by Judith
Picard stopped talking as the doors slid open. But it was the ambassador’s aides who entered, accompanied only by two duty officers. Neither Sarek nor Perrin was with them.
Riker stepped forward with a hint of unease that only Picard could detect. “Will the ambassador be joining you?”
But Picard put him at ease as he suddenly understood the reason for Sarek’s absence. “It’s all right, Will. The ambassador is letting us say our good-byes first, as he has noticed that his presence at such times can prevent people from speaking freely.”
Riker considered that. “Quite gracious,” he conceded.
“I hope your journey aboard the Merrimac will be uneventful,” Picard said to the ambassador’s aides.
Sakkath, in deference to what a human would expect to hear, stated the obvious in reply. “With all the pressures of the conference behind him, I believe I can help him maintain his control until we return to Vulcan.”
“What will happen to him then?” Riker asked.
Mendrossen, though human, answered with Vulcan control. “The effects of Bendii Syndrome are irreversible.” Then, in an afterthought that belied his emotions, he added hopefully, “Medical research is always continuing.”
There was nothing more to be said. Riker told O’Brien to stand by for transport. It was then that Perrin entered, tranquil and composed, her placid expression the legacy of a life on Vulcan. But there was nothing Vulcan about the warm smile she gave to Picard as she thanked him for what he had done for her husband.
For a moment, as Picard took her hand in his, he was once again caught between two minds, seeing Perrin as he had known [68] her—a charming guest aboard his ship—and as Sarek had known her—his lifemate, his lover. Picard fought with the confusion, trying to express to the woman who had lost her heart to a Vulcan what that Vulcan could never say, would never say.
“He loves you,” Picard told her. So simple, yet so profound. “Very much.” The words came nowhere near expressing the richness of the emotions he was experiencing.
But Perrin regarded him as if she understood what he was feeling, what he was trying to say, and at that moment, like a sudden flash of sunlight through the trees of a forest, Picard had a glimpse of Perrin’s mind. She had melded with Sarek. An essence of her remained in Sarek’s mind and was now in Picard’s. Without knowing how, without seeing details, Picard saw that Perrin truly understood, and was content.
“I know,” she answered Picard. “I have always known.”
And Picard knew without question that she spoke the truth.
With that final farewell between humans, Sarek entered, serene, implacable, a force of nature not by the strength and purpose that enveloped him, but by the unquestionable sense that he could not be stopped in anything he chose to do.
Except for the matters of your heart, Picard thought. The image of a young Vulcan boy came to mind, a scrape of green blood on his cheek, sullen, a forbidden tear forming in his eye. Picard felt afresh the warring desires to instruct the boy in his Vulcan heritage and to hold him in his arms, to keep him safe from harm, to tell him his tears were permissible. The boy was Spock, Picard realized, and from just a quick flutter of Sarek’s eyes, Picard knew that the ambassador had shared that memory, which had passed between them as a spark. Though it would never be acknowledged.
Sarek spoke first. “I will take my leave of you now, Captain.” Each word perfect. Even so simple a statement vested with unshakable authority. “I do not think we shall meet again.”
“I hope you are wrong, Ambassador.” Picard, at least, was able to say what Sarek could not. Earlier, Perrin had told him that the ambassador had taken an interest in his career, that he had found Picard’s record “satisfactory.” Picard had been gratified by that [69] verdict, the highest of praise in Vulcan terms. And he saw now in what he shared with Sarek that Sarek, too, had hoped for more time with Picard, and hoped, too, that this would not be the last time they met.
Sarek’s eyes stared knowingly into Picard’s. “We shall always retain the best of the other, inside us.”
Picard already knew that to be true. “I believe I have the better part of that bargain, Ambassador.” He held up his hand, parting his third and fourth fingers. “Peace and long life,” he said.
Sarek nodded, almost imperceptibly, and returned the traditional Vulcan gesture. “Live long and prosper.”
Sarek joined his party on the transporter pad. A moment before he departed, he took Perrin’s hand in his, as couples often did before a shuttlecraft took off, or when any journey together began.
Then the giant of the Federation dissolved into the quantum mist of the transporter effect, and except for one small part of him still in Picard’s mind, was gone.
“Merrimac confirms transport,” O’Brien announced from his console.
“Very good,” Picard answered. He looked at Riker, Riker at him. They both glanced down at each other’s long coat.
“Time to get out of these monkey suits?” Riker asked.
Picard appreciated the sentiment. “But we’ll need them again on Betazed.” Counselor Troi’s planet of birth was their next port of call, in conjunction with the biennial Trade Agreements Conference. Picard was actually looking forward to the mission—it promised to be dull. Despite his need for rejuvenating experiences, just for now he could use a few days of restful routine. He suddenly felt weary.
Riker followed Picard into the corridor. “The conference is ten days away, sir. I thought until then we might trade the dress uniforms in for some natty, wide-lapelled suits, loud ties, and a couple of gats, if you know what I mean.”
Picard was tempted. The Dixon Hill programs in the holodeck were getting better all the time, and he was intrigued by the notion of matching wits with a criminal genius like Cyrus Redblock while his mind still retained some of Sarek’s impressive logic. If [70] he could force Data into three stalemates, who knew what he’d be able to accomplish against the Enterprise’s computer in 1930s San Francisco?
But another wave of fatigue swept over him. A cup of Earl Grey in the quiet of his quarters seemed to be what he needed most.
“Not right now, Will. Maybe in a few days.”
Riker upped the stakes with an almost conspiratorial come-on. “Are you sure? Geordi’s been adding some refinements to a new scenario. A lady in red ... a mysterious black bird ... it should be a real challenge.”
They came to the turbolift. “Tempting, but I think I’m going to call it a day. Have Data take us out on our course to Betazed.”
The doors swept open. Riker hung back. “It’s going to be a long ten days without something to break it up,” he said in a final attempt to have the captain change his mind. “Even Dr. Crusher said—”
Riker stopped as Picard’s eyebrows lifted in feigned suspicion. “Oh, I see. You’ve been discussing this with Dr. Crusher.”
Riker put his hand out to stop the turbolift door from shutting. “A deep Vulcan mind-meld can be a terrible strain, sir. Dr. Crusher suggested you could use some R-and-R to help recuperate.”
But Picard shook his head. “I appreciate your concern. But as the ambassador said, it is the best parts of each other we shall retain. A few days of quiet rest is all I need, and a direct course to Betazed is the best way to get it.”
Riker knew when he had been overruled, and he took it well. “Understood, sir.” He stepped back from the doors. “Let me know when you get bored. We could even discuss philosophy, if you feel up to it.”
Picard smiled. “I look forward to that.”
The doors began to shut. And just in time for Picard and Riker to catch an instant of surprise in each other’s eyes before the doors closed completely, it was then that the corridor filled with the sirens of a Red Alert.
The Enterprise was being called to battle.
FOUR
LONDON, OPTIMAL REPUBLIC OF
GREAT BRITAIN, EARTH
Earth Standard: June 21, 2078
London was in flames. Not even the dru
g-controlled soldiers of the Optimum could contain the riots any longer. Zefram Cochrane had no trouble admitting that his return to the planet of his birth had been a mistake.
His companion in the backseat of the stately Rolls limousine tapped the silver handle of his cane against the viewscreen that angled out from the seat back before them. The windows of the limousine were set to maximum opacity and the external scanners were the only way to see what was going on in the streets they traveled.
“Look at them,” Sir John Burke said in disgust. “Worse than bloody Cromwell and his lot.” The elder scientist was a shrunken man, frail, in his seventies, with transparent skin, a dusting of wispy gray hair, and a thin mustache. Once he had been chief astronomer for the Royal Astronomical Society. But that had been before the Optimum Movement had triumphed in the general elections of 2075. Now the word “Royal” was banned from this island nation, Queen Mary was in Highgate Prison, and most of the rest of the Royal Family had gone into hiding in what had become the Republic of Great Britain, or cowering in exile in [72] the United States. And who knew what was happening over there anymore, with the Constitution suspended and only the fifteen states with Optimal majorities permitted to send representatives to Washington.
Everything Micah Brack had said to Cochrane on Titan, seventeen years ago, had come to pass. It was no longer a question of if there would be a third world war, but when it would start. As for where, between the splintering of the Optimum Movement, Colonel Green’s atrocities, the collapse of the New United Nations, and a dozen other nightmarish escalations of global tension, there was no end of places where the first shot could be fired, or the first atomic charge detonated.
What his friend Micah Brack thought of these developments, Cochrane could not be certain. Eight years earlier, after three Optimum assassination attempts against him in as many months, the industrialist had intentionally disappeared. Rumors placed him on Mars, helping draft the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies; on Altair IV, excavating the ruins of an alien civilization; or still on Earth, leading any one of a number of resistance cells in regions ruled by the Optimum. Cochrane didn’t know which stories to believe. Perhaps each of them was true to some extent. All he knew was that the bulk of Brack’s fortune had been given to the Cochrane Foundation for the Study of Multiphysics, and that Brack himself had vanished so completely and so thoroughly that Cochrane couldn’t help but suspect his friend had had considerable experience in the process.
Cochrane glanced at the viewscreen beneath Sir John’s cane. The limo was approaching a checkpoint near the Thorsen Central Hub, once known as Victoria Station. The data agencies were reporting that some maglevs to Heathrow were still running. From there, an orbital transfer plane to any platform would be enough to get Cochrane off planet.
But Cochrane wasn’t hopeful. On the viewscreen he saw the ominous gray hulks of zombies—the name the public had given to the Fourth World mercenaries the Optimum employed—lining civilians up against a wall. Some zombies stood with inhaler tubes from their self-medication kits pressed to one nostril, then the [73] other. Cochrane had been told the drugs took away all fear, and all moral compunction.
And I wanted to take this species to the stars, he thought with repugnance. He was forty-eight years old but felt far older because of what he believed might be his complicity in what was happening on Earth—nothing less than its destruction.
What sense of reason existed among the humans of this system in the late twenty-first century was exclusive to the burgeoning colonies on the moon and Mars, those orbiting Saturn, and those newly established in myriad other sites around the sun. Those colonies, Earth’s children, had rightly declined to become involved in their parent’s self-mutilation.
Cochrane wondered if that ready indifference would exist if the solar colonies were still dependent on Earth for critical supplies and technology. With the extrasolar colonies now, on average, no more than four months away from the home system—about the same time it took to travel across the system in the first decades of the century—the solar colonies for the first time could turn to other worlds. Already manufacturing specialties were emerging in many extrasolar communities: biochemical engineering in Bradbury’s Landing, molecular computer farms in Wolf 359’s Stapledon Center, and continuum-distortion generator design and manufacture on Cochrane’s own Centauri B II.
Brack had been right when he had told Cochrane that every airtight freighter in the system would become an interplanetary vessel when retrofitted superimpellors became readily and inexpensively available. But the ensuing grand, faster-than-light, second wave of human exploration had developed far more swiftly than even Brack had anticipated. Still, the result, also as Brack had intended, was undeniable: Earth was no longer critical to the survival of the human race. And all because of Zefram Cochrane.
Cochrane watched Optimum’s mercenaries on the screen with dismay, and wondered if it might be best if he didn’t escape tonight, if he could somehow find a way to atone for what he had caused to be.
But then he recalled Brack’s voice from so many years ago: [74] “The genie is out of the bottle and will never go back in.” True enough, once again more rapidly than the industrialist had predicted, there were now thirty-three self-sufficient human colonies on ten extrasolar, class-M planets, and the Optimum had been unable to influence them. It took so much time and effort to restrict the free flow of information and resources on Earth that its leaders could not extend their repressive reach the necessary dozens of light-years. Everything had unfolded exactly as Brack had said it would, because people remained people no matter what new technological advances came their way.
Micah Brack’s successful prediction and analysis of the consequences of the human condition, however, gave Cochrane no cause for happiness. He still couldn’t help but feel responsible. And guilty.
Cochrane and Sir John shifted against the deep upholstery of the Rolls’s passenger compartment as it dropped gently from inertial-dampened, urban-flight mode to its wheeled configuration, slowing as it approached the checkpoint. On the viewscreen, one of the civilians against the wall they were passing turned to flail wildly at the mercenaries. One of the impassive brutes, bulky in radiation armor, swung up a fistgun. But its threat did nothing to halt the civilian’s outraged tirade.
Cochrane saw a stuttering blue pulse of plasma fire erupt from the fistgun and looked away as the civilian’s body crumpled to the ground, all protests at an end. Cochrane, miserable, wondered again why he had ever decided to return to Earth. The Multidimensional Physics Conference he had attended on the moon last week, the first he had ever attended off Centauri B II, was as close as he should have come.
But he, too, was only human. And just as the leaders of Earth had been unable to believe that the followers of the Optimum could be as dangerous and as destructive as the past two decades had proven, he, like most others of his species, had found it hard to believe that something bad could happen personally to him. Whether that was a result of self-delusional blindness or transcendent optimism, Cochrane didn’t know. But it was a weakness of all humans, and Cochrane felt sickeningly certain he was about to pay for his naïveté.
[75] The compartment speaker clicked on and Cochrane heard the chauffeur’s clear young voice, calm and composed. “Checkpoint ahead, gentlemen. You’ll need your cards.”
Sir John grumbled as he reached inside his jacket and removed his identification card. Cochrane had never put his away since it had been given to him back at Sir John’s town house and its forged contents described to him. The slender strip of flexible glass, sparkling with quantum-interference inscriptions, falsely identified him as an American businessman from one of the Optimum-controlled states. Sir John’s network had further established an elaborate scenario to preserve Cochrane’s real identity. In the trunk were two suitcases with American-made clothes in Cochrane’s size, as well as suitable business records and doctored family photos.
The need for such subt
erfuge had been prompted by the leader of this region’s Optimum Movement, Colonel Adrik Thorsen himself. Acting as the provisional governor of the British Republic, Thorsen had appeared on data-agency uploads, proclaiming Cochrane to be an enemy of the Greater Good. At first, Cochrane had hoped Thorsen’s motivation had only been the result of the long-ago insult to his pride when he had arrived at Titan to meet Cochrane and found only Brack. At Brack’s urging, Cochrane had fled Thorsen then and wished he could do so again, right now. Especially since Sir John’s network of contacts in the lower echelons of the movement’s headquarters, in what used to be the Parliament Buildings, had revealed that Thorsen’s continued obsession with Cochrane appeared to go far beyond any simple redress for personal insult. The Optimum had apparently concluded that Cochrane’s superimpellor did have military uses, and that Cochrane alone held the key to unleashing that potentially unconquerable power.
It was a mad hypothesis, Cochrane knew, derived from an incomplete understanding of his work. But despite all that Brack and he had done to spread his work to the broadest possible audience, the Optimum still clung to the belief that Cochrane had held back certain aspects of his research—aspects they obviously now thought they could extract from Cochrane’s mind by the most optimal methods.
[76] Fortunately, when Sir John had learned of Thorsen’s true intent, he had immediately arranged the cancellation of the informal private sessions scheduled between Cochrane and Europe’s independent scientific community. Three days after arriving on Earth, two days after visiting his parents’ graves and walking past the home where he had grown up, Cochrane was bundled off to a safe house as preparations were made to return him to the stars.
There was a harsh tapping on the window next to Sir John. The elderly astronomer touched the control that cleared the window. A mercenary leaned down, her features swollen by the chemicals flooding her system and distorted by the encircling elastic of her radiation headgear. Her bizarre countenance flashed red then yellow in the harsh glare of the spinning warning lights of the checkpoint barricade. She tapped again, harder, using the upper barrel of her fistgun. From her expression, if she had to tap a third time she’d use that upper barrel to launch an imploder into the Rolls.
