Flashback - Diane Carey [18]
"When I'm in your memory," she asked, "will I actually be reliving it with you?"
"No. I will be the only one who will notice your presence. Because these are my memories, it will be easy for me to simply relive the experience instead of analyzing it. I will need you to help guide me through my memories and help me locate the one that has been forgotten. You will be an observer in the memory, not a participant. This will give you the freedom to guide me in an objective manner."
"And when we find the memory?"
"That is a more difficult question to answer," he said. "I do not know what to expect, or how I will respond."
Janeway wondered how formidable a struggle this would be-suspicious because everything so far sounded rather simple. In fact, it didn't sound like anything Tuvok couldn't do for himself. Go into the memory, walk through it, follow all the threads that looked like a little girl tumbling over a cliff, and track her down like lines on a chart. Connect the mental dots.
Still. . .
"When do we start?" she asked.
Right now. Before I have a chance to change my mind.
"I will need time to prepare," Tuvok said. "Please return in one hour." Damn.
"I wanted to get started right away, but Tuvok needed time. So I'm taking this chance to inform you of our intentions."
"I don't like this, Captain. Why can't one of the other Vulcans do this for him?"
Janeway leaned back in her office chair and looked up at Chakotay. A band of soft lighting behind her caught the lines of the patterned tattoo on the left side of his forehead.
"I can't turn down a chance to help a member of my crew because we're not the same genetic structure," she told him. "What kind of message would that be to the rest of the crew?"
He pressed his lips tight and frowned, thinking about what she had just said. After a moment he paced to the corner of her desk, paused, gazed at the carpet, then looked at her.
"That's true," he allowed, "but you're the captain, for all of us. That also means you shouldn't risk yourself unnecessarily for one crewmember when there's a viable alternative. What kind of message is that? You risk your life-in this case, your mental stability. If you live through the stress of a Vulcan mind-meld of this intensity, you might still come out of it severely brain-damaged. That leaves us without a captain."
Janeway tipped her head. "I believe I would be
leaving the crew with a capable captain, or I wouldn't try this."
He didn't fall for it. "Well, that's very flattering, and I appreciate the faith, but I'd like to go down in formal protest to your doing this. Risking you is risking the whole crew. If not physically, then certainly their morale. You are the focal point of all our hopes. You're the one who forged a single crew from Starfleet and Maquis personnel."
He was a single-minded man with many Vulcan-like qualities. If he weren't standing here pointing this out, Tuvok would be the one pointing it out. Janeway knew this was Chakotay's duty as first officer, to help her question anything he believed she had failed to question, but she also knew, from the flint in his eyes, that he believed she was putting herself in danger and that he didn't like that a bit.
Feeling fortunate to have a first officer who wasn't vying in the privacy of his ambitions for an extra pip on his collar and a rank acquired by loss of a commanding officer, Janeway let him have his say.
When he paused, she started to say something, but Chakotay leaned forward on the desk.
"This is just not necessary when there are Vulcans on board who can handle the mental and psychological stress better than any human."
"I think you underestimate me," Janeway commented with a little grin.
"I don't underestimate you at all," he claimed. "I just suggest that you accept the limitations of being human."
"I don't consider myself limited because I'm human, Chakotay."
The first officer let his head