIX


She could barely recall the many, many times that she had hesitated outside this fastened door, often locked, a thin skin covering nothing but silence. For somebody whose chief enjoyment in life was explosions, Malcolm Reed was an unexpectedly quiet man, and placid, and despised excessive noise to a fault. He had headphones which would occasionally turn to a good use and blast some frightful old rock 'n' roll into his ears, but never too loud to blot out the things beyond. There was precious little point, he had argued, in inventing a tactical alert if he didn't keep his ears pinned back to listen for it.

She had merely cast a demure, loving look at his oddly pointed, nicely positioned ears, darted forward like a gull scooping fish from the water, and bit his left earlobe.

Hoshi Reed pressed her fingertips into the sockets of her eyes, urging them closed, and let herself feel the breath twist its way into her lungs and out. What she was about to do was a court-martial offence, a direct violation of her captain's order, and the first thing she had done in her life that might constitute a crime . . . but some things were too important even for rules. Her captain was acting in ways she couldn't begin to assimilate, and by rights T'Pol could forcibly take command from him and would no doubt sanction what Hoshi was about to do; but that didn't help. She, Hoshi Sato-Reed, the golden girl of the senior staff that could do no wrong and that never acted out of the bounds of reason, was about to become a criminal.

She tapped Malcolm's old override code into the heavy bolt-on door lock, forced her head up, and prayed that the rupturing sensation collapsing her chest wasn't the heart attack she suspected it was.

The chalky-charcoal darkness, all but total, all but tangible, threw her for only a moment; she had wandered around this room often enough to know her every step without thinking, never bumping into his scant furniture or disturbing a morsel of his meagre belongings. He had always been especially notorious for spending a long time grooming, and she had often got tired of waiting for him to clean up for dinner and fetched it to his quarters. He would emerge from the bathroom, shaved, washed, and dressed, to find her curled up on his bunk with one of his books and a tray of something or other keeping warm under a lid. Sometimes she would pilfer odd items of his clothing and lounge there in them just to see his mouth move up and down in that speechless goldfish way of his, unable to assimilate this unexpected break in his rigid routine. Then he would smile, that hundred-watt grin that unveiled his pointed canines and lit his paper-fine white skin into beaming life; he would laugh, shake his head, and calmly, as serious as if he were presiding at a trial, he would reach up with both hands and vigourously muss his neatly combed and gelled hair into a messy bed-head. When in Rome, he had always said. When in Rome.

She remembered the layout now without a moment's thought. Seven steps forward, three to her left, and the edge of his old bunk was at a level with her knees, his no doubt immaculate pillow smoothed out and the base sheets tucked under with military corners. This always amused her, considering how much destruction the relatively compact and generally mild-mannered man could inflict on a bunk as he slept. It was almost as if his bed-making habits were an effort at making amends.

One step forward, and there was the muffled patter of his breathing in the dark, his soft, measured breathing, like her husband's in every way. Two steps, three; still the pattern did not break. He was a light sleeper, alert every minute of every day, but over their six months together she had learned his impeccable technique for walking without sound, spreading her weight as she trod, taking it slow. As if the deck was not her support or her driving force but merely a line in the sand. A guide for the level she ought to tread. She could creep past now without waking him, and she intended to tonight. Just until she had made up her mind to talk to him. And then, it would be without lights, without the constant reminder before her that this wasn't the face she was so used to gazing at.

Four, five . . . so far, so good. The door had glided silently closed behind her as she ventured in, and there was utter black, the deepest she had seen on board in two years, and unsettling. She hadn't been aware that Enterprise was programmed for the Black-Hole-of-Calcutta-look. He must have disconnected the lights somehow, even the gentle moon glow of the night simulators deadened, snuffed out like a candle flame.

Six, seven . . .

A sudden weight slammed into her chest and propelled her back against the bulkhead with a disgruntled clang, a solid arm barred across her throat and the other clutching her wrists as she lashed out. The clang died away in tinny rattles that shot soft vibrations through the metal at her back, and now the only sound was the fast, furious hyperventilation of her attacker, exhaling warmth against her face. She could feel his chest rise and fall deeply against her, his entire solid body blocking her escape, pinning her helplessly to the wall. He was strong, almost inhumanly strong, a Goliath in David's body, an unfair match in a way her Malcolm had never been. She had heard that kind of frantic, fitful breathing from him in only one setting before this; and not through fear or anger, but from a desperately checked, trembling excitement. He had breathed that way when they made love.

This was Malcolm Reed. There was no longer the faintest shred of doubt in her mind or in any other fibre of her being, pained and panicked as it was. No copy could do this. And those reflexes . . . they were his to the tiniest detail.

"He sent you, didn't he?" came his husky, smothered voice through the Indian ink air of Malcolm's old quarters. It masqueraded as a question but she knew that when his blood was up Malcolm Reed rarely asked questions. He made demands, imperatives fired in a quick succession, even those with the rising inflection of an enquiry little more than a veiled statement of fact. He teased out information and tested shaky ground . . . but he didn't ask questions. Except for rhetorical ones, the questions that could trap you and make you tell all you knew. Questions, demands - it all came down to one basic precept. He could be quite the bully when it was asked of him.

"Who? Who sent me? The captain?" Her voice shook as she spoke, and she cursed it, not for the first time. She needed her equilibrium, now if never in her life before. This was Malcolm. He wouldn't hurt her. Would he?

The arm at her throat quivered as he recognised who had crept up on him, and who he had thrown against a wall with such brutal force. It braced, yielded, and fell gently away. He eased backward, reluctant to allow her to leave, but acquiescing a little of his control. "H . . . Hoshi," he stammered. Then, tightly: "You shouldn't be here."

Hoshi brought up one shaking hand, slowly, and felt her affronted neck with her fingertips. He was close, she could tell, a murmur in the dark. A shade of faded black in stratas of ebony. Close. So very, very close. Guarding her . . . or in awe of her?

"I know," she said. "But then . . . neither should you."

"I can't help that." Had she thought his voice identical to her Malcolm's? It came from the same vocal chords and had the same impeccable accent, aided by the occasional (possibly deliberate) slip from public schoolboy to barrow-boy that she had grown to love - but when he spoke he did so so very softly, a murmur little more than a whisper of wind, that only her exceptional ears would be certain to catch it all.

She wished, quite suddenly, that she could see him, although only moments before it had been the last thing she wanted. It was stupid, insane, but . . . she couldn't help but feel a little closer to her husband, if only by proxy, being in the presence of this man so very like him. And he was her best and only link to what had happened, on that planet. There was always the chance that he would refuse to share it with her but he had some knowledge of what had happened, of that she was sure. She wanted to judge with her own eyes, and not just her ears, if she could trust him or not. "Who did you expect?" she asked, carefully. "You were afraid . . . weren't you? The Malcolm Reed I know would never jump somebody like that without a good reason."

"I'm not the Malcolm Reed you know." There was none of the venom or the chill she would expect from such a statement as that; just that same breathy undertone, without inflection. There was merely a sadness there. Nothing more.

"You were afraid. What were you afraid of?"

"Nothing. Where I come from, Hoshi . . . you learn not to trust anybody too quickly."

"You trusted me."

She heard an exhalation that was brutally shy of a laugh, but even in the blackness, she could feel him smile sardonically at her, indulgently; a teacher amused at a child's antics, blackly enchanted. "That was different."

"How?"

"It just is. Now you'd better leave. Before your captain finds you." His voice settled like velvet over her - or like a shroud. Its softness sent a quiver of disquiet into every bone, and she shivered almost as an afterthought, trapped in the cold brush of something not quite . . . human.

"He won't mind me being here. Not under the circumstances." She gulped, and dared move a little from the wall. She didn't know what she had hoped to achieve by coming here; it all seemed rather childish in hindsight. Had she expected him to respond to her, to tell her what she wanted to know, just because it was what her Malcolm would have done? They looked alike, moved alike, even; breathed alike and had that awful wistful sorrow in their voice; but they could turn out to be as different as night and day. He could even be dangerous. There was no reason, none at all, to expect two versions of a man need share common drives.

She raised her chin even though the gesture was futile in the dark, and backed softly towards where she thought the door was. She could walk quietly, of course, and for that she silently thanked the man that had taught her how. Wherever he was at this moment in time. "You told me my Malcolm wasn't dead," she hazarded. "In the shuttlepod. You said he wasn't dead. How do you know that?"

"I might ask you why do you call him your Malcolm." There was a huff, a rueful laughter lost in his sigh. Then: "I saw your wedding ring. My - his - grandmother's ring. This must be very difficult for you."

She gulped. "It is. So . . . you had the same ring?" She could feel her brain computing frantically at this; they shared at least a part of a common history, then. Correction; they shared a common history in memory. What did that leave? She hesitated where she stood, one shin pressed against the edge of the bunk, giving her some semblance of her bearings, and strained into the nothing swarming in front of her eyes. Inspiration hit her like a hammer striking a bell; smartly, sharply, leaving echoes imprinted on the air. "Are you from the future, Malcolm?"

"Not quite. But you're warm."

That much she should have known; if he were from her future, he would have known they were married now. He wouldn't have needed to see a ring to deduce that much.

If he were from her future. And yet the two Malcolms, in all appearances, may share some degree of their past.

"Malcolm, please," she pleaded, speaking as softly as he did now, mirroring the unnatural calm that seemed to accompany every word that came from his mouth. "I know you've got ideas about what's right and wrong and I know you'd never give information willingly . . . but please just answer me this one thing, and I promise, I'll do everything I can to help you. But please, if you know something . . ."

"I don't. All I can tell you is he's gone to the same place that I came from." He must have sensed her confusion; there was a rustle of fabric as if he had shifted a little, and he continued, in the same, meek voice: "It's basic displacement theory, Hoshi. There can't be two versions of the same entity existing together in any one place, just like two physical bodies can't occupy the exact same point in space-time together. For that to happen one would have to be shifted out of phase."

"I'm not quite sure I understand," she breathed. But her voice failed her, and she could manage nothing else.

Displaced. Alive somewhere, and probably unharmed . . . but displaced.

"Where?" she asked suddenly.

"I can't tell you that."

"Why?"

"Because you wouldn't believe me. And you said if I answered that one question that you would help me. I've answered it. I don't expect you to uphold your end of the bargain."

"Do you have that low an opinion of me?"

"No. But I don't want you in the line of fire. Now go on. Leave. Before he comes back and sees you here."

She pounced on that fragment like a starving dog on a bone. It was the most he had thrown her, and she expected no more. "The captain. Captain Archer has . . . he's been here, hasn't he? He's spoken with you. How much does he know?"

"Nothing that you don't, now. Perhaps less." It was a sparse sound, the barest dent on the air, and resounded all the more deeply for it. She could sense him, close by, not touching her, but in that very private, thin wedge that was her personal space. She couldn't find it intrusive, and hated him for it. She hated him for being so much like her own missing husband.

"And he just took no for an answer?" She could feel the fragile ice she walked on cracking with every word, the danger lurking beyond it suddenly visible through an imaginary fissure. This was what she had come to find out, and the one thing she knew he would never tell her. Not directly, and not without encouragement.

His pained breathing was cut short, and even in the dark, if only through that unearthly silence, she knew that she had shocked him somehow. "Hoshi . . . I can't expect you to understand. But be careful what you say to him. Don't be alone with him, even for a moment. It's not safe."

(I promise you I'll make it as good as it can be. But it's not safe, Hoshi.)

"What are you saying? That the captain is dangerous?" She bridled instinctively, defensive in a way she hadn't been since entering this room; suddenly the fact that she had been starting to believe him - had wanted to believe him - seemed pitifully foolish. Those words couldn't have come from his lips. She wouldn't allow herself to believe that they had. "Good try. You know I almost believed you. But Captain Archer is a good man, and he'd never pose any kind of threat to any one of us. Not even the Vulcans. I don't even know what I'm doing here!"

And she turned on her heel, and stamped towards the door.

"Wait." He didn't shout; it was barely even a call after her. There was just that word, left fading into the silence like outward ripples in a calm pool, disturbed by a single drop of rain. She turned back. "The two of us were displaced, Hoshi. That means one of us was sent where they didn't belong and it automatically switched us. I know where I was when this happened and I also know that nobody was there to have done it to me, or to arrange for it to happen. I was alone. So I have to assume that he was pushed out of his own place first and displaced me from mine." She heard him swallow, the only indication of emotion from him, even now. "It takes a person or a device of some kind to do that. And there were only three people on that planet, weren't there?"

She was trembling like a willow in an autumn breeze, bitterly unable to deny where his gentle coaxing was leading her. He was right. He had to be. There was no other explanation.

She stormed back to the door, her feet pounding her frustration from the metal like a forger's hammer on iron. He didn't call after her again.