The Folded World

by Jeff Mariotte

  “What?” he asked gruffly. “You all look like ye’ve lost your favorite sheepdog.” A sudden, terrible thought flashed through his mind.

  Uhura must have seen it on his face. “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just—the Ixtoldan battle cruiser refuses to respond to my hails.”

  “Hang ’em, then,” Scotty said. “They dinna want to talk, then we got nothin’ to say to them.”

  “I’m afraid we do, Mister Scott,” Chekov said.

  “Why’s that, Mister Chekov?”

  “Because, sir, our instruments show that they’re routing power to their weapons systems.”

  “Say that again, Mister Chekov. Nice and slow, if you please.”

  “The Ixtoldan cruiser is powering up its weapons systems.”

  “I see.” Scotty dropped into the captain’s chair and swiveled toward Uhura. “And you’d like to ask them why.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Uhura said.

  “And they won’t answer.”

  “Also correct.”

  Scotty gave the situation another moment’s thought. “Put me through,” he said. “I dinna care if they respond, just make sure they can hear me.”

  Uhura’s fingers flew across her control pad. She nodded once to Scotty.

  “Ahoy the Ton’bey,” Scotty said. “This is Montgomery Scott, acting captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I know you can hear me, so listen up. I dinna know what ye think you’re doin’, but it’s my duty as a Starfleet officer to warn ye that any discharge of weapons, anywhere in this vicinity, will be considered by Starfleet to be an act of war.”

  He left that statement hanging there for a long moment, in case the Ixtoldans chose to respond. When they didn’t answer, he went on. “We know you’re shunting power to your weapons. There’s usually only one reason for that. So again, I’m tellin’ you, do not discharge those weapons. Power them down immediately, or face the consequences. And next time Lieutenant Uhura hails you, answer her. D’ye hear me?”

  No answer, still.

  “Enterprise out,” Scotty said. He slashed his hand across his throat, and Uhura broke the connection.

  “They heard me, right?” he asked.

  “Their ship received the transmission,” Uhura said. “I can’t tell you if anybody was listening.”

  He had never expected to utter the sentence that followed. “Well, get Minister Chan’ya up here, then. Let’s see if they’ll listen to her.”

  He turned in the chair, facing the front viewscreen. The fold was dead ahead, shifting colors and turning slowly in space as he watched. Somewhere in there—presumably in the ship he could see at its very center, the monstrosity that had sucked in the others like a giant magnet—was the person who belonged in this seat. And the science officer, the irascible doctor, and others. Those people were precious to Montgomery Scott, and he would be damned if he would let some Ixtoldan with an itchy trigger finger put them in harm’s way. He would blow the Ton’bey out of space before he would let that happen.

  When Chan’ya arrived, she was not alone. She was, as usual, accompanied by her retinue. At least she had not brought any of the Federation diplomats for backup, Scotty was glad to note. But she had brought those two tall, thin Ixtoldans, the ones who looked like they could topple over at any moment.

  Chan’ya gathered her skirts and stepped onto the bridge like it was her own private throne room and the officers there a flock of court jesters. The tall ones teetered along behind her. “Someone here requested our presence?” Chan’ya said.

  “Aye,” Scotty replied. “ ’Twas me.”

  “Why?”

  He pointed in the general direction of the Ton’bey. “Your friends on that cruiser over there are powerin’ up their weapons,” he said. “They’ve got to stop.”

  “If that is true, they doubtless have ample reason.”

  “They’ve got no reason at all. D’you see another ship around here that looks like a threat?”

  “We have no instruments of our own,” Chan’ya said. “We can see only what you want us to see; therefore, we have no way to verify what you say.”

  “Then you’ll just have to trust me, won’t ye? Is that so hard for you to do?”

  One of the tall Ixtoldans ventured a few steps forward. “Mister Scott, you would be advised to remember whom you are addressing.”

  “I know perfectly well who I’m addressing, you animated pair of stilts. Now you keep out of this. I’m talkin’ to your boss.”

  “There is no need for angry words, Mister Scott,” Chan’ya said.

  “The hell there isn’t! You talk to the captain of that ship, now, and tell ’im to stand down. If ye won’t do it, so help me, I’ll load you into the first torpedo tube I fire at him!”

  “Mister Scott,” Uhura said. She didn’t need to say more. The tone of her voice and the warning in her eyes carried the message clearly. Scotty was a human being with all the usual baggage, but he was also an officer of Starfleet. As such, he had a different set of responsibilities. The man in him wanted to use the two taller Ixtoldans for kindling, and maybe get a good fire going under Chan’ya, but the Starfleet officer recognized his duty. “I apologize, ma’am,” he said. “I let my emotions get away from me. Our science officer, who’s over on that ship right now, would tell you that’s a common human failing. I dinna see it that way, but I admit that I should have used better judgment, and I’m sorry.”

  “Well and good, Mister Scott.” She did not sound contrite or forgiving, but then she always sounded the same to him: as if she were talking to something she had to scrape off her shoe.

  “So you’ll talk to the captain?”

  “We do not know why he is, as you say, powering up the weapons. If indeed he is. We are afraid the captain of the Ton’bey is not someone we know well or talk to often. If we tried now, we would doubtless get the same response that you did.”

  “I got nothin’ at all.”

  “There you are. The very same.”

  “So he won’t take your hails either?”

  “We cannot remember the last time we spoke. Probably when a Starfleet shuttle picked us up from Earth orbit to carry us to Federation headquarters.”

  “Are there others on the ship, then, that you and your party are in better contact with?”

  “We are afraid not. We are quite isolated here on your starship. Not uncomfortable, mind you. But isolated from our own kind, yes.”

  She was lying to him, and he knew it. He was well aware of every communications signal entering or leaving the Enterprise, and he knew that she—at least, someone in her party, using her quarters—was in touch with the Ton’bey several times a day. Granted, he couldn’t tell if those communications were reaching the battle cruiser’s commander, but he had no reason to think otherwise.

  He wanted to shake her, to demand that she at the very least respect his intelligence. His earlier blowup had softened him, though. He would not do that again, and he would not lay hands on his captain’s guests. His guests, until the away team returned.

  “No communication?” he asked, giving her one more chance to come clean. “You’re certain of that?”

  She didn’t take it. “Quite certain, yes. The difference between none and some is hardly a distinction we would fail to grasp.”

  “I’m sure not.” Not that he had trusted her before, but now he would trust her even less. He was almost certain that she was lying. And if she wasn’t, then she had a turncoat in her midst, someone talking to the Ton’bey without her knowledge or consent.

  Either way, he had to stay wary of them all.

  “Will there be anything else, Mister Scott?”

  “No, that’s it,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Well and good.” She said that a lot, he had noted. It was as if she had to give the world permission to continue doing whatever it wanted to do.

  He watched the retinue board the turbolift. The door closed, and they were gone.


  “Guess I got carried away, didn’t I?”

  “A bit,” Uhura admitted. “Not that anyone could blame you.”

  “I was hoping you’d go through with it,” Chekov said. “I’d love to push the button when you launch her.”

  “Believe me, I was givin’ it some serious thought.” He held up his right hand and eyed the gold braided stripes on his red sleeve. “It’d cost me these, but damned if it might not be worth the sacrifice.” He pushed himself from the chair, more comfortable by far than his usual perch in engineering. There were some benefits to command, after all. Catching Uhura’s eye, he said, “Tell Mister Gonzales that I’ll see him in his quarters in five minutes. And he’ll be alone.”

  “Right away, Mister Scott.”

  He went to the turbolift. When the door whooshed open, he stopped and turned back toward the bridge crew. “And thank you,” he said. “All of you, for your support.” He shook his head. “Our captain does nae have an easy job.”

  • • •

  When he activated the buzzer on the door of the quarters assigned to Gonzales, anger had begun once again to seep through Scott’s thin veneer of control. He wasn’t sure if folks were trying to play him because the captain was away, or if they would have been every bit as ornery with Captain Kirk as they were with him. He suspected the former, though, and it made his blood boil.

  The door opened and Scotty went in. Gonzales was sitting at a computer station, but he rose and extended a hand in greeting. Scotty shook it.

  “Will you sit, Mister Scott?” Gonzales asked. “Options are limited, I’m afraid, but—”

  “I’m not stayin’ long, Mister Gonzales.”

  “I see. This is not a social call, then?”

  “Between engineering and command duties, I’ve little time for socializin’.”

  “Of course.”

  “Before I say any more, I want to remind you of who you represent. The United Federation of Planets, not Ixtolde. I understand your mission is to make nice with ’em, but you remember who you are sworn to serve?”

  “Of course,” Gonzales said again. He returned to his chair by the computer.

  “Here’s the thing. Minister Chan’ya’s lyin’ to us. The Ton’bey is routing power to its weapons systems. They’re no doubt fully powered up and ready to go. That’s only done when a fight is in the offin’, and far as I can tell, there’s nae another ship in the neighborhood but ours and the ones in the dimensional fold. I see no reason for it to fire on those, or us.”

  “Nor do I,” Gonzales said. “Are you certain they aren’t simply testing their systems, running diagnostic checks?”

  “I’m nae certain of a thing, because they’ve stopped talkin’ to us. The ship won’t answer our hails.”

  “Strange.”

  “And Chan’ya says the captain won’t talk to her, either. But we know communications are passin’ between this ship and that one. So somebody on the Enterprise is talkin’ to somebody on the Ton’bey. If there’s conversation, then someone ought to be able to order the Ton’bey to stand down.”

  Gonzales steepled his hands and touched his fingertips to his chin. “Mister Scott, Ixtoldans are very private people. Individually, they’re uncomfortable with others asking them direct questions, or even making direct statements to them. You’ll notice that they don’t even have a pronoun for the first person singular. They exist, more or less, in a bubble of misdirection, making allusions, oftentimes very subtly, to important matters rather than addressing them outright. This personal characteristic is carried out on a societal level, as well. The Ixtoldan power structure is as antagonistic toward direct discussion as individuals are. It makes for . . . interesting diplomacy, let’s say. Interesting, and difficult.”

  “I’m sure it does,” Scotty said. “You make it sound like there’s only one society. Are all Ixtoldan cultures the same?”

  “Oddly enough, there is essentially only one society on the planet, at least one with any power or influence. Part of why we’re traveling there is to make our own on-the-ground determination of the level of advancement of that society, and of how it came to be so homogeneous. So yes, effectively, there’s just the one, and it operates as I’ve described. It is entirely possible that Chan’ya is in regular contact with the Ton’bey, but that since you asked her outright, she could not bring herself to admit it.”

  Scotty felt like his scalp was coming unglued and his brains beginning to leak out of his ears. “How should I have asked her, then?”

  Gonzales closed his eyes for a moment, as if the answer might be inscribed on the insides of his eyelids. “Perhaps something like, ‘If it were possible, would Ixtoldans on board the Enterprise communicate with those on the Ton’bey? And if so, would those on the Enterprise ever consider telling the Ton’bey to power down its weapons?’”

  “Acch,” Scotty said. “I thought Captain Kirk had it bad. But you, you’ve got to talk yourself into knots just to do your job.”

  “It is often difficult,” Gonzales admitted. “We have to try to walk in the shoes of those we negotiate with, metaphorically, of course. If we can’t think like they do, we can’t figure out how best to achieve our own desired results. But like an actor rehearsing a role, sometimes we can get stuck in character, as it were.”

  “Well, if you’ve any influence over Minister Chan’ya, you’d be doin’ us all a service if you can get her to make the Ton’bey stand down. I told its captain that I’d blow the ship to bits if it tries to use those weapons, and I meant it.”

  “I will see what I can do, Mister Scott.”

  “You’d better do it fast, too. Because if they decide to use those weapons on us, at this range, we’ll be takin’ heavy casualties. We won’t be able to guarantee anybody’s safety. Including hers.”

  Twenty-two

  Green beams sliced through the ship’s dimly lit interior. Tikolo had only an instant’s warning, but she dived behind a mound of debris. It wouldn’t hold them off for long, but it gave her time to draw her phaser and try to suss out where her best targets were. She eyed the Romulans through gaps in the mounded furnishings and electronics equipment and who-knew-what else sheltering her.

  She counted six of them. They knew where she had gone and focused their attentions there. Their disruptor beams churned through the rubble. It wouldn’t protect her for long. As soon as she fired back, she would be a target again, and they would all know exactly where to aim.

  The decision was being taken out of her hands, though, as her shield was being rapidly torn away. She sucked in a deep breath and made ready to jump and fire at the same moment.

  Then red beams pierced the empty space to her left. Three Romulans fell immediately, and the remaining three returned fire, shooting toward the newcomers. Tikolo took advantage of the chance to shoot, taking down another Romulan. Someone behind her screamed and she heard a body thud to the deck. She shot a second Romulan, and someone else got the last of them.

  “Greene’s hit!” someone shouted. “Jamal!”

  A huge, muscular, dark-haired man came into view from someplace behind Tikolo. “Are you okay, Miranda?”

  One of the pretenders, those who acted like friends. She didn’t know them, but they had fired on the Romulans, so her first instinct, that she was surrounded by hostiles, must have been mistaken. Now the question was, should she run, or play along?

  “Miranda?” he said again. “They got Greene.”

  Another one joined the first. This one was a woman, tall and broad through the shoulders. She wore a red uniform much like Tikolo’s. The man’s shirt was red, but superficially similar as well. They had spared no effort to carry out their charade. The woman had tears glistening in her eyes and streaks carving through the dirt on her cheeks. “Where do you suppose they came from?” she asked. “Miranda, you said there were Romulans outside—how did you know?”

  Tikolo could shoot them both where they stood. But there were others, just out of her field of view. One down; sh
e couldn’t remember how many that left. If they had gone to such lengths, even faking uniforms, to earn her trust, what was their ultimate goal? They could have shot her as easily, but none of them had raised a weapon toward her.

  The petty officer shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Her head was foggy, and she needed it clear. She had the nagging sensation that she knew something about these people, about their uniforms—and about her own. She could not imagine, for the moment, where she was or why she was in a uniform and carrying a weapon. It felt as natural as breathing, but what did that tell her? Was she a soldier in some army? And what was this bizarre place, with chunks of glowing stone providing scant illumination, dark passageways, walls furred with growth, and stacked detritus behind which one could take cover? She had known that Romulans were attacking, though until the woman had mentioned it, she had forgotten. How had she known?

  Uncertainty swamped her. She didn’t know whom to trust, and that included her own heart and mind. If these uniformed people weren’t her allies, was she actually with the Romulans? How could she find out?

  Another man stepped up beside the woman. He was handsome, in a way, his short hair thinning on top and brushed away from his face. His eyes were brown and soft, his chin hard, his cheeks carved by trenches. But the glowing rocks revealed blood on his hands and a smear of it on his forehead, where he must have touched himself. He looked both familiar and strange, like someone she had seen and remembered, but never actually known.

  Yet he looked at her as if he knew her, and he came toward her, his bloody hands outstretched, with no fear or guile. “Miranda, you’re okay. I was so worried.”

  She shrank away from his touch. Misunderstanding, he looked at his blood-soaked hands. “I’m sorry, Miranda. It’s Jamal’s. I couldn’t save him—maybe if Doctor McCoy were here, but I don’t think even he could have done much. Poor kid was so torn up.”

  “I . . .” Tikolo said. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “The Romulans shot him,” the man said.