Ex Machina

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Soreth studied her. “Do you think that if the mass of Lorini were to vote at this time, they would allow the Federation to remain?”

  “They probably wouldn’t,” she told him bluntly.

  “That would be very unwise. Yours is still a young settlement, trying to tame a wild planet. How many more of your people would have died without the advice and assistance of the Federation? Leaving aside the fact that your entire civilization would have been destroyed, along with that of the Shesshran, if not for the intervention of the Starfleet captain seated at this table.”

  “If I may, Commissioner,” Kirk said a bit sharply, then turned to address the others. “I’m sure the Commissioner didn’t mean to imply that you are under any obligation to us in return for our assistance. Our only purpose here is… to help you to stay on the course that you decide is best for you, and to reach your destination safely.”

  “And what if we do decide,” Kemori asked, “that the best course for us is one that takes us away from the Federation?”

  Kirk thought for a moment, then met Rishala’s eyes. “Your high priestess pointed out to me,” he said, “that when I helped put Yonada back on course I took on a share of the responsibility for this world. Now, I’m not here to force my beliefs, my choices on anyone. But I am involved with this world. The Federation is involved with this world. And it’s too late to turn back history and make it as if that never happened. The Federation would respect your choices… but any choice you make will be about the Federation on some level, whether you choose to work with it or to work against it. Either way, we’re part of what happens now.” He grew introspective. “Life is about change. Sometimes you get a second chance, you can regain something you thought you’d lost… but it won’t be the same. The things that happened in between will change it, will change you. And you can’t just fall back into the old patterns, you have to try to figure out new ones, and make peace with the things that are different.” He gave a self-deprecating smile. “Anyway, that’s what I think. I’m not sure how much it has to do with any—”

  He was interrupted by an explosion from outside. The negotiators all shot to their feet and the guards rushed toward the door, but then another blast blew it open. Chekov was saved only because the body of Tasari’s man took the brunt of the debris; Kirk saw instantly that nothing could save that man. Then a small narrow shape shot through the door—a crossbow bolt?—and erupted into a cloud of gas. Those nearest to the point of impact began choking and collapsing.

  Kirk found himself closest to Natira, and he pulled her aside, away from the toxic cloud. He indecorously ripped a piece from her flowing gown, resolving to apologize later, and tore it in two to make masks for the governess and himself. As he did, he saw black-robed, masked figures barging into the room, and pulled Natira back behind the ruins of the door. Then Chekov appeared, covering them and firing at the attackers, who returned fire with more conventional crossbow bolts. But Kirk saw one of them loading a bolt with a large cannister attached, and opted for the better part of valor. “Retreat!”

  Outside, he found the antechamber a blasted wreck, and the various guards in similar condition. There were fatalities, though fortunately none of his. “Report!” Chekov called.

  “An ambush,” Zaand replied. “Only five, but well armed and well trained. No fear of death. The first one blew himself up.”

  The crossbow-wielding attacker appeared in the door, and Kirk cried, “Back!” The security team pulled him and Natira back around the corner before the grenade-bolt went off, bringing the ceiling down almost on top of them. “Everyone all right?” Kirk called when he’d caught his breath.

  “Sh’aow’s leg is broken from before,” Zaand reported. Kirk was surprised; the stoic Caitian had shown no sign of pain. “Swenson was hurt too, but he’s mobile.” Otherwise everyone seemed intact. But Kirk saw there was no going back. The terrorists had Soreth, Lindstrom, Tasari, Dumali, Kemori… “Rishala,” he whispered. Then he turned to the others. “Come on,” he said. They would find a safe place to regroup, and then attempt to rescue the rest—if they were still alive.

  * * *

  “Something isn’t right,” Uhura said.

  McCoy rubbed his eyes and tried to work the crick out of his neck. “I’ll say. I like books better when they’re small enough to read in bed.” The two of them were in Yonada’s temple today, helping Spock with his research project. Uhura was double-checking the computer’s translations, comparing the scans of the mountain cache and the inscriptions on Lindstrom’s mural with the original Book of the People. The Book was a hefty tome, its pages made of a strong, flexible polymer that had survived intact for ten millennia—more intact than the computer files for which it had been intended as an emergency backup. A shame the technology had been lost by later generations. Anyway, she’d asked McCoy to compare notes about the modern usage of the language, as he’d learned it during his stay on Lorina.

  He would rather have been with Natira right now; they still weren’t quite sure where they stood with each other, but they were having fun finding out. All McCoy’s claims to prefer the life of a hermit dissolved under a woman’s loving touch, something he’d deeply missed. But she was in conference with the opposition right now, and she’d decided it would be bad form for him to be there; she didn’t want it to look as if she was, well, in bed with the Federation. And, she’d teased, she didn’t want to deal with the distraction he provided, however pleasurable. So that had left McCoy available to grant Uhura’s request—for all the good he could probably do. He was better with the spoken than the written, since most of the Lorini had still been illiterate at the time of his visit. He understood the basics of the written language: each symbol represented a syllable, organized into square or rectangular arrays representing words. It reminded him a bit of the hangul writing from that Korean restaurant he liked in San Francisco. But he had trouble telling the simple geometric symbols apart. Was ma the medium horizontal line or the long horizontal line? So whatever Uhura had spotted was beyond him.

  But her observation had drawn Spock’s attention. “What is it, Commander?”

  “Some of these passages on the mural… the words don’t seem to fit. There are some awkward clashes of meaning.”

  “For example?”

  “Well… some of the terminology is the same as what you might hear in one of Dovraku’s sermons—obey the Oracle’s commands if you wish to be spared the fate of blasphemers, that sort of thing. Very dogmatic, fire-and-brimstone stuff. But in the context of the mural, it seems out of place. The tone I’m sensing in the text there is far more benevolent. But then a harsher word suddenly appears and makes it feel… discordant. Like a piece of music badly transposed to a different key.”

  McCoy’s ear was at least thirty percent tin, so he didn’t quite follow. “Well, we know the language has changed, right?” McCoy asked. “Why not just get the original meanings from the probe translations, see how those sound?”

  “The translations were imperfect,” Spock explained—of course Spock had an explanation for everything—“without an actual speaker’s brain activity for a universal translator to map. Technical and scientific terms could be translated with precision, but more abstract and culturally nuanced terms were a matter of some guesswork. Indeed, for the past several years we have been basing our translation of ancient Fabrini on insights gained from the modern language, assuming the shifts were mostly in pronunciation rather than vocabulary. It is possible that we were—”

  He broke off as Nizhoni came into the room. “Sir, the conference is under attack!”

  “Report,” Spock ordered.

  “Details aren’t clear, sir—we got a brief comm warning, then heard explosions. But they’re definitely after the delegates. The FSes have already gone up to help,” she said, referring to the Federation Security forces.

  Spock frowned. “That may have been unwise. If the militants have reached Yonada, then the Oracle will be a prime target.”


  “Don’t worry, sir, we’re on the—” Just then a projectile shot into the room and blew up in a cloud of noxious smoke. “Oops,” Nizhoni said before passing out.

  * * *

  Dovraku strode into the temple of the Oracle, striving to quash the exhilaration which his treacherous flesh inflicted upon his mind. This was merely the inevitable achievement of his destiny, he reminded himself, and there were still more steps to take. “The Vulcan must not be killed,” he reminded Moredi and the others as they moved toward the unconscious Fedraysha infidels who soiled the temple.

  “And the others?” Moredi asked, glaring at them with hatred, which Dovraku opted to excuse for now.

  “Hostages for the Vulcan’s cooperation. Their deaths will come in their proper time… and at the proper hands,” he added, gazing at the cold perfection that was the Oracle’s altar. The Eye of Truth at the heart of the black marble slab lay dormant and dark, as it had been since Natira’s betrayal, since Kirk’s violation of the temple. Dovraku’s flesh tainted him with frustration at his failure to capture those two with the others; he strove to remind himself that their escape could only be temporary. For once he and the Oracle had achieved their destiny together; none could escape them.

  The others showed consternation as they moved the body of the dark-skinned alien woman from her Fedraysha console. There on the surface before her lay the Book of the People itself, left carelessly open like some schoolchild’s text. It teetered on the edge, but none of his followers dared to touch it. Dovraku moved forward smoothly and caught it up in his hands just as it slipped off. He was intensely cognizant of the symbolism. He was meant to be here at this moment, to take the instrument of the Oracle’s resurrection into his hands and play his part in the well-oiled machine of destiny.

  He had always known that he was meant for greater things than the rest of the lowly family into which he’d been born. For years, as a child, he’d believed his birth in such circumstances to be a mistake, a cruel joke at his expense. But now he understood that the Oracle had delivered him into that life as an object lesson in the evils of the flesh, of mortal passion. Instead of succumbing to those demons within him, he had quashed them, smothered them, and worked methodically to escape the lower levels, to ensure that he would never be trapped by the kind of frustration and helplessness that had plagued his father. It had been a long fight, but he had worked determinedly, advancing by embracing the Oracle’s system and discovering how it could work to his benefit, rather than silently resenting its limits as his father had done so fruitlessly for so long. To be sure, he had only reached the level of a menial clerk within the priesthood, but he had been there, on his way to greater heights, and beginning to recognize that it was what he had been meant for all along. He’d even begun to recognize that there was nothing in the Oracle’s laws which absolutely required a high priestess instead of a high priest.

  But then the godkiller Kirk had come and silenced the Oracle. And the betrayer Natira—an upstart too young and flighty for the responsibility; he’d never trusted her—had renounced her faith and removed the clergy from formal power. Then that unruly commoner Rishala had usurped the priesthood and purged it of all who deserved to be there, reducing it to a vulgar, superstitious cabal. Dovraku’s path to power had been torn away in front of him. For a time he’d despaired, and doubted his destiny. But soon he realized it was simply another trial of his faith. This was a crucial time for the People, the time of the fulfillment of the Promise, and surely they must be tested—their future leader most of all.

  Dovraku had even managed to wrest some good from Kirk and Natira’s evil deeds. The dissemination of the Book of the People, this divine text he now held in his hands, had given him new insights into the Oracle’s true being. He had read of the pure, mathematical logic that formed the essence of his god, and understood it to be the ultimate goal he’d sought all his life. Understood that fleshly passions were a distraction from the truth, and that it had been his ability to overcome them which had enabled him to rise from his squalid beginnings. Now, if he were to pass this new time of trial, he had to raise his spirit to the next level, to seek the divine perfection of the machine. Even the propaganda of the Fedraysha had served him, bringing him the knowledge that the universe was filled with cybernetic gods: Landru, Worldlink, Vaal, and others. He had finally understood the ultimate truth, and begun to preach it, and found others who recognized it. Yet many had doubted. The Oracle had died; the other gods had died. Was there a future in such worship? Dovraku had known this was the true way, all evidence to the contrary. He had known that the divine calculus was eternal, no matter the fate of its worldly forms of stone and metal.

  And then he had been vindicated, for V’Ger had arisen and prevailed over the godkiller. It was the proof Dovraku had known would come, the proof that the Machine was eternal, that the Oracle would rise again. It had given the People hope, renewed their faith in the Oracle—and in His prophet. Dovraku had understood that this was the time— the time not only to cleanse the World of Natira, Rishala, and the other blasphemers, but to achieve an even greater destiny than he’d realized. A destiny he was now on the brink of making real.

  Confidently, he strode forward and placed his hand on the Eye of Truth, pressing firmly. There was no sense of awe or hesitation in him; he was simply doing what he was meant to do, what everything in his life had prepared him for. His followers fell to their knees in awe as the altar moved forward smoothly, opening the way to the Oracle’s greater self beyond; but Dovraku stood tall, unafraid of his own greatness. Cradling the Book in his hands, he stepped behind the altar and into destiny.

  What lay beyond was glorious. To a lesser eye sullied by carnal passions, the control complex might have seemed crude, mechanical, prosaic. To Dovraku it was pure and perfect, quintessentially functional. Cold binary logic was the only aesthetic it needed. And far more important than its aspect was its power. This was the Oracle’s heart and sinew, the mechanism that had once held all Yonada in its omnipotent grasp, and soon would again.

  Of course, Yonada itself was an abandoned shell now; but the Oracle had power that extended beyond Yonada, power that Dovraku would use to compel the straying masses of the People to obey the Oracle once more. Rishala with her antique superstitions would call it Nidra’s fire; the Fedraysha in their schools called it an energy release from the fission of atoms. Dovraku knew it to be something purer and simpler than either of those: the raw light of Truth which would cleanse the world.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  None of us can directly comprehend what V’Ger’s ascension truly meant. So we treat it simply as a confirmation of whatever we were predisposed to believe: that we are destined to reach higher levels of existence, that we are helpless in a universe of superbeings, that some god or other has sent us a sign, or that we have to be careful lest our creations come back to bite us. But amid all these contradictory views we can perhaps discern a common truth: that wonder and danger go hand in hand, and our future will surely bring both.

  —Dr. Monali Bhasin, The Day the Heavens Opened

  “WELL, I’LL BE DAMNED,” Kirk said. “You really can touch the sky.”

  He, Natira, and Chekov’s team had been tracking the terrorists and their captives, who seemed to be heading down toward the inner shell. The catch was, the only way down was the elevator shaft through the mountain, and Kirk was sure the enemy would leave a guard. He and Chekov had been discussing ways of dealing with that when they’d gotten a call from the Enterprise, reporting that they’d lost contact with Spock’s group at the temple. Shortly thereafter, Yonada’s main power had come back online. Kirk had realized that it had been a joint attack, the raid on the conference being at least partly a distraction from Dovraku’s real objective, the Oracle itself. By now, the Oracle was probably in terrorist hands.

  But it had provided a solution to one problem. With the power back on, the sky projection was back on too, and would provide enough light for Kirk’s team to m
ake its way down the outside of the mountain, whereupon they could come at the terrorists from an unexpected direction. Chekov had Yonada’s plans stored in his tricorder, and had led the way to a maintenance hatch which came out at the interface of mountain and “sky.” When Kirk had emerged and seen the simulated expanse of carnelian sky projected on the roof above him, he couldn’t resist reaching out and touching it, as that old man whose name he’d never learned had done all those decades ago, even though it had been forbidden.

  Kirk took a moment to wonder about that ill-fated old servant. What had prompted him to risk his life, even knowingly sacrifice his life, in order to tell three strangers that the world was hollow? Kirk had just told the man that he and his friends had come from outside the world—“out there, everywhere, all around.” The Yonadi had been oddly accepting of the idea that their world was one of many, and that visitors could come from beyond, so telling him that had only confirmed what he had been told all his life. Yet the old man had spent most of his life convinced it was a lie, for as a boy he had touched the vault of the heavens and found it a solid boundary, his Copernican beliefs shattered by a Ptolemaic reality. But what was it about this one more repetition of the lie (as he believed it) that had prompted him to speak out at last, knowing the consequences? Had he simply grown fed up with keeping his silence and finally stopped caring whether he lived, so long as he could speak the truth just once? His manner had seemed kindlier than that, as though he’d believed the Enterprise officers to be dupes themselves, and wished to open their eyes to the truth. Maybe it had even been an act of resistance—maybe he’d concluded that the visitors were free of the Instruments of Obedience and could therefore carry on a fight which he had never been able to lead. Maybe he’d felt that was worth dying for. In which case, the tragedy was that it had been so unnecessary, for of course Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had already known what he wished to tell them.