“Yes,” Tanek said. “That is true.”
“You have all been deceived,” Carol said. “And you have all willingly participated in that deception.”
“Madness,” Sirajaldin said.
“That’s right. And we live in an age of unreason.”
Carol had known that it was far more than a coincidence that attempts had been made on her life, but none on Bart and Soloman. She had been the one wearing the device. She had been the one to leap forward into the same madness engulfing so many of these people.
And her would-be assassins…how serious were they? If someone had actually wanted her dead, there were cleaner and more efficient ways of going about it, particularly considering they had access to the same technology that was practically branded to her wrist.
That was how it felt now. A part of her, a thing that had been seared into her flesh, her soul, a mark upon her sanity.
She aimed the scepter at Bart and Soloman. “It was all a trick. Menzala Trivere couldn’t transform all his theories into reality on his own. He needed our help.”
“With what?” Bart called.
“You haven’t created a null field at all. This is a mass amplification module. It will make the power available to any and all on this planet…possibly even beyond.
“Power for its own sake.”
“What are you accusing us of?” Tanek demanded.
“She’s simply stating truth,” came the voice of Alhouan, who dragged the chained form of Martin Mansur with him through the crowd.
Carol said, “This was about potential. It never had anything to do with your planet joining the Federation. The man behind this wanted to know what we might do with your technology. If we could be stronger with it than yourselves.”
“The murderer,” Tanek breathed.
“He’s not,” Carol said. “Because there was no murder.”
Alhouan stopped before the stage, removing a small projection device from his pocket. “See for yourself.”
A screen rippled into existence behind Tanek and Sirajaldin. Images with specific dates and times played. Carol looked at the footage of the scientist entering and leaving his chamber, all that could be found after she had appeared to Alhouan and communicated all she could to him by covering her hands from view and tracing ceremonial symbols upon his arm to secretly pass along her suspicions.
“The man you see before you was my friend, or so I believed,” Alhouan said. “And no one killed him. He had all that he needed in his private chamber to assemble his own working prototype weeks ago, and that is what he did. View the holos yourself. Seventeen days ago, he entered his chamber at night, left it in the morning…then left it again in the afternoon. The corpse we found was a duplicate, one he maintained until ritual cremation.”
“The device already existed?” Martin said, his eyes wide with fury. “I was manipulated?”
“We had no knowledge of this,” Tanek maintained. Sirajaldin agreed.
“Not consciously,” Carol said, holding up her arm, exposing the device. “But you’ve felt it, haven’t you? The lure of it. The power it offers.”
“It’s an addiction,” Alhouan said. “One that drives its victim mad. We were all in it with him. All of us. But it seemed like sanity. It still does.”
Someone in the crowd gasped as a figure fled from its ranks and burst into the tower. It was the scientist. The dead man.
He was desperate. Crazed.
Tanek’s face flushed crimson. “You have no right to secrets,” he hissed at Carol. “The ritual has been tainted. This union—”
Sirajaldin struck him, and suddenly, dozens of wraiths burst into existence all about them, the crowd multiplying, doubling, tripling in number with every beat of Carol’s heart.
“The only thing you can’t control is what is in my heart and mind,” Carol said, touching the device on her wrist, willing her doppelgänger into existence beside the startled Bart and Soloman. It reached the device seconds before the lunatic scientist, who was still intent on seeing his will inflicted upon all on this planet.
Carol touched off the null field from her wristlet, causing the energies within the amplifier to overload. Crackling blue-white energies reached for them all, wiping the doppelgängers out of existence.
Epilogue
Tanek ordered them offworld immediately, of course. Although there were isolated bits of fighting here and there, the civil war on Vrinda never materialized. The people thought they wanted mass destruction, chaos, bloodshed; what they truly wanted was the power of the device. Without that, without its addictive abilities to re-create oneself, the desire had been lessened.
Martin was in the Sugihara’s brig, and the first thing Carol noticed when she went to visit him was his mad eyes. His mind, upon taking in the possibilities of all she had experienced, the power and control she had possessed, then tossed away, had snapped. In his head, he was still planetside, living in a world in which he could be anywhere, everywhere at once, and even transform his appearance to be a dozen, a hundred, a thousand individuals at once. More than that, he could be idolized by countless admirers, and they could all be himself.
“Why would I leave? Why would I ever go?” Martin said, laughing and telling her she was again the failure…but now she knew differently.
“Fine, Martin…you belong here,” she said.
“He had been right,” Martin whispered. “Tanek. He visited me. Tortured me. Said it was the end of the world. He was right. The end of the old world, the beginning of the new. And it is glorious.”
Martin was right, of course, but not the way he thought. Once, Carol might have taken pleasure in Martin’s fall from grace, but now she just pitied him.
From there she went to the mess hall to find Bart and Soloman.
As she sat down to join them, Carol said, “I’d say their emotional honesty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In the end, they were just as self-deluded as the rest of us.”
“Not all of us,” Bart said, taking a sip from his coffee. “You wound up being the most emotionally honest person on Vrinda because you recognized the device for what it was.”
Carol almost smiled. “Not something I’ve been accused of in the past.”
Soloman added, “Now the people must go cold turkey—which is, I believe, the best way to recover from an addiction.” He frowned. “I have never understood that phrase.”
“Later,” Bart said with a grin. “I think you should be proud of what you’ve done here, Carol. It may not be what Starfleet had hoped for in terms of the mission, but it’s probably best for Vrinda in the long term.” He gave her a look. “And maybe for you, too.”
“Maybe.”
“And best of all, we’ve got a week and a half left. It’s not the vacation I was hoping for, but Captain Demitrijian is gonna be able to drop me off at Starbase 92.”
This time, Carol’s smile was genuine. “Good.”
“I will be returning to McKinley Station,” Soloman said, “to make sure the da Vinci’s new computer is up to standard.”
“I’m sure it will be,” Bart said.
“Up to my standard,” Soloman amended.
Laughing, Bart turned to Carol. “What about you?”
“Oh, something will turn up,” she said. She thought about an angular face framed by raven hair, and wondered how long it would take to get to Pacifica, and if it would leave enough time to get back to Earth in a week and a half. She really liked Ian, and it was about time she started being a bit more honest with herself—and her feelings.
About the Author
SCOTT CIENCIN is a New York Times bestselling author of adult and children’s fiction. Praised by Science Fiction Review as “one of today’s finest fantasy writers” and listed in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Scott has written over fifty novels and many short stories and comic books. He has written in many shared worlds, including Star Wars, Dinotopia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. He is the coauthor of the Star Trek: S.C.E. adventure
Some Assembly Required and his original Dinoverse series has been optioned by Critical Hit Entertainment. Scott lives in Fort Myers, Florida, with his beloved wife, Denise.
COMING NEXT MONTH:
Star Trek™: S.C.E. #27
Balance of Nature
by Heather Jarman
In the wake of the catastrophic events of Wildfire, P8 Blue returns to her homeworld, only to find herself caught up in a web of intrigue. Strange disappearances among her fellow Nasats and odd happenings throughout her homeland have stymied local authorities. Due to her experiences with Starfleet in general and the S.C.E. in particular, Blue is asked to aid in the investigation.
* * *
What they turn up will lead to a terrible secret from the Nasat’s past, and it will take all of Blue’s ingenuity to save her people—and an entire world…
COMING IN APRIL FROM POCKET BOOKS!
Age of Unreason Page 5
