“Looks like you and she hit it off well,” Garcia said, then realized it had come out cattier than she’d hoped.
But Ranjea overlooked it. “She’s an excellent diplomat. A strong empath, not a full telepath like most Betazoids. Highly intelligent, highly experienced. She’s achieved some extremely difficult diplomatic feats in her time on Titan, and before that on Enterprise. I’ll be glad to have her on our side for this. Particularly since she is, pretty much by default, our sole expert on the Confederacy.”
“An empath, huh? Must make you feel right at home.”
“I think it will make for a convivial partnership, yes.”
“Just remember she’s married.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Why would that—ahh.” He laughed. “Don’t worry; Betazoids are generally monogamous. As are human starship captains. And the Rikers are clearly a very devoted couple. I don’t go where I’m not invited.”
Or where you are invited, alas, Garcia thought.
When they reached the conference room, they found Commander Troi already waiting for them. It was surprising to see someone more punctual than a pair of DTI agents. Ranjea had to duck his head to get through the low door, though he made it look graceful and effortless. Garcia and Troi had to duck just a bit as well. Vomnin were of typical humanoid size, but they were facultative bipeds, knuckle-walkers like Trinni/ek or Terran apes, so they tended to build low to the ground. The wall consoles she saw around the station were mounted at or around floor level. The furniture inside the conference room was almost Japanese-style, a low oval table surrounded by a ring of cushions. A row of windows looked out upon the interspatial portal to the Axis of Time, a misty blue-white orb that seemed to balance on the edge of unreality. Around the perimeter of the room were a variety of sculptures and artworks, their condition pegging them to Garcia’s trained eye as archaeological relics. They appeared to come from a variety of distinct civilizations and lacked any aesthetic or stylistic unity. Garcia had the impression that their purpose was less to serve aesthetic considerations than to show off the prizes the Vomnin had collected in their pursuit of useful antiquities. She wondered how the room appeared to Ranjea’s heightened sense of aesthetics. His expression seemed intrigued and approving, but Garcia suspected he would wear that same expression if visiting a garbage dump, so long as it was one he’d never experienced before.
Or perhaps he showed approval for the benefit of their Vomnin hosts, who now approached them. Troi stepped forward to mediate. “Subdirector Vennor Sikran of the Bureau for Historical Resource Development, allow me to introduce Agents Meyo Ranjea and Teresa Garcia of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations.”
“Greetings,” said Sikran in a rough baritone, rising to a more erect stance to greet his visitors. The Vomnin subdirector had orange-bronze skin, somewhat lighter than typical for his people, and wore a dark greenish suit that clashed badly with his complexion, making Garcia wonder if the Vomnin’s wide, pale eyes saw in a different spectrum than she did. His hairless head was rather wide as well, as though a roughly humanoid face had been stretched out to twice its width and flattened somewhat top to bottom. In conjunction with Sikran’s well-fed stature, it gave him a Tweedledum quality. Or was it Tweedledee? “Welcome to Bezorek Station. May you benefit from the bounties of the Confederacy during your visit.” Garcia stifled a grin at Sikran’s blatant reminder that he considered them to be on his territory.
After introducing his aides, he gestured to the final occupant of the room. “And may I present the lady Lirahn, spokesperson for the Axis administration.”
Lirahn had been holding back from the group, silhouetted against the glow of the Axis in the viewports. Now she glided forward and instantly commanded the room. She was quite humanoid in physique, though unusually tall, topping two meters. Her eyes were large and colored a silvery blue not unlike the Axis portal. Her features were strong yet elegantly feminine, her lips full and mobile. Her forehead was high, her cranium large and hairless. Her skin was a rich chocolate brown with diamond-shaped patches of forest green and gold adorning her skull, with more diffuse diamond patches running down her arms and possibly elsewhere. She wore a close-fitting, low-necked jumpsuit of shimmering black that called attention to her impressive curves. Even with Ranjea and the striking Commander Troi present, Lirahn was unquestionably the most captivating sight in the room.
“It is my great pleasure to meet you both,” Lirahn told the agents in a dulcet alto. “It’s fascinating how much changes across the ages . . . and how much remains the same.” Her gaze fixed firmly on Ranjea’s after roving up and down his body with an almost predatory hunger.
In turn, Ranjea clasped her hands warmly. “There are wonders to discover in every age,” he said. “May we ask what age is yours?”
“My dear man, in my time it was considered impolite to ask a lady her age,” Lirahn teased.
“Ah, but age brings experience and wisdom,” Ranjea said, “and is thus owed great reverence.”
“To be specific,” Subdirector Sikran put in, gesturing the guests toward the cushions, “Lirahn’s people, the Selakar, occupy a time approximately eight thousand sun cycles before our own.”
As per her training, Garcia had memorized the Vomnin calendar on the way here. A sun cycle was one orbit of the Vomnin home star’s binary companion, which took some sixty-four years. That made Lirahn’s time . . . “More than half a million years!” she said aloud, eyes widening.
“Remarkable,” Ranjea breathed. “In all my time as a temporal investigator, I have never met anyone from such a distant temporal origin.”
“The Axis spans a far greater interval than that,” Lirahn said.
“We believe the Axis was built over sixty thousand sun cycles ago,” Sikran said; Garcia silently translated that to nearly four million years. “However, the identity of the builders is unknown. For whatever reason, they seem to have abandoned it.” His broad, froglike mouth turned up in a smile. “Or perhaps they deliberately left it for later civilizations to use.”
“How far into the future does it reach?” Garcia asked.
“Less than half that interval,” Lirahn said. “Some one million, four hundred thousand years from now, the Axis interface is destroyed in a supernova.”
Garcia stared at her. “You catch on to our time units fast.”
“No doubt one of the benefits of being a telepath,” Commander Troi said. Her delivery was casual, but she met the agents’ eyes pointedly as she called attention to the fact.
“And quite a formidable one, I sense,” Ranjea added. The two empaths and Lirahn exchanged significant looks, and Garcia suddenly felt left out, wondering what sort of vibes were passing between them. At least Troi and Ranjea had made sure she was aware of the situation.
“Well,” Lirahn demurred, “my species has been around for a very long time.” She grew wistful. “Or it was. I fear we’re long extinct by your time.”
Garcia found herself wondering if Lirahn might have some notion of trying to change that. The Selakar woman’s eyes locked on her. “Not to worry, Agent Garcia. Whatever my actions within the Axis, they should have no impact on your timeline.”
Unhappy at having her thoughts so casually read, Garcia faced Lirahn down. “How can you be so sure of that? One small change at the right moment can rewrite all reality.”
“At the right moment, yes,” Sikran interposed. “But for how long? There are many factors and forces shaping the history of the galaxy. A given change may have a significant impact for several sun cycles on a particular world, in a particular territory of space. But in time, with so many other unrelated factors shaping events, those changes will be damped out. Even if a whole civilization rises where before it fell, and keeps another civilization from existing, what difference will it make to history thousands of cycles later when the species no longer exists?”
“That species would’ve interacted with others. Made changes that rippled outward.”
“And those ripples are gradually damped, lost within the greater noise of cosmic events,” Sikran said. He smiled. “Why do you suppose it is that you so rarely encounter time travelers from more than a few sun cycles away? It’s because they can change little by traveling farther. It offends our sense of self-importance to admit it, but as worlds-shaking as the consequences of our actions may seem to us, they will ultimately leave little mark on the galaxy, except in profoundly rare cases. Over time, even highly divergent histories can realign.”
Garcia remembered Ranjea’s lecture back in Greenwich, about how the single reality she perceived was simply an average of multiple smaller realities that briefly branched off and were quickly forgotten. What Sikran described was the same principle writ large. Would all the different timelines that existed today eventually coalesce back into a single one, hundreds of thousands of years from now?
Trying not to lose control of the conversation, she said, “I know the theory. I also know that some changes are too great to ever be undone. What if a new timeline leads to the destruction of entire planets or stars? Isn’t that kind of irreversible?”
“Which is exactly why there is no risk of such timelines eradicating our own,” Sikran told her, grinning smugly. “Changing the mass distribution of the galaxy by destroying a star or planet will alter its spacetime curvature, rendering it impossible for the two timelines to become congruent. Particularly over the course of thousands of sun cycles or more, as the changes in galactic mass distribution propagate further.”
“This,” Lirahn said with a smile, “is the key to the safe usage of the Axis of Time. The interface,” she said, gesturing to the eerily glowing warp outside, “only emerges into normal space at intervals of several millennia or longer, for only occasionally does its path through the complex curvature of subspace intersect with normal spacetime. As a rule, it’s more than enough time for any temporal variations that occur to be damped down. Any changes made to one era along the Axis would have no serious impact on any subsequent era.”
“Even granting that,” Ranjea said, “what about the impact on the era itself? Introducing anachronistic knowledge and technology, or anachronistic species or diseases, could have far-ranging consequences.”
“What is the difference,” Sikran asked, “between that and normal space exploration? There is no single linear progression of technology in the galaxy. Within forty parsecs of here, there are worlds whose technology is more advanced than we can comprehend and worlds where they are only beginning to harness fire. Travel through space is travel through time in its own right.”
“And history has shown that too great a technological divide can be disruptive if the contact is not managed very carefully,” Deanna Troi put in. “This is why the Federation has embraced a policy of noninterference in the affairs of pre-warp civilizations.”
“Believe me,” Lirahn said, “the Axis Council has its own policies in place to manage contact. We have subjective centuries of experience mediating interactions across great divides of technological and . . . mental advancement.” Did her gaze flick across Garcia? “All the concerns that you have faced only in the few weeks since your discovery of the Axis have been matters of primary concern to the Council for the duration of its existence.” Lirahn reached across the table to stroke Ranjea’s hand again. “The safeguards we have in place should satisfy all your doubts as to the safety of trade and cultural exchange across eras.”
“That is heartening to hear,” Ranjea replied, giving as good as he got in the flirtation department. Garcia hoped that he was just playing along rather than succumbing to her charms.
“But what about within an era?” she asked, as much to break their mutual attention as anything else. “What’s to stop someone from entering the Axis, moving just a little bit downtime within it, then coming out weeks or months in the past and changing the, uh, local timeline?”
“Not possible,” Lirahn said easily. “At those points along its length where the Axis emerges from subspace, the interface rotates its temporal axis into alignment with normal spacetime. The direction of time is the same for both, if not the duration.”
Sikran made a throat-clearing noise. “I should add that passage into the Axis must be cleared through this station,” he pointed out, apparently feeling the need to assert Vomnin authority. “We are more than capable of managing any temporal security issues without needing the Federation to dictate policy to us.”
“No dictation was intended, Subdirector,” Ranjea said, easily shifting his full attention to Sikran and reassuring Garcia that he wasn’t in Lirahn’s thrall. “We simply have reasonable concerns that we feel obligated to address.”
“Perhaps,” Sikran said. “But our past experience with Titan tells us that your Federation’s well-intentioned impulses often fail to respect the jurisdiction of others. Just keep in mind that the Axis is a Vomnin discovery. You are welcome to negotiate for access, and we are certainly willing to hear and consider your concerns regarding temporal security. But ultimately, you are here at Vomnin indulgence. You have no territorial authority here.”
Sikran’s expression grew smug. “And if we should choose to develop this resource in a way you’re not comfortable with . . . then there is simply nothing you can do about it.”
VI
Twelfthday/Vien 2/Bregat 8, Year of Consolidation 867, Tandaran Calendar
A Saturday
Kemrel Municipality
Tandar Prime (Rakon II)
15:41 UTC
Inspector Ranz gave the two human visitors’ credentials a skeptical once-over. “What interest does the Department of Temporal Investigations have in a traffic mishap?” she asked.
“Professor Vard is a noted temporal physicist,” said the taller, gray-haired one, Lucsly. “Our department has an ongoing interest in his research.”
“Besides,” said the shorter, blond one, Dulmur by name, “how often do you have a ‘traffic mishap’ where the occupants of the crashed vehicle find themselves suddenly standing in an alley without a scratch and with no idea how they got there?”
Ranz had to concede the point. As a rule, she was reluctant to defer to Federation authorities in what should be internal Tandaran matters. Humans had always taken a heavy-handed approach toward Tandar, going back to first contact, when they had forcibly liberated a group of Suliban from a Tandaran detention camp. Granted, the Suliban had been unjustly detained by the government of the time, but still, it had been the Tandarans’ right to fix their own mistakes without Starfleet blasting in and resolving things by force. The bad blood had eventually subsided, and the Tandaran worlds had finally joined the Federation some sixty years back, but strove to maintain their independence as much as possible. The influx of refugees from Borg-devastated Federation worlds in recent months had brought some buried tensions to the surface, and while Ranz liked to think modern Tandarans were too civilized to act destructively on those tensions, she was uneasy with having Federation officials barge in and make imperious demands that might inflame them further.
Still, Ranz was admittedly out of her depth here. Her forensic teams had been unable to discover the cause of the hoverbus crash, let alone how the noted Professor Vard and his gaggle of graduate students had escaped unscathed. The thought that there might be some kind of temporal anomaly at work here made her hair stand on end. The Tandaran worlds may have boasted some of the most renowned theoretical physicists in the quadrant, with Vard and his forebears doing pioneering work in temporal theory, but national pride could only go so far. And Ranz had never done well in physics, which was why she’d gone into law enforcement.
“All right,” she conceded, running a hand through her frosted black hair. “I’ll let you see the evidence we’ve gathered and interview the survivors. But anything you find out gets shared with me.”
“Anything we find out may be classified,” Agent Lucsly told her.
“Now look here,” Ranz said. “If there’s something out there that poses a threa
t to Tandaran citizens—or something that can save lives otherwise doomed—I need to know about it, Federation secrets be damned.”
“We appreciate your concerns,” said Agent Dulmur. “I guarantee you, we won’t do anything to jeopardize the safety of your citizens. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be able to tell you what we find out.”
Ranz glared at them. “So I just have to trust you, is that it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lucsly said, making it sound like a command. “You do.”
Firstday/Vien 3/Bregat 8, YC 867 (A Sunday)
04:17 UTC
Lucsly and Dulmur found Professor Vard at the scene of his unlikely rescue, scanning the alleyway with a whirring, rod-shaped sensor device. Dulmur had met the man only once—arguably twice—but he was still much as Dulmur remembered him: a tall, flamboyantly attired, middle-aged Tandaran with a wavy shock of what appeared to be badly dyed black hair framing a heavily lined, square-jawed face. The V-shaped ridge between his bushy eyebrows was sharper-edged and narrower than most Tandarans’. His gray eyes brightened as the agents approached. “Ahh, the amaranthine Agent Lucsly. I knew it was only a matter of time before our worldlines would converge again.”
“Professor.”
“And this must be your partner, Agent Delmer.”
“We’ve met,” Dulmur said patiently, shaking his hand. “Eight years, three months, one week ago. And it’s Dulmur.”
Vard blinked. “Really? You’re satisfied with a name beginning with ‘dull’?” He shrugged. “Well, you are DTI.”
Dulmur let it roll over him with practiced ease as Lucsly said, “Professor, we’re here to investigate—”
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