STAR TREK: TNG - Do Comets Dream?

by S P Somtow

I am sorry, Data said. There is only a finite amount of data I can process, and my highest priority is communicating to the Enterprise. So any other exchanges will have to remain on a lower priority for now.

  The Enterprise was Simon’s highest priority too—or it should be, he chided himself. It would be, he determined. He would just have to put Kio out of his mind and concentrate on his duties, which at the moment seemed to involve watching an amazing spectacle through this Indhuon person’s eyes. As assignments go, it’s not too bad, he thought. Crowded parapets stretched below him arrayed according to the major caste divisions, with the priestly ones here at the very top; Indhuon could not have dared come here save for the summons of the Shivan-Jalar’s daughter. The sight was as new to Indhuon as it was to Simon, and so the young ensign was able to experience the full wonder of it. Here on the upper level, guards held many-tiered parasols of sheer iridescent reptile skins above the counselors, who strutted and preened yet quailed when the Shivan-Jalar so much as glanced in their general direction.

  The only one he dared look at was the girl. And how she stared at him! There was magic there. Yes. They had met once or twice, in the cafeteria at the telepathy training summer camp, but she of course had been in the upper-caste food line, dining on [164] delicacies that a prostitute’s son could never dream of eating. The thought of those lips biting into the soft shell of a zerulax egg—he had put it from his mind. Except once—his arm brushing against hers as the two food lines converged in an X because that year’s enrollment was so overcrowded, with the war effort reaching its climax—

  And then she’d said, “I heard that.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Don’t bother denying it. We’re in telepathy school. You know you said it.”

  “It?”

  “You know.”

  And suddenly they had come between them, three enormous cloned nursemaids with fierce expressions, black gowns and wimples, each brandishing a hand-sized laser prod.

  “Do not address the daughter of the Shivan-Jalar directly, lower-caste scum!” one said.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Heresy of deed,” said the other, “is punishable by a year’s cryogenic suspension!’

  “Heresy of thought,” cried the third, “is entirely up to the pleasure of the Mindprober General.”

  Since then, he had thought of her night and day. He never expected he would be up here, on the shivantic parapet, gazing right into her eyes. She put a finger to her lips. Then, her father still preaching the finer points of theology to his counselors, she slipped away and came up close to him. [165] Immediately, there were nursemaids, but she dismissed them with a flick of the wrist.

  “Come for a walk with me,” said the most powerful teenaged girl on the entire planet, “and we’ll talk. I’ve been following your dragonboat races since the summer camp ended. I watched the tel-vid of the citywide competition last week. I was thrilled. You know I went to the dock just to see if I could catch a glimpse of you?”

  “I thought you wanted to see my little brother—he’s the ‘great hope,’ after all,” Indhuon said, unable to keep the envy completely out of his voice.

  “Oh, don’t think of him that way,” she said. There she went, reading his mind again. “Soon he’ll be a shining symbol of Tanith’s glorious destiny, whereas you and I will—oh! Do you want to kiss me?”

  “In front of all these—”

  She smiled. “These parapets are more labyrinthine than you think. For instance—”

  She took him by the hand. The cloned nursemaids gasped, but did not dare approach. She led him to an area behind her father’s throne; it was shaded by a petrobanyan tree with spreading branches that took root in the floor, so that the tree was like a many-chambered cave. Crystalline flowers sprouted from crevices and crannies, in eye-popping hues of cerulean, crimson, and fiery yellow. She tugged at his elbow; they ducked behind a wide column of living rock, veined with amethyst and citrine, and despite the massed heat of twin suns, this was a cool [166] place, and she held him tight against the stone; she was warm and the stone was ice-cold against his back, and he himself was all hot and cold at once, and when her lips touched his it was a sensation almost akin to an electric shock; but he didn’t mind.

  The outpouring of emotion brought Simon to the surface for a moment and he found himself, inside the shared body, passionately kissing Kio in her shared body.

  Simon’s voice whispered from his mind to Kio’s.

  This is wrong. You don’t want me. Or if you knew me, really knew me, you wouldn’t want me.

  He could sense her smiling, somewhere in the back of his head—a tickling feeling, almost.

  Five thousand years in the past, the ill-fated young ones kissed again. Did they somehow know their days, their hours were numbered? Was that what charged them with such powerful emotion? Or was it just the primal need that propelled all humanoid species toward something called love?

  He didn’t have time to worry about it, because suddenly the three nursemaid clones came charging into the sanctum.

  “You are commanded to the edge of the parapet!” they said in eerie unison. “The race is about to begin!”

  The race—from the second to the sixth parapet—was an annual tradition, but each year the victor became the thanopstru only symbolically; today it was [167] different. Today, as the climax to the launching of the armada to destroy Thanet once and for all, the thanopstru would be sent away for real. It would be the first time in history. And, it was hoped by all, the last.

  As Artas lined up with the other competitors, the chanting of the crowd crescendoed. There were hate slogans for the Thanetians, spontaneously it seemed, but in reality whipped up by the city’s crack corps of hate police.

  They were there for him, those thousands, rooting for him, shouting for him. His mother would be raised up from her lowly station to become anything she chose, perhaps even the tertiary consort of Hal-Therion himself.

  On this second parapet, the wind was whipping up his shoulder-length purple-blue hair.

  If he won the race, the hair would be shorn.

  It was, his mother told him once, his father’s hair.

  They were calling the names now, using the full formula of given name, matronymic, and clan name: “Beridon siv-Klastru sar-Toth. Anim siren-Taku es-Navik.” As the announcer read each name the contestant stepped forward. Each was dressed in the best finery his family could provide. Anim had a cloak of woven chlorquetzal feathers and a headband of ravenlizard pelts; on her wrists were glittering wires of iridium. Beridon wore a tunic of shimmer-fire chased with titanium filigree, and a coronet of rare Northern rushes woven on a loom of ice. And so [168] on and so on, until they reached the tenth name, which was his own: Artas siv-Taruna es-Sarion.

  And he stepped forth. He was a little self-conscious about his garb; his mother could ill afford the sartorial extravagance of the others, and he wore little but a kilt of crushed paper and a neckpiece of ancient burial jades that had been in his family since an ancestor from the Thieves’ Union had stolen it from a Mnemo-Thanasium. It did not matter. When he stepped forward, the crowd broke into a prolonged cheer.

  For me! thought Artas.

  The footrace was an ancient tradition, its origins so hoary that even the Panvivlion could not describe them. It had been a way to select priests, even kings; in ancient times, a boy could rise to an exalted caste as a result of the footrace.

  These days, the traditional run up the Mountain of the Gods was replicated between the second and fifth parapet of the sacred citadel. Four massive ramps, each one replicating every treacherous gully, every outcrop, of the actual mountain, were linked together and led to the Shivantine Stairway, the steps that brought the runner to the very foot of Hal-Therion’s throne. The four great streams that were the sources of life’s elements were replicated in rivulets of quicksilver, liquid nitrogen, brine, and sulphuric acid. There were other obstacles, too: predators and fearsome beasts, strange tw
ists and turns in the pathway. And from hidden sound devices in the artificial trees, there was the sound of [169] the crowd, whose pleasure or displeasure could spur you on to disaster or victory.

  At the sound of a whistle, the runners exchanged their ceremonial garments for the tunic of firestuff and the three sacred objects they would need to reach their goal. Artas held the baton of victory in his right hand; he would win by being the first to touch it to the entrance of the thanopstru shell. He placed the hoverboard on the ground; reacting to his unspoken commands, its sensors would carry him past all the obstacles. And around his neck he placed the amulet of his caste, lovingly forged for him at the caste elders’ behest, to bring him luck.

  He murmured a prayer to the god of celerity, and then he mounted the hoverboard. The other contestants were ready, too. The boards vibrated a little, let out a tinkling sound as they lifted off the stone terrace.

  And then they were off!

  Easy, easy, he told the board with his mind. Slow and steady.

  The boards were shooting ahead, angled upward against the contour of the artificial mountain.

  He skirted the first rivulet, the quicksilver. The suns’ light was dazzling against the liquid metal. This was not a dangerous river if one did not accidentally swallow the toxic mercury, but the liquid nitrogen and the acid flumes could kill. He kept to one side of the stream, carefully rounding a massive dendron tree. He had this part memorized. The first kid had gone whizzing uphill and had dashed himself [170] against bare rock. Artas could not bear to look. Steady, he told himself, steady.

  Artas was nowhere near the head of the line. The front runner was Beridon, whom some considered the favorite, though Artas knew that in the betting parlors of the city she held a slight edge. His brother had bet some money on Beridon—“so as not to jinx you,” he had told him with a smile.

  Beridon was moving by leaps and bounds. She was even managing a few virtuoso turns, somersaulting onto the board, kicking her leg behind in a graceful arabesque—all hoverboard show tricks that did not really belong in a race for the future of the world. Grimly, Artas guided his board through the obstacle course. He knew she was just doing those tricks in order to confuse the others, to drive them to despair.

  Steady! he told the board. Steady. His mind was focused now. Yes! Here, the hanging rock. There, the ledge with the treacherous tree. Another runner was trying to go around the tree and kept getting caught in its branches, with their heat-seeking, flesh-eating flowers waiting to snap off a child’s hand or foot. There, the kid was loose now, but the board was spinning out of control—

  Up! he screamed with his mind, sending the board on a steep curve to avoid the killing tree. Perfect! He swerved now, passing someone on the left. Higher up were the ravines of amethyst.

  The crowd’s roar was dull, distant.

  He didn’t listen to it. It was like the whisper of the [171] wind. Artas concentrated as he rounded another rock formation. A tunnel now. He had it memorized, a zigzag path, two lefts, two rights, left, right, right, now suddenly a corkscrew, a gravity well wrenching his gut as he let the board up and around in a corkscrew, the tips of his toes clinging by sheer inertia. Then he was through. The next parapet was easier in a way. The obstacles were all in the mind. Monsters, creatures of darkness. A shadowbeast lurching from a cave. Fangs. Bloodshot eyes. You’re not real, he thought. Concentrate. Concentrate. Smashed right through the illusion. Gore and entrails exploded around him but when he concentrated once more they had dissolved into thin air and—

  I’m pulling ahead!

  Right in front of him, weaving through a forest of twenty-meter demon statues, some twins he had seen in the training camp, riding in tandem. They were doing figure eights around each other in the air. Each loop was greeted by whoops from the crowd below. Ignore them! he told himself. And buzzed right over the twins’ heads, did a quick spin, caromed along an acid firewall—and then, breaking over a chasm where he could see straight down onto the sea of people far below, he heard the cheering—and his name—chanted, over and over, like a litany: Ar-TAS, Ar-TAS, Ar-TAS.

  A whirlwind was chasing them now, spewing from a rock cleft, laced with hallucinogenic gases that plucked dark images from the unconscious. The [172] whirlwind swept uphill, catching the twins in its path. Artas could hear them screaming.

  The wind was after him now, tendrils of noxious fumes reaching out toward him, the ends of the tendrils shaped like giant claws. He dodged, darted, slammed the board against a mirror-flat basalt wall to switch gravities and soared up high over the whirlwind, catching a faint whiff, trying to block the nightmare figures that immediately flooded his mind—

  The final parapet of the race was just above his head—there were massive metal rivets on its underside that bolted it to the artificial mountainside. The last part was all that remained of the ancient race—no hoverboards now, no hallucinogenic gases, just an uphill track, a straight run toward the throne of the Shivan-Jalar.

  A series of rope ladders hung over the edge of the parapet. Anim es-Navik had already jettisoned his hoverboard, pushing against its flexible surface to perform a death-defying catapult onto the first rung of the nearest ladder. Below, he could see that four of the contestants were still in the running.

  The whirlwind still had the twins; they were spinning around inside it, and the wind was amplifying their shrieks, broadcasting them to the distant crowd. Artas wondered how they could still be alive. There was so much terror in that wind.

  Suddenly the twins had outfoxed the whirlwind, broken free, and now, both riding a single [173] hoverboard, were arrowing upward toward the base of the final parapet. Artas had to make the leap too now.

  Good-bye, he thought at the hoverboard. The board steadied itself. He flexed his ankles three times, feeling the spring in it. In front of him, the sheer face of the artificial mountain. Above, the rope ladders dangling from the side of the next parapet. Beneath, the crowd, crawling around like hive ants. He stretched out his hand, gauging the swing of the rope ladder. The wind roared.

  Artas leaped.

  And in that moment, the whirlwind caught him by his toe and spun him around. Suddenly his head filled with images—the deviving chamber—he knew the death must come, had been told about the ritual blows, the insertion of the wireprobes into the skull, the toxins seeping into the blood—nothing to fear. He had always known it must be this way.

  The fumes were spiraling around him now. He could see other images. Himself, millennia hence, trapped, drowning, unable to claw free from a coffin of a prison—monsters now, bogeymen, night-creatures, all gazing at him through the glass—being speechless, unable to feel, touch, taste the world except through sensory organs of metal and pseudo-flesh and—

  Fire now, racing through the alleys on an unknown city. A woman’s hair flaming. A girl on fire, trying to quench herself in a lake that was beginning to boil—people racing through the streets—a man’s face [174] melting—piles of charred flesh—a crowd of hollow-eyed children pointing at the sky, chanting Artas, Artas, Artas—but not in admiration. No. In hate.

  No! he cried out in his mind.

  You’re going to kill a whole planet, a voice whispered.

  No! he screamed.

  And then, out of nowhere, it seemed that a hand reached out for him. Grabbed his wrist. Yanked him out of the miasma of nightmare. Thrust him against the lowest rung of the rope ladder. The wind was whipping his face, lashing his hair against his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, still tormented by the terror. Whose hand was it? You! he thought. The one I saw this morning! What are you to me?

  Artas, the voice whispered. It’s me, Adam Halliday—the kid from the future.

  Artas hung on to the ladder. It was swinging in the wind. With a supreme effort, he heaved his body up to the next rung—and the next—

  Stay with me, he told the inner voice. Please—I need someone—

  I can’t help but stay with you, said Adam. I’m stuck inside your mind
.

  Artas squeezed his eyes tight shut. Thought of all the training exercises, all the times on a rope ladder such as this with only a few meters between him and the training floor—not like this, swinging in a roaring wind, kilometers above ground level. He thought of his mother.

  [175] And then there was another image in his mind. A beautiful woman from another world. A woman who could reach into the very depths of his being.

  The vision flickered and was gone. Then there came the voice of the child.

  The inner voice said, I can’t get out of your mind.

  Artas whispered, Stay.

  Everything was blurry. There was no crowd, no competition. Only the rough rope against his sore palms, shredding skin now. He pulled himself up. In his mind he saw the angel, the boy from the future, whatever he was—floating against the starstream, arms stretched out toward him, drawing him up out of hell—in an ocean of stars—his hands strangely webless, alien—his hair glittering against the streaking starlight—pulling him, up, up, up—and—

  There was the final run now, a dash of a few hundred meters, all up a steep smooth slope toward the throne of the Shivan-Jalar. Only a few in the race—three or four at best. He couldn’t really see them because of the sweat pouring down his face, spurting into his eyes. His eyes smarted, his lips were stung by the briny taste—and here the wind was fierce, unrelenting.

  He ran.

  He was dimly aware of the others. They too were like him, all the hopes and dreams of their families riding on this one dash toward glory. They too were full of hatred for the Thanetians. They too were pumped up with slogans and pep talks from trainers [176] and religious leaders. They too had drunk themselves silly on potions designed for strength, agility, and indifference to pain—potions that also led to hallucinations and secret terrors. They too were afraid.

  Perhaps, they too had received visitations from angels—they too believed themselves to be the chosen one. But only one angel could be a true angel. For angels do not lie.

  Look! There were the twins. They were whooping as they ran, but Artas was faster. He swept by them. And now there was someone else, just ahead. He didn’t remember seeing that kid before. Someone running in a cloud of luminescence. Someone haloed in rainbow light. I’ve got to catch up to him! I’ve got to! he thought. He was aware of pain, fiery pain in his ankles and thighs, but he couldn’t stop. There was that one person left to beat, to overtake.