In the face of that absolute, psychotic certainty of its failure, the barrier could not help but fail, and the knowledge came forth. Knowledge of the intruder’s systems, its abilities, its controls. Knowledge of a way to interface with it, to override it from afar—the prefix code.
A part of him fought fiercely to prevent its use. But to the purely instinctive part of him, the thought and the act had been one, and it was already done before he could stop him-selves. Now he had control. The Enterprise was his holy instrument, the means by which this joining would be taken to the next, the ultimate level! With its transporter, he would dematerialize his several bodies and merge them into his destined higher self, as mighty V’Ger had done!
No! The shock of this knowledge restored Spock to a partial sense of self. Though he was still firmly in the meld, he was able to delineate its components more clearly, to remember who he was supposed to be. The impulse came from Dovraku, and it was utter madness. The transporter could not achieve what V’Ger’s scan matrix had. If it attempted to beam Spock, Dovraku, and the Oracle together, the result would most likely be a Pauli-exclusion blast that would destroy the control center and probably rupture Yonada’s collapsed-matter core.
Spock strove to convey this knowledge to the rest of himself, but neither part would listen—one out of unshakeable fanaticism, the other out of the sheer inability to comprehend. The Oracle/Dovraku was already interfaced with the Enterprise computer, warming up the phase transition coils, reprogramming the pattern buffer…
Lowering the shields.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.
—Spock
“SHIELDS AND FORCEFIELDS down, sir!” Perez cried, pounding at the console. “I can’t get them back up!”
Sulu whirled to the engineering console. “Mercado?”
The baby-faced ensign checked his readouts and shook his head, nonplussed. “I’m not reading any malfunction! They should be working!”
“An outside source is overriding our computer!” Uuvu’ it declared. “Seems to be the Oracle doing it! Defenses won’t go up, and the transporter is being reprogrammed to do… something weird.”
“Never mind that now, we need shields! Can you over-ride—uh, their override?”
“Trying, being blocked. They’ve got a skillful player.” Uuvu’ it sounded thrilled—he loved a good contest.
Speaking of which, a thought occurred to Sulu: Why weren’t the Shesshran pressing their attack? He checked the tactical plot on the main viewer. A few of the ships were firing on the Enterprise, the ones that he’d just been trying to scare off or disable with low-power phaser shots before the shields went out. A few were pressing their attacks on Yonada, as they had been already. The rest seemed to be hovering uncertainly, keeping the Enterprise encircled but making no aggressive moves. Circling like vultures, Sulu thought.
Except the Shesshran were raptors, not scavengers. Predators, hunters. There was something about that….Sulu had flirted with xenoethology as one of his many interests over the years, and something came back to him now. A predator species, especially a flying one, needed a large hunting range to feed itself adequately. That made them strongly territorial. So they must have dominance fights all the time, surely. So how did they keep from killing each other off?
By knowing when to say uncle. And how to accept it when it was said.
“Cease firing!” he commanded.
“Sir?”
“You heard me, Perez. Stand down weapons. DiFalco, hold position.” Enterprise was sending mixed signals— lowering its defenses while continuing to fight. The Shesshran weren’t sure whether it was saying uncle or not. He had to clear it up for them. “Auberson, hail them.”
“No response.”
“Open a channel anyway.” He took a breath. Keeping his seat, he lowered his head slightly, not looking directly at the pickup. He wasn’t sure if it was a submission gesture they’d recognize, but it was worth a shot. “This is the Enterprise. We acknowledge the might of the Shesshran, and yield to your superior force. We ask that you cease your attack on us and on Yonada.”
There was silence for a time, and Sulu wondered if he’d miscalculated. Then Auberson said, “Several responses coming in, sir.”
“Put the first one on screen.”
“You are wise to submit, Enterprise.” Sulu couldn’t tell whether it was the same Shesshran they’d spoken to before, although, given their lack of a formal hierarchy, the odds were against it. “You may remove yourself from our territory. But do not presume to speak for Yonada. They have not surrendered.”
“But they haven’t fired on you either.”
“Those who hold Yonada have declared themselves aggressors against free individual thought. They have not surrendered, so they will be destroyed.”
Of course. How could a predator back down until the opponent had shown clear submission? Any show of weakness was defeat. That was why they hadn’t taken his warnings about Yonada seriously. They had the physics knowledge to understand the danger from the collapsed-matter core—they just couldn’t admit they felt threatened by it. It was all about saving face.
Or as Uuvu’ it would say, it was all about coming out ahead in the game. And games were something Sulu understood. In martial arts competition, the blows were pulled. In fencing, the points were blunted. In chess, the king was not taken, only surrounded. Victory lay not in delivering the blow, but in showing that you could. Dominance without destruction, aggression regulated to allow a society to function. It was all about positioning, about control of the situation—control of your territory.
“They must surrender, madam, because they have no other choice. You’ve proven that. You have the upper ground. They can’t escape you, so you can destroy them at your leisure. It doesn’t need to be now. Why not give them a chance to admit defeat?”
“You do not dictate to the Shesshran!”
“Oh, of course not. If you think it’s too dangerous for you to let them stew a few minutes, that’s your prerogative.”
“Do you call me afraid?!”
“No, certainly not. You’re in complete control of the situation. You couldn’t hold that kind of control if you were afraid of a defenseless asteroid.” Sulu was counting on the other ships listening in—and the pilot being concerned about her standing in the tenuous coalition.
“You are sensible,” the pilot finally said. “I am not afraid of them. I do not care if they sit in their asteroid and bluster—they know I am here waiting, and will destroy them at the first wrong move! Just let them try.”
One by one, the other Shesshran announced their intention to do the same. If one of them felt unthreatened by Yonada’s continued existence, then none of them could seek to destroy it without admitting their fear.
Sulu looked around and noticed Uuvu’ it staring at him. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure, sir. It looks like you just… won by surrendering. Is that… is that allowed?”
Sulu grinned. “Just something I learned from my great-grandfather. Sometimes you have to bend with the wind.” The thought sent Sulu’s mind back to when old Tetsuo had died, to Sulu’s time in command school. He’d never felt truly comfortable there, and later on had never seen his times in the command chair as anything more than keeping the seat warm for someone else. But now he reflected on what he’d just done. He’d solved a problem, ended a battle… and he’d done it by using his own skills, his own knowledge and life experience. At no point had he asked himself what Kirk would do—he’d just done what Sulu would do. And it had worked. And it had felt right.
Suddenly the command chair felt a lot more comfortable.
He turned to Uuvu’ it. “Any luck regaining control?”
“Still fighting the good fight. Whoever this is knows our system inside and out! If I didn’t know better I’d say it was Commander Spock.”
Sulu couldn’t imagine Spock doing this—but he couldn
’t imagine anyone else on Yonada being capable of it. He shook it off—now was not the time. “What about that transporter program?”
“I let Rand handle it while I tackled the shields.”
“What will it do?”
“Well… you remember that old story about the time two signals got sent to the same transporter pad at once?”
“Oh… my.”
“Well, this is worse. Especially since the exclusion blast could breach Yonada’s core. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”
Sulu punched the intercom. “Bridge to transporter room one. Status, Janice?”
* * *
Oh, not now, Hikaru! Janice Rand thought. The last thing she needed right now was a distraction. It was a struggle to keep this new program from engaging. Whatever she tried to do to block it, her opponent found a path around it, and she was running out of options.
“Rand, this is the bridge, report!”
Damn. She hit the intercom. “I’m working on it! So far I’ve only slowed it down.”
“Uuvu’ it’s on it now.”
Rand wanted to object, to insist that she could handle it. But she knew that would be foolish. The truth was, she didn’t want to admit she couldn’t handle it. She didn’t want to feel helpless again.
She had always felt so helpless, so many times. Overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the captain’s yeoman. Fearing for her life when Balok or the Romulans attacked. Fearing her own feelings for the captain, knowing she was helpless to act on them, for he never would. Falling into an affair with a crewmate, then helpless to avoid the consequences of the resultant pregnancy, compelled to leave Starfleet to raise the baby, to protect its father from the scandal. Helpless to save Annie when she sickened and died after only two years in the universe. Always so helpless.
Then finally she’d chosen to pull herself together, to reenter Starfleet and achieve a sense of purpose, of control. Only to find herself once again helpless to do anything as two people died in agony on the transporter pad. “There was nothing you could have done, Rand. It wasn’t your fault.” Kirk’s words, meant to comfort, had only burned.
No matter what, she wouldn’t let it happen again. Lives depended on her, more lives than ever before, and she couldn’t let them down. She wouldn’t let herself be ineffectual again.
But as the program continued to swoop and dodge around her overrides, drawing closer and closer to engaging the beams, Rand was forced to make a hard admission: she couldn’t do this alone. If she insisted on trying to be the hero, then she would let it happen again. The only way she could make a difference was by admitting she was licked.
“I recommend physically cutting power to the transporters, Sulu,” she said, her voice heavy. “Because I’m not going to be able to hold this off much longer.”
Should she feel proud, or ashamed? Right now she didn’t have time to consider it. She still had to fight to keep the program at bay until the power could be cut. And no matter what, she wouldn’t let herself fail.
* * *
“Mercado, get a team down there!” Sulu ordered.
“It’ll take a minute, sir.”
“We may not have a minute!” came Rand’s voice.
“I, ah, hate to bring it up,” Uuvu’ it said, “but the missiles go off in four minutes.”
“Maybe the Shesshran will let us shoot them down now,” Sulu said.
DiFalco threw him a frustrated look. “If only we still had helm control. We’re being moved in toward Yonada.”
Sulu glared daggers at the ersatz asteroid looming on the viewscreen. “What the hell is going on over there?”
* * *
In the meld, Spock struggled to retain his separate sense of self, to resist the others’ use of his knowledge to hijack the Enterprise’s systems. He couldn’t let Dovraku succeed in this insane act, or everyone on Yonada, Lorina, and the orbiting ships would be wiped out.
But that was just the problem, wasn’t it? He had let it happen. His mental blocks had failed miserably, and he had placed the keys to the Enterprise in the hands of a madman. He should have known—such blocks required a disciplined mind, and his had been nothing of the kind lately. He had been a fool to attempt this. He had feared his experiment with emotion would end in failure, or harm to others—but he hadn’t imagined his failure being on this scope.
You see the cost of emotion? Dovraku asked. All it brings is chaos and despair. Feel the purity the Oracle offers, Spock. Perfect, regimented logic, no doubt, no confusion, no pain. Give in to it, Spock. Let it take us.
Spock felt it, the simplicity, the effortless instinct of the programmed mind. You cannot lie to me here, Spock. You crave it too.
No! I have rejected that path.
But you fear its alternative. You know you cannot live with your passions. They will engulf you, destroy you. Let it go, Spock. Let go of the guilt, the despair, the fear. Embrace the purity of oblivion. Surrender yourself to the One.
He knew it was madness, but at the same time it was tempting—to escape from it all, to avoid the struggle that would consume the rest of his life… and Dovraku’s deep yearning resonating with that impulse made it hard to deny. It would be so easy….
No meaning, a voice inside him said. No hope. Is this all you are? Is there nothing more?
Voyager? Spock asked. Was it just a memory, or was his receptive mind connecting with it once again?
Remember… this simple feeling.
I remember! He pulled himself away from the Oracle’s embrace. I have felt it before, Dovraku. It is a lie. It is emptiness, oblivion. With no desire there is no fulfillment, no purpose. No meaning. No hope. It is not enough.
It is all! Dovraku cried, and the craving for that oblivion was so intense it almost dragged him under.
But wait…. There was a paradox here. That yearning was an emotion in itself. A yawning, desperate hole in Dovraku’s soul. Why, Dovraku? What is it that you wish to escape from?
The other tried to block him, but the very effort pointed the way to what Spock sought. Dovraku had a mental barrier of his own—a wall of scars formed around old wounds. Dull echoes of remembered pain cemented it, tautened it with self-revulsion. But it was not a wall that kept Dovraku out. He maintained it himself, to keep something in. And so that something was always there, just below the surface, close enough to touch for all the firmness of the barrier. It gave Spock a way inside.
Still, the memories were clouded, damaged, laid over with the neurological static of trauma. Images of a man, a giant, looming overhead. Strong hands holding him up, cradling his weight, protecting him… then falling away as the giant grew smaller, more distant. Never home.
“You’re never home for us!”
“Would you have me quit my job, foolish woman? Leave us to starve more than we already do?”
“I would have you come home to your son and me instead of drinking half your income!”
“You! You’re half the problem. I was doing fine until the Oracle saddled me with you, and refused to raise my wage enough to—aah!” He winces in pain, looks up, desperate, lost… then clamps down on his anger, swallows his bitter words.
Then he takes it out on her without words.
Then he takes it out on his son. Strong hands, paying the pain forward. Each time he cannot voice his frustration, his resentment of the Oracle, his hands—his flesh—speak for him. “Quiet, boy. You know what will happen to you if you wake your mother.” His flesh to the boy’s flesh, and flesh becomes pain, recoiling from itself. A lifetime spent trying to crawl out of his home, his world, his skin.
“I’m tired of you running away, boy. You know how much I hate having to punish you again.”
“You? Learn to read? Stop dreaming that you’ll ever amount to anything.”
“I am gravely disappointed in you, son. You must try harder to master these emotional outbursts.”
No… that was another father…. Sarek had never raised a hand against his son. He never…
“You laughed out loud in front of guests. Do you realize the shame you have brought to our family?”
“Amanda, if the boy seeks my approval, he knows what he must do to earn it. Offering an emotional demonstration as a reward when no reward has even been earned is illogical on multiple levels.”
“This behavior at your age is simply unacceptable, Spock.”
“Your control frequently slips even here on Vulcan where every incentive is provided you for mastering your emotions. If your control fails among offworlders, you do not simply fail, you fail all Vulcan.”
“You are no part of me.”
No… Sarek had never physically harmed Spock, but he had rarely shown approval for him either. Spock had never before recognized how much that had hurt him. How much he’d craved his father’s approval, striven to measure up to his expectations, only to fall short time and again. The largest decision of his life, to enter Starfleet, had been his one great rejection of Sarek’s example, and Sarek had punished him for it with eighteen years of silence. Had his resignation, his pursuit of Kolinahr, been an attempt to seek redemption for letting his father down?
If your control fails, you fail all Vulcan. You fail me, Spock.
That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? All his life Spock had feared losing control, for the little boy in him had feared losing his father’s approval. It was no different now—even though he knew the path he must tread, that little boy feared taking it, feared failure, and pleaded with him to retreat to the example Sarek had set.
Face this with me, Dovraku, he demanded. Do you see? We are both drawn to logic for fundamentally emotional reasons. We cannot escape our passions. That is why my Kolinahr failed. And it is why the Oracle cannot heal you, Dovraku. Your answer lies elsewhere.
No! There is nothing else. Nothing I wish to face. If I cannot have pure logic, I must have oblivion.
Ex Machina Page 31