“Did you hear it?”
“No,” I said.
B’Elanna raised her head. “Well, that’s one good thing about the engines dying. We came down quietly.”
“And your idea about parachute thrusters was a good one.” I couldn’t make much sense of this strange talk, but it sounded very exotic. I tried to memorize the terms they used. Chakotay spoke again, this time to me. “Is there anyone else around that could have seen us coming?”
“I doubt it. Like I said, it is the Festival Time. No one is working. The farmer whose field you landed in certainly wasn’t working, and his house is far from the shuttle. His land is vast.”
“I hope you’re right.” He was truly interested in what I had to say, and I was grateful for his patience. I was obviously backward compared to his people, and I surely wasn’t the type of ambassador to which he was accustomed.
B’Elanna approached us. “I think I’ve done enough jury-rigging. If we can get to a higher elevation, we can probably contact Voyager. That’s our ship,” she added, obviously for my benefit.
“Can we salvage the shuttle?”
[304] “Not unless we can somehow reconfigure Voyager’s transporters to work at the lower elevation, and I don’t think that’s likely in a timely fashion.”
Chakotay glanced at me. “We certainly can’t fix it and fly out of here, either. We’d surely be noticed.”
“You still want your presence to be a secret?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Chakotay.
“Come, then, we will hike to a higher elevation.”
“You won’t be missed?” he said.
I shook my head. “Not on Festival Day. My family will assume I am with friends, and my friends will believe I am with family.” I was desperate to be allowed to spend more time with them. Finally, Chakotay nodded his approval.
I led them up the Mount of Kubl’a, using the trails the animal herders had worn. It took over a millicycle, so they shared food and water from their packs with me. We also enjoyed some ripening berries along the way. We were all tired and sweaty when we reached the summit. I explained that the sun would not set for another half-cycle. The fields that were now green and lush would soon be brown and withered from the unrelenting sunshine.
I plopped down on a nearby rock, but B’Elanna immediately pulled her adjusted gadget out of her bag and began punching its buttons. Her stamina and dedication to making her devices work Impressed me. I wished that I had the same technical ability. Soon, she tapped the device on her chest and called out for Voyager. I was startled when a feminine voice returned from midair. I chuckled at myself for being surprised after everything I had already experienced in such a short time.
[305] “Away team, this is Voyager. What is your status?”
Chakotay was the one to answer. “Our shuttle suffered full systems failure.” He glanced at me, obviously choosing his words carefully. “We were forced to land on the second planet in this system. At least one native sighted us. She helped us travel to a higher location so that B’Elanna’s equipment could get through to you.”
“We’ll enter orbit of that planet in two minutes, Commander; then we’ll try to transport you aboard. Recommendations for the shuttle?”
“We won’t be able to beam it up from its current location. We can’t risk sending repair teams and then flying it out, either. It would too easily be seen or heard.”
“Understood,” came the disembodied voice. I got the impression much was going unsaid, but I respected their privacy and did not listen to their thoughts.
“I think six photon grenades should do it, Captain.” B’Elanna, said.
“We’ll beam them down in a few minutes, Lieutenant. What of your guide?”
I stepped closer to Chakotay and spoke to the device on his chest. “Hello. I am Quator. If I tell others about you, no one will believe me.”
“Commander?”
“She’s probably right, Captain. The population here is scattered and, if you’ll forgive me, Quator, rather primitive. They most likely wouldn’t believe an individual account of aliens.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. He was absolutely right, of course, but not for the reason he believed. I was known for trying to pass off fanciful tales as truths. If I told of my [306] experiences, I would not be given much credence. Chakotay grinned at me.
“All right, Commander,” the captain said. “Accompany the young woman down the hill, destroy the shuttle, and then rendezvous with us at your current coordinates. What is your ETA?”
“We’ll need to get some sleep first, Captain, and then it will take about four hours each way. We should be back by fourteen hundred hours tomorrow.”
“We’ll look forward to your call. Janeway out.”
Chakotay smiled and then looked at B’Elanna and me. “Well, let’s get some shut-eye.”
During our trip down the mountain, we spoke of many things. I told them about my frustration in choosing a vocation and explained the customs of the Grain Festival. In return, they explained what life on their starship was like. On their journey toward home, they had seen beings of all colors, sizes, and levels of intelligence, and passed planets of all kinds. It sounded very exciting, but they were quick to assure me that there were dangers and difficulties involved as well. Dangerous or not, I knew my life could never be that interesting, at least not on its current track. To help me understand their secrecy, they also explained the principle that prevented them from influencing my world. While they may not have affected my world as a whole, they had certainly touched my life. I knew that I would never be the same.
When we again reached the karlok field where we had met, they thanked me for my help and encouraged me to go home. My emotions were a jumble; my chest was tight with [307] the thrill of my experience, while at the same time my eyes were wet with tears that it was ending. Chakotay looked at me kindly and said, “Good luck with your decisions. I know you will choose wisely.”
“Good luck with your journey,” I managed. “I hope that you make it home soon.”
“Walk on the perimeter of the mak’a field so you won’t get hurt,” B’Elanna said. I nodded and started on my way. My head ached again, but this time from unshed tears rather than the sunlight. I walked all the way to the forest before I looked back. B’Elanna and Chakotay were nowhere in sight—they had probably gone into the karlak fields—but the shuttle still gleamed in the sunlight. Then, before my eyes, there was a quick, silent burst of light, and the shuttle disappeared. I focused closely on the area but could find nothing of it, not even debris. I wondered again at their marvelous devices, and then turned and continued on my way.
My family supported my vocational choice, although it was an unusual one. Within a cycle, I had finished my first collection of tales, and even those who had once been skeptical of my decision were impressed. No Pathon writer had shown such promise and imagination in hundreds of cycles, they said. My parents beamed, saying that I had always been a curious and inventive child, and they were proud of me.
Surprisingly, the compliments meant little to me. Only putting words on paper, describing two-armed creatures who traveled the galaxy in boxy ships and spoke to jewelry attached to their clothing, pleased me. I found that I needed to write down all that Chakotay and B’Elanna had told me, and then, when I had finished with those stories, I had no [308] difficulty composing my own in the same vein. I knew then that the universe was a huge and wonderful place, and I knew that even those tales that came from my mind probably held some grain of truth somewhere, sometime. And with every tale I finished, I breathed quiet thanks to those who had made it all possible.
Almost ... But Not Quite
Dayton Ward
Dulmer ran like hell.
He didn’t have to look behind him to know the bear was gaining. The massive animal’s labored breathing was growing louder with each frantic step the significantly smaller human took.
If I live through this, maybe I’ll finally learn to kee
p my big mouth shut.
It had begun innocently enough, with Dulmer quietly moving through the forest toward the remote mountain camp. The darkness of the crisp Montana night helped to conceal him. He was also aided by the fact that most of the residents were currently gathered near the rather austere building that was the camp’s saloon. That was fortunate, for in a camp this size an unknown face would be noticed immediately.
Even from this distance, he could hear the sounds of laughter and music coming from the center of the camp. Looking up, he could see the moonlight reflected from the surface of the alien ship that towered above the trees. The Vulcans, despite being an eminently logical people, were long-renowned for their ability to effortlessly combine beauty and efficiency in the construction of their vessels.
[310] He had decided to approach the camp from the south, farther away from the massive concrete bunker that had acted as the launch site for Cochrane’s ship. This was supposed to have allowed him to move down the bank of a small mountain stream where it would be easier to cover ground, instead of pushing through the surprisingly thick undergrowth.
That was when he saw the bear.
It had been standing in the shallow water, probably looking to capture a fish for its next meal. Then it saw Dulmer and apparently decided he made a more filling, and perhaps better-tasting, alternative.
So Dulmer ran.
He darted back up the bank and into the forest, weaving between trees and dodging the foliage as best he could. Aside from the darkness, the terrain here was uneven and covered with rocks and thick undergrowth, making footing a hazardous proposition at best. A misstep here would send him crashing to the unforgiving earth, with the bear following quickly behind.
Dodging right to skirt yet another tree actually brought the bear into Dulmer’s field of vision. Despite its bulk, it moved with incredible speed. Only the natural obstacles provided by the forest had given Dulmer any chance at all to this point.
But then the bear was nearly on him, and he was sure it must have sensed its quarry’s already meager advantage beginning to evaporate. The bear suddenly released a roar that rattled Dulmer’s teeth and sounded too much like a victory cry.
It almost, but not quite, drowned out the whine of a phaser beam.
[311] Even as Dulmer staggered backward in an effort to stave off the inevitable for a few more seconds, an orange hue enveloped the bear. Then it faded, leaving only the animal, slumping to the ground. Dulmer watched in shock as it rolled onto its side and began to snore.
“Close your mouth before you attract a swarm of insects.”
From behind a particularly large tree stepped Dulmer’s partner, Lucsly. The dark-haired man still wielded the phaser he had just employed.
Dulmer was still trying to catch his breath as he said, “We’re not supposed to be armed on these missions.”
Lucsly shrugged and indicated the unconscious bear with the weapon. “Suit yourself. When he wakes up, I’ll be sure to keep this hidden so as not to risk upsetting the timeline.”
Dulmer shot a scathing glare at his partner. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Shrugging, Lucsly said, “What are friends for?”
Ignoring the sarcastic sentiment, Dulmer made a vain attempt to brush off the dirt and grass he had managed to collect on his headlong flight through the forest. “I still can’t believe we got stuck with this, and right as I was about to leave for Risa. It’s not as if we don’t have an entire department to handle PVRs.”
Lucsly sniffed disdainfully. “Post-temporal violation reconnaissance is an invaluable tool in the Temporal Investigations arsenal. I’ve always wanted to go on a PVR, myself. If you’re upset with this assignment, you have only yourself to blame.”
“All I said,” Dulmer replied, “was that I thought Sisko’s stunt with Kirk had no lasting effect on the timeline, and that [312] I might have done the same thing myself under similar circumstances.”
Taking a tricorder from a pocket in his jacket, Lucsly began a scan of the area as he said, “And that’s where you made your mistake. You know how totally inflexible they are on the top floor. One of their agents even entertaining the idea of such a frivolous flirtation with history sends them into a panic. Didn’t that case with the android head teach you anything?”
Dulmer sighed in exasperation. This was one story he was tired of telling. “All I did was joke that a five-hundred-year-old cave sounded like the perfect place to leave my ex-wife,” The uproar from Dulmer’s superiors at DTI had followed him for weeks after that particularly ill-timed joke.
“At least your pitiful attempts at humor gave us an interesting assignment this time,” Lucsly said as he began to thread a path through a narrow break in the hills rising up from the dusty soil around them.
“Oh yes,” Dulmer muttered. “Two months of research on a dustball of a planet that maybe a dozen people even know exists, coupled with administrative cleanup after a bunch of loose cannons go gallivanting through time without even a thought for the consequences.”
“I wouldn’t call Captain Picard a loose cannon,” Lucsly admonished. “He did the only thing he could, given the circumstances. According to my scans of the area, it seems he also did a remarkable job covering his tracks.” Then he held up the phaser. “Well, except for this.”
“Where did you find it?” Dulmer asked.
“While you were out entertaining the local wildlife, I was doing the recon,” Lucsly replied as he pointed to the [313] structure that was only barely visible in the pale illumination offered by the moon. “I found it in the Phoenix’s launch bay. One of the Enterprise engineers probably left it there.” He shifted the weapon to his left hand, then brought his right hand up to his nose and sniffed it. His face wrinkled in disgust. “It smells like someone spilled some kind of alcoholic beverage all over it.”
Dulmer caught a whiff of the odor. “It smells like tequila.”
Annoyed, Lucsly shook his head. “Other than that, I’ve found nothing that could be attributed to meddling by time travelers. I didn’t run into anyone during my sweep, so even with your little side trip, we’ve been very lucky. I think we can wrap this one up and get out of here.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dulmer said. “I’m ready to get going to Risa.”
“Well, don’t forget we have one more case to PVR before we can go home.”
There was the momentary feeling of disorientation, and then Dulmer was simply standing in the midst of what had to be the most dreadful-looking place in the known universe.
The world did not have a name or even a catalog entry in Federation data banks. An entirely new and separate level of security had been enacted to protect the planet and the staggering secret it possessed. To those select few that even knew of its existence, it was known simply as “the Guardian planet.”
Discovered over a century earlier, the otherwise unremarkable planet’s one incredible object of interest was the mysterious and apparently sentient time portal, which had [314] proclaimed itself to be the Guardian of Forever. From this single point, any moment in time in any location could be visited simply by telling the Guardian where you wished to go. Said to be billions of years old, the Guardian had stubbornly resisted all attempts by Federation scientists to understand it. After a century, the sum total of information on file about the Guardian basically stated that it was an immensely old, yet still functioning, time portal.
Well, and that James T. Kirk had found it.
That one fact had stuck in the collective craw of Temporal Investigations for decades. Regarded in hushed circles as the ultimate temporal demon, Captain Kirk had apparently made a career of instilling ulcers in DTI agents up to, including, and after his death. That he should also be the man credited with finding the most sophisticated and powerful time-travel apparatus in history had made him the bane of DTI’s existence since its inception shortly thereafter. Though it was not generally well-known information, it was popular DTI lore that the agency’
s creation was a direct reaction to Kirk’s three separate involvements in time travel during a period of only a few months.
However, Kirk was finally beginning to get some serious competition.
Since taking command of the Enterprise-D almost ten years previously, Jean-Luc Picard had himself racked up quite an impressive list of temporal violations. While he was a much more reserved and introverted commander than James Kirk had been, Picard was not above taking the proverbial mugato by the horn if the situation warranted it. This latest excursion by Picard and his ship to 2063 Earth had been just such an instance.
[315] Privately, Dulmer praised the initiative exhibited by people like Kirk, Picard, and just recently Benjamin Sisko. These were not reckless men, unconcerned with the possible consequences of their travels through time. Quite the contrary, each officer had repeatedly shown that preservation of the timeline was of paramount importance, whatever the reason for their travel in the first place.
That did not, however, mean that it was an activity he wanted to emulate.
Given a choice, Dulmer would rather have been lying in a comfortable lounge chair, sipping some ungodly alcoholic concoction while every want or need was tended to by a beautiful woman dressed only in ...
“Amazing,” Lucsly said, shaking Dulmer from his reverie. He looked up to see a huge grin plastered across his partner’s face.
“Reading about time travel is one thing,” Lucsly continued. “Listening to the accounts of others who’ve done it is fascinating, too; but nothing compares to having actually done it. Now I know what Alan Shepard must have felt like when he finally got his chance to walk on the moon. Sure, he’d heard about it and watched Neil Armstrong do it first, but it wasn’t the same as doing it himself.”
“Yeah, it’s a real treat, all right,” Dulmer muttered as he opened the carryall bag he had brought along with him on this venture. “And now we get to take yet another fantastic trip through time. Are we correcting a problem? No. Are we retrieving valuable information or perhaps rescuing a fellow agent? No. What are we doing? Research on the aftereffects of temporal displacement during an incident that began almost a hundred years ago.”
STAR TREK: Strange New Worlds II Page 26
