Star Trek The Next Generation®

by David A. McIntee

  “We saw no people. Until you spoke.”

  A suspicion grew at the back of Geordi’s mind. “We are a person, a life-form?”

  “Evidently.”

  “And the Romulan ship, which attacked you, what of that?”

  “Inert debris.”

  La Forge had thought as much. He looked up at Ogawa and Sela and felt comfortable knowing that Leah was listening in from the bridge. Hell, half the ship was probably listening in. “They don’t recognize us as life-forms. We’re like ants to them, and our ships no different than . . . asteroids.” It was clear that everyone in the room agreed. “We were debris, until we spoke?”

  “Yes. But now we know you are alive.”

  “The other piece of debris is also alive. It cannot speak, but we speak for it.”

  “We understand.”

  “Sometimes . . . when you travel into our galaxy, you bring debris along with you.”

  “It is an effect of our wish to go. We are, of course, careful to not disturb life where we find it.”

  “But you have been disturbing life,” La Forge said urgently. “Much of the debris you pick up on the way through our . . . pool, is life, not debris.”

  “We . . . mean no harm. We apologize.”

  “You said you don’t disturb life when you find it. How do you avoid disturbing it?”

  “We move more carefully in our wishes.” That was the answer La Forge was hoping for.

  “We would ask, on behalf of our pool . . . Could you move more carefully when you visit it? There is much life there that you may mistake for debris.”

  “Of course. We will be more careful.”

  •••

  “And that was it?” Leah asked, when they returned to the bridge. “We asked them nicely to be more careful, and they agreed?”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Guinan responded. “They seem to be a very nice people. They didn’t know they were doing any harm.”

  Sela was fuming, pacing around the bridge. “This doesn’t help our mission. We need that trans-slipstream drive.”

  “Are you still thinking of forcing it out of them?” La Forge asked.

  “Why not? Now that we know how to talk to them, we can offer an alliance.”

  “Which they’ll ignore, if they understand the idea at all,” Guinan said.

  “This isn’t the first time the Romulans have tried to snatch a living ship, or a living technology,” La Forge pointed out.

  Sela looked like she was trying hard to remember. “You’re referring to the entity called Gomtuu?”

  “The Tin Man, yes.”

  “This species’ technology is far beyond that.”

  La Forge couldn’t remain reasonable with Sela any longer. He had wanted to give in to his feelings of anger toward her since she first beamed on board, and now was the time. “They have no technology! Don’t you get that yet? They’re not like the Tin Man; that had mechanisms, warp drives, but these don’t. It’s not technology, it’s a natural ability. I always knew that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and I’m sure they have a similar saying on Romulus.”

  “Of course.”

  “But what we’re seeing here is . . . the opposite,” said La Forge.

  “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology?”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it. I think a more precise way of putting it would be that these . . . ships, beings, whatever they are, have a sufficiently advanced nature, maybe a sufficiently advanced biology, to be indistinguishable from technology. Or maybe it’s the word technology that’s wrong. The quotation should say that any sufficiently advanced scientific property or method is indistinguishable from magic.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence,” Sela said frostily.

  “All right, not magic, because it’s still science, but it’s the natural sciences. Exobiology. We use technology to do what we can’t do naturally, but if we could . . . For some species, I guess maybe we should say that there are some sufficiently evolved abilities that can be indistinguishable from magic.”

  “Then perhaps we should look at harnessing the ability.”

  La Forge laughed out loud. “Harness the ability? Do you think they can teach you how to do this?”

  “They don’t have to. The Gomtuu entity had crew spaces; perhaps these can be modified to do so.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Humans harnessed other life-forms on Earth, to provide transport. I think they’re called ‘horses.’”

  “The difference is that those . . . whatever they are, are so far beyond humans or Romulans, or damn near anybody else as we are beyond . . . ants. Let me put it another way: yes, humans ride horses, and trained dogs to do jobs, but trying to get those things to be your mount would be like trying to train an Organian to be your flashlight. And I don’t think you’d get very far.”

  46

  Scotty walked out into the clear space in front of the Hera’s interior, away from, well, anyone who might have a chance of reading him either by Vulcan telepathy, logical deduction, or just being too close to the right interpretation of his expression.

  The Hera cityscape was, as he suspected, the safest region on the planet. The living planet could create antibodies anywhere, except on the scab over the wound it had sustained.

  He wanted to find a place where he could walk and give in a little to both the good and the bad about where he was and how he felt. Being on a planet was always a nice change of pace, but he missed the sounds of a starship, and the vibrations in the wall panels and deck plates. You didn’t get those reassuring sensory stimuli on a planet, except maybe if you could hear the surf at the coast, or the rain drumming on the roof.

  The moss forests on the hills that Scotty could see reminded him of the Highlands, where the areas that hadn’t been re-forested over the years still rose up out of the earth. He was amused by the irony that he was involved in building starships these days, and the original forests in the Scottish Highlands had largely been cleared to build the ships of the ancient Royal Navy.

  “Mister Scott! Mister Scott!” Barclay hurried across to Scotty, carrying a heap of tricorder parts and circuitry that the Hera’s survivors had found useful. “I’ve done it! At least, I think I’ve done it!”

  “If you don’t calm down you’ll end up doin’ it again,” Scotty warned. He sighed when he saw Barclay’s blank look. “All right, Mister Barclay, what is it ye think ye’ve done?”

  “I’ve figured out a way to communicate with the Challenger.” Scotty was immediately interested.

  “That’s great!”

  “You see I got to thinking about the spatial fold, and the mass readings we’re getting from it.”

  Scotty understood immediately. “There must be some level of background radiation seepage through the fold. And it has to work in both directions, because we get an anomalous mass reading from this side. So if we can send narrow-focus gravimetric—”

  “—pulses in an orbital pattern through the spatial fold, we can talk to Challenger,” Barclay finished excitedly.

  “If they know to look for a signal in that form,” Scotty said, dour caution taking over.

  “I’ve thought of that. They’ll be constantly monitoring the gravitation from the Hera, so I’ve encoded a signal that the astrometrics computer will flag with an alert to the bridge.”

  “In that case, Reg, it’s time to get back to our own corner of the universe.”

  “It is? I mean, it is, but . . . How is it even possible?”

  “I’ve been thinking about how to reunite this bubble of the universe with our bubble of the universe.”

  “But aren’t they the same universe? I mean, if we knew where this planet was in relation to Challenger, and imagining that Challenger could travel to other galaxies as easily as from Earth to Vulcan, in theory Challenger could fly from where she is now to here, without intersecting the fold.”

  Scotty
nodded approvingly, like a teacher giving a good grade. “That’s right.”

  “Then there’s no need to re-unite the universe with itself, surely?”

  “Ah, but there is.”

  “Maybe if we could establish a wormhole . . .”

  “By artificial means? With quartz and moss to work with?” Scotty shook his head. “I may be a miracle worker, but I think you’ll find that’s a wee bit beyond even my level.” He started walking back to the Hera. “Let’s go talk to the others.”

  Scotty had everyone gather in a big circle around him, while he stood on the viewport that opened onto intergalactic space, where the alien vessels were now a shoal around the Challenger.

  “Mister Barclay, Miss Voktra, Commander Savar. The first thing we’re going to need is a way to contact the Challenger.”

  Savar raised both eyebrows this time. “To what purpose, if I may ask?”

  “To the purpose of getting you poor buggers off this planet, and getting the universe back to the shape it’s supposed to be in. I have an idea that ought to work just fine, but we’ll need the Challenger, and that means we’ll need to be able to tell her crew what it is that we need them to do.”

  “And what is it you’re not telling us?” Barclay asked slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Barclay beckoned Scotty over and whispered into his ear, “I can see it in your face, sir. I’m afraid I could see it when you told us you were recovering from your injuries, and that’s something I won’t mention to the others, by the way.” Barclay hesitated, perhaps a little embarrassed. “But I can see that worried look on you now too. There’s something you don’t want us to know, or . . .” Perhaps it was his long experience with counselors that gave him the insight, or perhaps it was being in the vicinity of so many Vulcans exercising their mental disciplines, but Barclay suddenly knew that Scotty wasn’t trying to hide something from them. “Or that you don’t want to think about yourself.”

  Scotty’s sad eyes locked with Reg’s eyes, and bored deep into his soul. “Ye’re a lot smarter than you usually get credit for, especially from yourself.” He nodded slowly. “There’s something in what you say. On both counts.”

  Scotty gave Reg the most reassuring smile he could muster and turned back to the group. “There’s something that we haven’t thought about yet, with the universe intersecting with itself here. How can the larger part that’s trapped inside the smaller part stay that way? Wouldn’t the smaller part rupture?” He had their attention now. “Sooner or later it has to. So far I’m thinking that each part of the universe, when scanned from the other side, is compressed more densely into a smaller space. That’s why they’re both reading as those incredible masses, because the sensors are trying to cope with the amount of universe on the other side of the manifold.”

  He made quick diagrams with his hands. “Eventually the smaller bubble of the universe won’t be able to hold the rest of it. The main part of the universe won’t be able to be compressed any further, and the smaller part will be ruptured.” The movement of his hands to illustrate this was all too simple and brutal, his hands coming apart, fingers splayed.

  “That sounds apocalyptic,” Savar said.

  “Aye, and it gets worse. There’s no way to tell which half is which.”

  “What?”

  “All we can know with the level of technology we’ve achieved is that a sizable percentage of the universe will be torn apart by the impact of the rest of it. It could be this piece of it right here, or it could be the half we came from.”

  Everyone remained silent. Scotty continued, “I do have a scheme that I’m pretty bloody sure will set things to rights, but it will require the . . . well, the sacrifice of the Challenger. And without another ship to replace her, that leaves us—”

  “Up a certain minor tributary without an appropriate implement,” Savar said.

  “Not exactly the way I would phrase it, but close enough.”

  La Forge was asleep when Vol woke him up with a call. “Guv! I mean Captain!”

  “Vol?”

  “I’ve received a signal from the away team, skip. They’re okay. Well, apart from one of the Romulans. Anyway, they also have forty-seven survivors of the Hera!”

  Geordi shot bolt upright. “Is my mother—?”

  “Sorry sir, but no.”

  “All right. Call the senior staff to the bridge.”

  He and Leah dressed quickly, and were on the bridge in two minutes.

  “We have contact with the away team,” Carolan said as she rose from the center seat. “Audio only.”

  “Put them on.”

  “Captain La Forge!” A cheery Scottish brogue called out.

  “Scotty! What happened to you?”

  “That’s a long story, Geordi. And it’ll have to wait, because I’ve got a job for you, Leah, and Vol, and it’s more important than you can imagine.” He explained about the situation with the two bubble sections of the universe. “We need to restore the Klein bottle of two bubble universe Möbius strips back into being one universal Möbius strip.”

  “You want to re-engineer the universe itself?”

  “What we need to do to put things right is to remove the intersection. We have to collapse the toroidal continuum fold.”

  La Forge could see the flaw immediately. “The first problem is going to be actually accessing the fold. Whichever side we’re on, the fold is on the other side. Which means we need something that can contain both sides of the fold at the same time . . . Oh no. You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”

  La Forge could damn well hear Scotty’s roguish grin. “I’d like to think I am.”

  “The Challenger’s warp field.”

  “We extend the shields around and through the Hera to their maximum extent, and then generate a static warp shell just within the inner limits of the shield.”

  “But if the other side of the fold is on a planetary surface—”

  “If we put enough power into the shield extension it’ll go up to a hundred kilometers above the surface.”

  “A hundred kilometers is more than enough of a corridor to fly a ship through.”

  “A rescue party, d’ye mean? I doubt Challenger herself could stand the strain, but if there’s another ship available . . .”

  “Some of Sela’s friends have arrived.”

  “More Romulans?”

  “Yes. For the moment, they seem to be willing to help.”

  “Maybe your friend Sela thinks she owes us one. Which doesn’t sound very Romulan to me, but I’ll take all the help we can get.”

  “Well, there are Romulans in the away team. At the very least they would want to rescue them.”

  •••

  La Forge stood outside the door to the quarters that he hoped were still occupied by Sela. She said she would remain on board for any future conversations that Guinan might have with the aliens. It had occurred to Qat’qa that Sela might try to steal the modified neural scanner, so she had armed guards outside sickbay.

  He kept pressing the button for the chime until, after several minutes, Sela opened it. There were two uniformed Romulan guards inside as well. La Forge eyed them but said nothing. The chairman of the Tal Shiar was a position that demanded loyal guards.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure, Captain. Do come in.”

  “There’s . . .” He hesitated. If there was anyone he would be less keen to ask this of, La Forge had no idea who it could be. “I know we have some issues . . .”

  “You have.”

  “Yes, dammit, I have! Kidnapping, brainwashing . . . you having that face—”

  “This face.”

  “That face belongs on another person. A good Starfleet officer. A friend.”

  “I am a good officer, Captain,” she said with surprising mildness.

  La Forge took a deep breath to steady himself. “I have a responsibility to my crew, even to the members of your crew on the ship or away team.”
/>
  “I understand, Captain. Believe me, I was dismayed that a Federation ship answered our distress call. But I am still grateful that you came.”

  “I’d like to ask for Challenger’s crew to be evacuated to Tomalak’s Fist.”

  “Is that all?” She seemed amused.

  “No, I lost my mother too. And, maybe, if I’d been quicker to realize—to find out what had happened, I’d have been able to look for the right things. If I’d done that, maybe we’d have found the Hera in time. If I’d done that, maybe she’d still be alive.”

  “Maybe. But who can say?”

  “What I’m saying is . . . I can’t pretend to know how you feel about what you did as a child. I can’t pretend to know how much stronger a Romulan’s emotions are. But I do know that somewhere, on some level, we both wonder what might have been.”

  “I didn’t lose my mother, as you put it,” Sela replied. “I killed her, by scre—by alerting the guards when she tried to take me from my father.”

  “You didn’t kill your mother by yelling out when you thought you were going to lose your father,” said La Forge. “He maybe killed her, because he had to. In the end, politics killed her. Someday they’ll kill you.”

  “And you. You’re telling me you killed your mother by not finding a clue in time? That’s guilt.”

  “Yes it is. It’s guilt because I miss her.”

  “I don’t miss my mother. She was human, she was Starfleet—”

  “If you don’t miss her, then why do you feel guilty about her being gone?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then what makes you think you were responsible?”

  Sela closed her eyes for a moment. “Let’s go talk to Varaan.”

  “We have a plan to retrieve the survivors of the U.S.S. Hera, and also recover the away team, made up of a mix of Starfleet personnel and Romulan personnel.”

  Varaan gave La Forge a thin half-smile, but no more than that. “I was under the impression that the away team was now in a remote part of the universe. It all sounded rather final. Unless you’re simply engaging in a morale-boosting exercise.”

  Sela turned from where she was looking out of a viewport at the alien vessels back to the comm. “I hate to admit such a thing, Varaan, but I—and the Tal Shiar—will vouch for La Forge having the ability to do the things he says he intends to do. And Captain Scott is . . .”