Requiem - Michael Jan Friedman [81]
The doctor considered it for a moment. After all, it was possible that they would all die in this place. But what if they didn’t? What if someone here survived to screw up the timestream?
She shook her head. “No. You won’t get anything out of me, either. In fact—”
Before she could finish her comment, another barrage cut through the air above them, sending a rain of debris down on their heads. Coughing, Julia dusted herself off and leaned close to her friend, as Travers inched nearer to the place where the window used to be. It gave the two of them a moment of relative privacy.
“Jean-Luc,” she whispered. “Will you tell me something?”
His eyes found hers. “If I can,” he responded.
The doctor licked her lips. “You went to the trouble of saving the colony from a devastating accident—even risked your life in the process. And now, you’ve come back to make a stand here with us—again, at great risk.”
Her friend seemed to see where she was headed with this. “Why would I have done any of that if the colony was destined to be wiped out? If at least some of your people were not meant to survive?”
He gazed at her with infinite kindness, with infinite sorrow and regret. And his hazel eyes told her all she needed to know.
Julia swallowed. So they really were doomed. They were all going to die; history had already decided that. But then …
“Why did you come back?” she asked. “If it wasn’t going to accomplish anything … what was the point?”
Jean-Luc shrugged. “Perhaps it was because of something someone once told me—that there’s no such thing as a meaningless sacrifice. That any positive act, no matter how hopeless or insignificant, is ultimately worthwhile.”
The doctor looked at him. “Me? I said that?”
He nodded. “It appears I have memorized it. I suppose it struck a chord.” There was a pause, as he turned away from her. “Julia, I have done things in the last few days that I am not proud of. I have lied to people who trusted me. I have spent all my time planning ways to abandon you and your fellow colonists to your fate.
“And for what? So I could live. Oh, there are good reasons for me to do so—reasons that I cannot go into now. But what I planned to do can be done by others almost as well. I see now that I am not as essential to the future as I wished to believe. And without that justification, what was left?”
Julia did her best to understand. “Is it so bad to want to survive?” she wondered.
Jean-Luc shook his head. “No, of course not. However, there are worse things than dying.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “There is shame, for instance. And there is the loss of someone dear to you, when you haven’t even put up a fight to try to keep her—as futile as that fight may be.”
The doctor could feel tears welling up in her eyes, and she willed them back. She wasn’t going to cry, she resolved. She had been strong all her life. She wasn’t going to falter right at the end.
“They’re coming,” said Travers. He looked back at Julia and her friend. “This might be a good time to lend a hand, Mr. Hill.”
“That’s not my name,” Jean-Luc confessed to the commodore.
Travers shrugged. “It’s the name I’ll always remember you by,” he said, keeping a straight face under his iron-gray brows.
Under different circumstances, Julia might have laughed at the gallows humor. As it was, she merely grasped her phaser more tightly and crawled forward next to her strange companion.
It seemed like a long time before they reached the neighboring node, guided through the darkness by their handheld light sources. In the meantime, the power surges hadn’t gotten any worse. The lights went on dimly for two or three seconds at a time, or flickered brightly for an eyeblink and then died, but there was no sign of those flashes that ran the length of the walls like a herd of wild horses.
All in all, it seemed to Barclay, they had been lucky. He wondered how much longer their luck would hold out.
“There,” said Commander La Forge, pointing.