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From: pegeel@aol.com (Pegeel)
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: NEW: "The Red Queen's Repose"  VOY, J, 1/11
Date: 1 Mar 1996 18:48:26 -0500
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Sorry this has taken so long.  It turned out to be a long story, and a   
hard one to get right.  At least I *hope* it's right.  Point of   
interest.  "Mzee" is Swahili for an honoured elder... it's one of the   
words that can mean "grandmother".  And Macedon, thanks for looking it   
up for me!  For the uninitiated, this is the fourth story in a chain.    
The first story is "Talking Stick" by Macedon, the second is "Circle" by  

me, the third is "A Cherished Alienation"  again by Macedon.  All three   
are in the archives, and "A Cherished Alienation" is in the process of   
being reposted... or has already been, depending on which service you   
have and how well AOL has been doing its job.  Macedon also has a copy  
ready to ship y'all if necessary, and can be reached at  
"jrz3@psuvm.psu.edu".  The reason I bring this up is because these  
stories really do each have an effect on each other, and "The Red  
Queen's Repose" will make a *lot* more sense to you if you've at least  
read "Cherished" beforehand.  
  
On to the disclaimers.  
  
Voyager is the property of Paramount, now and forever, as are the   
characters pertaining thereto.  Thus has it been, thus shall it ever   
be... or at least as long as the copyrights hold out.  The material   
created by Macedon in his links is *his* and I'll help whomp anyone who   
says otherwise.  My own material is my own, however, and that includes   
the material below.  (Excluding the Lewis Carroll quote.  Lewis Carroll   
and both of the "Alice" books, not to mention the Snark and the Boojum,   
belong to the world, and the world is the better for them.)  
  
Hope you enjoy it.  
  
                   Peg  
  
  
  
  
  
"Now! Now!" cried the Queen.  "Faster! Faster!"  And they went so fast   
that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the   
ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was quite   
exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground,   
breathless and giddy.   
  The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, "You may   
rest a little, now."   
  Alice looked round her in great surprise.  "Why, I do believe we've   
been under this tree the whole time!  Everything's just as it was!"   
  "Of course it is," said the Queen, "What would you have it?"   
  "Well, in *our* country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd   
generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time   
as we've been doing"   
  "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.  "Now, *here*, you see, it   
takes all the running *you* can do, to keep in the same place.  If you   
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as   
that."   
  "I'd rather not try, please!" said Alice....."   
   
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS   
Lewis Carroll.   
Old enough to be public domain, published enough that if you can't find   
a copy you aren't trying.   
   
   
   
"The Red Queen's Repose"   
   
by   
   
Peg Robinson, a.k.a. Pegeel@AOL.com   
   
C.1996   
   
   
  I would rather not be in the Delta Quadrant.   
   
  Oh, it's a fascinating place; under other circumstances, in some other  

situation, I would love to explore its boundaries; ferret out the   
secrets of every star, wander through the market places, and forums, and  

bazaars, through the streets and by-ways of its many worlds.  After all:  

"We are explorers."   
  I've said that enough times.  It's cold comfort; an attempt to hold on  

to the life I once had, the role I was familiar with.  I once explored   
for no reason but joy in curiosity satisfied, in the relative safety of   
the Alpha Quadrant.  Now I explore of necessity, with no safety to be   
found in over seventy light years range.   
   
The explorations seem to turn inward as often as outward now.  The   
challenges are endless, the demand for change constant; and there aren't  

many guideposts. The reliable things aren't so reliable anymore, and I   
have to look for new solutions to problems I had thought long since   
answered beyond question or debate.  I suppose, in a way, it's as great   
a test of my own commitment to discovery as I could ever face, but I   
can't say I wouldn't often prefer to have been able decline the test.   
  Oh, well.  Even cold comfort is still comfort, of a sort.    
   
  We are explorers.   
   
*********************************************************   
   
  I returned to the story circle five weeks after my first entrance.  It  

was a hard wait, and I would have gone sooner if I hadn't needed to   
claim a sliver of revenge.  It was bad enough that I'd frozen like a   
rabbit in the glare of a handlight at the simple use of my own name.    
I'd thought I'd been prepared for the shock of decompression, for   
entering the circle as just me.  Somehow I'd never thought about the   
question of names, or how I'd react when the man who's served beside me   
for all these months looked me in the eye and addressed me as "Kathryn".  
 
The humiliation of finding myself behaving like a sour spinster who's   
just been goosed by a drunk, and for so little reason, was hard to brush  

off.  Chakotay's too much the humorist not to have seen the humor in it.  
 
A grown woman undone by the use of her own name, in an informal setting,  

that she *knew* was an informal setting... I haven't felt like such a   
jackass in years.  And then I'd managed to make a mess of my attempt to   
pull his leg in return... and given him yet another reason to laugh...   
and another reason for annoyance.  I could have gotten past that.  Not   
easily, mind you, but I was working on it.  The circle still called, and  

I wanted to go back.   
  But then he had to come to my door and noodge me.  I mean *really*...   
"Maybe when you come to the circle I'll tell the story of why I kept the  

name 'Joseph' "  And all the while with that damned "butter wouldn't   
melt in my mouth" innocence, wide-eyed as a thirteen year old altar boy.  

  I sat out the next four weeks in the face of Tuvok's escalating   
efforts to lure me back, knowing that if it was a pain in the neck for   
me it was probably no less a pain for Chakotay... and served him right.   

The man is a menace, and much too aware of his own charm.  A simple   
"Come on back...we'll still be there when you're ready" and I would have  

been there like a shot.  All I'd really been doing that evening was what  

I'd been doing most evenings in the four weeks since I'd talked with   
Paris: reading over every text on methods of command I could find in the  

computer's data banks.  That night it had been "Command Seen Side Wise:   

A Treatise on Alternative Approaches to Leadership" by Commodore Nyota   
Uhura, rtrd..  She's become a favorite of mine, and not just because I   
remember her from my days at the Academy, when she stalked the campus   
like an aging lioness, her gray hair a halo around a face so striking it  

made us young women think yearningly that, if we could look like that at  

her age, we'd sell our souls.  The texts she wrote, and her memoirs,   
have a delighted, irreverent tone; and I've found a thousand odd,   
unexpected insights into leadership that may, God willing, help me find   
an antidote to over twenty years of following in the footsteps of the   
likes of Tom Paris' father.  But as much as I'm enjoying Uhura, and as   
embarrassed as I was over my own stupidity, when I heard Chakotay's and   
Tuvok's voices out in the corridor that evening, muffled but still   
identifiable through the sound proofing, I was ready to set my padd   
aside.  I stalled mainly because of the tag end of fluster left from the  

week before and a worried uncertainty as to whether, having botched the   
thing entirely, I was so much *wanted* there as someone they couldn't   
politely leave out now that I'd made my entrance.   
  And then the "Red Napoleon" had to get clever, and try to push my   
buttons.   
   So I waited it out in my quarters, getting by on the friendly, if   
challenging, company of  Mzee Nyota.   
   At the end of four weeks I decided I'd held out long enough. I really  

did want to hear that story, and dignity wasn't one of the more   
important attributes recommended by the authors I'd been reading.  Uhura  

had plenty to say in favor of it.. but more to say in favor of little   
things like empathy and humor, and connection.  "Dignity is no use when   
it isolates. James Kirk was often no more than a laughing madman.  But   
he was a loved and trusted madman, and a passionate leader who gave his   
all, and that's worth a hundred sober icebergs, silent and immured in   
their command demeanor.  Better to fail in dignity...and succeed in the   
hearts of your crew.  Dignity will not stand by you, in the end.  A ship  

of loyal crewmen will, so long as they know and love who they follow."    

So I set my dignity aside, and even my green and my beads, for all I   
love them, and went to the circle.   
   
 Understand: I knew there would be a sting in the tail of the story.    
I'd watched him as he told the first part that day in my ready room, and  

I'd listened to his voice.  I'd seen the anger there, heard it twist and  

bite into his words.  I wasn't going in blind, any more than I went into  

the circle blind the first time.  But like the first time, I was   
ambushed; caught off-guard by the anger and hurt that tore free.   
  I said afterwards that I knew he hadn't intended to provoke a   
confrontation.  It was hard to say; hard to find anything to say that   
night.  I don't think he saw what I saw, for all we were both there.    
But I had to say something.  He'd bled for us, had led his old crew to   
bleed for us, and as frightened as I was, I wanted to find some way to   
let him know that I'd listened, and that I wasn't going to turn and rip   
at him.  I've done that enough times before, and for less reason.   
   
  I'm not as good as I'd like at relationships.  I'm good at numbers,   
and logic, at sudden leaps of scientific intuition; I'm good at   
regulations and order; but I'm not really good at people, though I try.   

Oh, I won't say I'm terrible.  I've been working at it too many years to  

be terrible.  But it's harder for me than for some.  Part of it is not   
always knowing how to hold a balance between the role of the Captaincy   
and the role of "just Kathryn".  The dignity thing again.  "Kathryn" can  

be a terrible romp.  I've often felt the Captain shouldn't be.    
   Part of it is the separation that comes from being too bright, too   
interested in the wrong things to really quite connect with most of the   
people in the world.  That's one of the things I love about that   
hellspark, B'Elanna.  If I start talking about the superselection   
sectors in a Hilbert space she knows what I mean, and doesn't get that   
glazed look most folks do, even in Star Fleet.  But with most people I   
have to work a bit, where others seem to step in easily with open   
revelations and easy conversations.   And sometimes, when I'm angry, or   
too emotional, it all goes sour.  I rip out with a comment I never   
should have made, or worse, freeze up like an iceberg, not knowing what   
to say.  I usually try to pass that off as reserve.   
   With Chakotay it's twice as hard.  He isn't the easiest man in the   
world to know how to reach.  He seems to hover between a calm   
professional demeanor; tough, frustrated anger; and a relaxed intimacy   
that throws me off-center.  I never know if I'm talking to a Star Fleet   
officer, a Maquis Captain, or a friend.  I don't always know which one I  

want to be talking to either.  The officer is easiest.  That's what I   
usually choose.  It's safer for both of us.  But even then, sometimes I   
get it wrong.   
   That night, trying to find a way to reach him that wouldn't rake   
through pain already too close to the surface, I missed.   
  He was standing at the side of the room, wrapping his pipe, and his   
stance...   
  There's a way people stand when they're hurting.  It's like they have   
a sunburn, an all-over burn, bad enough that their skin blisters, bad   
enough that the air feels like fire and ice, and their clothes are   
torture...they stand like they wish they could pull themselves six   
inches away from everything.  Chakotay stood like that, with the room in  

a rip-tide around him.  It was frightening.  I looked around, and could   
see my crew, the Fleet crew, trying to step in, to give some comfort;   
saw the Maquis reach out, some accepting what my people offered, some   
pulling into their own group, not wanting to take from people they   
blamed for the pain they'd suffered.  And around the edges I could see   
Fleet and Maquis both, the ones with the fewest contacts across the   
groups, hovering against the walls and exchanging the first wary,   
hostile glances.   
  And Chakotay wrapping his pipe.   
  He hadn't meant to start a confrontation.  That night, he hadn't...   
not in the sense I meant, or he meant.  But looking around the room, I   
could only pray that the circle would do the job he'd intended.   
  He'd prayed, and passed the pipe with an intensity you couldn't miss.   

The gold chain had slithered from his hand and pooled, and I'd known a   
little where it would take us, as damning in its way as thirty pieces of  

silver.  His tale had paced its way from the Wallowa valley, and the Nez  

Perce's flight towards Canada; to the bitter confusion of an Academy   
cadet, trying to understand his own identity in a world that sees   
Vulcans and Klingons with more clarity and perception than it sees a son  

of the people who once owned the land the Academy is built on, who owned  

all the Americas, North, South, and Central; and on from there to the   
agony of the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone.  Behind him had come the   
other Maquis, angry to the point of bursting with tales untold outside   
their own little family.   
  He'd tried to make it a communion. But in his own pain and passion,   
he'd done something he hadn't planned, or desired.  I don't think he saw  

it; I think he was too swept up in his own pain and memories.  But I'd   
seen it:  seen the glances pass from Maquis to Maquis.  I'd seen them   
stand together in unity, *Maquis* again for the first time since I'd   
crammed them into Star Fleet red-and-black, or blue-and-black, or gold-  
and-black.  They took up that identity like a lit brand; like the   
Crusaders' Red Crossed shields and banners.   
  And the Fleet crew sat there, with no choice but to accept a blame   
they knew they hadn't earned; the blame for not making things right in a  

world they no more understood or controlled than the Maquis who had   
suffered; no choice but to accept responsibility, and reach out in   
compassion as best they could...or pull back, angry at the burden they   
couldn't accept, couldn't escape, couldn't ignore.  Some reached out.    
Some pulled away.   
  It's a bitter thing to carry a blame you haven't earned; that's yours   
through no failure beside the inability to accomplish every task of the   
thousands of conflicting tasks life presents you with.   
  But whatever angers I was afraid would flare, I was sure he'd intended  

the circle as a joining of our people.  And I didn't know how to tell   
him that, in spite of fear, I had listened, and cared.  Trying, and   
failing; seeing the annoyance close his face, I tried again, teasing a   
little, using his "Chief Joseph" to tell him I saw what he'd   
attempted... and was met with a "Kate" that was as harsh as a reprimand,  

and a look so sour it made me think of a man who, given a crate of   
lemons, wonders angrily if he has enough sugar in his cupboard to make   
lemonade...and doubts it very much.   
  At that point I gave up.  I'm not so stupid I can't see the writing on  

the wall; know when I'm so far from finding the right words, or the   
person I'm talking to is so deaf to the words behind the words, that to   
do more will only be to dig myself a deeper pit.  I added a word or two   
of "Well, thanks anyway", threw in a "Goodnight, Commander" for good   
measure, and fled to my quarters.  Once there I sent Murphy the Great   
and Powerful a spare, dry, scientist's curse that he had to help me make  

a mare's nest of an honest attempt to cross the barriers between myself   
and my first officer.  And then I prayed to any gods or powers that   
might be listening, if gods and powers there are, that the tumult I felt  

striding towards us never arrived, and that Chakotay's circle would   
stand intact in the face of all that anger.   
  I didn't sleep well that night. 

End pt.1