Go back. The time is not yet.

But she hurtles past him as the pinprick of light suddenly bursts, brighter than a thousand suns. Pure thought now, with no crude matter to hold her back, she streaks toward its incandescent heart. Out of its center a woman leaps to meet her, brandishing a spear and an oval shield with a boss of bronze. Her naked body is painted with blue spirals and runes of power, and her hair streams behind her like flame. From somewhere behind her comes the slow rhythm of a drum. Her shout rises above its pounding.

Go back. The time is not yet.

The warrior fades, gives way to another woman, this one clothed in scarlet silk that flutters about her like tongues of fire. Her face is serene with age, though the deep furrows at brow and mouth tell of wisdom bought at cost. The drumming grows louder now, but her gentle voice carries easily above it.

Go back. The time is not yet.

Another warrior comes forward, clad in some sort of leather dress with intricate brass armor buckled to her chest. In one hand, she holds a thick, two-edged sword. In the other, a lethal circlet. Her eyes blaze and pierce, their beauty filled with urgency and another, almost overwhelming, emotion she can’t put a name to.

Go back. The time is not yet.

Still she moves forward, helpless to stop her steady advance into the sun.

And out of the heart of that sun a third woman comes striding, dressed in white buckskin with a hummingbird worked in shell beads and quills across her breast. Turquoise and white shell adorn her wrists and her slender neck, hang like stars amid the cloud of her hair. Her feet as she walks beat out the song of the drum, though her moccasins touch nothing more solid than air.

You are astray, my daughter, she says. You must turn back.

Mother, Kirsten wails soundlessly. I have failed.

You have suffered a setback, certainly, the woman acknowledges. Will you let it defeat you, and all my children with it?

I am not strong enough. Not wise enough.

By yourself, you are not. But I have given you companions, for knowledge and for comfort. The woman pauses, smiling. And for something more, if you have the courage to lay hold of the gift. Will you refuse it? Look.

An eddy forms in the brilliance, light swirling like the waters of a whirlpool. An opening appears, and Kirsten finds herself looking down from an infinite distance. A slight figure with pale hair lies sprawled on the floor, its face already waxy with the spirit’s passing. A tall woman, dark, with a cloud of black hair wild about her face, kneels beside her, her fist rising and descending again and again to the rhythm of the drum. It comes to Kirsten that her own body is the drum, the fierce pounding a summons to return. There are words in that calling, but they skim past her awareness to be lost in the light and the voice of the drum.

There is, really, no choice.

I will go back, she says.

The woman’s smile becomes radiant, like the sun, bright beyond comprehension, yet not painful to look upon. A long-fingered hand, smooth, so smooth it is the bottom of a rock-bottomed stream, lays itself upon her and a benediction flows into her soul. It is cool, cool like the spring, like the morning, like the dew that bleeds across her bare ankles as she runs through a clover-filled meadow, a bounding, gray-furred beast at her side, matching her stride for stride, lope for lope.

The massive head turns, and she falls into eyes piercing and clear and blue, blue as the spring, like the morning, like the dew that slides across her naked flesh as she falls and falls and falls until her whole world is falling and nothing but.

Her landing is soft, but she awakens with a gasp and her hand clenched to a chest which is burning and throbbing to the rhythm of a newly beating heart.

Disoriented, she calls out for an anchor.

“Dakota!”

The hoarse call pulls Maggie Allen away from her conversation with a nearby medic. Approaching the bed, she lays a gentle hand on Kirsten’s shoulder and smiles. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Doctor.”

The sudden, absolute silence is something she can control, and Kirsten reaches behind her ear, only to have the motion stopped by Allen.

“Woah, woah, wait a minute there, Doc. You remember what happened, right?”

Easily reading the colonel’s lips, a skill she’s had for longer than she cares to remember, Kirsten nods. “I got caught in a self destruct feedback loop.”

“Exactly. The metalhead is out of the picture, but the base’s audiologist got fragged when the droids went over the wall in the first attack. We don’t know if your implants are still working, and if they are, whether or not that feedback loop is still active. Turn them back on, and you could short circuit yourself all over again.”

Kirsten knows enough military lingo to get a good sense of what Allen is trying to tell her, and nods again. “My computer?”

Reaching down by the side of the bed, Maggie grabs Kirsten’s computer and hauls it onto the bed. “Maybe you better tell me what to do, huh? You’ve had a rough time of it.”

The look she receives causes Maggie to throw her hands up and step back. “You’re the doc, Doc.”

Opening the case, Kirsten boots the machine quickly, pleased to see that it wasn’t harmed in what she is quickly coming to term “the event”. Reaching into one zippered pouch, she pulls out a small wire that ends in an electrode and plugs it into a port in her laptop. The electrode she places behind her left ear, pressing softly until it adheres to her skin. One pale finger depresses the ‘enter’ key, and she watches intently as data streams by in unintelligible—to the normal mortal—strings.

With a satisfied grunt, she ends the program and peels off the electrode before turning on her implants. Sound flows back into her world once again. She smiles, briefly, before slumping back against the wall, suddenly more weary than she can ever remember being. The ache is back in her chest, and it sets off a spasm of coughing that makes her feel as if a giant hand has reached down her throat and is even now tearing her lungs from their moorings. Breath is an elusive beast and her gasps chase after it with all their might, capturing only small slices before it slips away again.

She feels herself pushed back into bed by firm hands as a soft oxygen mask is pressed down over her face. Words, intelligible as an insect’s hum, swirl around her head, but she wastes no energy deciphering their meaning. She knows she’s being chided, in any event.

After another moment, the sweet, cool, dry oxygen flows into her lungs, and her hoarse gasping becomes winded pants, and then, as her constricted breathing passages open up to the size of interstate highways, the quiet inspiration of normal breathing.

Standing above her, Maggie’s shoulders slump in relief. “A little warning before you start playing Superwoman next time would be appreciated, Doctor King.”

“Sorry,” Kirsten replies, hoarse voice muffled behind the oxygen mask.

Maggie blinks, mildly shocked at the apology and the slight blush of embarrassment that dusts the younger woman’s cheeks. “Yes. Well….” She clears her throat. “I’m going to leave you alone for a bit, then. Please, Doctor, have the good sense to stay in this bed for awhile, ok? I’ve heard that bumping noses with the Grim Reaper takes something out of a person. Even a person as self sufficient as you.”

Pulling the mask off of her face, Kirsten nods. “I’ll stay. I could use a nap, anyway.”

“I’d imagine so.” Maggie’s tone is wry, to match the small smirk that curves one corner of her mouth. “I’ll see you later, then.”

She is almost to the door of the small hospital room when Kirsten’s voice reaches her again.

“Colonel?”

“Yes?”

“Dakota…Doctor Rivers…she was the one who saved me, wasn’t she.”

Maggie turns to face her. “It was pretty much a team effort, but yes, she’s the one who figured out what was wrong first and started CPR on you. She also shut off your implants. How did you know?”

Her dreamlike trek into the afterworld is slowly fading from her memory, but certain things stand out with crystal clarity. She also knows, with the same clarity of thought, that the experience is something she is loathe to share. “I just…had a feeling.”

Maggie nods, knowing there’s much more to the story, but accepting the statement at face value. Pulling teeth from a rabid wolf would be a cakewalk compared to getting information this woman. “I’ll tell her you’re awake and doing well when I see her.”

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem.” With a final smile, she exits the room, closing the door softly behind her.

Left alone, Kirsten sinks back into the bed’s soft comfort and stares blankly at the white cork ceiling. The words of the Mother—or whatever it is that the image represents—come back to her as if being whispered just now into her ear.

And for something more, if you have the courage to lay hold of the gift. Will you refuse it?

“What gift?” she asks the ceiling, frustrated. “How can I refuse something if I don’t know what it is?”

But some voice, one that she recognizes comes from within the depths of her own soul, tells her that she already knows the answer to that question, and needs nothing but the courage to listen and understand.

Pondering that voice, she falls into a light, troubled sleep.

3

Koda stretches luxuriously, planting her feet against the front of the tub. Her shoulders, higher than she would like because the damned thing is not made for six-footers, press against its back. Lightly scented with lavender, steam rises up about her, soothing her sore body, easing the soreness that lingers in mind and spirit. For the first time since setting out into the snow and the alien place her world has become, Koda misses her own home. She misses the firm platform bed; she misses the fireplace, larger than most people’s closets; most of all she misses her bath. The tub, almost deep enough to paddle in, long and wide enough to accommodate more than three quarters of her, had been the first renovation she had made to the hundred-year-old house, even before she and Tali had decided to marry.