Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [40]
Who was strong enough to come through Red Sector after Eric Stiles?
“It must be the ambassador,” Zevon said, as if reading Stiles’s mind. “He must finally have found a way to bring you out.”
“I don’t care if God Himself is coming,” Stiles uttered. The words gagged in his throat. “I don’t want to go.” “You must go,” Zevon told him firmly.
“I don’t have to go. Nobody can make me… I won’t go. Not even for Ambassador Spock… no, not even for him. Everything I’ve done, I did so he’d be proud of me. If I go back, everything’ll fall apart. If I die here, he can be proud of me. I’ll be lost in the line of duty. If I’m alive, I’m headed back to disgrace. Court-martial. Home to humiliation. Zero purpose… complete uselessness. I cheated my dopey destiny for four years. Now I’m twenty-five and dying, about to be crushed in name as well as in body… and you and I… Zevon… we’ll never see each other again. I don’t want to go. I’m not going.”
Without really turning to face him, Zevon glanced down at his side, at his own arm pressing against Stiles’s, and he moved enough to clasp Stiles’s hand. Still, they did not look at each other.
“You must go,” Zevon told him firmly. “They can save you. The Federation will cure you. You will go.”
Despite the physical abuse, the sickness, the deterioration, the pain, Stiles found himself looking fondly back upon the years of working side by side with Zevon, at first concentrating on keeping each other alive, later on the goal of deciphering the erratic Constrictor pattern. Their discoveries-that there was no pattern, but that waves did build before a Constrictor and could be measured… the possibility of predicting the disasters before they hit…
“Y’know, I didn’t mind the pain or the beatings, or anything,” he said. “I didn’t mind the chance to stay here and do what I perceived as my duty. It’s better for me to die here than go back and die humiliated. You understand, you’re Romulan-it’s better for my family to believe that I died in battle.”
“That is often best,” Zevon conditionally agreed, “but not always. Not this time.”
He squeezed Stiles’s hand, careful of his own strength and the possibility of actually crushing the weakened muscles and the thready bones.
Stiles gazed at their clasped hands, and sucked each breath as if it were his last.
“You’re the only friend I’ve got,” he uttered. “I’m dying and they’re taking me away from my only friend” “They’ll cure you. You’ll live.”
“I don’t want to live humiliated. I want to die here. At least I died trying, instead of going back disgraced and a failure, court-martialed-” “No, Eric. You must go” “Why’.7 Why do I have to go? I’d rather die here” “You must go for the billion.” “Huh?”
“You forget, as usual, that others are involved who are not looking at you or judging you.” “Who?” “The billion we can save.” “You son of a bitch… don’t do this to me.” “And me, Eric. You’ll save me too.”
For the first time, the idea of going home seemed less prickly. “How?” he demanded.
In a measured tone, Zevon explained, “If you go back and they cure you, you can get word to the Romulan Empire that I am here, that I’m alive. The royal family will have no choice but to breach Red Sector and get me out. My people don’t think I’m alive, or they would have come already. They can find resources to make a deflection system. Look what I’m working with-ancient trash, chips and coils and conductors, a spectrograph the age of my mother, and still we’ve found a way to predict. Look at those copper wires! On my ship I had more facilities in my cabin than we have here. Mathematics based on assumptions of certain things happening at the same time-think what I could do with real technology!”
Zevon paused, seemed to dream briefly, then leaned back until he could rest against the wall. He had to tip his head forward a little to avoid scuffing the points of his ears against the wall when he turned his head to glance at Stiles.
“I am still royal family, Eric. If they know I’m here, they’ll get me out. They’ll negotiate, they’ll threaten, but they