Cathedral Read online

  Two weeks, and I’m still mopping up after Thriss.

  The door chime rang. Ro looked through the glass to see who was trying to monopolize her time now. But the moment she saw who it was, she relaxed and ordered the computer to open the door.

  “Didn’t expect to find you still in your office so late, Ro,” said Lieutenant Commander Phillipa Matthias, leaning tentatively through the doorway. “Got a minute?”

  Ro smiled. She genuinely liked the station’s new counselor, not simply because she was friendly toward her—not to mention solicitous of her sometimes prickly moods—but also because she spoke plainly and directly. Starfleet counselors were rarely so refreshingly free of professional psychobabble as was Matthias.

  Ro also knew that she could rely on Phillipa not to waste her time. “A minute?” she said as she rose from behind her desk and stretched. “I’ve got as many as you need. Tell me: Have the Andorians agreed to talk to you?”

  Phillipa bit her lip, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Well, doctor-patient confidentiality would have constrained what I could tell you. If Dizhei and Anichent had decided to open up to me. But they haven’t. Frankly, I’m not a bit surprised. Andorians aren’t known for being overly fond of the counseling trade.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “It’s the antennae.”

  “Come again?”

  “Those antennae are a wonderful means of nonverbal communication. Sometimes unintentionally so. That’s why Andorians are lousy at keeping their poker hands a secret, but absolutely terrific at judging other people’s emotional states. They probably realize it, too, which explains why they aren’t keen on having counselors around. Especially when they’re this raw emotionally.”

  Ro felt another slow, pounding, warp-core-breach of a headache coming on. She understood, and sympathized with, the anguish Anichent and Dizhei were experiencing. She recalled all too well the desolation she had felt after a Jem’Hadar minefield claimed the life of Jalik, a fellow Maquis fighter. And there had been her father’s grisly death at the hands of Cardassian torturers, which she had witnessed at the tender age of seven. But she also knew that it was possible to survive such horrors. Despite all the death and cruelty she had witnessed during her brief span, Ro had never felt so completely paralyzed as those two young Andorians seemed to be. After so many interminable days of mourning, couldn’t one of them find the emotional wherewithal to give her a somewhat coherent statement regarding Thriss’s death? Even in the face of personal tragedy, official reports still had to be filed.

  Life had to go on for the surviving members of Shar’s bondgroup.

  “Have they let Dr. Tarses speak with them?” Ro said. “Or changed their minds about letting him perform an autopsy?”

  Phillipa shook her head. “They let Simon in tonight, just before he went off-shift. He visited on the pretext of checking on the stasis chamber they’ve borrowed from the infirmary. But that’s all they’d let him do. For me, they wouldn’t even open up the door to their quarters.”

  Shar’s quarters, Ro thought. The rooms where the despondent Thriss had taken her own life. Where two of her soul mates still maintained a vigil, two long weeks later.

  “Do you feel they’re dangerous?” Ro said at length, recalling how Anichent had charged at her, lunacy shining in his cold gray eyes.

  “Anyone that overwrought always has the potential to be dangerous, at least to himself. But when the person in question is an Andorian, that makes things even more volatile.”

  “In other words, I’d better maintain the guards I posted outside Shar’s quarters.”

  Phillipa nodded, but looked apprehensive. “As long as they stay out in the corridor, and a few doors away. Like I said, those antennae can be pretty sensitive, especially to the EM fields produced by phasers. That said, my sense is that they’re likely to refrain from any further, ah, demonstrative behaviors.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because they have each other. And grief shared is grief halved.”

  Ro wanted to believe that. But she understood only too well the impulse to spread grief around, the way nerak flowers scattered themselves on the wind beside the River Glyrhond.

  “Maybe I should make another stab at talking with them,” she said, recovering her padd and walking toward the security office door with it. Phillipa followed her out into the corridor, her brow scored with consternation.

  “I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Ro.”

  Ro stopped in front of the turbolift just as its doors opened. “You just finished explaining that they wouldn’t talk to you because you’ve got too much empathy.”

  Ro stepped inside, treading on Phillipa’s response as she moved. “That’s an accusation nobody’s ever made about me.”

  The turbolift doors quietly closed on Phillipa’s wordless you’ll-be-sorry expression.

  Standing in the habitat ring, Ro looked down the corridor to her left. Four doors away, Corporal Hava stood at parade rest, his hand near the butt of his phaser. Ro turned her head to the right, where Sergeant Shul Torem stood quietly an equal distance away in the opposite direction. Somehow, the grizzled veteran managed to appear both relaxed and vigilant.

  Clutching a padd tightly in her right hand, Ro was uncomfortably aware of her own weapon’s conspicuous absence as she pressed the door chime before her.

  “Go away.”

  It was Dizhei’s voice. Though the gray duranium door muffled it considerably, Ro could hear the underlying rawness.

  “Go away. Whoever you are.”

  “It’s Lieutenant Ro,” Ro said, relieved that Anichent hadn’t been the one to answer the door. “I’m here on official business.”

  A long beat passed before Dizhei spoke again. She sounded calmer now, though she seemed to be trying very hard to rein in her emotions. “Please, Lieutenant. We do not desire any visitors right now. Anichent and I will contact you. Later. When we are ready. After Shar returns.”

  Ro was quickly growing tired of conversing through a metal door. “Shar isn’t due back from the Gamma Quadrant for several more weeks. I understand your grief, Dizhei. And you already know that I respect your people’s funerary customs. But I have regulations to follow and reports to file. Certain things need to be resolved, sooner rather than later.”

  The heavy gray door stood as mute and inert as a Sh’dama-era stone monolith.

  After nearly half a minute, Ro broke the silence. “How does Anichent feel about speaking with me? I’ll only need a few minutes of his time.”

  More silence. Ro’s spine suddenly felt as though it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen as a thought occurred to her: What if Anichent wasn’t merely being reclusive?

  Perhaps he couldn’t come to the door.

  “Dizhei? Open the door now. Please. I really need to speak with Anichent.”

  Nothing.

  Ro gestured toward both guards, who responded by quietly drawing their weapons. She hated that things were coming to this. But she had to know what was going on behind that metal slab.

  Tapping her combadge, Ro said, “Computer, security override at the personal quarters of Ensign Thirishar ch’Thane. Authorization Ro-Gamma-Seven-Four.”

  The door slid aside and Ro entered the room, holding herself bowstring-taut. Hava and Shul followed a few paces behind her.

  The air was moist, and hot as summertime in Musilla Province. The darkness of the small main room was broken by the flames that danced atop a pair of tall, pungent-smelling candles. Countless bejeweled pinpoints adorned the emptiness beyond the large oval window. Between the candles, at the room’s spinward edge, stood a bier surrounded by the faint bluish glow of a large stasis chamber. Thriss’s corpse, clad in a simple white gown, lay in state atop the bier, per Andorian custom. The pale cerulean light that bathed the body gave it an oddly lifelike aspect, as though Thriss were merely sleeping and might be awakened by an errant footfall or a creaking deckplate.

  In spite of her
self, Ro made a special effort to be silent as she stepped toward the two figures who knelt before the bier. She stood for a long moment behind them, allowing her eyes to adjust to the wan candlelight and the room’s fluttering, crepuscular shadows.

  She watched Anichent and Dizhei in profile, observing that they both seemed to be in a deep meditative state. They looked tired and gaunt, their nondescript Andorian prayer robes draped over their bodies like sails. Ro couldn’t determine whether they had continued cutting their flesh, as they had begun doing immediately after Thriss’s death. Their eyes were closed, their limp antennae draped back across disheveled white hair. Neither of them acknowledged her presence. Ro couldn’t tell whether they were indeed sharing their grief, or if each was trapped in some solitary emotional purgatory.

  Thanks to a briefing Phillipa had given her, Ro felt she knew at least the basics of Andorian biology and funerary customs. Because their species’ reproduction depended upon all four members of a bond, the death of any one of them was a terrible blow to the survivors—and often produced some extreme grieving rituals. Obviously, neither Dizhei nor Anichent seemed able either to let go of their lost love or to go on with their lives. They wouldn’t prepare Thriss’s body for interment or even allow a proper autopsy. Before any of those things could happen, all three surviving members of their sundered marriage quad had to assemble in shared grief beside Thriss’s body. Therefore, they were determined to await Shar’s return, consuming only water—and interacting with no one—until that day.

  No matter how far off that day might be.

  If not for their tangled white manes, blue skin, and antennae, Dizhei and Anichent might have been a pair of Bajoran religious acolytes, beseeching the Prophets for guidance. Ro had always felt somewhat detached from—not to mention bemused by—the fervent religious beliefs of many of her fellow Bajorans. Her father’s murder at the hands of Bajor’s Cardassian oppressors had taught her that piety and a concussion grenade nearly always got better results than did piety alone.

  The self-abnegation on display before her stirred up some of the conflicted feelings the Bajoran faith frequently roused within her. And even though she knew that it was useless to judge another culture’s practices against those of her own, the sight roused an even deeper, more fundamental sentiment.

  It made her angry.

  She brought her padd down against the top of a low table, hard. In the silence of the room, the noise sounded like a thunderclap.

  Dizhei started as though she’d been dealt a physical blow. She turned toward Ro, glowering. Ro could hear Shul and Hava moving in behind her, ready to react. But Dizhei did not rise to her feet.

  “Is this intrusion a sample of what we can expect from Bajor after it enters the Federation?” Dizhei said, fairly hissing the words. Gone was the veneer of amiability Ro had noted when the Andorian first came aboard the station several weeks ago.

  Ro picked up her padd, ignoring the comment. “I apologize for barging in, Dizhei. But I had reason to suspect that Anichent might be in danger.”

  Dizhei laughed, a harsh sound that contained no humor. “Because we Andorians are such a violently emotional lot, no doubt.”

  “I never said that,” Ro said. She clutched the padd in a death grip.

  Dizhei’s gaze softened as she seemed to consider her next words carefully before uttering them. “You didn’t have to, Lieutenant. We both know it’s true.”

  Anichent lifted his head then, as though it were supporting an enormous weight. Still kneeling, he gazed up at Ro, who felt her legs and shoulders tensing in an involuntary fight-or-flight reaction. Her pulse quickened, and she heard a sharp intake of breath from Hava, who now stood beside her.

  “She saw it so clearly,” Anichent whispered, the despondence behind his words almost palpable. “More clearly than any of the rest of us ever could have.”

  Ro knew that he could only be referring to Thriss. “What did she see?”

  Before Anichent could respond, Dizhei cut him off with a harsh Andorii monosyllable. Anichent lowered his head and closed his eyes once again, as though lost in prayer or meditation.

  Dizhei fixed her eyes on Ro’s. “Your men can lower their weapons,” she said quietly. “Anichent can barely move, let alone attack you.”

  “Stay alert,” Ro told Shul, who grunted an acknowledgment. To Dizhei she said, “I really hate to be indelicate, but without an autopsy, station regulations require me to log an official statement from Thriss’s closest available family members. Councillor zh’Thane doesn’t qualify, but as members of Thriss’s bondgroup, either of you does. I’m sorry, but this is the only way I can officially close the matter. It’ll take maybe ten minutes. Then we’ll be gone, and won’t bother you anymore.”

  Dizhei looked incredulous and angry. “Surely you have more important things to do with your time right now than to harass us.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Ro said, feeling her own pique beginning to rise with the inevitability of gravity. “This station is going to be swarming with Federation and Bajoran VIPs over the next few days. I’ve got to stage-manage the Federation signing ceremony, and it’s going to be a security nightmare as it is. I can’t afford to have a case like this still open and unresolved here with all of that going on.”

  “I see,” Dizhei said, her ice-blue eyes narrowing, her antennae moving forward as though searching for something to impale.

  Tamping down her anger, Ro raised a hand in supplication. “Look. I know this is a terrible time for you. But surely two weeks has been time enough—”

  “Time,” Anichent said in a voice rough enough to strike sparks, his speech slurring as he raised his head again. “What is time when there is no future?”

  Ro approached Anichent more closely, watching as the candlelight flickered in his gray eyes. Gone was the upbeat, sharp-witted intellectual she’d observed weeks ago. This Anichent was a mere husk. A vacant, hollowed-out revenant.

  “You’ve drugged him,” Ro said to Dizhei. It wasn’t a question.

  Dizhei nodded. “To save his life.”

  “We’ve got to get him to the infirmary.”

  “No. I know the Andorian pharmacopoeia better than your Dr. Tarses does. Anichent is far safer here. Where I can watch over him.”

  All at once, Ro understood. Anichent would be safer in a place where he wasn’t likely to come out of his drug trance at an inopportune time. In a place where he couldn’t succumb to the temptation to throw himself willfully into death’s jaws. A semantically twisted phrase she’d encountered once during a Starfleet Academy history course sprang to her mind.

  Police-assisted suicide.

  The remainder of Ro’s anger dissipated as she considered the likely source of the Andorian people’s violence. It wasn’t innate, as with the Jem’Hadar. Or indoctrinated, as with the Klingons. Instead, it was born of pain.

  I understand pain.

  “Stand down,” Ro said to the guards. “Dismissed.” Hava didn’t need to be told twice, but Shul required a moment’s persuasion before he, too, departed.

  “Do you truly believe that you understand now?” Dizhei said after she and Ro were essentially alone. Anichent had retreated once again into his drugged stupor.

  Dizhei rose to her feet and approached Ro, who managed to keep from flinching, but steeled herself against the possibility of another violent outburst.

  Ro nodded cautiously. “He’s lost hope.”

  Dizhei responded with a barely perceptible shake of the head. She spoke softly, as though fearing that the oblivious Anichent might overhear. “No. It’s more profound than even that, Lieutenant. He believes that hope itself no longer exists. That Thriss’s death is merely an augury for our entire species.”

  “There’s always hope,” Ro said, without convincing even herself.

  “Looming extinction has a way of snuffing out hope,” Dizhei said.

  My son has also ravaged the lives of Anichent and Dizhei, zh’Thane had said. Ro recalled the
councillor’s explanation of how Andorian marriage quads were groomed for their unions from childhood, and how few years the young adult bondmates had to produce offspring. It came to her then that the odds of Dizhei and Anichent finding a replacement for Thriss might be remote—perhaps impossibly so.

  She saw it so clearly, Anichent had said. Ro knew that utter, bleak despair was what Thriss must have seen. Not just for herself, but for her entire world.

  And here I am, barging in and interrogating them about her. Good job, Laren. Ro felt as though she’d just kicked a helpless Drathan puppy lig.

  Dizhei resumed speaking. “Anichent truly believes that we are dying as a species because of our complicated reproductive processes. I tell you this only because I know that Shar considers you a good friend. He trusts you.”

  Ro felt the warning sting of tears in her eyes, but held them back by sheer force of will.

  “It’s mutual,” Ro said. “We have a number of things in common.” We’re both outsiders who don’t share our secrets with very many others. And especially not our fears.

  Dizhei’s antennae slackened once again. She studied Ro in silence, obviously waiting for her to make the next move.

  “Do you believe that Anichent is right?” Ro said softly.

  Dizhei closed her eyes and sighed, composing her thoughts before speaking. “There are times when I’m not at all certain that he’s wrong. But I can’t afford to let myself think that way often. If I do, then the rest of us will be lost, along with whatever tiny chance remains of finding another bondmate to replace Thriss in time to produce a child.”

  Dizhei straightened as though buoyed by her own words. Her bearing suddenly became almost regal. This is how Charivretha zh’Thane must have looked thirty years ago, Ro thought.

  “I will watch over Thriss until Shar returns, as our customs demand. And I will do the same for Anichent, to keep him from following her over the precipice. Even if doing so occupies every moment of every day until Shar returns. Even if it kills me.”