Department of Temporal Investigations

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Daiyar flushed. “Not many Tomika are as flexible about the sex of their partners as Dhei’ten are. At least, I’m not.”

  “That is your right, of course.” He smiled. “And your hypnotic block should not be necessary. It would always have been my preference to win you over with reason, not force.”

  “But what would you be prepared to do if reason failed?” She smirked. “Your colleague Lucsly seemed a very reasonable sort, yet he could not sway me from my goals.”

  “That’s true. But I’m far more charming.”

  She laughed. “What’s your name, Agent Charming?”

  “I am Meyo Ranjea. Please call me Ranjea.”

  “Ranjea, then. You know my name is Daiyar. Beyond that, I prefer not to say.”

  “That is also your right.”

  She spoke hesitantly. “I know something of how your people share of themselves with their loved ones upon death. But how can you have known Riroa Nadamé? She won’t be born for another few hundred years. I know she was a temporal agent, of course . . . but she was alive, and in the future, when I saw her last.”

  “I know few specifics,” he said. “But at some point thereafter, she was sent back to Dhei in the 2370s to guard an ancient time perceptor from theft. She failed and was mortally wounded in the attempt. I was a police officer at the time, investigating the theft along with an agent of the DTI. That agent was able to deduce that Riroa was not native to our time, so he asked me to participate in her final sharing to learn what I could.” He lowered his head. “That sharing changed me. It imbued me with Riroa’s passion for defending the timeline. I left Dhei and joined the DTI to carry on her work as best I could. That agent was my first partner.” He hesitated. “My second is the woman you made me fire at on Qhembembem. She is also my dearest friend. I don’t appreciate what you compelled me to do.”

  “I apologize, Ranjea. I do hope that, before long, I will be able to return you to her safely. I simply . . . I needed to try to convince you . . . the Riroa in you . . .” After another uneasy moment, she started again. “How much of my old friend is in you, Ranjea?”

  “I suppose that depends on your beliefs,” Ranjea replied, stepping closer—though he felt a sudden inhibition once he drew too close, confirming the existence of the posthypnotic block. “I believe her spiritual essence survives in me and in the others who took part in her final sharing, and that I will pass it along with my own essence upon the dissolution of this flesh. But it is not a complete personality transfer, as with a Vulcan katra. Objectively speaking, I absorbed many of her memories, though more on a perceptual and emotional level than a semantic one. I know few of the facts and specifics of Riroa’s life, but I remember her loves, her passions, her commitments, her hopes, and her fears as strongly as if they were my own. Often there are experiential sensory impressions along with them—memories of lovemaking, of magnificent music not yet written, of her favorite meals whose names I do not know, of beautiful vistas on worlds I could not hope to find on any existing chart.

  “When I saw you, Daiyar—when I touched you, caught your scent—it triggered many of those sensory memories in me, along with some very warm and beautiful emotions. I know she loved you. I know she felt loved by you, in ways other than the sexual. I have a sense memory of her lips and tongue forming the word Shaiyu when you and she were close, as you and I were when we wrestled.”

  Daiyar chuckled. “Riroa and I wrestled more than a few times. Though we were wrestling over a nikai ball on a grassy field.”

  As she said it, new sensory memories flooded him. “Yes. It feels like a lively sport. I feel sore at the very mention of it, yet exhilarated.”

  “That’s how we both felt. She was a hell of an athlete.”

  “And Shaiyu?”

  “A Tomika nickname. I’m embarrassed to tell you what it means. Call it a private joke between good friends. Very private—which is why it stunned me so much when you called me that.”

  Ranjea studied his foe. “What can you tell me of how you knew her, within the limits of the Temporal Accords?”

  Daiyar stared at him. “Agent Ranjea, do I strike you as a person overly concerned with the letter of the Accords?”

  “You strike me as a person who would respect my own concern for them.”

  She blinked. “Well, then, if you’re so concerned about future knowledge, why even ask?”

  Ranjea pondered. “Perhaps I’m trying to understand the remarkable coincidence that we should meet like this. I believe all life is connected, but there are few fatalists in our profession.”

  “It’s not such a coincidence,” Daiyar reflected after a moment. “The community of temporal agents is fairly small and well connected. By their nature, our activities tend to overlap quite a bit, even when we come from different centuries.”

  “True. But the Aegis—”

  “I know. We’re—they’re the aloof, mysterious ones, those who stand apart from the rest and love to keep their secrets.” She shrugged. “I think that’s more the higher echelons, the supervisors and—those they answer to. The Aegis has many levels, many responsibilities.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Think about it, Ranjea. You know how the Aegis operates. Taking populations from worlds that will one day be endangered, breeding agents to help them through their greatest crises.” He nodded, and she went on, “But consider the size of the population it would take to breed those few elite agents over the course of millennia. The vast majority will never return to their ancestral world, never participate in that work.

  “And consider, also, what happens after the world is past its existential crisis. When it’s mature enough to be left to its own devices. All those descendants are still there, part of the Aegis population. Some are content simply to live that way, as members of a marvelously cosmopolitan community that makes your Federation look insular. Others choose to return to the civilizations of their ancestors and simply blend in. But many continue working for the Aegis—as administrators, support staff, scouts in the field . . . or liaisons with other temporal agencies.”

  Ranjea nodded. “You were one such liaison.”

  “For part of my career, yes. The Tomika homeworld was centuries past its crisis by the time I was born. I retain the augmented abilities bred into my population, but they were not needed among Tomika civilization, so I served elsewhere. I traveled across quadrants, across centuries, to assist in the cultivation of the garden of history. I got to know many of my colleagues in the field, from many different agencies. Riroa was one of the best—and one of the most gregarious. Everyone knew and admired her.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe she failed in a mission.”

  “The attackers were exceptionally merciless and violent. They had no concern for collateral damage or loss of life. She prioritized protecting bystanders over protecting the time perceptor. She died saving lives. And the insights she passed on to me have helped me carry on her work.”

  “And the perceptor? Did you ever recover it?”

  “Not I. Reportedly, it was recovered uptime by Jena Noi of the Federation Temporal Agency.”

  Daiyar laughed. “Oh-h, yes. The redoubtable Agent Noi. I was certainly aware of her. I’d wager that Riroa knew her too. Perhaps intimately, knowing them both.”

  “Interesting,” Ranjea said. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Agent Noi. Perhaps I now have some insight into why.”

  “Because she knew it might trigger Riroa’s memories in you? Reveal something about the future that you shouldn’t know?” He nodded. Daiyar sighed and shook her head. “So many rules. So many restrictions. It’s why I had to get away sometimes. Ultimately for good.”

  Ranjea followed her gaze to the valley below. “Is this where you got away to? This planet, this valley, clearly means something to you. You chose to work on the time drive here. Whatever you’re doing . . . it’s conne
cted to this place.”

  She lowered her head, blinking several times. “This is Lakina II. It’s uninhabited now, but it won’t be long, in the grand scheme of things, before the Tomika colonize it. In my own time, it will be a thriving, rich world, a vibrant community known for its art and music and cuisine. Its capital city will be right down there,” she said, pointing toward the river valley.

  “A beautiful place for a city.”

  “Yes. My younger self will visit there often, growing to love the food, the sports, the night life. The people.” Tears rolled down her pale gray cheeks. “One person in particular. Falling in love with people outside Aegis society is . . . not encouraged. But my younger self will be unable to prevent it. She will love him deeply. She will come to visit him, in his home quite near this very spot, as often as her duties allow. She will be sorely tempted when he implores her to leave her mysterious calling and marry him.”

  Ranjea noted her switch to the future tense. While Agent Lucsly or Dr. T’Viss might use it merely for accuracy, he sensed that Daiyar was consciously distancing herself from the memory by treating it as something yet to come. He listened patiently, waiting for the painful twist he knew was coming.

  “So she will be here on the day, some thirty-eight decades from now, when the Fethetrit come.” She looked up at him. “Do you know the Fethetrit?”

  He mulled it over. “I’m not sure. A civilization from the Gum Nebula, I believe. Associated with the Colonial Consortium?”

  “Not quite. They were part of the Pa’haquel alliance that defended the Gum Nebula against dangerous starfaring life-forms. The Consortium participated in that effort as well.”

  “Ah, yes. The Starfleet vessel Titan encountered that alliance five years ago. They helped the Pa’haquel find a more peaceful method of protecting the region, herding the cosmozoans away from inhabited worlds rather than hunting them.”

  “Admirable enough in principle. But as is often the case with your Federation, the Titan’s crew were overly optimistic about the long-term impact.”

  “Do you mean the protection effort fails? These worlds are preyed upon again?”

  “Not in the sense you mean.” Daiyar took a breath and sighed heavily. “The Fethetrit are . . . an exceptionally aggressive and brutal race. Predators, cannibals, sadists. They conquered dozens of worlds centuries ago, enslaved their peoples, consumed them as food. When cosmozoan predators fed on their worlds in turn, breaking their power, they joined in the Pa’haquel’s hunts. But to them, it was not about protecting other worlds, merely about having something to fight and kill. The others in the alliance only tolerated the Fethetrit because their ferocity and ruthlessness were useful against a far more powerful foe.”

  Ranjea’s eyes widened. “But now that common foe has been contained.”

  “Yes. So there is nothing keeping the Fethetrit from resuming their old ways. For now, their surviving population is small, their forces weak. The Pa’haquel, the Vomnin, and their allies can hold them at bay. But over the generations to come, they will grow strong again. They will build their forces in secret, and one day they will swarm across the nebula and dominate, destroy, or devour everything in their path.”

  She gazed out toward the colony below. “And I will be here on the day they descend upon this world. I will see cities bombed into rubble, defenders on the ground torn apart by the claws and fangs of blood-red monsters. I will fight the Fethetrit invaders with all the powers of my Aegis heritage. I will be forced to become a killer for the first time in my life. But I will still be helpless to stop them from turning the man I love into a piece of meat.”

  Her recitation had remained calm—but it was a frightening calm, the calm of a hunter stalking her prey, of a sniper getting ready to fire. Her hands had moved to cradle the time drive, and Ranjea knew it was her weapon.

  “The Aegis wouldn’t let you prevent the attack,” he deduced. “This was after the Tomika had been designated mature and independent, so protecting them from the raid was outside the Aegis’s purview.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you went rogue. You stole an untraceable time drive so you could use it to change the future without the Aegis stopping you. You intend to prevent this colony’s destruction.”

  Daiyar turned to him, a frightening determination in her eyes. “No, Ranjea. I intend to stop the Aegis from preventing the Fethetrit’s destruction.”

  IV

  * * *

  Aegis observation post

  “Daiyar is not an easy person to track,” Rodal Eight admitted to Dulmur, Lucsly, and Garcia as they sat around a table comparing notes. Meneth prowled restlessly across the surface of the table, occasionally bothering the humanoids for a head scratch. “She spent much of her career as an observer monitoring historical events, and thus she knows all our methods for such monitoring—and how to evade them.”

  “She made that clear in her raid on our Vault,” Lucsly replied. “She recruited a band of Vomnin nationalist militants as cover, so that future history would blame them for the theft and her own agenda would be obscured.”

  “But we foiled her plan,” Garcia replied. “Exposed her involvement. That must make it easier.”

  “Not necessarily,” answered Rodal. “We can surmise that she intends a temporal intervention that the Aegis would wish to stop. But whether she intends to target the Aegis’s own operations or go after some other entity in a manner we would wish to prevent is unclear.”

  “You must have some idea what she’s after,” Dulmur said. “Based on Lucsly’s encounter with her, and on our interviews with the captured militants—who were more than happy to share what they knew about her after she abandoned them—what’s driving her is something very personal. Something she feels is connected to her people, the Tomika.”

  “Something she considers an injustice,” Lucsly added. “Daiyar has a sense of ethics and a reluctance to do unnecessary harm, but whatever she’s after is so important to her that she’s willing to set both of those things aside.”

  “If you ask me,” said Dulmur, “it’s about family. Not much else could motivate an otherwise rational, decent person to break all the rules like that.”

  “Her family has lived among the Aegis for dozens of generations,” Rodal said.

  “Not all family is biological. I’m engaged to a Denobulan woman.”

  “Yes, you mentioned a fiancée earlier, Director. I meant to offer my congratulations.” Meneth made a cooing noise at the Cardassian. “I’m not getting distracted, Meneth; I’m simply being polite.” Another coo. “As a matter of fact, I think he makes a good point. Daiyar was very private about her personal life outside her work.” Rodal turned to the humans to explain. “She was not high enough in the Aegis to warrant a personal companion like Meneth, who would have been privy to her secrets. Still, if she did form personal connections with a Tomika community outside the Aegis, we may be able to narrow it down by reconstructing her movements.”

  Rodal spent some time working the console at his end of the table, out of view of the DTI agents. “Interesting,” he finally said. “The pattern of her unofficial travels does appear to converge toward one Tomika colony world. A world that—oh, no.” Meneth issued a cautionary growl. “Yes, I know. But under the circumstances—”

  “What is it?” Dulmur asked.

  “I know that look,” Lucsly said. “The information you’ve found is from uptime.”

  After staring down Meneth for a moment more, Rodal sighed. “Yes. To keep specifics to a minimum: the colony world has not been settled yet. The event she most likely wishes to change is in the future. Which means, regrettably, that we may need to limit your involvement in the investigation from here on, Agents.”

  “Hold on,” Garcia said. “Nothing doing. We’ve been through this already.”

  “Your reaction is premature, Rodal,” Lucsly pointed out. “Daiyar
would not have stolen the time drive merely to travel into the future. There are simpler ways to do that, such as cryogenics and stasis fields.”

  “But why travel into the past of a world that hasn’t been settled yet?” Rodal countered. “If she wishes to make some change that could alter its fate—plant some sort of delayed-action device, say—it would be more sensible to implant it closer to the target date, to minimize our opportunities to discover and neutralize it.”

  “So maybe she isn’t going there in the past or the future,” Garcia said. “She still needs to install that path integrator in the drive—and they aren’t from the same civilization or even the same era. It’d take time and careful work to make the drive operational again. She’d need someplace out of the way to do it, and where better than a planet that she knows is currently uninhabited?”

  Dulmur smiled at her. “Especially if it reminds her of what she’s fighting for.”

  “It’s plausible,” Rodal said. “At the very least, it’s worth looking into. But if we do not find her there in the present . . . then we are still no closer to knowing where and when she plans to strike.”

  Lakina II

  “Think about what you’re saying,” Ranjea urged Daiyar as she continued installing the stolen component in the equally stolen time drive. “I understand your desire to save the ones you love, but there must be a less drastic way. You could forewarn the colony before the attack.”

  Daiyar did not look up from her work. “Too direct. The Aegis will eventually deduce that this is my objective. If I target the event directly, they will see me coming and be able to counter my move.”

  “That is your only reason? Daiyar, you’re talking about exterminating an entire civilization!”

  “No. I’m talking about leaving them free to exterminate themselves—as they would have eagerly done given the chance.”

  “You know that’s sophistry. The choice to bring about that fate is still yours.”

  Dropping her tools, the slender Tomika shot to her feet to face him. “And it was the Aegis’s choice to doom many more worlds!” She took a deep breath, gathering herself. “When I saw Lakina burn before me . . . I realized something about the work that we do. We pride ourselves so much on saving young civilizations from their own self-destructive natures. But think about what that implies, Ranjea. We’re facilitating the survival of species with an unhealthy proclivity toward violence and irresponsibility—species that might otherwise prove evolutionary failures and remove themselves from the galaxy before they can harm anyone else. The benevolent protection we offer just means that a greater number of dangerous, warlike civilizations succeed in reaching the stars.