STAR TREK: TNG - Do Comets Dream?

by S P Somtow

  “And it will surely make for an impressive display,” said Worf. “Can we blow it up now?”

  Picard nodded to his second-in-command. “Commence destruction of the comet,” Riker said, and La Forge initiated the sequence.

  “Five minutes till impact,” he said.

  “Four minutes, fifty seconds,” the computer continued the countdown.

  “Wait, Commander!” La Forge said suddenly. “There’s a signal coming in from—a Thanetian [98] craft—asking permission to beam aboard—it’s the Thanetian ambassador.”

  Riker said, “We do have plenty of time, Captain. The ambassador ought to be a witness to this; it’s routine for us, major history for them.”

  “Agreed. Escort him to the bridge,” Picard commanded.

  He summoned Deanna Troi to his side. “Do you sense anything?” he asked softly as Ambassador Straun emerged from the elevator, flanked by ensigns. Behind him walked the daughter, whom everyone had last seen desperately pleading for asylum.

  “Confusion—ambiguity,” she said, sotto voce, reaching out, sensing the man’s emotions whirling within the alien’s mind. “He can’t believe he’s here. But—the daughter’s mind-set is more interesting. She’s almost a different person—reborn—in charge of herself and her surroundings.”

  “Greetings, Captain,” said Ambassador Straun. “The High Shivantak sends me as a religious observer to your rites of exorcism. They may be futile against the Pyrohelion, which has been ordained since time began five thousand years ago, but he has asked that every moment of our history be officially recorded, even up to the final millisecond.” He stopped to stare at the comet, which now filled the screen, almost eclipsing the fiery globe that was Klastravo.

  “I’m sorry to speak out of turn, Captain Picard,” said Kio sar-Bensu, “but there’s an added bonus. If [99] the world should be destroyed, as the Panvivlion predicts, we would still be observing, and we would not actually be on the world; there might be a loophole, you see.”

  “Sacrilege!” Straun could barely get the word out, but his daughter went on speaking.

  “And in that case,” she said, “I would humbly resubmit my petition for asylum, this time as a sentient being without a homeworld.”

  “And I’m sure your petition would be approved,” said Riker.

  An ensign showed the visitors to some seats. Again, Picard asked Commander Riker to start the destruction.

  “Initiate the sequence,” Riker said.

  “Sequence reinitiated,” La Forge said. “Five minutes.”

  The computer resumed the countdown. Four minutes, fifty seconds—forty—thirty—three minutes, ten seconds—

  “No!” Troi shouted suddenly.

  She had reacted before even realizing what she was reacting to—a harrowing pang of loss and disillusion—a cry of pain that had lasted for millennia and could not be heard because there was no organ of speech to cry out—the desolate, stifled wailing of a lost child.

  “What is it, Counselor?” Picard asked.

  “Trust me on this, Captain! Stop the sequence!”

  Picard nodded. Riker held up his hand. Sequence [100] on hold at two minutes, twenty-seven seconds, said the computer.

  “Something is alive on that comet!” said Troi. “It’s so—intense, so—” A wave of nausea now. She almost buckled from the impact of it.

  Riker was speaking now. “Captain,” he said, “imaging suggests some kind of hollow chamber inside the comet—in the shape of a perfect octahedron.”

  “An artificial comet, then,” said Picard.

  “With some kind of intelligence, perhaps,” La Forge said.

  “More than intelligence—it has emotion,” Troi gasped. “Raw, unfiltered emotion that’s built up over thousands of years—”

  “The Panvivlion was right!” cried Ambassador Straun, coming to life suddenly. “This is no natural phenomenon that a few concentrated bursts of light can dissipate. This is the hand of the gods! Of course it has intelligence—of course it has emotion—this so-called comet is the God of the Last Days, the Inconsolable, the Eater of the World, he that is called Sorex Pyrohilael, he whose name can only be uttered by—”

  “Nonsense, Father,” said the daughter, “I’m sure they’ll find an explanation for it all in due course.”

  “Due course! They only have two days.”

  “A lot can happen in two days,” Deanna found herself saying. “Miracles have happened in a lot less.”

  “Miracle or not,” the captain said, “the presence of a life-form changes the equation entirely.”

  [101] Then he turned to Troi, who was still reeling from the onslaught of emotions from the heart of the comet. “Do you think—”

  “I know what you’re going to ask, Captain,” Troi said. “You want me to go in closer.”

  “You’re the only one who—can feel with it.”

  “Of course. I’ll do it.”

  “I want the transporter room on standby to beam you back the instant you reach a threshold you cannot safely tolerate,” Picard said. “And—Riker will be with you.”

  On screen, against the sea of stars, the comet continued to streak toward Thanet, and Klastravo burned bright, a beacon of death.

  Chapter Twelve

  Artas

  THEN, IN THE FINAL HOURS, he thought he could hear another voice.

  Not the harsh metal-voice that denied him his childhood; this seemed softer, this seemed, in the end, soothing. A flash: dark hair, ringlets, deep haunting eyes. But it was not his mother either. It was a stranger. She knew neither his name nor even his species.

  She spoke to him across the gulf of space. And time as well perhaps, though time had little meaning to him anymore.

  She said to him, I’m coming. Hold on a little longer.

  And he said, “Will you sing to me?”

  And the voice said, If I can.

  [103] He said, “And will I put my arms around your neck, and will you hold me?”

  If you have arms to hold me.

  And he knew that he had no arms, and he would have wept bitterly if he could, but he had no tear ducts, no eyes save the sensors that continually fed him data: proximity, acceleration, time till impact.

  Still, someone was coming.

  Someone who cared.

  Perhaps he could be loved again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Inside the Dragon

  THE DRAGON’S HEAD was a labyrinth. Corridors branched; the walls pulsated, were covered with an oily membrane; a rancid liquid oozed from a million pores. The dailongzhen led the landing party farther and farther downward, or at least it seemed downward to Simon Tarses, although his sense of up and down was all askew. Everything proceeded according to some ancient ritual; two of the oarsmen were swinging gilded censers that belched forth sick-sweet fumes; two more held torches aloft, leading the way, pausing now and then to utter incantations as though to allay the dragon’s spirit. Simon could not help but be caught up in the exotic rhythm of the ritual. The incense seemed to fill his nostrils; it seemed to intensify the chanting, the clanging of [105] ritual gongs, the garish colors of the dailong’s innards. He was getting a headache from the din in his ears.

  Only Data was unaffected. Simon watched him as he examined the fleshy walls, at one point even appearing to taste the liquid that was dripping down. “Intriguing,” he was saying to himself. “An unusually high silicon content.”

  Adam, the little boy, was chattering away at Data’s side. He seemed quite devoted to the android. Ahead, the boy’s father moved purposefully behind the dailongzhen. The incense billowed now; there was a kind of wind inside the tunnels here, and Simon could not help but breathe in the fumes. They were making him woozy.

  “I’m dizzy,” he said as the android stopped to examine another curious feature, an array of tentacular arms that waved delicately back and forth like a sea anemone. “Something in the incense.”

  “That,” said Halliday, “is gruyesh, the secret ingre
dient in the incense. It’s mildly hallucinogenic, and an essential adjunct to most of their religious rituals.”

  “Don’t breathe in too much at a time,” said Adam. “You can get drunk on the fumes.”

  Simon had visions of his Romulan ancestors carousing with their drinking vessels brimming with ale.

  At length, after descending what seemed to be a spiral staircase made of bone and cartilage, and crossing what seemed to be a rope bridge over a boiling river of bile, they came to an inner chamber. [106] The strange thing was, the room had a passing resemblance to the bridge of a starship. There were outcroppings of bone, and a central thronelike structure on which the dailongzhen sat himself, gripping two of the tentacle-like excrescences in his hands.

  “Awaken, O spirit of the deep!” he intoned. The chamber was small and most of the oarsmen were waiting in the corridor that had led here. Only the men with the censers remained, and they stood on either side of the dailongzhen, dousing him with the pungent vapors. Adam, Data, Martinez, and Halliday each sat on one of the bony seats; Simon found himself nestled against a cavity in the wall; the flesh gave way, contoured itself to his body, almost as though it were designed that way.

  From the corridor beyond came the sound of chanting and the cacophonous jangling of exotic percussion instruments. Then, abruptly, the noise ceased.

  The dailongzhen stood up. His eyes glowed.

  He gripped the tentacles tightly and began to rock back and forth, howling. And around them, images began to form. The ocean. The convoy of skiffs that had pulled up alongside the dailong. The crowd of Thanetians, laughing, parading about on the dragon’s back, rejoicing as the waves beat against the flanks of the great creature.

  “Astonishing,” Data whispered. “These are membraneous ... viewscreens, projecting pictures from sensors attached to the outside of the creature. They [107] are made from a mesh of rods and cones—like a human eye—and produce images in reaction to—”

  “This is like the bridge of a starship,” Simon said softly. For, as the dailongzhen began to wave his arms, there was movement, and the images in the screens were changing, shifting direction—the dailongzhen was steering the sea dragon! A stomach-wrenching turn, and he saw now, they had made a full turn and were heading in the direction of the harbor. He could see, rearing up above the waves, the spires and minarets and twisted towers and diamantine domes, and even, in the misty height, the very palace of the High Shivantak—and the whole image ghostly, fringed with refractive rainbows. They were skimming the ocean’s surface now, the dailong rapidly contracting and expanding its musculature. Several moons had risen, and their light danced against the purple of setting Klastravo.

  “And this,” Halliday was explaining, “is how they travel. Short distances, they use little boats, they have canals and artificial waterways, naturally, but—but the wide-open spaces of their world are all water, and these creatures are their ocean liners—guided by telepathic navigators half-drunk on the vapors of gruyesh.”

  And now the dailongzhen seemed to have settled into a kind of trance, and the great creature was settling. A deep thrumming permeated the chamber.

  “And this,” said Halliday, “is one of the profound mysteries of this planet. These creatures—the [108] principle mode of transportation—don’t seem to be entirely natural. But the Thanetians didn’t build them. No. They rely on these ritual hunts to bring in a new beast every time they require another vessel. But the dailong are triumphs of bioengineering.”

  “I bet the answer is right here somewhere,” Simon said. “Any ship this complex must have a computer, right? It might not be a computer as we know it, but well, isn’t Commander Data living proof that computers don’t have to look like computers?”

  “I believe you are correct,” said Data. “We are within the interior of an extremely large artificial intelligence, and the dailongzhen is navigating by means of a human/machine interface, crude but effective. Dr. Halliday, is it permitted for me to attempt to interface with this machine?”

  Halliday said, “I don’t see why not. I’ve been attempting to interface with one for months, and no one has said I couldn’t.”

  Around them, the rainbow-fringed viewscreens showed vistas of Thanet’s oceans; to starboard, the capital city loomed up in front of a setting sun and whirling moons. The dailongzhen was fully in control now, and the dragon sailed smoothly; they could see, on one screen, its body stretched out across the sea, with finlike appendages propelling it through the waves. Overhead, a flock of snowy inari birds flew in geometric formation that shifted periodically against gathering darkness.

  “Those bunches of tentacles,” Halliday said, “that [109] line the walls. As you can see, these people are able to communicate with the dailong in some way through them. I’ve always thought they were some kind of psionic amplifier, and that the dailongzhen must have some kind of telepathic talent that can link to the creatures; but perhaps there’s a more technological side to it all.”

  “Is there a location here,” asked Data, “with an especially high concentration of the tentacles? A data node, perhaps?”

  “Yes,” said Halliday. “Behind the control throne, there’s usually a passageway that leads to—I’ve always thought of it as a brain of sorts.”

  Carefully, Halliday threaded his way through the crowd of celebrants. Absorbed in their chanting, the throng parted for the group and closed up again without missing a beat. Behind the throne, there was a round opening in the wall; a ring of muscle-like flesh encircled it, and they could see a tunnel descending into gloom. Simon noticed that young Adam had pushed his way to the front of the queue; he showed no fear as he led the way into darkness, feeling his way along the dank walls.

  In the passageway, they could barely see. “Don’t they have any lights in this place?” Adam said.

  No sooner had she spoken than the walls began to glow with a faint bluish phosphorescence. The passageway was widening. “It’s almost as if—it understood you!” Simon said.

  [110] “The dailong does appear to be conscious of your human thoughts,” Data said.

  “Not human, maybe,” Adam said. “After all, I am part Betazoid.”

  “Part is the part we must emphasize here,” said Dr. Halliday. “And we’re not a hundred percent sure of which part.” Father and son laughed.

  “And therefore in possession of rudimentary telepathic abilities?” asked Data.

  “Really good intuition, at least,” Adam’s father said.

  “Look!” Adam cried. “Down there!”

  Sure enough, they could see another of the rainbow-fringed doorways, around which the dragonflesh pulsated and oozed. The belly of the beast, Simon thought, thinking of myths he had heard. The last few yards of the passageway descended steeply, but to his surprise there was a bony flight of steps and even a rail made of a tendonlike material, and the lights brightened. If he hadn’t been convinced before that this creature was made by a humanoid species, he certainly was now.

  The chamber they found themselves in was completely symmetrical, with a circular wall covered with small tentacles. They were delicate, fibrous strands that glowed an eerie blue and waved back and forth as though immersed in the waters of the sea.

  The ceiling was another viewscreen, divided into sections that each seemed to monitor the outside world from a different direction. In the center of the room were raised platforms; as Data, Tormod, and [111] the others reached the platforms, soft tongues of flesh rose up and licked their hands.

  “I do believe the creature is trying to locate some kind of input-output port,” he said. “Perhaps I should provide some assistance.”

  Data held out one arm and with his other hand opened up his forearm to reveal a mass of hardware. Simon watched in awe as, snakelike, the tentacles slithered and hissed and found connections inside the commander’s body.

  “What are you experiencing?” Halliday asked.

  “A welter of images—streams, rivers of information,” Data s
aid mildly. “It is unquestionably intriguing.”

  “But what is it you see?” said Halliday. “I’ve been here for months, trying to find out what makes this planet tick—and you seem to have gotten right through to it in a day.”

  “I believe,” Data said, “that I can make much of this information available to the entire group.”

  And suddenly the room was whirling. Fumes rose up from the floor—incense, the salt spray of the sea—and images were coalescing out the mist—the floor was buckling—an involuntary cry escaped Simon’s throat. Had the dailongzhen lost control, was the dragon vessel capsizing? But no—this was a far more familiar kind of disorientation. It was as though this brain chamber were transforming into a holodeck.

  And then, all of a sudden, they were on board a [112] Viking longship, very much like the model Engvig had set up in Simon’s quarters.

  The sun that beat down on them was more blue than the sun of Earth, and the mountains that jutted up in the distance were of a deep purple hue, and crystalline, but the salt tang of the sea was achingly familiar.

  The prow of the ship was carved into the same visage as the dailong’s, though now, of course, in miniature. The sea was a different hue, more gray somehow. Lizardfish with tails and fins leaped from the water.

  This was a vessel like the skiff they had come on, with chanting oarsmen, all of wood. But Simon and the other members of his party were no longer in their modern clothes—they wore tunics fringed with fur, and to his amazement there was a bronze dirk in his belt, with a handle studded with bright green gemstones. Data was wearing a dailongzhen-like costume, with a priestly headdress and a white robe.

  “Amazing,” said Halliday. “The realism of it—it’s every bit as sophisticated as holodeck technology.”

  “Where are we?” Simon asked. “What are we doing here?”

  Data said, “We are in a kind of library—a vast information retrieval system. Apparently, this information has been waiting for us for several thousand years. It is the key to the true history of Thanet.”