Caretaker - L. A. Graf [40]
Janeway wondered if the aliens in charge of this simulation had somehow identified this man and this house as the optimal soothing images for the current visitors, or if the holographic equipment involved was limited after all in how many patterns it could store and recombine for each new visit.
Tuvok opened his tricorder and released its song to drown out the banjo player's picking. "There are no humanoid life-forms indicated, Captain." He closed the device again. "Kim and Torres are not within tricorder range. They may not be on the Array."
Chakotay motioned at the banjo player with his compression rifle.
"He can tell us where they are."
Yes, he very probably could. But Janeway wasn't so confident that they'd convince him to tell them. Shifting her own rifle to her left hand, she tapped the Maquis standing next to her and motioned him to join Tuvok. She didn't want the Vulcan wandering off without armed backup. "Maintain your comm link," she told Tuvok. "I don't want to lose anyone else."
The Vulcan nodded, then swept away with his tricorder open in his hand again, his head bent over the readings as though concerned with where his feet might go. Waving Paris and Chakotay to flank her, Janeway silently released the safety on her rifle before starting forward toward the house. She had no intention of using the gun unless forced to, but she wasn't about to be caught off guard anymore.
The hologram on the steps of the porch opened its eyes and stopped playing its half-senseless melody, then remarked, "Why have you come back? You don't have what I need."
Janeway swallowed an urge to slap the banjo out of the hologram's hands. "I don't know what you need. And, frankly, I don't care.
I just want our people back, and I want us all to be sent home."
"Well, now..." The hologram blinked at her with an old man's thin, patronizing smile. "Aren't you contentious for a minor bipedal species?"
"This minor bipedal species," Janeway snapped, "doesn't take kindly to being abducted."
It shrugged, turning back to its banjo. "It was necessary."
She felt Chakotay start to move more than saw it, and stopped the Indian's forward lunge with her elbow. To her surprise, he obeyed the silent command, but gripped her arm in unconscious frustration as he yelled at the hologram, "Where are our people?"
His volume had no impact. "They're no longer here."
"What have you done to them?" Janeway pressed.
"You don't have what I need," the hologram replied, as though answering some other question, or just refusing to answer that one. "They might." The strings on its instrument warbled unpleasantly, as though warping out of tune, but the hologram didn't seem to notice. "You'll have to leave them."
Chakotay shook his head. "We won't do that."
The melody twisted around itself to resolve back into something almost resembling music. Nodding its head to the rhythm, the hologram said nothing.
Janeway sighed and lowered her arm from in front of Chakotay.
"We are their commanding officers," she explained tightly. "We are entrusted with their safety. They are our responsibility.
That may be a concept you don't understand--" "No." For the first time, the eyes it turned upward at Janeway looked completely alive.
Not a projection, not an image, but a real, living thing that suddenly exposed itself through the guise of this old country man. Janeway wanted to lunge forward and grab whoever this was before it faded away.
"I do understand," the alien told her. "But I have no choice.
There's so little time left."
Janeway held her breath for fear of shattering the rapport.
"Left for what?"
"I must honor the debt that can never be repaid." It looked between their faces, its own expression bleak. "But my