“There’s another target, ma’am.” Everyone turned to look at Shelan, and she realized how it must have sounded—the Suliban in the room suddenly making a bold declarative statement about a hidden objective of the Suliban Cabal. Suddenly she wished she had her Cabal ancestor’s camouflage ability so she could vanish into the woodwork. “I mean, maybe there is,” she went on more quietly. “Think about it. Given that the Cabal’s Sponsor wanted to discredit Archer, to get him out of the way . . . why choose Paraagan II as the place and time to do it? Why wait until then, nearly six months after their second encounter? There were other, earlier incidents that could’ve been sabotaged to make Archer look bad. Their rescue of the Klingon ship at the start of October ’51, say, or their visit to the P’Jem monastery two weeks later, or their attack on the Tandaran internment camp in December. For that matter, why not go back and strike at Archer even earlier, before Enterprise’s launch, before he’d interfered in Cabal affairs at all?”
Dulmur was nodding now. “You’re saying maybe it wasn’t just about Archer. That maybe destroying the Paraagan colony was the real goal, and pinning it on Archer was just a bonus.”
“It would explain a lot.”
“Not really,” Lucsly told her. “It wouldn’t explain why the Sponsor would want to destroy Paraagan II, or what his faction’s ultimate purpose was.”
“Or why he’d be so concerned with protecting the Federation’s history,” Ranjea added.
“Yeah,” Garcia put in, “isn’t he the bad guy?”
“Maybe in the future, the Federation is the ‘bad guy,’” suggested Stijen Yol. The red-haired Trill straightened in his chair and said, “The Sponsor’s from the same era as the early Temporal Integrity Commission. And we know they’re capable of some highly unethical acts. It’s possible that, at least in some future branches, the Federation loses its way, becomes corrupt. Maybe the Sponsor is Federation. Maybe he went after the Klingons because they were an enemy of the Federation for so long. Maybe the Tandarans would’ve been a threat if the Cabal hadn’t spent a decade wearing them down.”
“Okay, that’s a disturbing thought,” Garcia said. “But I don’t buy it. If this Future Guy was so concerned about protecting the UFP—”
Dulmur stared at her. “‘Future Guy’?”
Garcia flushed. “Yeah, let’s just pretend I didn’t call him that. The point is, if he was so concerned about the UFP, I don’t think he would’ve risked messing with Archer at all.”
“Then where does that leave us?” T’Viss demanded. “If you wish to reject one hypothesis, you must have a better one to offer in its place.”
Garcia winced at her former teacher’s chastisement and pondered the question. “Well, the Tandarans look like an obvious link. The attack on Vard was on Tandar Prime, and Elfiki was found on a Tandaran colony.”
“Paraagan,” Ranjea said thoughtfully. “Doctor Naadri is Paraagan.”
“Did she have ancestors on Paraagan II?” Lucsly asked.
“Illogical,” T’Viss interposed. “The attack on Para-agan II was successful. There were no survivors. Had the intent been to kill Naadri’s ancestors and prevent her birth, it would have succeeded. However, to my frequent annoyance, that has not been the case.”
A grim chuckle went through the situation room. When it died down, Virum Kalnota said, “And what about the Cabal’s attack on the Klingons? They aren’t exactly known for producing great temporal physicists.”
“There is Korath,” Peart interposed.
“Korath’s a crackpot,” Lucsly countered, while T’Viss merely sniffed in contempt. “Lots of big ideas, nothing to show for them. He’s shifted almost entirely to weapons development.”
“And starting a whole civil war just to prevent one man’s birth?” Dulmur added. “Textbook overkill. The risk of unforeseen consequences to the timeline—”
“Is about the same as a war between us and the Typhon Pact,” Yol replied, “or the death of President Bacco.”
Andos shook her head. “It’s an interesting thought, but it’s too tenuous. There are other noted temporal researchers from many cultures. As for Doctor Vard, we can’t even be certain he was the target, rather than one of his non-Tandaran students. Besides, if temporal physicists today are the target, why strike at their ancestors twenty-three decades ago? Why not a more recent intervention?
“We need more facts, people. Anything that might suggest a pattern. Kalnota, have your researchers pore over the history of the twenty-one forties and fifties for any useful clues. Lucsly, reach out to your uptime contacts, press them for whatever information you can.”
“You know they won’t tell us anything, ma’am.”
“If they’ll tell anyone, Gariff, they’ll tell you.” Lucsly nodded.
“Shelan,” Andos went on, drawing the young agent’s full attention, “talk with Lieutenant Elfiki, see if she has any knowledge that will help us. Maybe if we’ve figured out this much on our own, she won’t see it as contamination to nudge us the rest of the way.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The rest of you, reach out to your contacts in other governments’ time agencies. I’ll do the same at the administrative level. Whatever’s coming, it’s clearly not limited to the Federation. We need to get all of known space on the alert if need be.”
“Um, excuse me, ma’am,” Garcia asked, her hand raised. “Stupid question, but . . . we already know the Temporal Agents and the TIC are on this. They know what’s going on and they can actually time travel to stop it. To put it bluntly, is there any point in trying to handle this ourselves beyond professional pride?”
“Isn’t that reason enough?” Yol challenged.
Andos held up a hand, quieting him. “No, it’s a fair question. We do this, Agent Garcia, for the same reasons we exist as an agency in the first place. Because time is vast and needs the vigilance of every eye that can be brought to bear. Because the priorities of the future may differ from those of the present, and someone needs to speak and act on behalf of our generation.
“And because, at the very least, we deserve to know what our uptime partners in the Temporal Accords are doing in the name of our defense. We deserve to have a say in it, to ensure that their methods to defend us do not go against the very things we stand for. They must be held answerable to their ancestors. Their technology to traverse and alter time may give them power over us . . . but our knowledge and our choices for the future give us power over them.
“So go. Gain that knowledge. Give us a choice. So that this time, we will not be pawns, but will be partners in our own defense.
“This is our time, gentlebeings,” Andos finished. “And we will not let it be wasted.”
XII
Middle Season, Day 90, 743 Union Era, Cardassian Pre-Reform Calendar A Saturday
DTI Headquarters, Greenwich
14:16 UTC
Clare found Dina Elfiki in the holosuite portion of her “guest quarters,” an amenity installed to keep her from going stir-crazy during her confinement here. But instead of simulating some lush outdoor vista, the striking lieutenant stood in a bare holosuite, holding a control padd and perusing a hovering three-dimensional crossword grid whose size and complexity staggered Clare just to look at. “Oh, good,” Dina said, spotting her. “I’m rusty on history . . . who was the commander of the first manned Saturn expedition? Shaun Geoffrey blank, eleven letters, third is an R, ninth is an H.”
“Sorry, that’s after my time.”
“Well, I’ll get it on the crosses. Let’s see . . . ‘Carreon baggage’? Eight letters . . . Arhh, do they mean the amphibians from Carreon or the humanoids from Carrea? Which one is pronounced that way again?”
Clare had no idea what Dina was talking about, but it wasn’t what she’d come to discuss anyway. “So . . . you had a talk with Shelan yesterday, I hear.”
Dina threw her a look, then turned back to the puzzle. “And now you’re here to try to convince me to tell you what I wouldn’t tel
l her.”
According to Shelan, the talk hadn’t gone well. Clare wished she could have been there, but she’d been out for the past week, attending a family friend’s wedding on Denobula. With three husbands and three brides, the ceremony alone had taken over a day. The old Clare would’ve been scandalized, but it had really been very beautiful. “I’m just . . . confused,” she said. “I thought you wanted to tell someone. I thought it was just temporal regulations that were holding you back. It seems that if anything warrants bending the regulations . . .”
“‘Man on the beam’? Oh, come on!” she said, working her padd to enter ERICKSON. “Try making it a little challenging!”
Clare stepped in front of her and said, “Eight-letter word: the act of making excuses to av—not talk about something!”
Dina glared at her for a bit, then softened. “Avoidance. That’s nine letters, dear.”
“Whatever. Do I have your attention?”
The lieutenant’s big dark eyes held on hers for a long moment. Then she sighed and said, “Do you know what day it is?”
Clare tried not to laugh. “Is this a trick question?”
“It’s Saturday. Stardate 58926. Three days ago, the Enterprise was caught in a territorial dispute between an Acamarian refugee convoy and a renegade Betelgeusian argosy. The refugees tried to settle on a planet the ’Geusians claimed as a hunting preserve. Captain Picard tried to negotiate a compromise, said there was plenty of land to go around, but the ’Geusians’ pride, their need to win, wouldn’t let them back down, and the Acamarians were almost as prickly.
“So shots were fired. The captain put the ship right in between them, of course. It bought Jasminder—that’s our security chief—time to devise one of her brilliant strategies and neutralize all their weapons with no loss of life on either side.” She winced. “But they weren’t showing the same restraint. We lost shields on deck seven aft and five people were killed. Two of them were geophysicists who worked for me. Adrienne Markham and Metta Tharys. They were supposed to be off-shift, but they were rerunning an analysis I’d yelled at them for not getting right the first time.” After a tense moment, she whirled and threw the control padd across the room.
“I’m sorry,” Clare said after a time. “But you couldn’t have known . . .”
“Not then!” Dina cried. “But I knew now. I’ve had six weeks to warn them, to warn myself. But I couldn’t. My duty wouldn’t let me. Those big guards posted outside my door wouldn’t let me. The analysts monitoring my every keystroke wouldn’t let me. For six weeks, I’ve known I had to just sit back and do nothing and let those people die.” She took in a shuddering breath. “And I was able to live with it because I convinced myself that it was out of my hands. That there was nothing I could do about it. I convinced myself that, that all of this was just a replay of something that had already happened, something fixed in the past. That sharing what I know wouldn’t make any difference anyway.
“But now—” She barked a laugh. “Now your agents come and tell me that it’s okay to share it. That maybe I can help prevent something really bad happening. As if it’s okay to bend the rules when enough is at stake. Well, what about Markham and Metta? What about their families? What could possibly be bigger stakes from their point of view?”
“So . . . you’re keeping quiet to punish the Department for not letting you help them?”
Dina stared, looking shocked. “No! I . . . I don’t know. I just . . . I mean . . . if all my reasons for not saving them, if everything I convinced myself of before, is no longer applicable, then letting them die again was all for nothing. I have to believe, I have to tell myself, that keeping future knowledge to myself is the right thing to do, no matter the consequences. That’s the only way I can live with myself.”
Clare was silent for a time, not knowing what to say. That was all right; often her job was simply to be a sounding board, to let her patients work things out for themselves. She remained silent as Dina gathered herself, then walked over to retrieve the puzzle control padd. The lieutenant entered a few more words silently. Clare under-stood that it wasn’t frivolous; it was a distraction, and maybe a way to help her feel some sense of control over an orderly domain.
“You know,” she finally said, “I’m anything but an expert on theories of time. But it seems to me that . . . when you kept quiet before, that was about preserving the real history, the way it was supposed to go, for better or worse. But what the Department’s asking could help them stop someone from changing the way history’s supposed to go. I think that’s why they’re willing to make an exception.”
“Oh, here’s an easy one. ‘Therapeutic plant from Earth,’ four letters.”
Clare chuckled. The easy crosswords in the back of TV Guide had been more her speed, but even she knew this one. “Aloe.”
“Some things never change, huh?” She entered the letters and let out a breath. “They think history might be changed if I don’t help them. But it’s all guesswork. There’s just as much chance I could change it if I do. I could prevent some future faction from doing whatever they’re trying to do, but in the process I could . . . step on a butterfly. Cause some other monumental change just by accident.
“No—I figure if tampering with the past is that great a risk, then the last thing we should do is try to compound it with more tampering.” She studied the grid again. “I will do everything I can to help—when the time is right. But I’m not going to cheat by helping you peek ahead at the answers.” She gave a small scoff. “Not that I have many answers anyway.”
Clare shrugged. “You’ve got more than I do.” She came over to peer over Dina’s shoulder at the padd. “‘Gorkon’s gun’? Huh?”
“HIch.”
“I don’t get it.”
Norym District, Nivoch
Middle Season, Day 106, 743 UE (A Wednesday)
19:37 UTC
Lucsly and Dulmur found Cyral Nine in a bar in the seediest part of Norym District. They attracted a fair share of suspicious stares from the clientele; Nivoch was a neutral world that had been caught in the middle during the Dominion War, so its inhabitants—all settlers of various species, for the most intelligent indigenous form was a tree-dwelling rodent—tended to mistrust Federation nationals and Cardassians alike. Which made it an odd place for a Cardassian like Cyral to situate herself.
Cyral was at the bar, being unsuccessfully propositioned by a Chandir, his cranial trunk curling suggestively forward over his shoulder. The two DTI agents flanked him, peering at him sternly, until he got the hint and slinked away, his trunk falling flaccid down his back. The agents moved in on either side of Cyral, who took in their visages with bleary eyes. “Lucsly! Dlummer! As always, coming to the rescue of the downtrodden. Bartender! Two more over here!”
“We’re on duty,” Lucsly told her.
“Who said they were for you?”
“Aww, Cyral,” Dulmur moaned, shaking his head at the sight of her. “What happened to you?” The first time he’d met the Aegis agent—back in ’70 when she and they had both been attempting to disperse a Turtledove anomaly in the Hugora Nebula before the Obsidian Order could locate it and use it for time travel—she had been so disciplined and self-assured, with an ineffable wisdom and an air of precision that rivaled Lucsly’s. Sure, she could be a bit of a stiff, not the most socially gifted Cardassian around, but that was only to be expected when one’s ancestors had been abducted by a powerful, mysterious ancient race and bred and trained for dozens of generations to become physically and mentally superior operatives working clandestinely to guide unstable civilizations through their most dangerous times.
But nothing of that enhanced heredity showed in Cyral’s bearing now. “What didn’t?”
“I understand you quit the Aegis,” Lucsly said.
“No. I was fired.” She examined the first of her two new drinks for a moment. “Well, I anticipated being fired. I left of my own vol-volition to save them the trouble.” She punctuated it by e
mptying the glass and slamming it down on the bar. “I mean, naturally they were going to fire me, what did you think? Look around! Look at the ruin Cardassia has become! I worked . . . I worked for thirty years to nudge them in the right direction. Protected dissidents from discovery by the Order. Saved copies of Hebitian writings for future generations. The civilian coup? The Detapa Council wresting power away from the Central Command? My work,” she said proudly, then downed her other drink. “Even if nobody knew it. Bartender! Again!”
“Cyral,” Dulmur began.
“Was it my fault I couldn’t see the Dominion coming? I couldn’t help it if they infiltrated the Klingons and tricked them into invading us! And that Dukat, ohh, that Dukat. I should’ve had him killed long before he sold us out, but the Aegis, in their infinite wisdom, frown on such tactics.”
“But they know the future, right?” Dulmur asked. The Aegis was unusual among the Temporal Accords’ signatories; rather than arising in the future, they had existed for countless millennia and generally operated in linear time. But the mysterious, secretive race that headed the organization—suspected of being shapeshifters themselves, like a more benevolent version of the Dominion’s Founders—possessed an advanced facility for intertemporal travel and communication, which they used to coordinate their efforts in multiple eras—efforts which often included thwarting attempts by anti-Accordist time travelers to meddle in history. Of all the factions in the Temporal Cold War, the Aegis was the only one that could be considered indigenous to almost every era involved in the conflict—although they tended to operate more by stealth and espionage than open confrontation. “Couldn’t they have warned you, helped you head it off?”
“Ohh, no, no, no. They’re big believers in letting history unfold the ‘right’ way. Just like you, Luckle . . . Lucsly. True, they encourage us to nudge things in a positive direction, to ease pain and suffering where we can, but if a disaster or a war is part of the history that was ‘supposed’ to happen . . .” Cyral shook her subtly graying head and downed another drink. “No. We stop meddlers from tampering with history. We’re not just out for general do-gooding like those damn androids.”
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