Flashback - Diane Carey [70]
"Yes, Captain . . ."
The ledge held.
"Now, Tuvok, very slowly shift your weight all the way to the ledge. At the same time, I'm going to roll to my right side and pull with the primary grip. Understand?"
"Yes. . ."
"Good. If you don't fall, then our little friend won't have any reason to cling to the guilt. Maybe if I don't let you go," she added, "it will."
"Thank you . . ."
"Ready-rolling."
Grunting with effort, she dug her feet into the dirt and rolled onto her side, levering upward with her left arm, pulling valiantly on his wrist.
In a moment, his black hair made an appearance over the top of the plateau, then his face, limned with effort.
"Find another toehold for your right foot," Janeway instructed, forcing her voice to come out in something other than a series of squeaky gasps.
Tuvok actually had his tongue between his lips as he trembled with every muscle concentrating on reaching the top. Suddenly, his entire left arm flopped over the edge and slammed to the dirt
beside Janeway's face-she hadn't even felt her right hand let go of his wrist! That was how numb her arm had become.
"Captain!"
"Out," she murmured as Tuvok winced in pain and hitched himself chest-forward onto the edge of the plateau. "Get out... get out. . ."
CHAPTER 19
CONSCIOUSNESS WAS A FUNNY THING.
Tuvok lowered his hand from Janeway's face. The captain felt the touch slip away. For an instant she nearly snatched out for his hand, determined not to let go.
Had he fallen? Was that why he was slipping backward?
As she watched, he slumped against the back of the seat, his expression exhausted, but calm. His eyes were steady, glazed with revelation, and with relief. He no longer felt the nagging fear of being possessed by the uncontrollable.
Janeway slid back too, letting her shuddering body relax. She hadn't let him fall.
"Are you all right?" she asked him.
He stared at her a moment, then nodded. "Yes . ..
thank you. I am well. You did not let go of me. Most admirable, Captain."
She shrugged, and her shoulders actually ached. "Whatever this was, it clung to the fears of children. I don't know if that was all it knew . . ."
"'It'?"
"I sensed another consciousness."
Troubled by that, Tuvok muttered, "Indeed?"
"1 saw flashes of children holding each other at the edge of some kind of cliff or gulf. They went back hundreds of years, maybe thousands. I saw things like China and Africa and woolly mammoths. Tuvok, this scenario has been playing out, evidently on Earth, for centuries! And I saw Valtane involved in the same scenario."
Tuvok looked stunned. So he hadn't let go of a Vulcan child after all! He hadn't let a little girl die.
"Doctor," Janeway began, pushing herself up, "you got us out of that with some kind of surge, am I correct?"
"Yes, Captain, a thoron radiation pulse drove the foreign organism out of your brains." As he spoke he removed their cortical monitors.
"It was a physical manifestation?"
"Yes, I have it here on the screen, extremely magnified. A most exotic virus."
"Let's have a look."
Gathering their dignity, what was left of it, she and Tuvok shuffled across the carpet, tossing each other a little glance of silliness that they were walking so stiffly, and joined the Doctor and Kes at the small viewer.
Before them on the screen was a bizarre-looking thing that might have been a dot of pollen in another life, magnified many, many times.
"It's clearly a viral parasite of some kind," the Doctor said, "but its origin and genome classification are not on record."
"Probably because it started back so many years ago that nobody even knew about genomes," Janeway commented.
Kes said, "We were able to kill it using the thoron radiation."
"What do you know about it?"
The doctor pointed at the screen. "The parasite thrives on peptides generated in the brain. It evades the body's immune system by disguising itself as a memory engram. I believe it was residing in Commander