The Face of the Unknown

by Christopher L. Bennett

  And he had a neighbor. A human neighbor, a male with sandy hair and bright eyes, dressed in the same kind of gray jumpsuit as Koust.

  “Welcome,” the human said. “I’m Jim Kirk. So what are you in for?”

  * * *

  Within a day, and with help from statements issued by the Council’s Kisaja press secretary, the mood within the Web of Worlds began to calm. The arrest of Captain Kirk had allowed the populace to feel that justice was being pursued, and the Council’s statement urged the people to remember their customs of friendship toward refugees and not to hold the Enterprise crew responsible for the decisions of its captain. It was not an ideal sentiment, in Spock’s view, but it was sufficient to allow Nisu to grant the crew permission to leave the ship, albeit under protector escort at all times.

  Spock advised the crew to take advantage of this new freedom. “Many of you have already spent time as tourists, making connections among the Web dwellers,” he announced to the department heads. “See where those connections can lead you. In a community this large and diverse, there must be dissent. It is logical to expect that in the immediate wake of a disaster, those who bear grievances against the sitting government will be emboldened. Seek out those who do not agree with the party line. Particularly those who have engineering skills or access to starship technology—as well as those who understand the Web’s tractor systems and how to subvert them. It is still my hope that we can resolve this situation diplomatically. But in the event that we cannot, we must be ready to act.”

  Once the crew had begun mingling, it didn’t take long at all for a dissident faction to approach them. Spock had been concerned that the protector escorts would be an impediment to such contacts, but it turned out that one of the escorts was herself a dissident. Ne-Kewii, a Fiilestii who had survived the module collapse, made contact with Lieutenant Sulu to pass along a message. The Fiilestii warned that the collapse of her module was only the beginning, and she invited the Enterprise’s senior officers to a meeting in Kenaibrara, one of the Web’s nature preserve modules, if they wished to know more.

  Spock attended the meeting in the company of Sulu and Bailey. Most of Kenaibrara’s volume consisted of a tropical rainforest dominated by enormous trees with giant, disk-shaped leaves in hues of magenta and violet. Spock found the humidity most uncomfortable but endured it stoically. Sulu, who numbered botany among his many interests, was far from stoic, reacting to the exotic foliage with considerable enthusiasm.

  Ne-Kewii led them to a small clearing within the forest, then took to the air to ensure the area was clear of eavesdroppers. “All clear,” she announced as she landed in a quadrupedal crouch and folded back her silver-­feathered wings. Spock was reminded of the Greek mythological creature called the sphinx, until Ne-Kewii rose into a more upright posture, resting on her haunches and using her wingtips for added support. “I have sent my partners the signal. They are on their way.”

  Moments later, two more Web denizens emerged into the clearing. One was a Bogosrin male, stockier than Lekur Zan and with golden rather than dark brown fur. “This is Kasan Tor,” Ne-Kewii informed them.

  Spock nodded to the Bogosrin. “Commander Spock of the Enterprise. My colleague Lieutenant Sulu, and Ambassador David Bailey.”

  A hearty tenor laugh erupted from the small, silver-robed figure behind the Bogosrin as he stepped forward into full view. “Mister Bailey needs no introduction. Do you, my friend?”

  Bailey’s face split into a grin. “Balok!” he cried, striding forward to greet the Fesarius commander. “I was worried about you! Where the hell have you been all this time? What was with the cryptic messages?”

  “One question at a time, please,” Balok intoned, still laughing. “I do apologize for the theatrics, but the circumstances made it necessary to keep the triumvirs from knowing of my return. I needed freedom of movement so that I could coordinate with my friends in the underground.” He chuckled. “If you’ll pardon the expression. It doesn’t quite make sense in these surroundings, does it?”

  Ne-Kewii flexed her wings and hissed. “You laugh too easily, Balok. Sometimes at most inappropriate things. Or have you forgotten what has become of my home ground?”

  “Certainly not,” Balok went on, abruptly displaying a steel and solemnity that were quite incongruous on his childlike, gap-toothed countenance. “I’m here, am I not? I brought them, did I not?”

  “Yes, he did,” Kasan Tor said, addressing his words to Ne-Kewii. The Fiilestii dug her foreclaws into the soil and stilled herself.

  Sulu stepped toward her, offering a mollifying gesture. “I was on the module when it fell,” he told her. “I saw it all. Believe me, we understand your loss.”

  Ne-Kewii appeared to appreciate his words. “You are not the ones to blame,” she said. “And my people have lost our home before. The First Federation used to be about reaching out to the homeless and lost, giving them safe refuge. But these days, we’ve become too insular. The government values concealment above all else. They’re so concerned with protecting our physical existence that they don’t realize how much they’ve eroded our soul.”

  “Come on, Ne-Kewii,” Kasan said. “You promised you wouldn’t turn this into an ideological thing.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I know. I could quote it from memory, you’ve said it so many times.” The Bogosrin turned to Spock. “The point is, all this hiding is endangering our physical existence too. The Web has become a greater danger to itself than any invader could be.”

  “Please elaborate,” Spock invited.

  “What happened to Fiilestii wasn’t your fault,” Balok said.

  Bailey looked up sharply. “It wasn’t?”

  “No, my friend, no. It was the end result of instabilities that have been building up for a long time.”

  “More or less, yeah,” Kasan said. “Could’ve happened anywhere, but it hit there first. Will happen again if we don’t change our ways.”

  “What is the nature of these instabilities?” Spock asked.

  “You know how we hide ourselves, right?” the Bogosrin went on.

  Spock nodded. “You modify the circulation and thermal distribution of the atmosphere, as well as the dynamics of the planetary magnetic field, to cancel out the effects of the Web’s presence within them.”

  “In brief, yes,” Balok said. “Now, tell me, Mister Spock, speaking as a scientist: Does that sound like a stable system to you?”

  Spock raised a brow. “The First possess a greater understanding of the relevant technologies than I do. However, it has occurred to me to wonder how such suppression of the atmosphere’s natural circulation could be maintained over the long term without negative consequences.”

  “Well, here’s your answer,” Kasan replied. “It can’t.”

  Bailey frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you,” the Bogosrin went on. “There’s a whole lot of energy in Cherela’s atmosphere. A lot of heat and movement. You want to make the Web invisible, you have to control that energy, make it flow the same way it would if the Web weren’t there at all. But you have to use energy to do that. And that energy, that heat, gets added to the atmosphere. So you have to make that energy invisible too. Which means you have to use more energy, which—”

  “I see,” Sulu said. “Sooner or later you hit a point of diminishing returns. All that energy keeps building up in the system until you can’t hide it anymore.” Spock was reminded that Sulu had served as an astrophysicist before transferring to flight control.

  “It’s much more complex than that, Lieutenant Sulu,” Balok told him. “There are ways to balance the system—to recycle the energy back into the grid, or to let it leak out at levels too low to affect the weather. But this Web of ours is an immensely intricate system whose concealment depends on maintaining many different kinds of equilibrium at once. Imagine your
mythical Atlas balancing the world on his shoulders.” The Linnik commander grinned. “Now imagine him as a juggler.”

  “And the atmosphere’s even more intricate,” Ne-Kewii said. “The builders of the Web were so confident they could master all its complexities, but that was pure arrogance.”

  “Now, be fair,” Kasan growled. “My forebears—and Balok’s—did an impressive job with the Web. The problem is that the system they designed worked at the size they originally built it. Over the millennia, as we kept building more and more world modules, it put more strain on the system and the atmosphere. We’ve tried to upgrade the atmospheric regulation systems, the magnetic and gravitational control networks, and so on to keep pace with the growing demands. But again, it comes down to heat. The more modules there are, the more waste heat they generate, and the harder that is to contain.”

  “And the larger and more complex the system gets,” Balok added, “the more opportunities there are for Atlas to fumble—for components to fail or to interact in ways that create progressive instabilities.”

  “Instabilities both in the Web and in the atmosphere it occupies,” Spock interpreted.

  “That’s right,” Kasan told him. “And they feed back on each other. These storms we’ve been getting lately, the flaws in the concealment grid that let you detect us . . . the government insists they’re just a natural fluctuation like Cherela’s had many times in the past. But they’ve been getting steadily worse for years now. There’s a trend the Council won’t admit to, because it would mean admitting that continuing to build up the Web and keep it hidden indefinitely is a failed policy. Ghrrr, now it would mean admitting that their policies caused the destruction of Fiilestii, and they’ll never admit to that.”

  “So we . . . we didn’t cause the module to collapse sooner?” Bailey asked with great relief in his voice.

  “Hard to say, really,” Kasan said, oblivious to Bailey’s sense of culpability. “The situation there was profoundly unstable. The storm, the gravity failures, the structural upheavals . . . there were so many volatile things happening at once that it’s impossible to pin the final collapse on any one factor. The triumvirs want to think your gravity feed caused the system overload because Lekur can’t believe his precious systems could go that wrong on their own. But at most, it was the final push that toppled an already-failing system. If it hadn’t been that, the next lightning strike might’ve pushed things over the edge.”

  “And if Captain Kirk hadn’t attempted to hold Fiilestii with tractor beams,” Balok said, “it might have collapsed even sooner. I, for one, believe that far more people would have died without the Enterprise’s involvement. Captain Kirk is being made a scapegoat when he should be called a hero.” He smiled up at Bailey. “You all should.” Bailey smiled back, clasping Balok’s shoulder.

  Spock raised his brows. “I am sure the crew of the Enterprise will appreciate that sentiment as much as the ambassador does. However, I assume it was not the sole reason you requested this meeting. You believe we can do something to advance your cause.”

  “That’s right,” Ne-Kewii said. “Your interests coincide with ours. Together, we may be able to save the Web from its current leadership.”

  “I must inform you that our Prime Directive forbids us from taking sides in internal disputes. We would certainly be willing to mediate negotiations between you and the sitting government, but if you seek to solicit military assistance in a coup, that would not be possible.”

  Balok laughed raucously. “Oh, yes. A war. Just what we need when the Web is already starting to tear itself apart around us.”

  Kasan Tor’s reply was more sober. “Mister Spock, we’ve lost modules before, but never as suddenly and violently as Fiilestii, and never when the system as a whole was so overloaded and close to failure. Fiilestii’s collapse was just the beginning of the avalanche. It’s left a hole in the grid that was keeping the atmospheric forces in check, and what’s left is too unstable to hold them in. If we don’t make some drastic changes, then all of Cherela’s repressed fury is going to break free and tear the Web apart with storms that will make the last one look like a gentle drizzle.”

  “What kind of changes are you talking about?” Sulu asked.

  “The only way the Web can survive, Mister Sulu,” Balok said, “is if we stop trying to suppress the atmosphere’s response to our presence within it. We have to let the natural forces flow freely and find a new equilibrium, one that we’re an integral part of rather than one we’re fighting against.”

  “I see,” Spock said. “A simple, elegant, and obvious solution. But one that would permanently alter Cherela’s cloud layers and thermal profile, thus advertising the Web’s existence to outside observers.”

  “Exactly,” Ne-Kewii said. “Hiding here is killing us.”

  “But the Dassik are out there,” Sulu pointed out.

  “Yes, they might find us,” Balok said. “But we are stronger now than we were twelve thousand years ago, and they . . . well, they are weaker than they were. And if we do nothing,” he finished with a shrug, “then soon there will be nothing for them to find in any case.”

  “I presume you have made the government aware of your conclusions,” Spock said.

  “We’ve tried many times,” Kasan replied. “They don’t want to listen. They’re so afraid of what’s out there that they refuse to believe our findings. They dismiss them as ‘fearmongering speculations.’ The only scientists they’re willing to listen to are those who tell them what they want to hear.”

  “Are you hoping we can convince them?” Sulu asked. “I mean, if it comes from outside, not just from people they’ve already dismissed . . .”

  “They won’t listen,” Ne-Kewii said. “It doesn’t matter what the source is. Their power is based on their success at keeping us hidden. They’ll never admit they’ve been wrong to do that. They’ll absolutely never admit their own policies are murdering the Web.”

  “And let’s face it,” Kasan said, “considering they just threw your captain in jail and refused to let you leave, you’re not exactly high on their list of people to trust right now.”

  “Yes, they are fearful,” Balok said, his voice as serious as Spock had ever known it to be. “Fearful of outsiders. Fearful of losing power. Fearful of being proven wrong. We have become a people too enslaved to our own fear, and it is destroying us. But that is exactly why I believe humanity can help us.”

  Spock studied him. “The tests you conducted,” he said. “You were assessing more than the threat we posed to the First Federation.”

  “Quite right, Mister Spock. That is how I presented the program to the triumvirs, of course, but I had an ulterior motive. Since our own government would not accept the truth, I knew we needed allies. We needed the help of someone who offered not merely technological advancement, benevolence, and mercy, but some deeper, more ineffable quality as well.” He turned to Bailey. “It was you, David, who showed me that quality at last—the quality that led me to invite you aboard as an ambassador.”

  The lieutenant shook his head, nonplussed. “What quality, Balok? What was so special about me?”

  “Your fear.”

  It was not the flattering answer Bailey expected. “Excuse me?”

  Balok chuckled at his reaction. “Of all the stalwart officers on your bridge, as you faced my Mister Hyde and his deadly ultimatum, you were the most fearful. The one least in control of his terror, most ready to lash out at the thing you feared.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Balok took the lieutenant’s hand in his own far tinier one. “And yet, in time, you learned to overcome that fear. More, you volunteered to face the very thing you had feared so much before—even to reach out a hand of friendship to it. And when I offered you an opportunity to get to know us better, you leaped at it. The same passion that fueled your fear, the same dissatisfaction with your lot in li
fe, was transformed into the ambition to learn and grow. All it needed was a shift in direction from a negative response to a more constructive one.

  “Through you, friend David, I learned that fear could be overcome. I saw how humans had the capacity to learn from their fears and failures and transform them into strengths. And I hoped that you, and your people, could help our leaders learn to make the same transformation in themselves.”

  Bailey was dumbstruck, blinking rapidly. Sulu chuckled and thumped him on the back. “Always knew you had it in you, kid.”

  The younger lieutenant cleared his throat. “But if that’s so, Balok . . . why didn’t you just bring me here? Why keep me out on the Fesarius for three years?”

  “What’s the matter? Didn’t you like my ship?”

  “Come on, Balok, enough joking around.” The Linnik commander merely stared up at him with a very boyish pout. “Okay, I like the Fesarius fine. Now will you answer the question?”

  “Oh, very well,” Balok said after a further moment’s pondering. “But surely you can see that with a culture as . . . well, as timid and committed to concealment as ours, I couldn’t just bring you here and solve our problems with one lecture. I knew it would take time to convince them you were safe and trustworthy. And I couldn’t let on what my deeper goals were, of course. I was trying to be subtle. I thought I would have much more time to influence matters, to nudge the triumvirs until they were ready to learn from your example. To strengthen the ties between our Federations to a point where they would trust you enough to accept your aid. I had expected that to be the work of decades, perhaps generations.”

  “Decades? You were gonna string me along for decades?”

  Balok ignored the lieutenant. “But matters have become urgent far faster than we anticipated. Especially with the Dassik suddenly showing up again. Which is a whole other story in itself,” he finished with a hint of unease.