Caretaker - L. A. Graf [60]
Silence, Kim's mother was fond of saying, was persuasion's greatest ally. What crying, ranting, and threats might fail to accomplish, a few well-placed minutes of silence could usually bring about. Over the years, Kim had seen the power of silence win his mother a registered Pekingese, secure his father's permission for Kim to attend Youth Orchestra summer camp, and convince an entire crowd of rowdy teenagers that they didn't really want to shout obscenities at passing drivers.
Kim couldn't wield silence with quite the mastery his mother displayed, but he practiced it from time to time, and had faith he'd someday get better. "Remember," his mother had told him.
"If you stay silent long enough, people will talk themselves into doing what they already know is right. There's nothing you could say or do that would possibly work any better than they will on themselves."
So, with those words ringing in his memory--words spoken by a voice his heart now despaired of ever hearing again--Kim waited in dutiful silence while the nurse paced four steps away from them, then turned and slowly made her way back.
"One person I knew," she said carefully, "did get to the surface. We never saw her again."
Kim felt Torres's hand clamp hard on his shoulder. "How?" he asked the nurse.
She looked up with a certain tense bravery. "The ancient tunnels that brought us here still exist. Over the years, small breaches in the security barrier have appeared, just large enough for someone to get through. But it still requires digging through meters of rock to get out," she added quickly, her eyes flicking up to Torres as though reacting to something in the Maquis's face.
"Can you get us tools to dig with?" Torres asked, undeterred.
The nurse was already shaking her head. "It would take days, maybe even weeks, to break through. You have to rest--conserve your strength."
"Please..." Kim squeezed her hand, and tried to let her see the very real pain and urgency that had been gnawing at him ever since waking up so far away from his people. "It's our only chance."
The nurse stared down at their entwined hands, and Kim gave her as long as she needed for silence to do its work. When she finally sighed and looked up in frustrated reluctance, Kim knew the battle was won.
Still, he only nodded mute thanks, and let the silence say whatever else was needed.
* Janeway had never met the emergency medical program before. She wasn't sure she had met it now. Flashing from place to place in the still half-damaged sickbay, it concentrated on its alien patient with a single-mindedness that Janeway suspected few flesh-and-blood doctors could rival. Given the amount of heated discussion boiling among the half-dozen people crammed into the little space, she envied the computer its concentration. Still, it would have been nice to see it smile, or interact with the delicate Ocampa in some manner other than a strictly mechanical one. When we get home, she promised the snippily busy program, I'm going to talk to somebody about installing some bedside manner into your next upgrade. Although she wondered if such a thing really mattered when the program only hung around for an hour or so, pending the arrival of new medical personnel.
Probably not enough to justify the cost of retooling the whole program.
Which, she thought as she watched the hologram manipulate the Ocampa's arm into a new position with businesslike abruptness, was really too bad.
The girl's name was Kes, and what she saw in Neelix was a mystery to Janeway. On the other hand, what Neelix saw in Kes wasn't at all hard to figure out. She was tiny and slight, with eyes as blue as colored glass and as big as a full moon. A simple, angelic beauty cloaked her like a silken robe, and the sheer innocence of her smile lent it a brilliance even Janeway found hard to ignore. Neelix hadn't released her hand since the planet's surface, and Janeway didn't think Paris had remembered to blink since right