by Diane Duane
Picard smiled just slightly at hearing that. “They may overshoot a little, then.”
“It seems likely, Captain,” Data said, working over his console. “Synchronizing with engineering subsystems now. Commander La Forge.”
“We’re as ready as we’re gonna be, Data,” Geordi’s voice came back. “Go for it!”
“Captain?”
“As planned, Mr. Data. Execute!”
The warpfields shut down. Enterprise fell out into normal space, shedding the built-up energy not by gradual deceleration, but in the form of great blasts of radiation and visual light. Inside her, everything rocked and jumped. Picard hung on to the arms of his seat, knowing what the other Enterprise would be seeing, a ship suddenly turned into a core of disastrous-looking, searing light, slowing down, plunging toward a dead star.
It may buy us a moment’s confusion, he thought. They may think we’ve exploded already. Then they’ll check the mass readings and see that they’re wrong, come in for the kill. “Status, Mr. La Forge!”
“Deceleration completing, Captain. Entering wide orbit around 2044.”
“The other Enterprise has overshot by two point six three light-years,” Data said. “Coming around now and decelerating in the usual manner. Preparing to drop out of warp, if energy readings are correct.”
“On-screen,” Picard said. Now that the wild maneuvering was done, visuals were of some use again. Far under them turned the brown dwarf—not brown, but a sullen, glowing red with the heat remains of ancient gravitational collapse, not yet finished: an old, tired ember, soon to die out and go black.
“They have dropped out of warp, Captain. Center screen, magnified.”
The dark silver shape was there again, coming about on impulse to meet them, coasting in closer and closer.
“Their shields are up,” Worf said. “They are arming all phaser banks. The power—” He looked at his reading and looked up with an expression of unpleasant surprise. “The power is considerable.”
“Yes, indeed,” Picard said. “Raise our own shields, Mr. La Forge!”
“We’re getting ready for them, Captain. Thirty more seconds to make fast the ‘connection’ between us and the dwarf.”
“Make it so, Mr. La Forge!”
Slowly they orbited, “standing their ground,” and the other ship came in closer and closer, holding its fire. Picard looked at the dark, cruel shape, lowering at him, and something in the back of his mind said, The boy stood on the burning deck.
He had to laugh, though just once, as that other ship came closer. Riker looked at him. “Captain?”
Picard shook his head. “Just that I had no idea my brain had retained so much dreadful doggerel as it has produced in the past day or so. No matter, one way or another, I won’t have to bother with it again.”
“They are firing,” Worf said. They saw the phaser beams lance out: the ship rocked as they hit the shields. The other Enterprise came in closer and closer and went by just off their port side, taunting, no more than a thousand kilometers away.
“Mr. La Forge,” Picard said, very unnerved indeed, “was that close enough for you?”
“We need a couple of more passes, Captain.”
“The line between power drain and shield overload is going to be extremely fine, Commander,” Data said. “A few megajoules in either direction is going to mean the difference between a successful operation and an exploded ship.”
“Tell me about it, Data! You just keep your eye on the red line. But try not to move until we give you the word! If this works, we won’t need to move at all.”
The ship lurched and rocked again as the phasers hit, this time from behind. “Loss of power to rear shields, fifteen percent,” Worf said. “Some odd readings, however.”
“That’s us,” Geordi said. “Hang on, up there! We have to do some string manipulation just before the balloon goes up.”
“Pull whatever strings you have to, Mr. La Forge,” Picard said, “but hurry up about it! We can’t take much more of this phaser fire.”
“Hwiii, poke that baby, we need more!”
There was a pause. “Captain, you’ve got to let them shoot at us, we need the energy. As much of it as we can get.”
The other Enterprise came in again and made another pass. “All phasers firing, Captain,” Worf said, as if Picard needed to be told. This time the ship shook as if a giant had picked it up and rattled it, and the lights went down, and only the emergency lighting came up. “Rear shields down,” Worf said, “damage to decks forty-three and fifty. The other Enterprise is coming about again.”
“Mr. La Forge!” Picard said.
“Just one more time, Captain!”
“It may be all you get,” Picard said, watching on the screen as the great wicked-looking silver-dark shape bore down on them.
In engineering, Hwiii and Geordi were working together over the main status console. “That’s it,” Hwiii said. “The ‘tether’ is in place. One more shot!”
“Here she comes.”
“On automatic,” Hwiii said, touching the last control. “Check it?”
Geordi looked over his shoulder. “The power conduits are holding. Come on, you son of a—”
—and the other Enterprise fired, and the whole ship shook—
—not with the phaser impact, though: that was absorbed. Clutching the status board, they watched on the schematics as the dreadful flame of energy channeled down in a searing line from the shields into the inclusion apparatus. All around them the air seemed to vibrate and go thick with power as the gravitational and hyperstring forces they had harnessed to “tether” them to the bracing mass of the brown dwarf now reached back and seized on the target that Geordi and Hwiii had designated. The dwarf was the anchor of one side of a slingshot; the Enterprise was the other. If we can just keep from snapping before it does, Geordi thought desperately. The vibration got worse. The universe darkened, as if getting ready for a really big sneeze this time, and everything and everybody not fastened to something fell down.
On the bridge, Picard watched the other Enterprise fire at them point-blank. He fully expected to see what he had seen in the shuttlecraft, the bloom of fire, the walls blasting outward, fragmented, into darkness. But instead everything went thick and dim with a huge buzzing feel of power in the air, and everything shook—
—and that other ship abruptly went away from them, without moving. It did not so much get small, as simply become more distant—impossibly distant for something that had been moving on impulse. Yet it was not going into warp, either—the usual chromatic aberration was absent. It simply went farther and farther away… and then was gone entirely.
“Mr. Data,” Picard said, looking at Riker and Troi; they looked as stunned as he felt. “Evaluation.”
“The ship is gone, Captain,” Data said. “It was not destroyed—but rather dislocated from our space without changing local location.”
“Engineering!” Picard said. At first the unrestrained noise he heard frightened him. Then he realized it wasn’t screaming, or rather, not screams of pain, but of joy: cheering, hoots and howls of applause.
“La Forge here,” Geordi’s voice almost sang. “Owl Cut it out, Hwiii, I’m still sore there!”
“Report, Mr. La Forge,” Picard said, unable to suppress the smile now.
“They’re gone, Captain, “Geordi said. “Right back where they came from! And it was their own hyperstring residue that let us do it, the same way that we used our own to bring us back home again. But we’re not done yet.” He still sounded surprisingly urgent through the triumph. “Hwiii is busy doing another permutation on the string structure hereabouts—meaning ours. As soon as he’s ready, we—”
“Now!” Hwiii whistled from the background. “We need to head out of here at about warp nine, Captain, so that our inherent hyperstring association changes enough that they can’t follow us back again.”
“Warp nine, now, if you please, Mr. Redpath,” Picard said.
“An hour or so will make it impossible for them to latch on to us again without a major retool of their own readings, Captain… which they won’t be able to get because we will be a long way thataway, on a course they can’t predict.”
“Very good, Mr. La Forge. Mr. Redpath,” Picard said to the helm officer, “amuse yourself. Make sure ‘they’ couldn’t possibly predict our course.”
“Yes, sir!”
Picard stood up and pulled his tunic down and smiled. “I am going down to my quarters. You and I, of course,” Picard said to Troi, “will need to do debriefs for Starfleet, and for the… edification, if that’s the word… of our fellow officers. I want Mr. La Forge to stop in sickbay, however, before he bothers with his—he’s had a bad enough day.”
“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Troi said.
“Very good. Meanwhile, I would appreciate a department heads’ meeting this evening, though when things have quieted down a little and we’ve all had some rest. Anything else?”
He looked around the bridge. People looked back at him with expressions of satisfaction, and Riker said, “Welcome home, Captain.”
Picard nodded and went out.
Down in his quarters, when the door shut behind him, he simply stood there for a moment and looked around him. Off to one side, covered, the easel stood. He went to it, tossed back the cover. The wood in the Luberon looked back at him, the shafts of downstriking sunlight, the tiny scrap of fluttering light. Odd, though, how much more prominent the shadows in that landscape seemed, the dark places under the trees.
He turned away and walked over to the bookshelf. Everything in place, everything looking as it should—though that had been deceptive, not so long ago. He reached out for the Shakespeare again, weighed it in his hand, flipped it open.
It fell open where it always did. He looked down the column. There he found Portia where she should be, mercy all in place, and the gentle rain from heaven, and further down, Nerissa’s joke about the ring, the teasing wives, and the love at the end.
He closed the book and looked over at the painting again. The little scrap of light fluttered there among the trees, against the shadow. It needed the darkness to make that tiny bit of life look so bright: it would not have shown, otherwise.
Picard smiled to himself, all alone there in the dimness, and went quietly to the desk to start his debriefing.
CHAPTER 16
In his ready room, Picard sat going over his notes to see if he had missed anything. Surprising how little time it had seemed to take to tell everything that had happened to him—at least, everything that was anyone’s business. All the same, he wanted to make sure he had forgotten nothing that might later prove of importance.
The door chime went; he looked up. “Come.”
The door opened, and Mr. Barclay came in, looking faintly nervous. “Captain, you sent for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Barclay. Sit down.”
Barclay sat, his face showing a little less nervousness now.
“I’ve been looking over your record,” Picard said, sitting back in his chair. “Your work in the sciences and with the computer departments has been commended by your supervisors, including Commander Riker on several occasions. I note much extra, nonscheduled time put in.”
Barclay twitched a little. “I can’t just sit around doing nothing, Captain. It makes me crazy.”
“Yes. I know it does.” Picard studied the screen for a moment longer, then said, “Your next career review isn’t scheduled for another year or so, but I see no reason not to add a special commendation to your file.” He smiled slightly. “It’s my pleasure to do that effective immediately.”
Barclay blinked, then grinned widely. “Thank you, Captain!”
“You’re more than welcome… and as I say, it’s my pleasure. You’re dismissed.”
Barclay stood, still grinning, nodded to Picard in acknowledgment, and went out.
Picard sat there for a moment, smiling, too, though the smile had an edge of sadness on it. The promise might have been kept at a remove, he thought, but that’s better than not keeping it at all Symmetry.
He went back to looking over his notes.
The department heads’ meeting got under way as usual. The department heads had already read Picard’s and Troi’s initial debriefing memos. Geordi’s was still forthcoming since Dr. Crusher had been infuriated at “the state of his nervous system” when she had finally gotten him into sickbay and had forbidden him any further work or duty of any kind for at least three days. She had permitted him to attend the department heads’ meeting, “but more out of his need for closure than anything else,” she had said angrily to all of them once they were around the table, “so don’t push him!”
As it turned out, Geordi was amused but unconcerned by the concern. He wanted to talk about what he and Hwiii had done: “There are a lot of other possibilities inherent in the inclusion apparatus, and the changes we rang on its basic equations. But the most important one—at least, the one Starfleet is going to consider most important—is the ‘subversive’ use of the device to toss back ships originating in another space.”
“The technique of sourcing the hyperstring structure in a large mass, with another smaller mass as the control, is the key,” Hwiii said from beside Geordi. “Any large mass can be used for this technique—stars, planets, any large astronomical body. If we were concerned about an invasion fleet from this universe—we need not be. Any planet can now mount its own defenses against vessels originating from another universe: you simply supply the power necessary for their own, attenuated connection with their own universe to ‘snap them back.’”
“The Imperials made a tactical mistake,” Geordi said, “by not carrying their theoretical research through to its logical conclusion. If they had, this development would have become obvious to them—and maybe they would never have bothered with this at all or would have gone down some other theoretical avenue, one less likely to be turned against them. In any case, now we know about them; we know their state-of-the-art equipment, too. And any starship or planet can be equipped to throw them back where they come from as quickly as they emerge, should they try it again.”
“Subspace radio distances being what they are,” Picard said, “it will be a little while before we hear back from Starfleet about this episode. I am minded to keep us in this general area of space for a little while, until we hear from them and know that defenses are being prepared—just in case. It would be a shame to have come so successfully out of this encounter only to fail in our trust now, through carelessness.”
Around the table, people nodded. “I have a feeling, though,” Dr. Crusher said, “that Starfleet will not be releasing information about this incident for general consumption. Psychologically… it’s a bit of a time bomb.”
“You’re right,” Picard said. “And I think for the moment that we had better instruct our own crewpeople to restrain themselves as regards this incident when it comes to communications home and so forth, since this information is more than likely to be classified under need-to-know strictures. Among other things, I suspect Starfleet would not be wild about the Romulans getting their hands on the technique.”
“Indeed,” Data said, “since it can logically be adapted, though with fairly extensive modifications, to go looking for other alternative universes, as posited in other hyperstring work which Commander Hwiii has done. Imagine, for example, a universe in which neither the Federation nor the Klingon empires exist, and the Romulans have become dominant. Think what the Romulans in our own universe might bring home from a visit to such a place.”
They thought about that, and concerned glances were exchanged around the table. “Not our problem at the moment,” Picard said, “fortunately. We’ll leave that to Starfleet. Full reports from all your departments will need to go in
to them tomorrow. I’ll expect them by eighteen hundred hours. Is there anything else?”
“One thing,” Dr. Crusher said. “The stress levels around here the past couple of days have been unusually high. Intervention is required.”
Hwiii turned an interested eye on her. “In what form?” Picard said.
She pushed a padd over to him. “This should be posted on all the private terminals.” He looked at the screen. It said:
CMDR. W. RIKER AND LT. WORF
INVITE YOU TO A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
COME AS YOU ARE
TWENTY HUNDRED HOURS
BLACK TIE OPTIONAL
MAIN HOLODECK TWO
Picard pushed it back toward her. “Medicine takes strange forms sometimes,” he said. “Make it so.”
When one stepped in the door of the holodeck, the noise of shouting, laughter, and the orchestra tuning up was considerable. A great gilded hallway hung with glittering chandeliers stretched off in either direction, with red velvet-backed doors set in the far wall, the entrances to the boxes. Picard walked down to box twelve; a liveried footman in a powdered wig, standing outside it, bowed to him and opened the door.
The dimness inside the box made it hard to tell clearly what was going on, but the bigger chandeliers of the house beyond the boxes were dimming. Picard made his way carefully among the occupied seats. The audience, borrowed from some other time and place, were having scattered fistfights already, and the performance hadn’t even begun.
Picard sat down on a velvet-cushioned Louis Quinze chair and looked around. Off to his left, Worf and Riker were sitting.
“I could not get the tie done,” Worf said, frowning, to Riker. “This business of ceremonial ligature is very strange.”
“Here, let me help,” Riker said, and sat there for a few moments reworking it. “What have you got here, the Gordian knot? It’s going to take phasers to get this thing loose.”
“I could not stop tying it. It just seemed to want to keep on going.”
The noise from down in the orchestra was increasing, both the musicians’ and the crowd’s. “Is this a private riot,” Picard said over his shoulder, “or can anyone join in?”
