Chapter 8
Sedation buys them time, but they find nothing useful to do with it. As the next of what has turned into an endless series of sequencing attempts runs, T’Volis makes use of one of the Interpreter’s holodeck programs to meditate. Seeing nothing but bulkheads and carpet and artificial light has become painful, and even if she can still feel the sense of filled space around her, the invisible walls of the holodeck leaning in, even the illusion of open rock and growing things is a balm.
She camped in a place much like this with Diane. It was one of their favorites. A refuge.
She has spent much of the last two weeks reflecting on that relationship, on her decision to end it, and here she acknowledges the grief that has cost it–especially under the present circumstances, where Diane is dying the death T’Volis so feared. She is not sure that the termination of their courtship has saved her much pain, in the end. She still cares deeply for Diane. It would be worse had they bonded, that is true, but she can know that intellectually and still be hard-pressed to imagine feeling greater distress than she currently does; in none of her worst imaginings did she ever think that she would be the doctor handling the case, and helpless to do anything about it.
Diane is dying. There is no logic in denying that. There’s the possibility of a phage therapy, but in every simulation they’ve run, it kills the patient. Meket thinks he may have found a way around it, but it is very unlikely. L’Nar was the one to say that out loud, the vanishingly small percentage of a chance that it might work, and Meket had said, “It is point zero-zero-seven-five more likely than the next most likely approach,” and L’Nar had nodded, and started to run the simulation again. Then they had told T’Volis to go rest, as there was no logic in her spending energy in being idle while they took care of a basic task well within their capabilities.
So she is here, in a small room on a starship pretending very hard to be a Vulcan plateau, with her grief for Diane filing into neat columns, ready for deployment when it is time, and secondary to that is a terrible creeping realization–she does not regret the end of their relationship. If anything, she regrets it less now than she ever has.
She has seen a new facet of Diane’s life here, one mentioned in passing and in conversation with Sotek, but never experienced; the tight bonds of a starship crew, the almost fantastic loyalty to one another, the willingness to accept newcomers, the fanatic determination to snatch triumph and life from defeat and death, the total refusal to surrender one moment before they are forced to. She honors it–but it is also totally alien to her, uncomfortable and borderline foolish. And yet, such a profound part of who Diane is, a part that would always have been estranged from T’Volis’s own experience, a thing Diane could never have fully shared, even in a meld.
To have a partner who could never share such a profound, basic part of themselves–with whom she could not share that… it would have been a disaster, sooner or later. She had chosen sooner, and it is terrible, but she is very sure that later would have been still worse.
T’Volis could not bear to be a part of this community; Diane could not be separated from it, even in, as seems likely, death. To be away from sky and wind, to be around so many beings without relief–T’Volis could not have borne that, no more than Diane has ever been able to bear being on a planet for more than two weeks together. She knows this now, in a way she never did before.
She wishes she had realized it earlier. Perhaps it would have made it easier to repair their friendship earlier.
The door hisses open. She does not move, listens to the sound of footsteps making their way toward her; the measured gait of the Romulan. There is a soft sound of fabric as he bends, a disturbance in the simulated sand and rock as he places something in front of her.
“There,” he says. “I was hoping you would be intelligent enough to come to this solution yourself, but apparently I must do everything myself on this ship.”
He is being more abrasive than usual, but she can hear the brittleness in his voice. She looks up at him, standing rigidly over her with his arms folded a little too tightly across his chest. It strikes her for the first time that he is young, not the usual stodgy middle aged Tal Shiar agents who occasionally appeared at conferences during the war, but an equivalent to her and Diane, perhaps even a little younger. And he is upset.
“Go on,”’ he says, tilting his head at the vial he has placed before her. “There it is.”
T’Volis looks at the vial, and then up at Tanek, and says, “I do not understand.”
“You understand me perfectly well,” says Tanek, a vicious edge like a snarl underlying his voice. “This is the counteragent for the biological weapon the Captain was exposed to. Rather than questioning me, you would better use your time adapting it for use in her specific case.”
T’Volis looks at the vial again, and then takes it. If this is a deception of some sort, it is an exceptionally cruel one. “Why are you under the impression that this is the counteragent for this particular virus?”
He gives her a look of low-lidded disgust. “Must I spell it out for you?”
“Apparently so,” she says, because her suspicions are forming rapidly, and she has no desire to voice conjecture to him. Not conjecture like this.
“It is a Romulan biogenic weapon,” he snaps. “How the Dominion obtained it, I have no idea. I was uncertain until I was able to peruse the data I gained from my visit to Sickbay the other night.”
She looks at him, thinking of him standing outside the isolation room wall.
“Really, doctor,” he says, sneering, “you don’t think that was out of sentiment, did you? If a Dominion biogenic weapon killed the Captain, and I did not obtain data on it for my superiors, I would not deserve to wear this uniform.”
There was no reason for him to put on that show for Diane alone, if she was dying; he had not known T’Volis was there, and she has little doubt that the Interpeter’s medical staff would have made sure he was not unsupervised, had they known he was there–had he not taken precautions to ensure that no one knew he was there. No, that moment–that was no lie.
Then he is obfuscating now. “Not entirely sentiment, it seems,” she says, her voice very cool, and lifts the vial. She does not quite believe it yet; this seems too easy a solution.
“I would suggest you test it,” he says, trying for dismissive, and now she is listening for it she can hear the cracks in his facade. He claims he only cares about his duty, but she doubts his superiors have given him permission to divulge that this is a Romulan weapon, let alone furnish a counteragent.
“I am surprised you suggest that,” she says, “and that you have not demanded I trust you implicitly.”
He makes an impatient gesture. “Oblige me, Doctor,” he says, “by not being so careless with her in your professional life as you were in your personal.”
The observation cuts painfully, but it is not important.
“Why would you be provided with the counteragent?” she asks instead, though a few possibilities present themselves. Interrogation of a prisoner, for example.
“I have a genetic vulnerability,” he says. “Detected when I first entered training. I am susceptible to elements of the virus.”
The Romulans were serious enough about this weapon that they have provided one of their agents with a means to protect himself in case they decided to deploy it. T’Volis looks at the vial in her hand, then back at him.
“Of course,” he says, and for a second his expression twists in a way he must have picked up from Diane, “there is every possibility that is simply designed to kill me, to prevent…embarrassment. It will of course be your job to ascertain whether it’s a viable treatment.”
T’Volis looks down at the vial again. Diane is running out of time. A human would thank him. But this–this is too much to trust. “Why?” she asks.
“Really, Doctor,” he says, and if he has been abrasive and bitter before, it is nothing to what is in his voice now. “I thought you were a reasonably intelligent and perceptive woman. But perhaps you of all people are least suited to understand my motives.”
T’Volis has no patience for this kind of thing, not right now. “Your jealousy is illogical,” she tells him. “As is your expectation I will simply take you at your word in this situation.”
“Don’t,” he says. “Analyze that, and see what it is. Its efficacy is all that matters, not whether I can be trusted.”
He jerks his head downward in an acknowledgement that doesn’t even bother to be rude, and turns his back on her, stalking out of the holodeck.
T’Volis stares another moment at the vial between her fingers, a small ampoule of clear liquid, ready to be slotted into a hypospray. She does not want to hope.
She gets up and hurries for Sickbay nevertheless.