The shock was overwhelming.
“Norinda…” he whispered in the silence of his sealed office.
Their encounter in the Mandylion Rift still baffled him—everything this woman was, everything she had done, no matter all the years that had since passed.
And to see her now, at a time when all of his life seemed to be measured by loss and longing, Kirk wondered if he could withstand her again.
But Norinda shared none of his apprehension. Her face was transformed by a welcoming smile—the terrible smile he’d feared and craved.
And with that smile, Kirk had his answer.
After what Mister Scott had reported about the state of the Calypso, Picard was surprised to find it in such relatively good condition. Even the air smelled fresher, as if the recirculators had been repaired. If he hadn’t known that Kirk and McCoy had just escaped from their Reman captors within the past few hours, he might have thought that Kirk had been aboard for days, toiling incessantly to bring the ship up to Starfleet standards.
Then Picard had stepped onto the bridge from the lift to see Kirk in the captain’s office, and was appalled by what he witnessed next.
The moment Kirk glimpsed Norinda, Picard saw the flash of recognition quickly turn to shock, and shock to horror.
Picard knew the reason and pitied Kirk.
With each step Norinda took toward that glass wall, she changed.
Her reflection in the glass wall showed her Assessor’s uniform shrinking round her, molding into a glossy black jumpsuit that was a second layer of skin, until…she became the image overlaying Kirk’s stricken face: Kirk’s love, his life, his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.
Teilani. Kirk’s lost wife, mother to his son. Cruelly returned to him.
Picard felt almost mesmerized as he saw Kirk press his hand against the clear wall.
As on the other side, Norinda/Teilani raised her hand to—
“Stop it!” McCoy shouted, startling Picard out of his near-trance state. The doctor stood on the lower level of the bridge. “For the love of God, man, make her stop!”
McCoy was right! Picard rushed at Norinda, grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled her away from the clear wall and the tortured man behind it.
“Change back!”
“Jean-Luc, you’re hurting me!” Teilani gazed up at Picard in hurt appeal, her beauty captured to the last frightening detail, from her delicate Klingon forehead ridges to the Romulan sweep of her ears. But she was younger than she had been when Picard had met her, with no trace of the virogen scar that had marked her later in life. Picard realized he was looking at Kirk’s idealized memory of his beloved wife, pulled from his mind, his heart, his soul.
“Let him go!” Picard commanded.
“I can’t,” the apparition said. “He loves me, and I must love him.” She held up her hands in supplication to Picard, and the black jumpsuit she wore, its plunging neckline reaching almost to her navel, began melting from her.
Picard forced himself to slap her, hard across her face. He winced. Siren she might be, but she still felt all too real.
She gasped, and for an instant, her face seemed to flicker into shadow. But then Teilani looked up at him again in defiance, and she snarled at him in Klingon, “I must love him!”
Picard seized hold of her again, determined to break whatever telepathic bond this alien creature had forged with Kirk. Remember she’s an alien shapeshifter, he told himself. He pictured her as the Reman female who had towered over him, with the strength to throw him across the bridge. He readied himself to strike again.
“Let her go or I’ll kill you!” It was Nran who shouted at him, sobbing.
Picard heard the scuffle that told him how La Forge was keeping the Romulan youth from interfering.
“Can’t you see what you’re doing to him, woman!” McCoy stomped up the steps to the upper level of the bridge.
But Teilani shook her head back and forth like a child having a tantrum. “No, no—he’s doing it to me!”
Picard raised his hand, then stopped hearing the whisper of the transparent wall opening, as Kirk emerged from his sealed office.
“No, Jean-Luc,” he said. “That’s not necessary…”
Picard stepped back and Teilani turned to face the man whose memories had somehow brought her into being.
Slowly she spread her arms wide to him.
“James,” she said, and her voice was Teilani’s. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Your name is Norinda,” Kirk said, his voice unsteady. “Not Teilani. Never Teilani.”
But Picard heard the last traces of uncertainty still in his voice. And so did she.
“But I am Teilani for you.” She stepped closer to him, within reach of his embrace, and Picard knew the struggle Kirk endured not to simply give in and hold her close once more.
“No,” Kirk told her, “you can’t be. Because I won’t let you.”
She touched his face, his tears.
“It’s what you want,” she said. “I know what you feel.”
Kirk nodded. “It’s what I wanted,” he agreed, and took her hand from his face, pushed it gently away. “But now there’s something else, someone else, I need even more.”
Pain, Picard thought suddenly. It was what had freed him and La Forge from Norinda’s influence. It was the one force stronger than love. And just like love, there were many forms of it. The pain of Teilani’s loss had at last freed Kirk, as well.
Teilani’s perfect skin became the drab gray cloth of an Assessor’s uniform once more. Then Norinda, as a Romulan, looked back at Picard, eyes dark with pain of her own.
“I understand none of you,” she said. “When all I offer is love, and peace, and understanding….”
“We need other things as well,” Picard explained. He decided he’d try to take advantage of her undisguised distress. “Why don’t you take Nran back to the galley. I think some tea would help—”
Norinda slipped her arm through Nran’s, and with that simple movement, her figure became fuller, her face younger, her uniform snugger. For the first time, Picard found himself wondering if she was as vulnerable to others’ influence as others were to hers.
“It is you who refuse to accept the gift I offer, who need my help,” she said with a touch of petulance. She looked over at Kirk in pity. “Where is this thing you want more than your own happiness? Where is your son?”
Kirk looked at Picard, as if expecting Picard to say something.
But Picard said nothing, not certain what Kirk wanted.
“Jean-Luc,” Kirk said at last. “You know.”
Picard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jim. I don’t.”
“But he’s here with—”
A new voice burst out across the bridge, sweeping Kirk’s confusion aside.
“Daa-ad!”
It was Joseph.
22
S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57487.7
Kirk whirled around to see Joseph charge at him from behind his own desk!
Kirk opened his arms to his son and lifted him up in an unbreakable bear hug. Beyond maintaining any semblance of composure, he kissed his son’s head, his cheek, held him out to look at him, then pulled him close again. The heart-stopping shock of seeing Teilani again hadn’t faded. The moment of recognition had been
