“I do not see the reason for this delay,” Tarl said impatiently. “The artifact is yours. I need a ship for my crew.”
“Commander, please, a few minutes more,” Riker said. “We have strict protocols we must follow. I’m sure your command structure is no different from our admiralty.”
Tarl frowned. “Deliver me from subpraetors with their computer screens and regulations,” she muttered.
Riker nodded and sighed in agreement. “They’re everywhere.”
Tarl gestured for them to continue. “A few minutes then.”
As Picard moved around the side of the artifact and saw it extended another ten meters, he gave Riker a puzzled glance. “The protocols we must follow in a matter like this are very straightforward, Will. It’s all at the captain’s discretion.”
“We needed an excuse to bring you over,” Riker said in a suddenly lowered voice. “Data, where are you?”
Picard was startled by the android’s head suddenly poking out from among some tightly woven conduits on the surface of the artifact. He was already inside it.
“Allow me, Captain,” Data said. His body emerged just enough to allow him to push aside some strands of metal, bending them back until a narrow entry hole had been opened. “There is a corridor inside which is more or less undamaged. If you could come this way.”
Then Data disappeared back inside the mass of the artifact. Picard didn’t hesitate. This was thrilling. He climbed in after Data.
Picard’s uniform snagged a few times on rough pieces of metal or wiring, he couldn’t tell which, but after gingerly edging through a two-meter-thick section of the artifact, he found himself inside a large, well-defined passageway, whose appearance suggested that it had been sliced clean out of the interior of a Borg ship. As he stood up, Picard grew even more intrigued. If Starfleet could determine what kind of weaponry had been used to penetrate Borg defenses to cause such physical damage to their ship, the Federation would have nothing to fear when the Borg finally arrived at its borders.
“I am very encouraged by this,” Picard said. He looked around at the complex construction all around him. Starfleet engineers would be ecstatic.
“Just around this corner, sir.” Riker led the way now, Data hanging back. The internal passageway was lit by the small palm torches the away team carried, sending bars of light and shadow rippling through the mesh and interwoven conduits. La Forge handed his torch to Picard as he came to the corner where Riker stood. Picard was aware of how quiet everything seemed, as if the passageway were lined with a perfect acoustical shield.
“Do you notice the flattened quality of the sound in here?” Picard asked. He wondered if it had any significance.
Then La Forge held up a tricorder. “That’s because I’ve set up an acoustical baffle, sir. So we can talk without being overheard.”
“Talk about what?” Picard asked.
Riker glanced at the rest of the away team, then looked the captain in the eye. “We know the Borg assimilate the technology of whatever race they come in contact with.”
“Yes …” Picard said, not knowing where this was leading.
“Around this corner is another artifact, sir. An object which was obviously incorporated into the original Borg ship. It is our conclusion that neither the Borg nor Commander Tarl has realized what it is. We can’t be certain ourselves, but with your archaeological expertise, we think you should be able to confirm our suspicions.”
“I must say you have piqued my interest, Number One. But why not link up your tricorder to the Enterprise’s history computer?”
“If the Romulans are monitoring our communications, which they should be, we didn’t want to reveal what we suspect.” Riker extended his hand to the hidden passageway. “Take a look for yourself, sir. You be the judge.”
Picard tightened his grip on the palm torch and with a thrill of excitement, walked around the corner.
He found himself in a blind alley.
“What, exactly, am I looking for?” he asked as he moved the beam of the torch over the heavily textured walls. The moisture in the air gave the beam shape, making it glow as a blue cone against the dark Borg machinery.
“At the end, sir. The silver panel,” Riker said from behind him.
Picard shone his torch straight ahead. Sure enough, a patch of silver gleamed back at him. He could see where a metal panel had been pulled back to expose more of it, about a square meter in all. He moved closer to it. There was something engraved on the silver surface.
“This panel here?” he asked. “With what appears to be inscriptions?”
“Yes, sir,” Riker said.
Picard was aware of Data, and Worf, and Mr. La Forge all standing behind Riker at the open end of the passageway, watching the captain’s every move.
“And it’s more than a panel,” La Forge added. “My scans show it’s the surface of a discrete object about two meters by three meters by five meters.”
Picard touched the silver panel. It was cold. Moisture had condensed on it.
“The object is also the source of the power readings for the entire artifact,” Data said. “Because there appears to have been no effort to remove the object from the artifact, we assume that the Romulans have decided it is a power supply of some kind.”
“But you don’t believe that’s what it is,” Picard said. He rubbed at the gleaming silver surface, smearing the water droplets, feeling the depth of the inscriptions. They were an odd combination of delicate cuneiform wedges, broken up by simplistic, almost geometrical drawings of circles and squares and dotted lines. He could see why his away team had asked for him. The markings did look familiar.
“You’re certain we can’t risk even a brief contact with the Enterprise?” Picard asked. The ship’s computer would be able to identify these markings within seconds.
“That’s up to you, sir,” Riker said.
Picard turned his head sideways, seeing if that would make the inscription more recognizable. “I don’t know if I appreciate all this mystery, Number One. Perhaps my archaeological acumen leaves something to be desired when compared to Mr. Da—”
The pattern jumped out at him like lightning.
“Sacré merde,” Picard whispered.
He had seen inscriptions like this before. Just never so many of them at once. In Professor Galen’s study at the Academy. Reproductions of engravings from a hundred different worlds, so controversial that the professor would not even show them in class. Only to a select few students in whom he believed rested the future of exoarchaeology.
Picard realized he had stopped breathing. “What—” He had to clear his throat before he could make any recognizable sound. “Mr. Data … what is the age of this … object?”
“Overall, the age of the rest of the Borg artifact in which the object rests is approximately four centuries. However, the object itself is, at minimum, three point five billion years old.”
Picard’s mouth was open. He held his hand reverentially to the silver surface, feeling the textures that had been placed there by thinking beings when life on Earth was still primordial soup.
“And its power supply still functions?”
“That is correct, sir.”
Riker was beside the captain. “Have you recognized it, Captain?”
“Without question.” Picard almost felt as if the passageway were spinning around him, leaving him motionless in its well of silence. He looked at his first officer, and realized that the next words he spoke he would remember for the rest of his life. “This object was made by … the Preservers.”
It was not known what the Preservers had called themselves. Some Federation scientists still doubted that they had in fact existed. Others maintained that the relics and legends attributed to the Preservers were actually the work of a dozen different races over a broad range of time, blended only by the passage of eons. Still others believed that the ancient race, whether one species or many, was little more than a myth, similar to a hundred othe
rs common to almost all sentient, spacefaring species—the much-desired promise that somewhere in the void the answers to all questions were waiting to be found, if only the seekers were worthy.
It was a powerful belief, the fuel of uncounted religions and space-exploration programs. Privately, Picard was of the mind that it was far better to discover things than to be given them. But the secrets the Preservers represented were so profound that he sometimes doubted there would be much difference between discovery and revelation in their case, should they actually be fact and not fiction.
Among humans, what would eventually become the Preserver legend had begun at the same time as the exploration of space, reflecting more a change in the way of thinking about humanity’s place in the universe than any response to the discovery of evidence of extraterrestrial visitation of Earth. But as humanity ventured to other planets and met other spacefarers, tantalizing fragments of evidence did accumulate. It was clear that life was everywhere. It was clear that just as there were cultures on the brink of space travel, and cultures that had traveled among the stars for centuries, there were also advanced cultures that had arisen thousands, if not millions, if not billions, of years earlier. The ruins of their cities and accomplishments could be found throughout the galaxy. Picard had seen his share of them, including those of the Tkon and the Iconians.
But which among these ancient civilizations had given birth to the Preservers was still unknown. The most recent and probable sign of their hand had been discovered on an Earth-like planet to which a group of humans from the North American plains civilization had been transported almost six hundred years earlier. The largest known artifact attributed to the Preservers, a powerful graviton-beam generator contained in a metal obelisk also marked with inscriptions, had been discovered there, and was still being studied, as it had no apparent source of power.
In the decades since that artifact’s discovery, other examples of the mysterious writing on it had been uncovered at archaeological sites throughout the galaxy, including the inscriptions on a handful of metallic shards dating back more than a billion years. With that discovery, still controversial, made by Professor Richard Galen, arguably the greatest living archaeologist of the day, excitement had spread through the Federation. It was unheard of that any culture had survived with its written language unchanged for more than a few millennia at best. Yet Galen insisted that the similarities between the inscriptions on his shards and the so-called Preserver obelisk proved that an astoundingly stable culture, dedicated to the preservation of life, still existed today, unseen.
Galen’s critics, citing Hodgkins’s much-maligned Law of Parallel Planet Development, pointed out that given the enormous number of civilizations that had arisen in the galaxy, it was statistically inevitable that some forms of writing had been developed that were similar, and saw Galen’s claims of a single, founding culture only as an inescapable coincidence.
In response, Picard had read, Professor Galen had since gone on to a more scientific mode of exploration, analyzing the similarities of the DNA structure among many of the galaxy’s sentient life-forms, searching for other, more irrefutable signs of a Preserver-like race. But there were others in the Federation who pressed ahead to extend Galen’s early work at an archaeological level, searching for physical evidence of a culture that might have seeded the galaxy with life at the beginning of time, preserved it from destruction in the ages that followed, and somewhere unknown kept watch even now, for reasons unfathomable but endlessly compelling.
In the instant he had recognized the inscriptions, Picard understood that the object in the Borg artifact might be that one telling piece of evidence which had been sought on thousands of worlds. No mere handful of shards, but an actual, functioning device, richly detailed with Preserver-style writing, perhaps holding the key to understanding the origin of life.
And its ultimate purpose.
Picard had good reason to feel magically isolated while his world spun around him. Within his grasp could be the absolute answer to the ultimate question of existence.
And why else was there a Starfleet but to discover exactly that?
“I will make the following arrangements,” Picard said to Commander Tarl. He hoped that in the past few minutes he had recovered enough from the staggering discovery within the Borg artifact that his voice sounded normal and unremarkable. So far, at least, Tarl and the others of her crew seemed to suspect nothing. He continued reading the points he had entered on the small padd Riker had given him. La Forge, Worf, and Data remained by the Borg artifact, running a structural load analysis to devise a method to take it to the Enterprise.
“To begin: Immediate transport, under cover, for yourself and your crew to Starbase 718,” Picard said.
Riker added, “I’ve already requested four high-speed transports to rendezvous with us back at Legara IV, for your journey.”
Tarl regarded the captain and his first officer without expression, arms crossed.
“At Starbase 718,” Picard continued, “you will be provided with a Nautilus-class colony ship, fully equipped for the automated construction of a self-sustaining, class-M-world, farming and mining community, with a range of two thousand light-years at warp six before refueling. That should take you far beyond the Federation’s boundaries, and the Empire’s.”
Tarl stared at the deckplates. “Farmers and miners.” She shook her head as if she could imagine nothing worse.
“Other options are available,” Picard reminded her. “But they would require you to remain within the Federation. In time, should the Empire discover what you have done, we might be asked to extradite you for charges of piracy and … treason.”
Tarl unfolded her arms. “The Empire already knows what I have done, Captain. Your assistance is … acceptable.” She didn’t sound convinced, but Picard knew she had no other choice.
“Your assistance is most appreciated,” Picard replied. “And when the time comes, I shall personally see to it that you receive the honor that is due you.”
Tarl looked as if she hadn’t understood a single word. “When what time comes?”
“When the Federation enjoys the same relationship with the Romulan Empire as it does today with the Klingon Empire.”
Tarl reacted with amazement. “You actually believe that will come to pass?”
“Of course,” Picard said. “It is inevitable.”
Tarl stepped closer to Picard, making him look up at her. “The Federation will never conquer my people.”
Very calmly, Picard replied, “The Federation does not conquer, Commander. It invites. There is a considerable difference. And someday, when your rulers are convinced that the Federation’s ideals are their own, shared by thousands of worlds and cultures, they will ask to join and the invitation will be extended to them as it has been extended to so many others for more than two hundred years.”
Tarl stared down at Picard for long moments. Then she said, “You humans truly are the most arrogant life-form the galaxy has ever seen.”
“Humans are not the only species in the Federation, Commander. Therefore, your argument is not logical.”
“Logical,” Tarl sneered. “The corrupt Vulcan influence is everywhere.” She then strode away, her boot heels clicking loudly on the deckplates.
“ ‘Not logical’? I take it Ambassador Sarek is still with you,” Riker said.
Picard sighed. “From time to time.” He regarded Commander Tarl’s diminishing form. “She doesn’t seem happy, does she, even though we’re giving her all that she’s asked for. Even more.”
“Who understands the Romulan mind?” Riker said. “I know she thinks she’s actually helping the Empire by turning over the Borg artifact to us, but still, for a Romulan to not think that her system and science and technology are the best …” Riker shrugged. “But she is doing the right thing.”
“You mean,” Picard said, “according to us. In our … ’arrogant’ viewpoint.”
Riker eyed his captain
with interest. There was little the two men could hide from each other. “Are you having second thoughts about this transaction?”
For the first time, Picard wondered if he was. Or was it just an echo of Sarek’s long-held doubts about the Romulans that was affecting him?
“You don’t suppose it’s gone too easily, do you?” Picard asked.
“You mean: Are we being set up?”
Picard nodded.
Riker laughed. “Now you sound like you’re recovering from a mind-meld with Worf.” Riker saw that Picard was not returning his laughter and he responded to the question seriously. “If it is a setup, you have to admit it’s fantastically elaborate.”
“It all depends on what the purpose of the setup is,” Picard said.
“Any theories?” Riker asked.
Picard had been asking himself the same question. “Perhaps their intention is to mislead us about the nature of the Borg. Therefore, they have given us this artifact to study, to base our defenses on, only for us to discover in battle that it’s not true Borg technology at all and that all our efforts have been wasted.”
Riker shook his head. “Our defeat under those conditions would leave the Romulans facing a Borg Collective which had assimilated all the technology and firepower of the Federation. I doubt even they could be so shortsighted.”
That had been Picard’s only plausible theory and he was glad that Riker had pointed out its obvious flaw. He supposed there was a possibility that the Borg artifact contained a bomb of some sort. But any explosive device powerful enough to damage the Enterprise would have been easily detected by the away team. And if the Romulans were that intent on destroying a Federation starship, then there were other, more direct and efficient ways to go about it.
“Do you suppose they know about the Preserver object within the artifact?” Picard asked.
“It’s apparent that Commander Tarl doesn’t. No matter what she thinks about the Empire’s scientific capabilities, she would have to be a fool to give away something with a power source that’s still functioning after three and a half billion years. I can only think of a few devices like that that have ever been discovered, and so far they’ve given up none of their secrets.”
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