Oblivion - Michael Jan Friedman [62]
It looked different from this perspective. And not in a good way, she remarked inwardly.
She had known, when she set out to free Picard, that she might wind up in a place like this. But she hadn’t appreciated the hard, unyielding reality of it.
For all Guinan’s experience and abilities, this wasn’t something she was going to be able to get out of. This was, quite possibly, the end of the line for her.
She would be judged and, more than likely, found guilty of her crimes. And since Oblivion didn’t have the resources to keep people incarcerated on a long-term basis, she would be sent to a mining colony, where she would spend the rest of her days dragging useful minerals out of the ground.
Then Guinan would die, because even El-Aurians died eventually. And that would be it.
But the worst part, the absolute nadir of the entire ordeal, was that she couldn’t work up the emotion to care. After all, the one thing she had allowed herself to care about had turned out to be unworthy of the effort.
Feeling more desolate than ever, Guinan drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. At the same time, she noticed that the guards outside her cell had been joined by another security officer.
No, she realized. Not just another officer.
It was Steej. She recognized him from their encounter outside the detention facility. And having turned toward her, he was peering at her through the energy wall of her cell.
He seemed to be picking her apart with his eyes. She didn’t like it. However, under the circumstances, there wasn’t a great deal she could do about it.
Steej waited until one of his officers deactivated the transparent barrier for him. Then he entered Guinan’s cell, sat down on its other chair, and met her gaze.
“I am Commander Steej,” he said, in a serene, almost musical voice. “But then, you probably know that.”
Guinan nodded.
“And as you must also know,” he said, with the slightest undercurrent of anger, “you are in a great deal of trouble—not only with the law here in Oblivion, which is bad enough, but also with me.”
She nodded again.
Steej tilted his head. “What’s your name?”
She couldn’t see what difference it would make if she gave it to him. “Guinan.”
His brow wrinkled. “Guinan…?”
“Just Guinan.”
“I see.” He regarded her with his dark, protuberant eyes. “An interesting disguise, Guinan. One must look closely to see that you are not a Cataxxan.”
Reluctant to go down that road lest she get her friend Dahlen in trouble, Guinan didn’t say anything in response. She just sat there, waiting for whatever came next.
“You took a rather large risk,” the Rythrian observed, “first, in helping Mister Hill escape from us, and then in helping him to elude us.”
Guinan remained silent.
Her interrogator leaned closer to her. “What, exactly, is your relationship to Mister Hill?”
She thought she had known the answer to that question. But obviously she had been mistaken.
Steej was waiting for a response. “We’re just…acquaintances,” Guinan told him.
“Acquaintances?” the security director echoed. “And yet, you went to the trouble of helping him break out of this detention facility. If you go to such lengths for your acquaintances, what do you do for your friends?”
Not much, she thought. At least, not lately. But she had begun to diverge from that behavior when it came to Picard.
“I’ll ask you again,” Steej told her. “What is your relationship to Mister Hill?”
What could Guinan say? That she had encountered him hundreds of years earlier, and felt grateful for the kindness he showed her? That his very presence had given her hope?
And that everything she felt about him had been ground to ashes when she saw him run away?
“We met in a bar,” she said, “shortly before the bomb went off. Based on what I knew of him, I didn’t think he was the one who set it off.”
The Rythrian nodded as if he understood. “His arrest offended your sense of fair play, your sense of justice. So you risked your life to set him free—this person you met in a bar just a few minutes earlier.