Ex Machina

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Still, it was overwhelming to be in Dovraku’s presence, to behold the future of the People made flesh. He was not what Tavero had expected. He was tall, but not particularly impressive to look at—a long sullen face, rough features, middling brown hair. He dressed in simple, dark gray robes that made him hard to discern from the shadows of this warehouse. His voice was quiet, his manner subdued and cool. But there was something compelling that burned within his pale blue eyes.

  “Very well, young man,” he said in a soft, modulated baritone. “Tell me what you told Moredi.”

  “I—that is, Great Dovraku, I…”

  “Do not concern yourself with ceremony. We are all soldiers in the Oracle’s cause, cogs in the divine machine. Speak freely to me, so we may function together as part of a greater whole.”

  Dovraku’s words filled Tavero with pride. To be a part of the battle, declared a brother by Dovraku himself! “Sir, I was in Rishala’s temple yesterday—only at my parents’ insistence!”

  “Go on,” the prophet said, his tone never wavering.

  Tavero did as he asked, telling of the encounter with Kirk. He took care not to gloss over his humiliating defeat as he had with his friends; Dovraku could no doubt divine a lie. Still, he hurried past that part to get to the point: “…and Rishala welcomed him into the temple! Once I left, I watched the entrance from nearby. Kirk remained within, in conference with Rishala, for thousands of heartbeats! She claims to be holy, but she is in league with them, my lord! She disrespects the Oracle, welcomes His killer into a sacred place… she plots against us, I know it! She must be killed!”

  “Calm, young man,” the Great One said. “All things in their time. Rishala’s… ambivalence… is known to me. But for the moment, her public stance serves our cause. She will be given the chance to decide once and for all where she stands. She will learn there is only the One and the Zero, nothing in between. And if she is not One with us, then, when the time comes, she will be reduced to Zero.”

  Tavero was glad to hear that, but disappointed that his news had apparently contributed nothing. Yet the Great One sensed this and took a step closer. “But you, I can see, are One. Gratifying, to see such commitment in a youth your age.”

  “Thank you, Lord. The others my age… they are shallow and selfish. They like the new way because it indulges their lusts, lets them choose whatever mates they crave, and hop between each other’s beds.”

  “And you?” Dovraku asked.

  Tavero flushed, but could not deny the Great One’s request to know. “I… am not one that any of the girls would pick, when they are free to choose.”

  “I see. Such an unfair system, wouldn’t you say? This ‘freedom’—it makes things better for those who can take what they want, and worse for all the rest. It is chaotic, unbalanced.” He circled Tavero slowly as he spoke. “Under the Oracle, your rightful mate would be chosen for you when the time came.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “When He is reborn, the woman for you will not be claimed by another. If another has already claimed her, he will be struck down as a blasphemer, and she will be given back to you.”

  “Yes,” Tavero said eagerly. Oh, Semila! Such a delight it would be, to see that smug Madasi feel the Oracle’s wrath burning a hole through his skull for his sin in touching her. The bitch would have to be punished too, of course, but maybe the Oracle would let Tavero handle that himself. Or maybe Ribasi would turn out to be his chosen one—though there was no telling which of her boyfriends would pay the price when the time came. Maybe all of them.

  “Of course,” Dovraku went on, breaking his train of thought, “if you were to serve some… special role in the Oracle’s rebirth, He would no doubt reward you. Perhaps He would move up the time when your mate were to be chosen for you.”

  Or maybe He might grant me more than one? “The Oracle is wise and generous,” Tavero panted.

  “Yes.”

  “Just tell me what I may do, my lord, to serve you and the glory of the Oracle!”

  Dovraku’s face stayed dispassionate… but his eyes seemed to smile.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The humans have a saying: “No matter where you go, there you are.” Yet they often fail to grasp its meaning—that your own presence is the one constant in every experience you have. All exploration is part of the process of personal growth. We quest outward in hopes of discovering what is inside us. If this goal is not understood, then the quest becomes mere stumbling in the dark.

  —Kham’lia of Delta IV, doctoral thesis

  UHURA LOOKED AROUND the rec deck, wishing Will Decker could be here to see the culmination of his dream. Here more than anywhere else was where it was realized. On duty, the mingling of different species was determined by duty assignments, but here, it was strictly optional. And the species were mingling. Oh, a few still tended to favor the company of their conspecifics—the Vulcans, the Zaranites—but for the most part the crew members had grown comfortable with each other over the past weeks, developing a sense of being a single crew, a single community.

  She turned to Reiko Onami and Spring Rain, who stood next to her. “It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it? IDIC in action.”

  Onami smirked. “I’ve seen more species in one place on any given market day on Nelgha. They usually weren’t getting along so well, though.”

  “Megara’s markets offer wares,” Spring Rain sang,

  “Of many colors, shapes and tones;

  Yet all their rich variety

  Is emphasized by contrast with

  The sameness of the vendors’ hands,

  And all their selling songs are sung

  Upon familiar themes.”

  Sulu and Chekov came into view, and smiled in greeting. “Nyota!” Chekov said. “Come join us. We’re still trying to find a sport where Uuvu’ it can beat Sulu.”

  Uhura chuckled. “I’d love to, but the ladies here and I have an appointment with the hot tub. Spring Rain’s been dying for something to soak in. And I’m just eager for an excuse to get out of this uniform.”

  “Again with the uniforms,” Chekov kvetched. “I like these uniforms.”

  “But they’re just so bland.”

  “No, they’re not. The old ones were just so garish. I mean, really, whose brilliant idea was it to put security personnel in bright red shirts?”

  “You have a point,” Uhura said, “but I miss my mini-culottes. Who would’ve expected the Starfleet quartermaster to come up with something so fashionable? Besides, they were comfortable.”

  Onami scoffed. “Maybe for someone with legs like yours.”

  Uhura smiled. “Come on—Spring Rain isn’t getting any wetter. Later, Pavel.”

  He nodded. “Be seeing you.”

  The three females made their way over to the starboard side of the rec deck and into the locker room. Uhura eschewed the clothing transporter in the sonic-shower stall, going about it the old-fashioned way. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get undressed,” Onami said.

  “Not that way. Those things are a gimmick. More trouble than they’re worth.” Beaming clothes directly onto or off a person was a delicate operation. There were extensive safeguards in place to prevent accidentally, say, beaming fabric in underneath someone’s flesh or beaming away a favorite body part, but that meant the operation frequently had to be aborted and restarted if the subject moved. Also, the units were designed to replicate a garment perfectly tailored to the wearer, but the designers had overlooked the fact that the humanoid body changes its proportions from hour to hour with the vagaries of ingestion, gravity, and so forth. What was comfortable at 0700 could pinch unbearably by 1500. Something that fit a little less perfectly tended to work better. Bottom line, Uhura just didn’t like depending on a machine to dress her. The things must have been designed by men, or Vulcans, or someone to whom dressing was more a chore than an art.

  “Yeah, everybody seems to think so,” Onami said, passing up the booths herself. “They must have seemed g
reat to the engineers, but they’re too unreliable. I guess that’s what shakedowns are for—finding out what doesn’t work.”

  “Besides,” Uhura added as she slid the uniform down off her legs, “I don’t trust it with this.”

  Onami studied the scintillating, filigreed garter that adorned the communications officer’s right thigh. “Is that Deltan?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Uhura replied, gingerly sliding it off. “It was a gift from Lieutenant Ilia. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

  Spring Rain had also eschewed the clothing transporter, since it wasn’t programmed to cope with her special drysuit. As the Megarite peeled off the close-fitting garment, Onami stepped out of the booth and gave her pachydermatous hide a clinical once-over, making sure the drysuit was proving effective at keeping it moist. (Uhura was getting used to being asked, “Why is it called a drysuit if it keeps her wet?” and answering, “Why is it called a wetsuit if it keeps you dry?”) Uhura took a curious glance herself, noting that Spring Rain had no mammaries—not surprising for a species with baleen filters instead of mouths—but was otherwise recognizably female.

  Uhura helped Spring Rain make sure her voder was secure around her neck and said, “Come on, let’s get you into the tub before you dry out. You should know,” she added with a mischievous grin, “that I arranged for some special modifications.”

  They moved through the door into the hot-tub room, and Spring Rain’s eyes widened, a lively chorus erupting from her forehead vents. “Mud, mud, glorious mud!” she sang with gay abandon. “I wish to squish! Come, follow, let’s wallow!”

  “I tried to get as close to Megaran conditions as I could with the materials on hand,” Uhura said as Spring Rain climbed in and let herself sink, making incoherent choruses of glee. “I hope it meets with your approval.”

  “It oozes and squeezes and squelches and pleases!”

  “Glad to hear it!”

  Uhura followed Spring Rain readily into the tub, with Onami testing it more gingerly before sighing and sliding cautiously into the cool mud bath. “This’ll be good for my skin, right?”

  “Should be. Maybe a little rough, but no more than an Argelian exfoliant. Not as good as for hers, though.”

  Onami settled in a bit nervously, but soon she nodded in approval and allowed herself to relax. Uhura thought it suited her delicate, rounded features far better than her usual tense, aggressive manner. But if she said so, she knew she’d get an earful.

  But after a moment, Onami’s brows drew together again. “I didn’t know you knew Ilia that well,” she said.

  “I didn’t—not really. She wasn’t one of my recruits. And she was only on board for a day before… she was taken. But she left her mark. We spent some time together off-shift—she wanted to listen to my jazz collection, and there was a lot of girl talk…. I wouldn’t have expected it. Deltans seem so cool and rarefied at first glance, but they’re really very warm and generous. Ilia was easy to talk to.”

  “Not if you were a man,” Onami smirked.

  “Hmm, maybe.” Uhura chuckled as she remembered Sulu turning into an awkward schoolboy when Decker told him to “take Lieutenant Ilia in hand.” The Deltan had quickly reassured him that she would never “take advantage of a sexually immature species“—which ended up embarrassing Sulu more than it comforted him. Not that Ilia had meant any insult by it. Deltans did look on human sexuality with a certain amusement, but it was affectionate, the way adults would laugh at the sight of toddlers trying to walk— not with contempt, but with eagerness to see them succeed at reaching a higher level.

  “Still, you’re right,” Onami said, while Spring Rain continued to wallow luxuriantly, making sure every bit of her body was covered in mud and emitting happy burbling noises. “I knew Ilia a bit, while she was studying on Earth.”

  “Before she went to the Academy?”

  “Yeah, it was at Nehru University. Her father was there, teaching and working on his, I dunno, whatever his thesis was about the parallels between Earth and ancient Deltan history.”

  “I remember reading that,” Uhura said. “He believed exploring outer space was just a phase a young civilization went through before it turned its attention to more inward exploration, the mind and spirit.”

  Spring Rain made a rude noise.

  “Scholars in their towers see

  Their towers as the universe.

  What good is the mirror if

  The mirror’s all that it reflects?”

  “Ilia might’ve agreed with you,” Onami said. “She thought exploring space was romantic, in a noble-savage kind of way. She loved to talk about this Starfleet officer she’d met back on Delta, how exciting he was in a primal way Deltan men weren’t. I tell you, when I met Will Decker and realized he was the man Ilia had talked to me about, it was hard to keep from either blushing or laughing out loud every time I saw him!”

  “Her girl talk did get rather… graphic, didn’t it?” Uhura laughed.

  “Hell, I couldn’t follow half of it!” She sobered. “When she said she was going to join Starfleet, I told her it was just a schoolgirl crush, that she’d be risking her life for the wrong reasons. I tried to get her to go into psych like me— she would’ve been a great therapist, with that empathic ability. And I told her that there was almost no chance she’d ever serve with that handsome officer.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “But it was Decker who made me see what being in Starfleet was about, what Ilia saw in it. And the two of them… I guess they ended up together after all.” Shrugging, she finished, “I guess the moral is, never listen to me.”

  “That’s an interesting attitude for a psychologist.”

  Spring Rain lifted her head out of the mud to ask, “Was it a fight for her to swim / Against the tide of prejudice?”

  “Mmm, not really,” Onami replied. “Deltans are very open-minded about embracing new experiences. They may have seen what Ilia did as quaint and nostalgic, but they didn’t object to her trying it.”

  Uhura nodded. “Deltans embrace everything to the fullest,” she told Spring Rain. “Right after V’Ger, I went to Delta for her family’s memorial service. It was very intense. The grief they expressed was overwhelming to me, but still, in a way, they were celebrating the opportunity to experience it, as an expression of their love for Ilia. And at the same time they rejoiced at the new adventure she’d begun, the chance to discover whole new realms of experience.” She pondered for a moment. “I don’t think the fact that she’s still alive in some form really changed the nature of the services all that much. Deltans believe that before and after life, they exist as pure love pervading all things. They see that as something to be celebrated, too.”

  “A gift, to have such ties to home

  Though home is far away in mind

  As well as space. I envy her.”

  Spring Rain constructed a tone-poem image of her experiences on Megara. Uhura tried to follow her original multitonal song as much as possible, but still needed the translation to fill in some details. It began with a satirical picture of the spoiled female upper class, content to languish in their ancestral shoreline estates while the subordinate males were made to do all the work and traveling. Uhura understood that there was a biological basis for this; Megarite females had always needed to guard the eggs they laid on the beach, relying on their male harems to bring them food. But Spring Rain sang of how this natural mating-season behavior had been corrupted into a constant practice, and how it trapped the very people who perpetuated it. It had given the Megarite culture a narrow, insular vision, looking down on travel and initiative and discovery as lower-class things. She sang in dirgelike tones about the hollow, preprogrammed life her clan had laid out for her, a life limned by the borders of her ancestral cove, a life that meant never seeing other sights or tasting other waters, only singing variations of the same “respectable” songs. She’d always taken far more pleasure in the males’ raucous, iconoclastic improvisations, their equivalent to spiritua
ls and blues and jazz. And the otherworldly music she heard when alien traders and diplomats came fired her curiosity. And so she’d “lowered herself” to join the males who were chosen to represent Megara’s interests offworld, leaving home to join Starfleet, while her mother and sisters cursed her for betraying her obligation to perpetuate the clan, to bear more daughters to carry forth tradition.

  “A cursed, perverted, sexless thing / Was I, within their singing-worlds,” she finished. She was breathless, her deep-set eyes tearing with what Uhura assumed was sorrow.

  “Oh, Rain,” Uhura said, stroking her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No—worlds as small as those are not

  A place that can contain me now.

  But maybe… they can grow one day

  And take me back, along… with the

  New worlds I’ll chart—”

  The chorus from the breathing vents on her forehead grew increasingly wheezy and uneven as she sang. Now she broke off completely, clutching her chest and gasping for breath. Onami pulled herself through the mud to the young specialist’s side. “She can’t breathe! Call sickbay!”

  Uhura climbed out as fast as the suction of the mud would allow, and ran to the intercom, not caring how much mud she tracked across the room. Once she’d summoned aid, she helped Onami lift Spring Rain out of the tub and lay her carefully on a nearby massage table. Onami had her get some towels to wipe the mud off Spring Rain, so that she could examine the Megarite for signs of injury. Uhura also got robes for the two of them, but Onami barely noticed as she draped one around the psychologist’s shoulders.