STAR TREK: TNG - Do Comets Dream?

by S P Somtow

  In a moment the warp drive would kick in.

  In a moment he would get his revenge.

  He was beyond the star system now, and the twin spheres of Tanith’s suns were already becoming just [204] two more stars, still the brightest, but no longer dominating the blackness of space.

  Engage! he commanded the comet’s drive. His silicon nerves locked on, his brain sent the preprogrammed signal that would activate the faster-than-light engines.

  But there was nothing.

  The Shivan-Jalar had been right. The worst-case scenario was in effect.

  He had five thousand years of waking dream ahead of him, five thousand years for hate to fester, to grow, to become unstoppable.

  The angel named Adam said, We’ll meet again.

  And faded.

  On Tanith, there was light—

  Part Four: The Planet That Waited for Death

  The Shivan-Jalar is my protector; I am but a crumb that has fallen from his table.

  The High Shivantak is as the right hand of the Shivan-Jalar; he shall be to me as a god.

  They shall lead me toward the fields of light;

  They shall squeeze for me the juice of the peftifesht,

  And I shall neither hunger nor thirst.

  But for them would I have no soul,

  But for them would I sing no song.

  What to me is the shadow of death?

  Death is but a shadow,

  And the Shivan-Jalar is the light.

  —from the Holy Panvivlion

  ONCE AGAIN, PICARD TURNED to Dr. Halliday’s field notes. Soon, the Captain would face the High Shivantak himself. He needed all the information he could glean.

  CONFIDENTIAL REPORT:

  Dr. Robert Halliday’s field notes

  Let me try to say a few words about the religion of the Thanetians. I have been trying to make sense of it all since getting here.

  First, as I’ve said in previous reports, they believe that everything that has ever happened will happen again, and that everything that is happening now has already happened. I don’t know how many members of the board reading [210] these notes are familiar with ancient India, but that’s an important old Earth civilization with the same cyclical view of the universe. They also used to have a caste system, but nothing like as intricate as the one here, with the complex dietary laws attendant upon each.

  Their concept of godhood is very interesting. Superficially, there seem to be many of them, and they’re always invoking various gods when they are annoyed. There’s even a god for constipation. And there are statues of the gods everywhere, of course, shrines, little nooks on street corners where one can leave offerings, and so on; that too is like ancient India and such cultures. But when it comes to putting your finger on a god as a supernatural being, the Thanetians become pretty nebulous. They will start to tell you that all the gods are aspects of each other, and when you press them they will say that the High Shivantak is the sole person who can interpret the nature of godhead. And the High Shivantak, so far, isn’t talking, although there are times when I think that he appropriates the essence of godhood unto himself.

  The High Shivantak, in theory, rules as the regent for the Shivan-Jalar, except that there hasn’t been one of those in all of Thanet’s recorded history. From time to time, the Shivantak makes pronouncements in the name of the Shivan-Jalar, and many assume he is [211] communicating with that mythical being by way of some kind of psychic projection. Another possibility is that he is simply making it all up in order to appear even more powerful than he actually is.

  His position is by no means ceremonial, even though bureaucrats do just about everything on Thanet; his every whim is catered to, and he is the one person on Thanet who is exempt from the heresy laws.

  Ah, yes, those heresy laws! Once in a while, their equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition goes on a rampage, and, barbaric as it sounds, they actually do burn people at the stake. It’s a very sophisticated stake, with all the trappings of higher civilization, but a stake nonetheless. If one says the wrong thing, a heresy trial can be a drawn-out process, and lawyers for such cases belong to a caste that is not allowed to enter public buildings; they must project a hologram into the court to avoid contamination by a heretic’s touch. As one can imagine, then, there is a lot of prejudgment involved as soon as the word “heretic” is invoked, and few are acquitted. This witch-hunting orthodoxy is the darkness that underlies the mozaic-like beauty of this planet’s culture.

  When the High Shivantak leaves his roost, his feet are not permitted to touch the ground. He rides on a palanquin powered by a low-level [212] antigravity device, with ceremonial guards before and behind. Half-naked woman with censers walk in front of the guards to strew flowers and spread the fragrance of his divinity around. As one might imagine, it’s not conducive to humility. Indeed, the caste system itself tends to intensify people’s propensity to lord it over others, and to grovel; there’s always someone to be better than, and worse than, in this society.

  The High Shivantak’s day is circumscribed by ritual. His rising and sleeping are regulated by astrological calculations; and each evening he must speak a blessing from the uppermost story of his palace over the entire city. Some Thanetians wait outside in the square all afternoon in order to receive the blessing personally. It is believed that receiving one thousand or more such blessings in the course of a lifetime will cause the supplicant to be reborn, during the next five-thousand-year cycle, in a caste one grade higher than his present caste. Since there seem to be a pretty much endless number of caste grades, this more or less ensures a constant presence of a vast throng outside the palace from early afternoon onward. There are also those who believe that the dawn will not come without the blessing having been given the previous evening.

  There are many rumors about the High [213] Shivantak, some of which are gossipy speculation of the sort that any high royal is bound to have said about him: his sexual habits, his gluttony, and so on.

  Far more useful to the Federation is the belief, held by most people in the capital city, that the High Shivantak has a habit of “playing both ends against the middle,” and that he keeps his bureaucrats constantly on their toes by assigning them to secret missions and then—deliberately, it is said—forgetting those missions completely.

  In other words, he out-Machiavellis Machiavelli, if any of you Federation bureaucrats have any memory of who Machiavelli was.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Asylum

  PICARD LOOKED AWAY from Halliday’s field notes. There was much fascinating material here, and also much of Halliday’s own personality—smug and self-congratulatory at times, but also keenly incisive and knowledgeable. This High Shivantak was clearly a mass of contradictions, and the more that was known about him, the better.

  Picard wore full dress uniform, in preparation for an audience with the Shivantak in the last hours before their world would change forever.

  There was someone at the door. “Come,” Picard said gravely.

  And in a moment, Ambassador Straun was sitting across from Picard in the ready room. His daughter stood beside him. It was astonishing to Picard how [216] their roles had become reversed. For the daughter was afire with the discovery of myriad new worlds to comprehend, but the ambassador was in a daze, his old beliefs gone forever.

  The ambassador was still trying to assimilate all the revelations; Picard decided that it was best to leave him in peace.

  “The High Shivantak has invited me, and the Enterprise’s key crew members, into his august presence,” Picard said. “We’ll be discussing with him the final disposition of the thanopstru, and the details of the rescue mission. But—I see that you will not be coming with us,” he added.

  “Alas, Captain, I cannot,” said Straun.

  “But you are his representative to us still, are you not?”

  “I cannot reconcile my service to the High Shivantak with the heresy that sits heavy on my heart,” said the ambassado
r softly. “And besides, Captain, I was not invited. And no one sets foot uninvited in the High Shivantak’s presence—not even an ambassador to an all-powerful alien federation.”

  “Ambassador Straun, I don’t envy your position,” said Captain Picard. “I too, once—felt the trauma of being assimilated in an alien culture—my thoughts no longer being my own—everything about who I am dictated by an outside intelligence.” The scars of Picard’s experience with the Borg would not heal easily, despite the passing of time.

  “Captain Picard,” said the ambassador, “I would [217] like to ask you formally what my daughter asked for informally: I do have a sentence of execution hanging over my head, and I think I can genuinely claim that, as it is a sentence for heresy, I am being persecuted for my religious beliefs. My daughter has explained to me how this concept works among your people. I am requesting—asylum.”

  “And I’m granting it,” said the captain. “Good luck to both you and your daughter.”

  Kio spoke up for the first time, “I didn’t say that I am asking for asylum, Captain,” she said.

  “Oh. Forgive me, Kio. I assumed—” Picard thought of the young lieutenant she had been so taken with.

  “I’m not going to run away. Oh, I’ll travel to the Federation with my father, I’ll try to see all I can see—but I’ll come back.”

  “Yes, of course,” Picard said.

  “Your party is waiting in the transporter room, Captain,” the ship’s computer said.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” said Picard.

  “Of course,” the ambassador said, and prepared to be escorted to his quarters.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Politics of Self-Destruction

  EVERYTHING IN THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER was designed to accentuate the High Shivantak’s lordliness and splendor—and to make his supplicants appear as puny and humble as possible. Lord Kaltenbis, the chamberlain, stood at the foot of the throne, and though Picard was the representative of the Federation itself with its myriad worlds, he was not permitted to address the High Shivantak directly, but only through this intermediary.

  From Picard’s vantage point, the High Shivantak seemed little more that a blur of gold and brightly colored feathers. As Kaltenbis spoke, the blur moved; the captain could see arms waving. Then, it seemed, Kaltenbis began backing down the throne in a hurry. By the time he reached the floor level, he [219] seemed quite out of sorts. In fact, he glared at Pi-card, and left the chamber without a word.

  The High Shivantak rose.

  These people certainly had a sense of the majestic. As soon as he was on his feet, trumpets blasted from seven corners of the chamber. Courtiers, round about the hall, fell on their faces, not daring to gaze on the High Shivantak’s face.

  The Shivantak clapped his hands.

  Soundlessly, the audience chamber emptied. It was like magic. The stream of people were simply siphoned off into corridors and hallways, in a ritual that had clearly been practiced a thousand times.

  The man who came down the steps was robed in the accoutrements of godhood, but there was no godliness in his face. Instead, Picard observed some very human emotions: concern, instability, and insecurity.

  “I have done what no High Shivantak has ever done,” he said gravely. “Never in five thousand years of recorded history. I have dismissed everyone from the high chamber. Therefore there will be no record of what we speak, no remembrance, no recollection. This moment is outside history; if we will it so, it will not have happened. Do you understand what I’m saying, Captain Picard?”

  “Yes, Your Radiance,” said the captain. “On Earth, where I come from, this was known as deniability.”

  “Ah, politics,” said the High Shivantak. “Our cultures may have a wealth of differences, but always [220] there are the people plotting behind the scenes; always there are secret meetings; I’ve been reading up a little on your history, Captain.”

  “The Federation isn’t perfect,” Picard said, smiling a little. “We haven’t always done the right thing, but we’ve evolved some basic principles that we believe in—and that we try to live by.”

  “Indeed. But here, in this quadrant of what we have just discovered to be a very populated galaxy indeed, the Federation, imperfect as you call it, seems to be the larger reality; and it is always the destiny of the larger reality to dictate to the smaller; truth is defined, I think, as the confluence of many private illusions, and the majority must prevail; how strange it is for me, who have always been at the center of my own pocket universe, to discover that I am a minority, and my whole worldview an illusion spun from ignorance! You see, Captain, how it is with me.”

  “Birth is always painful, rebirth yet more so,” said Picard, quoting the Thanetian holy book.

  “I see that you know the Panvivlion,” said the High Shivantak, smiling also, though Picard could see the strain behind that smile. “Or is it simply that your handlers have distilled for you that which would be most pleasing to my ear?”

  “You give me too much credit, Your Radiance,” said Picard. “I’m not a trained diplomat, merely a starship captain.”

  “Then allow us to be honest with you, Captain.” [221] They were eye to eye now, and Picard sensed that the High Shivantak had rarely allowed himself to appear this vulnerable. And yet, he knew, even vulnerability could be a political tool, and even the end of the world could be the endgame of a cosmic chess match. “For years—ever since my elevation to the Shivantakate—I’ve believed there might be more to the universe than what is described in the great book. But such beliefs, of course, being heresy, and I, of course, being the guardian of all orthodoxy, have never given utterance to such beliefs. We have been waiting for millennia for the end of the world, Captain, and the end of the world seemed clearly to be coming, right on schedule; and that is my problem. That is the reason I’ve had two reactions to each of the astonishing events that have plagued this last year of my rule—the public and the private. Publicly, I condemned Straun sar-Bensu to execution for heresy; privately, I sent him to the Enterprise to continue to engage in a dialogue with the very aliens who spawned that heresy.

  “Now you have come to me, and you have sent me the data record synthesized for me by your Commander Data; and I have experienced the simulation of the events of five thousand years ago with mixed emotions. You understand how it must be for me: to see a sister culture so like ourselves, so committed to our destruction, and to know that we too were once motivated by such mindless hate, even though in this incarnation of Thanet’s civilization the past survives only as garbled mythology.”

  [222] “I realize that it’s been trying for you—”

  “More than trying. And that is why, even now, we must have a public as well as a private solution. If the end of the world is to be averted, it must happen in a way that does not jar with our worldview—or else-—or else, Captain Picard, there will be chaos!” There was silence in the chamber, the kind of silence that follows a statement of unpleasant but irrefutable truth. Despite his wealth and power, the High Shivantak’s position was not enviable. The preservation of his subjects’ lives counted for little if those lives were stripped of all meaning.

  “My underlings here—they think they protect me completely from the outside world,” the High Shivantak continued. “The many gifts your people have given us—they locked them away in a secret treasure chamber, hoping, perhaps, that no one would ever look upon them. But in the small hours of the night, when none of my attendants dared disturb me—ah, then, Captain Picard, I wandered through the corridors of this palace, through secret passageways even the servants do not know about, and I saturated myself in the Federation’s myriad cultures! I’ve watched a Klingon ten-opera cycle from beginning to end. I’ve listened to the cold logic of Vulcan poetry. Yet as much as I’ve learned from your cultures, I have still found nothing that will help me save the souls as well as the lives of my people.”

  The saving of souls as well as lives. Many people had grappled wi
th like dilemmas in the course of [223] human history. So many times the end of the world had been predicted, and so many times the Apocalypse had failed to arrive.

  The Apocalypse. Wasn’t there an ancient book by that name? It dated back to ancient Rome, and presented a similar scenario.

  Then, slowly, Captain Jean-Luc Picard began to smile.

  “Your Radiance,” he said, “I have a suggestion.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Life of One Child

  FIVE THOUSAND YEARS of rage. Would a few hours of compassion temper it? Was there still a recognizably humanoid intelligence in that mass of flesh and metal, or was this cyborg more machine than person?

  He floated in the tank. Now and then there came another tear from the corner of an ever-open eye. Aside from that, not a glimmer of emotion.

  The life signs were powerfully present. But what would happen if the boy were removed from the comet? Her preliminary findings had been that it could not be done.

  She tried again and again, shifting parameters, altering probabilities. But it was clear to Beverly Crusher that boy and machine were so thoroughly integrated that they could not be separated. This was [225] not a matter of a few Borg-like appliances slapped onto a human body that still walked and talked like an independent being. Though the boy’s body, preserved in the nutrient tank, looked human, his entire nervous system had been replicated in silicon and extended over the entire thanopstru. The frontal lobe of his brain had been invaded by artificial neurons, and fibrous masses of them prevented the extraction of the original brain. Only the most primitive area of the brain remained completely organic and intact—it was that area that was the seat of all that rage, that area that had caused tears to flow from ancient tear ducts despite the conscious mind’s lack of awareness of the eyes and other external organs.