Chapter Text
Epilogue
Ocampa homeworld--April 9, 2381, Stardate 57272.1
The central plaza, once a cafeteria where the Ocampa had lined up meekly to receive their food rations from the Caretaker, was the throbbing heart of the caverns. The underground city had always been their refuge from danger, whether those enemies were a hostile natural environment; careless extragalactic explorers; or neighbors with conquest on their minds. Now the plaza was their "capital city" within a city.
Today, as ever, Kes spent virtually every second exchanging greetings, enthusiastic waves, and smiles with her grateful people. Kes the Explorer had returned home and was hailed as a heroine once again as soon as the plans for the salvation of the Ocampa were presented. While some of those who greeted Kes were special friends who rated much more than a wave, sometimes it seemed that everyone knew her. Much to her surprise, she seemed to know all of them, too.
"Hello, Carys! How are you doing today?...Kiran, the Transport Assignment Team meeting was postponed until tomorrow. Can you still come? Excellent!...Everyone agrees that was a great idea, Raquiris. Vertris is presenting it to Council tomorrow morning for their consideration...Why, thank you, Julan! I do feel wonderful. Keeping busy must agree with me!...Yes, it is an exciting time, isn't it, Penan? We're just getting started.... "
"Auntie Kes!"
At the shout, Kes turned full circle and saw her friend Tyeris coming towards her, followed by her brood. Kes happily accepted hugs from the children Andryas, Linnis, and Neelan. "Hi, there! You know, every time I see you, I just can't get over it! You three aren't supposed to be so grown up yet!"
"I can't believe it sometimes myself," Tyeris admitted.
Kes had to reach far up to hug Neelan, who was as tall and gangly as his father Benan. The twins Andryas and Linnis were only a little taller than Kes. She always had to look carefully to see which was which; they were truly identical and sometimes played tricks on their boyfriends by switching places. Kes always felt a little choked up when she saw them. Tyeris had asked her to name the children, a great honor for any Ocampa, but an especially significant one for Kes, who had never had a child of her own. They'd left childhood far behind by the time Kes had returned in triumph two months before, but they had not yet traded the coltishness of adolescence for sober adulthood. "Auntie Kes" hadn't missed their entire journey to adulthood--just the greater part of it.
They chatted amiably for a time--too short a time, as far as Kes was concerned, since she had a late afternoon meeting. As she waved good-bye to Tyeris and her almost-grown brood, who were homeward bound while Kes still had to endure a Logistics Oversight Group meeting, Kes realized she must have looked very much like the triplets not so long ago, as beings of other races measure time. "Not so long ago" is a relative concept, as Kes well knew. "Ten years! A lifetime for an Ocampa--as a corporeal being." She smiled to herself as she stepped into Council Hall, where her meeting was being held.
There were many pieces of the puzzle to put into place before the corporeal Ocampa could emigrate, but Kes couldn't stop herself from looking forward to what would come afterwards, when they were settled in their new homes. Then I'll teach them what the Morilogium truly is, she thought.
*
Her meeting, mercifully, lasted barely an hour and a half. Afterwards, Kes walked briskly towards the crowded little apartment she shared with Josan, Lyrial, and their children Benaren and Alixas, born a month after Kes returned from Vidiia. "You see, I was right about your Elogium, wasn't I, Lyrial?" Kes had teased. "I'm glad you saved my luggage, but I think you need the room for your family! Maybe I should move out..."
They wouldn't hear of Kes living anywhere else but in her little alcove off the main room of the apartment. As long as they were careful to keep the dwelling tidy, there was enough room for them all. Benan had managed to rig the apartment to fit two cribs, two storage compartments, and two toy boxes within it, in addition to everything else it had always contained. "Auntie" Kes had to be careful where she stepped, though, because no matter how vigilant the rest of the family was, somehow Benaren always missed one of his toys during clean-up time, and it would lurk underfoot, waiting to trip the unwary. Lyrial confided to Kes, whenever they talked about the colony, "It will be nice to have a little more room, now that the children are getting so big."
"It will be nice to have a little more room" was being said in most of the apartments in the caverns, now that the prospect was no longer a fantasy. But if the waiting was hard, yet so would be the leaving. For better or worse, this had been home for many generations of Ocampa. Leaving all the familiar places behind would be difficult for everyone.
When she finally reached the final corridor to the apartment, Kes surrendered to impulse. She strode past her door and entered the hydroponics cavern. At this time of the evening, only the skeleton night crew would still be there. Where she was headed, all the workers would have already left for home.
Kes had spent many happy hours in the potting shed with Martis and Benaren, her parents, planting seeds and transplanting seedlings to larger pots to set out in the main farming area outside. Today she went there once again, to the place where she felt closest to those gentle spirits who had gone before her into the non-corporeal world.
"Mother, Father, are you here?"
There was no response. She didn't expect one, although she opened her mind as far as she could to reach out to them. Even so, she never felt discouraged. Her parents may never have learned the mental disciplines needed to reach back to touch her mind, but somehow, she was sure they did hear her. "I'm going to miss our talks once we're gone, Mother and Father. These caverns will be silent until they collapse into each other and are no more, but your spirits will still be here. Please forgive us for leaving you; it's the only way for our people to survive."
Kes sat on one of the benches along the wall. "Today I saw my friend and her children--triplets, can you imagine that, Mother! Imagine having had three of me! It made me think about you, about how you always encouraged me to forge ahead to wherever my curiosity wanted to take me. I was just about the triplets' age when I decided to climb to the surface and see the sun. The very day they were born was the same day I finally made up my mind to look for a new home for the Ocampa people. And now the triplets themselves will be among the pioneers settling a new world beneath another sun, building a new society light years away from the place we have always called home."
Kes stopped speaking for a moment and looked around, feeling a little foolish at the grandiose way she was speaking. "Maybe I should bring my PADD when I come here. Then I could say I'm working on my Personal Log if anyone heard me in here," she said with a little laugh. "I don't think anyone would really care, though. A lot of our people are doing the same thing in their hearts as they get ready for the Great Migration. And they all think I'm crazy anyway!"
Closing her eyes, Kes rocked herself back into a more comfortable position on the bench. "I know you don't know what a PADD and a personal log are. They're things I learned about as I lived my life--the life you predicted for me when I was first born, Mother. You thought I would 'see the sun' someday, and I did. Not just this sun, either, but many of them--planets and stars and nebulae, too. You would have loved seeing all that I did. We've been hidden away underground for so long, we Ocampa have forgotten how they look. That won't be a problem soon. The stars will be a little different over our new home, but the children will be able to see them. I hope they will thank us for giving them a chance for a new and better life.
"We can't get there without help. People from the other side of the galaxy will ferry most of us, but some of our near neighbors will help, too. It's not without risk, of course. There will be many challenges to overcome to become part of the greater community of this part of the galaxy. Coming out of hiding means exposing our people to enemies, you see. Some we already know about and some we don't; but our people have accepted that dangers go along with the rewards of having a chance to develop our society the way we would have if the Caretakers hadn't come here and ruined this world. What is most exciting for me is that once the pros and cons were explained to them, the Ocampa were still eager to go to New Earth.
"New Earth. A couple of very good friends of mine first called it that. It's a good name for people making a new beginning, don't you think? I've never been prouder of anything I've done in my life than I am of this, because by going there, we'll be helping others as well as ourselves.
"Many different races and species, some formerly enemies and now friends or, at least, allies working together, work to find a way for everyone to get what they need without hurting anyone else to get it. That's the way the Federation works. That's an organization at the other side of the galaxy. When I traveled with my friends on Voyager, I learned about it. I think it's a great model of how to get along. It isn't perfect, of course. Nothing is. And it won't be easy to do. It takes a lot of sweat and toil to do something worth doing--but now the Ocampa will be part of that effort. The Federation will be establishing an 'embassy' on New Earth, where we're making our new home. Maybe we here in what they call the 'Delta Quadrant' can learn from them and build something like their Federation someday. But first, the Ocampa must come out of hiding and take our rightful place as one of the many peoples who live in this galaxy.
"We won't start to actually leave for New Earth for a few months yet, and some of the elders don't intend to leave at all. They've already told us, 'Emigration is for the young. We'll face our Morilogiums here, in the place where we were born and raised our families. We will remain here, so our homeworld will still belong to the Ocampa in spirit.' Thanks to them and to you and to all the generations that have moved on to the spiritual realm, our homeworld will still be inhabited by the Ocampa. I hope all of those who have passed to another state of being will understand why we have to go. I'm pretty sure you will.
"I've really got a lot to do now, organizing the move. My days are full. The list of tasks I must finish keeps getting longer and longer, but everywhere I go, people tell me I actually seem to look younger and more relaxed now. I don't feel like someone pushing eleven. I seem to be getting younger all the time.
"Once I actually did keep getting younger and younger. I became displaced in time and lived my life backwards. Truly. That's when I heard you say you thought I would see the sun someday, Mother." Kes stood up, stretched a little of the stiffness out of her back, and began to pace back and forth in front of the bench as she spoke. "I'm sure some people would say I was just having an hallucination or a dream, but it felt too real not to have actually happened. I loved getting those glimpses of you, so long after you'd left me behind. I sometimes wonder if I would have ever had the courage to climb to the surface to see the sun if you'd both still been alive. Some of the things that happened to me afterwards were unpleasant, to say the least; but if all the pain and hard times I endured are the price I had to pay to get our people this chance, then it was worth it. I brought back a great gift--hope. Hope for the future, when for so long we had none.
"It's getting late. I don't want to get the people I live with worried. I really should go. I'll be back again before we leave. Maybe I'll bring my PADD next time to dictate my 'personal log'--or maybe not. I do feel better just having had this chance to speak to you again, whether you can hear me or not. Good night!"
Kes walked to the doorway to the potting shed, and stood there for several minutes, listening. The shed was dark, empty, yet it overflowed with memories of days and people only she could remember. She waited for some sign of...of something--she didn't know what--but she heard nothing with her ears or her mind. She never had here, but that didn't matter. This was the place where she felt her parents' presence most keenly. As she stood there, a sensation of something unseen and unfelt brushed through her soul, and she felt she had been heard.
Kes took one step out the door before turning around and facing back into the potting shed. She smiled enigmatically. "Oh, by the way. If you really don't want to stay here all alone, you can always fly with us to New Earth. I'm sure you can find the way. I'll make sure to leave a star chart here for you, just in case. I know you'll be welcome."
(To be continued in "Best Laid Plans")