by Peter David
“Right away, Captain,” she said, rising from her chair.
“Thank you, XO.” It was clear from her tone that she was not embarking on the course of action lightly, but—having concurred with Calhoun that it was the most effective way to proceed—she was now committed to doing so. “An away team consisting of myself, Lieutenant Arex, and Commander Gleau will accompany Ebozay to the surface. Oh, and inform Smyt that we will be requiring her presence as well. Her Gateway device helped precipitate all this; I want her there for what hopefully will be its conclusion.”
“Captain,” Gleau said slowly, looking rather thoughtful, “I think perhaps . . . you may want to assign Lieutenant M’Ress to the away team rather than myself.”
Shelby looked at Gleau with mild surprise. “What an unusual thing for you to say, Lieutenant Commander. Usually the only way we’d have of keeping you off an away team is with a large, blunt instrument. Why the change?”
“No change, Captain. I’m always of the opinion that the person best-suited to a particular situation should be the one who goes. Can I help it,” he said with one of his customary dazzling smiles, “if I’m the one who’s usually best-suited to it?”
Takahashi smiled lopsidedly from his post at ops. “The curse of being infinitely talented.”
“What can I say? It’s a burden I live with,” said Gleau good-naturedly. Then, more seriously, he continued, “ However, in this instance, M’Ress has more experience with Gateways than I do, particularly considering her personal circumstances in terms of how she came to be here. Plus, you’re bringing Arex down with you, and they have a working history together. I just think M’Ress is the better fit for this particular assignment.”
“All right, Gleau,” Shelby said. She still had the uneasy feeling that something wasn’t being said, but Gleau’s expression was relaxed and neutral, and she had no real reason to assume that anything was out of the ordinary. “Inform Lieutenant M’Ress we’ll be needing her for away team duty.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Shelby couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on . . . that there was some sort of subtext she was missing. But she couldn’t dwell on it; she simply had too many other things to worry about.
Like, for starters, whether she was doing the right thing.
She found—unlike when she was first officer, and always seemed to know for sure—that nowadays, she worried about that a lot.
Ebozay could scarcely believe it. He stood at the viewing port of Ten Forward, gazing at it in reverent shock, as if skepticism on his part would cause the planet below them to vanish like a soap bubble. “That’s . . . truly Sinqay?”
“These are the spatial coordinates both you and the Zarn presented us with, from your respective histories,” said Mueller, who was standing behind him, hands draped behind her back. “And Ambassador Si Cwan, over on the Excalibur there,” and she pointed at the other starship, visible a distance away, “confirms it from Thallonian texts he still possesses. There’s no mistake.”
“And . . . we’re going down there?” It was everything he could do not to be trembling at the mere thought.
“Yes. The captains will be in attendance, as will the Zarn and the warmaster.”
His face darkened. “I’m still not pleased that the Zarn brought a companion from her homeworld, aside from the keeper of the Gateway. I was not offered the same option. All things should be equal.”
“The Zarn is a nine-year-old girl,” Mueller pointed out, with a slightly contemptuous smirk. “It was felt by her Counselars that, considering the circumstances, she should not be without proper escort. Or are you saying that you have to be treated with the same delicate considerations that a child requires?”
“I . . . suppose not,” growled Ebozay grudgingly.
“If it pleases you to do so,” Mueller said, patting him on the shoulder as if they were long lost friends, “think of it this way: It takes two Aerons to equal one Markanian.”
At that, Ebozay laughed in spite of himself. “I like the way you think, Commander. Perhaps later you and I could get together.”
Her voice dripping with friendship, she said, “If by ‘later’ you mean another life, perhaps we can. Come. It’s time to put all the cards on the table.”
And in the brig of the Trident, Smyt suddenly had an uneasy feeling . . . as if everything was coming to a head.
Gragg wanted to let out a sob of joy and amazement, but he knew he had to contain such an impulse because that would certainly not be an appropriate thing for the Warmaster of Aeron to do. To cry as a child would? Particularly when the closest child, the Zarn herself, was looking upon their ancestral home with wide-eyed wonder, but dry of face.
They were in the observation bay. The viewfloor was open, giving that always-dizzying and odd perspective that made you feel as if you were standing unsupported in the depths of space—or, in this instance, miles above the surface of the planet. Standing on either side of Tsana were Kalinda and Moke. She had become quite friendly with them of late; indeed, it had reached a point during the trip when it seemed as if the three of them had become inseparable.
“That is . . . truly Sinqay?” said Gragg in amazement.
“These are the spatial coordinates both you and the Markanians presented us with, from your respective histories,” said Burgoyne, who was standing behind him, hands draped behind hir back.
“And Si Cwan and I have confirmed it, based on Thallonian texts in our possession,” added Kalinda. “There’s no mistake.”
“And . . . we’re going down there?” asked a reverent Tsana.
“Yes,” affirmed Burgoyne. “The captains will be in attendance, as will the Markanian, and the individual who brought the Markanians their Gateway technology.”
The comment pulled Tsana’s attention away from the orb below them for a moment. “That is someone I would be most interested in meeting,” she said coolly. “If not for him, after all . . . my parents would still be alive.”
This was enough to set off warning bells in Burgoyone’s head. “Tsana,” s/he said, “I can only hope that you are not considering in any way jeopardizing—”
“Are you doubting the Zarn’s word?” bristled Gragg.
“No. Merely seeking to clarify it,” Burgoyne said mildly.
“It is nothing you, or your captain, need concern yourself over,” said Tsana. She seemed a bit sad as she spoke, but otherwise displayed a singular lack of emotion. “What’s done is done. Dwelling on it will accomplish nothing, except more of the same sort of tragedies that have plagued us for centuries. It all has to stop somewhere. I can’t think of a better location than here.”
“Well said, Zarn,” Kalinda told her approvingly. “ Commander, will we be going down there—?”
“Yeah, are we going?” piped up Moke.
Burgoyne shook hir head. “Not initially. The captain wants to limit the size of the away team.”
Undeterred, Moke pointed out, “That’s okay, then, ’cause I’m not very tall.” Moke then looked a bit puzzled, in response to the amiable laughter from around him.
“Maybe you can go down later, Moke,” Burgoyne suggested, trying to sound conciliatory. Moke didn’t look especially reconciled to it, but obviously he was going to have to deal with it as best he could. Then s/he noticed a frown on Tsana’s face as she studied the world below their feet. “Is there a problem, Zarn?”
“Well,” she said slowly, “everything I’ve ever read about Sinqay makes it sound so much like a paradise. I would have expected more . . . I don’t know . . . more blues and greens. It looks mostly brown from up here.”
“Light filtering through the atmosphere can cause tricks,” Burgoyne said immediately.
“Oh,” said Tsana.
And in the brig of the Excalibur, Smyt suddenly had an uneasy feeling . . . as if everything was coming to a head.
27
SINQAY
THE SKY WAS AS BROWN as the land that stretched to the horizon, and
a mournful howling of wind blew steadily across. It was a land of broken promises, of potential unfulfilled, of hopelessness and helplessness and nothingness. There were the remains of some buildings dotting the terrain, or perhaps they were monuments . . . it was rather hard to say. There was a spire here, a statue there, but for the most part the unceasing winds had battered them beyond their ability to stand. The hum of the transporter had long since faded. Now they faced each other, the two groups, no longer divided by outer space or distances or represented through holographic imagery. On one side of the small circle was Calhoun, Soleta, Si Cwan, Tsana, Gragg, and Kebron, whom Calhoun had brought down—at Burgoyne’s insistence—for backup. On the other side were Shelby, Arex, M’Ress, and Ebozay.
Ebozay, Tsana, and Gragg were virtual mirror images of one another in their reactions. In each case, they looked past one another and saw the bleak landscape before them. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing, or perhaps thought—however irrational the notion might be—that only the land behind their respective centuries-old enemies was brown and lifeless. That they themselves, presumably, were standing upon ground that was fresh and green and full of promise and vigor. At that point, each of them looked down at the ground beneath their own feet, and then turned to stare behind themselves, only to find a vista as depressing as that which they had just been looking at. Then slowly, very slowly, they turned to look at one another again.
There was no greeting between the two groups, no formalities. Instead they just both looked stunned. To be specific, the Markanians and the Aerons looked stunned. The Starfleet officers simply appeared saddened.
“This . . . this cannot be right,” Ebozay finally managed to say. “This cannot be Sinqay.”
“It is,” Calhoun assured him.
“No, it’s not.” There was no doubt, no question in Ebozay’s voice. He was simply refusing to believe it. As he spoke, his voice began to speed up, faster and faster, as if he could somehow manage to out-talk the situation that he was finding himself presented with. “Sinqay . . . Sinqay is a paradise. A holy place. At most, you have not brought us to the Holy Site, but instead some godforsaken, forgotten patch of the world, but even that is most unlikely, for—”
Then Tsana spoke, and even though the wind was strong, her voice still carried over it. She wasn’t looking at Ebozay, but instead off to the side as she said, “This is it.”
“It cannot be!” Ebozay told her fiercely, clearly feeling that the child was out of her depth.
“It is. Look over there. See it?” She was speaking as if from a very great mental distance, and even though she took a few steps in the direction she was pointing, she almost seemed to come across like a sleepwalker. “That’s Hinkasa’s Shrine.”
It was almost as if Ebozay was afraid to hear what she had just said. He simply stared at her, as if the words had not reached him. “Hinkasa’s Shrine,” she said more forcefully, pointing in a direction that Ebozay did not want to see. “I’ve seen drawings of it since I was tiny. So have you. You must have. Look at it.” Still he did not look, but he was starting to tremble. “Look at it!” she shouted.
Ebozay forced himself to look, not wanting to appear too afraid to confront something that a nine-year-old was capable of handling. There were fallen towers, some distinctive statuary that featured a female with clasped hands, raising her eyes upward. Or, more accurately, her eye, since half her face was broken away. It was obvious that once it had been a powerful and mighty statue; now it was barely a shell of itself, not impressive to anyone unless they were the type to be impressed by broken-down rubble. Then Ebozay pointed with a trembling finger toward the horizon and said, “And . . . over there . . . it’s the Wall of Supplication.”
Tsana squinted to look where Ebozay was indicating, and then she nodded. The Starfleet officers simply saw a few sections of a wall that had etchings, words in an ancient lettering carved in. But most of the wall was fallen and prey to the storms that had long since pummeled it nearly to oblivion.
“How . . . is this possible?” Gragg finally managed to say.
Si Cwan stepped forward, and when he spoke it was with great sadness, even resignation. “When my ancestors removed yours from this world, remember, they were in the midst of unleashing weapons of fearful destructive power. The damage, unfortunately, was far greater than any could have anticipated.”
“Far greater in what way?” said Ebozay hollowly, still staring at the fallen Wall of Supplication.
Soleta spoke up in her calm, detached manner, as if she were talking about an abstract scientific curiosity rather than a situation that was personally devastating to several of the people there. “It knocked the planet off its axis. Not much, barely measurable . . . but enough to take what had once been a paradise and change it into someplace that is not even habitable.”
“Not . . . not habitable?”
Shelby shook her head. “Believe it or not, you’re standing on the garden spot of this world. And even here, once night falls, the temperature drops to such freezing depths that none of your people could possibly survive.”
“You knew,” Gragg said with dawning realization. “You knew it was like this before you brought us down here.” When Shelby nodded, he continued, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because they didn’t want us to know until we got here,” Tsana told him. She almost sounded as if she admired the cunning of the plan. “They felt it would have more impact on us if we saw it firsthand, without any warning.”
“Yes,” Calhoun told them.
No one said anything for a time then. The mood, the environment, was simply too oppressive. When the silence was broken, it was by Shelby, who said, “When I went to school years ago . . . there was a poem I memorized . . . by an Earthman named Shelley:
“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
“And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
For only a moment there was silence, and then Zak Kebron rumbled, “Thank you, Captain. Cheered everyone right up.”
“Kebron . . .” said Calhoun warningly, but Kebron didn’t seem particularly intimidated.
Ebozay still hadn’t fully managed to accept that which was being presented him. “So we’re to take this as an object lesson, then,” said Ebozay. “That’s what you’re saying. That war, that conflict, that all of the things we’ve dwelt on all these years . . . it is meaningless, because in the end it leads to . . . to . . .”
“To this,” Tsana said. “To futility, to death and destruction . . . and to everything we were, or might be, being reduced to nothing. To less than nothing. To sand and dirt and emptiness.”
“More or less,” said Calhoun.
Suddenly, bristling with anger, Tsana snapped out, “I want whoever brought you your Gateway to see this. And the person who brought ours as well. I want them to see what they were driving us toward. To see what’s left of the mindset that caused this, and could have caused it again on our respective homeworlds if we’d used the Gateways as they were intended.”
Ebozay simply nodded his head, which was enough to show his acquiesence.
“Yes, where are our ‘enablers’?” asked Si Cwan.
Clearing his throat, Ebozay said, “Ours was . . . reluctant to come down at first. She anticipated a possib
le trap, or inhospitable environment. . . .”
“Ours said much the same thing,” said Gragg. “We felt it wiser not to press the issue at first. . . .”
“I think it’s time to press it now,” Tsana told him. “And while we’re waiting for them to come, Ebozay, you and I can discuss . . . terms of peace. Perhaps our two races can find a way to coexist on the same world—if not this one, then on one of our own, or perhaps even another. We’ve been apart for too long . . . and I think we are far stronger together than apart. I just . . .”
“You just what?” Calhoun asked gently.
“I just wish . . . that this lesson could have been learned without my family losing their lives.”
And once again Ebozay nodded in agreement.
On the Excalibur, upon receiving the call from the planet surface, Smyt took in . . . and released . . . a long, unsteady breath, even as he held his Gateway close to him and headed for the transporter.
“This is it,” he muttered under his breath, unheard by the security guard escorting him. “The giant said activating the Gateway there at the right time would get me home . . . and I would know what the right time was. Let’s hope this works.”
On the Trident, upon receiving the call from the planet surface, Smyt took in . . . and released . . . a long, unsteady breath, even as she held her Gateway close to her and headed for the transporter.
“This is it,” she muttered under her breath, unheard by the security guard escorting her. “The giant said activating the Gateway there at the right time would get me home . . . and I would know what the right time was. Let’s hope this works.”
“We’re in trouble.”
Calhoun had walked over to Shelby, who in turn had been watching Ebozay and Tsana taking the first, tentative steps toward reconciliation. They were speaking with one another in careful, cautious tones, which was certainly to be expected, considering the history of vituperation and anger between their two cultures. All of it seemed very positive, which was why it was all the more disturbing to Shelby when Calhoun sidled up to her and made the announcement that he did.