Winter's Child, continued.
Twenty years is a long time to be away from the Federation, and fifteen an eternity to be without computers to someone born in the age of subspace data transfer. I wasn't surprised to find my mother perched behind the desk when I came back from the Jefferies tube, distractedly scanning newspapers and intelligence reports long since declassified. I leaned on the back of the chair and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.
She squeezed my arm but kept reading. Open on the terminal was a brief on the status of Voyager, written upon Harry and Chakotay's return; a précis of the Dominion War; a curt notice declaring Voyager and her crew lost; and the crew manifest of the Challenger. At the corner of the screen, several more documents blinked in the queue, downloaded but not accessed. "Where have you been?" she asked, tucking her chin against my forearm as she read.
"I got lost," I said. It wasn't true, but it seemed easier than explaining that Zayek and I had sat in a silent stalemate for the last forty-five minutes, staring at the transceiver, or that I had gone the wrong way from the Jefferies tube junction deliberately, to give myself more time to think. I let her go and straightened up. "What are you up to?"
She sighed and turned in the chair to face me. "Just trying to catch up on twenty years of Federation history, but I don't even know where to start. Captain LaForge kindly forwarded me the reports about Voyager, but there's so much more – we're going back to a very different Earth than the one we left."
I nodded. "Learn anything so far?"
"Chakotay and Harry got a parade, Starfleet is still recovering from a war fought with a species I've never heard of, and the Maquis were basically right about the Cardassians." She leaned back and closed her eyes. "It makes the Delta Quadrant sound almost friendly."
As she rubbed her temples, I slid down and knelt in front of her knees, chin level with the desk, squinting at the screen. It occurred to me as I began to read the précis that every book in the universe was now at my fingertips; the few I'd scavenged on Voyager had hardly satisfied my curiosity. All those stories, the history Tom had taught, the poetry Juliet had hesitantly recited, the philosophy Tuvok hinted at – it was all there, waiting for me.
When the terminal beeped, I recoiled; my nose had been inches from the screen. In an instant, my mother leaned over me to tap at the panel, bringing up another program entirely. "It's a live transmission," she breathed; her fingers fumbled over the keys. "From Starfleet Command." I sat back on my heels and craned my neck to meet her eyes. She trailed her left hand across my back, settling it firmly on my shoulder, and with the lightest touch of her forefinger opened a channel.
The officer sitting behind the desk looked to me just like all the others in Challenger's halls; he was older, but he was every bit as serious, his uniform just as precise. Only the expression on his face set him apart: in the instant of silence before he spoke, that crisp Starfleet calm seemed shaky.
"Captain Janeway," he said, then, with the barest hint of affection, "Katie." I looked up at my mother incredulously. No one had ever seemed less like a Katie than she did, and yet she must have been younger, softer once, and this man had known her then.
"Admiral Patterson," she said, smiling that crooked smile. "It's good to see a familiar face."
"LaForge has just submitted his report, and we wanted to contact you as soon as we could," he said, leaning forward on his elbows as he spoke. "I'm supposed to give you the official line, but I'm not going to tell you the protocol on missing ships. I'm sure you know it." He cleared his throat. "Instead, I'd like to apologize. We should never have stopped looking, Katie."
I felt her grip tighten on my shoulder. "From what I understand, Starfleet had other concerns."
"Don't let us off the hook. There's always a war or a diplomatic crisis to be dealt with; we still had a responsibility to our farthest-ranging vessel." He rubbed a hand over his bald head, glancing between me and my mother. "If I had realized, when I put your name forward for Voyager's command, that I was sentencing you to – to – "
"To five years with a finer crew than any in the fleet," my mother broke in, her voice catching. "Don't misunderstand me, Admiral: it's been hell, and I wish that Starfleet had gotten their act together and come after us fifteen years ago. But I wouldn't give up this command if I could."
"Whatever mistakes we made here, Katie, at least your crew had you." He held her gaze for a long moment, then cleared his throat and glanced down at a data PADD he held. "I'm also supposed to inform you that your rescue is highly classified; Starfleet is worried about bad press, especially after the hullabaloo surrounding the end of the search nine years ago. They're not looking forward to announcing that in fact, Voyager's beloved captain was alive all that time."
"So they're not even notifying our families?" My mother's tone was icy.
"They're not, Katie." The admiral lowered his voice, leaning still closer to the console. "But I am. I agree with you: after fifteen years slowly freezing to death in the Takara sector, your crew deserves more to be more than the 'Fleet's latest media gaffe."
My mother reached toward the screen, dropping her hand on the panel. "Thank you, Admiral. It means a lot to us."
"I wanted to double-check the identities of the survivors before I contacted any families. The only one LaForge could readily identify was you." He chuckled wryly. "It seems you made quite an impression on him. I'll be making the calls personally, though it's unlikely that I'll be able to arrange any two-way calls. If they would like to write notes, I would be happy to pass them along."
"Of course." My mother took a deep breath, drumming her fingers on the desk, before listing the survivors. She finished with, "And Naomi Wildman, Ensign Samantha Wildman's daughter. She was born in the Delta Quadrant, but you should be able to contact her father, a Ktarian man named Gresgrendrek."
The admiral noted the names on his PADD. "LaForge mentioned children; Naomi is clearly not the only one."
"No." My mother glanced down at me. "B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris have two children, Harry and Miral; Zayek Swinn is Madelein's son, and Ada is being raised by Eddie Matteo and Greg Ayala."
"Tom Paris, a father?" A genuine smile flickered across the admiral's face. "Owen will be pleased. How old are the children?"
Pride crept into my mother's voice. "Harry is seven, and Miral is about nine weeks."
"I must say, Katie, when you decided to bring Paris aboard, I was skeptical, but by all reports he took advantage of that second chance. Owen almost couldn't believe the way Harry Kim described him at the debriefings." He put down the PADD. "I'm glad to hear it wasn't just the bias of a friend."
"Not at all, Admiral," my mother said. "I'm sure Tom earned every word of praise." There was a pause; I could almost see her eyes narrowing. "Speaking of the admiralty – any sense of the attitude toward my officers?"
"The conspirators, Katie?" Admiral Patterson looked uncomfortable. "Pity, mostly, some sympathy, but not a whole lot of forgiveness. There are a few hard-liners who aren't going to back down easily. After the war – the Dominion War – there are a great many with personal grievances against the Federation, and the security council is worried that if they're lenient with Kim and Chakotay it will weaken Starfleet's authority." When my mother didn't respond, he said bracingly, "I'm afraid that this is one case that won't be decided by public opinion, Katie."
"The honor of the Federation's at stake," she supplied sharply. Though I couldn't see her face, I could tell that she was staring him down from the way his eyes traveled the screen, avoiding her gaze.
"Yes." His eyes landed on me, and he grasped at the distraction. "But who is this? Naomi, or Ada – "
From the tartness of her voice, it was clear that she resented the change of topic, but she let it go. "This is my daughter, Beatrice." The edge softened, and she added, "I'm sure my family would like to hear about her, too."
The admiral cleared his throat again. "Actually, Katie, you can tell them yourself. When I said no two-way calls, I really meant, none that your sister hadn't already bullied me into arranging." He looked almost embarrassed. "That was the first call I made, and if anyone asks, I'll insist it was before Starfleet told me not to."
She had drawn a sharp breath when he mentioned her sister; now she let it out noisily. "Thank you," she almost whispered, the brash captain gone. "For letting her bully you, if nothing else."
"Phoebe Janeway is not a woman to be trifled with. Rather like her sister," Admiral Patterson said, his eyes crinkling. "Now, we'll speak again, Katie; your sister is waiting."
"Impatiently, I'm sure. Thank you, Admiral – for – " But he waved his hand dismissively, and tapped a sequence on the brightly lit panel. His office was replaced by another room, equally severe, and for a moment it seemed empty. "Phoebe?" my mother called out, tentatively.
The woman that rushed into the field of vision almost tripped as she slid into the chair. "Kathryn?" she whispered, then laughed out loud, with more nerves than mirth. "My God, Kathryn, you – do you have any idea how many times you've been declared dead?" She had the same arched cheekbones and bright eyes as my mother, but her hair was a glossy brown with only a few telltale white streaks, bobbed at her chin; she had that clean, full look that everyone on the Challenger shared. She didn't glance at me, and I guessed that her screen had a narrower field than the admiral's; she couldn't see me at all. "It really is you, isn't it?"
"Phoebe – "
"My heart skipped a beat when the dean called me out of my class this afternoon; I thought I was done with getting confidential calls from Starfleet, Kath! First, when you and dad – and then, when Voyager disappeared, mom and I got that one together, and the news of those two officers in the shuttle." Her smile faltered, and she wiped impatiently at her eyes. She couldn't seem to stop talking. "It was almost a relief when they declared you lost, not to half-expect an admiral to wake me up every night."
"Phoebe, I – " My mother tried again to break in, but her sister nervously talked right over her.
"No, I'm sorry, Kathryn, I just don't know what to – "
My mother swallowed, hard, and said, "How have you been, Phoebe?"
Phoebe looked incredulous, "No, how are you? My life is mundane details, yours – "
"I would kill for mundane details," my mother said. She leaned forward, and Phoebe's eyes widened. "Please, just – tell me about the last twenty years. I need – " She broke off, her fingers pressing hard into my shoulder, her eyes fixed on her sister.
"Of course," Phoebe said softly. "Well, I'm teaching at a small art college outside Vancouver. About as different from Starfleet as I could find, and after all the nonsense about the recovery missions, it was a relief to be dealing with students, not cadets." She paused, thinking; how to sum up the last two decades? "Oh! I'm married, Kath. His name is Samuel Tayn."
"Samuel," my mother murmured.
"Sam. He's – oh, Kathryn, this is ridiculous. There's so much to tell you." Her hands twisted before her, a nervous gesture not unlike my mother's own. "I think you'll approve of him. We have a daughter, who we rather predictably named Kathryn; she was born just after you were declared dead."
"And mom?" My mother's voice was low, hollow.
"I forgot," Phoebe said, tears starting in her eyes again. "You couldn't know. She died, six years ago. Oh, Kath," she said, reaching out and laying her fingers against the screen. "I'm so sorry."
"I didn't expect the world to stop," my mother said, and I was surprised by how clear her voice was. "But I would have liked – well. I would have liked Beatrice to meet her." At Phoebe's quizzical look, her mournful calm was somewhat broken. "My daughter, Phoebe. The one sitting here with me."
Phoebe tapped her console with her free hand, presumably resetting the viewer angle; her eyes again widened as she took me in. She looked between us for a long moment, then said, in an inscrutable tone, "You still manage to surprise me, Kathryn. I thought I'd figured you out a long time ago."
"Really?" My mother's nervous hands ran over my hair. "Well, then you know me better than I do, because I still haven't." Between them hovered the unspoken question, but when Phoebe spoke next, she didn't ask it.
"What was it like, Kathryn?" Her voice was soft, tentative, but in her grey eyes I saw the worry and loneliness of a lifetime in the shadow of Starfleet Janeways, and a desperate need to know what her sister had suffered.
Behind me, my mother's whole body tensed; her muscles, like mine, remembered the icy air too well. "I tried so hard to keep the cold away." She let out a shuddering breath, warm against my neck, but I shivered. "There's nothing harder, Phoebe, than fighting a losing battle to protect your own child, watching her learn to bear numb fingers, the sharp pain of breathing ice, teaching her not to cry when she can't get warm. I thought, sometimes, that war or catastrophe would be easier than relentless hunger and cold." She shifted beside me; Phoebe was watching with an almost painful compassion, but she didn't interrupt. "Every night, I wrapped her in my arms, in clothes and in blankets, and even then I spent half the night awake, waiting for – oh, God, Phoebe, I was waiting for her breath to slow and her skin to cool under my fingers." She laid her narrow fingers against my neck, and her pulse beat against mine. "I waited for her to die. It seemed so impossible that she wouldn't."
Phoebe bit at her lip. "And when did you stop worrying?"
It was with a hoarse whisper that my mother responded: "I never did."
Admiral Patterson had only been able to secure the channel for twenty minutes; Phoebe signed off reluctantly, brushing tears from her eyes and promising to send my mother letters. My mother abandoned her précis and the briefs, retreating into the master bedroom. She didn't sob or cry out, but I didn't wait for her to start, and to give her back her solitude I slipped out.
At first, I walked just to hear the sharp steps of the crewmen all around me and step through the doors that opened at my approach. Normally, I would have sought out Zayek, but I didn't know what to say to him, and the thought of the tiny cold transceiver still nestled in his pocket kept me away. I thought I knew him well, but the Zayek I knew never would have stolen the device, taken it from its cradle in the lab while Ada and Harry chased each other around the room, and then lied so unflinchingly to all of us. I hadn't even guessed that anything was wrong, in the transporter room or aboard Voyager that last time, and it was this new, secretive Zayek that disturbed me more than the deadly potential of the device. I walked to keep him from my mind.
But I had been alone long enough. I knew there was a mess hall on the ship, but I doubted that I would feel any more welcome there than I did in the corridors. Instead, I teetered on my toes outside the quarters that Naomi and Juliet Jurot were sharing.
Juliet opened the door before I rang the chime and stepped aside to let me in without a word. She wasn't alone: Joe, B'Elanna, and Greg were clustered together on the couch, pouring over a single PADD, and Naomi lay on the carpet with Miral squirming on her belly. I sank down beside her, offering the baby my pinky to grab at. There were PADDs scattered across the coffee table, on the floor, even a few kicked under the couch: an embarrassment of information, after so long without.
B'Elanna was wiping tears from her eyes. "I knew that they were gone, but – there was nothing in the letters about this kind of – this – "
"Massacre?" Greg supplied dully.
"Maybe that's a blessing, B'Elanna," Joe said gently. His tight reddish curls, white at the roots, seemed greyer in the harsh lights, a work-worn hand rested on her knee.
She didn't shake him off, but turned to gaze out into the streaking stars. "I thought I'd imagined it, Joe. I thought I'd faced it. I programmed the holodeck with all my friends, burnt and murdered – but it was one atrocity. That war – it was hundreds."
Greg pushed the PADD away, looking more belligerent than I'd ever seen him. "If I had known – God, I was pounding flour and flirting with Eddie while – and I didn't even think of them, not once since – "
I could see on his face that there were no words that were good enough, no reassurance that would absolve him. It didn't matter that he had been struggling to survive or that there was nothing he could have done, trapped on Voyager. It might have been common knowledge to Federation citizens, but the blunt truths of the war had sent him reeling. I had known him as a friend, a teacher, a father, but he had been a rebel and a soldier, and his cause, his army, was gone.
The silence stretched. Greg dropped his head into his hands, and after glancing from me to Naomi to Joe's stricken expression, B'Elanna hurriedly leaned forward and with pursed lips began shuffling through the PADDs on the table. "This one's for you, Naomi," she said. "It's your father's service record. And look, Joe – this is a newsweb article on your elder son – looks like he won the Hawking prize at the Academy."
"What did you do," I asked, "just search for any files relating to Voyager?" I reached under the table and picked up a few files. "This is a tabloid article about the unlikely romance between Seven of Nine and – "
"Yes," Naomi cut in, grinning up at me. "We went a little crazy." She took the PADD B'Elanna offered her, but before reading it tossed me another. "Check this one out: it's a summary of Delta Quadrant species, and it's wildly inaccurate. It says Talaxians are quadrupeds."
B'Elanna smiled weakly. "There's a bunch of conspiracy theorists, too, who think that Chakotay deliberately collapsed the slipstream to send us all to an icy grave. Last cry of a terrorist. Or something." She slipped down to the floor, trailing a reassuring hand over Greg's knee, and kept nervously sorting the articles, setting some aside for survivors not there and handing out the rest. Juliet's mother was a columnist on Betazed; Tom's sisters had started a museum dedicated to what little information there was on Voyager; there was even a treatise on the psychology of my mother's command decisions, the salient conclusion being that the Delta Quadrant had unhinged her. "You're really going to throw them for a loop, Bea."
"If Kathryn goes public," Joe added. He scrolled eagerly through the PADD about his son, though the information it contained had to be ten years old; he seemed almost unaware of the tension in the room.
"She'd better," Naomi said, and I was surprised by the bite in her tone. She was deliberately avoiding the PADD clutched tightly in her hands, her eyes still fixed on the baby. "She kept that secret for too long."
Greg looked down at the top of Naomi's head. "She couldn't even tell us, Naomi. If we threatened her privacy, her sense of self – what will the media do?" He was the same tired, sad man I'd always known; the rebel had faded, but so had the cheerful rescuee from the picnic. "Will it be better, to put her in the spotlight again?"
No one answered. Paging through a collection of Chakotay's writings on life in the Delta Quadrant, I reflected that nothing had changed: my mother was still walled into her silence, now joined there by her crew, afraid of a media response I didn't yet understand. My father, imprisoned eleven decks away, was just as inaccessible as he had been before I knew his name. Starfleet had made us top-secret and compounded our isolation, trapping us with protocol just as surely as we'd been trapped by ice. Had Zayek realized that, down in the lab, and prepared to give up his future because of it?
Still, though: the air was clean and warm, and for the first time in my memory I was full. I stretched out my legs, nudging aside articles speculating on the physics of fluidic space and the uses of leola root, and if I didn't look to hard, I couldn't see Naomi's uncertainty or Joe's regret. I settled down to read in earnest, sinking into the comfortable silence we'd perfected on Voyager.
Chakotay's first essay began: "A lucky accident brought me back to the Federation.
"Ask the engineers, and they'll tell you I mean the slipstream; the diplomats will cite the turning tide of opinion surrounding the Dominion War. But I can't call the first luck, when it took my friends from me, and the latter seemed more inevitability than accident. No; a Cardassian Gul, a guardian on the verge of death, and a Starfleet captain with a spine of steel came together, and changed my life irrevocably."
Maybe it was possible. A hundred PADDs here, thousands more yet to be downloaded – but maybe we could catch up on twenty years' history. The man who had written this had again stepped outside the Federation, driven by a sorrow still etched in his eyes, but perhaps I could get to know him anyway. Starfleet would release us eventually; the crew would return to families that had long since buried them, and maybe we would find space there. We would forget the cold nights and the weary days, and maybe someday the warmth and white noise of a living ship would be commonplace. And when that happened, I thought, marveling at the way the panels responded to the lightest tap of a finger, words standing out clear on the screen, maybe then I could convince Zayek to bury or turn in or smash the transceiver, and we wouldn't have to give up anything at all.
Maybe.