Collective Hindsight (Book 2) - Aaron Rosenberg [3]
Caldon’s mind was already considering the problem. “Have other ships been sighted in that area?”
“Not recently, but Federation ships have been known to pass through there.”
“Of course.” He stood, knowing his sponsor could not see the movement. “I will depart at once.” He hesitated—should he mention it, or wait for his sponsor to do so? The former could be considered presumptuous.
“Excellent.” After a brief pause, his sponsor spoke again. “You will, of course, be compensated at your usual rates, plus a bonus for a speedy resolution.”
Ah. He had been right to wait. “Thank you, sir.” The call ended, and Overseer Caldon headed toward the bridge, to inform his crew of their new mission. And to punish them for disturbing his rest.
* * *
Soloman sat and stared at his screen.
“Something wrong, Soloman?”
He glanced up at Pattie, and shook his head. “No, I’m just accessing the data from the older files.”
She glanced at his console. “Is that what you and 111 recorded from its computers?”
“Yes.” He stared at it again, and felt as much as saw the Nasat crouch down next to him.
“What’s going on? You can talk to me.”
He thought back to their last mission, dealing with that strange time-travel device in the Ludugian system. He and Pattie had been sent to analyze the device while Commander Gomez, Lt. Commander Tev, Lt. Commander Corsi, and Carol Abramowitz had gone after the Ferengi they’d found taking advantage of it. While the two of them had worked, they had struck up a conversation, and both of them had revealed things they’d never mentioned to their other teammates. It had certainly brought them closer.
“I—I’m afraid,” he finally admitted quietly.
“Afraid? Of what? The ship?”
“No, not physically afraid.” He tried to put his thoughts into words—it was so much easier with numbers! “The last time we studied the Dancing Star, we had Commander Salek, and Lt. Commander Duffy—and 111.” It still hurt just to say her name. “I was part of a bonded pair then.”
“Ah.” His teammate’s antennae quivered with sympathy. “And you’re afraid of reopening old wounds by looking at the data again?”
“It’s more than that.” He glanced over at her, then back at the screen. “It does hurt, of course, but I’ve learned to accept that. Though it’s more painful than usual, reliving something we did together. But I’m also worried. I’m not 110 anymore—I’m Soloman now. I’m not part of a pair. I’m less than a pair.”
All of them had gotten fairly good at reading Pattie’s expressions, and he recognized this one with surprise. It was rage. “Is this about those two idiots on Venus?” The Bynar pair assigned to the Venus terraforming project, 1011 and 1110, had treated Soloman with contempt during the da Vinci’s mission to aid the terraformers, calling him a singleton, one of their race’s worst insults. But he shook his head.
“No, I’m not worried about what they think of me. Nor about what any of my race think. But I am not as capable as 111 and I were together—that’s a fact. I cannot process as well alone as we could united. And I worry that I may not be able to access the information as well now as we did then. What if I miss something because I can no longer read it as clearly?”
Pattie nodded and straightened to her full height again, which only put her level with him while he sat. “I know what you mean, actually. Fabian and I feel it, too. What if we’ve lost our edge now? What if we’ve forgotten something important, and are no longer sharp enough to catch it again?” She shrugged. “But I figure whatever we’ve lost in youth and eagerness we’ve more than made up for in experience. We’re smarter than we were, and that includes you, Soloman. You may be less than the two of you were together, but you’re a lot more than you were alone. You’ll catch the important details. We all will.”
She walked back to her own station, and Soloman glanced over at his screen again. He hoped she was right. But all he could do was his best, and that would have to be enough.
* * *
“Okay, how does this