Flashback - Diane Carey [12]
Tuvok cried out her name, but in his mind he didn't hear it. He felt it rip from his throat, to be snatched away by the plateau wind.
He plunged for the cliff, flinging his hand over the side barely in time to catch her tiny hand in his.
A furious hoist-he had her by the wrist. But no more than that.
She was so small. How could she seem so heavy? How could he be so weak?
"Tuvok!"
He winced at the piercing scream as the girl called his name on the breath of her terror. She was so small, only a child, entrusted to him for safekeeping, and he was failing. What would her parents say? What would his say? Would anyone ever trust him again?
She trusted him to pull her up. She knew she was dying, felt his grip slackening. The desperation in her eyes slashed him like blades.
"Don't let go!" she screamed. "Help me!"
His grip-moist, slipping-
He put out his arms to both sides as if to catch her from below. He tipped his head upward as if to see her fall and move beneath her.
And he kept falling over backward.
The child's narrow body spun toward him as he had seen flower petals disengage from their stalks and spin in the wind. He reached outward again, but the sky changed. The wind changed to a fresh, rich mixture. His clammy face turned cool, chilled.
The thing behind his ear whistled frantically. The Doctor would come soon.
He would come, and catch th e girl.
Wouldn't he?
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Captain Spock
Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan
CHAPTER
5
"TUVOK! DON'T DROP ME! I'M GOING TO FALL OVER THE plateau! Tuvok, hold on to me, please!"
"Please stop fighting me. I will try to pull you up."
"I'm-I'm hanging-you're going to drop me! I can feel my fingers slipping! You're losing your grip! Tuvok! Please don't let me fall!"
Her heart pounded, and her mind reeled with panic. Her fingers snapped as the bone broke in his last desperate clench, and as the pain shot down her arm and into her shoulder.
The sky turned and turned over her head, framing the Vulcan boy's head and shoulders and the one hand that was her lifeline. She should've listened to her mother and not come to the plateau today to play. Tuvok wanted to come here, and she wanted to do whatever Tuvok said.
She felt gravity tug at her small body and understood the science, but no one had ever explained terror to her, or that gravity could be terrifying. Her legs spun and kicked, her feet scratched at the face of the cliff, but she hadn't the strength to pull herself up, and Tuvok wasn't pulling her-why couldn't he lift her back up? He was supposed to be able to do anything. Couldn't males do almost anything?
As her finger bones snapped, her brain flew wild with pain on top of the fear, and she could no longer hold on.
Tuvok's eyes went wide as he realized the grip was finished.
She felt herself falling away from him. Her stomach jumped with the sudden moment of weightlessness as she went into free fall. Her arms flapped in useless circles, and she tumbled over backward. The thin clouds in the sky came to meet her as she fell, and fell more, and turned until she could see the jagged ground reaching upward like sharp-edged knives sloppily filed . . .
Medical files . . .
Kes clasped the Doctor's arm as he held her by the shoulders and kept her from falling over. Kept her from falling . . . she wasn't going to fall.
She was leaning back against a hard electrical trunk. Molded hull section. Carpet under her feet, not open air.
But she still felt the terror, her hand cramping as the grip began to slip.
"Kes, you're nearly in shock!" the Doctor said as
he scanned her with a medical tricorder. "Your heart is severely palpitating! What's doing this to you?"
"It's happening again! Tuvok-he's having another of those seizures!"
She felt herself shudder as the ghastly tale ran its course, and snapped just before her fingers