Myriad Universes 02_ Echoes and Refractions - Keith R. A. DeCandido [78]
David became aware that the boy was watching him, and shifted his attention away from the gruesome injury. “Hello! How are you feeling?” David asked him.
“What do you mean?” the boy responded with confusion. “I’m lying in bed. Why would I be feeling anything?”
“I mean, are you in any pain?”
Oddly, the boy’s spirit seemed to brighten at the question. “Yes, my arm hurts a lot. But that’s the will of Kahless. He put an angry spirit in there, so that it would help to claw the eyes out of my enemies!” He took a few playful swipes at David with his altered limb. “My father taught me all about Kahless. And now he’s gone to be with him.”
David’s heart sank. “Your father was killed on Praxis?”
“He was working in the mines,” the boy said. “But he was serving the Empire! Mother said he died honorably, and he would still go to Sto-vo-kor. Do you think he has met Kahless yet?”
McCoy held up his hand. “I’m sure your mother knows all about it. She’ll be back in a few minutes, okay, son?”
“Okay,” the boy replied, and resumed swiping the air with his novel appendage. McCoy motioned to David to follow, and together they made their way down the promenade around the perimeter of the stadium, which was lined with endless rows of cots and gurneys.
David raised up his prosthetic hand and examined the fingers as he flexed them repeatedly. He looked over at McCoy. “Doctor, do you believe in karma?”
McCoy offered back a perplexed expression. “First of all, we’re both doctors here, so call me Leonard. Second of all…what the hell are you talking about?”
David shook his head. “Think about it. The Klingons killed my father. Now, a weapon that I created is killing the fathers of Klingon children.” His eyes focused on the patterns in the stone floor under his feet. He felt too ashamed to raise them. “I just want it to stop. I want this all to be over.”
“It is over, David,” McCoy assured him. “You couldn’t have stopped this, you know. Every weapon that’s ever been fired in a war has relied upon technology that usually had benign origins. We always strive to better ourselves with invention and ingenuity, but someone else will always come along and try to use that same technology to create death and destruction. But we can’t let those forces stop the advance of science. We just have to trust that, eventually, enough good people will do the right thing.”
“I know you’re right,” David said, “but it doesn’t make me feel much better.” He stopped walking. Rows upon rows of injured Klingon civilians still lay sprawled out before him. The sounds of pain and suffering still filled the air. He looked up at the ceiling, sucked in his breath, and wept.
McCoy approached him and placed his arm over his shoulders. “It’s all right, David,” he assured him. “You’re gonna be okay.”
David sniffed, and reached up to wipe the moisture from his face. “It’s just that…every day when I think I’m going to be okay, something new happens…some new unexpected crisis swoops down like a vulture and rips my heart out.”
“Yep,” McCoy said. “But the good news is that every day, it grows right back. The only time you should start to worry is if one day, it doesn’t.” McCoy gave him a pat. “You want to get to work?”
David smiled weakly. His heart remained in its proper place. As long as he still had the capacity to feel, he would be okay. “Yeah, I think I really do.”
“Let’s get to it,” McCoy said, and together they approached a nearby bed where an elderly woman lay. McCoy picked up the chart. “Now, what can we do to fix you, young lady?”
“...and it is the most sincere hope of every citizen of the Federation that, by establishing a peaceful and mutually beneficial coexistence, never again will any world under any banner suffer the tragic loss of life that befell all of us during this terrible period of strife and conflict.”
The words of President Ra-ghoratreii echoed through the conference hall at Camp Khitomer, a newly established