by S P Somtow
“Think, Artas!” Adam cried. “I’m a kid like you, and I know what it’s like to be different, to be lonely. Look, if I was working for the Federation I wouldn’t be talking to you like this—I’d have to follow the Prime Directive, I couldn’t tell you anything about my world, my future—”
He was speaking in riddles again. This was a [149] nonsensical vision, something you’d get from downing too much peftifesht wine.
“Go away,” Artas said.
The image was suddenly gone, and the boy was gazing once more at his own reflection.
Taruna es-Sarion was on the verge of tears; she had often felt like crying in the past few days. She was proud of her son, of course, but she also knew that before he was sent into the sky in glory to wreak the ultimate vengeance on the Thanetians, he would first have to—
Enter the deviving chamber.
That was how the priests referred to it. The deviving chamber. Artas would have his life functions, one by one, turned off. Finally, only the brain would be functioning, and its neurons would be fused into the artificial nervous system of the thanopstru.
And her son would become more than just a person—he would become the savior of the world.
Artas walked into the dining area of the small living quarters they shared on the four hundredth floor of the prostitutes’ quarter of the city. How frail he seemed. In an hour would come the final test. She knew he would win, he had to win—but at the same time she hoped against hope that he would fail.
“Do you want to eat, son?” she asked him.
Her other son, Indhuon, was still resting; but he too would have important work to do, if Artas won the position of thanopstru. Indhuon would be one of [150] the last people with whom Artas would interact, as he descended into the cylinder of devivement in order to become one with the Deathbringer.
He nodded. She poured him a helping of the thin gruel and crushed bread that was the prescribed morning meal for a son of a woman of the pleasure caste, a woman who had no prospects in life unless her offspring could attain admission to the guild of weaponry—and great prospects if her son had the gifts that could elevate him to the status of thanopstru, the star of death.
So much terror, so much hope tied up in this one frail child—she resisted the impulse to hug him hard to her, to crush him against her body; she knew that he would not want that today. He needed to think of otherworldly things, to ready his mind for the great test.
They looked at each other, mother and son.
And then she couldn’t resist any more. She took him in her arms. He did not resist, but part of him seemed aloof. She did not weep, and nor did he, but she knew they were both clenching back tears.
Then it happened.
Looking out of the high window, over the sparkling bay whose water glittered in the twin sunlight, she saw a mist form—swirl—condense into the shape of a woman. A woman in a strange, mannish uniform, without a single caste-mark at all, unless it was that peculiar emblem on her breast.
How was she floating there? There was no balcony.
[151] Taruna was about to speak, but the alien put a finger on her lips.
“I’m not really here,” she said. “The boy cannot see me. I’m just a voice inside your mind, a voice from the future.”
“Are you a—” Taruna hesitated to use the word angel. Angels belonged to an ancient past. “Are you a messenger?” she asked.
“No,” she said. “I am only here to observe.”
“A guardian angel,” Taruna whispered. “One who watches.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m just a series of neural impulses that somehow managed to skip through subspace into your mind—I’ll try to hide. I was released because of the flood of emotion when you—when you hugged Artas.”
“Who, what are you?”
“I am Counselor Deanna Troi,” she said. She was strangely beautiful, with her ringlets of dark hair and her—unwebbed hands—a sure sign that she was not of this world.
“What caste is Counselor?” Taruna said in her mind, bewildered. “I do not understand.”
Troi said, “You love him so much. Don’t stop loving him. Your love is what I felt, anchoring him to the real world, when I stood in the dark chamber at the heart of the comet and saw your son—”
“You saw him? In a vision?”
“No—in the flesh—” and Taruna saw, with aching clarity, a vision of her son, naked, frail, floating in a [152] nutrient liquid behind a clear wall—and a single tear welling up in one eye—and all around him machines, cold and dead—and though she had always known what the heart of a thanopstru must contain, she had never seen it, could never have seen it—a terrible grief stabbed at her.
“I wish I could stop history,” said the woman who called herself Counselor. “But in your world I’m only a ghost—I have no reality at all.”
“You’re a devil creature, a tempter, I know it now,” Taruna said. “Don’t tell me you saw my son in a living death—he’s about to step through the paradise gate, he’s about to save us all, he’s going to be a martyr, he’s going to be reborn as an angel.
“Artashki,” she whispered, using his baby name. She thought he would wince, but instead he came back into her arms.
“I want to hear the song again,” he said.
She knew at once what song it was—the lullaby she had once sung to him each night, so he would go to sleep and she could go off on her night rounds, the profession that those of her caste practiced.
Sleep, my baby, sleep,
And tomorrow I’ll bring you a copper ring
And the next day I’ll bring you a silver chain
And the third day I’ll bring you a crown of gold.
Sleep, my baby, sleep,
And I’ll pluck the twin suns for your eyes
And the twenty moons for your fingers and toes.
[153] By the gods of death, she loved this child.
His eyes were closed. She wondered if he was feigning slumber—a last effort to remain a child, perhaps, knowing that from today he would no longer be one, even if he lost the race.
Oh, you are beautiful, Taruna es-Sarion thought, and wondered what the boy’s father was doing; they could not, of course, have anything like an exchange of letters, or even be seen to recognize one another in the street; such things were forbidden between one as exalted as he and a mere woman of the streets.
If only.
“Counselor Troi! Counselor Troi!” It was the voice of Dr. Crusher echoing through her skull. “You slipped out of focus for a moment—your life signs—”
Yes, Deanna thought. Step back. The wave of empathie vibration had almost sucked her in, had made her seem to—participate—in the simulated past. Or had that meeting with the boy’s mother really occurred? At what point did the dailong’s virtual creation cross over into actual real history? Mustn’t let the welter of emotions get to me—
“There,” came Beverly’s voice again. Now she knew that it was coming from the Enterprise, and that she and Kio sar-Bensu were still in the inner chamber of the comet, linked somehow to the mind of this boy and to a moment in ancient history.
“Troi here. I’m fine. I’m going back in.”
“Are you sure?”
[154] “I saw into that woman’s heart,” Troi said. “I want to see it through.”
Troi closed her eyes. Suddenly she was in the great plaza of Tanith’s capital city, making her way toward the first of many tiers of parapets, packed with citizens chanting slogans.
Chapter Eighteen
The Race
ARTAS LET GO of his mother’s hand as soon as they reached the first of seven parapets, representative of the Seven Ages of the Universe. He did not want to appear to be a mama’s boy now, not with the fate of the world perhaps resting on his shoulders. Especially not in front of his big brother.
On the parapet were gathered thousands of men, women, and children, all wearing the corona of hatred in their hair, all waving the red-bord
ered flags of destruction which the city government had been handing out that morning.
A chorus leader whipped up the chanting:
Whom do we despise?
Thanet! Thanet!
[156] Why are they our enemies?
Killers of babies! Slaughterers of the innocent!
How long shall we hate them?
Forever! Forever!
Glittering on the seventh parapet, on a plinth of gold and diamantine, sat the vessel itself, a perfect sphere of shiny silvery metal. Soon the winner of the final test would shed his mortal body and become the soul of the great sphere, and be winging its way toward the enemy.
Artas could barely contain himself. Only for a split second did he look back at his mother, who looked away and did not meet his gaze.
On the third parapet, the place of the High Priests, the Shivan-Jalar sat enthroned on the back of the skeleton of a megamarton, its tusks upraised and holding up a flaming red banner with the sigils of the High Castes of Tanith. His daughter, Ariela, sat beside him, taking notes on his august words, whispering them into a palm device; the device, as it happened, contained the consciousness of Commander Data, who was still the interface between past and future, transmitting information and images back to the Enterprise.
From the parapet, the Shivan-Jalar could hear the tumult below, could feel the force of the people’s emotion. That force was a powerful thing—if only—if only emotion alone could bring the war to an end, could force the final destruction of Thanet!
[157] The counselors who sat around him, on their various lesser thrones, were stiff, impassive, all awaiting his word. Then the Shivan-Jalar smiled a little, and everyone seemed to relax.
My father, Ariela thought, more powerful than anyone in the world—even his smiles are watched, analyzed.
“If only you had been with me on the longship, my daughter,” said the Shivan-Jalar. “There was a young navigator—a wonderful match for you, I think. One Indhuon es-Sarion—yes, yes, I know the mother is a whore, but the brother, I understand, is a prime candidate for thanopstru.”
“Really, Father,” said Ariela, “I do have the right to seek my own mate.”
The counselors looked discreetly away, not wishing to intrude on a moment of domestic strain.
Her father clapped his hands.
“Sire,” said the first minister, lifting his censer up and wafting a powerful woody perfume over his master’s nostrils, “the hour is ripe; perhaps we should proceed to the final test?”
“In time. A thousand years ago—” His Transcendence rose up, placed his palms upward in the gesture known as drawing-wisdom-from-the-sky. “—my ancestor undoubtedly sat on such a parapet, meditating on the very purpose of his existence. This time it’s different—this time it’s the very end of the Thanetian civilization, the final annihilation of those we have been taught for millennia to hate and fear. I [158] think that it’s only appropriate for me to ask aloud the question that I know has tormented all of you from time to time, which you do not dare utter for fear of a heresy trial.
“The question, my wise friends,” he continued, “is why? Why are we fighting a race that appears to be exactly like us?”
Everyone looked very uncomfortable, and even Ariela wondered whether her father was going too far in testing the limits of the counselors’ orthodoxy.
The Shivan-Jalar smiled. “I will tell you the answer today,” he said, “on the eve of our victory, which may also be our defeat, for if the Thanetians have not spent the last millennium developing weapons as powerful as ours, I would be most surprised. The answer to that burning question that flirts with heresy, my friends, is that we are all fools. I’ve prayed on this, I’ve downed the zul potion in almost lethal concentrations in order to communicate with our ancestors, and I’ve come to the realization that none of this was necessary.”
The first counselor, the one who had said it had always been so, said, “Your Transcendence, for the Shivan-Jalar to speak heresy is unthinkable, because you embody orthodoxy in your very person. And yet—”
“Speak your mind, Japthek, you may never get another chance.”
“Sire, I’ve often thought that perhaps the gods ... are simply toying with us—they’ve created this duality between two worlds, five thousand years apart in [159] space travel, though only instants away from each other by subspace communication—in order to test some theorem about balance and imbalance.”
“Interesting,” said Hal-Therion. “So your way out of the Unspeakable Dilemma is—that we are but playthings of destiny. Anyone else?”
“I think,” said the second counselor, clearing his throat, “that whatever Your Transcendence says must be the truth; for does not the Panvivlion state that ‘the lips of the Shivan-Jalar are the lips of God’?”
“Even I do not know if that is so,” said the Shivan-Jalar, “and really, I ought to know.”
“But if His Transcendence actually doubted—”
“I think that’s what I’m trying to say, old man,” said the sage. And Ariela suddenly realized that her father was not joking after all. “Now, today, on the eve of everything—I find myself wrestling with heresy.”
“Your Transcendence, even the legendary Tarsu of Saierion struggled with the dark forces before coming face-to-face with the shining hardness of truth,” said the first counselor in whining, solicitous tones.
“Silence! I have said the unsayable—now, all of you, do your duty!”
Ariela was paying full attention now. Her father was challenging the others—a challenge that might in ancient times have been met with mortal combat, but that today tended to end more with a wager and a forfeiture of a token payment. Would anyone take the bait?
“Go ahead,” Hal-Therion said. “Depose me.”
[160] The counselors rose up. This was serious! Such a move could delay everything, cause chaos in the governance of the planet, even prevent the choosing of the thanopstru! She could see them all thinking hard now, wondering whether this was their chance to seize power—as her father had once himself done—or whether it was an elaborate bluff, a test of loyalty. Last time, after such a test, the purge of the priestly ranks had lasted weeks, and several hundred had met their end in the auto-da-fé of glory. Ariela knew she must act quickly to defend her father’s position—and her own.
She rose to her feet. “No, counselors!” she cried. And in the singsong voice that was used to recite verses from the ancient religious texts, she quoted: “Always, on the brink of the shift in the cycle of the times, there will be a moment of wavering—a time when all possibilities seem equally possible. Do not hesitate to choose the path of death, for the end is ever the gateway to the beginning.”
“Well spoken, Ariela sar-Bensu!” said the wheedling Japthek. “You have returned us all to reality with a single well-chosen sacred text.”
The moment of tension passed as the counselors sat back down. But when she met her father’s gaze, she saw in his eyes a kind of imploring, a desperation: it was as if he was saying to her, amid all this pomp, dressed as he was in robes and feathers and furs and precious metals and all the panoply of a god-on-earth, “Please, daughter, let this cup be taken [161] from me.” And Ariela wept, but inside, for sorrow was an emotion that dared not show its face on this, the happiest of days.
“Look!” she said, changing the subject abruptly. “The race has begun!” And she pointed down toward the second and third parapets.
“I can’t watch anymore!” Ambassador Straun shouted. “Shivan-Jalars professing heresy, some obscene mirror planet I’ve never even heard of locked in a fratricidal war with my own world—it’s all trickery!”
He stormed from the bridge; concerned, Captain Picard took a moment to go after him personally. After asking the ship’s computer, he located the man pacing about in an empty corridor.
Quietly, leaning against a bare wall, the ambassador was weeping.
Gently, Picard touched him on the shoulder. “Courage, Your Excellency,”
he said softly. “We must play this thing through till the end.”
“If this is truth, why could I not have lived a lie?”
“We all want truth, Mr. Ambassador. And sometimes the truth comes with ... pain that seems unbearable. Come, sir. Let’s put a good face on it all, no matter what we learn.”
“You don’t understand.”
“On the contrary,” said Picard, “I do understand. Perfectly.” Picard thought of the Borg. Something in his eyes must have convinced the ambassador.
[162] The ambassador allowed himself to be led back. Picard had a glass of peftifesht wine replicated for him; the ambassador downed it in one gulp, without even worrying whether it had been correctly brewed for a member of his caste.
Grimly, they continued watching.
Indhuon es-Sarion was summoned up to the transcendent parapet level, a place of crystal pennants and peacock thrones. He did not want to meet the gaze of any of the high counselors, all of whom belonged to immeasurably higher castes than did he himself. But the daughter was a different matter. She sat at the foot of her father’s throne, her fingers darting nimbly over a handheld device on which she was recording—what? Great matters of state, no doubt. And she was a striking girl, no older, perhaps, than Indhuon himself.
And inside Indhuon’s mind, a passenger sat—Lieutenant Simon Tarses, equally entranced by the daughter of the Shivan-Jalar, who seemed the very incarnation of Kio sar-Bensu.
Kio! he called out in his mind before he could stop himself.
To his amazement, a gentle voice whispered in his thoughts. Simon, it said, fancy meeting you here—five thousand years from home, and who knows how many parsecs.
How is it that we’re talking? he thought.
The gentle voice of Commander Data explained the interface.
[163] I thought we’d never meet again, Kio said. I thought—and then—so much is happening now—The voice died away.
