Stone and Anvil

by Peter David

  “As always, Calhoun, the model of restraint,” said Picard.

  And Janos, from the table, howled, “Stop that thing! It’s in charge!”

  At first Calhoun had no idea what Janos was talking about. Then he saw where the furred security guard was indicating. The gribble was moving as fast as it could, and Calhoun was still bewildered, but Picard didn’t hesitate. His phaser was in his hand and he fired off a quick shot just as the gribble was getting to the door. The phaser shot caught it squarely and the furred creature ricocheted across the floor and came to a rest at the far end.

  “Nice shot,” said Calhoun.

  iv.

  The group of them—Calhoun, Picard, Selar, and Kebron—were grouped around the gribble, which was inside a bell jar atop a table, unable to escape. The tiny creature glowered at them.

  In other areas throughout the institute, the security teams were rounding up or, for the most part, disposing of the few remaining creatures running amok through the institute. Janos was still strapped to the table, but Selar had given him a sedative and he was sleeping soundly. There seemed little point to just returning him to the brig. Besides, at that moment, their attention was focused squarely on their undersized prisoner.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Kebron.

  “Shut up, you overgrown lummox,” snapped the gribble.

  “So am I understanding you correctly?” Selar asked. “You were a ‘failed genetic experiment’…?”

  “Except I wasn’t a failure,” said the gribble, glaring at Bethom. “I was his greatest achievement. And part of my greatness was keeping my intellect masked so he didn’t realize that it was only growing throughout the years. Why, the facilities here at the institute have been beyond anything I could have hoped for.”

  “Far better than the penal colony you were originally sent to, I’d wager,” said Picard.

  “Don’t be too sure of that, baldy,” the gribble said. “I made valuable contacts at that penal colony. Contacts who were extremely interested in what I had to offer, and the benefits of any further research I might implement. That’s why this place was a godsend. Bethom on his own had more or less reached the heights of what he was going to accomplish. But with my intellect guiding the research…”

  “And you used some sort of incredible mind power to influence the scientists so they would do your bidding?” said Kebron.

  “No, you idiot,” the gribble snapped. “It was just a matter of drugging their food and whispering to them at night while they slept. Human minds are remarkably pliable.”

  “I’m sorry,” sobbed Bethom, strapped to a chair a few feet away. “I’m sorry I let you down….”

  “Oh, shut up,” said the gribble in his squeaky voice. “Pathetic fool. I’m embarrassed to be seen with you. My achievements far outstripped anything you ever could have aspired to.”

  “Meaning…?” asked Picard.

  “The deterioration factor.”

  “The what?”

  But Calhoun understood immediately. Looking in Janos’s direction, he said, “You mean…what’s happening to Janos.”

  “Yes,” said the gribble. He reached up with one leg, scratched behind his tiny ear. “With the sole exception of me, all of Bethom’s earlier experiments suffered from deterioration of their faculties, to the point where they became too dangerous to live. Your ‘Janos’ lasted far longer than most, probably because he was the single most successful in terms of intelligence. But obviously even his deterioration and reversion to savagery is progressing.”

  “There has to be a way,” said Calhoun. “Unless you want us to dissect you for hints, you’ll tell us.”

  At first the gribble looked defiant, but as he saw the quiet building anger in Calhoun’s purple eyes, he realized that bargaining might be his best option. “Perhaps,” said the gribble. “Perhaps there is a way. It’s an outside chance. But if I do it, what’s in it for me?”

  “You get to live,” Calhoun told him.

  The gribble didn’t look impressed. “You wouldn’t kill me in any event. I’m intelligent, I’m self-aware, and I’m fluffy. I have to do more than live if I cooperate. I get to walk away from this. Well…scamper away.”

  “No deal,” Picard said harshly.

  Calhoun looked at him. “Jean-Luc—”

  “He has allies, Mac,” said Picard. “Someone he was developing research and technology for. Research and technology into outlawed sciences. These unknown allies present a potential threat to Federation security. He has to at least name them. Be willing to speak against them before the Federation when they’re captured.”

  “You’ll never capture them,” said the gribble confidently.

  “Then you’ve no need to worry about naming them, have you?”

  “I suppose not,” admitted the gribble. “All right…a deal. I try to help the hairbag over there and tell you who my allies are, in exchange for my freedom. And you’re lucky, Calhoun. Bethom would have been no use to you at all.”

  “It’s true,” sobbed Bethom. “I’ve no idea how to help Janos. I’m sorry….”

  “Damned right,” said the gribble. “I’m the only being in existence who could possibly pull it off. All right…here’s what needs to be done…”

  The snapping of the metal bonds caught them completely off guard. As one, they turned in time to see Janos bounding free of the table. His eyes were bloodred in fury and he roared so loudly that Calhoun thought he was going to go deaf.

  Janos was completely berserk.

  “Weapons out!” shouted Picard.

  “Stun setting won’t stop him!” Kebron said, advancing on him. Janos instantly took the challenge, leaping forward and slamming into Kebron, knocking him to one side. The impact sent him lurching toward Calhoun and Picard, who fired their phasers in unison. The twin blasts spun Janos completely around and he struck the table with the bell jar. The table was overturned and the bell jar crashed to the floor, shattering.

  The gribble tried to run. He didn’t get far. Janos was upon him in an instant….

  “No!” Calhoun cried out.

  It was too late. Janos hadn’t been fed all day. He grabbed the gribble up and before the terrified creature could utter a sound, Janos devoured him in one bite.

  Then Kebron collided with him from behind, hurtling him to the floor. Straddling his back, he pulled Janos’s upper and lower jaws in opposite directions. “Spit him out! Right now!” Janos made gagging noises. “Right now!”

  The gribble’s haunches tumbled to the floor out of Janos’s mouth. The small creature’s front section was nowhere in sight.

  “This can’t be good,” said Kebron.

  Janos suddenly reared up and managed to shove Kebron off him. He lurched to his feet, and once more phaser fire from multiple directions hammered at him. He tried to fight them off, but then he began to waver and, moments later, toppled to the floor and lay silent.

  “He was still heavily medicated,” said Selar. “Otherwise I suspect the phasers would not have stopped him.”

  “Great,” Calhoun said. He stared at the remains of the gribble and then looked woefully at Picard. “I think the deal’s off,” he said.

  Then

  Mackenzie Calhoun strode across the podium when his name was called. Polite applause followed him as he did so, and he received his diploma from the dean. He was saluted, and saluted in response. It was a ceremonial gesture, the salute, a holdover from centuries ago that was trotted out only for highly ceremonial occasions such as this.

  “Congratulations, Ensign Calhoun,” said the dean.

  “Thank you, sir,” replied Calhoun.

  He returned to his seat wedged in between two other classmates and studied the diploma. He ran his fingers across it, noted the raised letters, the smooth paper. The format of the diploma had not changed in centuries. He felt as if he were looking back through a window in time, seeing the way things used to be. He liked them.

  The rest of the ceremony breezed past
. More speeches. More congratulations. The Academy band played pompous music.

  And when it was over, people embraced one another, family members pouring forward like the great flood to mingle with the graduates, to congratulate them and express excitement about the great destinies that awaited them.

  Calhoun watched them as if from a distance. As if he were back at the time of those earliest diplomas, and looking forward to another time, another world that he was not a part of.

  He had no family to embrace him. No loved ones to celebrate with him. Wexler and Leanne were busy with their parents, who were pumping their hands or posing for pictures.

  Then he saw her, at the far edge of the crowd. Elizabeth Shelby. Smiling, joyous, her arms open wide, ready to run to him if she could just get through the crowd. He wondered if she was merely a vision, as she had been four years ago, but no, she was real, flesh and blood, trying to get past everyone else to get to him…

  …and then she stopped and threw her arms around another cadet, and he realized it wasn’t her. The hair was the same, the general shape of the body, but it was a different face, a different woman. Not her.

  He stayed right where he was, unmoving, just to see what would happen.

  And eventually, the field was deserted. It was a beautiful day, and he stood there until the sun moved across the sky, and the crews came and cleared away the chairs even as they looked in puzzlement at him, and the night fell, and the clouds came out. All that time, Mackenzie Calhoun didn’t move from the spot.

  No one came to him. And somehow he knew, in a burst of clarity, that he would spend his entire existence alone.

  “I can live with that,” he said finally, and walked away, leaving the field deserted.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Now

  “I couldn’t live with that,” he said.

  Captain Shelby, standing next to her husband, wrapped her arm through his. “Live with what?” she asked.

  They were seated on a hillside on a world called Neural. It was a lovely place, with tall trees and rich undergrowth. Once small tribes of humanoids had populated it, but they had wiped each other out in a civil war, and now there was only animal life.

  “Live with being alone,” Calhoun replied.

  “My. Where did that come from?”

  “Just…thinking about the past.”

  “That’s a safe thing to think about. The future’s always more problematic. But hey, at least you have a future.”

  “Meaning?”

  “God, Calhoun,” and she jabbed him in the ribs. “Do you have any clue how close you came to losing it all? If the Selelvians hadn’t withdrawn their complaint, if they hadn’t insisted the matter be dropped…”

  “You mean if I hadn’t been right,” he said. “But I knew I was. And now they want to drop the matter because they want to avoid investigation by the UFP. You can mind-control some of the people some of the time, but not all of them all of the time.”

  “You knew you were right.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were able to trust your instincts.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Here’s the problem, Mac: I trust your instincts, too. But there’re plenty of people out there with lousy instincts. That’s why there are rules. That’s why they have to be followed. And it’s impossible to pick and choose who is going to follow them. Despite the fact that, yes, you were right, Jellico was ready to have you strung up. If it weren’t for the combined efforts of Captain Picard and Ambassador Spock…I don’t like to think what would have happened.”

  “And would you have been with me?”

  “With you?”

  “Whatever they’d have done to me,” said Calhoun, taking her hands in his. “Would you have seen it through?”

  “You mean lived with you at a penal colony?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  He nodded. “All right. I can understand that.”

  “However,” she continued, “I hear such places have generous conjugal-visit policies.”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Much.”

  They watched the creature who had once gone by the name of Janos. He had made it to the edge of the woods, and now other creatures somewhat similar to him had emerged. They came out, one by one, sniffing at him, then roaring challenges. He had responded in kind.

  Then the largest one charged him…and Janos, acting entirely on instinct, stepped out of the way, grabbed him from behind, and threw him to the ground in a perfectly executed judo toss. The creature lay there, stunned, tried to get up, and Janos kicked him in the face.

  The second largest also charged him. The same thing happened.

  “He reminds me of you,” said Shelby. “That’s more or less what you did when you first came to the Academy.”

  “We’re both outsiders,” Calhoun replied. “Pity there’s no stone and anvil with a sword stuck in it for him to pull out in order to gain acceptance. It takes much less time, from what I hear. But I suppose you do what you have to in order to fit in.” He shook his head, unable to maintain the attempt at levity. “I failed him, Eppy. Do you think he realizes? Remembers?”

  “You did what you could, Mac,” she said. “Released him here into the wild. It won’t be the life he could have had…but it’s a life. You were able to give him that at least.”

  “I don’t like settling for ‘at least.’ ”

  “Would you settle for me?”

  He smiled at her, stroked her face, and then brought her lips up to his as, far away, Janos blended in with his new tribe and they vanished into the shadows of the forest.