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The Doctor looked over his shoulder at his coworkers. “These may be brilliant minds,” he muttered, “but there are times when they behave like children.”

“They focus when it is required of them,” said Seven, keeping her voice equally soft. She straightened in her chair. “And now, I think, we will demand it of them.”

The Paris family had, for the entire time they had been present on Boreth, been the only ones who had visited the library. Tom and B’Elanna had preferred it that way, and B’Elanna realized that she’d come to think of the place as “hers.” It was just the ancient books, the scrolls, and her…well, her and the cranky librarians, but she’d gotten used to their mostly silent disapproval. All the others who had come to Boreth seemed to have a single focus—the lava caves, and the visions that they hoped to achieve there, and that was just fine with Torres.

In the last day or so, however, two other pilgrims had joined her in the quietude of the library. The place was large enough so there was no crowding or jostling for seats, but she still found that she was slightly intimidated by their presence. She didn’t know what the two large, burly males were researching, and frankly, as she stole a surreptitious glance at them now, she thought they seemed as out of place as a targ in a china shop.

They didn’t wear armor, but it was clear they were more warriors than scholars. One, the larger who stood more than two meters tall and weighed well over a hundred kilos, was missing two fingers on his right hand. From beneath her lashes, B’Elanna watched as he reached for a scroll.

Those hands would be much more comfortable curled around a bat’leth, Torres thought as the large newcomer grasped the scroll assertively. She thought she heard poor Lakuur hiss in fear, as if he expected the warrior to crush the priceless scroll in his single, powerful hand as he might crush an enemy’s windpipe.

The other Klingon was no less intriguing, though slightly less massive than his companion. He seemed the more “book learned” of the two, whispering to his companion now and then and pointing to a line in the scrolls or one of the massive tomes. Both Klingons took copious notes. They seemed to studiously avoid B’Elanna, and that suited her admirably. She had no desire to engage in chitchat with her fellow pilgrims. She was here on a mission.

This quest to learn about the Kuvah’Magh had started as a way to humor Tom, to find something that might interest him enough so that she didn’t feel too overwhelmingly guilty about forcing him to come to Boreth. Torres had fully intended to abandon the effort once his interest waned. Instead, she spent nearly every waking minute in the library now, barely taking time to eat, drink, sleep, or nurse her child. More than once Kularg had given her a reproachful look when she’d come to collect Miral after leaving the girl with him for hours at a stretch. She felt the stab of guilt, but rationalized it by telling herself that she was investigating her daughter’s future.

A future that could, if the scrolls were to be believed, prove to be very interesting indeed.

She hadn’t heard anything from Tom, but then again, she hadn’t expected to. Communications on Boreth were usually for emergencies only, or at least highly important messages. Conversations along the lines of “Hi, sweetie, the conference is interesting, talked to a Ktlonian today” just weren’t going to happen.

But that was all right. B’Elanna buried the pangs of missing Tom in her research, and the more she learned, the more excited…and, she was forced to admit, apprehensive…she became.

“And then she fired some sort of weapon on him,” Moset was saying excitedly. Sekaya watched him with a strange, detached amusement. When she had first awoken to this living nightmare, she had burned with hatred and fury. As the hours crawled by, that burning had subsided to embers. It wouldn’t take much to stir the embers into a raging flame, and she knew it; she cherished her hatred of Crell Moset. But she had now figured