The first officer of the Enterprise had instructed two Starfleet security guards to show me to my quarters. One of them, a human female, told me that everything I might need was readily available. All I had to do was address the computer, which would relay my request to the appropriate service system. I nodded once, impatiently, not wanting to prolong the conversation. I was holding myself under such tight control that I feared moving a single muscle.
As soon as the cabin door slid shut, my control gave way. I was in shock: my hands and knees began to tremble, and I was sweating and freezing at the same time. The implications of what had happened were too horrific to grasp, and my mind was in chaos. Then, sickeningly, out of the chaos emerged the clear picture I had seen on the bridge screen--Eidolon, my own beloved ship, my home, my heart, speeding above and away from me, carrying with it my life and, far worse, the lives of Tal and my crew, who were doomed as surely as I, and by my own actions. That image was burned into the back of my eyelids, and when I buried my face in my hands it persisted there, filling me with rage and guilt and a sense of foreboding so powerful that it fell upon me like a weight.
The intensity of those emotions frightened me; as distraught as I was, I was lucid enough to know that I had to regain control, for I could do my crew and myself no good in this state. And when I thought of my crew, I remembered with a start that Adiv and Lem were still here, on this wretched evil ship, in the brig. I have to see them, I thought, but not like this. Somehow I was able to will myself calm--calm enough at least to stop trembling and to breathe deeply until my heart rate returned to normal. There must be a way to fix this.
My first task was to try to get my bearings and assess my position. I looked around and realized that I was standing in the middle of a large cabin that was, by Romulan standards, luxuriously furnished. An elegantly designed workstation and desk occupied one wall, and a comfortable-looking sofa and two chairs were arranged across from them. There was a partitioned sleeping alcove at one end of the room; from there a half-open door led to a fresher. The floor was carpeted in some soft blue material that muffled sound. A part of my mind acknowledged the captain's courtesy in treating me as his guest rather than his prisoner--so far, at any rate.
I was shivering, less from shock now than from cold. The enviro controls were set for human comfort: the room was frigid. My feet were bare, and I was still wearing the light silk dress that left my throat and arms uncovered ... I looked at the schematic on the controls. It was impossible to decipher the so-called universal symbols that were stenciled on or next to each key. Just what you'd expect from the Terrans--use symbols with human referents, and don't bother including words. I touched one or two of the more likely-looking keys and hoped for the best. Nothing would have made me open the door and ask for help from the guards.
It occurred to me that if I could try to normalize my activities for the next while, I might be able to gather my wits enough to make a plan. Obtaining something hot to drink or eat seemed like a normal activity, not to mention a necessity, so I sat down at the workstation. Fortunately, the computer screen displayed words as well as symbols, so I was able to find my way to the appropriate sections of the food-dispenser program. Unfortunately, I recognized almost none of the items that were available that day. The letters were from the Standard alphabet, but the words they formed were nonsense. Avgolemono, tisane, mulligatawny, cappuccino--I later learned that the terms were taken intact from their root languages, but that was of no use to me then. The only dish that sounded remotely familiar was plomeek soup. I had no desire to be reminded of Vulcan delicacies, but I was nearly paralyzed with cold, and that soup was likely to be served hot. I keyed in my choice, and in a few seconds I heard the tinkling of the little transporter in the food dispenser.
The soup was presented in the Vulcan fashion, in a deep stone bowl and without a spoon, so that I had to hold the bowl in my hands and sip the hot liquid gingerly. As I waited for it to cool a bit, savoring the smell of the soup and the heat of the bowl, I looked at my surroundings again. A display cabinet near the sofa on the opposite wall held a collection of small sculptures and curios, and the wall shelves were stocked with disks, books, and folios. My mind wasn't really on the decorative accessories, of course--it was occupied with examining and evaluating anything that looked like a strategy for undoing this disaster, this horror-- so it took me a few seconds to comprehend the thing I was now staring at, the thing that was mounted above and to the left of the cabinet. There, in the place of honor, occupying the center of the longest wall, was a meter-long verrolith of the Enterprise.
I couldn't think why I hadn't noticed it during my initial inventory of the cabin; perhaps my brain had simply refused to accept the message my eyes were sending it. In any case, I stood there now, transfixed by that smug silver-white demon ship, symbol of ruin and dishonor, shining bright and deadly against a stylized starfield.
As I gazed at the obscenity that had brought me to this end, I felt my face grow hot with shame and rage, felt the panic threaten me again. If only! If only Tal had been able to comply with my last shouted order; if only Eidolon's shields hadn't been nearly drained by the cloaking device; if only I hadn't assumed that the device was still somewhere on the ship; if only I hadn't lost myself in an illusion so seductive that it caused me to forget my duty, my honor--
The sob that rose in my throat became a scream, and in that instant the only thing I wanted was to destroy the insolent, mocking image that hung there in painted space before me. From across the room I threw the stone bowl at the verrolith with all the force I could manage. The impact was enough to dent the ship's wall behind the thin glass of the painting, which shattered into fragments all over the sofa and floor. Plomeek soup, still steaming, ran down the wall like blood from a fresh wound.Oddly, the bowl had broken into two clean parts. I couldn't look away from it. It can be mended, I thought. Suddenly I was calm; I felt detached, uninvolved, as if I were viewing the scene through someone else's eyes.
The door opened and the two guards entered, looking apprehensive. "Commander, are you all right?" said the human female, as her eyes moved warily from me to the soup-streaked wall to the shards of colored glass.
"Perfectly," I said, and for the moment, at least, it was true. "I'm afraid the bowl slipped from my hands."
© 1996, 1999 Kathleen Dailey. All rights reserved.