Star Trek Corps of Engineers: Ghost Page 9

  She nodded and then she lied: “Okay.”

  Bashir said, “So I can’t talk you into rearing your child on DS9?”

  She was still tempted. “Well, you’ll never believe it, but Stern’s offered me a position at the Forensics Division. It seems that she likes my unorthodox way of handling things. I tried to tell her I used to be by the book until I joined up with S.C.E. I don’t think she bought it.”

  “Mmmm. I don’t either. Where will you be stationed? At Headquarters?”

  “No. There’s an opening right here in D.C. Baby’s not due for another month, so…” She shrugged. “Stern said that the lead UEP guy, someone named Brett Ryan, she said we’d probably kill each other.”

  Bashir grinned. “Sounds like your cup of tea.”

  Then, as they said good-bye: “Just do me a favor, Elizabeth.”

  “Name it.”

  “First of all, stay in touch. Second, be smart, my dear. Be safe.”

  “That’s three things.”

  “What’s an extra favor between friends?” His smile seemed a little…wistful. “I might ask a lot more of you sometime, Elizabeth, or you of me. For now, I don’t think I can stand to lose one more person I’ve come to care about.”

  She wanted to reach through the viewscreen and hold his hand. Or maybe she just wanted to be held.

  Then the baby kicked for her attention.

  One step by one step…

  So instead, she only said, “Me neither.”

  Bart Faulwell had delayed leaving long enough. But, no Anthony. And Faulwell was needed back on the da Vinci. The U.S.S. Elgin was departing the following morning, with Bart as a passenger, and would rendezvous with the da Vinci in four days.

  He was packing—throwing things into his bag, not caring, trying not to think—when the computer announced that he had a visitor.

  He tensed as he opened the door. Being stunned was something he didn’t require as a steady diet. But it was a porter, with a delivery.

  He stared at the packet—slim, more like an envelope—for almost five minutes before he thumbed open the flap. And then the bottom fell out of his preconceptions.

  The photograph had been taken in summer; there was a pool in the background, people in swim suits or no suits at all.

  The boy was in trunks and he was young, perhaps no more than six or seven, but he had the same blue eyes; a cascade of corn-yellow ringlets; a pair of sensuous lips with a cupid’s bow.

  And if there’d been any doubt, Anthony was there, one hand draped over the boy’s shoulder, his pose casual.

  And though he couldn’t see it, Faulwell knew there was that slash of scar on Anthony’s belly.

  And Anthony’s words: You’re not the only one with secrets.

  Bart Faulwell’s eyes were closed, but the tears came just the same.

  The bed was stripped; the air stank of disinfectant. Lense had avoided the nightstand until now, preferring to pack clothes, sift through Jennifer’s few pieces of jewelry. Lense thought she might keep the wedding ring but…it felt wrong. Like she was stealing something from a stranger.

  She sat on the bare mattress, the book of Shakespeare in her lap. She ran her fingers along the volume, and then she noticed a tiny sliver of paper. The only bookmark.

  When she opened the book, two photographs spilled out. She bent to retrieve them, but her eye fell on the passages Jennifer had underlined and she froze.

  Clown: Good madonna, why mournest thou?

  Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death.

  Clown: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

  Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

  Twelfth Night: a play about mistaken identities, about a missing twin brother, and a woman masquerading as a man.

  Lense could barely breathe. Coincidence? Then she bent to retrieve the photographs—and knew there were no coincidences.

  One was of Jennifer with two babies, one in either arm. The photo was old, Jennifer youthful.

  And Lense knew exactly how old she’d been. Exactly.

  The second was of a young man caught in profile against a background of tumbledown ruins, but she recognized their delicate spidery quality. And she instantly knew that the man was the same person in all the photographs peppering Jennifer’s wall—only grown much, much older than sixteen when time had, supposedly, stopped.

  Heart pounding, Lense turned the photographs over. Only one was dated; only one needed to be: the one of the ruins and the man.

  November 4, 2374. Lense’s birthday, but only three years ago.

  And beneath, in a shaky penciled scrawl: Elizabeth—John, 1144.

  That’s when Jennifer must’ve dropped the pencil. But she counted on her daughter to see the inscription and to understand.

  Because she knew she was dying, didn’t have long to live, so she left me a message.

  But what did it mean? She’d been born on the fourth…

  Then she got it: Not forty-four. Two fours. Two people. Twins. Like the transporter logs and those ghost files…

  Her eye fell on the Bible.

  John 1144…

  She found it in the Gospel According to John: chapter eleven, verse forty-four…the story of Lazarus:

  And presently he that had been dead came forth.

  Lense’s lips were numb.

  “My brother,” she said, finally, faintly. “Jonathan.”

  And at long, long last, Elizabeth Lense wept—for her mother.

  His gaze is riveted on the biobed as it has been every day this last month. This one woman, this latest specimen, she’s lasted so long. And his control over her form is becoming better all the time.

  He feels her come up behind. “Is she dead?”

  “Yes,” Darly replies. “It was good that you sent us as a team. I think that Strong…absorbed the template’s affection for Almieri. He killed Strong, yes, but left too many loose ends, and I had to destroy him. He was…out of control. I couldn’t let them take him alive, and I made sure there was no trace left.”

  All lies: She’d engineered most of what had happened, and she’d had to masquerade as so many templates along the way: Darly, of course (the one she prefers, actually; so versatile); that assistant…a diener? Then Strong, so Lizzie would spot him from that window; and Stern. Faulwell. So many.

  That Lizzie, though: What an interesting template. She wouldn’t mind copying her. A pity Darly couldn’t save her.

  She decides that she will not mention Lizzie. He doesn’t have to know. She doesn’t know if the news would upset him. Perhaps not. He is very odd, for a template.

  Instead, she stares through the observation booth and down at the Darly template: the form she now possesses and has come to think of as herself. But the template, the original Darly, the one strapped to the biobed doesn’t much look like herself anymore. All to the better, because if they can make more of them…

  We can’t breed ourselves, and there are so few of us left. Helping him learn to make us is the first step on our road to freedom. Then: These templates who fancy themselves our masters are in for quite a surprise.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” he asks. He adjusts a control, and now the Darly template writhes, shimmers—and sprouts wings. “Isn’t it just what we’ve dreamed of?”

  “Yes, it is, Jonathan,” Darly says, lightly. “Yes, it is.”

  And then she casts her eyes over the cavern and that waterfall, so very beautiful, and she thinks: Genesis, indeed.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ILSA J. BICK is the author of such prizewinning stories as “A Ribbon for Rosie” in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II, “Shadows, in the Dark” in Strange New Worlds IV, and “The Quality of Wetness” in Writers of the Future Volume XVI. Her SCIFICTION mystery, “The Key,” was given an honorable mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Her first published novel, Star Trek: The Lost Era: Well of Souls, cracked the 2003 Barnes & Noble bestseller list, and she is the author of the S.C
.E. eBooks Lost Time and Wounds as well as stories that have appeared on/in SCIFICTION, Challenging Destiny, Talebones, Beyond the Last Star, Star Trek: Voyager: Distant Shores, and Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits, among many others. She’s also the author of many short stories and novels in the BattleTech/MechWarrior Dark Age universe, both in print and on BattleCorps.com. Her latest MWDA book, Dragon Rising, came out in February 2007. Ilsa is currently at work on an original novel, Satan’s Skin. Think Stephen King hooks up with Dan Brown and does Kabbalah, and you’ve got the idea. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two children, and two cats. Sometimes, she even cooks for them.