Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

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

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

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

Police-assisted suicide.

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

I understand pain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ro considered the despair that had stalked so many of her friends and loved ones. Few, if any, of her intimates had ever had such sound reasons for despondence as bond-sundered Andorians. These were people for whom complex reproductive biology was the single defining attribute of their lives. After suddenly losing that capability, how could one not succumb to hopelessness? Ro felt an uncharacteristic but irresistible urge to get a drink. Or perhaps several.

“Now, about that report you wanted,” Dizhei said, her antennae probing forward as though sniffing the air.

Ro shut down her padd and lowered it. A bead of sweat traced a leisurely path between her shoulder blades.

“It will wait,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of Dizhei’s burden—and by Anichent’s hopelessness. Routine police work now seemed utterly trivial by comparison. “Please forget I asked. And forgive me.”

Ro hastily excused herself, then stepped back into the cool corridor before Dizhei could see the tears she could no longer restrain.

Halfway through her third glass of spring wine, Ro felt considerably calmer.

“Whoa there,” said Treir, who sat across the table in Ro’s dimly lit booth. She eyed the two empty wine-glasses significantly. “Maybe you’d better consider slowing down to sublight speed, Lieutenant.”

“I’m off duty at the moment,” Ro said, swirling her wine. This vintage was a little drier than she was used to, but still serviceable. “And sometimes the best way to handle your troubles is to drown them.”

The Orion woman offered a wry smile, her teeth a dazzling white against her jade-green skin, much of which was displayed by the strategically placed gaps in her designer dabo girl costume. She raised her warp core breach, a beverage Ro had never been able to distinguish from industrial solvent, in a toast. Although Treir’s drinking vessel dwarfed Ro’s, in the viridianskinned woman’s large but graceful hands it was proportionally the same size.

“To the drowning of troubles,” Treir said, and they both drank. “Or at least to taking them out for a nice, brisk swim. Let’s see, now. Which troubles are in most urgent need of drowning? There’s the Andorians that have taken up residence in Ensign ch’Thane’s quarters. And the signing ceremonies for Bajor’s entry