Caretaker - L. A. Graf [64]
Toscat pursed his lips as though displeased with the idea of words passing through them, then nodded stiffly toward Janeway without actually meeting her eyes. "I didn't mean to be rude," he said, his voice too loud, and stilted with non-use. "But you should not be here."
"We'll be glad to leave," Janeway told him, "once we find our crewmen."
He looked up at her somewhat sharply then, and Janeway met his gaze firmly. He wasn't the first person who'd tried to interfere with her duty to her crew, but he was hardly the most threatening. She held him pinned with her stare until he glanced aside again, ostensibly gathering Paris and Chakotay into the discussion although Janeway could plainly see the smears of red darkening on his translucent cheeks.
"That won't be possible," Toscat said, addressing the landing party as one large whole. "We cannot interfere with the Caretaker's wishes."
Chakotay snorted. "Maybe you can't, but we can."
The elder Ocampa shook his head. "You don't understand--" "That's right." Kes touched Toscat's arm and made him look at her again.
"They don't understand," she said, softly but with strength. "They have no way of knowing that the Ocampa have been dependent on the Caretaker for so long, we can't even think for ourselves anymore. They don't understand we were once a people who had full command of our minds' abilities--" "The stories of our ancestors' cognitive abilities are apocryphal." Toscat aimed the explanation at Janeway, as though it were important that she understand. "At the very least, exaggerated."
"We lost those abilities," Kes said over him, more loudly, "because we stopped using them."
Toscat waved his hands in front of his face as though to banish her words from his sight. "We should not dwell on what's been lost, but on all that's been gained."
"Yes." Kes's voice dripped with a frustration that bordered dangerously on disdain. "We've gained a talent for dependence.
For simply taking what we're given." She shook her head at Toscat, and took up Neelix's hand again in a gesture of clear defiance. "I'm going to help them whether you like it or not, Toscat. And I think my friends will join me."
The young farmers all around them murmured agreement, and Toscat flushed again as he shot a scowl into the quiet crowd. "You defied the Caretaker by going to the surface, Kes. Learn from the experience.
Follow the path he has set for us."
Kes sniffed a little laugh. "I've learned very well, Toscat. I saw the sunlight!" Groans that could only have been from painful longing tore from half the assembled Ocampa. Janeway's heart went out to them, knowing--if only a little--what it must be like to grow up under the brow of the earth without even the touch of the sun. "I can't believe that our Caretaker would forbid us to open our eyes and see the sky," Kes went on. She looked proudly up at Janeway, then back at the other Federation men behind her.
"Come on. We'll find your people."
She spun with rigid determination, Neelix scurrying along behind her in a daze of wide-eyed admiration. Janeway watched Toscat as the knot of farmers broke apart into a quiet stream to follow Kes down through the gardens, leaving the elder to wring his hands in the front of his robe and shake his head somewhat sadly. A parent, unhappy with the road his children have taken.
Confident that his disapproval might sink into despair but never over into violence, Janeway motioned her people to stay with her, and started after Kes toward the still far-distant city.
Chapter 16
They'd known the tunnels would be long, and dark, Kim reminded himself.
The Ocampa nurse had warned them of that--more than once, even--before smuggling them out of the infirmary what felt like an eternity ago.
Somehow, though, all her warnings had only made Kim more certain that he understood what to expect. They seemed to leave so little to his imagination. But now, aching in every muscle as though he'd been beaten, and