“Sometimes. A colleague or predecessor of hers, going by the name Daniels, sometimes recruited Jonathan Archer’s aid back in the 2150s. These days, they rely on the Department. Keeping it within the classified loop.”
“Not just the Department,” Dulmur countered. “You said before, you’re the only one she trusts. Why is that?”
“Long story.” He rose. “Suffice to say, she knows I’ll do whatever it takes to preserve the original timeline the way it’s meant to be.” Dulmur noted the fervent gleam in his partner’s eye. Despite the proven existence of alternate histories, Lucsly devoutly believed that the timeline he inhabited was the true, original one. He considered it a matter of probability rather than faith; the “true” history of the universe was the most probable one, the one that would unfold most naturally in the absence of interference, and by definition, the timeline that any given individual, say, himself, was most likely to inhabit was the most probable one. Dulmur could quibble with Lucsly’s reasoning, but he chose not to; for purely selfish reasons, he had no problem with putting this timeline first in his priorities.
“And that means,” Dulmur said, “that she can trust you not to pry for information about the future, or reveal anything you do find out.”
“Exactly. Come on, we only have two hours, eleven minutes.”
Lucsly strode forward and Dulmur came after. “Until what? You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
This time, Lucsly didn’t hesitate. “Nine days from now, a pair of Vorgon criminals from the twenty-seventh century will attempt to steal the Tox Uthat from the archaeologist who discovers its hiding place in the Galarthan caves.”
Dulmur’s eyes widened. “The Tox Uthat? You mean it’s real?” Naturally he was familiar with the interstellar legend of a mysterious and powerful device hidden in the twenty-second century by a visitor from the future. An archaeologist named Samuel Estragon, recently deceased, had made the quest for the Uthat his life’s work and had been periodically questioned about it by the Department. But despite that, no proof had ever been found that it was anything more than a cosmic myth.
“Mm-hm,” Lucsly said. “And it’s a very powerful weapon. Fortunately, the Vorgons will fail to recover the Uthat. Unfortunately, they will escape, having discovered its location.”
“Oh, crap. You mean they go back to now so they can dig it up before that archaeologist does. Change history.”
“That’s what we have to prevent. Agent Noi tracked their timeship’s course to two hours and nine minutes from now. Then she came back early enough to ensure we’d be there in time to intercept them.”
“And do what?” Dulmur asked, suddenly very worried. “How can we compete with weapons from three hundred years in the future?”
“According to Noi, the Vorgons won’t use lethal force against anyone from this era, for fear of disrupting history. They just want the Uthat.”
“But they’re disrupting history to get their hands on it.”
“I said they were criminals.”
“So do you trust this Jena Noi?”
A pause. “We have an understanding.”
“What does that mean?”
“Wait.” Upon cresting a hill, they saw they were no longer alone. A pond had formed in a natural depression, and on the edge of the pond were several very fit Risians of both sexes and several less fit tourists of several sexes, all of them in . . . well, not so much various states of undress as assorted variations on near-total nudity. They were all too preoccupied in . . . what they were doing with one another . . . to notice the DTI agents. Well, almost all. One particularly perky-looking Risian with tumbling black curls and a wide smile waved at them without interrupting . . . what she was doing.
Dulmur stared for a few moments. “What are they doing?”
“Jamaharon.”
Dulmur shook himself and turned to look at his partner, who observed the scene with a clinical eye. “So that’s jamaharon?”
“The tag-team version.” Lucsly met his eyes. “It’s a very sacred rite. We should leave them to it.”
He started to move on, but Dulmur caught his arm. “Wait. How do you know so much about it?”
A pause. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
06:24 UTC
When they reached the right chamber within the underground cavern system, Lucsly and Dulmur heard movement within it. “We’re late!” Lucsly hissed, making it a curse. “Come on!”
Drawing their hand phasers, they flattened against the sides of the chamber entrance. Dulmur peered inside. The chamber was roughly hemispherical, perhaps a lava bubble whose roof had collapsed, creating a natural skylight through which the waning light of Risa’s suns illuminated the chamber. Yet its lower portion was oddly terraced, as though some ancient Risians had carved it into a ritual site. In the far left corner stood two humanoids, a male and a female, using handheld devices to project faint blue beams that disintegrated the centuries’ worth of accumulated dirt that made up the cavern floor. They wore dark, layered garments highlighted with silvery patches. Their skin was orange with purplish striations, their bald heads high and tapered, reminding Dulmur of terra cotta pots. Their lower faces and necks were covered in multiple breathing slits. He glanced at Lucsly, who nodded—these were indeed their targets.
It takes all the fun out of it when someone just tells you where to find the bad guys, Dulmur thought. But then he remembered he had a furious wife back home. On second thought, the sooner we wrap this up, the better.
After exchanging a look, the two agents barged inside, bringing their phasers to bear on the Vorgons. “Freeze! Department of Temporal Investigations!” Lucsly cried.
The aliens whirled, raising their disintegrators. “Drop the device, now!” Dulmur shouted, putting all his pent-up anger at the situation into the words. Apparently it worked; after trading a look, the female dropped the red crystalline device from her mittlike hand and the male followed her lead. “Keep your hands where I can see them,” Dulmur ordered.
“And away from your heads,” Lucsly added. Dulmur noted that each Vorgon had a small square device implanted roughly where a human’s left ear would be. Was Lucsly just guessing or had Temporal Agent Noi tipped him off?
“Please, you must listen to us,” the female said, her voice multitonal as it emerged from her complex respiratory apparatus. “If you are DTI, you must know we are from the future.”
“Exactly,” Lucsly said. “And we’re arresting you for attempted historical alteration.”
“No!” she cried. “I am Ajur and this is Boratus. We are temporal enforcers like yourselves, here to protect the timeline by recovering the Tox Uthat!”
“Not true,” Dulmur said. “You’re wanted criminals who’ve already made one try at the Uthat and have come further back to rewrite your own past.”
The Vorgons traded a look. “You are well-informed,” said the male, Boratus. “No doubt you have sources from the future. How are their actions any different from ours?”
“Because they’re trying to keep time from changing,” Lucsly said.
“So are we,” said Ajur. “We intend to substitute a copy for the real Uthat, so that events will proceed unaltered.”
“Don’t you think people will figure out it’s a fake?”
Ajur gave a wry tilt to her head. “The device will be destroyed shortly after its discovery—to keep it from falling into our hands. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Dulmur’s certainty wavering, he threw a look at Lucsly. The senior agent stood resolute, asking, “And what did you plan to do with the Uthat once you had it?” Clearly his trust in Agent Noi was real.
Boratus sneered. “A better question is, what would Kal Dano have done with it if we hadn’t stopped him?”
“Kal Dano?” Dulmur asked.
“The inventor of the Tox Uthat,” Ajur said. “The mysterious wanderer through time described in your legends. But he was no mere wanderer. His invention is a quantum phase inhibitor, a dev
ice that fits in one hand yet has the power to shut down all fusion in a star, triggering a core collapse and supernova-like explosion. Think about it,” she told the agents, taking a step toward them. “Why would he invent such a horrible weapon and then take it into the past?”
“He was a Shirna, the great enemy of our people,” Boratus said. “He intended to destroy our home system in the past before we even developed warp drive. Fortunately we intercepted him and forced him to hide it before he could use it. He was killed evading pursuit shortly thereafter.”
“Requiring us to return home and peruse the historical record in order to track it down,” Ajur finished.
“So if your motives are so benevolent,” Dulmur demanded, “why not just let the thing be destroyed? You killed the guy for his doomsday weapon and now you want it for yourselves. Sorry, but that doesn’t make me want to trust you.”
“If the Uthat is destined to be destroyed,” Lucsly said, “then let it be destroyed.”
Sizing them up, Ajur made a decision. Her sincere expression gave way to a haughty sneer. “And who are you to enforce that decision? You’re just DTI. Mere record-keepers and referees. You don’t even travel in time. We’ll simply go back and try again.” Her hand began to move toward her head implant.
“Stop!” Dulmur shouted. “You do not want to test my reaction time, lady!”
Ajur looked bored. “Boratus?”
The male Vorgon charged them, forcing them to fire at him. His garment resisted the phaser beams, so Dulmur raised his aim to take Boratus in the head, stunning him. The distraction was enough to allow Ajur to touch her head implant.
And nothing happened. Looking skyward in bewilderment, she tapped it again and again, with no response. “Computer!” she cried. “Emergency beam-out! Activate the temporal drive!” But still she remained in the cave.
“Something tells me your ship has been neutralized by someone who does travel in time,” Lucsly told her.
“Yeah, you might want to surrender now,” Dulmur said.
Ajur’s nasal folds fluttered with furious breaths, but she lowered her arms in surrender. Lucsly kept her covered while Dulmur took a restraint band from his pocket and secured her wrists. He then proceeded to do the same with Boratus, who was already beginning to recover from the phaser stun.
With that done, he walked over to Lucsly. “So now what do we do with them? How do we try them when most of the evidence doesn’t exist yet?”
“Leave that to me,” came a new voice.
Dulmur whirled, lifting his phaser, but Lucsly pushed down on his arm and nodded reassuringly. Once he got a look at her, Dulmur recognized the speaker as the same exotic woman who had been in Andos’s office. “Jena Noi, I presume.”
“And you’re Agent Dulmur. Pleased to meet you at last.”
“Their timecraft’s secure?” Lucsly asked.
“No problem.”
“And what about them?”
“I’ll take them back for trial in their own time,” Noi replied.
“We would have done nothing to damage this segment of time,” Ajur insisted to her.
“Shut up,” the Temporal Agent barked. “Do you have any idea the risk you’ve taken, intervening now? Here? With him of all people?” Ajur seemed chastened for reasons Dulmur couldn’t grasp.
“Wait a minute,” Dulmur groused. “If you were gonna intervene anyway, what did you need us for? Why not just do it all yourself?” And let me have my weekend with Meg?
Noi threw him an apologetic look that was irritatingly endearing. “The changes they want to make in history are very specific, so they’re careful not to kill anyone in the past that isn’t on their target list. But they’d have no compunction about killing someone from their future.” She shrugged. “I could’ve defended myself, but at the risk of creating a disruptive battle where history says there was none.”
Dulmur supposed that made sense. But he still wasn’t convinced he could trust this woman. Who knew if the Federation of the thirty-first century still had the same positive goals it did today? “So who’s really the good guys here? They said the Tox Uthat was invented to destroy their homeworld in the past. And it seems to me there’s no good reason for bringing a doomsday weapon back in time.”
Noi tilted her head and ran a finger along one scalloped ear. “Sometimes it’s bad guys versus bad guys, Agent Dulmur. Both sides want to change the past for their own reasons. Our job as Temporal Accord signatories is to stop them all. And you two have done the timeline a great service today.”
“Thanks,” Dulmur grumbled. “Any chance you could send me back three days and let me have my weekend with my wife after all? Just kidding!” he added at Lucsly’s scandalized stare.
“I’m sorry about your weekend,” she said. “Even time travelers don’t always have good timing. But things will work out the way they’re supposed to.” The wistful tone in her voice didn’t reassure him.
Noi strode between the Vorgons and took hold of them, hauling Boratus’s heavy frame upright with one dainty arm. Dulmur’s eyes grew wide at the display of strength. “Thanks again, Lucsly, Dulmur. See you in the future.” With a blue shimmer, they were gone.
“Can we get out of here now?” Dulmur said.
“Not yet,” Lucsly said. He pointed at the large hole the Vorgons had left in the cave floor. “Nobody can know this happened. The Uthat needs to be there for its discoverer to find three days from now. We need some shovels and about, mmm, half a ton of dirt.”
“Ohh, Lord,” Dulmur moaned. “Now I really need a vacation.”
PRESENT TIME
STARDATE 58746.7 to 58806.9
VIII
Day 459, Year 71, Cycle 12 Confederacy Era, Vomnin Standardized Calendar A Saturday
U.S.S. Capitoline
13:47 UTC
After eleven days of increasingly circular debate, Ranjea, Garcia, and Troi had made no progress in persuading the Vomnin to restrict their visits to the Axis of Time, or in convincing Lirahn to impose restrictions on behalf of the Axis Council. And so Ranjea had come to a difficult decision. “I’m growing convinced,” he told his fellow negotiators as they met in Capitoline’s conference room, “that Lirahn does not speak for all the groups that jointly manage the Axis.”
Commander Troi nodded. “I feel the same way. She’s difficult to get an empathic read on; her self-control is extraordinary. But I can’t believe that so many disparate groups from so many vastly separated eras could be as completely in agreement as she claims.”
“Exactly,” Ranjea replied. “And I have gotten the clear impression from her that she’s hiding something when she’s pressed about differences of opinion within the Council.” He took a breath. “I’m convinced we need to go into the Axis ourselves. We need to find what other voices there are within its leadership and whether we can cultivate them as allies.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” Garcia said. “That would mean traveling through time. Isn’t that against Department policy?”
Ranjea had been mulling that over for days, which was why he had waited so long to propose this. “Yes, technically. But if we remain within the Axis, if we don’t return to our continuum except at the point of our entry, then we won’t technically be visiting our own past or future. We’ll merely be occupying points that allow access to our past or future, but lie within a continuum where our own time has no meaning or relevance. It’s pushing the letter of regulations, I admit, but I don’t believe we have a choice.”
Teresa had relaxed as he spoke and was smiling now. “If you say so, boss. To tell the truth, I’ve been dying to get a look at the place. Not to mention the people. There might be living relics in there, representatives of dead cultures I’ve only known from their ruins. Imagine what we could learn!”
“Just be careful,” he reminded her. “The exchange of information goes both ways.”
She grew subdued. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll follow your lead.”
He sensed the hint of b
itterness in her words, knew she was upset with him, and he knew why. But he saw in Deanna Troi’s eyes that she sensed it too and was ready to do something about it if asked. It wasn’t Ranjea’s way to retreat from dealing with a personal matter himself. But if Teresa saw him as the cause of her anger, perhaps she would be more receptive to another voice right now. And Deanna was an accomplished counselor; she’d had to be in order to maintain the stability of Titan’s remarkably diverse crew on a mission that kept them so far from home for so long. He could tell the Betazoid woman was brimming with compassion and the desire to help anyone in need; who was he to deprive her of the chance to fulfill that desire?
Once Ranjea had left the conference room to make arrangements with the starships’ captains, Garcia started to head back to her quarters. But Commander Troi’s voice stopped her. “You have doubts about his judgment.”
She turned back to face the older woman, crossing her arms. “No, he’s right. As long as we’re careful, we’re not breaking regs.”
“All right. Then what is it about his recent choices that you don’t agree with?”
Garcia sighed. Counselors and their leading questions. I get enough of this from Clare. “Okay. I admit it. I’m only human. I’ve accepted that there’s no way he can be with me.” There was no point in trying to hide her feelings for Ranjea from a Betazoid. “And I’m not jealous that he’s hooked up with your Ensign Fell. I understand. She’s Deltan, she can have what I can’t.”
Troi studied her a moment more. “Yet you’re still angry at him.”
“I’m not. It’s his life, after all. If he wants to . . . go ahead and enjoy himself, it’s up to him. Why should he care whether he does it practically right in front of me?” she finished through gritted teeth.
“So you think he’s being insensitive. Flaunting his sexual freedom with his own people and failing to consider how it makes you feel.”
Garcia blinked several times, clearing the moisture from her eyes. “I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t blame a Deltan for having casual sex. But he knows . . . he knows I’m lonely and I thought he was willing to help me through that, as far as he safely could.” She’d been through so much counseling these past months that it didn’t feel odd to open up like this to a near-stranger. “So to turn around and, and do this, and not seem to care how it makes me feel . . .” She broke off, shaking her head.
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