by S P Somtow
The music complemented the holodeck program perfectly, smoothing over what would otherwise have been a most garish spectacle. Lightveils parted to reveal the ambassador, who was garbed in several layers of robes and extravagant headgear. The webs between his fingers were painted, and there was a [49] patterned circle intricately painted on his brow, a miniature mandala. The ambassador seemed agitated. “My child!” he said. “Kio has not returned to my quarters.”
Commander Data asked the ship to locate Simon Tarses. No sooner had he spoken than the illusory veils of light flew open to reveal the young crewman and the ambassador’s daughter. Ensign Engvig was skulking in the background.
“This is your guide? Captain Picard, I must protest. I assumed you would have picked someone more suitable, an older woman, perhaps, or—”
“Oh, Father, really,” said Kio.
“I meant no harm, Your Excellency,” said Tarses. “I was just showing her how things worked. And then, Ensign Engvig got lost—” Tarses glared at the poor boy who hovered anxiously in the background.
“I had trouble getting back to Mr. Tarses’s quarters from Ten-Forward.”
The ambassador raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, Father, nothing happened!” She appealed to the captain. “On Thanet, they think they only have a week left to live, so people have been wildly giving way to, well, their baser instincts. These people aren’t like that at all, Father,” she added. “Their planet isn’t about to be crushed to smithereens. And if it were, they’d do something about it.”
“Heresy!” the ambassador exclaimed. But she only laughed.
She was as captivating as her father was ungainly, [50] in a simple flowing garment of sarducca, a living, sheer fabric woven from one-celled creatures that grew into angstrom-thin filaments and lived off the fluids secreted by the human organism.
Captain Picard frowned. He had hoped for a less negative reaction from the ambassador, but was not particularly surprised that the selection of Tarses had not gone over well. Truth be told, Picard himself would have made a less controversial choice, if Crewman Tarses had not been the next name on the roster for guide duty. But skipping over the young officer would have sent the wrong message to Thanetians, to Starfleet and to Tarses himself; a message that a half-Romulan could never be trusted, even with the simplest assignments.
“Your daughter, Ambassador, is perfectly safe with Mr. Tarses, as she is with any member of my crew,” Picard said in a voice that he hoped broadcast his intention to brook no further insults to Simon Tarses.
Straun opened his mouth, clearly wanting to reply, but then apparently changed his mind. He glared briefly at poor Tarses, who looked utterly miserable, and then stomped off the transporter pad, causing the colorful metallic ornaments on his hat to knock into each other and rattle in an echo of the ambassador’s indignation. It was time to break the tension.
Picard smiled, signaling for the Mozart-Kamin to begin once more. “I trust you find this venue a little more familiar than the alien corridors of our ship. Shall we sit?”
[51] Soon the officers and diplomats were all seated, and ravenlizards’ necks were being snapped, both holographically and in the flesh; Tarses, the captain noted, did well after a moment or two of hesitation, while Engvig seemed to have no trouble serving the various beverages.
The first half of the dinner was taken up with pleasantries. How lovely your world is, congratulations on having recently conquered space, and most of all, How impressive the dailong look as they breach and sound from Thanet’s tempestuous oceans.
“Yes, it’s a stirring sight, Captain,” the ambassador, seated on the captain’s right, was saying. “It’s so sad that it must all end soon.”
Silence fell. It was time for the real business of the evening.
Picard glanced across to Counselor Troi, seated at his left. She gripped the double goblet hard; no doubt she was experiencing Straun’s feelings of hopelessness and fear.
“Must,” said Picard, “is a difficult word—when one is speaking of the destruction of an entire civilization.”
“Yet it is something we have been taught all our lives to expect, Captain,” said the ambassador. “It is no great burden to know that our existence is circumscribed, that the circle must one day close upon itself, that we are both the end and the beginning of things.”
“Even when that end is so easily averted?”
[52] “Averted?” The ambassador seemed appalled. “It is indeed an honor, a miracle, that the gods have afforded us this glimpse of the greater universe at the moment of our destruction. But no, of course we do not seek aversion. That would be heresy!”
“Heresy?” said Picard.
“The High Shivantak would never permit such an outrage.”
“And yet, Your Excellency,” said Commander Data, “we have the High Shivantak’s letter.”
A holographic scroll appeared in the air above the dining table. It bore the great seal of the Shivantak himself.
We thank you for your enlightening us, the document began, about the nature of things beyond. If what you say is true, let it be tried. Let us at least have a chance for life.
The ambassador gazed at the document—and seemed ever more confused and mortified as he skimmed the words. “This must be a forgery,” he whispered. “You are trying to subvert all we believe in.”
“I fear that it is not,” Picard said.
The ambassador’s consternation was genuine, Picard realized, not some diplomatic feint. There was more going on here than met the eye. Perhaps this was not going to be a quick errand of friendship after all.
Ambassador Straun continued to stare at the hologram. Deception! he thought. Now who was [53] deceiving whom? Was it these aliens, and did they have some strange agenda of galactic domination? No scripture mentioned what might happen if the world were not to be destroyed every five thousand years. The Thanetians would surely have no moral right to exist—perhaps they could even be reduced to a zombie-like state of slavery.
An even more frightening possibility was that it was the Shivantak himself who—
No! The holiest of the holy, profaning the very beliefs he existed to protect—beyond belief! And yet—
Nothing, thought Ambassador Straun, is certain anymore.
In a subdued voice, he said, “I will listen.”
Picard said, “Mr. Data will explain the situation, and Mr. La Forge will show you how we propose to solve it for you.”
Straun listened.
“Your Excellency,” Data said, “there is a belief on your planet that all civilization comes to an end every five thousand years with the coming of a fiery star, a harbinger of destruction whom you call Deathbringer. The belief is so deeply ingrained as to have the force of fact. And there are other facts that seem to lend support to your cyclical view of history. For example, your recorded history is only five thousand years old, and there is definite archaeological evidence of a huge cataclysm at the very beginning of your history.”
“Of course it has the force of fact!” Straun exclaimed. “Why would it not?”
[54] “Please hear me out, Your Excellency,” said Data. “I have analyzed all the information available to me so far, and the descriptions of the Deathbringer in your scriptures and in your literature and art are about ninety-seven point two percent consistent with the hypothesis that this instrument of destruction is in fact some kind of comet. Comets, as you know, are satellites with a highly eccentric orbit that brings them very close to the sun, then carries them far off beyond the boundaries of the star system. A five-thousand-year orbital cycle is not uncommon. Perhaps, the cataclysm of five thousand years ago was a near-collision of some kind during the comet’s last cycle. If so, it would explain the belief in a five-thousand-year cosmic cycle, and also why civilization seemed to start up so quickly and so abruptly from what seems to be almost nothing.”
Straun sat in stunned silence, but he could see that Kio was listening, not in shock, but in awe and—hop
e. He wanted to stalk out of the room at once, to call out the full forces of the antiheresy league with its inquisitions, dogma trials, and executions of false prophets, but the hope in his daughter’s eyes was something he could not turn his back on.
The future is the past, said the opening lines of the Panvivlion.
If she really believed in a future, the ambassador thought, could he dare to take it away from her?
For her sake, he continued to listen.
Now it was the dark-skinned one’s turn to speak. [55] This man, an engineer or scientist, it seemed, wore a strange prosthesis about his eyes, as did the Priestesses of the Oracle when they breathed the sacred fumes of Ar-Jan-Fang in order to interpret the commands of the gods. Perhaps it too had some kind of oracular function. Certainly it lent him an aura of religious mystery, and when he spoke his words were full of multisyllabic conundrums such as the priestesses were wont to insert into their utterances in order to render perfectly simple prophecies more dramatic-sounding.
“We have confirmed,” he said, “that there is indeed a cometoid object on a trajectory that would intersect the inner Klastravo system within a few hours. We can anticipate actual collision with Thanet in about seventy-seven point three standard hours.”
“So our scriptures are correct,” said Straun, as relieved by the confirmation of his beliefs as he was mournful about the death of Kio’s dreams of a bright future.
“Yes,” said La Forge. “But the collision won’t happen, sir. The prevention of comet disaster is pretty routine; we can fine-tune our phasers to pulverize it long before it reaches Thanet’s orbit.” As he spoke, the hologram of the Shivantak’s missive vanished and was replaced by a schematic of the Klastravo system. They had plotted the Deathbringer’s path; a fiery comet was winging its way toward their planet, the whole represented in miniature with such lifelike accuracy he could almost reach out and cup the entire world in his hand.
[56] There it was. The end, as foretold, as sung about in a thousand odes. The Deathbringer inexorable, implacable. But then, from the edge of the viewing area, a starship materialized. The Enterprise. A few quick bursts of light, surgical in their accuracy, and the Deathbringer was no more. Just like that.
“Would you like to see that again?” La Forge said.
Ambassador Straun nodded numbly. Seeing was believing, but the third and fourth replay were not enough for him. His master—the High Shivantak—already knew of this. He had sent him—an undersecretary, a nobody—into this place. Straun was being set up for a heresy trial—he was sure of it! But what difference could all of this plotting make so near to the end of the world? Unless the Shivantak did not plan for the world to end! Unless the unthinkable were true—and in his heart of hearts, he knew it must be. The “Shivantak was a consummate politician. If there was a way he could cling to power, to life, and an undersecretary could be sacrificed, a heretic who had somehow manipulated the aliens into saving the world—a heretic who could be made a scapegoat—it made a twisted sort of sense. Set up to take the fall!
Or am I just paranoid? he wondered.
“Forgive me,” he temporized. “It is all so overwhelming.”
“Perhaps—something familiar will ease your mind,” Picard said. He clapped his hands; the hologram of the Klastravo system dissipated. In its place [57] was a platter of poached cassowary eggs topped with whispering algae from the snowy slopes of Ilimantang. The kind of delicate dessert that graced only the tables of High Shivantaks and their priestesses of nocturnal pleasure.
“Not that familiar,” he said wryly. He had always wanted to try Cassowary eggs. If he still believed that his life, that his very world, was coming to an end, he probably would have reached for one. But now his arm felt numb and his stomach roiled. The past hour’s events had caused the ambassador to lose his appetite for even the most intriguing confections.
Reflexively he glanced at his daughter, hoping to find comfort in her beautiful face, but her eyes were fixed upon that boy—that crewman. Wonderful, he thought sourly. She’s falling in love with a barbarian, and a low-status one at that. Couldn’t she at least have picked a high-ranking officer. Now she would not just die in shame. She would live her last moments in shame. Just wonderful.
Picard’s voice intruded on his thoughts.
“We have the Federation’s formal response to the Shivantak’s letter,” said Picard, and two crew members in dress uniform entered the holographic chamber bearing a gilded chest on a silver tray covered with feathers. They bowed in keeping with Thanetian custom, and handed the tray to the ambassador, who waved his hand over it three times and inclined his left wrist in the formal gesture of acknowledgment.
[58] He then waved it away, and the two crew members retreated with it to the background.
“I shall carry the message to my master,” he said.
But who was his master now? Was the Shivantak now a heretic himself—and thus no longer worthy of allegiance? Ambassador Straun kept these mysteries in his heart, and bowed humbly even as he cursed these aliens for trampling on everything he had ever believed in.
Chapter Seven
Artas
AND STILL HE FLOATED.
Subtly, imperceptibly, the dreams were changing. The voices were strident, urgent. He wanted to wake up. He hadn’t felt that way before, not since the journey began.
He dreamed of lights. Twinkling red lights. More voices. Alarms. Levers. Switches. Twisted ribbons of metal glistened in the half-dark. This was very different from the fields, the ocean. Usually his dreams were nothing but warmth, nothing but softness. His dreams were there to help him forget the cold hard metal prison that was his whole existence ... but now, something impinged upon that inner paradise. Something was changing. The journey was truly ending.
This was strange.
[60] There was something out of place.
Forget! the voices screamed. He was afraid.
Or—another memory surfaced. Tantalizing.
Are you my mother? he asked the alien voice.
It did not answer him for a long time—but finally, with a certain sadness he did not think he had ever heard before, the voice said, No.
If only I could weep, he thought to himself.
He could not quite remember what weeping was, but he knew he would feel better afterward, because someone would enfold him in her arms, and he would sleep.
Chapter Eight
Asylum
SOON THE TRAUMA would be over. Ambassador Straun was relieved to be returning to Thanet, even though he knew that he would soon be facing a confrontation with the High Shivantak.
A heresy trial, perhaps? In a way it didn’t much matter. Infamy or honor, all would be washed away when the great cycle returned to its beginning, when the mighty Ur-Dailong swallowed its own tail, when the karmic quotient of every soul would have its counter reset to zero. Unless ... No. He must banish all doubt. These were the teachings of the Panvivlion; these were the sayings by which he lived.
At 0900 hours by the aliens’ curiously rigid system of reckoning time, he was walking toward the transporter room with this disturbing bald man [68] whom they called “captain.” The hospitality he had received aboard this vessel would of course be reciprocated on Thanet; a lavish reception was planned, and a party from the Enterprise would attend. Some were there already; there was that obscene parody of a human being, the android who spoke in riddles, and a few others he dimly recalled from last night’s dinner. This creature seemed to be exhibiting a bizarre hyperactivity, breathing heavily, with his hands trembling and his lips constantly trying out different smiles and frowns.
At length the ambassador couldn’t control his curiosity and said, “Are you ill, Mr. Data? You appear abnormally agitated.”
“I am attempting to demonstrate the proper level of excitement,” said the android. “I am about to set foot on a world new to the Federation. It is an exceptionally thrilling moment, hence I am causing my extremities to palpitate and increasing the pac
e of my heartbeat and breathing. It is all part of learning to fit in with humans, Mr. Ambassador.”
“In our culture,” said the ambassador, “we place great importance on never trying to become what one is not.”
“You are overdoing it a little, Commander,” said the captain mildly.
The commander immediately went very still. It was unnerving, how the creature could switch parts of itself on and off. These were an unholy race indeed, for they blurred the distinctions between the [63] highborn and the lowborn ... even between the animate and the inanimate! He would have a great deal to report to the Shivantak, assuming that they didn’t hustle him off to a heresy trial within minutes of his return to the real world.
His daughter was due to meet them there. In a moment of weakness, he had permitted her out of his sight, for a last-minute tour of some sort of menagerie. She loved animals. He loved her, wanted above all to humor her wishes now that their time together was so limited; he hated the handsome young man they had assigned to escort her everywhere, distrusted the way he tried to anticipate her every whim. But it was only for an hour. Then it would all be over. Yes. So it was written. He would believe.
He and the captain reached the little chamber with the instant-travel machines. She was not there.
“Ah, young people,” said Captain Picard. “They do love to keep us waiting.”
Straun didn’t like the intimacy that “us” implied, so he just smiled grimly. “My patience is not infinite,” he said.
Several long moments passed.
The captain continued to smile. Oh, those reassuring glances, those ever so patronizing looks! This alien actually pitied him. He thought he was some deluded, self-destructive fool, and not the guardian of his world’s eternal truth.
“What have you done with my daughter?” Straun said, succumbing to a sudden panic.
