Fire On High (22 page)

XI.

SI CWAN STOOD OUTSIDE the brig and looked at Morgan inside of it with more than a little sadness. "I did my best, Morgan," he told her. "I pointed out to the captain that you could easily have made your escape at the cost of my life, but you chose not to. I thought that would weigh in your favor. Unfortunately the captain did not choose to view your generosity in the same manner as I did."

From within the brig, Morgan shrugged. "That's all right, Si Cwan. You tried. And to be honest, I can see your captain's point of view on this one. There's just something about having someone blast open a door in one of your shuttlebays that makes you less than likely to think kindly of that person."

"That's a very philosophical way to look at it," Si Cwan noted. Then he stopped speaking, apparently
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noticing someone coming his way. "Why, Morgan, I believe you have visitor."

Morgan knew perfectly well who it was going to be even before Robin appeared in view, for the tread tipped her off. She realized belatedly why she was able to pinpoint it so easily. It was because it sounded just like her own step.

"Hello, Robin," she said.

Lefler stood on the other side of the forcefield door, her hands behind her back, simply staring at her mother. Judiciously, Si Cwan said, "Perhaps you'd prefer that I left so that you ladies could have some time alone."

"No, that's quite all right," Lefler said. "Mother, I know about the circumstances that resulted in your being here, and although I know that you were in the process of committing a crime . . . a crime for which you deserve to be punished, and frankly, I don't care if you're left here until you rot, and . . ."

"Robin, is there going to be something remotely uplifting in this dissertation anytime soon?" asked her mother. "Because if—"

"Mother, just be quiet, okay? I just . . . I wanted to thank you for not killing Si Cwan. God, I can't believe I said that. Thanking someone for not committing a murder, as if that shows any sort of incredible moral character. No one was ever thankful to me because I didn't kill anyone."

"Our tenth anniversary," Morgan said promptly.

Robin stared at her in confusion. "What?"

"Our tenth wedding anniversary, your father and me," Morgan explained. "You were five years old.

And you decided that you wanted to make us breakfast. You were very excited about it. You couldn't
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decide what to make, so you made everything. While we slept, you destroyed the kitchen. You made eggs, pancakes—peanut butter pancakes, as I recall—

French toast, cereal, bacon that was fried so tough you could have chipped a tooth on it, fresh-squeezed orange juice that still had the pits in it, and some other things. I think I've blanked them out. You brought the whole thing up to our bedroom on a tray," and she demonstrated, imitating the proud walk of a five-year-old confident that she has just performed the greatest service of her entire young life.

"You woke us up, showed us how you had made breakfast for us, and then sat there and expected us to eat it."

"My God, I vaguely remember this," said Robin, putting her hand to her mouth. She looked completely embarrassed, and Si Cwan was happy to see it. It was the first time he had seen her looking anything other than angry in days. "Your hair was all standing every which way because you'd just woken up."

"That's right. And you were so adorable in this little white nightgown you had then. So you marched over and put the tray down and then plopped onto the floor with that Cheshire Cat grin and waited. And your father and I, we had absolutely no choice. So we plastered smiles on our faces and we ate everything.

Every damn thing. And then we spent the next few hours taking turns running to the bathroom. It was the single most hideous meal we'd ever eaten."

"Oh, my God," laughed Robin. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Morgan assured her. "In many ways, it was also the best. You were such an adorable child, the best, you . . ."

And then she saw that Robin's lower lip was trem-187

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bling. "Oh, Ches'," she said sadly, invoking that childhood nickname of days gone by.

"Why did you leave me, Ma?" Her voice sounded very small and very defenseless.

And Morgan walked toward her, her arms outstretched, and Si Cwan barely had time to shout a warning before she would have hit the forcefield.

She fought to keep tears from her eyes.

"Ma, are you okay?!" asked Lefler.

Morgan fought to bring herself under control. "Oh, fine. Just fine. A little shaken. Nothing I can't handle."

"I'm sorry, Mom. That was . . . unprofessional."

She forced the tears to stop flowing from her eyes, drew her arm across her face in a large and rather dramatic smear.

"That's . . . quite all right, dear," Morgan said, feeling as if her teeth had been severely rattled. "I probably had that coming. That and a good deal more, I should suspect. Look, Ches', tell me what happened before. When the whole place was going crazy. No one's speaking to me about anything."

"There's nothing you can do about it, Mom.

They're handling it in Engineering."

"Well, honey, I don't quite believe that's all of the story. I'd very much like to know more of what's going on, and I'd appreciate it if you would bring me up to speed. And maybe—just maybe—I can solve some of your problems if you help me solve some of mine. You know me, Ches'. You know I've got some serious brainpower, if you must force me to boast of myself."

"We have top minds working on it right now, Mom."

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"Then what's one more? Go ahead, you've nothing to lose. Tell me."

So she told her. She laid it all out for Morgan, the entire story as Lefler had managed to hear it in bits and pieces. As the narrative went on, Morgan's face became more and more serious, and her eyes seemed to come into even clearer focus as if the only way that she could possibly view the world were through the prism of a problem that required solving.

Robin was silent for some time after she finished, and still Morgan said nothing. Finally, though, after having apparently given the matter considerable thought, she said, "I need to see your captain."

"Whatever for?"

"Because," Morgan told her with a hint of impatience, "I think that I can actually get this mess settled. I think I may—just may, mind you—be able to save this ship. But I'm going to have to discuss it with your captain first, and I don't think I'm exactly very high on his list."

Now it was Robin's turn to appear to ponder all that had been said. Finally she said to Morgan, "You have to understand, Mom, you're asking me to crawl out on a limb here. Not only, as you say, are you not high on the captain's list, but you're asking me to risk my own status on that very same list. Because if I crawl out on that branch along with you and then it winds up getting sawed off behind us, there is going to be a very considerable crash when it hits the ground. I have no desire to be on it."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, Mother, that you're going to have to be forthcoming this time." She leaned forward to the very edge of the forcefield, resting with her hands on
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either side of the door frame. "Before you're given the opportunity to convince the captain, you're going to have to convince me. Do you think you can do it?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Not that I can see."

This time Morgan didn't have to give it any thought at all. "All right," she said without hesitation. "I'll tell you. Not everything, mind you, but enough to get us started."

And she told her.

The narrative took a few minutes, and as she spoke the eyes of both Lefler and Si Cwan grew wider and wider. By the end of it, they had turned and looked at one another with conviction on both their faces. "The captain," said Si Cwan, "has definitely got to hear this."

"Do you think he'll believe it?" asked Morgan.

"If you were in his position, would you?" Si Cwan asked her reasonably.

Morgan pondered it a moment and then said, "No chance in hell."

"In that case, he probably will. Because if there's one thing I've noticed, it's that whenever one tries to second-guess Mackenzie Calhoun, one inevitably finds oneself squarely in the wrong."

"I don't believe it," said Calhoun.

"Captain, I'm deadly serious," said Morgan as Calhoun paced the conference lounge. As opposed to Morgan's earlier meeting with him, when he had appeared utterly unflappable and relaxed for the vast majority of the meeting, this time around he seemed tense and cool. She couldn't blame him, really. He
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had a creature living in his warp core. That would be enough to put anyone on edge.

Also present in the conference lounge were Shelby, Soleta, and Burgoyne, as well as Lefler and Si Cwan, who had organized the meeting. They likewise seemed preoccupied, and every so often Burgoyne would, as quietly as s/he could so as not to disturb anyone else at the table, receive reports from Engineering. S/he had demanded that s/he be updated every ten minutes as to any changes that might have occurred with the creature. In a uniquely odd endeavor to lighten the situation, Burgoyne had named the creature, for no discernible reason, Sparky. When Soleta had asked, "Why Sparky?" he had retorted that the creature had to be called something, and Sparky was as good a name as any. Soleta hadn't quite understood exactly why the creature needed to be called anything other than the creature, but she didn't see much point in arguing.

"Your skepticism is understandable, Captain,"

Morgan said. "But I'm telling you that your only hope of solving this problem lies with a race of beings—the same beings who are the reason I wound up coming here in the first place."

"Yes, so you said," Calhoun replied. "Since you are the one who's making this rather outrageous claim, Morgan, I will thank you either to try and prove it, or else stop wasting the time of everyone concerned here."

"Captain, if you'll just listen . . ." Robin began.

"I believe, Lieutenant, that I've done more than enough listening to this woman."

Morgan sat in the chair nearest the captain and
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leaned forward, her fingers interlaced. Speaking with a newfound urgency, she said, "Whatever they call themselves, I couldn't begin to say. I call them the Prometheans, a highly advanced, technologically su-perior race. I came to Thallonian space in the company of a friend named Tarella. We'd been tracking these mysterious Prometheans, and the research trail led us to Momidium. What we found there led us to believe that the Prometheans could be found on a world called Ahmista. But before we could set off, the Momidiums wound up capturing me. Tarella got away, however, and I half expected that she would come back for me. In fact, I spent my entire first year in captivity waiting for her to return and free me. But she never came back. I don't know whether she was killed, or whether she found something so incredible that she . . ." Morgan shrugged. "It could be anything. Any of a hundred reasons why she didn't come back."

"And we're supposed to go searching for your friend, is that it?"

"I don't come to this party offering a lot of guarantees. The only thing I know is that we were heading for Ahmista. What has happened to her since then, I couldn't even begin to tell you. If I had to guess, I'd say that the odds of her still being on Ahmista are pretty slim. Chances are that I'm going to have to start from level zero to try and pick up the leads to the Prometheans."

"How do we know," Shelby asked, "that this isn't simply another ploy to try and escape?"

"Don't kid a kidder, Commander. We both know that if you don't do something about junior in the warp core, there isn't going to be a ship left to escape
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from. You can't survive indefinitely. You might not even survive into next week."

"Considering the gestation period of the last energy creature we encountered, we might survive into the next century," Soleta said.

"True enough, Lieutenant. Are you willing to risk your life, and the lives of everyone on this ship, on that possibility?" fired back Morgan.

"None of us are," cut in Calhoun. "But neither are we willing or interested in committing resources to a false lead to a race of beings so mythic you don't even have a definite name for them. We could be chasing fairy tales for all we know."

Si Cwan stepped forward. "And yet these fairy stories have a ring of familiarity to me, Captain. I described earlier the tales of my youth, of the gods and the firebringers. Morgan's own naming of her mystery race is after a similar fire-to-humanity story that exists in our own mythology. Don't you find it curious that both of our civilizations share a mythology having to do with the acquisition of flame?"

"That is not at all unusual," Soleta replied. "There are many core concepts that prompt similar myths.

Many cultures have end of the world scenarios, flood scenarios, and different mythologies explaining different aspects of nature. No, it is not uncommon at all, and hardly proof of any connection. Unless you are about to claim that these mysterious Prometheans were responsible in some way for technological advancement on the part of mankind."

"Anything is possible."

"But not probable," said Calhoun. "We could use some sort of proof about this race aside from your suppositions and guesses. Otherwise my assumption
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will be that this is merely an elaborate ruse that, for some reason, Lieutenant Lefler and Ambassador Si Cwan have bought into."

Si Cwan glance down at Morgan and said simply,

"Show him."

"Now is the time, Mom," agreed Lefler.

She nodded and reached under her shirt, sliding something that was round and hard up toward the collar. And then she pulled out, mounted in a black casing, a small amulet with a raised image of a flame on it. "We came upon two of these through a trader on Momidium who didn't realize what he had," she said.