There was a slight delay before the main airlock cycled, and Sabrina wished they would hurry up. Her doubts about this course of action had never really abated, and she wanted to get it over with so she could turn everything over to someone else to worry about. It was an urge she recognized as uncharacteristic, though perhaps understandable, but after all, part of why she was doing this was her own tenuous grasp on her identity. She could not possibly help Ford while she was so in need of help herself.
The two orderlies seemed harmless enough at first glance, though they were older than she expected. Sabrina realized she knew nothing about Homeworld's health care structures, or in fact anything about their culture beyond the specialized area of the Wayfarer program. It was anything but comforting. Maybe, she thought, her unpleasant memories of Scotty's reconstruction were responsible for the escalating adrenaline response she was trying to talk herself out of.
She lingered in the doorway as the orderlies maneuvered the floating pallet next to Ford's infirmary bed. To physically help them remove him from his ship seemed too personal a betrayal, and she wasn't feeling rational enough to make herself do it anyway. It's not as if he's conscious so I could comfort him, she thought, trying to drown out the voice in the back of her mind shrieking, No, this is wrong, wrong!
Every step back down the hall, trailing in the wake of the pallet, got harder to take, as if something dense and unyielding were pulling at her ankles. Never could she recall her instincts and her mind being in such bitter conflict.
A faint moan from the pallet shocked her into stricken immobility. She knew she had sedated Ford adequately for transfer; she'd had Rudolf check and recheck the dosage. His Pharon abilities could be used to resist any chemical influence, given time and practice, she supposed, but why? What did he sense that made him feel it imperative to wake? Was he picking up her own uneasiness, or was it something else, some danger sense that she was oblivious to?
She felt him come fully awake in her mind even before her eyes registered movement on the pallet, and she was already shouting a warning before her conscious mind caught up and she was rushing forward into the blur of movement and energy that suddenly exploded into the corridor. The orderlies fell back, too stunned even to cry out, and she tripped over one of them as she struggled to reach the pallet.
"Ford!" she shouted desperately, reaching out for him. One of her fingertips brushed his sleeve, and in the next second her wrists were caught in his bruising grip. She understood in that moment that he thought the orderlies had been taking him away from her.
"It's okay, it's okay," she kept saying, knowing all the while that it wasn't. He wasn't going to agree to this; she'd been crazy to ever think it. They'd be lucky if he didn't accidentally kill everybody aboard The Oasis in his attempts to defend them both. She had to get the orderlies out of here.
Before she'd even finished the thought, they had vanished. She felt the power working through Ford as he made the transfer and reached out with his mind to undock The Adventure. "Ford, wait, we have to—"
He swung his legs off the pallet and adjusted his grip on her, urging her to keep pace with him toward the control deck. "I don't know what they've told you," he growled, "but this was not a good idea."
"I'm getting that," she sighed. "Ford, calm down, please! Nobody here wants to hurt you."
"Nobody here wants to help me, either," he retorted. "Sit down and don't interfere!"
A flash of indignation at his brusque order made Sabrina swallow the plaintive "I want to help you!" she had been about to utter. She sat down at the secondary control panel and folded her arms. Well, she had wanted things taken out of her hands, hadn't she, she scolded herself. Ford, even mentally unbalanced, wasn't that bad a trade for Homeworld's paranoid guardianship. At least, she hoped so.
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"Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting something like this," Mara sighed as Mukryilla finished relating the few facts they had about Ford and Sabrina's escape.
"The eyewitness accounts appear to be confused," Mukryilla noted, trying to sound hopeful. "They don't specifically attribute the, er, energy manipulation to the prince."
"But they will. It's the only logical conclusion: that my son has, to all intents and purposes, become Pharon, and he is loose in the galaxy." Mara massaged her temples and took a deep breath to calm herself. This was a calamity it had never occurred to her to imagine, and it came at the worst possible time. She wished, for a moment, that she had not sent Tirqwin, Scotty, and Aurora off together, so that at least one of them could have been here as a comfort. Trying to wrap her mind around the thought of Niavar as an active threat to the universe and Sabrina as an unknown quantity was actually more painful than the multi-dimensional equations of temporal mechanics she had struggled over all those years ago, when she and Tirqwin and the Devons had no one to worry about except themselves.
Mukryilla evidently found the silence painful too, because she cleared her throat and offered, "I've got our best strategic analysis people working on this. But frankly, I don't think we're going to find them if they don't want to be found. The prince is widely traveled—there are any number of places he could go to ground."
"Assuming he has access to those memories," Mara said. "We don't know how much of himself he retains right now. It may well be Sabrina making decisions at this point."
"If that is the case, we have a chance," Mukryilla acknowledged. "She will turn to the only place she knows outside the Realm. To Earth. I will need Scotty's analysis of where and when."
"And you will have to send Scotty to search for her," Mara sighed. "Thereby risking his contamination."
"I don't think we're going to be able to avoid that risk," Mukryilla said. "He's the one who knows Earth, and knows Sabrina when she's on Earth. I also don't think it's possible to exclude him. Doing so would only result in his striking out on his own."
"Which would undoubtedly cause more problems than we already have," Mara said. "I would like to avoid putting him in any situations that require him to choose between his loyalty to Sabrina and his oath of service."
"So would I, but it may not be possible to control that," Mukryilla sighed. "Do you wish to issue a recall for Khediva?"
"Not necessary; they will be en route as soon as they are informed what has happened," Mara said. "In the meantime, we must turn our attention to how best to present the situation when it becomes more widely known. The Council of Trême, for instance, will have to know soon. I am sure Homeworld will demand some kind of Realm-wide response. Other Realm governments must be told some part of the truth." Mara derived a wan amusement from watching Mukryilla try to compose a polite way to say "Not my job!" but finally took pity on her. "I will discuss this with Aunt Imari. In the meantime, please focus your attention on the search, and on putting together what you can to brief the special forces if they are sent to Earth. I do not want to leave Scotty without backup."
Mukryilla looked uneasy. "Earth is a non-aligned world. We cannot land troops there, even in small numbers, unless they are requested. And Scotty is the only person who can make that request in this situation. I do not think he will."
"Suggest it to him. Firmly," Mara said. "I have faith in you, Commander."
Mukryilla could not think of a response to that, at least not one that she felt comfortable voicing, so she saluted and left, intent on her appointed tasks and feeling a rush of sympathy for everyone else who had ever been sent off with such a damning compliment.
——————————
"None of this is right!" Ford exploded, bringing a fist down hard on the main console. "None of these stars are right! This must be malfunctioning."
"I think we are all malfunctioning to some degree," Sabrina replied, trying to keep her voice calm in the face of his furious frustration. "Where are you trying to go?"
"I...it must be...I thought...." He trailed off, and his angry expression collapsed into a forlorn confusion. "Somewhere we'll be safe," he said finally, sounding defeated. "There has to be someplace. Doesn't there?"
"I'm sure there are many," Sabrina said. "Unfortunately we don't know them all, and we have no sure way of recognizing them." She ran through the list of planets she knew personally, but they were all out of reach because they were within the Realm. Except one. "I know it's the obvious choice, but Earth is the only planet I'm familiar with that we have a chance of getting to undetected."
"Earth?" he repeated blankly.
"My home planet." Sabrina bit her lower lip and tried to outline a strategy. "Their main source of information about it will be Scotty. His memories are fragmented, but we have no way of knowing what he'll be able to access. I'll have to avoid the places he knows about. Maybe this is my big chance to visit Tahiti."
She eyed Ford appraisingly; he was suffering the aftereffects of throwing off the sedative and the subsequent energy he'd expended on their escape, and she doubted he would have the strength to stay on his feet for much longer. It suddenly occurred to her that he might need more medical attention than she could provide, even with the ship's resources. And her own problems meant that she needed someone she could trust.
There was a short list of people she counted as friends whom Scotty had never met, but the real problem was finding someone who could deal with the weirdness that would surely ensue, even if Sabrina could think of some way to avoid blurting out the unbelievable truth. And in the worst case, it had to be somebody who could deal with the unbelievable truth if it came crashing through their door.
Sabrina realized with a sinking heart that none of the friends she had made as a professional adult fell into that category. They would simply assume she had gone quietly crazy, and act accordingly.
And then, with an almost audible click, it all fell into place for her. She needed not someone she knew, but someone who knew her. Someone who wouldn't be able to doubt that knowledge, no matter how crazy things got, because she had been there as Sabrina's character formed, and had helped shape it and been shaped in return.
"It's okay," Sabrina said, a gentle smile smoothing out her face. "I know just where to go."