STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

Too late to take the words back.

  The shuttle touched water, bucked, and dropped as it slid down the crest of a comber, down farther and farther. The seas were higher than Gillian had realized.

  [93] Below the heaving upper layers of water, deep where the currents were usually stable, there was turbulence still.

  Gillian turned on more of the shuttle’s floodlights.

  It was like looking through dilute pea soup—greenish, murky, filled with sediment. If it weren’t for the navigational computations, and sonar and sensor readings, she’d be lost.

  There was a click, and Uhura hailed them. “Ladies, we’re losing your signal. Can you hold steady while we try to counter the effect?”

  Gillian opened the channel to the Hermes. “Can do, Uhura. Let me know when you’ve finished.” She set the amphishuttle’s controls to stand in place in the current.

  “Doctor Taylor,” Uhura said a moment later, “we’ve been able to clean up our readings—and in the process we’ve discovered something else: a sensor null area, right in the heart of your search zone. My science officer says that it seems to be related to the effects of the Romulan cloaking device. That moves our ‘unexplained interference’ into the realm of ‘probably caused by intelligent life-forms.’ Under the circumstances my advice is to cancel the upcoming stage of Genesis, call the two of you back in, and continue the investigation at our leisure.”

  “No.” The word came from two mouths at once. Gillian and Marcus looked at each other. Then Gillian continued, “I still have to find Harpo—he could be in danger. And we’re down already. Let us finish what we started, Captain.”

  The pause as Uhura considered seemed eternal. Then, her voice a leonine growl, she said, “As you wish. But watch yourselves down there. Do you understand? No grandstand plays.”

  [94] Marcus snorted. “That was Jim’s specialty, Uhura. We’re just his shy little shadows. Pale echoes of his derring-do.”

  Uhura gave a dismissive snort. “In a pig’s eye, Doctor Marcus.”

  Marcus laughed. It was the first time Gillian could remember her doing so. “We’ll be careful, Uhura. I promise. Won’t we, Doctor Taylor?”

  “Oh, yes, Doctor Marcus. Very careful,” Gillian agreed, soberly.

  Uhura sighed. “I wish I believed it.”

  “Believe it, Uhura.” Gillian laughed. “Now we have to go—the current down here is terrible.” In a few moments Uhura had relayed them a course setting for the location of the cloaked area, and they were back underway.

  “Thanks,” Marcus said.

  “For what?”

  “For making Uhura let us continue.”

  Gillian shook her head. “I just fought for what I cared about But I can’t make Uhura do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

  “No. I suppose not. But it’s what I wanted, too.”

  “You treat that damned project like it was your baby,” Gillian grumbled. “I have a whale lost, and all you can think of is your schedule.”

  Marcus looked over at her, as they dropped deeper and deeper into Pacifica’s waters. “It’s been my life. It was David’s death, in the end. It may not be very scientific of me, but I want it to mean something. Somehow, over the years, Genesis has come to define me. If it fails, I don’t know what I’ll do. Who I’ll be ...”

  Gillian didn’t comment. She understood too well, and [95] wasn’t ready to admit it, or, more accurately, wasn’t quite sure how to.

  “You worry about that whale like he was your own child, don’t you?” Marcus countered, suddenly.

  Gillian felt something ease inside her. She smiled, reluctantly. “Yeah. I do. I’ve always been terrible, even back when I came from. I overpersonalize. Besides being a teammate, Harpo’s as close as I ever came to a child. He is George and Gracie’s child—and I love them like family. In a lot of ways they are my family. Having Harpo out there is like having a favorite nephew gone missing.”

  “I never really thought about it. You’re so far out of your own time. Are the whales the only family you have?” Carol Marcus sounded uneasy at the thought.

  Gillian swiped a curl out of her eyes. “No. Not just them. You can count some of the people I’ve worked with over the years, too. And a few special folks like Uhura. I was close to Sarek of Vulcan for some years—he and his wife were good to me when I first came here. But Amanda’s dead, now.”

  Marcus frowned. “Sounds lonely.”

  “My life’s not lonely!” Gillian was startled to hear it described that way. “It’s out of kilter in some ways. Making the shift to a new time was harder than I expected. But I’m not lonely—how could I be, with so much to learn and see?” Then Gillian scowled, and pointed to the screen. “What do you think that is?”

  “Where?”

  “There. Along that rock face.” Gillian guided the shuttle closer to the side of the slope, to a sheer cliff that dropped down, and down, disappearing in the green waters.

  [96] “I don’t know. Could just be a natural vein in the stone. Could be a crack.”

  “It’s too—I don’t know. It looks wrong. Like something that’s supposed to look natural, but doesn’t make it. That edge is too regular, and the irregularities are phony. Like fake rocks in a bad B movie. Like someone printed ‘Styrofoam’ across the face of the thing. I think we may have found our unexplained interference ... and maybe my lost whale.” It was a relief to move away from personal issues to practical, worldly problems.

  “So? What next?” Marcus was tense, her shoulders set. Her fingers drummed the console in front of her, lightly.

  “Call Uhura up on the Hermes. Arrange for backup.” Gillian activated the comlink. “Captain Uhura, this is Doctor Taylor, on the Nautilus. We’ve discovered what appears to be an artificial—”

  The console went dead.

  Then the entire shuttle went dead.

  “Damn.” Gillian’s hands crept over the controls, trying to find their way by braille. “Oh, hell.”

  Marcus was struggling with her own controls. “Nothing.”

  The shuttle jerked and shuddered, then began to move. Gillian thought they were drifting toward the cliff face, but in the absolute black of the cabin it was hard to determine more than a general forward motion.

  “I can’t tell where we are. Can you?” Marcus said, her voice as tense as a finger on a phaser trigger.

  “No. It’s like we’re nowhere. Nowhen.” Gillian swallowed hard. She’d felt this way on deep dives, traveling through black-on-black immensity. But she’d never gone down without knowing she had enough control to get back [97] up, before. This was more like when she’d thrown herself into the glow of a strange, mysterious transporter beam—hoping that she had what it took to cope with whatever she found on the other side. “I didn’t know black could be so physical,” she murmured. “If eternity had a form, it would look like this.”

  Marcus laughed, sharply. “Genesis. ‘And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.’ I hate it. I do. I absolutely hate it. This is what Genesis is supposed to undo. Endlessness and entropy and death.”

  Gillian could hear strangled panic in her companion’s words.

  She couldn’t criticize. As the shuttle drifted, her own hands trembled, still looking for a control that would answer to her touch. Another moment and she’d have to give up, open the latches of the safety straps. She and Doctor Marcus would have to grope their way into the diving suits, crank the hatches open manually—and take their chances trying to swim back up to the surface.

  It was a long way up.

  Then there was a greenish glow, and the crack in the cliff slid open.

  “ ‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ ” Gillian was giggling, as dizzy with relief as if she had the bends.

  “ ‘And God saw the light, that it was good ...’ ” Marcus snorted. “I have never been so happy to see light in my life.”

  The crack was a wide gate, now, leading into the cliff wall. S
ediment stirred and swirled in the light. “Why am I so relieved?” Gillian wondered. “It’s just light. The controls are still dead. We’re being drawn into who knows what, and I’m [98] giggling and shaking and so happy I could sing.” The Nautilus drifted closer, closer, then passed through, out of the darkness into a blaze of radiance.

  “Oh, my God.” Marcus leaned forward. The light shone on high cheekbones and polished silver hair, gleamed on the fine, sculpted curves of her eyelids. “Oh, my God. Look at it.”

  Gillian looked.

  The cliff had hidden a cavern—a cavern so vast she could only imagine the existence of a far wall. The water was clear, far clearer than the stew of silt and amino acids the shuttle had just left. And everywhere there were structures, though she was hard put to know what to call them. They weren’t houses. The latticed partitions reminded her of lace, and birdcages, and summery gazebos covered with vines.

  In and around the structures there were people.

  She realized she was leaning forward, the safety straps cutting into her shoulders, her hands pressed flat to force her still closer to the front viewport.

  “They’re beautiful,” Marcus murmured. “Simply gorgeous.”

  Gillian thought she might be willing to call them humanoid. But there was something as seallike as human about them, and a trace of otterine slenderness and grace. And the frond-fin-feathers of them! A fan-dancer’s wardrobe sprouted from spines and crested heads, in colors that would shame a Terran macaw. The beings were small, not much bigger than raccoons. They swam alongside the Nautilus, huge eyes peering in at the two women. Their delicate webbed hands brushed the transparent aluminum of the port. The flesh was so thin the blazing light of the caverns shone through, silhouetting bones, and veins of a delicate purple.

  [99] Gillian didn’t dare move. She didn’t even dare smile, or wave. Whatever they were, their technology held the Nautilus firm—and they almost certainly had Harpo. She didn’t dare risk a single gesture that might be misunderstood.

  “What do we do now?” Carol Marcus whispered.

  “I think I go out and try to communicate,” Gillian returned.

  “And me?”

  “You wait. Unless you want to be the one who goes out But one of us should stay in the shuttle. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “You know. ‘Just in case’? I’m sure you can think of something.” She was trying to laugh. She eased a hand up and released the catch of her straps, then stood, cautiously. The strange beings continued to peer in at her, but an uneasy shiver moved through the school. Gillian slip-stepped backwards down the center of the shuttle, reaching behind her until she found the door of the cabinet that held the diving gear. After that she had to risk looking away.

  “They don’t seem to be too frightened of us,” Marcus said.

  “They’ve caught us, not the other way around.”

  “ ‘Do not project the social assumptions of your own race onto the aliens you encounter; this is especially true during first contact situations,’ ” Marcus quoted. “I think I read that in some academy pamphlet I picked up at Jim’s place, once.” She laughed. “It’s a rule he usually broke.”

  “He broke a lot of rules,” Gillian said, dryly. “It was part of his eternal charm.”

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Carol Marcus said, smiling. “I should remember that.”

  [100] “Why? You don’t break enough rules on your own?”

  “No. And the ones I do break, I regret too much.”

  Gillian frowned. “I suppose I do, too. I regret being one walking broken rule. The chick he brought back from time.”

  Marcus sighed. “Why the hell are we talking about Jim Kirk, now?”

  “I don’t know. What else should we talk about?” Gillian had shimmied into the bottom of her suit. She pulled her tunic top over her head, and began to squeeze into the suit jacket. “It’s not like we know what to plan for next. And it’s the one topic we share in common. What else are we going to chat about?”

  “Why did you come to this time?” Marcus asked, suddenly. “It wasn’t for Jim—your behavior afterwards made that clear. So, why? It’s so dangerous, now. Violent, uncertain. People die for such stupid reasons. The old days were better. One world, one race, one culture. You knew who you were, where you belonged. How could you choose to leave that, and risk everything to come here?” In her voice Gillian could hear the death of a son, the devastation of a career, the loss of a lover, the failure of a dream.

  Gillian frowned. “I don’t honestly know. It wasn’t as good then as you think. That’s part of it. The good old days are never as good as people think they were. But—” She zipped the jacket and pulled up the rubbery plastic hood, adjusting the waterproof seals. “I used to collect whale quotes. Lawrence, Nash, you name it. There was one I loved, a poem that ended: ‘Lord, if only some fortunate plunge would let me come up into your eternal peace.’ I think I threw myself into that transporter beam for a dream of [101] surfacing in some unimaginable peace, where George and Gracie and I could live happily ever after.”

  “And you ended up here. Surrounded by all of modern life’s uncertainties. Some happy ending.” Marcus’s voice was bitter, even as her awed eyes watched the drift and dance of the beings outside the shuttle.

  Gillian frowned, watching the water ballet. “I suppose it is. I certainly hope so.” Then she slipped the aqualung attachment over her mouth, cranked the hatch open, and stepped into the chambered airlock.

  When she left the shuttle, the water was cold. The aliens clustered around her, close, closer, closest, touching her, tracing her features, exploring. Their hands were like spiders, tickling, prickling, creeping over her face. And there was a hum about them, deep, like the sound of music heard vibrating through the pipes underwater during a bath.

  Gillian knew they were trying to communicate, but the results were no better than all the years she’d tried to communicate with George and Gracie, before Spock had melded with them, before they’d all come to a future filled with telepaths and universal translators. She tried to signal her confusion, her regret. Tried to mime Harpo, to mime releasing the shuttle from whatever it was that held it.

  She’d never been any use as a mime. She’d once quipped that the reason she became an oceanographer was because she had to do something if she wanted to live and work near the San Francisco shoreline, and she’d never have made it as a street performer. She wasn’t any better now than she’d ever been. Her broad gestures to indicate the young humpback only made her wallow, and bump into the delicate little aliens. Desperate waving and pointing at the shuttle, and the [102] exaggerated opening of an upheld fist to signify release, only confused them and made them swim wildly around her.

  She was utterly frustrated.

  Then a shadow slid beneath her frog-finned feet. It rose up, dark, sleek, and massive, a contrail of silver bubbles streaming from the divided blowhole and rising up to veil her in crystal and champagne sparkle. A second later Harpo was nudging her and humming. She could just make out the melody: one of her old favorites, from her own time. “Octopus’s Garden.” She laughed, and struggled to hum along through her mouthpiece and the constant rush of air the aqualung forced on her. The results were peculiar and tickled her nose, but they seemed to satisfy Harpo.

  Gillian gave a kick, and a twist, and let her hands track along Harpo’s skin. He was smooth—far smoother than George or Gracie, as they were smoother than true “wild” humpbacks had been in her own time. It was amazing the difference medical attention and barnacle removal could make. Harpo was a very civilized young whale.

  The strange aliens seemed to think so too. They flocked around him, a festive flight of tropical finches fluttering around an elephant. Gillian could hear their hum, moving from single solo passages to the full chords of a choir singing in unison, as they surrounded her friend.

  He was communicating something to them. She couldn’t tell what, but there was more purpose
in their response to him than to her. But she couldn’t identify the mode, or grasp the method of exchange.

  It was driving her crazy. Under normal circumstances her communication tab would have served as a translation device. But just as the shuttle was still and passive, its [103] technology reduced to the bare mechanical aspects of life support, the translator was silent.

  She scowled. There had to be some way to communicate. Harpo seemed to at least be getting by. She dropped down and swam alongside him, listening to him hum and moan.

  It wasn’t language. Not really. But somehow the creatures seemed to accept it as communication, of some sort. In the time Harpo had been held here, he’d found some way to make contact with these people.

  She pulled away and returned to the shuttle, letting herself in through the hatch.

  Carol Marcus had released herself from the straps of her seat and was standing in the middle of the shuttle. She made a face as Gillian came in. “I had to move. I was beginning to freeze up solid, just sitting there. So, what did you find out?”

  “Harpo’s here. He’s fine—still has his aqualung, seems to be healthy. Other than that—I don’t know.” She frowned. “This is going to be a problem. We’ve been working for years to come up with a functional human-cetacean pidgin, but it’s never gotten very far. Whales don’t appear to process language in even remotely human ways, and humans are no better off with whale song. Our best solution has been to use the universal translator and depend on telepaths when the translator isn’t enough. But that’s not going to help now. So I can’t communicate with the aliens, because they’ve shut down our communication system, and I can’t talk to Harpo for the same reason.”

  “Uhura did say she’d send down a search and rescue team if we were gone too long. We don’t have to solve this on our own.”

  Gillian huffed. “No? Another two people who can’t [104] talk, with a neutralized shuttle, will help? Or four? Or more? This could go on forever.” She paced to the front port. “We need to find some way to talk to Harpo. He seems to be able to communicate something to the aliens. If we can get him to ask them to give us back our power, we could bring the translator on-line—and then we’d be cooking with gas.”