by Peter David
What McHenry had to do was get to the far edge of the canyon. A fall of some considerable distance awaited him if he stepped off the platform, but the platform was shrinking anyway. He had no reason to think that it was going to shrink into nonexistence. On the other hand, he had no reason to think it wasn’t going to. On that basis, it would probably be best just to proceed as if the latter were the case and not wait around.
But if he were dealing with the real world, and real world rules, then there was no way that he could simply step off the platform without plummeting to his death. The fact, though, that time was unquestionably passing, and yet his body was not showing any signs of that passing, made him question the reality of the world. If he was dealing with an unreal world, then unreal rules should apply.
At least, that’s what his study of ancient animation seemed to tell him.
And if that were the case . . .
. . . then he could step off the platform and not fall. Because gravity would not apply if he paid it no mind. It would cause him to plunge only if he acknowledged it. It was a scenario he’d seen played out any number of times in the animations that Janos had shown him. A cartoon character would dash off a cliff and keep going a considerable distance, until such time as he realized that he was in jeopardy. At that point, one of two things would happen: Either gravity would, after much delay, seize him. Or else, he would actually be able to pivot in midair and make a desperate dash back to safety. On one or two occasions characters had actually made it (although some further contrivance would then serve to send them plummeting anyway).
If it was good enough for them in their unreal world, reasoned McHenry, it was good enough for him in his.
Walking was no big deal. All McHenry had to do was start walking and then ignore the fact that he was doing so. The other elements might be trickier, though.
He took a deep breath and cleared his mind.
The moment his mind was clear, it was like a vacuum. And since nature tended to abhor such things, then naturally everything and anything was sucked right into his head.
Numbers, images, concepts, and assorted situations tumbled about in his skull. The many wonders and possibilities of the universe, all suggesting themselves to him at once, all vying for his attention. There were so many options that he literally did not know where to look first. And so, as he usually did in such circumstances, he proceeded to look everywhere.
A particular conundrum regarding an obscure contradiction in a series of novels he’d read three years back suggested itself. He started to work on that. While he did so, he went back to working out “pi,” which was one of his favorite pastimes, and he also tried to determine how many instances there were wherein a straight line was, in fact, the longest distance between two points. He also gave passing thought as to whether, in fact, the duck-billed platypus was a simple outgrowth of nature or a demented joke on the part of a higher power, and if that were the case, then just who might that higher power be and what did that imply about the structure of the universe. In relation to nothing at all, he also started to wonder whether life actually imitated art, or whether art was simply an intuitive prediction of where life was going. As a result of this, an old song lyric flitted into his mind and he devoted approximately six percent of his brain toward trying to determine just why fools did fall in love. He also came to the realization that four hundred years hence, every computer in the Federation was likely going to shut down and total anarchy would range through the length and breadth of all known space . . . or maybe not. Maybe nothing would happen at all.
He pondered all of this and more, and as he kept thinking about it and thinking about it, he suddenly tripped slightly. He caught himself, but the slight stumble was enough to attract his attention and make him wonder what he had just tripped over.
He looked down, without giving any consideration to the notion that looking down might not be the brightest move in the world. As it turned out, though, it didn’t make any difference, because he was standing on solid ground.
It took him a few moments to remember why that should be an extraordinary thing, and when he did recall, he turned and looked back the way he had come. In the distance was the still-dwindling platform that he’d been standing on. The infinitely deep fall still yawned all around it. But he was safe on the far side.
It had worked. The experiment had worked. The laws of physics of an unreal world had applied to him in this unreal situation. With his mind elsewhere, occupied with so many other things, he had begun walking in a straight line without paying attention to the fact that he was, indeed, moving. So when his feet had trod air, he had not noticed. Because he hadn’t noticed, gravity had been helpless against him.
“That was easy,” he said.
At which point he suddenly heard a loud whistling sound right above him. He stepped back quickly, just in time to avoid an anvil slamming to the ground directly in front of him. This immediately caused a massive crack in the ground directly in front of him, and instantly the previously solid ground upon which he was standing crumbled away, sending him falling back and down into the darkness.
SOLETA
ALL AROUND SOLETA WAS CHAOS as people in the city, who only minutes before had been going peacefully about their business, were running this way and that, shrieking, crying, shouting questions, getting a hundred different answers. Of the Noble House, there was almost nothing left except half of one wall. The explosives had been most thorough in their task.
Different answers rang out everywhere. It was the Klingons. No, it was the Cardassians, no, the Federation, the cursed Federation had struck in this cowardly fashion. No one knew how many were dead yet, but the odds were spectacular that anyone who had been inside the building when it had gone up was now residing with the gods.
The distant stench of smoke and charred meat mixed with the stink of fear in the air. And through it all, Soleta passed like the angel of death at a holiday feast. She was part of the crowd, but apart from it at the same time. Her mind was numb, the logic circuits had shut down. It was as if all the blood was gone from her entire body. She couldn’t feel anything, not the slightest sensation.
He’d used her.
The son of a bitch had used her.
She walked to the spaceport like one in a trance. People would run into her, bump up against her, even slam into her, and she reacted to none of it. They might as well have run into a walking corpse. In a hurricane of activity, she was a distant and icy eye of the storm.
He’d said it. If only she has listened, he had said it. He had spoken of allies, of friends. He had spoken of the terrible vengeance the government had taken against them, talked bitterly of how they had exiled him. All that time she had been so suspicious of him, but the suspicions had wilted when she had learned of his illness, and had finally died when he had died. His impending death had prompted her to believe that he had nothing to gain. She knew now that she’d been wrong. His impending death had simply left him with nothing to lose.
Those allies he had spoken of, those hidden allies, had rigged the explosives. And they had put the triggering device in the tomb. It had been Rajari’s intent to sneak back to Romulus somehow and insert the amulet, which would set the explosives into motion. But he had waited too long, his illness progressing faster than he had anticipated. Even then he might have made the endeavor himself, but two things happened that changed that. The first, obviously, was the assassin squad of Adis. The second was the arrival of Soleta herself.
He had obviously seen within her a potential cats-paw, and he had batted her around with feline expertise. It was incredible, phenomenal. On the one hand a young woman, burning with anger, had come to him. On the other hand a vengeful Romulan noble, with guardsmen at his side, had also come to him. He had played one against the other masterfully, the only cost to him being his own life, which was forfeit anyway.
And she . . . Soleta . . .
She looked at her hand as if it belonged to someone else. It was
the hand that had turned the amulet, and she could only think that if she had a knife or large blade handy, she would hack it off at the wrist.
All the ruckus, all the chaos around her, had happened because of her. Yet she felt disconnected from it all. Her mind simply could not wrap itself around the immensity of what had happened. She kept waiting to wake up and find that she was still back on Vulcan, visiting with her father and finding amusement in a worst-case scenario that was simply too insane to have any credibility.
She was following the signs to the spaceport almost as if she were a sleepwalker, but as she approached one of the entrances, a massively built guard was suddenly in her way. She looked up at him impassively.
“Identification,” he said.
“What?”
“No one is going into or out of this port without proper identification and reason for . . .” Then his eyes narrowed. He stared at her, really stared. “Wait a minute . . .” he began to say.
Soleta did not need to wait for the rest of the sentence. She knew that he had looked too closely and saw that he was not dealing with a fellow Romulan. As an offworlder, she would be arrested immediately, questioned in that unique and wonderful way that Romulans had. There would be nothing left of her by the time they were done. Her mind would be in smoldering ruins. Part of her almost welcomed the notion. Another part of her, however, acted on instinct, and before he had even completed the sentence, her right hand speared toward his shoulder.
But the guard was quick and he caught her hand before it could clamp down. He twisted his other shoulder away from her, his height and angle taking it from her reach, even as with his free hand, he went for his weapon.
Soleta’s left hand lashed up and clamped onto his face.
“Our minds are merging,” she whispered.
The Vulcan mind-meld was always intended to be used as a bonding. A mutual joining of thoughts that would allow two Vulcans to have a better understanding, not only of each other, but also of themselves. It was never intended to be used as any sort of weapon, and doing so went against not only Vulcan philosophy and teachings, but against decency itself. When Ambassador Spock had written his memoirs, he had stated that of all the things in his life that had brought him pain, it had been the forcible mind-meld with the traitorous female, Valeris. He had described it as a “mind rape,” and had needed to embark on several months of meditation and spiritual cleansing in order to try and distance himself from that distasteful moment. Even with that “cleansing,” he had never been able to leave it behind.
For Soleta, a woman born of violence and rape, to engage in such an activity would bring her closer to the very roots that she found so appalling.
She did it without hesitation.
The guard’s eyes widened as he realized what was happening, but he could offer no resistance at all. Another Vulcan might have been able to fight her off, or at least delay the actions enough to mount a defense. But the Romulans, for the most part, had left behind such spiritual niceties as telepathy in exchange for the sheer, cunning ferocity that was their trademark. So the guard had no abilities at all that would allow him to combat Soleta’s assault.
He tried to pull his weapon from his belt. Had he done so, he would have had her cold, because she was right up against him and could offer no physical defense at all. He could have blown a hole in her the size of a cantaloupe. He was unable to do so, however. No matter how much he tried, he could not force his hand to move the additional few inches required to produce his weapon, for his hand was no longer his hand, it was their hand. Soleta had as much command over it as he did . . . more, in fact. She had driven her mind deep into his with wolfish abandon, as if some aspect of her had been unleashed for the first time in her life.
“We are putting our hands down,” she said, and his hand dropped to his side. “We are offering no resistance. Our minds are merging . . . merging . . . you cannot kill me . . . you would be killing yourself . . .”
He trembled, but it was nothing more than the last-ditch effort to provide some minimal resistance. Her eyes were locked into his, but whereas her gaze was filled with cold, channeled ferocity, his was empty.
Had she chosen to, Soleta could have driven her thoughts into his like a spike through tissue paper. She was almost tempted, for a heartbeat, to do it. But then she dismissed the notion as the guard, unable to do anything to prevent it, sagged under the Vulcan nerve pinch that was now applied with no difficulty. His mind spiraled away into unconsciousness and Soleta pulled herself free from him before the meld rendered her insensate as well.
She eased him to the ground, glancing around to see if anyone was paying attention. No one was. They were still busy looking to one another, asking who knew what, and whether there were any survivors. So many questions, with no answers forthcoming.
She pulled out his weapon from its holster and tucked it into the folds of her garment. Then she made her way into the spaceport.
She crossed the field unmolested. The place was a hive of industry, and now that she was inside, no one was making any further efforts to impede her. For a moment she considered the unfortunate possibility that Sharky might have already departed the planet. That had always been something that had worried her; she’d had no real way of ensuring that he would stay put. Fortunately, he had. She could see his vessel from halfway across the field, and she sprinted the remaining distance, anxious to get off the accursed planet before anything else went wrong (although it was hard for her to imagine that anything could go more wrong than it already had).
She dashed up the gangway to the main control room, calling, “Sharky! I think it would be best to depart expeditiously!”
She stepped through the control room’s entrance and froze.
Sharky was rising, a look of grim concern on his face. “Have you heard what happened?” he asked. But that wasn’t what had caused Soleta’s blood to ice up. It was the other individual who was there, turning to face her.
It was a Romulan, in the distinctive uniform of a private guardsman. What immediately caught Soleta’s attention was his right hand, which was made of gleaming metal. It was there to replace the one that Soleta had blown off back on Titan.
Sharky saw the flash of recognition between the two of them, but misread it. “Do you two know each other?”
Mekari raised his weapon. Soleta pulled the stolen disruptor from concealment. In half an instant, both of them were pointing their disruptors at each other’s respective heads, the barrels trained unflinchingly. They were no more than two feet away from one another.
Nobody budged.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Sharky said mildly, breaking the sudden silence that had fallen upon the control room. He clapped his hands together briskly, as if this sort of occurrence in his vessel was fairly routine. “On Earth, this is what we call a Mexican standoff. Whoever fires first will also very likely die as well, because when one person is hit, his or her finger will reflexively tighten on the weapon and cause it to discharge.”
“Thank you for that history lesson, Sharky,” Soleta said.
“You said that perhaps I would kill you on another day, Vulcan bitch,” said Mekari. “Is this a better day for you?” His disruptor didn’t waver.
“To be blunt,” Soleta replied, who was keeping her own weapon equally trained on him, “this has not been a terribly good day for me, no. Dying would not improve it. Although, upon further consideration, it might actually be the high point. What is he doing here, Sharky?” she said, her gaze never straying from Mekari.
“Mekari is my supplier for Romulan ale.”
“Wonderful.”
“I suggest you leave this room, Sharky,” Mekari warned him. “This could be unpleasant.”
“This isn’t really necessary,” Sharky began, “because you could—”
Soleta saw the look in Mekari’s eyes. “Do as he says.”
“Soleta, if—”
“Now.” Her voice was flat and unyielding and clear
ly not allowing for any dissent.
Sharky very carefully moved his heft around the edge of the control room, stepping through and out with no further comment.
They remained frozen for a time.
“Is there no other way than trying to kill each other?” Soleta finally said. “Does your service to Adis require—”
“Adis,” he told her, “is dead. He was in the Noble House when it was blown up. You were responsible for that, I take it?”
Vulcans never lie.
“No,” she said flatly.
“So your presence here is simply coincidence.”
“Coincidence happens,” she reminded him. “Were that not the case, you would not be standing here holding a disruptor on me. And I on you.”
“You cost me a hand. You must pay for that.”
“I have paid greater prices in my life than you can possibly know.”
“I do not care about those. I care about now.”
“And do you wish to die in endeavoring to kill me? How will you savor your vengeance if you are not alive?”
“Vulcan logic. Dazzling as always.”
“Lower your weapon. I will lower mine. And you will have an opportunity to dispose of me without risk to yourself.”
He arched an eyebrow. “An interesting proposal.”
“Thank you.”
“A pity I must kill you. You would be an interesting individual to mate with.”
“I am told that by most individuals who desire to kill me.”
It was everything that Soleta could do to sound like her old self. It was a façade, a reconstruction of who she was. She was saying things that sounded like Soleta, gave the impression that it was Soleta talking to him. But deep within herself, she felt as if the real, true Soleta had crawled away somewhere to hide and die.
Slowly, and with the slightest bit of hesitation, Mekari started to lower his weapon.
She did likewise.
It was nerve-splitting. Each passing second, lower and lower went the weapons.
