Scene 19

            Angelo had been very useful. Not only had his unsettling presence distracted Deanna from looking too closely into what she felt from Jarod, but he had also been able to help Jarod identify the two crewmembers Jarod wanted. Late at night Jarod snuck him into the school rooms and Sickbay and watched him perform his magic, prowling the desks and the scanning beds, identifying the unreasoning fear of one small, intelligent child and the inhuman interest of one of the teachers and one of the medical personnel. Jarod had already identified them, but it was good to have Angelo’s second opinion.

            He had also managed to take some of the scans Dr. Crusher wanted, though not all. Some would leave a definite signature of the machine used to take the scan, and he couldn’t risk Angelo being discovered. Not yet. At their last meeting, Beverly had seemed close to a breakthrough.

            Angelo loved the Enterprise. There were even more hidden passageways than at the Centre, more interesting people to watch, more fascinating things to take (Jarod made him take them all back), and, best of all, there were replicators. At first he seemed determined to replicate nothing but boxes and boxes of Cracker Jacks, once Jarod figured out how to program it to copy the box Angelo had brought with him, but Jarod had convinced him to try something else. The Cracker Jacks Angelo had had in the Centre as a child had been Jarod’s first taste of the wonders of processed food, but he couldn’t fill his quarters on the Enterprise with them. He had gotten Angelo interested in chocolate sundaes and, of all things, Vulcan plomeek soup. Even Jarod had been unable to stomach bright purple soup, though he was very fond of a good, strong Klingon raktajino. Angelo loved the purple stuff. Jarod had convinced him to only eat it in the quarters they were now somewhat sharing; plomeek soup dribbled through all the Jeffries tubes was not a good idea.

            “Angelo, listen.”

            Angelo was eating a nauseating combination of the soup and Cracker Jacks, and Jarod was about to go on duty on the bridge.

            “Angelo, when all this is over, I’m going back to our world. I still have to find my family, as much as I would like to stay in this place. But I brought you here to stay. Do you understand? This is a good, safe place for you. No more Mr. Raines and the Centre. When it’s time, I’ll introduce you to Dr. Crusher. She’s been looking for a way to help you, Angelo, a way to bring back Timmy.”

            Angelo looked up vaguely from dropping bits of popcorn into his soup. “Timmy…gone.”

            “Maybe, Angelo. They can do wonders in this world. They will take care of you and be kind to you. I’ll miss you and all the help you’ve been to me, but I want you to have a better life. I want to be able to do something for you.”

            He knelt down by Angelo’s chair and looked up at him. Angelo grimaced his twisted grin at him. “Help…Angelo.”

            “Yes, Angelo. I will help you.”

            Angelo chuckled. But when Jarod had left, his grin faded. “No—no. Protect…Jarod.” His head came up sharply. “Miss Parker…coming. Protect…Jarod!” he shouted.

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Scene 20

            Deanna Troi was having bad dreams. The odd thing was that they were not of things that would ordinarily have bothered her. Scenes from her own life played over in her dreams, innocuous scenes, accompanied by the same emotions that had accompanied the events, only intensified, almost unbearable in strength.

            Then she dreamed she woke and knew there was another presence in her quarters, scarcely more than a dark shadow of being. A presence was there, and yet she could not feel it, only herself, as if she had stepped out of herself. In her dream she lay still in her bed, afraid to turn on a light, for fear she would see herself standing there, reflected back at her as in a mirror.

            What are you? she tried to ask it. Her own memories came reflected back. The latest memories were there, like a flood. The Starfleet Intelligence operative, his horrifying news, his covert mission, and the storm of emotion that accompanied him. How lost the man was! How like a lost child, desperately seeking the security and warmth of home. How confused about his past, about the people he knew, how frightened and angry and longing.

            Deanna Troi…cares for Jarod. Was it a whisper in her ears, a thought in her mind, or a feeling in her heart? Or all at once? Care for Jarod. Protect…Jarod!

            With a gasp, she woke up, sitting straight in bed. Protect…Jarod! Protect Jarod! pounded in her temples. What in the galaxy was going on? She didn’t know.

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Scene 21

            Miss Parker, Sydney, and Broots spent an uncomfortable night in another horizontal accessway, Miss Parker cursing Broots for not letting them occupy some empty crew quarters they had found. When the Enterprise had settled into its pseudo-nighttime, it startled them all, even Broots, but it had proven advantageous. Locating empty quarters, they used them briefly, Miss Parker occupying the bathroom while Sydney investigated the replicators and Broots found ship layouts on the computer. He also made a valuable discovery.

            “I found Jarod’s quarters. Information on him, too. Commander Jarod Westmore, Starfleet Science Division, assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D on special assignment to investigate a new star system and…teach astrophysics to children!”

            “That man does get around,” Miss Parker said grumpily. “An alternate universe and he’s already a commander on their precious ship?”

            “Special assignment, huh?” Broots mused. “That explains why no one thinks it’s strange they suddenly got a new officer. Westmore…Westmore. Why is that familiar?”

            “You recognize it?” Sydney asked.

            “Yeah. Something to do with this series, but I can’t remember what. Say, Miss Parker!”

            “What, Broots?”

            “Did you happen to bring that communicator Jarod left us?”

            “Does it look like I packed for this trip, Broots?”

            “I just mean that little metal badge that was in the box.”

            “No, I don’t have it. It was on the table with the other stuff. What is it?”

            “A communication device. You tap it and speak to whoever you want.”

            Miss Parker heaved a sigh. “Broots, logically it had to have been a fake from that convention, unless you think he made one of those things before he left, too.”

            His face fell. “Oh, yeah. Well, if we could find one we could probably contact him—”

            “And let him know we’re here? We have the element of surprise this way, Broots.”

            Sydney came away from the replicator with food. “We really ought to find out what he’s doing here and possibly allow him to finish it before we bring him back.”

            Miss Parker snatched a plate from him. “Finish? Why should we do that?”

            “Logic, Miss Parker. He is more likely to come back with us if he feels his mission is accomplished. We are still dependent upon him to get back. Even if you have a gun in his back, he is in control of the situation.”

            In frustrated silence, Miss Parker tore into the food. “What is this?”

            “I don’t know. It just came out.”

            Broots was eating something violently purple. “This is good! I think it’s that Vulcan soup. Want to try it?”

            Miss Parker gave him a withering look. “Will that thing make cigarettes?”

            Broots almost choked. “You can’t smoke here, Miss Parker! They’ll think something’s on fire. They don’t smoke in this century.”

            “Barbarians,” she snarled.

            “Look, maybe I can do something.” He applied himself to the computer, and in a moment he gave the replicator some instructions. “Here you go.”

            She glanced at the small glass suspiciously. “What is it?”

            “I think it’ll work like a nicotine patch. Except you drink it.”

            “You think?”

            He shrugged. “I’m a computer tech, not a doctor.”

            She sighed and drank it. In a few moments, she sighed again. “Thank you, Broots.” She gave him a sudden glance. “I underestimate you.”

            “Uh—uh—you’re welcome, Miss Parker.”

            Now, with a mental picture of the access tunnels, they were in an obscure one Broots had chosen and trying, unsuccessfully, to make themselves comfortable on the floor.

            “This is so weird,” Broots said, mostly to himself.

            “What is?” Miss Parker demanded.

            “We’re on the Enterprise hiding out from the crewmembers. I’m only afraid I’ll wake up and it’ll all be a dream.”

            “Don’t I wish. What’s so great about it, anyway? This is a stupid, fake world, and we’ve done nothing but climb these ladders and crawl around in tunnels since you brought us here. Why are you so excited about this?”

            Broots sighed. “Miss Parker, I work for the Centre. For a zombie named Raines and with an empath who shouldn’t really exist. I’m tracking a bad guy who technically isn’t the bad guy…which I suppose makes me the bad guy. This is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages.”

            After a moment’s silence, she said, “Why don’t you leave the Centre?”

            “You don’t ever really leave the Centre. You know that, Miss Parker. What would become of my little girl if something happened to me? Thank goodness she’s at a sleepover tonight. Can you imagine her coming home from school to find me missing? Our neighbor is always glad to have her over whenever I’m gone, but it would still be frightening for her.”

            “Well, you’d better hope we get back before her little party is over. If we ever can.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Well, you didn’t bring that remote, did you?”

            “No. I dropped it when we started transporting. You don’t think Jarod has got us stuck here permanently, do you?”

            “Jarod wouldn’t do that to you, Broots,” Sydney said. “Jail for a day or two, perhaps, but he knows your daughter needs you. He knows how to get back. He always has an escape planned.”

            “How do you know this isn’t his escape?” Miss Parker asked wearily, turning over, trying to get comfortable. It was not a comfortable Jeffries tube.

            “He has no chance of finding his family here. He cares about that more than keeping us off his trail. Otherwise he would have disappeared without a trace long ago.”

            She shifted again. “Thank goodness for meaningless obsessions.”

            “Meaningless? Not at all. Not any more than your search for answers is meaningless.”

            “Leave me out of it!” She flopped angrily again.

            “Miss Parker, I have a shoulder if you’d like.”

            “Oh, thank you, Syd, for your blatant surrogate-father-figure approach. It’s worked really well with Jarod, hasn’t it?”

            Sydney’s voice was weary. “I have never attempted to be a surrogate father to Jarod. If anything, he was the one who sought me. Rather a reversal of roles, in a way.”

            “It’s too bad you didn’t. Maybe he would never have run away.”

            “I couldn’t have manipulated him that way.”

            “You manipulated him in every other way. Why not that one?”

            Sydney didn’t answer. After a few moments, Broots heard Miss Parker whisper something that almost sounded like, “Sorry, Syd.”

            Silence fell. Broots went to sleep. When he woke, stiff and cramped, he saw that Miss Parker’s head rested on Sydney’s flung-out arm, the rest of her body angled away from him. He admired her ability to maintain her aloofness even while accepting a certain amount of intimacy. He almost wished he’d been the one to offer.

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Scene 22

            Beverly couldn’t sleep. Tomorrow was the day Jarod had set for his entrapment of two Starfleet officers, and though Beverly had nothing to do with the trap itself, she felt as nervous as if she were the one waiting for it to spring.

            Children! The main victims of this crime were children, the ones who would be used like machines, like slaves, because of their intellectual capabilities. Within the Federation itself! It infuriated her on many levels, as a dedicated officer of the Federation, as a doctor who strove to give people life and meaning, and as a mother of an extraordinary son who couldn’t imagine the horror of having him torn from her to be raised as a commodity in an environment without love and a mother’s touch.

            What might Wesley have been like if his life had been so sterile? If his capacity for play had been stifled, his knowledge of himself as a lovable human being erased, his emotional life ignored, his mind hyper-developed far too early? His questions about his origins unanswered, his affectionate heart starved. In many ways his sense of self would have atrophied. He would not know who he was as a Human, would be adrift in a confusing world. She could see him exploring a world entirely new to him, fascinated yet sensing his own lack, seeing children with parents and feeling his own void, angry at the ones who had made him that way, longing for what he could not understand. In short, he would be like—

            She pulled up sharply. Surely not. Absurd! Not Commander Jarod Westmore of Starfleet Intelligence. He was a man of formidable intelligence with a self-confident air, a man who trusted himself and his mind and instincts. And yet… A child looked out of his eyes, a child who had been suppressed and never allowed to grow up. No wonder she felt a powerful maternalness toward him, in a way she had never felt toward anyone but her own son.

            But how? And who, and where? You’re missing something, Beverly, she told herself. Timmy! Could he have been another Timmy, living under the same regime, escaped, perhaps, and fled to the sanctuary of the Federation, now devoting himself to righting that same injustice—?

            It’s all pure speculation, Beverly. Scientists should not make wild guesses. But there was everything that had shone in his eyes when he told her about his friend, when he talked about his mission. Wild emotions that choked him. She was not Deanna, but she could see them.

            Decisively she spoke to the computer. “Computer, where is Commander Westmore?”

            “Commander Westmore is in Holodeck 2,” the computer answered.

            She should have known he would be working instead of sleeping. She touched her communicator. “Dr. Crusher to Commander Westmore.”

            “Jarod here, Beverly.” Was it only her suddenly overactive imagination, or did he sound exhausted?

            “Jarod, when you have a moment, would you see me in my quarters? It’s about Timmy.”

            His voice was suddenly alert. “I’ll be there immediately.”

            She hadn’t intended to tell him about the possible solution she had found until after the sting operation, not wanting to distract him, but maybe he needed to hear it now. As he stood in her doorway, he looked like he needed good news. She knew when she looked at him that she was right about him. This case was taking a toll on him, slumping his shoulders, darkening his eyes, and drawing weariness on his face. When she had first seen him, she had been struck by his air of bright interest in the world around him. Now his air was veritably saturnine.

            “Jarod, have you been sleeping at all?”

            A smile briefly lighted his face. “This is quite a case. What have you got to tell me, Beverly?”

            “I thought you should see the possible treatment I have come up with. I can’t promise anything with it quite yet, but it’s a start in the right direction.”

            It was the right news. The smile reached his eyes this time. “Please let me see.”

            Beverly pulled up the computer files she had been working with earlier. “I want to run some computer simulations and do some more research, but I’ve discovered a serotonin isotope that could have the possibility of reversing your friend’s condition.”

            Jarod leaned forward, reading intently. After a moment he nodded. “I see. Beverly, this is good news, some I have needed.”

            “I know.” She dismissed the information. “Jarod, do you want me to prescribe something to help you sleep?”

            “Oh, no. Thank you.”

            “This case comes too close to home for you, doesn’t it? Have you been having flashbacks or dreams or both?”

            He sat very still and watched her.

            “Jarod, I’m a doctor and a scientist and a mother. When I imagine my son in this situation, I see you.”

            Jarod’s whole body slumped, the pain coming out fully in the compressed mouth and hollow eyes. “I don’t know who I am. I was taken from my parents when I was a small child, and I have never known them. I was these children. They are me. I can’t bear for them to grow up not knowing their parents as I did.”

            Beverly acted on pure instinct. Jarod Westmore couldn’t have been more than ten years her junior, but her son was looking out at her though his eyes, and she knew that he was in essence a little boy who had never known the comfort of a mother’s arms. Her arms went around his shoulders. He, with the instinct of a child to match her instinct of a mother, put his face down on her shoulder, and she held him as she had once held her son Wesley when he was small and heartbroken over the loss of his father. He clung to her as Wesley had clung, temporarily lost in the mother’s warmth he could not remember.