STAR TREK: TNG - Do Comets Dream?

by S P Somtow

  [64] “I’m sure she is on her way,” said Captain Picard, his voice oozing the serenity of one who does not have his own daughter to protect. Truly, these people were insufferable!

  “Computer—location of Kio and Crewman Tarses,” the Captain continued seemingly into the empty air.

  “In Holodeck Two, Captain,” said a disembodied voice.

  “Beam them here immediately,” said Picard to the transporter technician.

  A flash of rainbow light, and there they were. In mid-embrace. The temerity of it! Straun was trembling with as much agitation as the artificial human had shown earlier in his obscene mockery of human emotion.

  “Father, I can explain—” she began. Meanwhile the young man was hastily concocting lies to soothe his captain—some nonsense about the constant presence of someone named “Engvig,” and the trio’s innocent stroll through something called “the buffalo exhibit.” Quite suddenly, the boy claimed, Straun’s daughter—his decent honorable Kio—had thrown her arms around Tarses’s neck. To even suggest such a disgrace—it was simply unbearable.

  “I was just—entertaining her. Obeying orders,” the boy concluded lamely.

  Kio was not at all sheepish after she recovered from her momentary embarrassment. “Entertaining me! Is that what you call it? You’ve shown me doorways into other universes, you’ve tugged at my [65] heartstrings and my emotions, you even caused me to break the sacred laws of the Panvivlion and—you call it entertainment? Were you entertaining me or myself? Were you just toying with me?”

  Simon Tarses just stood there, his lying mouth hanging open, his eyes stupid with shock. Picard frowned, but held his tongue.

  A monumental rage stirred in Straun. A day and a night among aliens—and his daughter had practically become one! What had they been doing in that so-called holodeck, what filthy alien secrets had she been learning? And what if she had somehow already yielded up—her precious ara-ta-zorn, that thing which may never be yielded to a man without the seal of approval of the Shivantak’s Conjugal Affairs Office? It was all too much! In his life, he had never so much as said a harsh word to his daughter—he had left all the disciplining to his late wife;—but this was the last straw. He was going mad. He threw aside all diplomatic pretense and pulled her to him. His bony hands went for her throat.

  “You bring shame on me, you—you—arataq!” he screamed. There! The most insulting word in the Thanetian language had escaped his lips.

  Kio twisted free. And then—and this was far worse than if she had wept, or spat back some insult—she began to laugh.

  “Is this what it’s come to, Father? Your world is about to be pulverized by a comet, and you still want me to protect my purity? For what?”

  [66] “Captain!” Tarses protested. Picard’s palm covered his brow as he shook his head in dismay.

  “Not my world, daughter—the world. Our universe. The very hub of our existences.”

  “Father,” she said, “I’ve tasted sweet zul from the mountaintops of Aragur! I’ve sipped the juices of the forbidden purple pomelo! Those are the highest taboos in our society, Father! After that, what’s a little sex?”

  Ambassador Straun slapped his daughter’s face. Immediately, he felt a strong hand grip his arm, presumably to restrain him from striking her again. He looked up into the angry eyes of Jean-Luc Picard.

  “That is enough!” the captain thundered. But the human needn’t worry. Straun would not raise his hand to his sweet, innocent daughter again. None of this was her doing. These words weren’t her words. Henceforth he would lay the blame where it belonged. Right at the feet of Simon Tarses.

  “I swear, sir, I never, never in a thousand years. ...”

  “That’s enough out of you too, crewman.”

  “Father,” Kio said, “I’m not going back.” To the captain, imploringly, she turned and said, “They can’t make me. I’m going to die if I go back. Everyone’s going to die, and they don’t even care.”

  “No one’s going to die,” said the captain. “I’ve given the Shivantak the Federation’s word that this disaster will be averted—”

  “How dare you!” Straun cried. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve shamed me in front of my daughter by forcing me to stoop to—violence? Isn’t it enough [67] that you’ve sown the seeds of doubt in her, so that she can no longer face the end gracefully, with quiet stoicism and pride?”

  “Captain,” said the young girl, “I demand—I don’t know, political asylum!”

  “I didn’t mean to—I was telling her about some of Earth’s ancient history—the Cold War, people defecting, that kind of thing,” said the young man forlornly. “I didn’t realize that—”

  “Mr. Tarses, we will discuss this later in my ready room. Dismissed.” The young upstart left. Straun silently promised himself that he too would have words with Tarses. Later.

  Captain Picard put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. She continued to stare defiantly at her father, but Ambassador Straun was not inclined to back down.

  Gently, the captain said, “Kio, your father is an ambassador, and we are in the process of establishing diplomatic relations with your world; perhaps now isn’t quite the time to—”

  “A world that is about to be destroyed. You’re never going to succeed in blowing up the comet,” said the girl. “My father is a fanatic. He’ll sabotage your plan. He’ll subvert even the High Shivantak himself—”

  “Heresy!” shouted the ambassador with all his might.

  “Heresy, he says,” said his daughter. “Well, then ... if not political asylum ... I claim religious persecution. I don’t believe in the inevitability of the [68] end of the world ... and my father is trying to force me to die for my beliefs.”

  “Kio,” Picard said softly, “you must go with your father. I cannot interfere with the traditions of your people.”

  “Cannot?” she said, as slowly she moved toward Straun, looking away when he tried to embrace her. “You already have. I wish, oh, by the Panvivlion, I wish you had never come.”

  For the first time that day, Ambassador Straun agreed with his daughter. Change had come at the eleventh hour, bourne by this mighty ship.

  Change!

  Nothing had ever changed on Thanet.

  The universe is a dance. The cycles follow each other with the regularity of—no! Nothing has ever changed on Thanet, Straun found himself saying over and over in his mind, as though the repetition of that axiom were enough to counter the clear evidence that change had finally come.

  And Straun was afraid.

  Part Two: The Machine That Was Mortal

  Do not resist

  The one who shall come

  For the one who shall come

  Is father and mother to you

  And son and daughter as well;

  You are all part of the chain of being

  As the dailong, engendered deep beneath the sea,

  Rises from the mists to serve you

  And retreats beneath the waves

  When his time is come;

  You are all as the dailong,

  Called by God,

  Sent back by God

  At the proper time.

  —From the Seventh Book

  of the Holy Panvivlion

  CAPTAIN PICARD, once more, was alone with the report. Halliday had the unerring knack of putting his finger on that which was most troubling to the Federation, that which the Federation most wanted to avoid coming to grips with.

  For the Prime Directive, beautiful as it was, was an idea, not a law of nature.

  It had taken millennia for this idea to be shaped, and yet it was still as fragile now as it had been when first formulated. So many things worked against it: avarice, human desire, megalomania, even love.

  Picard read on:

  CONFIDENTIAL REPORT:

  Dr. Robert Halliday’s field notes

  Dr. Halliday’s report resumes with more translations from the Panvivlion, and his commentary:

  As far as
I’ve been able to figure out, the Thanetians have seventeen basic castes, each of which is divided into hundreds of subcastes, and the amazing thing is they keep it all straight. Every caste has its own ritual greetings, its own respect language, and its own dietary restrictions. The dietary restrictions, in particular, are spelled out with astonishing strictness in the Book of the Forbidden, the lengthiest section of the Panvivlion. I have been working on one such segment, and this gives the general flavor:

  “Of the flesh of the he-klariot, no part shall be partaken of that lieth betwixt the organs of digestion and the organs of breath; for such tissues are the exclusive right of the priestly clans. But of the she-klariot, such flesh may be freely eaten, provided that four ceremonial sips of peftifesht wine are taken between each bite, and that the she-klariot hath not been known to have had carnal congress with any male of a species other than its own.”

  The klariot is small mammal, about the size of a Denebian possum. By the way, its flesh is [75] very delicate, and it’s not perhaps that surprising to an aesthete such as myself that the various bits would be so jealously argued over in a religious text; imagine, if you will, a really fine filet mignon with a hint of caviar and a sort of musky aftertaste.

  The truth of the matter is that it is so hard to ascertain the correctness of the diet, and the stigma attached to making a mistake is so severe, that there have developed special restaurants and grocery depots for each caste, and even the large hypermarket chains that cater to all have separate exits and entrances for the seventeen major groups. It would seem to me that replicator technology would make a lot of sense in this culture, since the entire Book of the Forbidden could be programmed into it. However, there is a section of the Book of the Forbidden that implies that the use of replicators might not be religiously acceptable.

  The Thanetians attach great importance to their laws, their hierarchy; ceremonial forms of address are used even in the home, among close relatives; and the first question asked of a stranger is often “Where do you sit?” a way of finding out what level to assign to the person and what forms of address to use. Indeed, a formal living room is designed more like a very wide staircase than the flat floors we are used [76] to; and those of higher caste automatically gravitate to the highest step.

  I have tried to find out the origins of this tradition, and have been told only that it is lost in the mists of time.

  However, we have already determined that “time” on Thanet only goes back five thousand years; those mists are more in the nature of an iron curtain, completely separating this present civilization from its past.

  I do not feel that such a sophisticated hierarchy could just have sprung from nowhere; I welcome the arrival of Federation savants who would help in gathering material. I particularly welcome the suggestion that Commander Data might join my efforts for a while. For while his physical form is human enough that the natives would not fear to give him information, his powers of deductive reasoning would undoubtedly be more than human. ...

  “Computer,” Picard sighed, “inform Dr. Halliday on Thanet that an away team will be there very shortly. Including, as he requested, Commander Data.”

  Chapter Nine

  Thanet

  ADAM HALLIDAY WAS ONE of the only humans on Thanet, and certainly the only human child. That should have made him very precious, but in practice it made him a loner. His father was often so wrapped up in his research that they barely spoke for days at a time; sometimes Adam wished he hadn’t come along, that he had stayed at the institute with the other kids. At least there would have been people his own age. Well, sort of. They weren’t kids exactly at the institute. They had special talents, which made them bad company.

  Adam too had a special talent. More than one. For one thing, he had a Betazoid great-grandmother, which, he was often told, accounted for his [78] occasional flash of intuition. For another, he was a genius.

  The best thing about Thanet was the fact that Adam was special. He wasn’t a member of any caste—his off-world status made him acceptable everywhere. He could literally go anywhere in the city, walk into any shop, speak to anyone at all. And everyone wanted to be nice to him, pet him, stare at his unwebbed hands, run their fingers through his reddish hair.

  Being special was the worst thing about Thanet too. He wished he could have a friend. Perhaps, today, he finally would; the Federation was sending down a team to look over his father’s research.

  They were arriving right now. They had just beamed into the courtyard. It was night, but the Moon That Sings flooded the stone walls, making the silvery flecks—a mica-like mineral—sparkle. They materialized next to a small shrine of Yarut, the love god, the epaulets glistening on their uniforms. Adam hid behind the well as his father emerged from the dilapidated hostel the Federation had acquired as its research headquarters.

  Dr. Robert Halliday waddled out and greeted the guests with a wave. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, “it’s not often we get visitors here at the End of the World.”

  “But Dr. Halliday,” said the one with the strangely rubbery skin and funny eyes, “this is not the End of the World at all; indeed, the Enterprise has come here to prevent that very thing.”

  [79] “Irony, Mr. Data,” said Adam’s dad, “a little gallows humor.”

  “I see, Dr. Halliday,” said the man.

  Adam couldn’t help giggling a little. This man was very literal-minded. Halliday shuffled over to the well and pulled out the boy. “My son,” he said. “I asked him to help greet the new guests, but he prefers to play the spy.”

  “Ah, the famous Adam Halliday,” said the man his father had called Mr. Data.

  “I’m famous?” said Adam.

  “It is rumored,” said Data, “that an eight-year-old boy by that name at the Metadevelopmental Institute once scribbled out an astonishing proof of Fermat’s Theorem on a piece of rice paper. ...”

  “And,” his dad added, “in fit of pique at being denied his favorite pudding, swallowed the paper! Oh yes, that’s my son all right. A genius manqué, but a genius nonetheless.”

  “Well, since you know so much,” Adam sniffed, “I’ve figured out who you are, too—you’re that famous android. And you’re even smarter than me.”

  “That is very perceptive of you, Adam Halliday,” said Commander Data, taking the backhanded compliment in his stride. “Allow me to introduce the rest of this away team. Lieutenant Lisa Martinez is a science officer on temporary assignment, an archaeologist and philologist—”

  “I much enjoyed your treatise on the use of [80] glottal stops in the regional dialects of the Klingon Empire,” said Martinez, shaking Adam’s father’s hand.

  Halliday made a dismissive gesture. “A trifle,” he said. “But I’ve been working on something a lot more significant—I’m translating James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake into Ferengi. Those people could use a little light entertainment.”

  “Well, son,” said his father, “why don’t you show the commander around the city later? Then Martinez and I can chatter through the night about obscure dialects. As for Mr. Tarses—you don’t seem very happy.”

  “I believe he is suffering from what humans metaphorically call a ‘broken heart,’ ” said Data, “although cardiac arrest does not appear to be imminent.”

  “Nothing that a good pizza can’t cure, young man!” said Halliday. “Shall we dine?”

  The child, Data thought, was a curious phenomenon. That evening, at dinner, he had not spoken at all; but the next morning, as he showed the commander through the crowded cobblestoned streets of the metropolis, he chattered so rapidly that even the android had trouble parsing the nuances of his speech patterns.

  “See,” Adam said, “up there, the endless zigzagging steps all the way up that artificial mountain—that’s the High Citadel, and the High Shivantak lives inside it. He never goes out. He’s like a kind of king, [81] pope, and living Buddha all rolled into one. Did you enjoy the pizza last night? Dad sends in his food column, you
know, the one under that pseudonym, he sends it in religiously to that magazine; he always has time to describe a meal, even when we’re investigating the mating rituals of cannibals or something. Along those walls, those cloth drapes, they’re the entries to the different food halls of the different castes, you see, they’re all color-coded. Toss that beggar a coin. Don’t worry, he’s not as sick as he looks, they have a union and a special subcaste of their own.”

  A theater on wheels, pulled by two-headed quadrupeds, rolled slowly by, and on it two actors intoned and juggled simultaneously, while an eerie music blared from a quartet of instruments that looked like a cross between trumpets and cabbages. Children rushed after them, shouting epithets, singing along with the music. They paused for a moment when they saw the boy and the android, and then they started chanting, “Aliens, aliens,” not viciously, but with a kind of lilting curiosity.

  “Don’t mind them,” said Adam. “They come from the clan of theater children, and they spend their whole childhood learning to imitate others. Look.” Adam held up his hands, wiggled his fingers, clapped, and scratched his head. The sequence was taken up by all the kids, and pretty soon there was almost a weird sort of ballet going. Adam stopped; they all stopped; and presently there were gales of giggling.

  [82] “Intriguing,” Data said, uncertain of what he had witnessed.

  They were descending now; the streets sloped downhill; indeed, everything in this city was full of slopes and stairs, for everyone had a need to be higher or lower than someone else; it was in their culture. For ease of movement, the streets had escalators, banks of them; those for the upper castes were inlaid with colored stones and cunningly wrought intaglios of the faces of gods and demons; the lower castes’ escalators were plainer, and were crammed with people: merchants with cages full of squawking birds, pleasure women with their eyes heavily painted with gold dust, newsboys barking out the latest information from quaint little handheld monitors strapped to their arms. It was dawn, but several moons still danced among aurora-like veils of light.