All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [52]
But one day, when she was clearing the remains of a Cardassian’s meal into her clothing, one of the guards saw what she was doing. Without a word, he grabbed her by her long blond hair and took her to the commandant of the prison camp.
Like so many Cardassians in high positions, Gul Makur was not an especially bad-tempered individual. However, he wasn’t about to let Calan’s audacity go unpunished. If his prisoners began to think they could get away with small things, he explained, they would try bigger things. And that would lead to the sort of trouble he’d prefer to avoid.
So to prevent small things from leading to bigger ones, the commandant took his dinner knife and dug it into the tender flesh of Calan’s shoulder. He did this three times, until her shoulder bled in three spots. Then he connected the spots with the edge of his blade, creating a triangular scar that would remain with her the rest of her days.
Her only satisfaction came years later, when she heard that the Resistance had dispatched Gul Makur in a particularly slow and painful way. Then, in her mind, her scar became a badge of honor.
Even after she joined Starfleet and was given the option of having it surgically removed, she opted to keep it. It had become a part of her, and not the worst part by far.
As she often did when she remembered these events, Calan reached beneath her uniform and felt for the raised triangle of the scar. Funny… for some reason, it was difficult to find. She felt around some more, but still came up empty-handed.
Ice water tricked down into the small of her back. It wasn’t possible that the scar had disappeared. By the prophets, she had seen it this morning in the mirror ….
But after another moment or two, she came to a conclusion as inescapable as the Marjono prison camp. Her scar was gone, as if Gul Makur had never inflicted it on her in the first place.
Yet it hadn’t been a dream; the damned thing had happened. Even now, she could feel the Cardassian’s knife piercing her skin. She could feel the pain, the shame of her tears as they made hot little trails down her cheeks ….
No, the scar had been real. And now it was gone. The only question now was… how? I’m surprised,” said Geordi. “I had no idea that Captain Picard had such a handle on temporal theory.”
“I was surprised as well,” Data admitted, his voice only slightly masked by the hum of the engines.
They were working alongide each other in engineering, making the adjustments the captain had called for. Once the android had described what he was up to, Geordi couldn’t resist pitching in. After all, he’d never even seen an inverse tachyon pulse, much less created one.
“And using the beam to scan past the subspace barrier…” The engineer shook his head. “That’s pretty innovative… if it works.” “I thought so too,” agreed Data.
“But,” Geordi added, “I guess this isn’t the first time Captain Picard has caught me off guard. It’s amazing some of the things he comes up with.” The android nodded. “I suppose it is.”
The engineer pointed to one of the monitors they were working with—and, more specifically, to a key juncture in the deflector schematic. “We can get more power if we reroute this circuit to the deflector array.”
It seemed to make sense to Data also. “Initiating tachyon pulse…”
On another monitor, the engineer could see a thin, oscillating beam emerge from the deflector dish and begin scanning the anomaly.
After a moment, the android turned to him. “I am curious, Geordi. Where do you think you will be twenty-five years from now?”
The human smiled. “What?”
“Captain Picard has been to the future,” Data explained. “All our futures. He might even be interacting with one or more of us in that time period. I find it interesting to speculate where our lives will take us by that time.”
Geordi shrugged. “I don’t know. Assuming I’m still around, I’ll probably still be in starfleet.”
His friend looked at him. “Then you do not anticipate any significant changes in your future?”
The engineer shook his head. “Not really. I’m a