STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II

by Dean Wesley Smith (Editor)

  What decisions? Are we still going? What did Mama say?

  Papa pushed himself off my bed. Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.

  That night I dreamed, and it was all bad, and I remembered it all when I woke up.

  Only we didn’t talk. Mama was gone all day, the last day of the phase shift. Papa walked in and out of the house. I had a funny-awful feeling all day. Usually drawing helps me feel better, as if all the yucky feelings spill right out onto the [291] paper. Except I didn’t have any paper, and I didn’t want to bother Papa. So I drew on the walls. I just did it. I used lots of black, which is weird, because red is my favorite color. But I felt black. So I drew black.

  Next thing I knew, Mama and Papa were there. I expected they’d be mad about the walls. But they just looked at the pictures. I remember how they held hands, only not in the way people in love do. More like they were holding each other up.

  Then Papa pointed. What are they?

  Dream pictures.

  Dream pictures? asked Mama. When did they start? asked Papa.

  Last night. Night before.

  When she came, said Papa.

  What are they? asked Mama.

  It just came out. Ships, I said.

  Ships? asked Papa.

  Space ships.

  But, dear, said Mama, they’re cubes.

  They’re ships, I said, and stared at my fingers. They were black.

  She came again that night. She walked right in, like she belonged.

  Papa said, I have something to show you.

  He took her to my room. She stared at my pictures for a real long time. Then she asked, She drew these?

  Yes. What are they?

  These are Borg. It is as I told you. The temporal stream has curved back upon itself.

  [292] I’ve checked your figures, said Papa. I ran the simulation. You might be mistaken.

  She pointed at my pictures. You need more? This is Borg. If you go, you will become Borg. Or worse.

  You can’t know.

  I can.

  No. You said your bioimplants phased with a high-density particle beam. That the relay synchronized to a gravi-magnetic disturbance to create the temporal rift. What if the rift didn’t loop you back at all but into a parallel continuum?

  Impossible. Your ship matches the resonance frequency of the vessel in B’Omar space.

  In your time, your continuum. Ours might be distinct.

  Why do you refuse to listen? I am not here by accident.

  Papa didn’t say anything. I thought maybe he might change his mind, and then we wouldn’t leave. I think Mama wanted that, because she laid her hand on Papa’s shoulder, as if her touch said more than words.

  Then I saw Papa’s face move in a certain way, and it was all awful again.

  I’m sorry, he said. While I concede that what you present is plausible—

  It will happen—

  I believe you’ve stepped across times, not back into your own. Or ours.

  She looked as if she might cry. You are a fool—

  Please—

  The child is showing you!—and now she was crying—She knows! I know!

  Mama gripped Papa’s shoulder. Can’t we stay?

  No.

  [293] But I’m afraid, I’m—

  There’s nothing to be frightened of—

  No, whispered Mama. Look at her, look at her. Can’t you see—

  She cried, Listen, please listen—

  You’re both of you becoming hysterical—

  Stop! It was a new voice, and it was screaming, screaming, and then I heard that the voice was mine. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!

  Mama rushed over. Oh, my poor darling, my little girl—

  Oh, Mama, Mama, Mama! I cried.

  Only there were two voices calling for my mama. Because she had said Mama, too.

  Mama and Papa stood real still, Mama hugging me, and Papa staring, and me snuffling into Mama’s arm.

  She was crying, Please, Mama, Papa, please, listen to me—

  I looked up at Mama. I didn’t know I had a sister, I said.

  I turned back. Are you my sister?

  Papa stepped between Mama and me, and her. You’ve got to leave. You don’t belong here. I am truly sorry for what has happened to you, but this is not your time.

  She stopped talking. Her face was all wet.

  No, she said after a long time, I can see that it is not.

  We all went to the ship. She touched it again, like she had when she told it hello, except now it was good-bye.

  Papa said, Don’t come again.

  She’d stopped crying. She said, I could not, even if I wished. The shift on this planet is nearly over. By the next shift, time will have overtaken us all.

  [294] I’m sorry things didn’t turn out differently for you.

  And I grieve for you, she said.

  She looked at Mama. Good-bye.

  Mama’s lips shook. Good-bye. Be well. Be—

  Mama looked away.

  Then she came to me. I have something for you.

  No, said Papa. Let her, whispered Mama.

  I want you to have this, she said. She held out a little box.

  I looked at Mama, and she nodded, so I took it.

  Is it a present?

  Yes. For your birthday. Open it then, not before.

  Please, I said. Are you my sister? Who are you? What’s your name?

  I am Seven.

  I’m going to be six.

  I know.

  Then she backed away and did something to her bracelet. I must go before the rift collapses.

  I thought my chest would burst open. Will I ever see you again?

  All of a sudden, she got clear, like a picture with all the color washed out. Like a cloud thinning out under the sun.

  I saw her move her lips, and the sound came back all echo, like an empty room.

  Pray, the echo said, pray that when you look in the mirror, you do not.

  We’re all alone now.

  Days are long, but it’s always night in space. Mama gives me lessons. I play with Rosie. I draw a lot, but I don’t like [295] my pictures. Now they’re not just those ships but people. Only they’re people-machines, like she was, but worse—all metal and tubes and only one eye. And they’re white, like skin when all the blood is gone.

  I show my pictures to Mama and Papa. Papa says there are no people like that. Mama doesn’t say anything.

  Yesterday was my birthday. Mama made a chocolate cake. And Mama and Papa sang Happy Birthday, Anika, and there were six candles plus one to grow on, and I blew them all out.

  And I opened her box. Inside were two red ribbons: one for me, one for Rosie. I love them, and we’re going to wear them forever. Because red is my favorite color, and because red is the color of a sunset and the color of human blood, and mostly because red is the color of luck.

  Touched

  Kim Sheard

  During the seventeenth cycle in the age of Marth’o, aliens first reached my planet. I know, because I was the one there to meet them.

  I was on my way home from the Grain Festival. Most people had chosen to take the transport tubes back, but I had decided to walk. After all, we were celebrating our harvest, so I wanted to walk through the fields that yielded that harvest. More importantly, though, I wanted time alone to think. I would soon be reaching the Age of Choosing and would need to select either an occupation or a mate. None of the obvious choices pleased me. The career of technician was beyond my skills, but the life of a farmer or a home mate seemed too mundane.

  I had always been curious and excitable. As a child I had spent hours doused in make-believe when I was supposed to be doing my schoolwork or my chores. My parents were almost always exasperated with me. To my sorrow, that time was now over. I had no choice but to grow up and leave behind the ways that my elders had always called foolish. I needed to become responsible and adult. I was capable of it, of course, but I was certain I could never be happy t
hat way.

  [297] It was warm for a walk. The sky was bright with white sunlight that forced me to look at the ground to avoid its intensity. As soon as I could, I ducked between the rows of karlak so that the four-pace-high plants could shade me from the glare. I regretted having left my eyeshades behind that morning. I walked slowly for about a thousand paces before the karlak ended and I had to leave its shelter. I squinted in preparation before I pushed the plants aside, but still my optic nerves were overloaded with bright red spots. That was why I didn’t immediately believe what I saw. I thought it was a trick of the light or the beginnings of the headache that the gleam would almost certainly cause. But after I blinked the red dots away, I realized that what I was seeing was very real, although unfamiliar. Interested, I dropped down on my stomach among the plants to observe, my vivid imagination already at work creating a fanciful explanation for me.

  About five hundred paces from me, in the middle of a crop of short mak’a grain, was a boxy white object about five paces high and ten paces long. My first thought was that this farmer had built a storage shack in the middle of his field, but then I spied the black and red markings on its side. I used my telescopic eye to get a closer look. The designs were like nothing I had ever seen before, small individual marks as square as the item itself. As was habit when encountering things I didn’t understand, I pretended that they were of extraterrestrial origin. Then, as I watched with my hearts pounding, one side of the box lowered and steam rushed out. It was beautiful in an odd sort of way. After a few seconds, a being came out.

  It walked upright on two legs as we Pathons do, but it [298] had only two arms and two eyes. It was very light brown with a small amount of black hair on its head. What I assumed were its coverings were mostly black, with a splash of red near its head and where the two arms met. Its face looked ugly to me without a third eye. It had another deformity, a scar perhaps, on the left side of its head. That’s it, I thought. It must be a Pathon, but a deformed one. Certainly there must be a Pathon somewhere on our planet that has lost an arm and an eye. My parents would have been proud of my reasoning.

  But then a second one came out, smaller than the first, but with similar coloring and the same deformities. Instead of the scarred forehead, though, this one had a bumpy one. It looked like it had been dashed painfully against the river rocks. It had yellow on its clothing rather than red. When I saw the two of them together, it finally occurred to me to be frightened. Still I lay there gawking.

  I reached out with my mind and was just barely able to read their surface thoughts. It was difficult to turn the conversation in their strange language into images I could understand, but soon I could get the gist of it. The larger one was the leader, it seemed, and it was grilling the smaller one about the status of the “shuttle.” It was referring to the shiny white box, which was apparently a transport of some kind. The smaller one, called B’Elanna, was frustrated and snapping that it had done all it could do for the problem given the circumstances. They had underestimated the force of this sun’s gravity. This sun! They had implied that they were from another sun! I shook as the adrenaline tried to get me to run away, but still didn’t get up. What I was watching was better than any story I had invented as a child.

  [299] The larger one—“Chakotay,” B’Elanna had called it—went back into the shuttle and emerged a moment later with three cylindrical objects. Each one had a point on top. Chakotay handed one to B’Elanna and pointed, and they poked them into the ground in a triangle around the shuttle. When the tubes were set up, they glowed with blue light. Had I not been able to read their thoughts, I would probably have thought the tubes were explosives, but I didn’t sense any evil intent from either of them, just worry. I almost laughed. Ironic that I was here looking at aliens, and they were the ones that were worried. I rubbed my telescopic eye briefly, hoping that it would hold out against the glare.

  Chakotay stood within the triangle of lights and pressed a small shiny object on its chest. It was apparently trying to talk to someone that I couldn’t see. Nothing happened, even after several more tries, and it shook its head, disappointed. B’Elanna had spent several minutes inside the shuttle, but then emerged, carrying two satchels and two rolls of cloth. Chakotay indicated that they still couldn’t make contact and pointed toward the karlak fields. They were coming this way! I froze, afraid of being seen if I moved. I didn’t know what they would do to me if they found me.

  Staying still seemed to work, as they proceeded to the edge of the field about thirty paces to my right and began pulling the karlak leaves off the plants. They spread out the cloths (“blankets,” they called them) and tossed the leaves on top. Then, when they had a large pile on each blanket, they dragged them through the low mak’a toward the shuttle. I watched, incredulous, as they covered the white box with the big leaves, trying to hide it. It took several more trips, but [300] they finally managed to cover the whole thing so that the green covering blended in fairly well with the similar shade of grain.

  Next, they shook the blankets, rolled them up, gathered the satchels, and began walking once again in my direction. The one called Chakotay pulled a handheld object with blinking lights from its bag, pointed it in front of its body, then moved it in a wide circle, allowing me to see more of the flashing colors. When the item was pointed toward me, Chakotay frowned and indicated to B’Elanna that someone was near. I considered running, but didn’t have time. Within a few seconds, they had found me. I jumped to my feet and backed up slightly.

  My head was telling me to run away, but deep down, I wanted to meet these creatures from another sun. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, the child who could never do anything right. My face wouldn’t stop grinning at them. That smile apparently encouraged them, because Chakotay extended a hand, palm up, and spoke. The voice was soft, gentle, and by Pathon standards, masculine. Although I couldn’t understand the words of his greeting, I did understand the sentiment. I returned his gesture and said hello myself. His thoughts were vaguely frustrated again because he could not communicate with me very well. He apparently could not read my thoughts, and his “translator,” another of his devices I supposed, had not yet heard enough of my language to interpret. I gathered that speaking more Pathon might help him understand.

  “Hello,” I said. “You are on the planet Pathon. You are the first to come, and I welcome you. If you are having trouble with your transport device, perhaps some of our technicians [301] could help.” It wasn’t the speech that the first alien visitors to our world deserved, but it would have to do.

  They were beginning to understand. They nodded and urged me to continue. “My name is Quator. I was on my way home from the Grain Festival when I saw your shuttle. Why were you hiding it?” The shiny badges on their chests began to speak with me in what I supposed was their language. I stopped for a moment, giving Chakotay the chance to speak, this time in my language, courtesy of the translation device.

  “Hello, Quator. I am Chakotay, and this is B’Elanna. Would you please repeat the first part of what you said, now that we can understand you?”

  I repeated my welcome to our planet. The aliens looked at each other and then turned back to me and laughed. “Your planet?” Chakotay asked jovially. “What does that make us?”

  “Aliens,” I insisted. They laughed again. “I scanned your thoughts. I know you are from another sun.”

  They looked at each other again. “A telepath,” B’Elanna said in a feminine voice.

  Chakotay sighed. “We’re not supposed to be here,” he said to me. “We had an accident with our shuttle and had to land here. We aren’t supposed to interfere with your people.”

  I shrugged. “You’re not. You’re just talking with me.”

  “Yes,” he answered, “but before today no offworlders had ever visited your planet. We have changed everything for you.”

  “But this is wonderful news!” I said. “We have wondered ever since we charted the stars ages ago if there were oth
ers out there like us. Now we have our answer.”

  “But are you ready for it? Is there somewhere private we [302] can go to talk and to try to contact our ship? Somewhere shielded from your species’ telepathy?”

  “Your thoughts can’t be read unless you can be seen.” I gestured to them to follow, and we walked several thousand paces to a cave far from the city. “This is the Festival Time,” I said. “Everyone will be at home with their families. No one will come and see you here today.”

  “Thank you,” Chakotay said. B’Elanna was busily emptying the satchels. She pulled out more objects similar to the one with the blinking lights that had detected my presence. She scanned the cave and the area around it and then returned and began taking some of the items apart. Meanwhile, Chakotay spoke with me about my people and our culture.

  “There are about five hundred thousand of us on our planet,” I explained.

  “How are they counted?” he asked.

  “At birth, we are each issued an ID tab.” I lifted my center arm to show him where it was attached to the skin underneath. “It is taken off the body at death, and the numbers are adjusted.”

  “How does it work?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. Some kind of psychic imprint of our mother, I think. The counters are able to track the imprints somehow.”

  “You mentioned your technicians. What kinds of things do they fix?”

  “Everything from our irrigators to our transport tubes.”

  “Tell me about your transport tubes.”

  “Pathon has natural underground currents that we use to run the transport tubes.”

  [303] “What kinds of transportation do you have above ground?”

  “Animals, spring carts, water transports, things like that. Nothing like your shuttle. Did you drop from the sky?”

  “Yes,” Chakotay said. “All of the shuttle systems are offline now, though, and we don’t have the tools here to make them work. Tell me, did you see us fall from the sky?”

  “No, the sun was too bright for me to look upward. I wish I could have seen it, though.”