But the rift couldn’t be kept open long, for fear of detection. As soon as it stabilized, Kes ordered her crew to beam in the Doctor’s mobile emitter—not the tiny original which still held pride of place in Voyager’s sickbay, but a bulkier Vostigye-built unit able to fit inside the torso of one of the Doctor’s avatars. The hologram it now projected was that of a member of Species 8472, hopefully accurate and nondescript enough to avoid drawing attention. Once the copy of the Doctor within the emitter confirmed his arrival, Kes ordered the graviton beam reduced to minimal strength; the rift closed, but enough of a link remained to allow its quick reopening in an emergency, and to allow Kes to maintain telepathic contact with the Doctor. Though I still find it remarkable that you can read the mind of a computerized being, he sent to her. Reassuring, though. Does this mean I have a soul? And if so, how many do I have?
Kes chuckled. “I’ll get back to you once I figure out if I have one.”
Closing her eyes, Kes could perceive what the Doctor perceived—a universe of fluid, yellow-green with bioluminescence, cloudy with density variations and microparticles, with larger specks floating through it. Everything here is biological, the Doctor reported, interpreting the readings of the emitter’s built-in sensors, which had been calibrated to cope with the scattering effect of the inhabitants’ bioelectric fields, though their resolution was still limited. I think those particles are a sort of plankton. Would it look odder if I tried to eat some or if I didn’t?
“Is there anyone there to see you?”
I’m not sure. There are some forms moving in the distance…it’s hard to make them out… She sensed annoyance. I’m thinking too much like a humanoid. I’m essentially an aquatic life-form here. Sound is more useful than sight. She sensed him boosting his audio receptors. Fascinating, he sent after a moment. This universe is pervaded with sound. Distant calls, large bodies moving…maybe some kind of currents flowing…a literal music of the spheres, do you suppose, Kes? I wonder if the 8472 have opera. Imagine a song that propagates across an entire galaxy! Although the Doctor had grown away from his former fascination with humanoid hobbies such as dance and painting, he’d retained his love of music.
“It’s a lovely idea, Doctor, but about those moving forms…?”
Oh, yes. Moving my way, and fairly sizable. Wait a minute…there are smaller forms congregating around me. She could perceive them too; some of the specks were circling around him, darting in to taste his skin. Kes, I think they’re antibodies of a sort! If fluidic space functions like a single organism, it must have a sort of immune system. But why would a universe need defense against outside intrusion?
“It’s a very dense and energetic universe,” Kes answered, drawing on the expertise she’d absorbed from the cosmologists aboard ship. “Other universes might be drawn to it, with rifts forming naturally.”
Or maybe it isn’t all one organism. Do we really know that the fluid fills the whole thing? Maybe it just has big liquid blobs in place of galaxies.
“No, then there’d be centers of gravity pulling things toward them and they would’ve collapsed into solid masses, even with the repulsive dark energy. The fluid has to be uniformly distributed.”
Come to think of it, with no gravity and no solid surface, what am I doing with three legs? Or any legs? She sensed him thrashing a bit. Thesestubby things aren’t good for swimming. My body’s not very streamlined, either. She felt his concern; the big forms were drawing closer. If his emitter wasn’t giving off the correct electrochemical signature…
But Kes could do nothing about that, not at this range, anyway. Instead, she concentrated on projecting the right telepathic “scent” onto him, the same sense of presence she’d gotten from her intermittent contacts with Species 8472. The approaching forms were now becoming clear as bioships of a kind, though Kes could sense a telepathic ambience to them as well, recognizing that they were more animals than vessels. They didn’t seem to have any of the tripeds aboard. But they were animals with a lethal bioelectric defense. I hope you’re telling them “hello,” the Doctor sent.
Whatever she managed to do must have been effective, for one bioship went on its way while the other pulled up alongside him, opening an orifice/hatch in invitation. “It’s accepted you, Doctor. I think it’s offering you a lift.”
Should I go in?
“Yes. There are no other sentients aboard, so you should hurry before it decides to go on its way.”
The Doctor entered just before the orifice irised shut. Inside, the bioship/animal resembled the one described in Chakotay’s reports from that first 8472 contact, except for the lack of gravity and the presence of the pervasive fluid throughout its interior. The Doctor drifted backward as it accelerated, so he grabbed for a handhold on what looked like a set of interior vertebrae. Once its motion stabilized, he looked around. No windows. How do I see where I’m going?
“Try touching an outer wall and getting a sound picture.”
He did the best he could, but it only gave a vague sense. Kes broadened her perceptions, taking in his full surroundings. “See that opening in the wall with the luminescent tubes running through it? I think it’s a neural interface. Try grasping it.”
He did so, with no result. I feel silly. I’m a hologram—I don’t have any nerves.
“Be patient.” Reaching her mind toward the interface, she linked with its perceptions and fed them to the Doctor. Now they both had a full sensory experience of the journey as the bioship perceived it, primarily with sound, scent, and electrical impulse, with vision as a secondary component. It had monochromatic color perception, since all the light in this universe was yellow-green.
But the creature’s other senses gave her a richer perception of fluidic space, and she committed it to her eidetic memory for later analysis, hoping it would provide some physical insight allowing a less destructive defense to be devised. From this perspective, it was a richer, more complex environment, its fluid divided into distinct currents and convection cells like an ocean’s, though Kes was unsure what could drive such currents without gravity. Perhaps thermal differentials, with some parts of fluidic space being hotter and more energetic than others. There were no stars here; the energy that warmed this universe was the residue of its Big Bang, a cosmic background radiation a hundred times hotter than that of Kes’s universe, since fluidic space had expanded so much less, attenuating the heat of its birth to a far lesser degree. But some parts must be warmer than others, as the activity of life generated and transferred heat.
This is extraordinary, the Doctor said. The different convection cells seem to host different types of organisms. There seems to be a correlation between the shape and size of the convection cells and the organisms they host. And the currents between them appear to be delivering nutrients, removing waste. It’s almost like the organs and blood vessels of a body, but divided by flow patterns and density differentials rather than walls of tissue.
Soon it became evident that the bioship was heading for a particular convection cell, moving sideways in the current flow so as to pass across the interface and be shunted into the cell. Inside the cell was a dense concentration of large structures; Kes had to remind herself that they were alive, for they were immense, the size that living things could reach only in weightless conditions. But she sensed acoustically that they were hollow, and inhabited.
“Doctor, it’s a city! I’m sensing hundreds of thousands of Species 8472, and other creatures of various types.”
I’m not sure if I’d call it a city or a biome. It’s almost like a school of immense fish. Indeed, the whole agglomeration of creatures moved in a stately gavotte, independent entities cooperating as a single unit. Smaller forms moved among the large ones, interacting, exchanging who knew what, and still smaller forms passed between them. The bioship spiraled in to become part of this unending dance, and opened its orifice once it was immersed.
“You should probably get out now, Doctor,” Kes sent, “before the rush-hour cro
wd climbs aboard.”
I was tired of being a straphanger anyway, he replied, letting go of the interface conduits and pulling himself along the wall until he reached the exit.
Through the Doctor’s senses, Kes saw thousands of 8472 swimming through the motile city. Except they weren’t the 8472 she was familiar with, the kind the Doctor was emulating. Instead of heavy tripedal legs, they bore three large, ribbed, triangular fins on their lower bodies. Their hands were much like the Doctor’s, except webbed. The rear plates of their heads were swept back, better able to accommodate the tilting of their heads perpendicular to their bodies as they swam. Now, that design makes sense for this environment! the Doctor said. So what am I, and why am I so different?
“They feel the same telepathically,” Kes said. “They’re the same species, in mind, at least.”
Could the tripeds we’ve encountered have been specially bred to function in our environment? Am I a soldier home from the war instead of just a nondescript Scourge on the street?
“It’s possible. This could complicate things.”
You’re telling me. Uh-oh…I’ve got company. Some 8472—or 8472 and a half—are swimming this way.
“Just act natural.”
I’m an artificial intelligence holographically disguised as a three-legged alien and swimming in a parallel universe made of lime gelatin! How do you define “natural”?
“Calm, Doctor. Remember, you’re in no danger.”
The rest of me isn’t. But this little part of me would like to return to the whole intact! If you were a finger, would you be sanguine about getting amputated?
“I’m trying to communicate with them. Just try to play along.”
She sent recognition and query to the swimmers. They responded without words, but in the tone of security guards demanding identification. “They want you to stay where you are.”
With this anatomy, that’s the easy part!
One swimmer had a smaller organism attached to it like a lamprey. It pulled it off and extended it toward the Doctor. “Don’t let it touch you!” Kes called. His holographic skin might not have whatever chemical or thermal properties the organic device would test for. Better an unidentified fugitive than a confirmed Coalition spy.
The Doctor pulled back and began dog-paddling away at his best speed, such as it was. He headed for the nearest crowd of finned 8472. If I can get lost in the crowd, I can change to look like one of them.
“It’s worth a try.”
But something big suddenly swam into his path, a flat, translucent creature like a cross between a manta and a jellyfish. The Doctor looked around wildly for another way out, but the creature began to fold itself around him, reaching out tendrils to grasp him. “Open the rift!” Kes called to her crew, praying he was still in transporter range.
But then she felt the shock that went through his mobile emitter as the tendrils touched him. “Doctor!” she called. But his presence was no longer in her mind.
Something else was, however. It was the 8472, probing back along the telepathic signal she was sending, trying to get a taste of what was on the other end.
Kes shut them out with her mental shields and sighed, ordering her crew to activate the emitter’s self-destruct system. “No contact,” her tactical officer reported. “I can’t confirm self-destruct.”
“Shut down the deflector array,” Kes ordered, resigned. There was no choice but to abandon the mission and hope the destruct command had gone through. Kes tried to take comfort in the knowledge that the Doctor’s core consciousness was still intact. But it was this facet of him she’d been linked with, this one who’d feared destruction. This one that she had to condemn to his fate. She would have to live with that.
But could the Coalition live with the consequences of his exposure?
12
With the capture of the Doctor’s avatar, the hardliners began pushing for immediate construction of the subspace field generator to collapse fluidic space. Janeway and Kes, with help from Chakotay, did their best to talk the council out of it, but Kilana argued that time was too short to wait for a less apocalyptic solution. Her eloquence, and her carefully calculated appearance of vulnerability and fear, carried the day in favor of constructing the doomsday device.
Their urgency seemed to be borne out when a quantum singularity was detected on the outskirts of the Vostigye home system. Only one ship emerged, but the destructive power of even a single bioship was well known, and thus a fleet was sent to intercept, with Voyager as its flagship.
But instead of engaging them in battle, the vessel came to a stop as the fleet approached. “Stand ready,” Janeway ordered the other captains. “There’s no telling what they intend.”
“Captain!” Surt reported from ops. “They’re hailing us. Voyager specifically.”
Janeway frowned, trading a look with Harry. “They’ve never tried communicating other than telepathically before,” her first officer said.
“Maybe they wanted to be sure we heard their ultimatum.” Janeway rose from her chair, steeling herself. “On-screen.”
Her composure wavered when the visage of the Doctor appeared, standing in what looked like the interior of a bioship. Unlike the ones described in Kes’s report, this one seemed to have a gaseous atmosphere and artificial gravity. “Ah. There you are, Captain. I’m happy to report that there’s no need to launch the rescue mission you were undoubtedly planning to undertake,” he said.
It certainly seemed unlikely that Species 8472 could fake that supremely sarcastic tone. Still, Janeway had to be sure. “Bridge to sickbay.”
“Sickbay here, Captain,” came a voice identical to the one from the bioship. “I know what you’re going to ask, and you needn’t worry. I’m receiving feedback from him already, and I can confirm that he really is me.” He paused. “Oh, my. I’ve just synchronized memories with him, and he’s got quite a little surprise for you.”
On the screen, the other Doctor rolled his eyes. “Just like me to steal my own thunder. I was hoping to ease into this, but…Captain Janeway, there’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”
The Doctor stepped aside and another figure came into view—a wizened figure she’d never expected to see again in her lifetime, certainly not on this side of the galaxy. The incongruity of his presence was so great that she could not even bring herself to say his name. “Harry…are you seeing it too?”
Harry was on his feet now as well, gaping. “Groundskeeper Boothby?”
“Don’t let your mouth hang open like that, son,” the gaunt, elderly man said. “You’ll let flies in. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.” His eyes shifted to Janeway. “And before you ask, Captain, I’m not the same Boothby you knew back at Starfleet Academy. But then, you’re not exactly the same Kathryn Janeway I met a little while back. Though I’m sure you still like roses just as much.”
A chill ran through her. At the Academy, the real Boothby had often given her fresh roses for her quarters. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“It’s a long story. And an embarrassing one for my people, I’m afraid. That’s right,” he told her. “I’m a member of what you call Species 8472.” His gruff features took on an impish grin, so like the genuine article. “Quite a trick, isn’t it?”
The story told by Boothby—there was nothing else to call him—was remarkable. Apparently, the immensely complex genome of Species 8472 enabled them to alter their bodies in almost any way with the right chemical and enzymatic therapy. The soldiers sent to battle in the Delta Quadrant had been altered to function in environments with air and gravity, mimicking the conditions aboard the Borg vessels that had invaded their space, and their ships had been modified to match. This was why the tripeds encountered in the past seemed so mismatched to their fluidic environment.
But their transformational capabilities had served another purpose as well. Boothby had been part of a project to infiltrate Starfleet Headquarters on Earth—apparently Species 8472’s reach
extended even that far—to conduct reconnaissance and evaluate the threat humanity posed to them. Essentially it had been similar to the Doctor’s spy mission, but on a larger scale, with hundreds of tripeds undergoing transformation into Alpha Quadrant species. They had impersonated everything from cadets to admirals, but he, their leader, had chosen the form of the man who had tended the grounds of Headquarters and Academy alike for generations—a man at once inconspicuous and universally trusted, the ideal infiltrator. (It made Janeway wonder how many secrets the real Boothby must have accrued over the decades.)
The astonishing thing was that, according to the ersatz Boothby, this infiltration had been in response to an attack that Voyager had launched on Species 8472 in conjunction with the Borg—even though Voyager had never formed such an alliance.
“He’s saying he comes from an alternate timeline?” Kyric Rosh asked Janeway as they entered Voyager’s observation lounge, where Harry, the Doctor, and the 8472 emissary waited. The councillor had come aboard to debrief the visitor, not willing to risk letting an 8472 into Kosnelye but willing to take a personal risk in the hopes that Boothby’s professed mission of peace was genuine.
“Actually I’m from another universe,” the disguised emissary told him in Boothby’s gravelly voice. “But last time I visited your universe—let’s say I saw a different side of things. Where I come from, we only have the one timeline, but yours seem to multiply like tribbles. And that’s the root of the problem.”
Rosh shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m a little confused on the difference between a universe and a timeline.”
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