Goedel, Escher, and Bach... I Remember You
A Star-Trek: Voyager/Highlander Crossover
by Henry Wyckoff

Chapter 2

Captain Janeway paced back and forth, strongly resisting the urge to throttle the Nightman's neck then and there. "Are you sure that this is the work of the Borg?"

The Nightman held in his smile. He'd dealt with this type of question many times. "Captain . . . I don't read the future. This could just as easily be the spontaneous destruction of the planet's surface without any help from volcanic or seismic activity."

The Captain was furious. "I will not put up with sarcasm from one of my officers!"

He shrugged, "The data is here for your own analysis. If I'm wrong, you have no idea how good that would make me feel."

He looked at his wrists again, his eyes becoming distant. At that very moment, the Communications officer held her head again, holding back her scream of pain. Nobody else seemed to notice.

Janeway shook her own head, and tapped her comm badge, "Tuvok?"

The response wasn't as groggy as her own had been, "Yes, Captain?"

"Please wake up the senior staff. We have a possible crisis on our hands. Set up a meeting for thirty minutes."

"Yes, Captain."

She looked at the Nightman. "Thank you. You're relieved."

He nodded, saying nothing as he left. The rest of the bridge crew, however, stayed. Only the Communications officer left, having asked for a replacement on her own, citing a possible medical problem.

* * *

The Nightman lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. His stomach gripped at him, and he knew he needed something really off the beaten track. "Computer. Make me an Irish Kegbomb. One imperial pint."

There was a sharp beep. "There is no Irish explosive in the database in liquid form."

He grimaced, "It is an alcoholic drink. Add two shots of Absolut vodka to one half Guinness over one half Bass."

A few more moments. "Bass is a fish. The liquefied form is not in the database."

"List the pale ales in your database."

After the fifteenth on the list, he picked it. It wasn't as old a brand as Bass, but it would work. It soon materialized, black as Guinness, but with its own unique taste. He smiled, remembering those many times he'd challenged engineers to drinking contests, and they'd always slid under the table with this drink in their hands. He could slam down six pints in a sitting, but the engineers slid under only after three.

It was now 0400. He had an urge to drink the whole day through on some real scotch that he had hidden under his mattress. Two fifths, which would be more than enough to keep him sloshed for the next twelve hours. Before he could reach for the scotch, there was a ring at the door.

"Enter!" he said loudly.

It was the Communications officer, Lendaxa Valois. She looked half-hungover and totally annoyed at something. "We need to talk." It wasn't even a request. It was a full command.

He was confused, for good reason. "Come in. Have an Irish Kegbomb." He replicated another and handed it to her. She sat and took it reluctantly. But after she took a sip, the look on her face faded a little. Perhaps it tasted more like a Betazoid drink than an Earth drink . . . "So . . . what's on your mind?"

Although he was what one would call a perfect gentleman in thought and deed, he was still a man at heart, and he couldn't help but interpret this scene in the wrong way . . . or at least, he wished that his interpretation was the real one, while knowing that it wasn't. His eyes scanned her quite quickly, off and on when he thought she wasn't looking, and he had to fight to keep his breath under control. A Betazoid she was, but she looked everything like the perfect Spanish woman to him . . . one that he'd been married to long ago, in fact. He successfully kept the name 'Becky' from his thoughts.

Lendaxa fought very hard to keep from slapping him full in the face. That was evident to the Nightman, but not which thought or deed fueled that hatred. "The question is," she said in scraping tones, "what is on your mind?" Her face was tense as she nearly screamed, "Do you have any idea what kind of agony you've been causing me?!"

"Excuse me?" He was honestly shocked and confused, and she read in to that. She wasn't too cruel at heart, and sighed. Some of the tension left her.

"Ever since I've known you, you've been so guarded that I've barely felt you. I've expected that of any of the Maquis . . . but ever since we encountered what you thought was evidence of the Borg, your feelings have been so violent that they've caused me headaches, and they made me feel -- " She choked, looking as if she wanted to both cry and hit someone at the same time. "HOW DO YOU STAND TO LIVE WITH YOURSELF?!" she screamed. "Not even a Vulcan can have so much depth of pain and hate." The next was a whisper. "What caused you to feel such pain?"

The Nightman swallowed audibly. He knew that the telepathic races would be able to most certainly detect his active projections, as they would any human's projections, but he'd thought that he had effectively locked down all his emotions so well that all they would detect is that he felt emotions. He didn't know what to do or say. But he knew what he needed. "This sounds like a scotch talk." He grabbed for the scotch and opened it. "I have a feeling that I'm going to need it."

She looked at the bottle. "That's not synthahol."

"No. But the drink you have is."

Shrugging, she sipped some more, while he slammed down his own Irish Kegbomb and immediately followed that with three healthy swallows of the scotch. Nice and smooth single malt scotch that threatened to scrape out the lining of his throat and make him go into spasms.

"So what is it that you want to know?" he asked.

"What are you?"

From the sound of the question, he knew that she had sensed somewhat of what he was, and just wanted to hear it from his own lips. "You're a full Betazoid. Why can't you just read it from my mind?"

She grimaced, "That's immoral. I can't help but hear what radiates from you, or anyone else, but to invade your thoughts without your consent would be rape."

He nodded. "That makes sense. Would you be offended if I asked you to keep with your sense of morals and stay out of my mind . . . as well as my past?"

That was a slap on the face, but she held her anger in. "Because you're not of my race, I'll interpret that as ignorance . . . but as for your past . . I just want the headaches to stop. Maybe if you shared your pain with me, you might . . . feel less pain." Then she smiled, "And I would feel less pain."

The Nightman shook his head. "I can't. Please . . . just back off."

Lendaxa changed tactics. Smoothly, she moved over to him, caressing the sides of his jaw, whispering softly, "I can feel your pain. Think of how good you would feel if you just let it all go . . . "

The stone-heart expression on his face shattered her attempts, and she knew it. "I'm sorry, but I just can't tell you what I've held in for over five hundred -- " He stopped himself sharply, realizing what he'd just said.

Lendaxa's eyes widened as she realized the import of what he had stopped himself from saying. She could feel the truthfulness of his statement, partly because of the emotions he projected, but also because he was drunk enough to let his barriers slip. "You're not human!"

He looked directly at her. "I am very human."

She was confused, because that statement was true as well . . . or he believed it, at least. "But humans live only a hundred years at the most!"

He nodded. "So they do."

"But you said yourself that you're at least five hundred years old!"

"I'm drunk . . . slip of the tongue . . . "

Lendaxa grabbed his face so that he couldn't help but stare her in the eyes. "I can tell the difference between truth and lie. I felt the truth in that slip of the tongue. You are different."

He slammed down some more scotch and broke away from her soft grip. He got up, pacing back and forth. He knew now that lying was out of the question. "Dammit! Look . . . if anyone else found out what I was . . . "

"What would it matter? Hasn't it occurred to you that we're a few decades from home? What would it matter to anyone?"

He looked into her eyes, fear shaking her nerves. His fear. "It would matter to me. Mortals must never know about my kind."

"And what would happen?"

He drained the rest of the bottle. "Many of our kind has been killed by Hunters. Others were killed by lucky mortals who did the right thing unknowingly . . . some became the victims of science and medicine." He shuddered.

Something clicked, "But wait! You said 'mortals'! Doesn't that imply that you're an immortal?"

The Nightman laughed, "That's a misnomer, though it's also what we call ourselves. We can't age or die under normal circumstances. If you ran me through with a sword or shot me with a phaser, I'd get back up. But there's a way for us to die."

Lendaxa had enough sense not to ask how an immortal died.

Suddenly there was a red alert. The lights dimmed, and the sirens blared. The Nightman paled as he looked out the window. They saw a sight that made them very, very afraid.

A Borg ship approached very quickly and stopped at exactly 100 km from the ship, but it was so large that it looked like it could have been 1 meter away.

Just like clouds, or landing on the moon. Without reference points, scale meant nothing.

*

"That looks real fine!" said Francois, his face as happy as a golden retriever's as he looked at the field of corn. "That's the best job of weedin' I've ever seen." Though the man's name was French, his accent was thoroughly Southern. Maybe he came from a Cajun family that had moved out of Louisiana?

His assessment of this man was correct from the beginning. He was born simple, but knew what was important in life: good food, a solid roof over the head, and a straight row of green corn free of weeds. He smiled, nodding at his own handiwork. "I was a farmer off and on. It's even fun nowadays."

"You were?" His face lit up. "I thought you were with Starfleet!" Complex thoughts often confused Francois, unless someone was patient enough to explain all of the aspects of an issue. That was something that his new helper had in great abundance.

His eyes grew distant as he relived the past in his own mind. "I was in Starfleet for only fifteen years. Before then . . . I was working at the University of Barcelona, teaching history."

Several moments passed. "You must be really smart, huh? Knowing all that history. What kind of history do you know?"

He smiled, "Just about everything that happened after the year 1000, especially in Europe and Africa. I didn't pay much attention to what happened before then, since the history of those times aren't what I consider to be worth remembering."

Francois looked confused, "But isn't all history worth remembering? Like my mom says, if you don't remember something, it's dead."

He nodded. "That's right. And if you forget all the unpleasant things, they'll die forever."

Francois still looked troubled, but he didn't go down that road anymore. "That's a really nice row of corn."

"Yes, Francois. It's nice."

In the distance, the Brit, who later introduced herself as Mary Higgins, stood in silence, watching the two. If either one of them saw her, they would have seen the soft smile that rarely appeared.

"I'll see you inside, Francois. Mary has some tea ready for me."

"Nice corn."

He walked back inside out of the heat and humidity. It was enough to make even bathing only a momentary break from the agony. All the houses were true havens because they had dessicators at all the inlets. It was true air conditioning minus all the humidity, and he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief as he took off his Australian-style hat and wiped the sweat off his face.

This was where he rested whenever he wasn't out working in the fields or doing odd chores. It was quite spartan, yet seemed very elegant in the cleanliness and arrangement of the items in here. The only furniture in this room was the futon and a small table with two seats.

He had a private bathroom, where he had built an old-fashioned bath in the place of the sonic shower, which saved on water . . . but didn't have that relaxing feel to it. The only person who even knew about this was Mary, who had insisted on making sure that her charge had adequate facilities, and when she saw the fruits of his labor, found it "rather quaint, in a charming sort of way."

As he took off his sweat-logged clothes, the water was running in the tub, and by the time he was done, his bath was ready. The sheer pleasure of heat penetrating all of his aching bones and joints put him into a deep sleep . . .

. . ."I wondered what happened to you." The voice barely hid the amusement.

He opened up his eyes to find Mary, sitting on the floor against the wall with a cup of tea in her hand while he lay in the tub, the water still pleasantly hot. Most men might have been embarrassed on waking up to this situation, but he himself wasn't embarrassed. At his old age, it took rare things to embarrass him . . .

"That is the one thing in this house that makes me green with envy," Mary came close to chuckling. "I never had the luxury of soaking in a bath." She frowned, "I grew up in a bad place, and never even bathed. And when I got to 'civilization', the only things available were sonic showers."

He leaned back his head, looking at the ceiling of brown adobe. "I've never asked about your past. I'd say you still sound troubled."

She lowered her eyes. "You do not want to hear my story. There are too many sad stories in this world."

He couldn't help but laugh cynically, "Mary . . . You'd be surprised."

Mary's eyes snapped back at him very sharply, a mix of hurt and anger in her face, and then when she saw his own face, it softened. "I never asked you about your own past . . . after that first day." She'd heard about the Borg from the rare newscasts that reached this isolated colony. Those had come while he recovered from his many days of wandering from the crash site. She never asked him anything about his past again after she learned the news, figuring that it would be better for him not to be reminded. Better to farm corn and forget in the midst of hard work.

His eyes closed tightly as the sounds momentarily returned, but they were fainter than before. But he would never forget.

A soft hand touched his face, her own face inches from his own, as she whispered, "I'm so sorry. I wish I could make you forget."

There were so many things he wanted to do, but the habits of centuries firmly gripped him, and all he did was say, "So can I, but I can never forget."

He had the feeling that he said the wrong thing, or what she didn't want to hear, because her stoic mask returned, and she got up. "Memory fades, though."