Caretaker - L. A. Graf [66]
Her hand closed tightly around his. "We're not finished yet. I know a few things old Sneezy didn't teach in his Survival Course."
The remark seemed to come out of nowhere. "Sneezy?"
"Commander Zakarian." Torres smiled at his confusion, and Kim thought he sensed a certain underlying relief in the way she playfully joggled his arm. "Remember? He must've been allergic to everything."
A sudden vivid memory of a lean, white-haired instructor with eyes as red as his face flashed across Kim's mind. They'd been in the Appalachians, and had been forced to cut the excursion short when something in the local flora shut down Zakarian's breathing without warning. Kim's Academy class had made an especially good grade for finding its way from wilderness to civilization without instructor guidance in record time. "You went to the Academy?"
"Actually made it into the second year before we `mutually agreed' it wasn't the place for me." She smiled as though the memory didn't bother her, but Kim recognized Starfleet's euphemism for expulsion. He squeezed her hand in sympathy, and, just as quickly as it had come, the moment of rapport passed and she pulled her fingers from his grip. "I fit in a lot better with the Maquis," she finished with a shrug.
"You know," Kim told her, "I never really liked Zakarian." It was easier than what he would have liked to say.
Torres seemed to hear him both ways. Grinning somewhat wickedly, she chucked him under the chin, then pointedly settled back on her step to stare up in the direction they still had to go, giving Kim his minute to rest, but nothing more.
* The sculptures in the open courtyard rattled, dancing about on their bases as the thundering shocks from the Array's pulsed signals grew in power and speed. Janeway looked up, peripherally aware of every other Ocampa in the vicinity echoing the gesture with a little cry of surprise. Unlike whatever the Ocampa were looking for, Janeway didn't really expect to see anything. When a sound as pervasive and intrusive as the hammering of these pulses rained down on you from overhead, though, there was just some human instinct that made you look up to see where the noise was coming from. As though by catching sight of the demon, that somehow gave you power over it. Janeway's brain teased her with some faint memory of how seeing demons more often made you an easier target for them, but dismissed that as nonsense as she turned her attention back to her landing party in the courtyard.
They'd made good time into the city by following Kes and her friends through a complex tangle of walkways and public transports. Along the way, Janeway had not seen a single act of public misbehavior or disrespect. It was almost macabre. As though everyone in the Ocampa city had been replaced by a perfectly tooled robot that never stepped outside its programmed little niche. Or maybe they had all been given special drugs to flatline the delightful arabesques of emotion that Kes's farmer friends seemed to display so freely.
It isn't our place to judge, she reminded herself sternly.
True. But just because you didn't pass judgment on a society's behavior didn't mean you had to approve.
Kes and Daggin had left the landing party here among the artfully placed tables and half-eaten food. They had friends in the clinic, Kes had explained. It would be easier to gather information without a lot of strangers trailing behind like avenging angels. Janeway had reluctantly agreed, but only after extracting Kes's specific promise to return the instant she learned anything. She even almost gave the girl a comm badge. I don't like the sound of things, Janeway had wanted to tell her.
I don't like feeling like the roof's about to come crashing down.
But she did her best to maintain a certain aura of composure--for the sake of Paris and the others, if nothing else--as Kes and Daggin trotted off toward a distant doorway and left their friends the farmers to mill near a food dispensary and make disdainful noises.
And then,