Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [33]
Picard couldn’t help smiling a little at the doctor’s enthusiasm. “Come on then. Let’s not keep Pug waiting.”
Decalon gazed out the observation port, mesmerized by what he saw there. Stars, he thought. So many stars…
One of them, too far off to discern with the naked eye, bathed Romulus in its warmth. Decalon remembered watching that star diminish behind him as he made his way to a new life in the Federation, certain that he was seeing it for the last time. And yet, in a few days he would be watching it wax larger again, welcoming its native son to its embrace as if he had never left.
As if nothing had changed.
It was a disconcerting thought. I have changed, Decalon insisted. I am not the man who left the Empire more than a decade ago. I am calmer now, more contemplative.
I am at peace.
In truth, he was more like a Vulcan now, though he had mixed feelings about that association. One could reject the Empire and all it represented without aligning oneself with the particular principles of Vulcan logic. Surak, wise as he was, did not have a monopoly on serenity.
Ignoring the stars for a moment, Decalon focused on his reflection in the observation port. As far as he could tell, he didn’t look any different from the day he had left Romulus. The crow’s-feet at the limits of his eyes were no deeper, the loose skin at the corners of his mouth no looser.
Appearances, he thought, quoting a Romulan adage, are the glimmer of sun on water. It was one of the few bits of homeworld wisdom to which Decalon still clung.
I am different, he insisted. I must be. Otherwise, what was the point of leaving?
As he thought that, he saw someone else’s reflection loom behind him. It was that of Captain Momosaki, the commanding officer of the Starship Zodiac.
“This must be difficult for you,” Momosaki observed, smiling in apparent sympathy.
Decalon shrugged his shoulders. “A small adjustment.”
“It’s understandable,” said Momosaki. “You risked your life in order to leave Romulus.”
“Others risked their lives as well,” the Romulan noted.
Indeed, dozens of his people had died helping to set up the network that would smuggle Decalon and others like him out of the Empire. And it wasn’t just Romulans who had given their lives. Starfleet officers had done so as well.
Decalon had thought many times about their sacrifices, their courage. They never knew the identities of those whose lives they were saving, and yet they were willing to put everything on the line for them.
It was the reason Decalon had agreed to assist in the mission at hand. If those others could place themselves in deadly jeopardy for a stranger, how could he fail to return the favor? Especially when the Starfleet admiral who approached him had asked so nicely?
To that point, Decalon had been quite content living in the enclave established for his people on Santora Prime. He had become a senator, albeit in a very small and humble imitation of the homeworld Senate. He had grown a summer squash garden that was the envy of his neighbors.
Then Edrich had come to him and described the circumstances. Captain Picard, he said, needed Decalon’s help. And Picard, along with his Betazoid counselor, had been instrumental in delivering that first trio of Romulan defectors to freedom nearly fifteen years earlier, paving the way for dozens of other defections.
Including that of Decalon himself.
“Are you familiar,” he asked, “with the writings of a human named Thomas Wolfe?”
Momosaki thought for a moment. “You Can’t Go Home Again? That Thomas Wolfe?”
“One of my neighbors on Santora Prime brought his work to my attention. I found it most eloquent when I read it-and even more so now, considering the circumstances in which I find myself.”
“Don’t think of it as home,” said Momosaki. “It’s just where your mission happens to be taking you.”
It was an interesting approach, Decalon had to admit. But he doubted that it would work. Romulans were not transient by nature. They became attached to their domiciles in a way