Being Human

by Peter David

  “In himself. In us. He isolated himself from us, Marcus. You see . . . collectively, we are able to draw energy from . . . well . . . each other,” she smiled. “We have an endless capacity for doing so. As a result, we know no boundaries, have no limits in what we can accomplish. When Apollo wrapped himself in his depression, he effectively cut himself off from the rest of us. Severed himself from the energies that we provide one another, that we can uniformly generate. So he sought . . . alternative means of energy. Fashioned a sort of . . . of ‘ battery,’ I suppose you would call it. Once that was destroyed, however, he was utterly vulnerable. Indeed, he could barely hold himself together at all at that point. He simply lacked . . . the . . .”

  She stopped, looked down. And McHenry, to his astonishment, saw the slightest bit of moistening in her eyes. “Artemis . . . ?”

  Artemis seemed annoyed at herself, and determinedly wiped the wetness from her eyes. “He was my brother, Marcus. As . . . as foolish as I sometimes considered him to be, he was my brother, and I do miss him. You’ll forgive me if I choose not to dwell on this any further. It is . . . upsetting to me.” She cleared her throat. “Have I satisfied your curiosity in this matter?”

  “In this, yes. But there are others . . .”

  “Oh!” she said in loud frustration. She wasn’t so much walking around McHenry’s cabin so much as she was stalking it. McHenry took a few steps back, trying to stay out of her way. He’d never felt his quarters were especially small before, but they certainly seemed cramped now. “This is absurd! Marcus, I was standing naked here, waiting for you. Men have lost their lives simply for getting a fleeting glimpse of that divine nakedness which you drank in in full measure. And all you wish to do is talk! You were more man when you were a boy!”

  “When I was a boy I didn’t know enough to question,” McHenry replied. “Being a man means thinking with something other than your . . . impulses. Gods are supposed to be omniscient, so I’d think that you shouldn’t have trouble understanding that.”

  “Very well,” she said, draping herself over a chair. She extended one perfectly toned leg from beneath the robe. “What else do you wish to know?”

  Feeling that it would probably better suit the mood—her mood, especially—McHenry went down on one knee in front of her. He did so in a casual manner, but to a “goddess” he would come across as a supplicant, and she would probably find that attitude of his quite preferable. “This whole golden age you keep talking about. What is it, exactly? You’ve been so vague . . .”

  “Ah.” She seemed to perk up, preferring this line of inquiry. “That, my dear Marcus, is indeed a very legitimate question. To be honest, it is something of an oversight on my part that I did not make that clear in our previous meeting. Perhaps the attitude of your captain distracted me. He is not what I would consider a very receptive individual.”

  “He’s better when you get to know him . . . and when you’re not trying to kill him.”

  She nodded in a distracted manner. “Hmm. I suppose so.”

  “So . . . the golden age . . .”

  “Yes, yes.” She brought her other leg down. The robe opened slightly and McHenry quietly rearranged it so that he would be able to keep his mind on the matter at hand. “May I assume, Marcus, that you have heard of . . . ambrosia?”

  “That’s . . .” He paused, remembering. “That’s . . . the ‘food of the gods,’ right?”

  “Correct,” she said.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be the stuff that gives you immortality?”

  Artemis laughed lightly. “According to myths, yes. As you know, not all myths are literally accurate . . . but on the other hand, many of them have some basis in fact. This happens to be one of the latter. We are virtually immortal by our nature, my dear Marcus. But all things tend to wear out, break down over time. Nothing is immune from entropy . . . not even the Beings. Ambrosia is a . . . a vitamin, if you will, that we have developed. There is nothing magical about it. The ingredients can be found in nature, or synthesized by your own devices. It is our desire to give ambrosia . . . to you.”

  “To me?”

  “To humanity. To mortals. To your Federation,” she said, her voice crackling with excitement, her eyes wide as if she could see a mental image of herself and her fellow “gods,” moving from person to person and handing out this key to immortality. “Ambrosia will not affect you in precisely the same way it does us. Nevertheless, the impact it will have on your way of life will be nothing short of epoch-making. It will bring people to full health, slow down the aging process so that they’ll practically live forever. Not only that, but it will expand their mental capabilities, make them achieve things that previously they would not have thought possible to achieve.”

  He stared at her, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. “You’re serious about this.”

  “Why would I not be?”

  “But . . . aren’t there potential dangers? This stuff . . .”

  “There will be no dangers. There will be nothing hidden.” She shrugged. “We have no need to hide anything.”

  “Yeah, I know, I saw that when I first walked into my quarters.”

  Her laughter at that was soft and musical. “Very amusing, Marcus, and I suppose I had that coming.” Then the laughter faded and she took on a very serious attitude. “The reason we would be hiding nothing, in terms of the composition of ambrosia, is that we would be working in tandem with your Federation and its technology to mass-produce ambrosia. So your people would be privy as to what went into it. Again, nothing would be hidden.”

  “I just . . . I’m having a bit of trouble believing that you’re going to be that open about it all,” McHenry told her. “I mean, let’s face it, you folks do have this habit of moving in mysterious ways. Hiding out in Olympus, letting humans twenty-five hundred years ago believe that you were gods when you . . . well, you’re more than human, but . . .”

  “Less than divine?” She shook her head, looking nostalgic. “When your people were youthful, ignorant of the true nature of the universe, we could not be candid with them as to our nature for the simple reason that they never would have been able to comprehend it. I mean, after all,” and once more came that musical laugh, “when we first encountered your ancestors, they were under the impression that the Earth was the center of the universe! That the sun, the stars, everything, revolved around them! A more egocentric bunch you could not possibly imagine! So how could we explain to them about life on other worlds? How could we disabuse them of the firmly held belief that everything radiated from, or related to, the little dirtball they called Earth? No, Marcus, every aspect of our interaction with them had to be simplified to the point that they could understand it.

  “But now . . . now, Marcus, your species has grown up. You can better comprehend us, just as a child, grown to adulthood, can better understand the nature and thinking of his parents.”

  Something, however, was still not falling together for McHenry. He still felt as if there was a piece missing. “And . . . what do you get out of it? The Beings?”

  “The same thing that we did in our first interaction with you,” she said matter-of-factly, as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world. “The appreciation of a grateful people.”

  Now McHenry felt he was close to something. “ Appreciation in what sense?”

  “The usual sense. Appreciation. Gratitude. Regular recognition and acknowledgment . . .”

  And McHenry suddenly started to laugh, very loudly and very boisterously.

  Artemis’ face clouded a bit. Clearly she was not thrilled with McHenry’s reaction. “What is so amusing, Marcus?” she said stiffly.

  He managed to stop laughing long enough to say, “You . . . you want to be worshipped! Just like your brother! I don’t believe it!”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “You do!”

  She drew her legs up, tucking her feet under herself, almost making her look as if she was withdrawing into a p
rotective mode. “Apollo wanted to turn back the hands of time,” she admitted. “He wanted to overlook a millennium of human achievement. He thought that the crew of the Enterprise would set aside its personal goals in exchange for a simple, bucolic life of raising sheep, playing pipes, and worshipping him. He was . . . unrealistic. We, on the other hand, are not endeavoring to suppress your goals. Instead we want to help you achieve them by making you as close to divine as can reasonably be done. In exchange, we are asking only that you revere us, bless our names, thank us daily for the incredible boon that we have given you. For Hera’s sake, Marcus,” she said impatiently, “we’re not asking you to go out and sacrifice goats in our name. To be honest, we never wanted that, even back in the days when that was being done. It always seemed a tragic waste of a perfectly good goat. Now if you feel compelled to equate gratitude with worship, then you are of course free to do so. Tell them we wish to be worshipped, if you think they will comprehend that more readily.”

  “I think there’s going to be serious problems no matter which way we go with this,” McHenry said. “I can tell you right now that most races will not accept this offer on faith. They will need to understand what’s in it for you.”

  “Altruism, then, is truly dead in your civilization?” she asked sadly.

  “No, not at all. But you’re talking about introducing something into our society that could potentially change it to its core. People will want to know how this benefits you, and they may not want to take you up on it until they have an answer that they can understand and believe. The basic answer you’re giving me is that you want to be worshipped.”

  “You keep using that word,” Artemis said with impatience. “It is a word you use, I believe, because you associate us with gods. It is understandable to a point . . . but only to a point. After that it becomes impertinent, and ungrateful, and even a bit dangerous.”

  McHenry suddenly felt a chill in the air, and he had the distinct feeling he knew what the source of that chill was. “Artemis . . . are you saying . . . that if we don’t accept the offer of your ambrosia . . . that you’re effectively going to ram it down our throats? And that if we don’t let you . . . you’re going to consider us a bunch of ingrates and act accordingly.”

  “No. I did not say that,” she replied quietly. But before he could relax, she added, “And it will be up to you, Marcus, to make certain that matters do not progress to the point . . . where I do have to say that. Because the outcome will not be a pleasant one for anyone.”

  And with that, she swung her elegant legs down and off the chair, turned, and walked right through the bulkhead. The robe dropped off behind her.

  McHenry flopped back onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  “This day just keeps getting better and better,” he muttered.

  iii.

  Moke knew precisely where Xyon was the entire time. Even as Xyon crouched behind a locker filled with maintenance equipment, Moke made a great pretense of not having the faintest idea where the younger child was. But not for a minute had he taken the chance that Xyon would actually vanish from his care. Moke was taking his shepherding duties of the youngster very, very seriously, and had taken the precaution of asking Xyon’s mother, Dr. Selar, to implant some sort of tracking device on the boy.

  Selar’s face remained as impassive as always, but he could see the surprise in her eyes nevertheless as she clearly wondered why in the world she hadn’t thought of doing that herself in the first place. “Excellent idea, Mr. Moke” was all she said, but even that was high praise, because she had never addressed him as “Mister” before. Moke understood it to be a title of some sort, and his chest swelled with pride.

  With a hiss of a hypo, she had placed what she called a “subcutaneous transponder” (two words that Moke had had to work at very hard to try and master) under Xyon’s skin, and had then presented Moke with a small tracker that was keyed directly to it. So even if Xyon managed to get out from under Moke’s watchful eye, it would still be a matter of minutes, even seconds, before Moke tracked him down.

  Nevertheless, at this point Moke didn’t need any help, because he could hear the child giggling from his hiding place. “Where’s Xyon?” Moke called loudly. More giggles. Xyon wasn’t talking all that much yet, but his physical development was astonishing. Within a relatively brief time he had gone from crawling to walking to running, and his agility was nothing short of phenomenal.

  Moke walked all around the equipment locker, except for the place where Xyon had “hidden” himself. “Xyyyyyyon!” he called in feigned helplessness. A crewman, taking a tricorder down off the rack, smiled indulgently and went on his way. This was definitely a better place to play hide-and-seek than Moke’s previous choice: the armory. That had gotten them escorted out of there inside of thirty seconds.

  Then he blinked in surprise, because he saw a quick movement out of the corner of his eye, but he was reasonably sure that Xyon and he were the only ones there. He looked back where he thought he’d seen something . . . but it was gone. It . . . could have been Xyon. The child moved like lightning. “Xyyyyyyon,” he called more cautiously this time, and he heard Xyon once again chuckling from the exact same hiding place he’d been in before.

  And there it was again, this time at the other side of the room.

  He spun quickly, looked once more, and once again it had been only the most fleeting of glimpses. But this time it lingered a moment more. It was an adult . . . a man, Moke thought, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Xyon,” he said, and this time there was no amusement in his voice, no sound of a young boy playing games. “Xyon, come on.” Dropping the contest, he moved quickly around the equipment locker. Xyon looked up in mute, wide-eyed surprise, clearly not having expected Moke to simply walk up to him. He put out his hand and in the most no-nonsense tone he could muster, said, “I said come on. We’re—”

  There again.

  This time Moke moved so quickly that he actually saw it straight on, and then it was gone again, but there was a visual impression burned into his eye. A man, definitely a man, shrouded in darkness, in a black cape that enveloped most of his body, and a hood pulled up over his head. He was an older man, with a beard that was dark red with streaks of white and gray in it. What little Moke could make out of the hair atop his head seemed similar in type and style. His face was wrinkled as parchment, with a broad nose and mouth, and he was squinting. Except he seemed to have only one eye, glistening dark and storm-filled in the right socket. In the left there was just darkness, with a single streak of what looked like blood, just in the corner.

  He had no expression on his face at all, and that was possibly the most frightening aspect of all. Just that sheer, malevolent blankness. He had no idea how someone could be both inscrutable and threatening, all at the same time, but the hooded man had managed it.

  All of that seared into Moke’s brain, like a lightning bolt leaving an impression upon flashing, but when he looked right where the hooded man had been, he was gone. Moke didn’t have the impression that the man was moving at supernatural speeds, or trying to get out of his field of vision. It was just that whenever Moke would try to look directly at him . . . he could not be perceived. It was as if reality was bending around him somehow, silencing him, locking him away where no one could get to him.

  Moke put both his arms around Xyon and backed out of the equipment room, his head sweeping back and forth like a conning tower. He was trying to watch every square inch of the room simultaneously, while also being concerned about whatever might be behind him. And now it felt as if the hooded man was everywhere, all at the same time.

  He backed up, fast as he could, and then he was out the door and he banged into someone large, so unexpectedly that he let out a yelp of alarm.

  “Is something amiss?” inquired a cultured voice. He looked up and relief sagged through him as he saw the familiar snout of Ensign Janos. “I was just passing by, and you looked a bit distres—”

 
; “There’s . . . there’s someone in there!” Moke managed to stammer out. Xyon, who was now holding tightly to Moke, was not crying. He had too much quiet confidence in Moke, a childish certainty that he would be protected.

  “Someone? You mean someone unauthorized?” When Moke nodded his head, Janos said firmly, “Stay here. If I am not out in thirty seconds, inform Lieutenant Kebron.” Over Moke’s loud protests, Janos took two quick strides forward and was in the equipment room.

  “I dunno,” Moke said nervously, suddenly realizing he wasn’t wearing a chronometer and so was unsure of how much time had already passed.

  But then, very quickly, Janos emerged from the room. Moke looked to see if the security officer looked the least bit concerned . . . or, for that matter, if his white fur had any blood on it as a result of a violent encounter with . . . with whoever that was in there.

  Janos, however, simply shrugged and said, “No one is here, or there, or hereabouts or thereabouts or anywhere abouts.”

  Moke couldn’t believe it. “Are you sure? I mean, your eyes are kind of small and pink . . . maybe—”

  His immediate reaction was a low growl of annoyance, but then Janos reined himself in. “That much is true, yes. But this,” and he tapped his nose, “never lies. No one could be hiding in there without this baby detecting him, her, or it. Although if you want, I can report this to the head of security . . . or, considering your personal situation, your father if you so—”

  “No. No, that’s okay,” Moke said after a moment’s thought. “I don’t want to bother anyone or make anyone nervous. I was . . . probably just imagining it.”

  “That would not be surprising. Children are justifiably renowned for their imaginations,” said Janos solicitously.

  Moke knew that much to be true. But he also knew two other things: That the hooded man had indeed been in there, no matter what Janos was saying. And that for a heartbeat, Moke had thought he’d seen the hooded man standing in the corridor, single eye gleaming and watching him.