The cloud forest was full of the densest haze Kathryn had ever seen. Not even San Francisco's worst mornings denied her sight of things a meter ahead of her.
"Chakotay?" she called tentatively, reaching out for him. She felt his hand grab hers, and she turned to find him behind her, smiling at her in a way she had forgotten in the last few years.
She smiled back at him, pulling courage from some forgotten part of her soul. The atmosphere was dripping with water, the humidity high, the temperature at best a moderate level. It was as disorienting as deep space in an environmental suit, facing away from a ship, looking into incomprehensible vastness. If anything, this was the exact opposite, instead of eternity, one could see only oneself, or something immediately touching. She felt shrouded, and had she not held tightly to his hand, very afraid.
"It's odd, isn't it?" he asked, a laugh barely contained.
"It's like…being underwater," she thought aloud. "It's almost like the deep diving on Mars."
"Dark, hard to see," he agreed.
"But it's not truly dark here."
"And you're not truly alone. This mist will probably rise late tomorrow morning, and you would be amazed at the great variety of animals and birds up here."
She squeezed his hand. "You've been up here before?"
"Once, several years ago. I've been tracking a trip my parents took together before they married. They came up here."
"You have the record of their trip?"
"Yes, the original was destroyed on Trebus, but a copy was kept by the owner of the coffee grove."
She sensed a story there, but waited for him to continue, her eyes sweeping his face. "Tell me how you got it."
"I was given my first copy by my mother when I left for the Academy. She suggested it might be a way for me to better understand my father, if I knew his story when he was closer to my age. She pointed out that our trip a few years before hadn't been very successful because I refused to try to understand him." He looked a bit sheepish, but continued on. "I came to Café Montigua to find her family, really. Jungles and mosquitoes and guides who laughed at me, I wanted no part of them, but I was homesick for my mother, and for my father, so I went to the village. They welcomed me with open arms, gave me a bed in the house where my mother grew up, fed me food I'd always loved. I harvested coffee beans, drank the local beer and chased the children in the square. In some ways, it was home, in too many ways, it wasn't. I met the man who introduced my parents to each other, he introduced me to Hector Diaz, who came up here with my parents. His father owned the grove and had been given a copy of the same record my mother gave me."
He glanced around at the entrapping cloud that held them tightly together. "When Trebus was destroyed, it was one of the few things I had left of them. I wasn't able to rescue it from the Liberty." Despite his avoidance of her eyes, she brought his attention back to their joined hands when she squeezed it tightly. "When Voyager returned to Earth, Hector contacted me. He asked me to come to see him, and when Seven and I came," he admitted reluctantly when he looked again at Kathryn, "he gave me another copy. I've been using it to trace their trail."
Kanicha found it highly amusing that the men wanted to bathe. She laughed until tears were falling down her face and she couldn't stand upright while Kolopak and Hector stood silently exchanging glances. "Oh, please," she said. "It's just that I've spent five of the longest days of my life with a bunch of women more concerned about their hair than the grove."
Her attempts to regain some sobriety led to hiccups, for which Hector pounded her on the back. Kolopak stood with his arms crossed, waiting patiently for her to settle down. "Waterfall?" he asked pointedly when she finally was able to breathe.
"This way," she motioned, and they set off together. The rest of the crew had already packed and left, following this same path, and for a brief moment, Kolopak wondered if Kanicha was playing some sort of joke by taking them back to the village. She came to a small stream that fed the northern end of the grove and pointed up stream. "About a kilometer. Stay in the stream and you won't miss it."
The two thanked her and wandered along, each enjoying his own thoughts. Kolopak's were about Kanicha. And if he didn't get them under control in a few minutes, Hector was going to know what he was thinking about, if not about whom. A cold shower was exactly what the Treban needed now.
The waterfall wasn't big enough for both men to wash at the same time. Hector looked apologetically at Kolopak. "It's the dry season. We haven't had much rain."
"Not much rain?" Kolopak thought about the massive shower they had sampled yesterday.
"During the rainy season, it will usually rain twice a day."
Kolopak was stunned. "Rain twice in one day?"
"Don't they have rain on Trebus?"
"Not like that. We're only 30% water-covered. The vast majority of the planet is desert."
"Then the humidity in the cloud forest is going to be hard for you to adjust to."
Kolopak shrugged and directed Hector to the waterfall. "I'll wash my clothes here in the pool while you clean up."
"We can have my father send up some clean stuff for you."
Kolopak fondly examined the shirt in his hand. "No, thanks. These are from home."
Hector pulled his shirt over his head and ducked into the stream. It didn't take long to get clean in water that cold. The Treban was still soaking some sweat stained garments when Hector came dancing out, trying to warm himself. "We forgot towels."
Kolopak rolled his eyes, and as he looked up, he saw Kanicha on a rock above them, a silhouette against the blue-grey sky. Her head was tipped back, looking upwards at the peak above them, her hands stretched out as if she was seeking some blessing. Then she quickly dropped to the ground and picked up a loose handful of rock and soil and gravel, and standing again, poured it out.
Kolopak stopped breathing, blinking furiously in amazement. How many times had he seen his grandmother, or father, or one of innumerable cousins doing the same thing prior to a difficult trip?
A whipping sound and a wet crack against his leg brought his attention back to Hector, who stood unrepentantly with one of Kolopak's clean shirts now rolled tightly into a thick cord.
"Hey!" The Treban yelled and jumped back, nearly falling over a tuft of high brittle grass. "You'll pay for that, Hector amigo."
From above, they heard Kanicha's laughter, and Hector quickly unwound Kolopak's shirt to cover himself. That made Kanicha laugh even more, and she chucked a few broken branches their way before she scrambled across the stream above them, moving beyond the brush and out of their sight.
"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Hector asked in a genial conversational tone.
Kolopak's voice was noncommittal. "For someone who was bothered by others who spent so much talk on their hair, she certainly maintained hers well."
"She could go to a Starfleet ball and look as good as she does here."
Once again Kolopak needed that cold shower, and he pulled the rest of his dirty clothes into his arms, and stepped up to the waterfall. The cold blast immediately sobered him up, and he held out his arms to get the full effect down the sleeves of his shirt before stripping it off. Other garments were equally scrubbed by the falling water before he stripped off his pants and pulled out a small pouch. The sweet smelling bar allowed him to lather up his hair and rinse it quickly before cleansing the rest of his body.
"Sweet Spirits!" he yelled. "I needed that!"
Hector stood nearby, pulling on his only dry clothing and Kolopak realized that he'd managed to soak everything he owned. A quick glance at the high sun, peeping out from the clouds that covered the summit, made him sure of one thing: he would be wearing wet clothes the rest of the day.
His friend noticed his glance at the sopping clothing and at the heavens and grimaced. "Let's see what's arriving with the llamas. If I've got something dry, it's yours."
Gratefully, the Treban redressed in some wet clothing and they headed back to the camp. Expecting to find it feeling abandoned with most of the team and their equipment gone, instead the men found it full of boxes with numbers and a tall grey-haired man.
"Chakotay!" Hector rushed up and grabbed him in a large embrace, neatly displacing Kanicha.
"Hector, boy, where have you been? And why don't you take a bath? You stink!" Chakotay pounded Hector on the back with loud thumps before pulling him back. "What's it been, a year? Look at you! You're taller than Margarita now!"
"Isn't it about time? You promised I would be taller than her when I was done."
"You were just taking your time, amigo. And what's this I hear - you're going up into the cloud forest with Kanicha and Margarita? Do you have any idea how stupid this idea is?"
Kolopak pulled up, offended at the derision.
"I'll never talk her out of it, Chakotay. You know her. She's got it in her mind to do it, the only thing I can do is protect her from herself."
Kanicha and Kolopak exchanged irate glances, and watched the two men walk away.
"Who is that?"
"Chakotay. He's my uncle in Starfleet."
"I thought he was Margarita's cousin."
"He is. I am too. His brother is my father. Their grandparents are Margarita's grandparents." She glared back at the spot where he had stood, and waved her hand in a disrespectful flip, and wiggled her fingers at it.
"You just cursed him, and removed the curse."
She smiled slowly. "Why, so I did. I guess he'll have to deal with a little bit of a curse, then."
She took his arm and walked over to the stack of boxes. "Nice shower?" she asked, her voice not quite innocent, and Kolopak wondered for a moment if she had found a more secluded perch.
"Exactly what I needed. Now, what's all this stuff?" He pulled open a box and found several telescoping wands about the length of his forearm.
She pulled a piece of paper from the box. "Those are perimeter setters. Once they're set up, no one gets in or out," she said as she scanned the sheet. "Not a bad idea. There're some dangerous animals up on the mountain. We'll be able to set these up and not worry about a puma or ocelot."
Puma, ocelot. More animals that Kolopak had never heard of, much less seen. A monkey skittered across the top of the boxes, Chattering fretfully at a tree just beyond him. "Oh, little brother," Kanicha called.
"Little sister, surely," said Kolopak in a quiet voice.
"You might be right," she conceded. "I'm interested in the land management aspect of agronomy, not the animal side."
The monkey continued to chatter at the unseen in the trees, ignoring Kanicha's pleading until she pulled out a small banana from her pocket. The extended fruit was quickly snatched and the monkey pulled back, fearful that the gift would be withdrawn. "Come here, little sister," Kanicha cooed again, but the monkey was distracted, running off, and for the first time, they noticed the small baby attached to her back.
"Spider monkey." Kanicha waved at the grove and the trail before them. "They wouldn't come out when we were all here."
"I've never seen one so close before." He'd never seen one live before, only in books and databases. "They make that noise I've heard down on the west side of the grove?"
"That's were most of them live. They're trying to scare you off."
"So why are they coming down now?"
"They're very curious. And probably hungry." She put down the supplies she'd pulled from the boxes and sat down herself. "All these boxes. This tribe is especially curious, since they're half tamed."
"Half tamed?"
"These monkeys aren't native to the grove, even before we planted." She used the word we when it was impossible that she had even been born when the grove was first started. Hector had said the grove was nearly twenty-five years old. "Someone introduced the first three pairs about ten years ago. It was an attempt to sabotage the grove."
"How could monkeys do that?"
"Really, they couldn't. They reduce the amount of cherries we pick, and that reduces the bean crop, but honestly, they're more fun than a hindrance."
Kolopak looked back to the stand of trees where the monkey ran. "You like them?"
"Very much. I'd like to have one for a pet, but I can't get close enough to even start to make friends."
"Do they make good pets?"
"Some do, some don't. My mother has had one for three years that had a crippled foot. I think it hung around more for the food than from affection."
Kolopak looked at her closely. "Crippled foot?"
"Yes, it looked like a birth defect. Probably didn't even know there was a problem until it tried to let go of its mom."
"Is that so?" he mused quietly. "Have you seen a lot of that? Crippled monkeys? Other animals?"
"We saw a lot a few years ago, not so much these days."
Kolopak was running across the campground for the red tent faster than she'd ever seen him run. By the time she joined him in the tent, he had five different tricorders running, and two chemical tests of some water samples.
"Do you know where I could find some beans from this grove?"
She waved toward the outside of the tent. "Of course. Roasted?"
"No. Raw."
"Not a problem," she said and stepped out of the tent.
Chakotay caught her by the arms. "Where you going, Chica?"
"I need to get Kolopak some coffee beans. Excuse me, please."
Chakotay didn't release her, but even tightened his grip. "You need to get him, Chica? Can't he get them himself?"
Kolopak stepped from the tent and stood before the Star Fleet officer. He assumed a wide stance, his hands loose at his sides, but Hector, standing nearby, moved quickly to place a calming hand on his arm.
"Chakotay, this is my friend Kolopak."
"Kolopak, this is my neighbor, Chakotay."
The men did not shake hands. "Let go of Kanicha, please. I need to have those beans."
Chakotay looked down at the girl, and removed his hands. "Kanicha, I want to talk to you. I'll go with you to get this desconocido his coffee beans."
She glared at him with unrestrained anger. "I don't need your help, Uncle. I don't want to talk to you."
Margarita joined the group with a few quiet steps, and waved Kanicha away. "Go." She turned to Chakotay and pointed to her tent. "Get in there, cousin."
Kolopak waited until they were out of sight before returning to his experiments. "Hector, can you get me some branches from the dying trees? I would prefer something living, but dead will do if you can't get anything else."
They listened to the mumbling from Margarita's tent for a moment, then Hector turned and walked out. Kanicha was back in a few brief minutes, holding some misshapen beans in her hand. "I forgot to ask how many you would need."
"This is plenty. Thank you."
As he placed the beans on the table and set a tricorder to scan them, she stepped up beside him with a troubled face. "Chakotay…" she began.
"It sounds like Margarita is giving him quite a lecture over there."
"I know. They always fight like that."
Kolopak stuck that thought away for later consideration. "Tell me when the die-back began."
She counted on her fingers for a moment. "Three years ago, on my thirteenth birthday, I came up here and noticed that there weren't many blossoms on the trees. That year they pruned most of the trees down to the main trunks to see if they would regrow."
He stood and looked at the bean sample she handed him, and then the tricorder reading. "I've figured out what the problem is. Now we just have to find it."
"What are we looking for?"
"What I've found is the presence of selenium."
She nodded slowly. "It's common enough around volcanoes. Why?"
"This much? I doubt it, but it might explain why it wasn't noticed until now." He sat down on a tall campstool and gently pulled her over to look at his test findings. "We're going to find a pump upstream with a selenium solution. Somewhere else, we're going to find another pump with either a carboxyl or a hydroxyl solution. Together, they would make a mild pesticide that would take several years for sufficient levels to be reached to cause the damage the grove has sustained so far."
"Then there's nothing that can be done."
Kolopak scratched his still-wet hair. "No, I didn't say that. First, we find the source of the solutions. They are almost certainly stream-based. Once we can disable the pumps, we might be able to find the culprit. As to these trees, they're not going to produce good beans again. El Patron might as well clear that land and plant some of the heavy metal assimilating plants for two seasons, if they'll grow this high up. Otherwise, Margarita will know how to purify the land. My guess is that in three years, the land will be ready to support new overstory planting, and three years beyond that, coffee trees."
Chakotay snorted from the doorway of the tent, Margarita standing behind him. "What do you know about coffee?" he challenged in an angry voice.
"Not much. I do know about mineral poisoning of the land, and the effects on the local wildlife."
Margarita slipped around her tall cousin and quickly scanned his test results. "I think you're right, Kolopak. This theory fits all the facts we have so far."
"Who would try to sabotage the coffee grove?" Chakotay asked, his dislike clear on his face.
"It's not the first time, Chakotay," Margarita said calmly, intervening before Kanicha's loud support of Kolopak would startle the birds from the nearby trees. "Those monkeys were the first, then the tree girdling…You've missed a lot."
"Yeah, war with the Klingons does that."
Kolopak listened to the tone of voice, and found it curiously amused. Was it some sort of challenge to him, personally?
Margarita picked up Kolopak's test results. "I need to call Marcos."
Kanicha and Kolopak walked out of the tent with her, Chakotay remaining, apparently studying the equipment.
"Kolopak," Chakotay called him back, and Kanicha grimaced. Her quick squeeze to his arm was reassuring as he turned back.
"What planet did you say you're from?"
"I didn't."
Chakotay's eyes raked over him. "What planet?"
Kolopak returned the gaze comfortably. The older man was probably as old as his grandfather, but where Kolopak's family inclined toward a muscular build, this man was tall and lean. The strong chin was oddly balanced by rather feminine lips, and smoky grey eyes were at this moment boring holes into his head. This man must have been serving in Starfleet a long time to have seen the Klingon War. His demeanor was one of command, someone who expected immediate response to an order.
On the other hand, Kolopak had been trained all his life to respect his elders, but the respect had been as much earned as given. So far, he didn't have much for the older man. But it didn't hurt to be polite. "Trebus." It was unlikely that he had heard of it, no one had since he'd arrived on Earth. The colony was several weeks away at high warp, new enough still to be getting established, but his people had consciously chosen to ask little of Earth or Starfleet. Trebus had been the planet carefully picked by his ancestors as the prepared place, and Kolopak had no doubt that the prepared place would only need the people to make it prosperous, not a great deal of over-engineered technical assistance that would destroy the land.
"Trebus. Sector 377. M-class planet, two satellite moons, fourth planet in a twelve- planet system around a smaller blue star, second planet looks good for some deuterium mining, possible dilithium deposits. Have the planet elders decided to mine the southern continent for that large water supply under the western desert?"
He shrugged. His surprise that Chakotay knew his planet in such detail was well masked. It wasn't right to discuss the particulars of his home world with this man, even if he was a remote cousin of his people. Even if he was Margarita's cousin. Even if he was Kanicha's uncle.
"Tell them to do it. Trebus is tactically one of the most important planets in that sector. The planet needs the water to support the human population that will be required to defend it."
"Defend it?"
"You heard of Bajor?"
"Of course." It was an old and distinguished race only six light years from Trebus. "They were just invaded. Their attempts to throw off the Cardassians have been unsuccessful. Trebus will be next, once the Cardassians are through destroying Bajor."
"I've never heard of Cardassians."
"Very few have. It's a large empire some fifty light years from Trebus. They're reputed to have an appetite for planets and systems rich in raw materials and low in population. Your planet, and six or seven other newly colonized systems are at the edge of the frontier where they are currently plundering Bajor. They'll be after you in another fifty or sixty years."
Kolopak still revealed none of his inner turmoil this conversation was creating.
"Kolopak of Trebus." Chakotay glanced up at the trees that shaded them. "If anything happens to them while they're up there, I'll hold you responsible."
"That's not fair!" Kanicha exploded. "He's never even been on a mountain. How can he protect me… not that I need it, Uncle," she stressed the title strongly, "if he doesn't know the first thing about the environment or the dangers we're going to find."
Kolopak smiled at his exuberant defender. "He's not talking about protection from the animals we'll find in the cloud forest. He's not even talking about the danger of the trip, are you, Chakotay?"
Chakotay looked at his niece with a hint of exasperation. "Go get Margarita. I think you're too young to take this trip. I'll take you back to your mother."
The slap across his face was painful to hear, and Kolopak could only imagine that it was more painful to bear.
"You will not take me back, Uncle Chakotay. I am going up that mountain. You will apologize to Kolopak and to me for your rude and crass behavior. And then you will leave."
Chakotay's grey eyes did not blink until he looked away and saw Margarita standing close by. "Very well, Margarita, it seems my presence is not required anymore."
She chose to say nothing. The majority of the supplies she needed for this trek were on the ground beyond him in boxes marked Starfleet Procurement. But her stance, her look, told very clearly what she thought of his innuendo.
"Tell him to get his sleeping bag out of your tent, Margarita," he called as he pulled his communications device from his pocket. "Chakotay to Starfleet Central Command: one to beam home. Energize."
The boxes remained.
Pulling a tricorder out of his pack, Chakotay turned and scanned the area immediately around them, and pointed west. "The cave opening is up there, we'll need to climb that ravine to get up there. It's almost dark, we can either eat here and sleep in the cave, or try to get a fire going inside the cave and roast our leola root in there."
The death-glare amplitude was slightly lower than out-right fatality, but she pointed to the cave. "This much humidity is going to make a fire difficult."
"You're right. And since the monkeys haven't discovered us yet, there's a chance we'll miss the serenade."
"Monkeys?" She knew that attempt to hide his smirk from her by wiping his hand over his jaw and mouth.
"Howlers. Not very big, considering how much noise they make."
She felt the injection in her neck before she noticed the medical equipment in his hand, and watched as he gave himself the same shot. Another shot went in as quickly. "What are you giving me?"
"The first was a tri-ox compound. The altitude is so high, I don't want to deal with us coming down with oxygen deprivation. This is the closest I've gotten to the treasure, I don't want to give up this time."
She rubbed her neck gently. "And the second?"
"An all-purpose injection for dysentery, antivenin and tetanus."
She didn't reply to that. They sounded prudent for a cloud forest.
Without much sense of air movement, the cloud that surrounded them began to break down, the wisps shifting past them, following the curve of the mountainside. In the fading of the dusk, she looked around the large cliff where they stood. Its area was quite large, and oddly, only grass and other low vegetation grew from the base of the ravine to the edge, not quite a square kilometer. Kathryn lay back against the rotten log and stretched out her legs. The aurora of the sunset sky framed her silhouette as Chakotay approached from behind her. "Careful," he warned. "That log has been down a long time."
She patted it reassuringly, watching a little of it crumble under her hands. "You're right, it's not too sturdy. But it should make us a delightful fire tonight."
"The cave's up there about a hundred meters."
She refused to turn around. "Then let's stay here tonight."
"I thought the point was to stay in the cave tonight so we wouldn't have to pitch our tents."
The hand motion he had long since tagged as her royal wave dismissed the notion. "I want to see the sunrise from this spot."
Dropping his pack beside hers, he stepped over the log and looked at the terrain. "We're not the first to stop here for a night."
She admired the rustic fire-ring. "Perfect. I see a nice flat spot for you to put up my tent."
"If I'm putting up a tent, Kathryn, I'm putting up mine."
She gazed up at him with cool blue eyes, slightly autocratic in her mien. "Then where did you expect to sleep?" she said in a haughty voice. That old challenging captain's voice was not quite audible. "You better hurry. Putting up a tent in the dark is rather difficult."
She avoided his eyes by turning to break off some of the rotting wood. "I'll get the fire started."
He laughed at her, and he heard her laugh with him.
In the end, darkness fell so quickly that only one tent was erected, but a warming fire and the clear night made an irresistible invitation to stay out among the stars as long as they liked. The weather this high up was always unpredictable, but for the moment, neither wanted to crawl inside a tent when millions of stars twinkled upon them. Her sleeping bag and mattress were carefully arranged to catch heat and not smoke, and Chakotay, noticing her ploy, shifted his close by. At least his face would be out of the smoke.
She pulled out some apples and oranges, and handed him them while searching for some other food in her pack. Further excavations found packets of marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.
"What is that? You didn't get those from Chelipto."
"No, my sister sent them in my boots. They're for later."
He watched as more packages were pulled out, and finally she found what she was looking for. "Mushroom risotto."
"Risotto? Here?"
"Chelipto said it was very good. You just have to add water and throw the whole package into the fire. Twenty minutes later, presto! Mushroom risotto."
It was obvious he didn't believe her.
"So, what other attractions do we have at this resort?" she asked, pouring water into the package.
He looked around. "The ambiance isn't enough?"
The package was thrown into the fire at the exact moment they both realized they had no way to retrieve it.
She considered their dilemma. "Ambiance isn't everything… but this comes very close. How many sunrises and sunsets have we missed, anyway?" She laid her head on his shoulder, watching the flames.
He pulled his knife from his pocket, but the blade was far too short. Looking back into the forest, he noticed a stand of some tall branches, but they were too brittle to use to pull anything out of the fire. Frustrated, he scanned around, looking for a stronger branch, and moving forward, neatly twisting his ankle as he stepped on something round and hard. Picking it up, he found it was an old pickax, and he hefted it carefully. The finely wrought steel reflected the moonlight, and he reckoned their dinner was saved.
The cabin was on loan from a surprised Captain Janeway, who had quickly offered it when she had been approached by Seven a month earlier, asking for a recommendation of a remote spot for the friends to get off McKinley Station and Planetia Utopia for a short vacation. The snowy lake attracted few but the most dedicated ice-fishermen and winter sport enthusiasts, and so they gained the privacy they sought. If Kathryn had hoped to be included in the invitation, she never showed it, just gracefully gave her the coordinates and the key code.
Tom and B'Elanna arrived a full day before Seven was able to get away, and Chakotay, while technically on leave, had declined to join them earlier. For that, they were grateful.
The cabin had two bedrooms. The larger of the two had been outfitted with a small bed, with a small toy bunny on it with Miral's name attached. The generous bed had been mischievously strewn with some purple flowers between the sheets that had thrown B'Elanna into hoots of laughter their first night here, before Chakotay and Seven arrived. She declined to explain them, simply laughing again at Tom's baffled expression before pulling him into an ardent embrace. He had to admit, the fragrance had been a delightful addition to their night's activities. He'd planned to ask Kathryn what they were, until he found the novel on the bedside table the next morning. The cover looked plain enough, but the description of "Volcano Flowers at Q'Tar" had him placing the book out of Miral's reach.
It didn't matter that at less than two years of age she was more likely to chew the book than read it. He didn't want her ever to see that book. Seven and Chakotay had arrived separately that afternoon. Chakotay had found enough wood in the forest the week before to stock up the pile beside the house when he wasn't in San Francisco at a series of meetings about the Decker and the particle fountain they had just finished studying. Seven came bearing enough food for the weekend, and quickly took over the cooking duties. Chakotay and B'Elanna had taken Miral for a hike in the snow while Tom valiantly tried to assist Seven in the kitchen. He ended up with a beer at the kitchen table.
"Seven," he asked, watching the foam rise as he poured. "What's with you and Reg Barclay?"
He could see her attempt to hide her smile under the Borg-face, but he knew her well enough to know it wasn't a serious effort. She twinkled at him, a little hint of some secret in her blue eyes. "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Paris."
Oh, back to the formality of Voyager… that meant something. He took a drink of his beer and decided to tease her back. "Seven, don't try to kid me. Every time I've seen you, I've seen him nearby. When did he get the transfer to PU?"
It was hard to judge if she was shrugging her shoulders or simply kneading the ball of dough. "Lieutenant Barclay was assigned to a beacon project at PU. He arrived three months ago."
"I see. Do you see a lot of each other?"
"We occasionally meet for a meal."
"Eating out with him, Seven. Is that a date?"
She blushed, but gave him no further answer as she pressed down the dough.
"And what else do you do with your time?"
"I am attempting to be more efficient in -" she was cut off by his laughter.
"You're applying rules of efficiency to dating?"
She gave him a sour look. "It seems efficient to invite him to join me in meal preparation and then its consumption."
"It's more efficient to eat in the mess with the rest of the staff." He needled her and stood to grab a handful of blue corn chips she had placed in a nearby bowl.
"It may be more efficient, but it…" she changed her voice suddenly. "The Doctor recommended that I learn to prepare food as I begin to ingest sustenance."
"As you begin to eat."
"That is what I said."
"Not quite, but go on. You're learning to cook?"
"Captain Janeway has been very complimentary about my food preparation."
"It's not Janeway's comments I'm curious about."
"Perhaps not." Seven had not yet learned a gracious way to deflect Tom's attention. "But it is what I wished to say."
"You didn't wish to say that you and Reg Barclay are enjoying sautéing?"
"I did not say…" she was confused. Apparently sautéing with Barclay was more fun than she cared to admit.
Caring to admit, the phrase echoed in his head as he watched Chakotay play silly games with Miral out on the cabin deck. There was some caring and some admitting that needed to be said between Chakotay and Seven. B'Elanna had rubbed her ridges when she saw the cabin only had one other bed.
Conversations with each of them, independently, had shown her a fuller view of the character of their relationship that either of them had. Seven, quite simply, had mentally moved on. Separation for nearly a year, first by the debriefings and her duty on McKinley Station, then his duty on the Decker, had managed to disengage her romantic feelings for Chakotay. On Chakotay's part, he had no place for any feeling other than a single-minded desire to rescue the Maquis. B'Elanna thought, without any sorrow, that it was for the best. If the tales the Admiral had told were true, Chakotay and Seven's true love was limited to the Delta Quadrant. It hadn't survived the first year home.
The Voyagers would always have that special bond. It just wasn't enough to support a marriage. Maybe Kathryn Janeway was right in resisting every attempt made by the crew and her first officer to change that rigid stance, but B'Elanna was now willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her marriage to Tom was based on far more than the camaraderie of a crew that had fought and lived together for seven years.
The Admiral had been another complication to a bizarre relationship. B'Elanna had listened to the Admiral's blandishments to try to convince the Klingon to support her plans to return Voyager through the Borg transwarp conduits, and thought several times that the Admiral was lying. Maybe not about Seven and Chakotay, maybe not about Tuvok. But she was lying about too many other things to trust her entirely. Going through the transwarp conduits was an experiment that the engineering odds said they should play - adding the factor of the Admiral's act of poisoning the Borg - and win. The Admiral didn't need to lie to her to convince her to support the plan, but she did anyway.
And in the following two years, she wondered more 'why'. Other than a few tips to Chakotay to beat Tom's betting pools, virtually everything the Admiral said was not entirely true. Had her research been incomplete, or had she manipulated things to make the Captain agree?
Her machinations had had far reaching effects, if only on Seven. In the Delta Quadrant, without any interference from the old woman, the jealousy Seven had developed might never come to be. It ended up polluting any relationship Chakotay had with any other woman, as innocent as they had all been. Even B'Elanna had to regain Seven's trust, and B'Elanna wasn't sure that the Captain ever had.
Tom took pity on her and changed the conversation. "What's for dinner, anyway?"
She covered the bread for it to rise and rinsed her hands in the sink. "Leola root lasagna."
Tom stared at her, his mouth dropping open. "Leola root…"
"Yes," she continued dryly, "Neelix offered some of his recipes when I told him I was learning how to cook."
She looked up at his face, and for a short moment, he believed her. "Seven, I can't believe you did that to me!"
She laughed at him, and Chakotay looked up as he followed B'Elanna and Miral back into the cabin as Tom grabbed her around the waist and started dancing her around the kitchen, laughing uproariously with her.
"What's so funny?" B'Elanna asked casually as she pulled the snowsuit off a very red-faced girl.
"Seven told me what we're having for dinner." Tom wiped the tears from his cheeks over Seven's shoulder. "You'd never believe it."
As the pandemonium settled, Miral sat down for a serious playtime with her daddy while the other grown-ups discussed the crew that had spread across the quadrant. Harry was stationed at Deep Space Nine for a short stint in Security, and Tal Celes was nearby on Bajor, where she was working with the Bajoran Academy to prepare students to enter Starfleet Academy. Mortimer Harron had just published another paper intent on demolishing Janeway's doctoral thesis on cosmology. It was dedicated to her, which gave most people a good laugh when they realized the connection between them. Dalby, Ayala and Ashcroft were serving together on the USS Triumphant, a small ship patrolling the Bajoran-Cardassian border.
Chakotay had seen them while on his last tour with the Decker. Between the three of them, with Tom's odd interjections, the majority of the crew was recalled and placed on their mental maps.
Chakotay's mind was only half on the gossip. He did need to know who, of the Voyager crew, was near the Cardassian border, but when the talk moved to Tuvok and his current position at Starfleet Academy, his mind wandered to the sight that had greeted him when he walked in from the cold. Tom and Seven, laughing and dancing around.
Why hadn't he noticed that she had changed so much? She wore common clothing now, shoes that were comfortable, sweaters that were at once subdued and eye-catching. She was laughing, and for the life of him, he couldn't ever remember her laughing with such abandon. And in another man's arms - why didn't that make him feel jealous? Was it because it was Tom? Or… had he lost something else in this new life in the Alpha Quadrant?
He stood beside the window and watched the darkening skies. "Tom, let's get that walk in before it gets too much later, ok?" B'Elanna called from the doorway, pulling on her boots.
Miral didn't even look up from her bunny as her father jumped up and quickly joined her. "Seven, you won't mind?"
"No. Enjoy your stroll. You will smell dinner outside when it is ready."
Her smiling face saw them out the door, Tom laughing at her wit. He still wasn't sure that leola root wasn't on the menu for dinner, but he was willing to wait and see.
Seven stood beside Chakotay, looking out the window toward the frozen lake. "You are preoccupied."
"I guess I am." He waved out at the pair holding hands as they walked through the snow. "They're so young. And they have it all, already."
For Seven, the comment made little sense. Tom was ten years older than she, B'Elanna at least five.
"They have each other, a child, a home." He stared at them as they moved beyond a stand of pine.
He turned to her and took her face in his hands, moving his thumb off the implant near her ear. "Seven," he whispered. "What's happened?"
She lowered her face to look at the floor, thinking quickly about the day before, when Reg had escorted her to the transporter, carrying her bags of supplies and clothing for the weekend. He, too, had touched her facial implant, but instead of moving his hand off, he had tenderly looked at it. "Does it hurt you when I touch it?"
"No, it does not." Why had she been out of breath?
"What about this?" And Reg had leaned over gently and touched it in a kiss.
"No, Reginald…" she had breathed huskily.
Reginald had kissed the implant above her eye. "Or this, Annika?"
"No…" Reginald had kissed her lips, stopping any more denials.
Chakotay dropped his hands to her shoulders, bringing her attention back to him. She asked, "Does there have to be an explanation? It happened."
His hands dropped to her waist. "Can we go back?"
She shook her head. He accepted her denial by turning back to the window with a deep sigh. "I never meant to hurt you, Seven."
"I know." But you did, the Admiral did… she thought it in passing, but let it slip away.
"You know that I'm committed to getting the Maquis away from the Cardassians."
"You will need my help with your plan."
His smiling dark eyes looked down at her. "You're right. I do."
After dinner, the friends sat around the table, all stunned into silence by his plan. B'Elanna, his only confidante until the point, hadn't grasped the full depth of the plan until now, and he could see her calculations in her eyes as her engineering perspective took over.
"Modifications to the Delta Flyer will take a few days, Chakotay," she said slowly, glancing at Tom. "The life support system can't support nineteen people for two days, much less a week."
Tom sat open-mouthed at the plan. The sleeping child restrained him from jumping up and telling B'Elanna there was no way in heaven or hell she would be participating in such a stupid plan. "That's if we can get to it, even," he said in a low voice. "She's still on Voyager."
Seven spoke up. "I can get her."
"How?"
She swallowed nervously, and Tom took the moment to consider this woman who had grown to be his friend in the past year. "I have been asked to go to several conferences this year concerning the Borg. I will stipulate that I must have the Flyer to reach these destinations instead of depending on Starfleet transport. They will comply."
Seven's discomfort was not lost on Chakotay, who sat back in his chair with crossed arms. He knew that these three had to agree to make the plan workable, if not successful. B'Elanna was already convinced that the Maquis must be rescued, and that this plan was as good as she had ever seen him come up with after more than ten years serving with him. Tom, oddly, didn't see it as personally threatening, even though it was he and not B'Elanna who would be walking into the Cardassian camp. Seven and B'Elanna would be safe, as safe as they might be, high above them on the Delta Flyer, ready at a moment's notice for either a massive beam out of all the remaining Maquis prisoners or just Chakotay and Tom, if the plan failed.
B'Elanna spoke slowly, pushing her glass of beer across the rough table. "You're depending a great deal on the Klingon assistance."
Chakotay stood and wandered around the rugged room. Chakotay's new assignment on the Decker had been easy. After a decade of constant abuse, six months on a ship without a single red alert or hostile alien contact had been the cure for Chakotay's battered mind. Seven's refusal to accept a position on the ship, accepting instead an offer as an engineering consultant on Planetia Utopia, had given him the mental space to heal from the wounds they gave each other on McKinley Station. The debrief for the mission had taken two hours, and Admiral East had given her fullest approval to his report. The Decker was down for the next two months for a refit and installation of several new science stations.
As much as the calm challenge of the science expedition soothed his mind, his soul continued to be torn by the knowledge of old friends still incarcerated. The time aboard the Decker gave him the opportunity to make his plans. The refit gave him time to pull it off. Whether or not he got her back was immaterial. The ship was just a ship. She wasn't Voyager.
"I've already spoken to the Klingons." He hadn't spoken to just any Klingons. His Starfleet rank had gotten him to Ambassador Worf, who had not hesitated to take him to the Klingon High Command. Martok himself had listened and approved the plan. The covert visit to Qo'NoS had been very successful.
Tom stood and took his daughter to her bed, trying to control his erratic breathing. Taking B'Elanna, a wanted Maquis agent, into Cardassian territory was insane. It was impossible. He knew she would do it.
"How will you get the necessary documents from the Cardassians?"
Chakotay smiled. "I didn't have to, they were delivered to me last night."
The three exchanged disbelieving looks. "You got Cardassian prison release approvals delivered last night?" Tom asked incredulously.
He pulled an odd looking package from his pocket, the Cardassian symbol etched in obsidian on a black background. "It's all right here, complete with the signature of Garak, a high-ranking official in the provisional government. I'm to take all Maquis prisoners into my custody, no questions asked. They will be transported to a new, undisclosed location for further interrogation."
"Are you sure that's what it says?" B'Elanna studied the cryptic glyphs, turning the page one way and then another.
"According to the commander of Deep Space Nine it does." Seven's hands tightened around her mug of coffee, but she did not comment. Her dislike of the Bajoran woman stemmed from the night of the Federation ball. She could let it go, now that Chakotay was no longer a part of her life. "How did she get it?"
"I didn't say she got it. I said she confirmed what it said." Chakotay didn't want to play games with these people, but he didn't want to compromise his source, either.
They understood, and looked at each other again. Tom raised his glass. "To the rescue."
Four days later, Kolopak was lying in his small tent, the others still tending the small fire that had been started earlier in the evening. Tri-ox injections aside, the trip up the mountain was draining his strength with every meter of altitude they gained, and he found himself in his tent and asleep long before the others had any desire to rest.
Not only the altitude. The cloud forest was wonderment, a true fantasy world of which he'd never even dreamt. Large wisps of cloudy fog would block their vision, and they would try to find their way up through them, tracing backwards the water streams that were fed by the condensation of the fog onto leaves and branches.
The trees were not tall or very graceful. At this altitude, Margarita said, the trees might be hundreds of years older than the tallest trees in the rainforest below them. It was hard to tell what was the tree in the first place - the abundance of moss and other plants growing off the tree branches gave the cloud forests an exotic look that was framed by two meter tall ferns and tiny wicked weeds that would work through the tough canvas pants into an unsuspecting bottom. Snakes, the sheer variety of this type of creature that Kolopak had never seen on Trebus, ranged from a tiny pit viper with a nasty bite to a large anaconda that Hector reassured them would be unable to either pass under the force field barrier that Starfleet had provided, or eat them whole, if it did.
Kanicha was uncomforted. "I hate snakes. It's the only part of the mountain that I hate."
"Who eats them?" Kolopak nudged a slow-moving green snake with white stripes out of his way carefully. Already they had been forced to use the med-kit's snakebite antivenin on him twice, and he was determined there would be no third time.
"Large birds. There are several condors and eagle species up here. They just can't see them through the haze."
Kolopak whistled loudly. "Hey, birds! Dinner time!"
The birds ignored him, for which he was profoundly grateful when he finally spotted one of the condors above him in a tree. The giant avian eye was focused on the Treban, who moved closer to his llama.
The llamas were a constant source of amusement and amazement, too. From the very beginning, when Margarita insisted that the largest, Groucho, haul the llamas' food, Kolopak found himself infatuated with the pack animals.
"Groucho will eat all the llama kibble if he doesn't carry it."
"But he's the biggest - he could carry far more if we put the food on Romeo."
"Romeo is a wimp, Kolopak. Groucho would mug him in a heartbeat."
Wimp and mug were not words that Kolopak knew, but he caught the drift quickly enough when the llamas found a stand of some suitable grazing. One minute Romeo and Caffey were happily chewing, the next, Groucho had knocked the two sideways and was adroitly blocking Felix from any mouthful at all.
Groucho in particular was Kolopak's favorite. Mostly black, he had a white face with black eyebrows and mustache, and his ears were tipped black. The largest and also the best packer, Groucho also had an uncanny knack for finding the best way to get up the steep inclines when waterfalls moved the water downstream meters at a time. Kolopak quickly learned the way to a llama's heart was with peanuts, and Groucho quickly learned that Kolopak was very careful with the supply. Good llama behavior was well rewarded, spitting at the other llamas was not. They got along fine and Groucho learned in one day to answer a whistle from Kolopak with a quick charge for a handful of those delightful little treats.
Caffey was a black llama, but his face, chest and feet were a stark white, giving him a very formal appearance that Margarita enhanced by tying a red bow tie around his halter. He was most adept at finding good grazing, but tended to be overprotective of it once he found it. This llama was the surest footed of them all, so Margarita led him packed with most of their heavy Starfleet issue supplies. She would scratch his neck, the only llama that liked that and he would hum for her to sing along with him. Either years of practice or Margarita's sweet voice made the exercise enchanting to Kolopak.
Felix and Romeo looked like twins, and it took Kolopak a few days to discern the physical differences. Both were a dark tan color, with odd spots of white on their faces. But their characters were entirely different, and he grew to be able to tell them apart more by their stance or their behavior. Felix was as ornery an animal as Kolopak had ever met. If an animal was quietly sitting in the cush position - legs tucked neatly under his body - Felix would be the one most likely to attempt a tackle to pin their head against the ground. Felix thought that the humans around him were fun to tease too, by blowing grassy breath down their necks while following them on the trail. Hector endured with gross insults for the llama, but Margarita frequently had to remind him not to overfeed Felix with the peanuts Hector stashed in his pocket. Hector was as smitten as Kolopak.
Romeo was the sweetest of the pack. He would lick people, snuffling their faces and hair, moving close to them if the humans were unmoving. He disliked having his neck touched, but constantly prodded Margarita and Kanicha for a good back scratch, something none of the other llamas would tolerate. Romeo was fascinated by little bugs and birds, and although his chasing behavior tended to scare away the objects of his interest, he would be happy to lie in the sun and watch the little creatures scurry around. He was patient and kind to Kanicha when she tried to get him to climb up an unsuitable hill. Groucho would simply sit and refuse to look at Kolopak had he done it, but Romeo would sit facing Kanicha, nodding his head while she tried to demonstrate how easy it was for them to go up the trail, but refuse to climb nonetheless. He was bullied by the other llamas all the time, but never once spat at his attackers.
It was also interesting to note that none of the llamas refused to drink the water. The humans preferred to purify it, if not for the sake of the pesticides, but amebic dysentery was not easily treatable on a mountaintop.
The Starfleet issue medical kit was one of the last items Chakotay sent after he stormed out. Several new shipments, some of them very valuable for the trip, arrived hours after he left. A new type of communications device that was pinned to a collar or neckline allowed for quick communication with the rest of the team. Hector was grateful for the compact-sized rations; they greatly reduced his job as cook. The perimeter force fields gave them the comfort of not standing shifts, as if it mattered. Kanicha tried to convince herself that it was an apology, but neither Kolopak nor Margarita made any comment beyond a noncommittal hum, and without any support for the idea from them, she let it pass. His actions were still unforgivable.
"Why?" Kolopak yelled from his tent. "Why did Chakotay send us heated mattress pads, fourteen liters of fire starter, an utterly useless portable refrigeration unit, and not send us something to shut up the hosja monkeys?"
None of his companions understood his vulgarity, but they did share the sentiment; he could hear Kanicha and Hector laugh from the campfire, and Margarita from the pen where she was whispering into Caffey's ear. The howler monkeys were loud. Very loud. From the first dimming of the sky in the evenings, to the deepest part of the night, the howler monkeys lived up to their names.
It began again at dawn. Males, females, babies - all of them were offended at the presence of the humans in the cloud forest and were sure to loudly complain.
The llamas slept through it. No one else did, but then, Margarita bedded each of them down. They knew they were safe.
First, she would prance around with Felix. They would play a game she called "hit or miss". A charging Felix would either veer off and miss her, or she would try to run into his flank, which would spin Felix around and he would make a funny trill in the back of his throat. Margarita assured Kolopak that it was a happy noise, and he took her word for it.
Romeo's evening was always concluded with a bedtime story about a silly llama boy named Romeo. She would tell a story about a llama who flew starships and fought off the invading Romulans. Or the story might be about Romeo winning his Juliet. Kolopak noticed that Romeo had surgically lost any interest he might have had in any Juliet who might come along, but he and llama both enjoyed the stories.
Groucho's bedtime routine was less strenuous than hit or miss, but Margarita was convinced that she had time to achieve her goal: to teach Groucho to dance the tango. Hector pointed out that Caffey was the better dressed with his tuxedo markings of the two, but Groucho had learned the first dozen steps of the choreographed dance, and Margarita expected him to master the entire dance by the following New Years. She had a sizeable bet riding on it.
Caffey had learned to wait patiently for his evening lullaby. The two might duet any number of songs, but they always ended with the llama cushed, legs neatly tucked under him, and Margarita sang sweetly in his ears, "little llama, go to sleep, night is come, the dark is deep, the sun will soon be up, my dear, when you don your pack is near, so go to sleep, little llama, go to sleep." Kolopak had yet to learn if there was a second verse to the song, he was always asleep before it ended.
As the sun rose, the howlers tended to settle down, and the trekkers were able to have the second part of their sleep into the late morning. It reduced their travel time, but the way the clouds hung between the trees and the great fronds of fern, it took a lot of time to accurately trace the stream sources. A geological surveying tricorder had been a godsend. Already it had traced the water supply underground when the stream disappeared, and it had helped them find the one luxury of the trip.
The hot spring-fed pools were completely unexplainable to Kolopak. Margarita and Hector tried, but in the end, Kolopak was simply grateful for their warming comfort after a day of following a chilly stream and a well-named llama. The water was hot and relaxing, and it was Kolopak's personally assumed responsibility to be sure they camped near one as often as possible. No one had thought to bring a bathing suit, but Margarita had solved that dilemma quickly enough. She sat down in the spring, fully clothed. "I stink. My clothes stink. I kill two birds with one bath."
So they bathed in their clothing unless it was strictly a private moment, and watched the uncountable birds from the comforts of their pools.
The birds were startling in their colors and variety. Scarlet macaws and colorful quetzals screeched and called to their mates, and once Kolopak noticed a flock of macaws, greens, blues, reds and golds, picking at a muddy wall that was by all indications, well visited by the flyers. Stunning hummingbirds hovered over vast sprays of orchids and other flowers that perfumed the air.
Dawn, despite the howlers, was a glorious experiment of color and display as the flowers and the birds awakened.
"I can almost forgive the monkeys, that I got to see this dawn," Margarita mumbled around a cup of coffee that Kolopak had just placed in her shaking hands. The cold morning's light had brought her out of her tent as they perched on a naked bluff. No clouds blocked their view as they watched the sun rise over the mountains far off in the east.
He sat down beside her; slightly more rested for all his exhaustion had made the howlers' cries useless. She snuggled up against his arm, savoring the warmth of his body and the beverage. "Don't ask me to forgive them yet, Margarita," he replied. "I'm still in deep need of some serious sleep."
She had to agree. His face, beardless, though she had not noticed him shaving, looked haggard, and she felt a moment's repentance at the steep pace she'd placed on them. But there were still no signs of any pump or source for the chemical they were looking for. Even the traces of it in the stream were gone, and she feared they had missed the pump. "No, I can see you need your beauty rest."
"I do." He replied mildly, sipping his own coffee. Behind them, the llamas stamped and hummed, awaiting their morning kibble with little impatience, but it was enough to encourage Kolopak to abandon the dawn and feed them. As he stood and turned to face them, a glittery flash far above his head drew his attention.
"What was that?"
"What was what?" Margarita still faced eastward to the dawn.
"That flash - up there." He pointed to a ravine above their head.
She looked back briefly and returned to contemplate her coffee. "That's the Arrow."
"Arrow?"
"It's a ravine that looks like it's pointing to an eye. You can't see the eye from here, it's around the side, but we can see it from the village. The rock formations look like an eyebrow over an eye. It's been Uno's Eye for as long as anyone can remember."
Kolopak reached up and gently touched his forehead above one eyebrow. "Ok, but what was the flash?"
She glanced up at the growing cloud line that was approaching their perch.
Another hour and it would be entirely cloud-bound again. "Water? Drops reflecting the sun light?"
"Too big." He scanned the ravine again, watching to see another telltale sparkle. "Do we go up there?"
She sighed. "It's a logical place to look, but I sure don't want to climb it. Where there aren't snakes, it's likely to be a hard climb. Even Groucho wouldn't go up that way. I tried last night."
It was very steep and sheer, with a few trees and plants that might give a good strong hold during a climb.
Again, he caught the flicker of light. "Have you tested the water at the bottom of the ravine?"
"I will this morning."
"It's up there."
She stood and looked up with him. "Tell me why you think so."
He pointed to the log that they had just been resting against. "It's been sawn."
She looked down at the wood and then up to his face. "And there's the trunk it was sawn from."
His finger pointed to a space above their heads in the ravine, where clearly three trees had been neatly removed, allowing light to shine up into the ravine.
"It will be a condensation pump. It needs daytime warmth to work, and those trees had to be moved to give it enough light to work."
She nodded quietly. "The llamas can't get up."
"I can climb that."
She tried not to look disbelieving. "That entire ravine is going to be filled with heat-seeking vipers."
He nodded. "It's a good thing that Chakotay sent those gloves, then." In his last shipment, they had found four pair of chain mail gloves, lined with silk, covered with heavy leather. Hector was all for leaving them behind, but Kolopak thoughtfully slipped them onto Groucho's back.
"Would it be easier to rappel down from the top?"
Kolopak considered where he had seen the flashes. "It's right in the middle. Is there a way to get to the top of the ravine?"
Margarita studied the cliffs carefully. "It's not an easy trek. The best way is to go back to the campground we used two nights ago, and take an easy ascent from the north."
"How long would it take you to get there?"
"With the llamas? All day today. By myself, I could be there at noon if I started now."
He worried she would be pushing herself too hard to accomplish the trek so quickly alone. "Not alone."
She waved off his concern. "We're low on food and supplies. If we don't find that source tomorrow, we have to head back down anyway."
He calculated the climb. "Ideally, I'd like to climb up with a rope attached above me."
She calculated the drop. "Maybe, if we had a way, we could shoot up a line and anchor it without backtracking up to the top."
"If I left now," he mused, "I think I would beat most of the sleepy snakes."
"Presuming they're not already there."
"Dawn was five minutes ago. That rock is still cold."
Yesterday's unexpected rain was suddenly a blessing - too chilly for the snakes to have come out.
"We need a mongoose." She laughed and took a deep drink of the coffee. The dawn colors lighting the sky behind them were forgotten.
"We need you to test this water coming out of the ravine. If I'm right, there should be some chemical in the water down here."
She jumped up and ran for her gear. The test took all of fifteen minutes and confirmed Kolopak's suspicions. The watershed was full of carboxyl molecules, just looking for some selenium to mix with and create a nasty, effective pesticide.
"Why didn't we notice this before?"
She turned her tricorder to the water dripping from the rocks, and traced it down the ravine. "It moves underground here. I'll bet it doesn't come out until that last waterfall where we last found the traces of it."
"I want to get up there before those clouds start moving in. Once they're in, I'm out of sight, and I'll lose the chance to find that flash again."
"How high up was it?"
He tried to gauge the distance, but gave up. "How tall is that tree over there?"
She studied it for a moment. "I don't know either. Fifteen meters?"
"The flash was above it. At least two thirds of the way up."
She took her tricorder remote and started up to the bottom of the ravine. "Maybe I can scan for it, and see if we could arrange it to be beamed out."
The tricorder showed no clear sign of anything glass above them, but Kolopak knew that the basic ingredients for making glass were all in the mountain. The tricorder at this distance would be unable to discern the difference between a piece of glass and the silica and carbonates in the rocks surrounding it.
"Would Chakotay be willing to send us some food and supplies to keep us up here another day?"
She shook her head. "There were some burned bridges there, Kolopak. He's trying to make nice without the apology, but I'm not accepting it, and he knows it."
He tried to interrupt her, to stop her from taking up the offense that was truly only against him, but she held up a hard, stopping his interjection. "No. Chakotay went too far. Until he apologizes to you, to me and to Kanicha, I will have nothing to do with him."
"Will he?"
"There's always a first for everything, Kokopal." She resumed her meditations on the ravine in front of them.
"What about Marcos Diaz? Would he beam something up?"
She looked at him speculatively. "He would if I asked, but there's not a transporter in Café Montigua. Getting the stuff to Guatemala City would take days, probably."
"But he would do it for you."
He looked at her, piercing eyes boring into hers. "Yes, he would do it for me." She put the emphasis on the pronoun. "But you already figured that out, didn't you?" She looked away from his face. "It's a long, long story, Kolopak. It's an old story, from before Marcos was married to Hector's mother, Liberica."
He waited.
"Marcos and I grew up in Café Montigua, just like Kanicha and Hector. Where one was, the other was nearby. As we grew older, we fell in love. Marcos' father wanted to expand the grove, and he wanted a particular coffee tree strain to plant. The only way he could get them was to have his son marry the daughter of the family that owned the plant line… and since I'm not Ladino, it wasn't a suitable match to Marcos' father… I was offered the chance to go to the agronomy school in Texas. While I was gone, Marcos married Liberica." She looked very uncomfortable.
"You are still lovers?" Kolopak asked quietly.
"No, no longer. But we were for a very long time. Liberica left Marcos shortly after Hector's birth. I couldn't come back then. The scandal, my job, my family, his family, there were so many reasons why I couldn't stay."
"Does Hector know?"
"Of course not. The last time I was with Marcos in the village was five years ago. Marcos and I disagreed on a job I wanted to take, and he made an ultimatum. I ignored his wishes."
"But he called you back for this job."
She nodded. "I came back. I nicknamed him El Patron when we were children for a reason. He's bossy and arrogant, just like his father. I'm afraid that he'll do to Hector what was done to him."
"He and Kanicha?"
"Yes. Kanicha is very close to being in love with Hector, but she's Mayan, not Ladino."
"Do these things matter?"
She waved at the canopy above them. "Up there, in the stars, maybe not. Here, yes, it does."
They were quiet for a moment, listening to the morning birdsongs from high above.
"It would be safer to rappel down. I brought the basic equipment, but I haven't rappelled in years. Kanicha can do it in her sleep…"
"No!" he said forcefully. "No!"
"I agree. But she may know of a quicker way to the Eye. If I can get the two of you up there, I'm confident of Kanicha's rappelling expertise to get you heading down that cliff safely."
Kolopak looked around at their camp. The llamas were quietly rooting around for something to graze, but from experience, he knew that within the hour the morning frolic would begin.
Caffey would begin to hum, and start sniffing at Romeo's ears. Romeo would get annoyed and move away, probably finding a bug or bird to investigate. Felix would try to harass Caffey by jumping into whatever feed Caffey was trying to protect, and Groucho would start dancing. If the howlers were close enough, they would try to run over to the monkeys, butting and pushing the others out of the way to satisfy their curiosity. Felix, for all that he was a good ten kilos less in weight than Groucho, would try to pin him to the ground, an antic involving a great deal of chasing and silliness. Romeo would get distracted from his insatiable curiosity about little things (whatever would a llama find interesting about small hopping insects still mystified them all, but Romeo would gladly watch a bug for extended periods of time if the other llamas were quiet) and join in the frolic.
Unexpectedly, the cloud mist, completely blocking views of anything more than a meter or two away, did not discourage them in the least. "Maybe their humming is radar," Hector had suggested, listening to some seriously silly noises coming from the pen.
"Sonar's more like it in this humidity," Margarita had replied in a joking tone.
Kolopak considered the options as he dealt out the llama kibble into the bags. Kanicha was still in her tent, taking advantage of the quiet before the howler's dawn serenade. Hector wasn't in his tent, but it seemed probable that he was using the nearby hot spring for his morning clean up before starting the day. Margarita has strolled over to Caffey, a handful of kibble for him while she chatted to him quietly. He wondered how many of her secrets the llama heard. "Suppose," he said to Groucho, "suppose that I was to find a route with Kanicha up to the Eye. Suppose you were able to make the trip, because we know that Felix is not going to help us make any speed." Felix had two speeds: slow and get-out-of-the-way-and-let-me-at-the-peanuts speed. The second was rarely sustained more than fifteen seconds per burst. Even unpacked, Felix was not as sure-footed as Caffey or Groucho fully loaded. "And suppose, Hector was to take the other boys up the other route…but then I'd have to come back up the ravine carrying that pump…No, I think you'll need to stay down here."
Groucho bared his teeth at Kolopak, a clear sign that he wanted less talk and more kibble.
Margarita had returned to look at the dawn and the rolling clouds. It looked to be a thick hazy afternoon.
"Lokokap," she called, and Kolopak patted the llama's shoulder affectionately before turning. She certainly had managed to twist his name into a variety of nicknames. "What do you want to do?"
"What little toys of Starfleet do we have that might make this a little safer?" He asked neutrally. The Starfleet supplies still bothered Kanicha, who barely agreed to trying an experimental comm-link badge, much less use a single thing that had come from that uncle of hers… She frequently stunned him with her choice of invective when discussing Chakotay, but he overlooked it, reminding himself that Kanicha was neither his mother nor his grandmother, both of whom were far more reserved in their speech and in their vocabulary.
Margarita pulled out her inventory, a quickly scrawled list that she had compiled while they were packing.
He looked at the length of
rope she had brought along. It was easily
"Okay, it's a climb."
Kanicha joined them, her own cup of coffee in her hands. "What's a climb?"
"Up the Arrow. We found the chemicals in the water this morning, we think the pump is up there."
Her eyes lit up. "I get to climb up the Arrow."
Margarita raised a restraining hand. "Slow down, Chica. We haven't made any decisions yet about climbing that cliff."
"You can't do it, Margarita. It's been years since you've been up here."
Kolopak listened to her wheedling voice, but it grated like a whine on his ears. "I'm doing it, Kanicha." His tone allowed no compromise.
"You can't, you don't have the strength."
He shifted his eyes away from hers, his face emotionless.
"Margarita, he's in no condition to climb the Arrow." This might be true, the Treban thought, but under no circumstances would he let Kanicha climb that ravine.
"You didn't see what Kolopak saw, or even where he saw it. It's only logical for him to make the climb."
She turned calculating eyes on him. "Ever do any mountain climbing before? Ever use a pick and pitons to go up the side of a cliff or ravine?"
Kolopak pulled on one ear. "Many years ago, on Trebus. We were there for a… It doesn't matter. I've done some climbing. And the longer we wait, the harder it's going to be for me to get up there safely."
Margarita pulled out the portable weather station and listened to the report. "We've got a bank of clouds rolling in, they'll be here in less than an hour."
His shoulder sagged. "We've got to get up there."
"We've got to get up there safely. From here, it's a three-day hike back down to the village. We can get more supplies and come back up."
Kanicha nudged him with her arm. "You told me you wanted to be at Tikal for the equinox. If we head down now, you'll make it."
Her attempt to manipulate him out of going up the ravine and leaving the task to her lacked all charm. Both Margarita and Kolopak glared at her, but she changed her tack. "I can do this, Margarita. Or we can go down and get my father, he'll take me up that way."
Margarita ignored the outburst. "Kanicha, do you know where we are?"
Kanicha rolled her eyes. "We're at the bottom of the Arrow. It's the most used camping spot in the forest. I've been here hundreds…" Margarita's hand stopped the exaggeration, "Ok, dozens of times. My father and I took a team of solo climbers up here last summer. They climbed it. I watched."
"How?" he asked urgently. "What was their route?"
She stepped back and pointed to the ravine. "They started there, climbed up to that outcropping, took a break, then headed up to that rock that's covered with those white flowers, swung around…" her voice faded. "What?"
"Wrong side of the ravine.
Unless you can jump
She did not pout when shown the problem, Kolopak realized, as she
immediately turned to look at the other side of the ravine. She approached it, sizing it up slowly, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she tapped her fingers on her belt.
"That's looking pretty tough."
"Besides, I didn't bring rock climbing equipment, just rappelling gear."
Kanicha looked hopeful, her face lighting up. "I could get Kolopak up there. We could get to the Eye by nightfall, you could stay here and I could get him down the side."
"We're almost out of food, Chica."
Kolopak noticed that whenever anyone called Kanicha by that nickname, her nostrils flared and she got a stubborn look between her eyebrows. "Who's out of food? We could eat up here for three days without any problems at all."
"You could. Maybe I could if I could get past eating meat. But I don't have the food for the llamas. There's not enough grazing for them up here, other than right here. Even then, this spot will be grazed out today."
Margarita pointed worriedly at the llamas.
Hector joined them, munching on a wild carrot he had pulled from the ground nearby. "You find something?"
"We have. That pump is up there."
Hector looked at their anxious faces. "So what's the problem?"
"Climbing up there. We don't have the equipment."
Hector laughed and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. "Sure we do. Chakotay sent it."
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