HISTORIAN'S TIMELINE 2061 Zefram Cochrane returns to Earth's solar system after the first successful faster-than-light voyage to Alpha Centauri. 2079 Earth endures the Post-Atomic Horror as it recov- ers from World War III. 2117 At the age of 87, Zefram Cochrane leaves his home in the Alpha Centauri system and disappears in space. 2161 In the aftermath of the Romulan Wars, the Federa- tion is incorporated and Starfleet is chartered. 2267 In the second year of Captain James T. Kirk's first five-year mission aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701, Kirk and his crew discover the Guard- ian of Forever. In the third year, Kirk, Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Federation Commissioner Nancy Hed- ford encounter Zefram Cochrane and the Compan- ion. Later that year, Ambassador Sarek comes aboard for passage to the Babel Conference. 2269-70 Following the completion of the first five-year mis- sion, Kirk is promoted to admiral; Dr. McCoy and Spock retire from Starfleet. 2295 The Excelsior-class U.S.S. Enterprise NCC- 1701-B is launched from spacedock on its maiden voyage. 2366 In the third year of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's ongoing mission aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Ambassador Sarek comes aboard for passage to Legara IV. Several weeks later, the Borg attack Federation territory for the first time. 2371 Captain Picard returns to Earth's solar system following the incident at Veridian III. Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the myswries of time, still he will be beginning. --H. G. Wells Things to Come 1936 PROLOGUE ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER ELLISON RESEARCH OUTPOST Stardate 9910.1 Earth Standard: Late September 2295 Kirk knew his journey would be ending soon. That feeling overwhelmed him even as he resolved from the transporter beam and felt the gravity of this world reassert its hold on him--a hold it had never once relinquished over all the years, all the parsecs, which had passed from that first time to now. All that had happened since that first time was but a heartbeat to him, as if his life were dust streaming from the tail of a comet, without mass, without consequence, measured only by the moment he had first arrived at this place, and by the moment of his return. It had been twenty-eight years since he had first set foot here, and Kirk had no doubt that he would never do so again. He could hear Spock's patient voice in his mind, blandly noting the illogic of that conclusion, given that the unexpected was all too common in their lives. But in some matters emotions took precedence. Which is why he had returned. Everything was coming to an end. No matter what Spock concluded, no matter how McCoy argued, Kirk's heart knew the truth of that feeling. This is the last time .for so man3' things, Kirk thought, falling into the litany that had grown in him since his retirement. Soon Would come his last passage by transporter. His last look at JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS starlight smeared by warp speed. His last glimpse of fleecy skies and Earth's cool, green hills. He thought of the old song for space travelers, written before spaceflight had even begun on Earth. He was saddened that he could not recall all of it. "Captain Kirk, we are honored by your visit." The words caught Kirk by surprise, though he knew they shouldn't have. The speaker was a young Vulcan woman, Acad- emy fresh, standing at attention before the slightly raised trans- porter platform in the outpost's central plaza. Kirk guessed her age as no more than twenty-five years Earth standard. He hesitated on the platform, thinking back. When she had been born, he'd been returning home. The first five-year mission almost at an end. An admiralty waiting for him. Kirk cast back to the memory. He had not gone gentle into that good night. His time as a deskbound admiral had lasted less than two years. Two years of going to bed each night on Earth knowing that she was orbiting above him, being readied for another mission. And each night he had known that she would not leave spacedock without him, Starfleet and all its admirals be damned. Kirk had been right. V'Ger had come to claim the world and Kirk had beaten the odds again. As he always would. No, Kirk thought. Had. Past tense. He was sixty-two years old. McCoy told him he could look forward to one hundred and twenty, even more. But the trouble with odds was that you could never really beat them, just avoid them for a while. Spock would be the first to admit that, in time, everything evened out. That was one way of looking at death, Kirk knew, the inescapable evening out of the odds. The thought brought him no comfort. "Captain Kirk?" the Vulcan began, a polite query in her tone. "Is everything all right, sir?" "Fine, Lieutenant," Kirk said. Even though he was finally, unthinkably, retired from Starfleet, a civilian again, however unlikely, the Fleet always remembered her own and this, his last rank, would be his forever. He stepped down from the platform, hearing the whisper-soft grinding of fine red dust beneath his boot. He smiled at the Vulcan, and because Spock had been his friend for thirty years, he FEDERATION could see an almost undetectable shadow of emotion cross her face. Kirk blinked and looked again at the rank insignia on the white band of her tunic. He corrected himself: "Lieutenant Commander." He supposed he should wear his glasses more often. But a lieutenant commander at twenty-five? Could the Academy really be making them that young now? Couldlreally be that old? "May I show you to your quarters, sir?" The Vulcan nodded to indicate a collection of prefab habitat structures a few hundred meters away, assembled within a clearing in the ruins of the city.. ? or whatever it was. A quarter-century of study by the Federation's best xenoarchaeologists had been unable to reveal the purpose of this place, only that its primary structures were at least one million years old, and the age of its oldest structure was exactly what Spock had later surmised: six billion years. There was a time when the significance of such antiquity had been overwhelming to Kirk. The central stones of this place had been carved and assembled before life had ever arisen on Earth, before Earth herself had coalesced from the dust and debris surrounding her sun. But now six billion years was merely an abstraction--a mystery he would never comprehend in his lifetime, just another fact to be placed aside, abandoned, with so many other unattainable dreams of youth. "No, thank you," Kirk said. "I'm afraid I won't be staying long enough to make use of any quarters. The Excelsior will be arriving shortly to pick me up." "The staff will be disappointed to hear that, sir." Kirk noted that the Vulcan hid her own disappointment well, as she did her disapproval that Starfleet's flagship had been relegated to provid- ing a civilian with taxi service. That's not how Captain Sulu had viewed Kirk's request for a favor, but Kirk understood how others might see it. "As you are one of the few people to have interacted with the device," the Vulcan added, almost boldly, "we had looked forward to hearing of your encounter in your own words." Kirk looked around the plaza, anxious to continue without further conversation. "It's all in my original logs. I'm sure they Offer more detail than I could recall today." JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS In what was, for a Vulcan, surely a near act of desperation, the lieutenant commander impassively asked, "Is there nothing we can do to have you extend your stay with us?" "No," Kirk said. It was that final. In less than two months the Excelsior-class Enterprise B would be launched from spacedock. Kirk wasn't certain what was drawing him back to Earth for that occasion. He had no intention of ever again setting foot on a starship as anything other than a passenger. He still recalled too well the haunted look on Chris Pike's face when they had spoken the day Kirk had taken command of the first Enterprise. From that first day, that first hour, somehow Kirk, too, had known that that was how his own journey would end. With the Enterprise, or her namesake, going on without him. Even here, it made him uncomfortable to contemplate that moment to come in his future. There had been so much he had wanted to accomplish, so much he had accomplished, and yet the two never seemed to overlap. Forty-six years in Starfleet, and his losses still seemed to outweigh his gains. Kirk caught sight of a distinctive pillar at the far edge of the plaza. Floodlights had been set up on slender tripods around it, changing the dark color of the stone he remembered to something lighter. There was writing on it as well, intricate lines of alien script like the overlapping edges of waves on a beach. He didn't remember having seen writing there before, but no doubt the archaeologists had cleaned away the encrustations of millennia. "That way, isn't it?" Kirk asked, already walking toward the pillar, knowing what he would find beyond. "Yes, sir," the Vulcan said. She fell into step beside him, her tricorder bouncing against her hip as she hurried to match his stride. "If I may, sir, as you know, it gave no indication that the conversation of stardate 7328 would be its last communication with us." "And that surprises you?" Kirk interrupted. He picked up the pace before she could answer. He felt he was swimming in sensations--the taste of the bone-dry air that drew the moisture from his lungs, the lightness of the gravity, the slight reediness of sound distorted by the thin atmosphere. He was thirty-four again, FEDERATION filled with purpose, pushing eagerly at the edge of all the boundaries that encompassed him. "Surprise connotates an emotional response," the Vulcan said primly, "which has no place in a scientific investigation." Her response, all too predictable, wearied him. Such earnest- ness was best served by youth. Let her devote the next four decades of her life to this mystery if she would. Kirk no longer had that luxury. ? 'Instead," she continued, "it could be said we were perplexed by its silence, especially in light of the conversations you reported with it, and its apparent willingness to answer any--" "Yes, fine, very good, Lieutenant Commander." Kirk let the sharp words spill out of him, anything to have her stop talking. "If I could just have a few moments..." He sensed her falter beside him and he walked on, alone, past the pillar and the floodlights, around a fallen wall, a tumble of columns, and--yes!--there--right where he remembered it. Right where it had remained through all these years, haunting him, forever haunting him, just as its name had foretold. The Guardian of Forever. A large, rough-hewn torus, three meters in diameter. A reposi- tory of knowledge. A passageway into time. Its own beginning and its own ending. A mystery. Perhaps, the mystery. Kirk paused and gazed upon the Guardian. Like the pillar, its color was different, changed by the floodlights that ringed it. There were sensor arrays nearby as well, sheets of gleaming white duraplast on the ground around it to keep the soil from being disturbed by the many scientists who toiled to learn its secrets. Kirk gazed upon the Guardian, and remembered. .4 question. Since before ),our sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question .... Those had been the first words the Guardian had spoken to him. An investigation of temporal distortions had brought the Enterprise to this world. McCoy had accidentally injected himself with an overdose of cordrazine and in fleeing his rescuers had passed through the Guardian into Earth's past. There he had changed history so that the Federation never arose, so that the JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVt Entelj2rise no longer flew through space, so that Kirk and Uhura and Spock and Scott were trapped in this city, on the edge of forever, with their only chance of restoring the universe they knew waiting in the past. Kirk closed his eyes, the cruel memories still alive within him. The universe had been restored. The Enterprise returned to him. And the price had only been the death of one woman. The one woman he had truly loved. Her name formed on his lips. "Edith," he whispered. Kirk knew the Vulcan would hear him, but he no longer cared. Caring was for youth, and at this moment, Kirk felt as old as the stones of this place. He walked across the ruddy soil until he came to the duraplast sheets. A permanent static charge repelled the dust and kept the sheets clean. His boot heels clicked across their hard, slick surface. He heard the Vulcan follow. Now, no more than a meter from it, Kirk stopped to study the mottled surface of the Guardian. It had glowed when it spoke so many years ago, pulsing with an inner energy no one had ever been able to trace to a source, just as they had been unable to replicate whatever mechanism had initially allowed the Guardian to act as a gateway through time. The most detailed sensor scans possible consistently reported that the Guardian was no more than a piece of granitic rock, hand-carved, and that was all. "Perhaps you could ask it something, sir," the Vulcan sug- gested, after a moment of respectful silence. There were a thousand questions Kirk could think to ask. Perhaps that was why he had returned. But for now, none seemed worth asking. "Do you really think it would do any good?" he asked. He glanced behind him and saw the Vulcan staring intently at the Guardian, as if that simple question asked in a familiar voice might stir the intelligence locked within the stone. "The Vulcan Science Academy spent years in conversation with the Guardian, sir. It offered virtually infinite knowledge, ours for the mere asking. But--" Kirk held up his hand to stop her. He knew the story. The )N Guardian did claim to be the repository of infinite knowledge, present, past, and future. But it seemed that there were inherent limitations to the languages of the Federation and the minds of the scientists who had engaged the Guardian in conversation. Too many times the Guardian had said it was unable to respond until a more precise question had been asked, yet it provided no clues a> to how particular questions might be framed more precisely. A human scientist had summed up eight years of frustrated ~-esearch by equating the total of recorded conversations between the Guardian and humans to an exchange that might be expected between a human and dogs. The smartest, non-genetically engi- neered dogs might have a vocabulary of five hundred words, and comprehend a handful of actions and even abstract concepts such as direction and the duration of short periods of time. But what about the other hundred thousand words a dog's master could use? What hope did a dog have of understanding its master's philosophy and biochemistry and multiphysics? How could a dog even attempt to respond to its master in the human's own spoken words? It was frustrating and humbling for humans to be rele- gated to the status of mute animals, knowing no way to reach up to the Guardian. The scientist had bitterly concluded that the researchers at Ellison Outpost had spent eight years conversing with a stone, and had gotten exactly the same results as they might get from asking questions of any rock. A few months later, the Guardian had ceased to respond to questions at all, as if confirming the scientist's assessment. The Vulcan kept her face blank, but her next words, to Kirk's attuned ears, were a plea by any other name. "I would find it most interesting if you would ask it a question, sir." Kirk nodded. It was a small enough request. In a few minutes, a few hours at most, he would be gone, but the Vulcan would still ~vork here. Why leave her with regrets? He turned to the Guardian, focusing on its wide opening through which the other side of the plaza was clear and unob- structed. The ruins beyond stretched to the horizon. "Guardian," Kirk said in a firm, commanding tone, "do you remember me?" 8 9 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS The Vulcan betrayed her extreme youth by holding her breath in audible anticipation. An instant later, she remembered the tricorder at her side and brought it up to check its readings of the mute stone. "Guardian," Kirk repeated, "show me the history of my world." The space bound by the circle of stone was unchanged. Kirk turned to the Vulcan. "I'm sorry," he said. And in an abstract way, he was, even though the mysteries of the Guardian had moved beyond his concern. "Thank you for trying, sir," the Vulcan said. Then she switched off her tricorder and stood with her hands behind her back, as if she were stone herself and had no intention of leaving his side. In the past, Kirk might have paused to consider a polite way to ask what he asked next, but time had become more important than hurt feelings these days. "Lieutenant Commander," he said, "I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone here." The startled Vulcan hid her surprise again, though not as well as the first time. "Is anything wrong, sir?" "I wish to meditate." It was a lie, of course, but one with which no Vulcan would argue. "Of course, sir," the Vulcan said. She began to walk away. Kirk turned back to the stone. Then he heard her footsteps stop. He looked back at her. A wind had sprung up. Her severely cut hair fluttered against her pointed ears. "Sir," she called out over the growing wind, "this outpost has standing orders that personnel are never to step through the opening in the Guardian. We do not know if or when it might become operational again." "Understood," Kirk called back, and the Vulcan left him. He was alone with the Guardian. He stared through the opening. Is this what I've come back for? Kirk thought. With no more future before me, did I hope in some way to return to the past? The wind gusted and Kirk felt himself pushed toward the stone, caught in a swirl of obscuring dust that made his eyes water and FEDERATION his throat raw. He reached out a hand to steady himself. The Guardian was cold to his touch. He felt tired. He thought of the stateroom Sulu would have for him on the t.lw'c/s'ior. A soft bed. He could even turn down the gravity to ease the ache in his back. The old knife wound he had gotten just before the Coridan Babel Conference so many years ago had been coming back to taunt him of late. Assisted by too many other past injuries. too many sudden transports into different gravity fields. "Has it come to this?" Kirk asked the wind and the dust. "Will there be no more worlds to explore? No more battles to fight?" The Guardian was silent. Just as Kirk had known it would be. There would be no more miracles for him in this universe. He had captured a part of it in his life, imprinted a thousand worlds in his mind, had experiences and adventures that humans of centuries past could not conceive, and which humans of centuries to come could never repeat. He should be content with that, he knew. But he wasn't. For all his confidence, his bravado, his skills and talent and drive to be the best, in his heart, at his core, there were doubts. Too many words left unsaid. Too many actions left undone. Too many questions gone unanswered. And now, with the journey's end in sight, with the knowledge that it was time to put aside those things left unfinished, Kirk was not ready. His doubts tortured him. Edith, his love, in a roadway of old Earth, the truck rushing for her... David, his son, on the Genesis planet, with a Klingon knife above his heart... Garrovick, his commander, and 200 crew facing death on TychoIV... For all that Kirk had done, had he done enough? Could anyone have done enough? Or was it all without meaning? Was life a simple tragedy of 10 11 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS distraction from birth to death, with no more purpose than this stone before him? Kirk knew his journey would be ending soon, and this far into it, he still did not understand what had driven him to take it, nor long to continue it. Alone, he whispered a single word to the wind and the dust. "Why?" And for the first time in two decades, the Guardian of Forever answered .... Part One BABEL 12 THORSEN ]'he Eugenics Wars of the late twentieth century were more than lifiY years in the past, but the evil that had spawned them lived on. Ha,'ed, intolerance, unrestrained greed, all those qualities which defined humaniO, so well, proved fertile ground as always. ,q ,k, eneration unborn at the turn of the millennium grew up with a /~lscination for those who had promised order and salvation in the mi&t of chaos. In the worm of the mid-twenty-first century', crumbling beneath the environmental outrages of the twentieth, that promise was a heady dream. A perfect worm was possible if ,n/~' the mistakes made by Khan Noonien Singh and his followers could be avoided. Adrik Thorsen was one of that generation determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. He heard the call of the supermen whispered through the ages, predating even Khan. He rallied beneath the red banners and dark ea~,/e ~/' the Optimum Movement. He wore the red urnform of Cob;he/Green. He awoke each day with the knowledge that the desUny of the world, of all humanity, lay in the hands of those who h~d the will to take drastic, necessary action. .4drik Thorsen had that will, and in the mid-twenO,-first century, 15 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS in pockets of despair, regions overcome by anarchy and hopeless- hess, Thorsen was allowed to enact his policies. His quest.for perfection began with the weeding out of the unfit. Those who were less than optimal, by infirmit),, by geneties, then by religious belie~ and political persuasion, were the first to be coded ,for deletion. In those earl), days, killing children for the sins off their parents had been distressing to Thorsen. But in time he came to see the anguish he experienced, and then transcended, as a sign of his own growing perfection. True to his own theories, Adrik Thorsen was becoming optimal. If the world would only follow in his footsteps, he could lead all humanity to an era of peace and prosperity that would surpass all understanding. But his progress tormented him because he knew that whenever great men such as he dared dream great dreams, inevitably there were those who would attempt to drag them down. By their very opposition, he considered his opponents to have proven themselves less than optimal. Thus, they, too, could be coded for deletion with all the others unfit to share the world. As he journeyed on his own inner search for the Optimum, Adrik Thorsen's dream consumed him. Then it consumed his own pocket of the world. In time he was certain it would consume the world itself and Paradise would follow from that moment as surely as night followed day, as constant as a law of nature. But ,first Thorsen understood he must vanquish the laws of histor)'. The biggest mistake that had been made by Khan's supermen was that they had lost. Adrik Thorsen would not permit that mistake to be made a second time. Thus on the morning of ;l/larch 19, 2061, Thorsen himself led the mission against the WED Research Plat/brm, geostationary orbit, Earth. Six carbon-shelled, single-passenger orbital transfer units carried Thorsen andfive trusted troopers to within two kilometers off the corporate space station, undetected by proximiO' radar. The transfer units were jettisoned and the final approach was made in membrane suits, using nonignition maneuvering units. The); made magnetic contact with the station's hull at 01:20 G.xll', precisely as scheduled. Their induction scans showed that no alarms had been triggered. FEDERATION :tl 0l;27 GMT, they detonated the first spinner charge on the zq~link dish, shutting off all communications with the platform's ~,otporate headquarters. Eight seconds later, a series of secondary dctotTations flashed along the staff module, splitting it in two. T17orsen watched with satisjaction as he counted seven platform crew members expelled from the resulting hull breach, arms and /c~s kicking frantically, mouths horrifically gaping with silent cries i, the vacuum. As he had suspected, two of the crew members wore t/l~' bhtc and white unzforms of the New United Nations peacemak- it~,~/brees. It was clear that Thorsen and the Optimum Movement were t7ot the only ones who knew what breakthrough had been ~%~,~itleered at this facility. ,tccording to the operations manifest Thorsen had obtained, ten researchers and an unknown number of peacemakers remained on the platform. By now, the platform ~ automated emergeno' decom- [,'ession procedures would have sealed internal airlocks. It would bc at least .five minutes before any remaining peacemakers could ctr;~l their own membrane suits and launch a counterattack. Tllor,sen and his troopers were unopposed as they jetted directly to t/ze oz~termost arm of the platform, where the revolutionary new test vehicle was stored in its own docking module. Thorsen knew he could not explosively decompress that module without risk of damaging the vehicle itself. And it would be suicide /i,' a~iv of his troopers to attempt entry through the personnel (lir/ock, where they would become a captive target. Accordingly, T/zor,s'en ordered one of his troopers to the airlock to deploy an i~!flatable decoy. The decoy' was the size and shape of a trooper in a ,Tc,Tbrane suit, and would draw the attention and laser fire of any o'cw members inside. At the same time, Thorsen commanded two other froopers to assemble an emergency evacuation blister on the (~,,'side e f the docking module, sealing it to the hull and pressuriz- i~?,, it. 5k)w his forces could breach the module's hull without loss of i~f~'r~zal atmosphere. The vehicle inside would be safe. ,-tt Thorsen 5' signal, the first trooper cycled the inflatable deco), t/,'oz~,h the personnel airlock as the troopers in the evac blister used c'z~tiqk' lasers to breach the hull. The two troopers floating near Thorsen, ten meters away from 17 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS the module, watched for the approach of peacemakers from the other airlocks. But whoever remained inside the vehicle storage module did not share Thorsen's respect for rational military action. Before Thorsen's troopers in the evac blister could finish cutting their entry point, a gout of crystallizing moisture exploded from the vehicle airlock doors at the end of the module. Debris blew out with it, meaning both the interior and exterior doors had been opened at once. Thorsen guessed what desperate strategy was being attempted and instantly moved to counteract it. He and the two troopers with him .jetted to the open vehicle airlock door. The .first trooper to arrive was cut in half by a particle beam, his suit and flesh rupturing in an explosion of instantly frozen blood. Thorsen directed a fiy-by-wire fiare pack to the lip of the vehicle airlock door and ignited it. Anyone inside who had seen the flash would be blind for at least thirty seconds. Then he and the remaining troopers flew into the docking module, lasers on contin- uous,fire, tuned for membrane fabric, not for metal or carbon. There were no peacemakers inside, only' unarmed researchers, all but one cowering in their pressure suits. Soon, only that one remained alive. She was in the vehicle itself, a reconfigured Orbital Fighter Escort with a single particle cannon on its nose. The modifications that Thorsen knew had been made to the fighter's vectored impulse drive unit appeared to be all interior. From the outside, it was no different from any other fighter he had piloted. Thorsen ~ troopers on watch outside the airlock door reported that no peacemakers had yet emerged from the other modules. Thorsen conferred quickly with the troopers in the module with him. They c'ould see the researcher in the .fighter through the vehicle's jTight-deck windows. It was dij~cult to assess what she was doing on the control consoles, but it was apparent that the fighter was still locked into position on its launch rails and would not be able to leave without a manual release. Then Thorsen's induction scans alerted him to impulse circuits cycling through their ignition sequence. The researcher was at- tempting to power up the fighter's main drive. Thorsen knew that when the researcher activated it, the plasma venting would kill FEDERATION overtone in the docking module, including her, and the mechanical strain against the launch rails would tear what was left of the entire ?/af/brm apart. Thorsen admired her for her willingness to die for her ideals. He nodded at her with respect as he tuned his laser to optical j).cqtwncies that would pass through the fighter's flight-deck win- dows. Though he forgave her the terror she showed as she saw the muzzle of the weapon point at her,' she died badly', without ~lcceptance of her fate at the hands of her superior. She was obviottsly not optimal. Thorsen thus had no regret as he watched tter lff~,less body slowly spin in the fighter~ cabin. ItJthin ten minutes, the troopers had removed the researcher~' body and Thorsen was strapped into the pilot's chair. Despite the ,todlifications to the vehicle, there were no major changes to the jlifitt controls. He approved. The best innovations were always the ~implest. EJficieno' was always optimal. Thorsen ~ troopers released the fighter from its launch rails and Thorsen used the maneuvering thrusters to gent/), guide the vehicle from the storage module. He told his troopers he would use the particle cannon to decompress the platform's remaining intact modules,' then, when the danger of a peacemaker counterattack /tad been neutralized, the); could board.for the next phase ()f the mission. I[ took Thorsen three minutes to destro), the pla(form. Bodies /1oating everywhere, a cloud of death surrounding the distant Earth. as it always had. In two more minutes, he had used the particle cannon to neutralize his own troopers as well. History' had too often shown that great men were brought down by' those who dared to share the glory for others' actions. Thorsen.felt no remorse because none was warranted. At 02.'11 GMT, Thorsen sent a coded signal to an Optimum listerling post on the moon. The listening post responded with a /li~17t plan that would guide the.fighter to Thorsen'3' meeting with de.sti~Tv. And Thorsen's meeting with destiny would be humaniO"s ~t~rt~ing point as well. Because, as of March 19, 2061, the key to total victory over the Optimum's opposition, and to the resulting emergence' of a new Order and salvation for the world, lay in the hands of a young 18 19 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS scientist named Zefiram Cochrane, who was poised on a threshoM from which he would forever change humaniO'%' place in the universe. Driven by the wings qf history and dreams of salvation for all who were ~vorthy, and determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Adrik Thorsen fiew jbr Titan. His plan was simple, efficient, optimal--whoever controlled the genius of Zqfram Cochrane would control the future of humanity. And as o['March 19, 2061, the future of humaniO' belonged to Adrik Thorsen. ONE CHRISTOPHER'S LANDING, TITAN Earth Standard: March 19, 2061 For just one moment, a fleeting instant of the time his life would span, Zefram Cochrane thought he heard the stars sing to him. He could see them overhead, through the transparent slabs of aluminum that formed the dome over this part of the colony of Christopher's Landing, Earth's largest permanent outpost in near-Saturn space. Beyond the dome, the frozen nitrogen winds of Titan swept away thick orange streamers of crys- tallizing methane and hydrogen cyanide, as they chased the terminator to clear the dense atmosphere for only a few min- utes between the clouds of day and the mists of night, allowing, briefly, dark bands to appear in the sky above. In that darkness, the stars flickered for Cochrane, creating a shimmering jeweled band around the dull yellow arc of Saturn that filled a quarter of the sky, so far from the sun that the light reflecting from it made the enormous planet almost imperceptible in Titan's twilight. Its rings, head-on in the same orbital plane as the moon, Were invisible. In that narrow window of time, between the beginning and end of a day unlike any other in human history, Cochrane stared at Stars he had known all his life, and they were unfamiliar to him. 20 21 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Alone among all humans now alive, as far as he and most others knew, he had seen them as no one ever had. Blazing in deep space. Orbiting a world belonging to another star. Four and a third light-years from Earth. Four months ago. Cochrane closed his eyes to see the stars as he had seen them then, the constellations familiar to billions of his fellow beings shifted to new perspectives never seen before. Four and a third light-years. A world so far away the fastest impulse-powered probes took more than two decades to reach it, and then took more than four years longer to transmit back the data they recorded. And Zefram Cochrane had gone there and returned in two hundred and forty-three days. Faster than any human had ever traveled before. Faster than light. Cochrane blinked open his eyes at the sudden feeling that the stars here were staring down at him with shock and approbation for daring to invade the sanctity of their domain. In response, he felt laughter rise up in him. He couldn't help it. He stamped his foot into the engineered soil beneath his boots and unexpectedly bounced a few centimeters in the moon's half-gravity. The awkward moment as he waved his arms for balance broke the previous moment's spell, and he finally realized that the pleasing harmonies he heard were not from the offended stars above, but from the string quartet that played in the assembly hall of the governor's home adjoining the domed field. The faint melody, festive even over the perpetual background hum of the immense air circulators and muffled howl of the outside winds, sounded like something by Brahms, but he couldn't place it. Cochrane looked down at the bare soil beneath him, the crushed and sterilized decomposed rocks of an alien world in which Earth bacteria worked to change its composition, cleansing it of Titan's octane rain and hydrocarbon sludge. Someday grass and trees would grow here, so that children would run in play and lovers would stroll and old people would sit in contentment on benches by a splashing fountain as they grew old together, gazing 22 FEDERATION up at the stars and knowing that others like them looked back from different distant worlds. Now the laughter that had been growing in him faded and he felt tears form in his eyes for no reason he understood. What books would he never read that were still to be written on those different distant worlds? What poetry would he never under- stand? What music? What paintings, what sculpture, what histo- ries unimagined would play out without him now that the human stage had been expanded to... "Infinity." Cochrane jumped at the word so aptly spoken, startled by the unexpected company. He recognized the voice, of course. His ship, the Bonaventure, had cost more than 300 million Eurodollars, and the precarious state of the world was such that government agencies were not inclined to turn over that level of funding to thirty-one-year-old physicists who had the audacity to question the most basic tenets of nature. But the voice belonged to the man who had paid for his ship--Micah Brack. Brack owed allegiance to no government funding committee or board of directors. The debit slips the tycoon had authorized over the eight years of Cochrane's single-minded pursuit to overturn the Einsteinian mind-set of the Brahmins of modern science had come from Brack's own pocket. Considering that most data agencies placed him among the ten wealthiest individuals in the system, with holdings on every planet and moon humans had colonized, that pocket was virtually without limit. Most of Christopher's Landing existed because of Brack's foresight, and his impatience with those who merely looked up at the stars, unable to grasp the promise they held. In Micah Brack, Cochrane had found a champion, a backer, and most importantly, a friend. '%orry to startle you." Brack put his hand on Cochrane's shoulder, glancing up to see what Cochrane had seen, so far away. He nodded to the sounds of the reception coming from the lit doorways and windows of the governor's metal-walled home. "But they're about to notice the star of their party is missing." Cochrane knew that as well. Since his return to the system, less than fifty hours ago, he had had no time to himself. He wasn't Used to that kind of intrusion. He didn't like it. Never had. And 23 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS he had no intention of ever getting used to it, even though Brack had warned him about the publics probable reaction to news of his accomplishment almost three years ago. At the time of that conversation, they had been out past Neptune, with Sternbach and Okuda, literally bouncing off the walls of the John Cabal, an old lunar ice freighter Brack had refitted as Cochrane's microgravity lab. The freighter had allowed Cochrane and his team to conduct their research light-hours from Earth's military surveillance nets and the gravimetric disruptions of the sun's gravity well. Brack had been with them that day, on one of his infrequent trips from Earth--the day the team's first, hundred-kilogram, fluctuation superimpellor test sled had literally warped itself into a smear of rainbow-colored light and streaked off into something other than normal space-time. Eight minutes later, Cochrane's scanners had picked up the distinctive radiation signature of the miniature particle curtain he had rigged to self-destruct the sled one minute after launch. It had been a drastic measure, but at the time he had known of no other way to cause a continuum- distortion generator to reenter normal space at a precise moment, had no precise idea of how far the sled would travel, and had no way to predict in which directions it might drift while not in normal space. When the signature had been confirmed, the vast, hollow drum of the John Cabal's science bay had echoed with cheers. The sled had traveled eight light-minutes--more than 143 million kilometersrain sixty seconds. The prototype superimpellor was massive in proportion com- pared to the initial test devices Cochrane had used in his twenties at MIT to accelerate electrons to twice the velocity of light. But its size had not lessened the effect of the distortion and it had transported the sled at a pseudovelocity eight times faster than light, corresponding to a relativistic time-warp multiplier factor of 2-'! That day they had toasted farewell to the EinsteinJan universe, drinking hundred-year-old cognac from squeeze tubes~ microgravity was no place for effervescent champagne. It wasn't FEDERATION tha~ Einstein and Hawking and Cross and all the other giants of ph> sics had been proven wrong--the universe had simply opened another window onto its infinite, unpredictable nature for hu- man~, ',o peer through, and a whole new science had to be created to de. scribe phenomena that earlier scientists had never seen. and that same. like Einstein, had refused to imagine. In th;tt refusal, at least, Einstein had been wrong. Because, as ('ochral~e had predicted, and as he had finally given up trying to explain to nonscientists, whose eyes inexplicably yet inevitably dxxcd over whenever multidimensional equations entered the coxvc~:4ation. the effects of relativity were limited to normal space-time alone. Cochrane's subsequent bench tests on rapidly decaying particles had shown that once the superimpellor had entered a fluctuating continuum distortion, the well-known time- dilation effects of very fast-speed travel no longer occurred. Beca~use there was no way for information to be exchanged bct~cen the normal universe and the volume contained within the di~tortionIfor non,, his team continued to remind him-- time could progress within the continuum distortion at the same rate ~t had progressed when it was last in contact with normal space-time, without contradicting anything that had been estab- lished about light-speed being the fastest anything could travel. OF course, Cochrane knew that eventually, given enough 11uc~uation-superimpellor-driven ships visiting enough distant stellar % stems with their own rates of relativistic time, variations in tir:;ckeeping would mount up. He could see that eventually, ~ivcn enough superimpellor-driven spacecraft visiting enough distan~ planets, a whole new technique of timekeeping and date-recording would have to be developed to account for those local rate-of-time variations and relate them to each other in a mean;,ngful, if complex, way. But by slipping the bounds of [~inste]nian space-time, time dilation was no longer a limiting FactoF to the human exploration of space. More importantly, Brack had observed that day, neither was distance. Hewever, Brack had gone on to warn, there was a price that ~ould have to be paid. When Cochrane returned from the stars as the ~r%t human to have traveled faster than light, his name would be uttered in the same breath as Armstrong, Yoshikawa, and 24 25 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Daar. He would no longer be able to lead a normal, low-profile existence--he and his life would belong to the world. To the universe. Judging from Cochrane's reception in Christopher's Landing, everything Brack had said had come true. Cochrane sometimes wondered about the insight or science behind his friend's ability to predict the future. He did it so often and so well. But Brack himself denied having any special gifts. "The events of the future are reflected in the events of the past," he often said. He claimed only to be an attentive student of history. Cochrane looked back up at the dome, but the brief twilight clearing had passed. The mists of Titan's night billowed beyond the transparent slabs, roiling in the external floodlights, as if the colony were a lone oceangoing vessel, plying Earth's North Atlantic in the winter. Cochrane tried not to think about icebergs. "What was that you said about infinity?" he asked his friend. Brack grinned and the years dropped from his face. Cochrane guessed the billionaire was in his fifties, middle-aged for the citizens of Earth's industrialized nations. His short hair was white--Brack paid no attention to fashion or fads--and worn in a style reminiscent of the Caesars. But his eyes sparkled like those of a much younger man, and the smile in his rugged face was always full of the promise of youth. Cochrane guessed having enough wealth to affect the course of human history might give a person reason enough to feel young and energetic, but he often thought there was more complexity within Brack than the man would ever reveal. "I saw you looking at the stars," Brack answered. "So wasn't that what you were thinking? About the new limits to human growth? Or, should I say, that now there are no limits." "But how did you know that u'as what I was thinking?" Brack glanced away, a smaller smile flickering at the corners of his mouth. Cochrane recognized the expression. Brack wasn't going to answer the question. Instead he asked one of his own. "What are the prospects for a colony?" "At Centauri B II?" Cochrane was surprised by Brack's sudden change of subject. He was operating in his business mode now. 26 FEDERATION .-Those surveys were complete before I left," Cochrane answered. ,'They were complete practically before I was born, weren't they?" The whole world knew the prospects for a colony at Alpha Centauri were good, and had for decades. Of the hundred or so known solar systems detected beyond Earth, the Centauri system xvas the most thoroughly mapped, primarily because it was also the closest solar system to Earth's. Seen with the unaided eye, Alpha Centauri was the third brightest star in the sky, though only visible south of latitude + 30?. Its brilliance was due to its closeness and to it being, in fact, a ternary system composed of three separate stars. Alpha Centau- ri A was a spectral-type G2 star, a close twin to Earth's own sun, gravitationally locked to Alpha Centauri B, a slightly larger and brighter K0 star. Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B orbited each other about the same distance apart as the diameter of Earth's solar system. The third stellar component of the system, Proxima Centauri, was a much smaller red dwarf star, in excess of 400 times more distant from A and B than they were from each other. Just after the turn of the century, astronomers on Earth, using ground-based, adaptive optic telescopes, had resolved at least two additional bodies in the Alpha Centauri system: two large planets caught up in a complex, oscillating orbital pattern around the A and B stars. The scientific world was shocked by their discovery because common wisdom presumed that no planet could main- rain a stable orbit between two such closely situated stars. In the decades that followed, a new generation of astronomers employed liquid vacuum telescopes on the moon's farside to resolve three more planets in the Alpha Centauri system. One, about the size of Mercury, was locked in an eccentric orbit around Alpha Centauri A. The other two Earth-size planets occupied interweaving orbital paths around Alpha Centauri B, in a region roughly corresponding to that defined by the orbits of Mars and Venus in Earth's solar system. Such an orbital pattern was, of cOUrse. also considered impossible. The charting of the Alpha Centauri system made it a fascinating time to be an astronomer. 27 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Lunar-based spectroscopic interferometry analysis of the five Centauri planets eventually confirmed that one of the two Earth- size planets orbiting B exhibited a strong oxygen-absorption line. Since the planet's size and mass and, therefore, gravity were only a fraction higher than Earth's, and since oxygen is a light enough gas that it would dissipate within a few thousand years under Earth-type gravity, the strong concentration of oxygen in that planer's atmosphere could mean only one of two things--either a completely novel chemical reaction was occurring on the planer's surface, constantly replenishing the supply of oxygen-- --or there was life. The news electrified the world. In the solar system, only on Earth had life taken hold with such success. Mars had merely shown promise. The microfossils excavated from its ancient seabeds had shown the existence of early forms of plankton and archaeobacteria--suspiciously similar enough to forms that had evolved on Earth to lead several scholars to suggest that some agency other than catastrophic meteoric impact had been respon- sible for the same seeds of life being sown on Earth and Mars together. As the new century progressed, uncrewed probes were launched toward the Alpha Centauri system. Most met the same fate as the disappointing Nomad series at the turn of the century, rapidly and inexplicably failing after passing the hellopause surrounding Earth's solar system. The development of efficient, vectored impulse drives led inevitably to a second and third generation of probes launched toward Centauri and other likely extrasolar systems at substantial fractions of light-speed. Though some of these new series also met with unexplained failures and disap- pearances, dozens of probes did succeed, blazing past alien worlds as they transmitted relativistically attenuated data back to Earth. By the time of Cochrane's own birth in 2030, scientists were as certain as scientists could be that a fully evolved, self-regulating, Gala-type ecosystem was flourishing on Centauri B II, just as on Earth. So certain were they that crewed expeditions were launched. But a further series of mysterious failures, culminating in the tragic loss of telemetry from the NASA vessel Charybdis, 28 7 FEDERATION brought an end to the first attempted wave of the human exploration of extrasolar space. Some commentators fond of conspiracy theories even put forward the idea that Khan Noonien Singh and his followers were not frozen in some long-lost sleeper ship. but were prowling the outer solar system, blowing up space probes. keeping their genetically inferior conquerors planet- bound. Whatever the reason for Earth's initial difficulties in pursuing advanced exploration, as the political tensions of the mid-twenty- first century worsened, funding for purely scientific endeavors became less popular and harder to obtain. As had happened so often in human history, Brack assured Cochrane, even with the potential rewards of cooperation and exploration so obvious, humankind once again turned in on itself, becoming insular and distrustful and forgetful of the need to look beyond the im- mediate. There was always a weariness in Brack when he spoke about the incessant repetition of failure in human affairs. Cochrane de- tected that same weariness now. "I know what the scanners say," Brack continued impatiently. "I've seen the simulations, read the reports, the speculations." He gestured dismissively. He was a man who only wanted results. "But what I came out here to ask you, Zefram, is what did Centauri B II look like to you? What did it.feel like.'?" He held out both hands as if beseeching Cochrane. "I know what the oxygen percentage of the atmosphere is. But what did it taste like to breathe alien air? Do you think a man could live there and call it home?" Cochrane recalled the tang of that air: sere, dusty, but filled with the scent of life. After the fact, he knew he had been a fool to slip off his breathing mask even for the few minutes he had allowed himself. Computer analysis had shown the ecosystem of Centauri B II to be DNA-based with the same range of amino acids~more fuel for the fire of those who thought Earth and Mars had been deliberately seeded. There was no way of knowing ~vhat kind of bacteria and viruses he had exposed himself to with those lungfuls of air never before tasted by humans. But other 29 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS than two days of sinus discomfort, and some stinging grit in the corners of his eyes, Cochrane had suffered no ill effects. Maybe he had been lucky. Or maybe humanity was meant to go to other worlds unencumbered. "Yes," he told Brack, numbers and scanners aside. "No night for half the year, but it's a place where people could live with no more hardship than desert equatorial regions on Earth." "Good," Brack said. He winked at Cochrane. "You remember the law of mediocrity?" Cochrane understood the law was a much misunderstood scientific principle, which translated to the lay public as "things are pretty much the same all over." If chemistry behaved a certain way on Earth, then the law of mediocrity suggested that chemistry would behave the same way on a planet a thousand light-years distant, or on Earth a billion years in the past. Cochrane knew what Brack was getting at. "You're thinking that if the first planet we visit in the first solar system we explore has an Earth-like planet, then the galaxy is filled with them." Brack nodded. "And humans will be like dandelion seeds blown on the wind, filling them all." Cochrane smiled at his friend's grandiose dream. "You know how long it would take to establish even a single colony in another solar system--even with the superimpellor? You know how much it would cost?" Brack didn't smile as he answered. "One billion Eurodollars." He held up the fingers of one hand, the thumb folded in. "Four years." Cochrane stared at Brack as the industrialist spread his arms to indicate everything around them. "Think of it, Zefram. A Christopher's Landing-type colony. Fusion generators to begin. Solar and thermal in the second decade. Hospitals, libraries, self-building factories. Drone mines. Even an orbiting space platform for mapping, communication, and ship maintenance and repair. I'm assembling the modular components on the moon as we speak." Cochrane was startled by the news, and by Brack's audacity. "You were that certain I'd succeed?" 30 FEDERATION ..lf you've been in business as long as I have, you learn how to pick winners." Cochrane's eyes narrowed. He wanted to ask exactly how long Brack/lad been in business, even though he knew from experience that that was another topic Brack didn't like discussing. But there were other questions. "Why the hurry, Micah?" Brack thought about his answer, pursed his lips, stared up at the dome. but focused on something only his eyes could see. "In 1838, a British steamer, the Great ~bstern. crossed the Atlantic, Bristol to New York, in fifteen days." He looked back at Cochrane. Cochrane shrugged. He didn't see the point. "It was the first fully steam-powered vessel to make the crossing. Another ship arrived the same day, but it had taken nineteen days to cross from London. Now, the sailing clippers could make the crossing t'aster if the winds were right, but the Great Western moved independent of the winds and the weather. It was technology. Dependable. Repeatable. Fifteen days from London to New York. :\ trip that used to take months." Cochrane waited. "I sense an analogy building." Brack rubbed at his temple, as if he were caught up in a memory instead of reciting facts he had studied. "You know what the American newspapers--they were the data agencies of the time --you know what they said?" 'Tin at a loss." Brack quoted. "'The commercial, moral, and political effects of this increased intercourse, to Europe and this country, must be immense.'" "They were right, weren't they?" Cochrane asked. Brack's eyes burned into him. "And, they said, because of the expansion of business, the rapid spreading of information, and the resulting reduction of prejudice, it would make 'war a thing almost impossible.'" Cochrane shrugged. "Simpler times." "No," Brack said emphatically. "There's never been a simpler time. Never. In all of human history, everything has always been as complex as it is right now. The people change. The technology Changes. But the... the forces at work, whatever it is that drives us to be human, that's always the same." JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Brack looked back at the governor's home. The quartet still played. Cochrane could hear faint laughter mingled with the music--a cocktail party on Titan. He wondered what the newspa- per data agencies of 230 years ago would have thought about that. "Eighteen thirty-eight," Brack continued. "That same year, the Boers slaughter three thousand Zulus in Natal. British forces invade Afghanistan. Eighteen thirty-nine: Ottoman forces invade Syria. Britain and China start the Opium War. Eighteen forty: the Treaty of London unites Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia against Egypt. Steamships didn't do a thing except get troops into battle more quickly. It's never going to end, Zefram." Cochrane thought he saw where his friend was headed with his argument. "You're worried about what's going on back on Earth, aren't you? Colonel Green. The Optimum Movement." But Brack went on as if he hadn't heard Cochrane. "A century later, nineteen forty-four: World War Two." He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. "We actually started numbering them. And all eyes were on television. You know what the data agencies said about that?" "You tell me." "Exactly what they said about steamships!" Brack held his hand to his eyes, recalling something he had read. Or heard. "'Television offers the soundest basis for world peace that has yet been presented. International television will knit together the peoples of the world in bonds of mutual respect.'" Now Brack rubbed his hand over his eyes, as if overcome by a sudden wave of fatigue, not just weariness. "Television! And after Korea, and Vietnam, and Afghanistan, and Africa, and Khan, and Antarcti- ca, war was still with us. And television..." Brack snorted disdainfully. "It's been twenty years at least since anything's been done with it on an international level. It's dead. Steamships are curios for collectors. But people are still people." Across the domed field, the concert ended. Cochrane heard the polite applause. As Brack had said, the guest of honor would be missed soon. "What's your point, Micah?" "They're going to say the same thing about what you've done." "That the fluctuation superimpeller will bring an end to war?" FEDERATION Brack's wry smile didn't do anything to warm his grim tone. "I promise you that that will be the lead editorial on a hundred serxices by the end of the week." -'Well, why not?" Cochrane asked. "I mean, wars are fought over resources, and the superimpeller opens up the galaxy. 'thefts no end to resources now." Cochrane followed Brack's gaze to the governor's home. There were silhouettes in the windows. People looking out, trying to find the man of the hour. Of the century. "Wars are fought because that is what people do," Brack said. "Resources are an excuse, nothing more." Cochrane felt frustration rising in him. Usually, he was all for these philosophical talks with Brack. The industrialist could go on as if time had no meaning for him. But Cochrane was about to be pulled back into the governor's reception. Who knew when he would have five minutes to himself again? "Micah, the superimpeller has no military function, if that's what you're worried about. It can't even be used out here by Saturn without getting twisted up with the sun's gravity well. On Earth, it can't function for more than a nanosecond without self-destructing. Remember Kashishowa?" Brack's expression hardened. "I know it has no military function--the little 'accident' at Kashishowa Station notwith- standing. I would never have funded your work if I had thought otherwise. But no matter what the editorialists say over the months ahead, the superimpeller has no peacefid function, either. It*s technology, Zefram. Neutral. It's only what humans make of it." At last Cochrane saw the question to be asked. "And what should we make of it?" "An insurance policy." Cochrane didn't understand. "War won't end, Zefram. The superimpeller won't do it. Matter replication or teleportation won't do it. Nothing on the thousand drawing boards I fund ever will. But what the superimpeller wi/[ do is make sure the next war won't cause humanity's extinction." "There won't be a 'next' war. The New United Nations--" "Are a joke. There will always be a next war. And each next war 33 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS brings crueler weapons. And the more cruel the weapons, then the more cruel the person who uses them." Brack stepped closer to Cochrane. Someone was in the open door of the governor's home, waving her arm as if calling Cochrane in. "We're ten years from World War Three, Zefram. Twenty at most. The New United Nations is destined to collapse like its predecessors. And a third world war fought with twenty-first-century technology is going to be something from which Earth might never recover. Cochrane frowned as he finally understood what Brack meant. "But Centauri B II will be far enough away not to get involved." within the decade. Centaurl B II and a half-dozen others Perhaps twenty within the same number of years." Cochrane gave his friend a skeptical look. "Not even you can afford to spend twenty billion Eurodollars on twenty extrasolar colonies." "You're right. But I can get four or five started. And when my competitors see me doing it, they're going to think I see profit in it, so they're going to try and beat me at my own game. They'll :' form consortlures. Sell shares. Attach superimpellors to every probe sled and impulse freighter in the system to flood the nearby systems with a wave of exploration ? ? ? and I intend to give them the patents to do it." Cochrane nearly choked. "Give them the patents? After what you spent to develop them?" Brack patted Cochrane on the back. "You've made space travel quick, now leave it to me to make it inexpensive. Trust me, my friend, by the time I'm finished with giving your invention away, they'll be naming planets after you. And by the time any of my competitors figure out I'm just throwing my money away on colonies, with no hope for any kind of reasonable return, it will be too late. A whole industry based on interstellar exploration will have emerged." Brack's eyes narrowed as his most serious tone returned. "An industry that will be able to survive the collapse of Earth." "You re telling me all of human history is a race, aren't your" Cochrane asked. "That we've always been running away from our own worst instincts, and that we always will be." Brack gave Cochrane a look the physicist knew too well. A 34 FEDERATION surprise was coming, and it wouldn't be pleasant. "Zefram, Colonel Adrik Thorsen left Earth two hours ago. He's coming here. To see you." Cochrane felt a chill that had nothing to do with the chill air of Titan. Thorsen was one of Colonel Green's cadre. He was rumored to have quelled a ration demonstration in Stockholm by deploying battlefield pulse emitters designed to be used against armored infantry. The civilians taking part in the demonstration had had no radiation armor. Hundreds had been killed. Thou- sands left impaired, their synaptic connections sundered at a molecular level. Then Thorsen had joined with the Optimum Movement in the Pursuit of Perfection. Perfection was whatever Colonel Green and those of his countless analytical committees said it was. And if something, or someone, or some group of people wasn't perfect, then that thing, or that person or group, didn't deserve to exist. Cochrane understood what Brack had said about history re- peating itself. The coldly efficient bureaucracies of Green's Ana- lytical Committees, the stark design of the interlinked OM triangles, all were just new skins for an old and hideous ideology that should have been consigned to its ashes more than a century ago. "I've had nothing to do with the Optimum," Cochrane said. "Why does he want to see me?" "Don't flatter yourself. He wants to see your ship." "Our ship." '~The point is, he wants to make it his." The answer seemed obvious to Cochrane. "But we won't let him." Brack sighed. "There have been a great many changes while .~ou've been away, Zefram. The Optimum Movement has been expanding its influence. Rapidly. There are some nations on Earth that don't like the way things are going. They're the ones clinging to the illusion of order the Optimum offer, and ignoring the price they'll have to pay." "Well," Cochrane said, his mind working quickly, "if Thorsen leh two hours ago, then we've still got a few days before he gets here. We can work out something tomorrow." 35 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS "Colonel Thorsen will arrive on Titan in nine hours." Cochrane's eyes widened. Whatever vehicle Thorsen was in, he was traveling at almost five percent the speed of light. Impulse drives could boost a space vehicle to that kind of velocity in less than an hour, but the rapid acceleration would crush any living thing on board into a thin organic paste against the aft bulkhead. True, there were specially constructed impulse ships designed to operate at multi-g accelerations with humans aboard, for military or emergency rescue missions, but those required the pilots to be suspended in liquid-filled command capsules, "breathing" an oxygen-rich saline solution to prevent their lungs from being crushed. Crewed ships could reach light-speed velocities without harming their living cargo only through gradual acceleration. But even at a constant, military-standard three-g acceleration, it would take almost five days to achieve the speed with which Thorsen was coming to Titan. "What's he sending? An artificial-intelligence surrogate?" "He's coming himself, Zefram." "Not in nine hours, he's not. This time of year, we're thirty- seven light-minutes from Earth. No human could survive that kind of impulse acceleration." A handful of people were walking across the bare soil to Cochrane and Brack. They only had a minute left to talk undisturbed. "As I said," Brack said emphatically, "there have been a great many changes since you left." Cochrane's eyes widened as he realized what Brack was imply- ing. "Inertial damping?" Brack frowned. "l've spent a fortune trying to develop that over the past thirty years, too. And the breakthrough came out of the R-and-D section of a chain of simulator theaters, of all things." He looked away to gauge the approach of the party guests. "But on the bright side, between your superimpellor and control of inertia, there's not a place i'n the universe humans can't travel." cochrane felt as if he'd been kicked. Control of inertia put the full power of vectored-impulse space travel in the hands of human crews and passengers. The solar system could be crossed in hours. An Earth-moon flight would be little longer than a maglev train 36 FEDERATION trip between San Francisco and New Los Angeles, with more time spent getting out of Earth's atmosphere than traveling the next 380,000 kilometers in vacuum. And Adrik Thorsen, the Opti- mum, was already using that technology. A part of Cochrane wished he could see the specs of an inertial damper. The device, if it were real, might help him overcome some of the superimpellor's engineering shortcomings. But it was human shortcomings that concerned him now. "After all you've just told me about human nature, do we really want the Optimum to spread into the universe?" Brack shook his head. "The Optimum aren't interested in the universe. They're interested in control. And how can they have control if the superimpellor can whisk their potential subjects light-years beyond their influence?" The reception guests were almost upon them. 'Tm guessing Thorsen's coming here to see if he can suppress your invention." Cochrane clenched his fists at his sides. Alone in space, it was easy to convince himself that science was as pure as the numbers glowing on a scanner screen. But being back among the madding crowd, he was once again reminded of how impossible that ideal was. As long as people remained blind to the clarity with which the universe was laid out, there would always be those who would seek to obscure and twist its truths for ugly political and philo- sophical goals. Cochrane could see Brack read that growing sense of resentment and anger within him. "Don't worry," Brack said. "There's no chance he'll be able to suppress anything. I'm giving away the patents, remember? As soon as you download a systems assessment I can include as an engineering supplement, I'm going systemwide to transmit your design theories, your blueprints, and your manufacturing log. By the time Thorsen arrives, the information will already be on its way back to the inner planets. By the time the editorialists start pontificating on the end of war, millions of people will have access to your work. The genie, so to speak, is out of the bottle and will never go back in." Cochrane felt overwhelmed. After so much time alone, his emotions were too rarefied. Though he had never admitted it to anyone, indeed, had taken great pains to deny it, he had looked 37 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS forward to a scientific triumph. He especially had wanted to hear the apologies from those who had scoffed at his work years ago. "I had hoped to publish in the normal way," he said hesitantly. "Peer review. A data conference upon publication. That sort of thing. I... I don't know what to say, Micah." "That's why you're with me, my friend. I do. And this is not the time for things to be done normally. I want humanity to explode out of this system as if a dam had burst." Cochrane wanted that, too. More than ever. More than any- thing. "So what do we do about Thorsen?" Brack lowered his voice as the approaching partygoers came within earshot. "Leave Thorsen to me. In two hours, my yacht will be prepped for launch at Shuttlebay Four. She'll take you back to the Bonaventure. I've got a tug up there now replenishing her." Brack suddenly turned to the approaching guests and held up his hands. "Ladies, gentlemen: an indulgence, please. I'll return him to you in just a moment." Then he put his arm around Cochrane's shoulder and guided him across the soil, away from the excited and slightly annoyed buzz of conversation that grew behind them. Cochrane was annoyed, as well, as he pictured strangers' hands on his ship. "Micah, please. The antimatter field containers are still too sensitive. And I've got to do something about the lithium converter. It only runs at twenty-two percent of---" But Brack cut him off. "There's no time for that, Zefram. Put it in your engineering download. The point is, when the Bonaventure's fueled and stocked, I want you to leave." Cochrane stopped dead. He could tell Brack didn't just mean Titan or near-Saturn space. "As in, leave the system?" Brack nodded. His expression was grim as he heard the partygoers swarming toward them again. "That's right. Far enough out that you can use the superimpellor again." Cochrane grimaced. It would take him two weeks to get far enough away from the sun's gravity well. Two more weeks of being alone in space. "Not for long," Brack added, obviously sensing Cochrane's FEDERATION unspoken reaction. "Just enough that the military nets will lose track of you. Because when Thorsen arrives and finds you gone, they will be tracking you." "And then what?" Cochrane asked. Brack quickly laid out his flight plan, telling Cochrane to reenter the solar system opposite Saturn's present position, then come in like an Oort freighter on a long-fall passage, to rendez- vous with asteroid RG-1522. "I've got a manufacturing setup there," Brack explained. "You can get started on the second generation of the superimpellor. Get the fields up to the volume of a freighter." "And be safe from Thorsen?" 'Tll be honest," Brack said. "Thorsen's just a puppet. I want you safe from the Optimum." "When will that be?" "When they realize that anyone with a few hundred thousand Eurodollars can retrofit an existing space vehicle to make a faster-than-light vessel. And that anyone with a few hundred Eurodollars can book passage on one. When Colonel Green and his cohorts realize they can't stop the spread of the superimpellor, they'll lose interest before they'll admit defeat." There were footsteps immediately behind them. Chiding voices told Brack he had monopolized Cochrane long enough. "Come with me, Micah," Cochrane said impulsively, as if the two of them were still alone. "See what I've seen." Brack smiled with no hidden meanings. "Soon, but not now." He gestured to the bare soil around them. "I've still a lot of work to finish here before I move on"--he waved his hand at the dome and what lay above it--"out there." "What kind of work?" For a moment, the weariness left Brack's eyes. "I want to see the grass grow here, Zefram. A billion kilometers from where it evolved." He patted his friend's arm, almost in a gesture of farewell. "And then, I want to plant a fig tree." Someone handed Cochrane a drink. He felt hands on his arms and back. Conversation, a dozen questions, flew around him. But he looked over at Brack and asked, "A fig tree?" 39 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Brack looked almost sheepish, being parted from Cochrane by the throng that gathered. "From which the Buddha drew enlight- enment. It reminds me of home," he explained. He touched his fist to his heart. "A man's entitled to that." Brack nodded once, then stepped aside with an expression of finality as the crowd bore Cochrane away in triumph, as if he had safely tossed Cochrane into the currents of history but must himself forever remain on the shore. Through the long hours that passed that night, until he stood at the airlock doors of Shuttlebay 4, Cochrane thought of all that Brack had told him, and of Colonel Thorsen hurtling toward him with a technology that had not existed a year ago. But most of all, he thought of Brack's final words. What more could any person want than a home? And what was the purpose of Cochrane's work if not to make the entire universe humanity's home? The thought of home brought back memories of the small house outside London where he had lived with his parents on their last posting. Sitting in the back garden, a few days after his eleventh birthday, playing with a simple plastic wand and tub of soap solution, he had cast shimmering bubbles into the air. The colors had transfixed him that day, along with the reflections caught within reflections when one bubble formed within anoth- er. And for some reason he still did not understand, his mind's eye had suddenly conjured an image of a different sort of bubble twisting around another so that they both popped up in a somewhere-else his young mind could see but not describe. It had taken Cochrane twenty years to work backward from that moment of intuition and create the technology that could do what he had seen so clearly. All because he had sat beneath a tree. Cochrane thought of fig trees then, as Brack's yacht was buffeted by Titan's winds, lifting through them. As the clouds were left behind, Cochrane stared out a porthole to see a distant star, brighter than any other but a star nonetheless, not easily resolved into a disk. Somewhere near it, too faint to be seen, was the home of all soap bubbles, all fig trees. Cochrane's home. 40 FEDERATION Planet Earth. It would be seventeen years before he returned to it, and he would never see Micah Brack again. The ancient race humanity ran to escape its own worst attri- butcs continued, but on this day, unlike any other in human history. for the first time the race's destination was in sight. And though he had not yet fully grasped his position in what would unfold, it was now up to Zefram Cochrane to lead the way. 41 TWO U.S.S. ?NTERPRISE NCC-1701 IN TRANSIT TO BABEL Stardate 3849.8 Earth Standard: November 2267 Kirk knew the inevitable could be avoided no longer. There was no time left to consider the odds, to devise strategies, or even to change the rules. He had to take action and he had to take action Y/OW. His opponents stared at him, their thoughts unreadable. All Kirk could hear was the faint hum of the environmental system's fans, the slow sighs of his ship while she slept, late on the midnight shift. Kirk allowed no emotion to show on his face as he reached forward. All eyes were on his hand. He dropped five tongue depressors onto the pile on the shim- mering fabric of the medical diagnostic bed, and in his most authoritative voice, he said, 'Tll see your five." Without expression, Sarek of Vulcan, son of Skon and grandson of Solkar, turned over his cards. Kirk lost control of his own expression as he stared at the ambassador's poker hand. A pair of sixes. Kirk sat back in the chair he had set up beside the ambassador's bed in the Enterprise's sickbay. "You were bluffing," he said. FEDERATION Sarek blinked. He looked over at Spock, who sat placidly in a second chair, wearing his blue medical jumpsuit and black tunic as if they were a formal uniform. "It is the nature of the game, is it not?" Sarek asked. Spock nodded sagely. "Indeed." Kirk didn't like the sound of that. There was something wrong here. "Spock, I thought Vulcans couldn't lie." "Though we are capable of it," Spock explained, "we choose not to. In most circumstances." Kirk narrowed his eyes at Sarek. "But isn't bluffing a form of lying?" Sarek's expression remained bland, though Kirk was certain that something in it had changed. The more time he spent around Spook, the more he had convinced himself that Vulcans betrayed just as much emotional information in their faces as humans did, though in a much subtler fashion. "In this case, Captain, bluffing is an expected strategy of the game. Indeed, it is encouraged. Therefore, by betting in a manner inconsistent with the actual value of my cards, I am, in fact, lollowing the true intent of the game, which therefore, by definition, cannot be false." Spock nodded thoughtfully. "Well put, Father." Sarek lay back against his pillows. "Thank you, my son." Kirk wrinkled his brow. Not two days ago he had heard Sarek tell his wife Amanda that it was not necessary to thank logic. He didn't know how, but something told Kirk his leg was being pulled. Perhaps being cooped up in sickbay with him for two days was beginning to take its toll on the Vulcans. "So this isn't the first time you've played poker?" Kirk asked accusingly. Chess was more his game, and he enjoyed the never- ending tournament he and Spock had fallen into. But with three players to account for, poker had seemed a better way to socialize with his fellow patients. To Kirk's chagrin, however, the pile of tongue depressors was deepest on the blanket beside Sarek. $arek maintained his maddening composure. "My wife taught me many years ago, after Spock joined Starfleet. The insights it afforded me have been beneficial in certain negotiations with ... certain species." 42 43 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS I bet they have, Kirk thought. "Coridan's going to be admitted to the Federation, isn't it." He made it a statement. If Sarek negotiated as well as he played poker, the other delegates to the Babel Conference didn't stand a chance against him. "I will argue for admission," Sarek acknowledged, "but my wishes are in no way an indication of what the result of the final vote will be." "With that much dilithium on the planet," Kirk continued, "how could Coridan not be admitted? The Orions were willing to start an interplanetary war over it." The knife wound in Kirk's back was a direct result of Coridan's dilithium. Orion smugglers had conspired to prevent the planet's admission to the Federation in order to maintain their illegal mining and smuggling opera- tions and profit from supplying both sides with dilithium in the war to come. But Sarek did not agree. "It is true that dilithium is the lifeblood of any interstellar political association. Without it, warp drive can never be exploited to its full potential. But, it has been my experience that wars are seldom fought over resources. At the time, the question of resources may appear to be a valid excuse for hostilities, indeed, a rallying cry. But upon reflection, most conflict is inevitably based in emotion." Sarek fixed Kirk with a steady gaze--an emotional signal of some sort, Kirk was certain. "I mean no disrespect," Sarek concluded. Kirk mulled over that last statement, which from anyone else would have meant the opposite of what it appeared to mean, and despite the ambassador's recent heart attacks and cryogenic open-heart procedure, Sarek had never once lost his mental edge. Kirk wondered if there was such a thing as Vulcan humor. He looked back at Spock, trying to detect any sign of hidden Vulcan laughter. But Spock merely raised a quizzical eyebrow. "You have a question, Captain?" Kirk couldn't bring himself to ask the obvious. He knew he could talk with Spock about Vulcan emotions, but it might be too embarrassing a topic for Spock to discuss in front of his father. If Spock could feel embarrassment, that is. Kirk decided that FEDERATION changing the subject was a better tactic. "Did your mother teach you how to play poker, too?" Spock shook his head. "Dr. McCoy did, after our encounter xvith the First Federation ship." "Actually," Sarek volunteered, "I have often thought poker would be a useful exercise for Vulcan children, to help them learn to control the display of their emotions." Kirk saw his opening and pounced. "Gentlemen, it sounds as if you're suggesting that the famed Vulcan reticence to display emotion is nothing more than a prolonged bluff itself. In fact, it could be said that for a people who pride themselves on choosing never to lie, their whole demeanor is, in fact, just that." Feeling proud of himself, Kirk folded his arms. Sarek and Spock exchanged a look. Spock spoke first. "Captain, what you have suggested is not logical." Kirk didn't understand. "Yes, it is." Spock was about to reply when Sarek interrupted. "Captain, the 'pot' is still unclaimed. We have yet to see your hand." Damn. Kirk thought. He had hoped they had forgotten. He turned over his cards. A pair of fives. "It would appear you were bluffing, as well," Sarek said, with just the slightest hint of smugness in his tone. "He is quite good at it," Spock offered. "Indeed." Kirk looked from father to son, realizing that they had success- fully changed the topic on him. Kirk decided that whatever effect the past two days were having on Sarek and Spock, they were certainly beginning to take their toll on him. Sarek reached out to scoop up the tongue depressors. "I believe the cultural incantation required at this time is 'Come to poppa.'" "That is correct," Spock said. At the sound of those words coming from the revered Vulcan diplomat, Kirk clamped his hand to his mouth to try and contain his laughter, but he knew he wasn't going to make it. It erupted from him with a barely contained snort. He tried to cover his unfortunate reaction with a series of coughs, but that just made 44 45 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS the knife wound in his back flare with sharp pain, bringing tears to his eves. In their most subdued Vulcan manner, Spock and Sarek looked alarmed. "The incantation is not 'Come to poppa'?" Sarek asked. Kirk waved his hand. If he even tried to open his mouth, he'd go on a laughing jag that could set Earth-Vulcan relations back by a decade. "Captain?" Spock said with Vulcan concern. "Are you all right?" Kirk nodded. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. "Water," he gasped in what he hoped was a convincing simulation of some- thing caught in his throat. He started to get up from his chair. The door to the examination room puffed open, taking Kirk by surprise. It was too early for Nurse Chapel and far too late for Dr. McCoy. But it was McCoy who entered, eyes bleary, hair mussed, uniform obviously just thrown on. Kirk instantly knew that whatever had brought McCoy to sickbay at this hour, it had also wakened him unexpectedly. The ship's surgeon came to a stop in the middle of the ward. He stared at his three patients with an open mouth. "What in God's name are you two doing out of bed?!" Sarek folded his hands in his lap. It was clear the doctor was referring to Kirk and Spock. Spock answered the question. "Playing poker." McCov's eyes dropped to Sarek's bed, took in the deck of cards, the piles'of tongue depressors. "So help me, I'll sedate the lot of you! Put you in... restraints/" Kirk finished getting to his feet. "Bones, it's all right. Your treatment made us feel better even faster ...."But then he winced. The knife wound in his back seemed to twist in place, as if the knife were still in it. He felt the blood leave his face. From the look on McCoy's face, it was an alarming departure. Kirk suddenly felt Spock's arm slip under his, steadying him. But McCoy disapproved of that, too. He grabbed Kirk away from the science officer and manhandled the captain across the ward, telling Spock to get back to bed before he was put into isolation. FEDERATION Kirk flopped back on the medical diagnostic bed and felt his breath escape him. McCoy activated the diagnostic board and Kirk heard his own heartbeat racing. "I told you this could happen," McCoy snapped as he held a whirring medical scanner over Kirk's chest. Kirk mouthed the words "What could happen?" Now he really couldn't talk. He felt as if the bandages around his chest were solid duranium, slowly constricting, cutting off any chance he had of breathing again. "The knife was treated with a protein inhibitor." McCoy deftly clicked a drug ampule into a hypospray. Kirk heard his heartbeat accelerating. "It's an old Orion trick. Keeps the wound open and bleeding with no poison to show up in an autopsy. Makes sure there's no blood left on the weapon, either." The cold tip of the hypo pushed against Kirk's shoulder and he felt the sudden pinch of its high-pressure infusion. "Fortunately, you were lucky enough to get in here before you needed an autopsy. Barely." Though Kirk didn't feel as if his condition had changed, the sudden caustic tone in McCoy's delivery told him he was going to be all right. He felt his breathing ease. His heartbeat began to slow. He recognized the effect from his last visit to Vulcan. "Tri-ox?" he whispered. McCoy glared down at him "When I hear that you've earned your medical degree, I'd be happy to discuss drug therapies, Captain. Now stay put." "Yes, sir," Kirk whispered. He squinted to the side as McCoy spun around and advanced on Spock. "And as for you," the doctor began. Kirk closed his eyes and smiled as McCoy's tirade continued. Sometimes he thought the doctor was only happy when he had something to complain about, and Finagle knew Kirk and Spock went out of their way to oblige him. The pain in his back began to lessen, and Kirk guessed that McCoy had included something else with the tri-ox compound without telling him. Just as he hadn't mentioned anything about the protein inhibitor on the knife. Probably didn't want to worry me, Kirk thought, feeling himself beginning to drift as McCoy and Spock argued over medical 47 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS procedures, and Sarek maintained an appropriately diplomatic silence. Kirk slipped back to three days earlier, walking near his quarters on Deck 5. An Artdorian had passed him: Thelev, a minor member of Ambassador Shras's staff. Thelev had nodded in greeting. Kirk had nodded in return, eager to get back to the bridge, eager to continue the investigation into the murder of Ambassador Gav--the murder for which Sarek was prime sus- pect. In retrospect, Kirk decided it was his eagerness that led him to ignore Thelev's unexpected change in pace. In retrospect, he knew he had distinctly heard Thelev stop, turn, and start again, walking behind him. At the time, Kirk had worried that the Andorian was going to raise vet another matter of concern to the ambassador, as if having 114'dignitaries on board for the past two weeks hadn't given Kirk his fill of ambassadorial concerns. Part of him was still hoping he could make it to the turbolift before Thelev called his name when he felt the first blow to the back of his neck. Starfleet training had taken over then, diplomatic immunity be damned. But the first blow Kirk had taken had dulled his reflexes, and just as he thought Thelev was finished, he felt the long narrow blade of the Andorian ceremonial dagger rip into his back, grating against bone, igniting shocking streamers of pain like lava through his chest. What had happened next, Kirk still wasn't too certain. Whatev- er had transpired, he had ended up in sickbay and Thelev had been taken to the brig. But the threat to the Enterprise hadn't ended with the Andorian's arrest. An unknown vessel was still pacing them. Thirty-two ambassadors whose loss could mean an interplanetary war were its probable target. And Sarek was only hours from death, unless McCoy could operate. Which he couldn't do without Spock's cooperation in providing a transfusion. Which Spock wouldn't provide while Kirk was in sickbay and the Enterprise was being followed by an unidentified vessel. In the end, Kirk and McCoy had convinced Spock that the captain's wound was minor. Spock had relinquished command, donated blood, and Sarek's operation had been a success. FEDERATION Xo. Kirk suddenly thought, jerking awake from his reverie. It was too soon to think of success. Thelev had turned out to be a surgically altered Orion. The pursuing ship, also Orion, had destroyed itself when the Enterprise had disabled it. But the Babel Conference had yet to take place. Coridan's fate was still in quesuon. What if the Orions had a contingency plan? For all the effort they had put into placing Thelev on the Andorian ambassa- dor's staff, into reengineering one of their vessels for a suicide mission, into sanctioning Gav's murder--it just wouldn't be like the Orions to give up after a single attempt. l/lave [o talk to Spock about this, Kirk thought. He opened his eyes. McCoy was standing above him. Kirk had a sudden feeling of' panic that he had slept. That he had missed something. But McCoy was in as much disarray as he had been when he had caught his patients at their midnight poker game. "Can you breathe now?" McCoy asked. It wasn't a friendly question. 'Wes." Kirk said. His throat felt normal. The pain of the knife xvound throbbed with each heartbeat, but it was dulled. "Good," McCoy said. "Then get up." "Up?" Kirk felt a rush of adrenaline as he connected McCoy's command to his unexpected presence here. Something had woken him up. Something had brought him to sickbay to waken the captain. Knowing that, Kirk was instantly alert, the knife wound a memory. "What is it, Bones?" "Nothing I'm in favor of," McCoy complained. "But then, I'm just a doctor, not a fleet admiral." "Admiral?" Kirk asked as he slowly sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Kabreigny," McCoy answered, keeping one eye on the scanner he held to Kirk's side. Now Kirk was even more alert. Quario Kabreigny was one of the most powerful admirals at Starfleet Command, in charge of the entire Exploration Branch. Starfleet had been from its very beginning, more than a century ago, an organization whose prime mission was scientific, whose very charter clearly stated its mandate "to boldly go where no man has gone before." Yet the nature of the universe was such that Starfleet vessels quickly took 48 49 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS on responsibility for upholding the law at the boundaries of the Federation's expansion, for protecting shipping lines and colo- nies, and for maintaining watch over security threats from other, nonaligned systems. The fact that Starfleet and the Federation itself had risen from the nightmare of the Romulan Wars further added an inescapably defensive flavor to its role. But whenever the critics grew too loud, whenever the members of the Federation Council grew concerned over the ongoing dichotomy between Starfieet's scientific and military missions, Admiral Kabreigny would step into the fray. By the time she had finished addressing her questioners, detailing the impressive scientific advances engendered by Starfleet, and showing how they stood above and apart from its "secondary mission," as she characterized it, which involved phasers and photon torpedoes more than sensors and diplomacy, the debate would end for another year or two, until the next funding cycle. Without question, Kabreigny was one of the great shapers of the modern Federation, following unwaveringly in the footsteps of those giants who had drafted the Paris Charter in 2161. Books had been written about her and her influence. Hers was a name that was spoken with a respect reserved for Black, Cochrane, and Coon--all people without whom the Federation would not exist. And she wanted to speak with James T. Kirk. It was a bit like waking up to find the finger of a god pointing down at you. "When did the message come in?" Kirk asked. He knew he'd have to reply right away, which is presumably why McCoy had been wakened in the middle of ship's night, to see if the captain was in a condition to receive a communication from Command. Kirk could get to his quarters, into a uniform, and be onscreen inside of five minutes. "No message," McCoy said. He closed his hand around the scanner, shutting it off. "When that tri-ox wears off, you are going to have such a headache." But Kirk ignored the prognosis. "What do you mean, no message?" "She's here, Jim. On the Enterprise." 5O FEDERATION Kirk stared blankly at the doctor. Admiral Kabreigny was seventy-seven years old. She didn't leave Earth lightly. She certainly didn't journey all the way to the Babel Conference for a strictly political debate. McCoy read the questions in Kirk's eyes. "She arrived about thirty minutes ago. No warning. Communications blackout, she says. Showed up at my door demanding to know why you weren't in your quarters and when you'd be fit for a meeting." Whatever was going on, it didn't sound good to Kirk. Subspace radio was as secure a method of communication as had ever been invented, and it was so fast, its signals propagating at better than warp factor 9.9, that the delay between Earth and the Babel planetoid was only a matter of minutes. What could she have to say that was so critical? And that justified the risk to her health? "Did she give any indication of what this was about?" Kirk asked. McCoy frowned. Clearly, he knew something. He glanced over his shoulder at Spock and Sarek. Kirk saw them watching the proceedings with indifferent expressions, but was certain their Vulcan ears had picked up every word that he and McCoy had said. "Excuse me, Ambassador, Spock." "Of course, Doctor," Sarek said magnanimously. Then McCoy pointed at Kirk, followed by a quick gesture at the door to the examination room. "And you, in there." Kirk gave McCoy a half smile as he started for the door. "I'm not going to be your patient forever, Bones. You keep that attitude up and I'll have you swabbing decks." As the door opened before him, Kirk heard Sarek speak in a low voice. "Can he do that?" the ambassador asked. As the door slipped shut behind him, Kirk heard the beginning of Spock's answer. "I believe he would like to, but regulations clearIx, state--" Kirk took a deep breath as he faced McCoy in the privacy of the examination room. "All right. What's going on?" McCoy's eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere but at the captain. "I think it's pretty bad, Jim. You see, this passenger liner has... disappeared." 51 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS Kirk tried to understand what that would have to do with Kabreigny's unprecedented visit. "Sabotage? Piracy? Important passengers? What, Bones?" "None of that," McCoy said hesitatingly. "It's where the liner disappeared that has the admiral concerned." Kirk held up his hand. "Just a minute. You're telling me that the admiral has come all this way from Earth under a communi- cations blackout and suddenly she's telling everything to the ship's surgeon?" The irritation was gone from McCoy. Instead, he just looked nervous. "I think it involves me, too, Jim. And Spock. But he's in even worse shape than you are right now." Kirk was starting to feel dizzy, but whether it was the medica- tion or straight frustration, he couldn't be sure. "All right. Where did the liner disappear?" "The Gamma Canaris region." Kirk sat back against the examination room's diagnostic bed. He was afraid he could see where this was going. There was only one way out, a slim one. "Command doesn't think the disappear- ance has anything to do with hostilities on Epsilon Canaris III, does it?" "If that's what Command thought, I doubt if the admiral would be here right now." McCoy dropped his voice to a whisper, even though they were alone. "You know what Kabreigny suspects just as well as I do, Jim. I was there. Hell, the three of us were there." "You didn't tell her, did you?" Kirk asked, then immediately regretted having done so. "Of course you didn't. I'm sorry. I'm ... tired." "That's nothing compared to the way you're going to be feeling in about three hours. Do vou feel up to meeting with her? I could tell her your medical condition is worse than I thought." Kirk shook his head. "I knew we'd have to face this sooner or later. We all did. I just didn't think it would be so soon." He straightened up. Certain situations had a way of repeating them- selves. No time to consider odds, devise strategies, or change the rules. "Where is she?" "Conference Room Eight. Do you want me to at least go with you?" FEDERATION "Did she ask for you?" "No." Kirk smiled, trying to make it easier for McCoy. "It could be nothing, Bones. Leave it to me." Kirk headed for the door to the corridor. He stopped when McCoy called after him. "Don't get any ideas about taking all the blame on your own. We all agreed. The three of us are in this together. And if you don't tell her that, I will." Kirk wasn't in the mood to argue with McCoy. He was the captain. He didn't have to. "Understood, Doctor. Tell the admiral 1'11 be with her in ten minutes." Kirk left. He was back in his quarters within five minutes, back in uniform in another two. He paused for a moment by his door, looking at his bed. It was very inviting. Despite his complaints to McCoy these past two days, he had to admit to himself that he had appreciated the chance to rest. It wasn't often that the Enwrprise's mission was so straightforward as transporting diplo- mats within a well-protected region of space. It had almost been like a vacation, a chance to get away from it all. Bur I'm no Zefram Cochrane, Kirk thought, then turned his back on his bed and left his quarters. There was a limit as to how far away he wanted to get from the rest of the universe, and for how long. Kirk thought of Cochrane the entire way to Conference Room Eight. Zefram Cochrane. Of Alpha Centauri. The giant who had invented warp drive for humanity and led the way to the stars. History recorded that Cochrane had disappeared in space in 2117, at the age of eighty-seven. But six months ago, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had found him, still alive, a young man again, on a planetoid in the Gamma Canaris region, accompanied only by an energy-based life-form, which Cochrane called "the Companion." It had not been a pleasant meeting at first. War was threatening to break out on Epsilon Canaris III. Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford was that world's only chance for achieving a negotiated peace. But she had been stricken with Sakuro's dis- ease. forced to return to the Enterprise for treatment. It had been on that trip that the Galileo shuttlecraft had been pulled from its 53 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS course by the Companion. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Hedford had been kidnapped to provide company for Cochrane. The four of them had been a gift from the Companion to Cochrane, because the Companion had fallen in love with him. All that had happened had happened because of that simple, universal emotion. That revelation had not surprised Kirk then, and it did not now. Empires had been forged and destroyed, entire worlds conquered and laid waste for no less a reason. Even Spock had seen no reason to question what had transpired. The fact that to him humans were irrational was explanation enough. In the end, things had worked out. After a fashion. Moments before Hedford had succumbed to her affliction, the Companion had somehow joined with her, combining to form a single entity that shared both Hedford's and the Companion's memories and personalities. Cochrane had finally comprehended the nature of his relation with the Companion. And because the Companion could not survive being away from the planetoid for more than a handful of days, and even though her powers could no longer be used to arrest Cochrane's aging process, Cochrane had decided to remain with her on the planetoid. "There's a whole galaxy out there waiting to honor you," Kirk had told Cochrane. But after gazing into the Companion's new human eyes, Cochrane had said that he had honors enough. When Kirk had asked him if he was sure, Cochrane had sidestepped the question with the skill of a Vulcan. "There's plenty of water here," the father of warp physics had said. "The climate's good for growing things. I might even try and plant a fig tree. A man's entitled to that, isn't he?" Kirk hadn't been sure what Cochrane's allusion to a fig tree had meant, but he understood the conviction in the man's voice and in his eyes. After 237 years of life, Kirk supposed, a man was entitled to just about anything. Then, just before the Enterprise was to beam her crew home, Cochrane had said something that did surprise Kirk. "Don't tell them about me." If it had been anyone else, anywhere else, Kirk would have FEDERATION argued. But after all that he had seen on the ptanetoid, he understood Cochrane's request without agreeing with it. "Not a xvord. Mr. Cochrane," Kirk had promised, immediately sensing the objections of McCoy and Spock. Those objections had been strong and well thought out, not the least being what should be said about Nancy Hedford's fate, to her family and the Federation. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had spent several long nights in McCoy's quarters, debating the possibilities, and the extent of their duty to Starfleet and to history. Between Spock's unassail- able logic and McCoy's unalloyed passion, it was Kirk who had come up with a compromise which was acceptable to all and that still respected Cochrane's wish. Kirk stood before the door to Conference Room Eight. Like all compromises, he had known that the course of action he had taken after returning from Cochrane's planetoid exposed him to some risk. He just hadn't thought he would be exposed this quickly, or at such a high level. He stepped forward. The doors parted before him. Admiral Quarlo Kabreigny sat at the end of the long table, a cup of coffee beside her. She was a thin woman, her dark skin deeply lined after a lifetime of service, her snow-white hair drawn back tightly into a coiled bun, her admiral's uniform loose on her spare frame. 'Tin sorry to have kept you waiting, Admiral," Kirk began diffidently. But the admiral was in no mood for pleasantries or politeness. She told Kirk to sit down and pay attention. Then she slid a data wafer into a player at her side. The table's central viewer came to liffe. It displayed a passenger liner with three warp nacelles, an ungainly design that provided a much smaller increase in speed than the math suggested it would. Twin nacelles was still the most e~cient design for warp travel. ~'The Cio' of Utopia Planilia, "Kabreigny stated, identifying the liner. "Mars registry. Crew complement of fifteen. Passenger manifest as of stardate 3825.2: eighty-seven." The viewer flick- ered to show a Fleet chart of the Gamma Canaris region. A solid line indicated the liner's course. It ended midscreen. 54 55 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS It had happened before, Kirk thought. It could happen again. He tried to get straight to the point. "Admiral, I think there's a possibility the liner was not destroyed." Kabreigny's smile was cold. "Oh, you do, do you? Are you going to tell me it was drawn off course, the way your shuttlecraft was six months ago?" "A possibility," Kirk said, hearing the controlled anger in the admiral's words. "Are you further going to report that you encountered a threat to navigation and neglected to include it in your logs, putting civilian shipping in harm's way?" Kirk realized he would have to move carefully. Kabreigny was not the type of officer of whom it was wise to make an enemy. "As my log recorded, I believe we hit a random energy field that affected the Galileo's guidance controls. I had absolutely no indication that it was a repeatable phenomenon." Why should it be? Kirk thought. The Companion had provided company for Cochrane. Now she was content with him and he with her. Besides, what reason would she have to go after an entire liner? And she had said she no longer had the power to control spacecraft. "Let me put it this way, Kirk, in simple language I think even you will understand: I don't believe you." Coming from an admiral, that was a serious charge. Kirk placed his hands on the table. He had given his word to Cochrane. He would not betray that. But he had no idea how he could escape the admiral's accusation. "May I ask the admiral why?" Kirk said evenly. "The liner hasn't vanished completely. One week ago, while I was in transit, we picked up an emergency subspace transmission from the liner's last known general location. Unfortunately, we couldn't lock on to its origin point, but there's nothing else in the region that could be transmitting." The admiral touched a control on the player. The viewer changed again. This time it showed a frozen, blurry image of a woman, human, her dark hair in disarray, her skin smudged with what looked like dirt or blood. But still the face was recognizable. The woman was Nancy Hedford. FEDERATION ~Recognize her?" Kabreigny asked. "Yes." Kirk answered warily, "I do." Kabreigny adjusted the control. Hedford's image came to life, broken by static. -'... trying to contact Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Please answer. The man is lost. We cannot continue. We need your help again." The image completely broke up into static and then began again from the first. The admiral cut the sound. "That was received Starfleet Command, stardate 3812." The admiral's eyes bore into Kirk's. "Care to work out the math?" Kirk shook his head. It was obvious what the admiral was going to say next. "In other words," she continued, "that message, to you, was sent almost five months after you informed Command that Commissioner Hedford had died of Sakuro's disease." The viewer displayed a certificate of death. Kirk could recognize McCoy's illegible signature. "We even have this, sworn and attested to by Leonard McCoy as the attending physician." Kirk leaned back in his chair. It was going to be a long night. "What do you want to know?" he asked. Admiral Kabreigny nodded with clinical acceptance. She popped the data wafer from the player and slipped in a second one. Kirk saw her hit the controls for Record. "1 want you to start at the beginning, Captain, and explain quite carefully why it is you're receiving messages from a dead woman." She leaned forward, eyes glinting. "And if you ever want to command a starship again, you'd better make your story a damned good one." 56 57 THREE U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D STANDARD ORBIT LEGARA IV Stardate 43920.6 Earth Standard: May 2366 Picard knew the inevitable could be avoided no longer. Odds had nothing to do with it. Strategies were no longer applicable. The rules were firm. His opponent continued to look downward, his thoughts un- readable. All Picard could hear was the faint hum of the environ- mental system's fans in his ready room, the steady mechanical pulse of the Enterprise's life-support systems at normal operation, on standard orbit of Legara IV. Picard revealed no emotion in his voice as he leaned forward to rest his hands on the table. "I'm afraid it's quite hopeless, Mr. Data. Stalemate in four." The android sitting across from Picard blinked his artificial eyes as he finally looked up from the three-dimensional chess- board in the center of the captain's desk. "I find it most remarkable," he said. "That is the third stalemate you have forced on me in the past forty-seven minutes. I am aware of no other human with the abiliD7 to do that. Even Grandmaster Parnel of the--" "That's quite all right, Mr. Data." Picard tried to smile at his operations manager to show he had no real objections to a FEDERATION three-dimensional-chess history lesson, but the expression felt forced, as if he had forgotten how to move those particular facial muscles. In a sense, he supposed he had. "This has not been a test of my abilities." Data reset the board with the efficiency of an automated construction drone. "I understand, Captain. You believe your proficiency in three-dimensional chess is a result of your recent mind-meld with Ambassador Sarek, who is, himself, a grandmaster many times over." As quickly as that, all the pieces were restored to their starting positions. "Though the intrinsical- ly unpredictable nature of probability theory, or 'dumb luck,' as it is called, tends to put me on a more equal footing in games of chance. such as poker, I would look forward to a fourth round of chess with you. The opportunity to play a challenging game of logic with a human is one I am not often presented with." Data patiently waited a few moments for his captain's reply. "I mean no disrespect by that." Picard gazed at the multilevel chessboard. Without conscious thought, a flood of opening strategies swept through his mind as if the logic of the game were instinctual to him. "Sir? Is something wrong?" Picard jerked his head up. "Poker?" he said. Had Data men- tioned something about poker? The android was most solicitous. "It is a card game, sir. I play each Thursday night with my fellow officers. If you recall, we have often invited you to join us." The captain looked up to the ceiling of his ready room, trying to remember something about poker. Picard rubbed at the side of his face. He could still feel Ambassador Sarek's fingers there, on the katra points of his nervous system. The effects of the mind-meld still trembled within him, though the maelstrom of emotions that had raged through him yesterday had now dwin- dled to slight, recurring eddies. But still his mind dealt with disturbing flashes of detailed knowledge of the ambassador's life. t I ~dcan would know how to deal with this, Picard told himself. A It/~time ()/' training in mind-control techniques would permit the ca,sv setting aside of information obtained from other minds. And there were other minds. Sarek had mind-melded with hundreds of 59 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS different beings in his more than two centuries of life, and the echoes of the psychic force of all their collective experiences now also reverberated within Picard. "Captain Picard?" Data said more emphatically. "Shall I call Dr. Crusher?" Data's familiar voice brought a moment of clarity. Picard shook off a sudden visual image of the red-tinged mountains of Sarek's walled estate--not his. The only property in which Picard had an ownership interest was located in France. Picard tugged at his uniform to smooth nonexistent wrinkles. "No, Mr. Data, I'll be fine. It's just that... from time to time I find myself overwhelmed by an unexpected memory from Am- bassador Sarek's past." Data observed Picard carefully. Picard understood his pur- poseful gaze. "But the memories are lessening in both strength and frequen- cy," Picard said firmly. "Both the ambassador's wife and Dr. Crusher have agreed that there will be no long-term, detrimental effects." "I hope that that is true," Data said. "It has been my observa- tion that emotions can be confusing and dangerous when allowed to develop out of control." Picard smiled at Data, and this time the expression came naturally. "And yet you still wish to experience them." Data took on a thoughtful expression, one of his subroutines, Picard knew, designed to help the android relate to humans by providing subtle body-language cues to his thought processes. "It is, as the ambassador would say, a most illogical goal, but one to which I aspire, nonetheless." "You sound as if you're halfway there already," Picard said with amusement, mixed with a sudden burst of friendship for his ofihcer, a feeling he shared to some extent with almost all of his command staff, but which, like Sarek, he too often allowed to remain hidden. Since he had first taken command of the Enter- prise, almost three years earlier, Picard had enjoyed watching Data's growth as a... person. There was no other word for it. To watch that complex intellect wrestle with ideas and ideals that FEDERATION most humans took for granted helped Picard see the universe through fresh eyes, innocent eyes. At the age of sixty-one, he realized he needed that rejuvenating experience more often. It was a law of nature that when growth stopped, stagnation set in. For now, the Enterprise helped Picard keep that law at bay. But it was always out there, circling, like predatory norsehlats worrying a herd of vral, waiting to pick off the old and infirm. Picard blinked, momentarily distracted. "Mr. Data, would you happen to know what a norsehlat is?" Data responded without hesitation. "A nonsentient predator native to the southern, high-mountain deserts of Vulcan, filling a similar ecological niche to that of the Terran wolf." "I see. And a vral?" ~'In context with norseMat, I would presume the word vral is a plural form of vralt, which is a nonsentient herbivore, similar to a Terran mountain goat, again indigenous to the same areas of Vulcan as is the norsehlat, and thus its prey." Data cocked his head. "Are you experiencing another of Ambassador Sarek's memories?" "No, not a memory, really. An allusion. Referring to animals of which I have no personal knowledge." Picard found that innocu- ous aftereffect much easier to deal with than the torrent of anguish that had stricken him in the first hours after his mind- meld. "It is a... most fascinating experience." "Indeed," Data commented. Picard stared at his operations manager for a moment, experi- encing a strong feeling of deja vu. Something about the conversa- tion. something about seeing Data on the other side of a three- dimensional chessboard.. ? Picard could almost put his finger on it... almost grasp that memory... almost-- His communicator chirped. Picard tapped it. "Picard." Riker's voice emerged from the tiny device. "Sorry to disturb you, sir. but Ambassador Sarek's party is ready to beam to the -'~h'rrimac. " Picard stood. "On my way, Number One. I'll meet you in the transporter room. Mr. Data, please relieve the commander." Data left the ready room as Picard opened the storage compart- JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS ment in which a folded dress uniform lay ready. Three days ago, when Ambassador Sarek had beamed aboard, Picard had had such hopes for their meeting. More than any being now living, Sarek had shaped the Federation, guiding it in its transition. Under his direction, it had evolved over the past century from an expansionist cobbling-together of idealistic, often unrealistic worlds eager to forge an unprecedented alliance without a clear idea of how that could be accomplished, to a mature and stable institution for which each new admission was a further infusion of strength for the integrated whole. In standard English, the Vulcans called that basic precept IDIC, one of the most profound philosophical cores of the United Federation of Planets. The acronym meant Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Simply put, it was a celebration of how simplicity could arise from complexity. In physics, the matching term was "the self-organizing princi- ple," perhaps the most basic condition underlying the universe's existence. Simply put, it was the tendency for replicating systems to arise from the chaotic conditions of the fractal boundaries that , separated domains of high and low energy. In high-energy domains, physical bonds could not form. In low-energy domains, physical bonds once formed could not be broken. But somewhere between the two extremes, in the flux of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there existed domains where a balance could be achieved. And it was the same in the Federation, thought Picard with a sense of satisfaction, both in the institution and the role he played in maintaining it. In the universe at large, between those domains of high and low energy, galaxies had coalesced like jewels on the cosmic strings formed in the first instants of the universe's birth. In those galaxies, stars had condensed, then burst into life, shedding energy on their planets, creating pockets of still more boundary domains, neither too hot nor too cold. In those domains, molecules had formed that could survive the more minor fluctuations of local conditions. Among those mole- cules that were good at surviving, some could replicate duplicates of themselves. Not perfectly, for that would lead to stagnation, FEDERATION but bnperfectly. For in imperfection, Picard believed, as did the Federation's scientists, there was room for improvement; room l'or improvement inevitably brought change; and what was life but change--the constant shuffling of attributes and abilities to insure that life would continue, even to the extent that life on a planetary scale would evolve the capacity to affect the planetary environment such that it remained a suitable habitat. Thus on a planetary scale, there was no distinction between life and habitat. Life itself and life's home were like space and time--they could not be thought of as independent entities, only as different reflections of each other. More and more, Picard knew, the restrictive use of the phrase "on a planetary scale" was being questioned by Federation scientists. Even "systemwide scale" was not broad enough for them. "Galactic scale" was better, for as life begat intelligence and intelligence begat technology, life spread forth from its origin points to propagate into more domains, creating more habitats. But as Picard had discussed with Will Riker, in one of their t'requent philosophical debates, even thinking of life and its influence on a galactic scale was increasingly viewed in some quarters as missing the point. As in all things in the science of cosmology, at some point the study of the very large inevitably led back to the study of the very small, just as the analysis of the very complex uncovered the very simple principles from which com- plexity emerged. Derived from that research, Picard had learned, there was a realization that was slowly spreading through the worlds of the Federation. He found he was almost ready to grasp it himself, like searching for a single misplaced memory a hairsbreadth out of reach. It was the notion that the self-organizing principle, the most simple principle in nature, which had led to all the forms and structures of the universe, also had its mirror in the affairs of intelligent beings. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. In sociology and politics as it was in physics. From the simple came the complex. From the complex came stability. Picard believed the founders of the Federation had understood 63 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS this intuitively. The horror of the Romulan War had truly been the last lesson in valuing life, in all its disturbing complexity, that humanity had needed to learn. Those who had inherited the founders' Federation had strug- gled to keep intact what had been forged at such cost. The first contact with the Klingon Empire in 2218, only fifty-seven years after the Federation's birth, had been a trial by fire. But in that trial, what had been created in the Earth city of Paris in 2161 revealed its true strength. Through all the dark years of conflict with the Klingons that followed, until the rapprochement of the Khitomer Conference of 2293, all-out war did not break out between the Empire and the Federation. The Federation had entered a new phase. It no longer reacted simply by learning from its mis[akes, it took action, truly going where no one had gone before, by learning from its triumphs. Picard, who had not been born until 2305, twelve years after Khitomer, was a child of the new century, the era the poets had called "Technology Unchained," when quality off life became paramount for all beings, not just an elite. He had grown up in LaBarre, a small Earth city a short distance from Paris where the president of the Federation Council kept his official offices. Paris was a city continually enlivened by the constant stream of alien diplomatic missions. The Federation had been as much a part of young Picard's early life as had the pastoral charms of his horne's vineyard and winery, each an unquestioned condition of life which, to the child's mind, had always existed, indistinguishable from the constancy of the sun or a parent's love. Those two images of sun and parents played in Picard's mind as he felt the turbolift carry him to Deck 6 and the transporter room Sarek's party would use. The sun: a force of nature, blind and unthinking. Love: a force of sentience, but equally primal. Even in Sarek Picard had felt the unity that had arisen from the acknowledgment of emotion as essential to life--the same unity that linked the Federation to the universe it inhabited until, like space and time, like life and habitat, the two were inseparable. Picard stepped through the sliding doors of the transporter room with a revelation in his mind, created from the images of FEDERATION the sun and the Federation of his childhood--two extremes: the logic of Vulcans, the passion of humans. Perhaps neither one could ever have achieved alone what they had achieved together. Humans a domain of high energy, where structure could never form. Vulcans a domain of low energy, where structure once formed could never change. But together, on the boundaries of their separate domains, from the fractal chaos of their meeting and desire to work together, a new system had come into being. Riker was already waiting in the transporter room and Picard could see him give his captain a curious look. He realized that the excitement of his thoughts must be showing on his face. Real excitement. Because what had just come to mind was not the result of his own thought processes--it had arisen from that part of Sarek that was still within him. What Picard knew now, all Vulcans knew. The exchange was exhilarating. He made a mental note to add these thoughts to his next discussion with Will. "Captain?" Riker said. He stood in the center of the room, even more imposing than usual in his long dress coat. The rest of his question about the captain's well-being went unasked. No doubt because of the presence of Transporter Chief O'Brien and Lieu- tenant Patrick standing off to the side. "I am having a most... unusual day," Picard explained to his first officer. "Impressions from Sarek's mind are still... making themselves known to me." Picard saw in Riker's expression the same concern Data had voiced in his ready room. "But it is not a distraction from my duties," Picard reassured his first officer. Riker marginally relaxed. He gave Picard a quick, sardonic smile. "Be careful what you wish for, sir." It took Picard a moment, but then he understood Riker's comment. Just after Sarek had beamed aboard, Picard had told Riker and Counselor Troi that he had looked forward to sharing Sarek's thoughts and memories, his unique understanding of the history the legendary Vulcan had made. At the time he had stated his expectations, he was feeling disappointed. Sarek's aides had preceded him--Sakkath, a tall and characteristically dour Vulcan, and Ki Mendrossen, a human and senior member of the Vulcan diplomatic corps. The aides had explained that Sarek's age would prevent the 65 JUDITH AND GARFIELD REEVES-STEVENS ambassador from undertaking any social functions that would normally be part of the honors given a visitor of his rank. The negotiations Sarek would be concluding with the Legarans--after ninety-six years of patient effort on the ambassador's part--were too vital to the Federation. Picard had understood, but had been disappointed that he would not have a chance to renew his acquaintance with the ambassador, whom he had met years earlier at the wedding of Sarek's son. But in the days that followed, Picard learned the truth behind the aides' concern for their ambassador. Sarek was suffering from Bendii Syndrome, a rare affliction that occasionally struck Vulcans over two hundred years of age. He was losing his ability to control his emotions. Although Sarek was surreptitiously buttressed in his attempts by the telepathic powers of Sakkath, the end result was that the ambassador's confused emotions bled out to the crew of the Enterprise, leading to a series of alterca- tions, fistfights, and even acts of insubordination. With the meeting with the Legarans absolutely unable to be changed, the only chance Sarek had had to maintain his self- control had been put forward by his human wife, Perrin. She had come to Picard's quarters to suggest the captain share a mind- meld with Sarek. Picard had agreed and the elder Vulcan then, for a few hours, had made use of Picard's self-discipline and iron willJvital tools for this final stage of negotiations to be con- ducted on board the Enterprise herself. But Picard, in turn, had been left with Sarek's emotions unchecked--the pent-up rage and regrets of centuries, the unspo- ken love, unvoiced anguish, the soul-crushing despair of ap- proaching, inevitable death. There had been good reason why the Vulcans of millennia past had chosen to suppress their emotions --they were too powerful. The strength of them, even filtered through a mind-meld, had crippled Picard for most of a day, leaving him racked with tears, shaken by fear and anger. Yet without question the exchange had been worthwhile. Sarek had successfully concluded his negotiations with the Legarans, and the benefits of that achievement would be incalculable to the Federation. FEDERATION In the end, as Riker's smile had suggested, Picard had also received all he had hoped for from the voyage from Vulcan to Legara IV, but not in the manner he had anticipated. Picard reflexively smoothed his coat and turned to watch the door expectantly. "They're almost here," he said. "Remarkable. It's as if I'm still in some kind of telepathic contact with him." "Perhaps you should talk to Deanna about your experiences," Rikcr suggested, facing the closed doors with his captain. "l intend to, Number One. As soon--" Picard stopped talking as the doors slid open. But it was the ambassador's aides who entered, accompanied only by two duty off~ccrs. 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 .~br Sarek's absence. '~It's all right, Will. The ambassador is lening 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 Me~rimac 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