SYMBOLS

CHAPTER 22

"Captain, there's someone here I thought you might like to see." The Doctor's voice sounded through the comm system. Janeway reversed direction. Only minutes before, she had left Tayna in the company of Samantha and Naomi Wildman.

Naomi was the first child born aboard Voyager and was only slightly older than Tayna, although Tayna was considerably smaller and seemed far more childlike in her thinking than Naomi.

Quietly Janeway re-entered sickbay and walked over to the biobed where Neelix lay.

"Welcome back, Neelix," Janeway said and gently placed her hand on his shoulder.

"It's good to be back, Captain." Neelix's voice was strained. He took short shallow breaths while the Doctor re-bandaged his chest where the disrupter shot had hit him.

Neelix smiled feebly at the captain.

"Captain, I know you always try to reach a peaceful solution, no matter what the situation. But when I saw the guard reach for his weapon, I just knew he was going to shoot. I had to do something... There wasn't time to think of alternate strategies."

Neelix obviously didn't want his actions to be misunderstood, but Janeway was just relieved he was still alive.

"Neelix, you acted without thought for yourself. Commander Chakotay and Tayna are probably only alive today because of your actions. The crew all think what you did was very heroic, even if it was a little reckless." She smiled at him.

Neelix sat up and then he tried to stand. Doubling slightly, he gritted his teeth from the unrelenting pain in his chest. Then he grasped the biobed, suddenly dizzy, as he patted his cheeks a couple of times to force some color back into his pale speckled head.

"So when can I get out of here?" he asked the Doctor, through pallid lips.

"Steady on Mr. Neelix. Why not take a few days to rest and recover?"

Neelix's yellow-green eyes looked to the captain for a second opinion.

"I could order you to take some time off," Janeway said.

"And I would respect your decision, Captain." Neelix assured her. "But the Doctor mentioned something about several of the senior officers preparing for an away mission. I thought the crew might need its morale officer right now. Otherwise, perhaps, I could offer my assistance to Commander Tuvok. Lately I've had a lot more practice at handling weapons."

"Unfortunately, Tuvok is one of the reasons for the away mission. High Councilor Zeron transported him from the bridge not long after Kylani was killed. We're going back to the Anawin planet to find him."

"But what would the High Councilor want with Mr. Tuvok?"

"That's what we're hoping to find out, Neelix."

"Captain, I need to speak to you about that," the Doctor said.

Neelix continued to pursue the option of gaining an early release from sickbay.

"Captain, I'm sure there's something I can do to help."

"What do you think, Doctor?" Janeway asked.

"Well, he's certainly made a remarkable recovery. If Mr. Neelix feels capable of returning to light duties, I see no reason for him to remain in sickbay. As long as he checks back here for the next few days."

"Settled then. So I'm free to leave?" Neelix smiled at the captain, while her cautious nod provided him with the clearance he was seeking. He began to hobble out of sickbay.

"You know, Neelix, there are much easier ways to earn a promotion!" Janeway called after him, while Neelix increased the pace of his eager footsteps as he exited sickbay and headed straight for the mess hall.

Janeway turned her attention back to the Doctor and looked at the two semi-helical structures that were once again pictured on his computer terminal.

"I'm sure you recall the mystery of the child's genetic and physical alterations," the Doctor said. "Well the mystery has now been solved."

Superimposing the child's unique gene sequence over a longer strand of DNA, the Doctor smiled triumphantly. "Voila!"

Janeway stared at the screen in amazement.

"Not what you were expecting, I'm sure," the Doctor continued. "But it was simply a case of elimination. The sequence was essentially familiar, so I knew through my own ingenuity and a little help from the DNA database, I'd eventually find a match." He pointed to the string of base pairs. "The DNA is Romulan."

"But how can that be? Tayna doesn't look at all like a Romulan," Janeway said.

"I believe her genetic code has been modified and that physical alterations were made to her appearance during the embryonic stage and throughout infancy."

"You think that's why she looks Anawin now?" Janeway checked. "No wonder she didn't pass the genetic test in the branding ceremony. She didn't stand a chance."

The Doctor had solved the mystery of the child's parentage. No matter how implausible it seemed, Tayna was part Romulan. The child's mother may have been Anawin, but her father was definitely Romulan. At some point in time, the Anawin race had made contact with at least one Romulan.

Janeway suddenly thought about Tuvok and the reaction of High Councilor Zeron. He had absconded with Tuvok, without any explanation as to why. Now she had a theory. In Zeron's eyes, Voyager had been harboring a Romulan. Zeron had most likely never seen a Vulcan before. To someone who had never seen one, the two species - Romulan and Vulcan - could appear almost identical. It was an obvious connection and an easy mistake for the High Councilor to make.

"Doctor, as far as Tuvok's disappearance, do you think we might be dealing with a simple case of mistaken identity?" Janeway asked, while the Doctor nodded in agreement. In light of this new discovery, he too had come to the same conclusion.