Flashback - Diane Carey [4]
"Tuvok!"
The girl's voice screamed plaintively, suffering in his mind.
But now it was before him, and he heard it physically, felt the open land around him, the outstretching mountains and plateaus.
Whump-ump . .. whump-ump . .. whump-ump ...
Heartbeat. His own. The girl's. Faster and faster, he heard the sound of his own metabolism reacting to the rising anxiety, to the desperate screams of the girl.
Tuvok flinched to the core of his being as a face flashed before his eyes-a young girl, a Vulcan girl, staring at his eyes from a distance of no more than a meter-terrified. All Vulcan reserve had flushed from her eyes, and he couldn't help but react to that. Eight years old, nine ... no more.
His knees flexed slightly as the lift eased to a halt and Tuvok heard the turbolift doors whisper open before him. He knew he had arrived at the sickbay deck. The Vulcan girl's face flickered and peeled away as the doors parted. The corridor before him seemed dark, cloying, as if carved from rock.
Rock . . .
Flushed with terror, he tipped his body forward as he let the ship's artificial gravity pull him out of the turbolift. It was as if this were his first walk down a starship's corridor, before he had ever gotten used to the unplanetlike, unequal tug of artificial gravity. After the first few weeks, such a tug became second nature, a thing to be ignored, like the slightly rich scent of artificially produced atmosphere, but at this moment he could feel and taste both as if he were a
visiting plebe. His stomach roiled, and his legs were like tinder in wind. The corridor undulated before him like the gullet of some hungry animal.
Symbolism . . . nonregulation . . .
No logic in this. No female Vulcan child on board. No rock, no plateau. Still on board, corridor, sickbay. Forward, go forward.
Just as he thought he could regain control, a blanket of dizziness caught him as if by the throat, and he drifted sideways. If he stumbled, he would go over the cliff! He would die with her!
Panic tore through him as balance was knocked from his feet and he staggered. He crashed against something solid-the corridor wall had stopped him. He hovered there with his shoulder pressed against it.
No cliff. . .
But there was a cliff, there is somewhere. A cliff on board. The ship could fall off.
"Tuuuuvok!" A scream seared his mind. He heard it as clearly as the red alert klaxon.
He reached out and caught her hand, made a quick pull, and got her by the wrist. She was small, but her weight was too much in spite of that. Stones and slabs of shale cracked under her feet as she scratched desperately at the sheer rock wall. Dust plumed away, downward, spiraling in a rising thermal, forming a ghastly frame around the narrow body, the tribal clothing. Her pointed ears caught the rosy Vulcan dawn over the plateau. Her eyes were wide with panic on so intense and base a level that not even a Vulcan could bury a reaction. Death
was final and frightening, and not even Vulcans could discipline it away.
He was too young to save her, too young to accept transfer of her katra-that was for her parents to do, but they weren't here. They were in the city, on business. She was entrusted to him, supposedly safe on this trail, on this plateau.
He willed all his strength to his hand, but his body would not give up his own grip on the plateau's edge. Self-preservation shot in and made him lean back just a few centimeters.
Enough-enough that the girl's weight shifted and bumped against the cliff face. Startlement and pain rippled through her body, up through her arm and into Tuvok's. Their Vulcan telepathic minds shared the terror she felt. If he could only keep moving against the turbolift wall, he could reach the security alarm and get help. A security team could pull the girl back over the top. Starfleet Security . . .
Please-
His hand cramped, knotted, began to hurt. He felt the girl's moist fingers slip into his coiled palm, then on through it.
Her feet flashed back and forth beyond Tuvok's sight of the