Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [99]
As the two men talked, Troi could feel how relieved they were to have gotten each other through their ordeal unscathed. But she sensed more than that: inside, they really did feel a lot like father and son. Perhaps they could fulfill for each other those needs which the courses of their lives had left unmet.
She wondered if Picard would let down his reserve and show his feelings just a bit. Riker already had—one didn’t have to be an empath to see it.
Bowles arrived at that moment and received cordial greetings. He wore a new Starfleet uniform. He seemed a bit tentative about his surroundings, but relaxed. His scarred face had a new mobility—he wasn’t exactly smiling, but his mouth did have a hint of upturn.
“How are you feeling, Al?” asked Picard.
“Not bad, actually. I guess when you’ve been asleep for ten years, at least you’re fairly well rested. There are huge areas of my memory missing, though. My childhood and teens don’t exist. I have never been young. My personal life doesn’t exist, either. My Starfleet training is still with me; I have the knowledge itself, but I can’t remember going to Starfleet Academy. Were you and I there at the same time?”
“Yes. And, yes, I did know you.”
“Oh.” Bowles seemed almost afraid to ask for more information. “I guess I must have done all right. I made Captain.”
“You were brilliant,” said Picard. “Actually, you were torn between two pursuits, Starfleet and holography. You were a holographic artist. I expect when you get back you’ll be able to visit galleries and see plenty of your work.”
Bowles was stunned. He had to sit down.
“That explains so much.”
He stared at his hands.
“When I was Crichton and I started having … ‘hallucinations,’ one of them was of myself making a holostatue of a talking thousand-year-old tree. Crichton had a great deal of trouble with that one. It had everything—aliens, art …”
“Why do you think you—or rather, Crichton—were chosen to become Director of Cephalic Security?” asked Picard. “Wouldn’t he have been a bad risk?”
“Not at all. It didn’t matter what a person had been before blanking. One became a clean slate. Crichton was given someone else’s past. But he had a special aptitude for creating images the public needed, and rose through the ranks. He was the best they’d ever had in the Director job. It wasn’t until your arrival that the Bowles memories started emerging.”
“Sort of like pentimento,” said Troi, “when a painter paints over his original work, but then years later the original shows through.”
“Yes.” He continued to stare at his hands. “But I guess the Rampartians were using my innate abilities all along. Or misusing them.”
“Al,” said Picard, “I highly recommend that you talk some of these things out with the counselor. She is the best Starfleet has to offers.”
“Let me second the invitation,” said Troi, “while disclaiming the flattery.”
“Appreciate the offer,” said Bowles. “I was just remembering that Crichton had a compulsion to wash his hands. I think he was really trying to wash off my art.”
“Yes,” said Troi. “The hand-washing was a clue for me. I eventually remembered that Captain Bowles had been an artist. Everything fell into place then. I saw how I’d been wrong and at the same time right all along … how I had first felt Crichton was secretly remembering aliens … then how I felt he was hallucinating fictions. In fact, he was remembering aliens—those he’d seen in Starfleet—but he mistakenly believed them to be fictions.”
Bowles looked away from his hands and gazed out the porthole.
“What do you think Starfleet will do about Rampart?” he asked, directing his question to all of them.
“They’ll want to know all they can about the Huxley,” said Picard. “They’ll gather any further evidence, and give the Rampartians a warning about attacking other ships. And that’s probably it. We had to evolve our own way out of our age of horror, and the Rampartians will have to do likewise. If they don’t, they’ll be stuck on their isolated little rock forever.”
“They’ve already discovered,” said Bowles, “that alien life exists on their own