by Gene DeWeese
But the kind of selflessness required for such a project was rare. Few were willing to work for years, even decades, under the harshest of conditions, not to save themselves but to save, at best, the distant descendants of one in a hundred of their fellow workers, particularly when there were those who, despite the disquieting evidence that was beginning to appear even then, insisted that sealing the cities was a better, safer way. Sealing the cities would not save a paltry million but virtually everyone.
Domes, they had said at first, but that had been when they thought they would have fifty years before the Plague drove them from the open air. When the Plague had accelerated, leaving them twenty, then ten years, the planners and engineers had thrown up their hands. They abandoned the domes, they abandoned excavations for the barely begun subterranean complexes planned to hold all the hydroponics, all the food production, all the recycling machinery—in short, everything needed to keep the city alive. Instead, to beat the Plague’s accelerating deadline, they had improvised, done what they could with what materials they could get their hands on. Great tracts of “wasteful” individual homes were wiped out, replaced by square kilometer after square kilometer of hydroponics enclosures and everything else that they had hoped to seal neatly underground. Other tracts were replaced by hastily constructed “hives,” each capable of housing tens of thousands. Instead of a complex series of massive domes, simple walls and roofs and support columns were all that could be managed. Even the “glow panels” planned to cover the inner surface of the domes, then the roofs, could not be perfected in time and were replaced by rings of harsher light that circled the upper reaches of the support columns.
It had been the same everywhere, every city for itself. Cooperation had vanished as each city raced to complete its own enclosure, of whatever size or shape it could manage.
And for another eighty years they had continued to struggle to survive even as they continued to die out. Most of the enclosures were never finished. Lack of raw materials, lack of energy, lack of time, lack of will, a lack of the same kind of selflessness that would have been needed to complete another hundred Deserter ships—all contributed to the failures and the wars and the deaths.
And it had all been for nothing. Jalkor had been the largest, and now it was the last. Originally holding more than a hundred million within its five thousand square kilometers, it had been reduced to less than five million by four generations of desperation. And less than one in a hundred of that five million spent more than an hour or two a day in the real world. And half of those, she thought with a new flare of anger, were not trying to save themselves or the city but, one way or another, trying to destroy it even more quickly than the Plague. Barring a miracle, Jalkor would soon be as dead as all the others, as dead as the barren landscape outside the—
A rasping buzz filled the tiny driver’s compartment. “Zalkan?” she said, almost shouting over the rumble of the engine as she slowed it to a somewhat less deafening idle. “It’s even worse than you thought. Unless we find a way to produce and maintain a hard vacuum—”
“My name is Koralus,” an oddly accented voice broke in. “I must speak with you.”
“What?” Ahl frowned at the unfamiliar voice and name. “Where’s Zalkan?”
“I know nothing of anyone named Zalkan,” the voice said. “Please, I must—”
“Who are you? Whoever you are, get off the air! I don’t have time for any—”
Another, deeper voice with the same odd accent broke in. “Look up, in front of your vehicle.”
“What? Are you insane?” Despite her protest, she looked up. “Now, just who—”
She broke off, her jaw dropping. Hanging motionless in the hazy air not twenty meters away, half that high off the ground, was—something.
At least twice the size of her own lumbering vehicle, it looked like a rectangular box with a streamlined front end and a pair of eerily glowing tubes running the length of the sides.
Fighting down a growing feeling of panic, she turned back to the radio. “What are you? What do you want?”
And the voices explained.
If not for the apparition floating in plain sight in front of her, she would have assumed that, like countless others in recent years, the owners of the voices had been pushed over the edge into insanity by the strain that living on Krantin had become. With that thing staring her in the face, however, she realized that she was more likely the one who had been pushed over the edge. She was simply having an elaborate, pointless hallucination of her own, without even the help of the computer.
Unless this whole thing—her whole life the last ten years—had been a computer-generated fantasy. Unless, rather than being pulled back into reality by Zalkan, his appearance had simply marked the beginning of a grimmer fantasy—
She shook her head sharply. Hallucination or not, it was not in her nature to ignore it, and she forced herself to listen and to absorb what they were saying about federations and generation ships and someone named Koralus who—
Abruptly, the name clicked into place in her mind. Someone named Koralus, according to the histories, had been a leader of the Deserters! He had departed on one of half a dozen ships that had left orbit around Krantin a hundred years ago! They had not been heard of for at least ninety years. For a few years after the departures, the surviving supporters of the program struggled to keep in touch, and for another few years, isolated individuals continued to listen for transmissions from the ships even though they had no means of replying. Within a decade, the so-called Desertions had begun to recede from public awareness until they became just another unpleasant incident on the downslope of Krantinese history, one small but bitter skirmish in the long, losing battle with the Plague.
And now one of these voices was saying he was Koralus, one of the leaders of this almost forgotten exodus?
It was of course impossible, she told herself, just another symptom of her insanity, or a new twist in the fantasy she was still trapped in. Only minutes before, she had been thinking about the Deserters and the ships they had left in, and now, conveniently, here was a disembodied voice coming from a glowing, floating apparition saying he was Koralus, that he had been rescued by the other voices and brought back to Krantin in a magical ship that blithely defied the laws of physics!
At least, she thought, it was an interesting hallucination. And a persistent one.
Finally, one of the voices—the one that called itself Commander Riker—asked if she would like to come on board his ship. He called it a “shuttlecraft,” which, the Koralus voice explained, was an auxiliary ship of some kind, carried by the main ship and used to take small numbers of people places the main ship couldn’t go—like to the surface of a planet.
Sighing, she acquiesced. If this was all happening in her own mind or in the semiconductor synapses of a computer, what did she have to lose?
And if, by any chance, it was real . . .
Only a few minutes earlier, she had been thinking that only a miracle could save Krantin. And she couldn’t help thinking now, despite all common sense, that maybe, just maybe, this was it.
In her stained coverall, Ahl Denbahr reminded Riker of an attractive Starfleet engineering cadet who had just emerged from one of the belowdecks training exercises the Academy liked to throw you into without warning. As Riker had hoped, bringing her aboard the shuttlecraft seemed to dispel her suspicion that she was hallucinating. “There’s no way I could imagine that!” she said, recovering from a momentary Worf-induced paralysis.
After that, she was willing, even eager, to answer their questions, as long as they would answer hers in return.
Unfortunately, her answers did nothing to clear up the mystery of the disappearing ships. Not only had Krantin not developed impulse drive in the century since the Hope had departed from orbit, they had not sent a single ship of any kind into space since the destruction of the half-constructed generation ships—“Deserter ships,” she called them, a hint of apology in her voic
e—and most of the orbital construction facilities.
Nor had they made any progress in understanding or stopping the Plague. “There may be people still working on it besides Zalkan,” she said, grimacing, “but whoever they are, if they’ve made any progress, they haven’t let me in on it. The few of us that haven’t given up altogether are just trying to cope with the effects. And losing ground faster every day.”
She looked around at the group and at the image of Picard and the Enterprise bridge on the tiny viewscreen. “Now you people think these mysterious ships may have something to do with the Plague? But you can’t catch one to ask? Have I got that right?”
Riker suppressed a smile. He only hoped that whoever else they would have to deal with was equally sharp and as adaptable. “You have,” he said.
“Meanwhile,” she went on, looking toward Koralus, “you’re hoping to have your ten thousand brought back to Krantin.”
Koralus shook his head. “No more. Unless the Plague is overcome, they—we—will be better off on the Hope.”
She leaned toward the viewscreen and the miniature image of Picard. “So, what are our chances against the Plague? Can you help us? Are you willing to help us?”
“If we are able,” he replied. “We must first speak with your leaders, of course, and with those who have studied the phenomenon. In the meantime, our chief engineer has been listening in, and he would like to inspect your fusion power generators.”
“Can he do something for them?”
“He won’t know until he looks the situation over personally, but it is likely that he would be able to produce the replacement laser units you say are needed. He would like to begin by bringing one of your units on board the Enterprise to analyze.”
She was silent for several seconds before closing her eyes briefly and pulling in a deep breath. “Tell your chief engineer I will be glad to give him anything he wants or needs. Assuming I can get in touch with Zalkan, and also assuming I don’t get overruled. And if I am,” she added with a laugh, “let me know how I can help you steal one.”
She didn’t get overruled, at least not by Zalkan. When he finally responded and she told him what had happened, all he wanted to know, after several seconds of silence, was “Are you convinced they are genuine?”
“As convinced as I can be. Either they’re genuine or this entire thing, including this conversation with you, is one giant hallucination.”
He was silent again, uncharacteristically so, for several more seconds. “Tell me about the one who calls himself Koralus. I would like—” He broke off. “No, I am wasting time. The laser unit is more important than my own curiosity. I will meet you at the airlock. I will try to have one of the laser units there as well,” he said, then signed off.
After a brief discussion, Ahl was returned to her machine long enough to drive it back to the power plant, where it was left. Minutes later, she was back in their vehicle, waiting at the city’s one functioning airlock, a wastefully massive thing that opened into what had once been the maintenance area for the countless machines that had, a hundred years ago, ventured out to aid in the final sealing of the city and then to scavenge the surrounding area for anything useful. Now it was a junkyard for all but a half-dozen of those machines, the only ones that were still functioning.
Their chief engineer, as dark as the one called Worf but not at all frightening despite a strange silvery device that covered his eyes, had arrived a few minutes later in a second vehicle, where he sat waiting at the controls. He was to pick up the laser unit from Zalkan and return it to their orbiting ship for analysis while she and Zalkan notified President Khozak of the aliens’ arrival and their offer of help. If Khozak had any sense at all, he would arrange to meet with them and discuss their offer.
When, finally, the outer airlock door creaked open a couple of meters, she began to suspect that Khozak, not surprisingly, didn’t have the requisite amount of sense and that, somehow, he had managed to interfere. Instead of Zalkan, a nervous young man in a breathing mask and a Council coverall several shades lighter than her own stood in the lock. Despite her uneasiness at this development, she couldn’t help but grin as the young man flinched backward a step when he saw Worf emerge from the vehicle a step behind her.
“Welcome,” the young man said, his voice stiff and uneasy at the same time. “President Khozak is most anxious to meet with you. Please come with me.”
“Where is Zalkan?” Ahl demanded. “He said he would meet us here. With one of the replacement laser units.”
“You will have to discuss that with President Khozak,” he said.
“Look, whoever you are, you’re wasting time!” Ahl snapped. “Khozak has nothing to do with maintaining that plant. That’s Zalkan’s responsibility. And mine. Now, where is he? Why isn’t he here?”
“I told you,” the young man said, glancing nervously at Worf, “you will have to discuss that with President Khozak. In any event, please step inside. You of all people should know it is not safe to breathe this air any longer than absolutely necessary.”
Ahl started to protest again, to tell the irritating young man that the tiny unit attached to her coverall was something called a “field-effect suit,” but the one called Riker intervened before she had gotten out more than a half-dozen words.
“Yes, whatever disagreements we have,” he said smoothly, “I suggest we discuss them where the air is less toxic. Geordi,” he added, tapping the metallic emblem on the chest of his uniform, “you can return to the Enterprise until we get the situation sorted out.” He turned to the Klingon as the second vehicle lifted off and vanished into the haze. “Lieutenant Worf, stay with the shuttlecraft. If our direct link with the Enterprise is interrupted for any reason, you can relay our messages.”
The Klingon hesitated a moment; a new expression, equally as unreadable as the previous one, altered his features slightly. “As you wish, Commander,” he said, then turned and marched back into the shuttlecraft.
As the vehicle’s door closed behind him, the others, Ahl still frowning, stepped into the airlock. Slowly, the massive door slid down, almost as noisily as it had risen. When it reached bottom, the usual whirring noise started up, and the air gradually cleared.
Finally, the inner door inched up. When it reached approximately head height, several men in dark, loose-fitting jackets with the chevronlike insignia of Khozak’s security forces on their sleeves stepped abruptly into view.
They all carried something she had rarely seen outside the computer fantasies she had once been trapped in, something she had never wished to see again: guns.
And every one was leveled at Ahl and the group in the airlock.
Chapter Six
PRESIDENT KHOZAK WORRIEDLY PACED the length of the empty Council Chambers. Had Zalkan lost his mind? First, without even asking for authorization, the scientist and one of his technicians had taken one of the newly and laboriously produced laser units from storage. Khozak would never have known except for a sharp-eyed security officer.
And when the two of them had been stopped, Zalkan had first blustered something about its being none of the officer’s business. Even when Khozak himself, on the officer’s radio, had demanded an explanation, Zalkan had lied, saying it was for Denbahr, the technician he had sent to the power plant. She had not taken enough with her and needed this one to replace a unit that was about to fail. Denbahr, however, couldn’t possibly be back for another five hours, and the idea of Zalkan, in his condition, trekking a hundred kilometers across that no-man’s-land out there in one of the converted construction machines they used was ridiculous.
Finally, either from desperation or insanity, Zalkan had spun a fairy tale so ludicrous it defied imagination. Apparently with a straight face, he had spewed out a story of how one of the leaders of the Deserters had not only returned from the dead but been ferried back to Krantin from the depths of interstellar space by some magical star-traveling ship that just happened to be in the neighborhood. And the bein
gs on this ship had offered to produce new laser units for the power plant, in order to do which they needed a sample unit. They were, Zalkan had said angrily, waiting outside the airlock while valuable time was being wasted by “interfering” guards.
Ordinarily—if anything about this could be thought of as ordinary—that piece of insanity would have been the end of it. Khozak had never completely trusted Zalkan, and Zalkan had from the very start seemed to take an instinctive dislike to the president. And the scientist was far too secretive and independent for Khozak’s liking.
But Zalkan was also good. He had kept what was left of the city running, after his predecessor had simply surrendered and retreated into the fantasy world of the computer, and Khozak was forced to accept his eccentricities, no matter how annoying they might be. Even so, this outlandish story was pushing things too far, even for Zalkan, and Khozak had been on the verge of ordering the scientist and his accomplice locked away until Denbahr returned from the power plant and could help make some sense of the situation. But the security officer had, on his own initiative, checked the one monitor that still sporadically relayed indistinct images from outside the airlock.
And there was, the guard said nervously, something there! Two somethings! A pair of strange, glowing objects, they were obviously not the cumbersome, rumbling vehicles the technicians used on their trips to the power plant. But what they were, neither the security officer nor Khozak had any idea.