FORTUNE'S LIGHT

by Michael Jan Friedman

It had been a close call for his first officer. He didn’t like close calls, particularly when he had no control over them.

  As his body unwound, so did his mind. And some of the ship’s business that had been submerged during the emergency started to float to the surface.

  The captain sifted through it. And stopped when he got to Data’s recent attraction to the holodecks.

  It was a development he’d barely noticed at first. But the android was hardly a creature of habit, so anytime his behavior grew repetitive, it drew Picard’s attention.

  And given the substance of Data’s last obsession with the holodeck . . .

  Perhaps it was something that needed looking into. Filing the thought away, he went on to the next bit of command minutiae.

  Rain clamored on the dugout roof, dripped off the edge of it in wind-twisted cascades, and collected in puddles on the worn concrete steps. It had begun in the Icebreakers’ half of the fifth inning with a light sprinkle, which the umpires decided would pass.

  The umpires were incorrect. By the top of the sixth the skies had become bloated with black-bellied clouds, which looked no less menacing after the stadium lights were turned on. Then came the wind and the sheeting downpour, and by the time the ground crew rolled out the tarpaulin, the pitcher’s mound and the base paths were the color of rich, dark cocoa.

  Now Data knew what the clubhouse man had meant when he’d questioned the weather before the game. Apparently he’d seen this kind of meteorological phenomenon before.

  In any case the android didn’t have to sit through the delay. He could have stopped the program and picked it up again after the deluge was over. Certainly he wasn’t honing his prowess as a baseball player by huddling in the dugout.

  But only a couple of the other Icebreakers had retreated into the clubhouse. Most of them remained out here despite the swirling wind and the rain, speaking in soft voices and regarding the vast, empty field. Occasionally they would laugh, and the laughter would ripple down the bench from player to player until it was finally lost in the shusharush of the elements.

  This was part of the experience, Data told himself. Part of what Commander Riker had built for himself, and as such, he could not overlook its possible value.

  Still, as time passed, and the players’ exchanges became more and more like those that had gone before, the android found his mind drawn elsewhere. It kept returning to matters outside the holodeck and, in particular, to the goings-on in Besidia.

  Why had the first officer been called down there? And was he truly out of the woods now, as Dr. Crusher had informed the captain? Or, as Wesley seemed to think, did other dangers await him?

  Throughout the worst of the storm, Denyabe had been sitting next to Data, his fists jammed into the pockets of his warm-up jacket. He hadn’t spoken a word to the android or anyone else. He just followed the clouds in their passage and smiled from time to time.

  So the android was unprepared when Denyabe elbowed him in the ribs—or what would have been his ribs if he’d truly been Bobo Bogdonovich, and not Dr. Soong’s creation.

  “Hey,” said the second baseman. “You look down. Like your best friend just died.”

  Data looked at him. How perceptive, he thought. Especially in view of the android’s limited capacity for facial expression.

  “In fact,” he told Denyabe, “a friend was severely injured recently. But I am told he is recuperating.”

  The second baseman nodded. “Good.” He turned back to the field, where the rain had lightened to a drizzle and the wind seemed all but spent.

  Just when Data thought their conversation had come to an end, Denyabe nudged him again and pointed to something. The android followed his gesture past the left field wall to the mountains rising in the distance.

  “See that?” he asked.

  Data wasn’t sure what he was referring to. He said as much.

  “The light,” said Denyabe. “The sun’s trying to come out—way up in the mountains.”

  The android saw it now, though he was a little surprised at the acuity of his teammate’s vision. Most humans could not see well at such great distances.

  “It’s the Light,” said Denyabe.

  “The Light?” echoed the android.

  “Yes. The Light, the golden radiance that pierces the clouds at the end of a storm.” The second baseman’s eyes narrowed. “Back where I come from—or anyway, where my people come from—it’s supposed to be an omen of good luck. The Light touches you, the goddess Fortune lays her hands on your shoulders, and you’re blessed. You’ll become wealthy, you’ll have a big family, you’ll be surrounded by love and happiness. The same with the land. Where the Light falls on it, the crops will grow strong and tall.”

  Out among the mountains, the shafts of light were easily visible now. As the storm receded, they seemed to be approaching the stadium.

  “An interesting theory,” said Data. “And probably one with some basis in fact. Light, after all, is a—”

  Denyabe stopped him with a shake of his head. “No. It’s a lie. The goddess Fortune, the Light, the promise of wealth—all lies.” He smiled at the android. “Fortune doesn’t turn double plays. She doesn’t knock me in from second base. And she sure as hell doesn’t grow crops.” He hawked and spat. “Wealth? I’ll tell you what wealth is. It’s you and me, here and now. It’s people working on something together—something they can be proud off.” He grunted. “People can’t depend on Fortune, Bobo. They’ve got to depend on one another.” A pause. “You understand?”

  Data nodded—slowly at first, tentatively, and then with more assurance. He hadn’t comprehended all of it, to be sure. There was still much for him to ponder. But he had grasped the essence of it.

  The second baseman winked. “All right, then. You remember all that and maybe you’ll hit a home run today.”

  The android winked back—it seemed to be the appropriate response. “I certainly hope so,” he said, as the ground crew trotted out to uncover the playing field.

  Even though Riker had some idea of where he was going this time, the passageways were still narrow and confusing, and he needed his wits about him. The color codes wouldn’t help him much if he read them incorrectly.

  “How’s the arm?” asked Crusher, a few steps behind him.

  “It isn’t throbbing as much as it did before,” he told her. “The effect of the cold, maybe?”

  “Or else your regenerated nerves are deteriorating. But more likely it is the cold.” She looked around. “You know,” she said, “this place seemed a lot more romantic when I was listening to Wesley describe it. It’s hard to be enchanted when you’re so concerned with staying alive.”

  Riker was concerned, too. He’d been looking over his shoulder since the moment they left their hotel suite. There had been no sign that anyone was following them—but then, a real professional would have been sure not to leave one.

  And now that they were in the maze, it would have been easy to kill them as Teller was killed—and just dump their bodies in the hole beside his.

  “Are we getting close?” asked the doctor.

  “Very close,” he told her. “In fact, if memory serves . . . ” They negotiated a sharp bend in the passage and there it was—the pit created by the cave-in. “We’re here,” he said.

  It was no different from a dozen other pits they’d passed on the way—at least, at first glance. Crusher said so as they approached.

  “Nonetheless,” Riker insisted, “this is the one.”

  They shone their beamlights down into the darkness. To her credit, the doctor didn’t gasp at what she saw within. She didn’t make a sound. In fact, her only overt reaction was a flaring of her chiseled nostrils.

  Teller was just as he and Lyneea had left him. Perfectly preserved by the cold, more like an ivory statue than the remains of a man.

  “I’ll go first,” said Crusher. “You’re going to need some help getting down.”

  Nor was the irony of role reversal lost o
n the first officer. Normally Riker, with his greater strength and agility, would have been giving the doctor a hand. But this was no time for machismo.

  “You’ve got to hang on to that flat rock,” he instructed, indicating the stone with his beam. “Then drop. There’s a slope below it.”

  She walked around the hole until she had a better view. “I see it,” she told him. Then, stashing the beamlight in her tunic, she latched on to the rock and lowered herself over the brink. A moment later he heard the crunch of her boots on the gravel.

  “All right,” she called softly—out of deference for the dead man? “Do your best. I’ll try to keep you from hitting anything.”

  Riker stowed his own beamlight. He sat carefully on the edge of the cave-in and took hold of the rock with one hand. Then he let himself slip in and down.

  His purchase on the rock was tenuous at best; he couldn’t hang on for very long, and he wound up dropping at an awkward angle. But Crusher was there to help straighten him out when he landed.

  Together they slid down the incline. Somehow they managed to keep their feet.

  “Thanks,” he told her.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said. “I didn’t spend all that time healing your shoulder to let you go and wreck it again.”

  The body was at the base of the slope. They knelt down beside it.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  He tried not to think about what they were doing. He couldn’t shake the notion that it was one step removed from grave-robbing—if very necessary grave-robbing.

  “A communications device of some kind—that is, if I’ve guessed right about Teller’s method of finding his way through the maze. And even if it’s here, it won’t be easy to locate. Lyneea searched him pretty thoroughly and didn’t find a thing.”

  “Then it’s not in his pockets,” concluded Crusher.

  “No. Not in any obvious pockets, anyway.” He played the beamlight on Teller’s footwear. “Try those.”

  “His boots?”

  “Just a hunch. I don’t think Lyneea looked there.”

  The doctor removed the dead man’s right boot and reached inside it. Immediately she turned to regard Riker, and a grim smile played at the corners of her mouth.

  “There’s something here all right,” she told him. “A couple of somethings, in fact.” A second later she drew out a plastic rectangle.

  “A chit,” said the first officer, recognizing it easily. He trained his light on it. “A valuable one at that—you don’t see too many of this denomination.” And the thing was black. “Issued by Madraga Rhurig.”

  “What does that mean?” asked the doctor, delving deeper with her narrow fingers.

  “Probably Teller’s payoff, or at least the first installment. And since it came from Rhurig, that’s probably who hired him to steal the seal.”

  Crusher plucked out something else then—an object the size and shape of the chit but thicker.

  As Riker illuminated it, she turned it over in her hand. It was silver, with four fingertip-size plates and three tiny but separate readouts above them.

  “He had a pocket sewn inside his boot,” explained Crusher, still looking a little incredulous. “This fit right inside it, along with the chit.”

  “It looks Maratekkan,” he observed. “They’re good at miniaturization.” He pulled his glove off with his teeth and held out his good hand. “May I?”

  She gave it over. Cradling it in his palm, he fingered one of its plates. Immediately one of the readouts became illuminated; numerals appeared.

  “Coordinates?” ventured Crusher.

  “That’s what they look like,” he agreed. When he touched another plate, the first readout died and a second one sprang to life. It displayed the same sort of numerals.

  The third plate triggered the bottommost readout, but that one was blank, as if it hadn’t been programmed. That left the fourth plate, which was set below the first three and centered.

  Riker had an idea what it was for. Touching the first plate again, he reactivated the original set of numerals. Then he tried the fourth plate.

  Suddenly the thing started beeping. Not loud—in fact, if it hadn’t been for the silence all around them, they might not have heard it at all. But it was loud enough.

  Riker nodded, gripped the thing tighter. He looked at Crusher.

  “A homing mechanism,” he told her. “The louder this beeping gets, the closer one is to one’s objective.”

  “I see,” said the doctor. She tapped the topmost readout with a fingernail. “It looks as if it’s got two active settings. You think that one of them will lead us to . . . what’s it called again?”

  “Fortune’s Light.”

  “Right. And the other setting, I imagine, would indicate the way out.”

  “That would make sense,” said Riker. “Teller probably planted a transmitter near one of the exits.”

  “So what are we waiting for? Let’s follow the audio signal and—”

  A sound. They froze at the same time and exchanged glances by the glow of the beamlight.

  It could have been one of those skittering things, Riker told himself. There were enough of them down here. But somehow, he didn’t think so. The sound had been too heavy, too substantial. And it had been isolated, with nothing before or after it—as if whoever made the sound had realized it, and stopped before he could make another one.

  Riker jabbed a forefinger at the opening above them; Crusher nodded. They had to get out of there or they’d be easy targets for whoever had followed them.

  With a touch of his thumb, he eliminated the beeping. Then he pressed the device into the doctor’s hand and led her up the slope.

  “You first,” she whispered, as she stashed the thing in her tunic. She braced herself and held out her hands.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  If Crusher went first, at least one of them had a shot at getting away. If they wasted time trying to get him out, they might both be caught.

  And he couldn’t allow that. They had just found the key to recovering Fortune’s Light; it was important that it not be lost again.

  The doctor glared at him, but gave in. There was no time to protest and she knew it.

  This time, Riker held out his hand—just one, unfortunately, but Crusher was a slender woman. It would have to do.

  Placing her boot in his palm, grasping his good shoulder for balance, she launched herself up toward the crossways-lying rock. Riker couldn’t add anything to her effort—it was all he could do to keep his hand steady against the thrust of her heel.

  But it turned out to be enough. And once the doctor had a good grasp on the rock, she managed to wrestle her way out of the pit. It wasn’t easy for her—far from it. But she managed.

  “All right,” she gasped, leaning her head over the brink. “Come on. There’s nobody around—not yet.”

  She held out her hand to him, but they both knew it was a token gesture. If he was going to get out, it would be under his own power. And he had to make it on the first try; after that, with his strength at low ebb already, the odds would drop precipitously.

  Setting his teeth, Riker eased his arm out of the sling. His shoulder complained, sending shoots of fire through the muscles in his back. He did his best to ignore them.

  Hell, he told himself, this is nothing. If you can’t take this, you might as well give up the whole idea.

  Taking hold of the rocky projection he’d used once before, he gathered himself and sprang for the cross-piece. His hands hooked around either side of it. In the same motion, he swung his legs up and past, until they found the lip of the pit.

  Agony. Like talons shredding the newborn nerve ends in his shoulder. Like acid searing the raw, half-formed flesh.

  No time to breathe. No time to think about what would come next.

  As Riker readjusted his grip on the rock, pushed with his feet and twisted, he cried out—he couldn’t help it. He thought his shoulder would gi
ve out before he could reach the top. He thought he would find himself on his back next to his friend, hopeless, having spent the last of his strength.

  He was wrong on all counts. On the other side of the blinding pain was Crusher. And the hard, reassuring ground that surrounded the pit.

  “Come on,” she was saying, trying to get him up off his back. “Let’s move, Commander.”

  Cursing inwardly, he allowed her to help him to his feet. Then, slipping his bad arm back inside the sling, he started off with her down the passageway.

  It was getting late, he noted. Up above, the sky was approaching the color of twilight.

  Behind them, there were footfalls—distinct now, unmistakable. It gave them a greater sense of urgency as they negotiated a bend in the corridor and rushed through the gathering gloom.

  They had a head start, he told himself. They could probably elude whoever was pursuing them.

  But more than likely, there were other pursuers in the maze. And maybe a few outside as well, waiting for them to emerge.

  A blaster would help to even the odds. It would help a lot.

  Making up his mind, Riker stopped dead in his tracks. A moment later, the doctor stopped too—and looked back.

  “What’s the matter?” she breathed.

  “Nothing. Just hoping our friend is well armed, that’s all.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We need a blaster,” he explained. “And I can’t think of another way to get one.” Slowly, as silently as he could, he worked his way back to the twist in the passageway.

  When he reached it, he listened. The footfalls were getting louder. Closer. Suddenly they stopped.

  In the vicinity of the pit? Perhaps to see if anything had been disturbed?

  After a moment the sounds of progress picked up again. Riker noticed how quickly night was falling, how eagerly it was rushing to fill this place. But that was all right. Their pursuer would take that much longer to spot them.

  And by then, he hoped, it would be too late.

  The scrape of boot soles on gravel, a little nearer now. Nearer still. He exchanged glances with the doctor as she clung to the wall behind him. She frowned, unable to conceal her anxiety.