by S. D. Perry
Pif nodded, steering him onto the lift as he answered. “The subdeck is always in the same place, and the Wa is mostly confined to the subdeck, but it spills over in spots. And it migrates, we don’t know the exact pattern. Every time Prees thinks she’s got it pinned down, it pops up somewhere else.” At Jake’s expression, Pif grinned. “Didn’t I tell you that the Even’s been around? C-D subdeck,” he ordered the lift.
“The ship was built by an unknown species, approximately two hundred years ago, we think,” Pif said, as the lift began to move. “She’s passed through so many hands since her inception, she’s probably barely recognizable from the original, but the builders were extremely advanced technologically; according to Prees she’s been through a dozen major design overhauls, at least. Some of the systems have been added to by ten different species, something like that, but somehow, they all work together. With each addition, the ship adapts. She makes herself compatible.”
Remembering how Chief O’Brien had struggled constantly with DS9’s three conflicting technologies—Bajoran, Cardassian, Federation—Jake was impressed…and a little uneasy. Was he saying that the ship was alive?
“Fac has been able to trace it back about half of her life, but even with that, there are gaps in her history—periods where no one knows where she was,” Pif continued. “Dez has had her for, ah, ten years, I think. Anyway, one of the few original parts left of the ship is the subdeck, and the Wa, which both go to show…”
The lift hummed to a stop, and as the doors opened, Pif’s grin widened. “…that clearly, the original builders were very alien aliens. Oh, very important—don’t touch anything. Can’t stress that highly enough. And stay close.”
The lift had opened up into what appeared to be a vast white tunnel of varying circumference, the material of its construction unfamiliar. The air was cool, and smelled faintly like wet organic fabric. Soft white light came from no source that Jake could spot, evenly lighting the randomly swirled, soft patches of pallid color that decorated the tunnel room. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds. Some of the pastel smudges seemed to hang in the air, three-dimensional, others dripped and melted down the rounded walls, pooling at the floor; the sizes ranged from a handspan across to two and three meters. The colors and tunnel extended to either side of the open lift as far as Jake could see.
Pif stepped out in front of him and stopped, waiting. After one long, unblinking second, Jake followed. Instead of turning left or right, Pif walked straight ahead, and the plain white tunnel wall that had seemed to be only a few meters in front of the lift, that should have stopped them, continued to hang the same distance away. Jake started counting paces, five, ten…he glanced left and then right, and saw that the infinite tunnel was starting to look more like a very large room, like we’re stretching it out. What is this place?
Finally, Pif stopped and turned around, still smiling. “That’s about right. Look back the way we came—see that red cross?”
Jake nodded, vaguely noting that Pif’s voice sounded flat and muted, as though he were hearing it over a cheap com. They now stood in a very large, somewhat rounded chamber, still white and decorated with soft color swirls, still entirely strange, and there was a bright smear of two-dimensional red about ten meters behind them, ambiguously X-shaped. It was no bigger than Pifko.
“That’s the lift. If you ever get lost down here, that’s the way out. The color changes sometimes, but the shape is always the same.”
Jake nodded again, speechless, his brain too busy trying to figure out what they were standing in to wonder why the lift was so disproportionately close, or how the color might change. It was like they were floating in a still white space…but no, that wasn’t right. The floor beneath his feet felt like floor, even if it looked as white and ethereal as the rest of the bizarre chamber. More like they were in thick fog…except that wasn’t right, either. The color swatches were pale but unobscured. He couldn’t see a ceiling, only white, couldn’t clearly make out walls anymore, but there was a definite sense that they were inside a room.
“What is this place?” Jake asked.
“We’re in the Wa, on the C-D subdeck—which doesn’t actually take up any space, by the way,” Pif said. “The external dimensions of the Even haven’t ever changed, which means this is some kind of dimensional-shift subspace deck, or something. Honestly, I don’t know anything about the physics of it. Anyway. Check this out.”
The closest blot of color was only a few meters from them, a very wan, amorphous purple approximately the size and shape of a human head. Pifko stepped toward it, motioning for Jake to follow. When they were close enough for Pif to touch it, he reached out his front right hand—
—and they were somewhere else, a small, square room that smelled like burning lemons, that was darker and warmer and empty—except in front of them hovered a tiny black sphere that seemed to be hissing. The sibilance was steady, soft, the fist-sized ball bobbing gently in the warm air.
“Oh, good. I like this one,” Pif said, watching the sphere, obviously perfectly relaxed.
The feeling wasn’t catching. “Pif, what’s going on? What happened to the Wa?”And what happened to the exit, ’cause I’m definitely lost—
“This is the Wa,” Pif answered, his gaze still fixed on the floating, hissing orb. “It’s a bunch of rooms andenvironments where different things happen…though there are some that are just there, too. We don’t know if it has a real name. Dez called it the Wa after a festival on the planet where he grew up, some kind of riotous, one-night-every-ten-seasons sort of celebration? The kind where everyone gets altered and ends up fighting or fornicating with one or more strangers, you know. Seems like every other planet in the universe has something like it.”
Jake nodded, recalling the Mardi Gras on Earth, stories from his grandfather’s great-grandfather. Once upon a time, it had been a less-than-wholesome affair.
“Anyway, each of those colors out there does something different,” Pif said. “Some of them you have to wave your hand at, some you can just get close to—wait, here it comes. Stay where you are.”
The hissing of the tiny ball began to grow higher in pitch, and the ball itself began to spin in place, quickly picking up speed. The sound and movement continued to accelerate, to climb—and all at once the ball stopped spinning and changed shape, dozens of small black rays protruding from every side, turning it into a tiny symbolic sun. At the same instant, the hissing became a clear, melodic tone, the sound hanging in the air like the hollow note of a metallic chime…and as the note faded, the small sun absorbed its black beams, returning to its original spherical shape. After a few seconds, it began to hiss again.
“Isn’t that neat?” Pifko marveled. “There’s another one just like this one, only made out of white light. I think it’s a little bigger, too.”
Jake nodded uncertainly, still not sure if it was okay to move. “Yeah, but…what does it do? I mean, what’s its purpose?”
“This one?” Pif shrugged. “Don’t know. Entertainment, maybe, I think that’s what a lot of them are. Some are for meditation, I guess. There are a lot of different smells and colors, a lot of textures. Let’s look at another one—oh, if you ever want to return to the entrance, just back away from whatever the focal point is. Some of these things—these environments—are big enough to wander around in, but there’s always an obvious focal point when you first go in, something that stands out from everything else. When you’re ready to leave, just find the focus and then back away from it, the way you came in. Come on.”
Together, they backed away from the hissing, bobbing ball—and were back in the cool open whiteness of before.
Wow.
“So…you think this is like some alien version of a holodeck, a web room?” Jake asked, looking around at the dozens of color splotches with awe, still careful not to move. “For recreation?”
Pif shook his head. “Nobody knows exactly, but we don’t think so. Some of these bring up control rooms, with
controls we don’t know how to use. Srral tried to go into one of the machines once and had to be suctioned out; it just said the environment was alien, but coming from Srral, that’s saying something. It also said that there’s enough power here to blow up a small planet, which is why it really is important not to touch anything—push a contact and you could turn on the lights, or maybe the ship self-destructs. Oh, also important—you should never go into any of the gray ones, not ever.”
“Why not?” Jake asked, looking around. There were only a handful of gray splotches that he could see, definitely outnumbered by the other colors.
“No idea,” Pif said. “Dez said that the salvage dealer he bought the ship from told him they were extremely dangerous, but wouldn’t say why. Dez tried to send in some remotes right after he got it, sensory probes…and they disappeared. Over the years, he’s tried it a half-dozen times, that I know of…. The last one was this kind of high-intensity optic device in this shielded mini-transport case, that would send an image back out? Prees designed it. Anyway, we were all watching the receiver when it went in, Prees pushed it though with a modified forcefield generator…”
Pif’s dramatic pause was too long. “What happened?” Jake asked, torn between impatience and fascination.
Pif paused a second longer, then shook his head. “Nothing. There was a flash of light, and then it was just…gone. Prees thinks they’re some kind of disposal system…”
Pif lowered his voice melodramatically. “…but I think it’s another dimension. The man who sold it to Dez said that when he picked it up, there was no one aboard; she was derelict, dead in space. I think the last owners are in there, somewhere.”
Jake couldn’t tell if Pif was kidding. “You don’t really think they’re still here,” he said, smiling, more than a little unnerved by the concept.
“Why not?” Pif asked, his voice still low. “Prees spends half her free time down here, and she says she’s yet to see all of the environments, that there’s something new every time she comes. The colors change all the time, and the whole thing moves around, it wouldn’t be hard to get lost…and it doesn’t happen often, but there are a few spots on the ship where you might just bestanding around, minding your own business, and suddenly woof, there’s a liquid control panel in front of you, or a whistling rock, or one of the dark faces. Maybe they are still here. Maybe they’re trying to tell us something….”
Pif’s voice returned to lively normality, so abruptly that Jake started. “Anyway, it’s a thought. Want to look at another one? This is the good part of the tour, the rest of the ship is mostly just a ship, you know?”
“Sure,” Jake said eagerly, and was delighted when Pif let him pick the next one, which turned out to be an alien garden where the flowers spat seeds at each other. The one after that was a room full of important-looking console equipment, with handles and dials that pulsed; that one, they quickly backed away from, next choosing a perfectly blank, cold corridor dotted with pinkish pockets of warm air that smelled a lot like raktajino. In the next two hours they visited fourteen separate environments, carefully avoiding the gray splotches and anything that looked mechanical…and in that entire time, Jake didn’t stop once to think about going home.
As soon as Pif and Jake stepped onto the bridge, Dez asked for Facity to call a meeting. It was early for lunch, but he had her set it in the conference room closest to the dining hall, in case it ran long. Not that he expected it; except for introducing Jake to the crew members he hadn’t yet met, it was just going to be a standard mission-kickoff meeting, prep work for Drang. He wanted to announce that they’d be starting daily conferences, some update and delegation…most jobs, they didn’t go daily until three or four days before, but Drang was big, the most important assignment in years…with the potential to be one of the most important ever.
As Facity’s husky voice spilled out over the shipwide, Dez set aside the stat reader he’d been reviewing and walked over to where Pif was showing Jake the library access codes. Jake’s gaze was bright and awake, his posture better…he seemed well rested, and much more relaxed.
“Good morning,” Dez said. “How was the tour?”
“Oh, fine,” Pif answered cheerfully, looking up from the console. “We spent all of it in the Wa, of course, but I’m sure you expected as much, since that’s really the most interesting part—”
“Pif,” Dez interrupted, his smile turning clenched, “would you do me a favor and run ahead to the meeting, make sure that Feg didn’t forget to bring his current Drang estimates?” Which Feg surely had, since Dez hadn’t asked the Ferengi to bring the list.
Pif’s eyes lit up; asking him to run anywhere was a sure motivator. “No problem,” he asked, then added hopefully, “And if he did forget, I could go get it…?”
Dez nodded, finding a real smile. Pif was tiring at times, but so easy to please that it was hard not to like him. “Good idea. If he forgot, it’ll still be on the conference table before anyone has a chance to sit down.”
“I’m your man,” Pif said, obviously delighted with the small praise. “See you later, Jake.”
Pif trotted to the lift, leaving Jake and Dez alone. Facity stayed sitting at communications, intently watching whatever was on her screen, clearly not wanting to intrude. It seemed she’d decided that Jake Sisko was his personal growth project for the year, and didn’t want to interfere. Dez felt a surge of affection for her. She was a good first officer and a good woman, undoubtedly better than he deserved.
“How are you?” Dez asked. “Settling in all right?”
Jake’s smile was hesitant. “Everything’s great…”
“…but?”
Jake squared his shoulders, meeting his gaze levelly. “But I’m still wondering if there’s some way I can get back to the Alpha Quadrant sooner than four months from now. This place you’re headed, Drang—is there a chance I could get a ship there, or access to a repeater beacon?”
Dez looked into his eyes, saw the hopeful determination, and wished he could say yes, that he could offer the help Jake wanted….
…though maybe this is best. Once he knows it’s hopeless, he can focus on other things.
“Walk me to this meeting, and I’ll tell you what I know about Drang,” Dez said, sighing, tossing Facity a wave as they headed for the lift. She would participate from the bridge; as automatic as the Even Odds was, leaving a bridge unmanned was bad policy.
“In all of the systems closest to the Anomaly, there’s been a lot of chaos over the last seven years,” Dez began, stepping onto the lift, “and during the Quadrant War, things got worse. The Dominion never formally annexed the region, but they did establish a strong military presence here while the conflict lasted.”
Jake nodded, recalling that some critics of the Federation’s policies toward the Gamma Quadrant labored under the misconception that the wormhole opened into Dominion space. They tended to forget that it was nearly a year after the wormhole was discovered that Alpha Quadrant explorers first started hearing rumors of the Dominion. The Jem’Hadar didn’t begin to encroach on the sectors near the wormhole until much later.
“They did a good job of upsetting the balance of power among a number of star systems around here,” Dez went on. “A lot of nonaligned worlds got hurt by the changing political landscape. Dominion-friendly cultures took liberties they might not otherwise have been able to get away with. Basically, the situation made a lot of nice people look the other way, and gave a lot of opportunistic people the chance to make money or take power.”
“It was pretty much the same on the Alpha side,” Jake said, as the lift carried them toward the conference room. “My father always said that war brings out the worst in the worst of people.”
Dez nodded. “I agree…and the Drang epitomize that sentiment. Drang is the name of the planet and its people. They’re deliberately isolated, territorial, and very, very aggressive.”
The lift had come to a stop and they walked off, Dez leading them toward
the conference room.
“Think big, tough, bipedal reptiles, nasty temperament,” he continued. “Anyway, the Drang took advantage of the increasing political and economic uncertainty in these parts. They’ve used the last five years of general confusion to stage a series of successful raids on a number of planets, stealing everything they could get their claws on—weapons, ration supplies, various types of currency, anything that could be valuable to somebody, somewhere…and they’ve ended up with hundreds of precious cultural and historical artifacts in the process.”
“So…they’re selling them?” Jake asked.
“As far as we can tell, no,” Dez said. “They seem perfectly happy just to have them, although we suspect that they’re still looking for markets. On the other hand, Neane, she’s our head researcher, she’ll be at the meeting—she came across a rather obscure field report on the Drang, in a science survey file dated a century or so ago, that suggested their behavior might reflect some kind of religious conviction. The report said the Drang believed that the end of the universe would come after a massive interstellar war, and that the species with the most…well, stuff, is the one that the gods will favor with salvation. That’s the basic idea, anyway.”
Jake smiled a little. “Or, they could just be bad guys.”
Dez smiled back, stopping. They were almost to the conference room. “Right. In any case, they finally stole the wrong artifact from people smart enough to hire us, and that’s why we’re going there…”
Glancing over Jake’s shoulder, he lowered his voice slightly. “…and why you won’t be able to find transport,” he finished. “I’m sorry, Jake.”
Brad, Neane, and one part of Stessie—Aris, he thought, though he wasn’t close enough to be positive—had just come around the corner at Jake’s back, the three females pausing when they saw Jake and Dez. Dez could feel Aris’s sudden interest, and Brad’s whisper to the smiling Neane was clearly not about the meeting. It was a small ship; a new face on board was no minor event.