Should the photonic creature fail, Vivia had a contingency plan playing out in the present as well. She had carefully chosen emissaries who had fanned out through the galaxy and into other dimensions searching for the Light’s offspring. Thus far, the child’s whereabouts had eluded her, but she would not be discouraged. She would not fail. Either the photonic being would take care of the Light or she would destroy his offspring. Her victory could be assured without ever having to begin the fight with Phoebe.
But Phoebe did not know this. She believed that Vivia was marshaling for war, and this incorrect assumption had allowed Vivia to put off making her choice. She would wait to see what Phoebe would do next. Vivia resented having to base her decision on that inconvenient dimension: time. The Exiles’ existence in a dimension bound by time required that she figure in such limitations. At least it would be over soon, the gateway sealed and Monorhan space dealt with once and for all.
Yet she had yet to understand why she felt so restless when all of the momentum appeared to be flowing in her favor. Phoebe would sow the seeds of her own destruction—Vivia was certain of it. Something she observed nagged at her. She would be bothered until she rid herself of it. So she conjured up the vision of the Exiles before her, replaying the events the way they had transpired. How typical of Phoebe to be so cruel, especially to prove that she deserved to lead them. Phoebe would be dealt with. The Exiles would know what suffering meant before her existence was complete. The universe had a way of enforcing consequences; Vivia knew this to be part of the balance.
A presence beside her disturbed her focus. She turned to see who or what would dare approach her in this moment. No Nacene would be such a fool. A lustrous, flowing being floated beside her. One of the abominations, naturally. The photonic one had found them…beautiful. To Vivia, beauty was harmony and this creature embodied chaos.
You are fortunate to still be living.
The abomination fluttered its wings with what Vivia could only perceive to be pleasure. I am. And it is a joyful existence. If only I knew that my rih had passed over with me. Until the end, she thought only of her tribe. The abomination curled its wings thoughtfully. The one you watch. She thinks only of herself. As, I suppose, is the Nacene way.
What do you know of the Nacene way? Vivia increased the height of her form until she towered over the fluttering abomination.
Only that you tried to destroy us the moment we passed through the conduit. The abomination flew up to where it could look Vivia in the face.
The balance—the harmony—the strings!
The ugly-faced abomination swooped and dove, beating its wings with a rhythm that found sympathy deep in Vivia’s sporocystian core. We have no interest in the strings, it thought, save to listen to their song. We came from you, so we share your purpose. Why do you want to destroy us? Why do you want to destroy all you touch? The abomination extended its wing, indicating the tableau playing out before Vivia. This time, the vision of Phoebe attacking her kindred Exiles seemed different to Vivia, though she could not say why. She considered her own choices, her own behavior in light of Phoebe’s. Vivia had always been so different from the selfish, vindictive creatures who had remained Outside. Or so she believed.
After the abomination flew off to explore the glorious energy and thought that was Exosia, Vivia pondered and watched the flow of future streams shift and change as the future became the present, then the past. Soon she would choose and her choice would enter the stream, thus shaping the future. Either the photonic creature would stop the Light or the fabric of space-time that protected the gateway would be destroyed, by her and those who kept the strings, as a way of preserving balance.
Vivia split her focus between the preparations of the Exiles and the photonic creature. She held out hope that the course of its mission might make her choice for her. Such an outcome would be fortunate, she thought, though her sudden willingness to surrender her choice to another troubled her.
Ocampa. Of all the places in the universe, this was where the past needed to be fixed. The Doctor couldn’t be absolutely certain of his exact geographical location or historical era, though he surmised Vivia had sent him back at least a millennium, to when the Ocampans still lived on the planet’s surface. The presence of water affirmed that the Nacene hadn’t annihilated all nucleogenic particles from the atmosphere, though he suspected that time was close at hand. Either the Nacene were already here working their mischief or they would arrive shortly, of that he was certain. Finding the Nacene should be as simple as looking for evidence of their presence by the damage they caused. The knowledge he’d gained from Kes would provide him with enough of a map that he should be able to navigate this time without being hopelessly lost.
Strange…he hadn’t revisited his memories of Kes for a long time. He never thought the information would matter beyond his sentimental attachment to Kes and pure academic interest in Delta Quadrant species among scientists at that time when Voyager would eventually return home. Now, however, he would have to devote a good part of his time to scouring his recollections, searching for clues as to how he should proceed on this mission for Vivia.
After Kes’s encounter with Suspiria’s Ocampa, her latent psionic abilities began manifesting themselves with a degree of strength she hadn’t experienced up to that point in her life. A side effect of stirring these latent abilities had been her ability to access memory engrams that didn’t belong to her and had been dormant since her infancy.
One of the fascinating aspects of the Ocampa life cycle was how they learned. A shortened life span necessitated that knowledge be transferred efficiently; the luxury of spending years in the classroom studying and analyzing simply wasn’t afforded them. The Ocampa who demonstrated an increased psionic strength by comparison with their peers, as well as the superior cerebral capacity, were designated by Ocampan leaders as sages, whose primary role was the mind-to-mind transfer of knowledge engrams.
Along with knowledge of history, mathematics, language, and culture, some memory transfer occurred, most accidentally. Rarely did memories received as part of the transfer process impact Ocampan life in a meaningful way, save the occasional flash or dream. A few Ocampans, usually those who had undergone psychological trauma or who had been subjected to extreme duress, would experience more complete manifestations of memories not belonging to them. These Ocampans were said to have experienced the “second life,” because they had the perspective of living not only their own lives but also the lives of those who had gone before. Rebirth or reincarnation wasn’t a part of their belief system, though those who did have the second life were revered and honored.
From the Doctor’s analysis and studies, he determined that the Ocampans had little in common with the Trill except the ability to build on the knowledge acquired by previous generations in an organic, physiological fashion as opposed to the experiential methodologies employed by most humanoid species. The Ocampans, from a purely scientific standpoint, were a relatively ordinary species who displayed psionic abilities similar to those exhibited by Vulcans or Betazoids.
Not surprisingly, Kes was exceptional. Little about her complied with the “generally accepted” beliefs about her species.
As her abilities grew, so did her capacity to fully access residual memory engrams. She had flashes of experiences she’d never had—saw vistas she’d never visited. At first, the memories had frightened her, confusing her sense of what was real and what was imagined. Time and careful tutoring helped her refine her powers of discernment. She developed the capacity to not only separate inherited engrams from her own memories but to study and learn from them.
Now, sitting here amid all this destruction, the Doctor recalled the day when Kes asked if she might begin sharing her memories with him, as a way of preserving her heritage. Her relationship with Neelix had long since ended and she’d just survived a dramatic journey from her future to her past. Hoping to spare Voyager from future catastrophe, Kes had discussed the future she’d
experienced with Janeway. She knew, as a consequence of her “spoiling” the future, that she had cast her own destiny in doubt. Having a new awareness of the totality of her life had caused her to question her assumptions, one of those assumptions being that she would someday have a child.
“All of my life, all the experiences I’ve had and those of my predecessors will be lost if I can’t pass these engrams on to someone,” she’d said. “There are no other Ocampa I can give them to and I don’t want them to be lost entirely.”
“Someone” turned out to be the Doctor.
And so began their long discussions in sickbay, shift after shift passing all too quickly as the Doctor listened, entranced by her recollections. Being a hologram gave him the capacity to record her every word in his database. In the months since she’d left, he’d indulged in replaying some of those conversations, as he found himself longing for more refined company than Mr. Paris. Her stories had kept him company, assuaged his loneliness, and now Kes’s stories would be critical not only to his survival but to Voyager’s as well.
The Doctor surveyed the chamber one more time, determining that he’d learned all he could from his current surroundings. He would be able to pinpoint his identity and location and time with more specificity once they departed. The sooner he could catch up with the general, the sooner his questions would be answered. Impatience seized him. He hopped off the block where he’d been sitting, brushed off his clothes. “How soon can you help me find the general?”
Din looked up from his scavenging. “The troops are in the mountains. More than a day’s travel from here. The journey is not easy.”
“I will compensate you in whatever way I can, I promise. There will be a greater reward if we leave immediately.” The Doctor had no idea how he would make good on his promise. He would use his genius to figure out something.
Nual stood staring at the Doctor, his face thoughtful.
“Is there something wrong?” the Doctor said.
“Most of those in my community have radiation sickness—too many sunny days spent in the fields,” Nual said. “I’d forgotten what health looks like.”
The Doctor felt chastised by Nual’s words, and his posture softened. “I know something of various treatments for the poisoning you describe. Perhaps as payment for rescuing me I can look over your injuries and see if I can—” He paused, searching for a word other than “cure.” “—help you be more comfortable.”
Din’s eyes widened. “Are you a healer?”
“One learns things when one is in the service,” the Doctor said.
“As soon as we’re done here,” Nual began, “we’ll place you on the road to Silver River. Once the baron’s people come back and discover him dead, I suspect they’re going to blame your general—”
“And they’ll take their frustrations out on me,” the Doctor said, not liking this conclusion.
“I’m finished here, Father,” Din called out from the far side of the room.
An idea occurred to the Doctor. “I’ll formulate a treatment plan for your illness as we travel so you can get started when you arrive back to your community.”
Nual paused, and then said to his son, “Do you believe we can trust him?”
“We can’t know,” Din said. “But the general has power. If we return her man, she might help us.”
At last, Nual nodded his assent.
It was the middle of the night when the Doctor left the chamber in Nual and Din’s company. The baron’s forces hadn’t yet returned to the fortress, so they moved uninhibited, though stealthily, through the various levels of the eerily quiet structure. Only the wind whispering in the draperies and the hollow shuffle of their footsteps against the stone could be heard. With no lighting, artificial or natural, to speak of, the Doctor could discern little of the baron’s home, save its opulence and ancientness, in the bruise-colored duskiness. He longed to study and absorb the details of this clearly advanced society, but he knew such wishes were folly at this critical time. Thanks to Kes’s detailed recollections, he could content himself with being able to identify various artifacts, architectural styles, and cultural details.
They passed through a drooping curtain of desiccated vines into a large, circular courtyard paved in geometric patterns of light and dark stone. The Doctor noted the empty fountains, the sculptures stained with mineral residue and dried moss. Shriveled plants in crumbling soil dangled limply out of hanging pots. Further examination revealed that barren basins and gutters lined the perimeter of the courtyards and terraces. The bottoms of the gutters were marred by the occasional flea-covered skeleton—presumably some water-based creature. Once, this place must have overflowed with aquatic life. Nual walked from water outlet to water outlet until he found a weak burble in the shade of a shriveled tree. He removed an animal-skin bottle from his utility belt and fitted the mouth of the bottle over the water source and waited for it to slowly fill.
Night breezes stirred the dirt film coating every surface into a low-lying dust fog. Din wheezed asthmatically; the Doctor raised the scarf draped around his head so that it covered his nose, though it failed to filter out all the particles. Each inhalation drew in a layer of dirt into his nostrils that caked uncomfortably around the rims of his nose. We must be close to the end of times for Old Ocampa, the Doctor thought. The drought is already far-reaching for dust storms to be a problem. He guessed that along with their observable medical problems, Din, Nual, and millions of others had also developed respiratory problems ranging from simple asthma to emphysema and pneumonias.
As with most species, Ocampan physiology was ill-equipped to deal with such sudden, drastic climate changes. Less catastrophic events had forced the extinction of species across the galaxy. The Doctor suspected that if the Caretaker hadn’t built the Ocampans an underground world, life on the surface would have ceased to exist, even without the decimation of nucleogenic particles. The Ocampans of this age had been born on a verdant planet, lush with diverse plant life.
Din touched his sleeve: time to leave.
After traversing several similarly situated terraces, the threesome exited the compound through unguarded gates, past vacant sentinel posts and into the yard outside. Low-lying buildings formed the yard’s boundary; the grunts and growls of animals could be heard through open doors, the sour, acidy aroma of waste wafting on the wind. The realities of Ocampan life in this age held little promise for the Doctor. A twinge of longing for his twenty-fourth-century life squeezed his chest.
He followed Nual and Din to where they had left their traveling animal, a lumwa, in a stable. Much to his relief, several mechanized vehicles, reminiscent of Federation hovercars, were parked outside the stable. The Doctor had enough general technological knowledge to believe he could both activate and pilot the crafts. At least this place wasn’t entirely barbaric.
“We’ll move faster if we take one of those,” the Doctor said hopefully, pointing at a vehicle that didn’t have tangles of wires hanging out of the hood and bent fins scraping the ground.
Nual refused to consider the idea. “What gives us ease now will cause suffering later. The baron’s men will hunt this vehicle down and extract payment for it from what little profit we make from our failing crops. Combined with the seasonal tribute we owe the baron, we will be in debt till we die.”
As was usually the case, the Doctor had considered his own comfort before the possibility of retribution against Nual and his people. His own selfishness nauseated him. He had much to learn before this journey ended! The hardship endured by these people touched the Doctor. He could tell from watching Din that he was a young man accustomed to manual labor, his body hard and wiry from continual exertion. Walking beside a lumwa for the ten kilometers back to their community would be nothing compared to day after day working in fields that, owing to the drought, were no longer arable. The Doctor simply couldn’t understand how the baron could justify living as he did when those who made it possible for him to retain his standard of
living suffered. Without further complaint, he asked what he could do to help them get on the road.
He helped Nual and Din pack their scavenged treasures into several saddle packs on the weak-looking four-legged animal they informed him was named Mur. The lumwa had smooth, mottled brown skin, in texture more like the skin of an amphibian than like the skin of mammals humans had used in their past. His four stumpy legs featured heavily muscled thighs, tapering down to webbed feet that would be useful on boggy land—possibly even equipping the creature to swim. Having heard a bit of Ocampa’s evolutionary history from Kes, the Doctor was aware that the planet had a water-based ecosystem with much of the landmass being heavily waterlogged. Bog and swamp-based crops had been their primary sustenance.
Glancing up at the clear star-flecked sky, he was reminded that part of the planet’s water cycle had been the nearly continuous presence of a thick, protective cloud layer that functioned very similarly to Earth’s ozone layer. The brief “light” seasons had been the Ocampan’s indoor time as they avoided prolonged exposure to the sun’s radiation. Now the occasional wisp veiled the stars, but nothing more substantial.
He gritted his teeth angrily, cursing the careless, irresponsible Exiles who had wrought this mess. The Nacene might be inadvertently responsible for his existence; after all, had Voyager not been taken from the Badlands he never would have been activated to replace the deceased medical officer. Gratitude, however, wasn’t among the emotions he felt when he thought about the Nacene. He’d had enough dealings with them to find them a reckless, selfish species who failed to see beyond their own needs and desires. The Doctor glanced at the lumwa’s hide, discovering, unsurprisingly, that the animal too had sores indicative of radiation poisoning. It wasn’t enough for the Nacene to wreak havoc on a planet; they had to make life miserable for every living thing within their touch. He patted the lumwa’s back comfortingly.
String Theory, Book 3: Evolution Page 13