Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations - 01 - Watching the Clock

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Troi’s expression grew wistful, understanding. “Teresa, you need to know, there’s nothing casual about it.” She took a moment to formulate her words. “The Deltan oath of celibacy is difficult for them. They swear to it in order to protect others, but they’re depriving themselves of something basic, something important to Deltan mental health. There are ways to compensate, meditative techniques and the like, but for a Deltan to go without intimacy with others . . . Imagine if you went to live on a planet where they didn’t allow solid food. You could survive, you could compensate for the lack of what your body needed, but given the opportunity to devour a steak and salad, could you pass it up?”

  Troi’s words chastened Garcia. “I . . . I hadn’t thought about that. How hard it must be for him.”

  “Harder for Ensign Fell, actually. Peya is young, inexperienced. And she’s the only Deltan on a ship where visits home are few and far between. Moreover, she was injured last month, in Titan’s first encounter with the Sentry artificial intelligences. It was a frightening and traumatic experience for her, and she needed a unitive connection to help her heal. Frankly I’m grateful that Ranjea was there to help her. It would have been a longer, harder road for her if he hadn’t arrived when he did.

  “So ask yourself, Teresa: is that really a threat to your need for companionship? Or is it reassurance of his generosity toward anyone in need?”

  Garcia was blushing now, abashed by her own insensitivity. On the surface, Deltans appeared so casual about their sexuality, so open and promiscuous that it seemed like a game to them. But Troi’s words helped her begin to grasp that there was a far deeper intimacy to it on an emotional level—perhaps as deep as any bond between human lovers or spouses, but shared more easily with more than one person at a time. “I just . . . I guess I envy her getting to . . . know what it’s like to be with him.”

  “Maybe what you need is a distraction,” Troi said. “It’s not the same level of companionship you’re looking for, but there are lots of eligible males in Titan’s crew, and Capitoline’s too. I’m sure our men in particular would welcome a fresh . . . face. And I’ve seen the way they look at you. You should have no trouble finding companionship of your own.”

  Garcia stared at her, grinning. “So your professional recommendation as a therapist . . . is that I get laid?”

  Troi chuckled. “I’d rather not put it that way for the record.”

  “Don’t worry,” Garcia told her. “I think you’re suddenly my favorite therapist ever.”

  Shuttlecraft Cincinnatus

  19:15 UTC

  Ranjea’s plan to enter the Axis had put Sikran in a bit of a bind. The Vomnin representative couldn’t say no, since free access to the pocket dimension was what he and Lirahn were advocating. But if there were dissenting voices in the Council that might be persuaded to shut down that access, the Confederacy would be out one potentially very lucrative source of ancient—or future—technology.

  So in the end, Sikran and Lirahn insisted on accompanying the DTI team as “guides.” Ranjea accepted this calmly, telling Garcia that they would simply have to adjust to this reality as best they could.

  Captain Riker insisted on sending along a couple of his people as well: Titan’s science officer Melora Pazlar, a low-gravity Elaysian clad in a formfitting antigrav suit, and Ellec Krotine, a Boslic security guard with golden skin and cherry-red hair. From the way they both stared at Ranjea, Garcia had to wonder if maybe Riker should have sent male personnel instead.

  Once the Capitoline’s shuttlecraft was en route, Garcia shuddered a bit as it drew nearer to the diaphanous orb that was the portal to the Axis of Time. Next to her, Pazlar smiled at her. “Your first actual trip through time?”

  Is it that obvious I’m a rookie? “Second, actually. First planned one.”

  “Oh. So you’re nervous that something might go wrong again.” Pazlar shook her head. “I can’t blame you, after what we went through at Orisha.”

  “It’s not that,” Garcia told her. “I’ve just had it drilled into me for months that what we’re about to do is a very bad idea. My first mission and already I’m dreading what the director will think of my report.”

  Krotine’s green eyes widened in disbelief. “We’re about to enter one of the wonders of the cosmos, and all you can think about is paperwork?”

  Garcia didn’t expect a Starfleet crewperson to understand. It was that mundane, procedural focus that kept a DTI agent grounded in the face of something like this.

  Still, when the shuttle passed through the spherical portal, seeming to go into a spin in a direction Garcia couldn’t directly perceive, and then emerged into the realm beyond, Garcia’s sense of wonder emerged in full force. The shuttle seemed to be flying through a vast glass cylinder. All around it in a ring, superimposed on the still-visible background stars, she could see a distorted image of the shuttle’s own lights. As the shuttle banked toward a course parallel with the cylindrical space, the reflected arcs of light moved with them and split into multiple rings, each one fainter than the previous.

  But the light rings moved in the wrong direction to be reflections. As Garcia looked more closely, she saw that the rings of light before her, now drifting off to the side, were too dim to be a reflection of its window lights, and flared as the shuttle’s aft thrusters fired to turn it. “The reflections are . . . backward,” she said. “We’re seeing what’s behind us.”

  “Only one dimension of the Axis space is fully expanded,” Lirahn explained. “In the other two dimensions, it is finite and closed, a loop of only a few kilometers. The light we emit loops around and hits us from the other direction. The multiple images are from the same light looping around repeatedly in a spiral path.”

  But as Garcia watched, the stars vanished, leaving only the shuttle’s light. “What happened? The stars . . .”

  Sikran answered this time. “We have moved from our initial position along the Axis, so we are now no longer in a place—or time—where the interface with normal space exists. So the stars beyond cannot be seen.”

  The Vomnin’s words sank in. “Are we going forward or back in time?” she asked, hushed.

  “Back,” Lirahn said. “The Council is based near the midpoint of the Axis, over a million years downtime from your era.”

  “And how far is that to travel?” she wondered. The pocket universe of the Axis had no subspace in the conventional sense, and thus shortcuts like warp drive and transporters were useless.

  “Not far. In your units, a bit over a kilometer per millennium.”

  As the shuttle moved downtime, they passed through more regions where the stars briefly became visible, at intervals Garcia estimated at several dozen millennia on average. “Pass through one of those and we’d be in the distant past,” Garcia breathed, her heart racing at the prospect.

  “Yes,” Ranjea said. “Which is why we’re not doing that.”

  At many of the interface zones were space stations, surrounded by brilliant rings of their own multicolored light; as the shuttle approached, the first harbinger of each station was a halo of progressively brightening rings and arcs of light, echoes generated as the light spiraled around the constricted universe over and over. It was hard to remember that the illusion of a closed cylinder was actually generated by an absence of boundaries, space physically looping back around on itself in two dimensions. Garcia imagined that what worked for light would work for objects too; if the shuttle flew in any direction perpendicular to the Axis, it would simply keep looping back around and around forever even while perceiving itself traveling in a straight line. That would be handy for any maintenance worker who lost a tool during an EVA, she thought; it would just drift until it hit the other side of the station.

  Each station had its own distinct design, perhaps the work of those beings in a particular era who discovered and traded with the Axis. Before Garcia could ask the question aloud, Lirahn answered. “Each of the major powers administering the Axis brings in materials fr
om outside to construct trade stations.”

  Garcia glared, not appreciating the telepath’s intrusiveness. “How long has the Axis existed, internally?” she asked.

  “No one is certain, but the first station was built several centuries ago.”

  Garcia pondered. From an internal point of view, every interface with the outer universe would’ve come into being at the very beginning of the Axis’s existence. So people could’ve begun traveling out into her time very shortly after the Axis community came into being. “Why wait so long before making contact with our time?”

  “Our scouts ventured out into your era at various times,” Lirahn said. “But we found the region of space near the interface too hostile, due to a strange and dangerous spacetime anomaly nearby.”

  “The Null,” Melora Pazlar said. “It drove everyone away from that part of space except the Sentry AIs who were created to fight it.”

  Garcia frowned. “But that was only defeated a couple of weeks before Titan found the Axis with a Vomnin station already there.”

  “Galactic drift carried the Axis portal beyond the Null region within the past year,” Sikran explained.

  “Ahh, here we are,” Lirahn said. Ahead loomed an exceptionally massive and elaborate station, so large that it seemed to merge at some points with its own “reflections.” “The structure takes advantage of the finite dimensions of the timespace,” Lirahn said, again reading her thoughts. “At some points it actually extends far enough to touch its opposite end. One can travel through it endlessly in a single direction.”

  “A Möbius structure,” Ranjea breathed, grinning hugely. “Magnificent.”

  Garcia realized there were no stars visible here, no interface with normal space. Of course, Lirahn was right there with the explanation. “The Council meets in a zone with no interface to avoid any perception of favoritism.”

  “Thanks, I could’ve figured that out on my own.”

  The shuttle flew into the open latticework of the station, and suddenly there was nothing but station visible in any direction, as if the entire universe around them consisted of a technological construct. In a sense, at least in two dimensions, it did.

  Axis Hub Station

  Middle Calabrian Age, Lower Pleistocene Epoch

  Soon, the Cincinnatus docked in a vast hangar housing ships of dozens of unfamiliar types—although several had design elements that Garcia could swear she recognized from her studies of galactic archaeology. If I can bring back answers to some of the great archaeological mysteries, can this kind of commerce through time really be all bad? she wondered. In the corner of her eye, Lirahn smiled.

  Once they debarked, Lirahn was promptly greeted by a quartet of crustacean aliens, wide-bodied creatures about a meter and a third tall with mottled blue-and-brown carapaces, multiple stalked eyes, and six multiclawed limbs that seemed to function interchangeably as arms and legs. They addressed her in a fawning, obsequious manner; it was hard to be sure from their own alien body language, but Lirahn’s air of superiority was crystal clear. One sidled behind her, crablike, and tilted its body, using its three right-side limbs to drape an ornate cloak around her shoulders while balancing on its other three limbs; its right-side eyestalks rotated to observe the operation. Another extended a padd for her perusal; she glanced at it briefly, then gave the crustacean a look and sent it scurrying away on some telepathic command. The other two just fell in behind her, ready to serve if called upon. It was a display Garcia found distasteful. She glanced at Ranjea, but he was just taking the whole thing in with his normal, open curiosity—or at least that was what he was letting Lirahn think. Garcia tried to rein in her own reactions.

  Close behind Lirahn’s invertebrate retinue came a group of beings whom Lirahn introduced as fellow councillors. Damyz was the elder statesman: a member of the Yeshel, one of the most ancient civilizations within the Axis community, dating from nearly three million years in the past. He was a stout, short-tailed biped with a blocky, short-snouted orange-brown head and dark eyes. He greeted the visitors with open arms and warm dignity, but seemed to follow Lirahn’s cues.

  Oydia was a smallish, silver-furred lemurlike female who introduced herself as a Caratu, a member of the Colloquium of Progress, a peaceful multispecies community from some eighteen millennia in the past. Garcia had never heard of any such civilization from that era, which troubled her, since Oydia’s description made it sound very expansive. How could it have been lost so completely? Still, she said nothing to Oydia about the possible extinction of her civilization, lest it prompt her to seek to prevent it. Over such a relatively short span of time, any changes to the timeline could easily affect the Federation. And Oydia seemed quite friendly with Lirahn.

  The roles were reversed when Garcia met Temarel, a councillor from twenty-six thousand years in the future and the only member of the Council whose species Garcia found familiar. Her aspect contained both Vulcan and Romulan attributes, yet was subtly different from either. Yet the councillor, who called her race the Chenar, didn’t recognize the names “Vulcan” and “Romulan” when Garcia asked—making her afraid to bring up the name “Federation” or “human.” Temarel looked on Lirahn’s ostentation with visible distaste, confirming that she didn’t follow the ways of Surak.

  Last but not least was Shiiem, a tall, slim humanoid whose bronze skin was covered in silvery filigrees that resembled ornate circuit diagrams, and whose eyes glowed with a soft red-orange light from within like a cat’s. His people, the Zcham, came from over eight hundred millennia uptime, farther forward than any other councillor. While Damyz apparently functioned as a figurehead on the council, Garcia sensed real power from Shiiem. “We are always glad,” the Zcham councillor said, “to hear the concerns of those charged with preserving the integrity of the timestream. All points of view on the question are welcome here.” As he said that, his eyes locked with Lirahn’s and seemed to flare briefly. The glamorous Selakar held his gaze without flinching. Garcia couldn’t blame her, since she seemed to have at least half the Council on her side—whatever that side was.

  It soon became clear that Lirahn and her cronies weren’t going to let Ranjea out of their sight. The Selakar was determined to control the agenda, and it would be difficult to have any candid discussions with dissenters so long as she was around.

  Fortunately, Lirahn’s attention was fixated on Ranjea—not just for the obvious reasons, but because she’d apparently dismissed Garcia as a mere subordinate. She’d been happy to lecture Garcia on the nature of the Axis, but it had been like talking down to a small child. That disregard gave them an opportunity. Just outside the Council chamber, Ranjea stopped Garcia and said, “Listen, this will probably be very long and tedious. I can handle it, and I know you’re eager to get out and explore the Axis. So why don’t you go indulge yourself? See the sights, learn whatever you can. Have fun.”

  She caught the subtext: dig for voices of dissent, find the people or groups that could offer an alternative to Lirahn’s narrative. “How can I resist?” she said, winking at him. He smiled and nodded. It thrilled her that she knew with such certainty what he wanted. Was it some kind of Deltan empathic projection, or were they just clicking that well as a team?

  Commander Pazlar ordered Krotine to accompany Garcia for her protection. Garcia didn’t like the Starfleeter’s assumption that she needed to be nursemaided, but she didn’t mind having the lively Boslic guard along for company. Krotine seemed as enthusiastic about exploring the Axis as she was.

  It put a damper on Garcia’s plans, though, when Lirahn ordered one of her crablike servants—Siri, their species was called—to accompany the two women as a “guide.” Or rather, Lirahn threw the order in the general direction of her retinue and let them hash out who would go. One Siri with more blue in its shell than the others volunteered to do the job, and the other two seemed happy to let it. “I am Vikei,” the Siri introduced itself, the translator giving its voice a high but masculine timbre. “Anything you wish to kn
ow about the Axis, you may freely ask.”

  In the hours that followed, Garcia had to admit that Vikei made a pretty good tour guide, enthusiastically showing them all the sights of the Axis hub station. Krotine was particularly eager to ride the tram shuttle that traversed an entire lateral dimension of the Axis timespace, traveling constantly in one direction yet always ending up back where it started. The two women rode the shuttle through several cycles, unabashedly laughing and pointing like tourists as they experienced the novelty of going in a straight line that was also a closed loop.

  Well, not entirely straight. There was a subtle bend to the tram’s path, angling off to the left and then coming back to the right after a time. “I was hoping I’d be able to look ahead and see the back of our own tram,” Krotine protested.

  “Apologies,” Vikei said, “but such an uninterrupted path could allow for dangerous feedback effects. A light shone down such a path, for instance, would continuously cycle through and reinforce itself, creating a runaway amplification that could be quite dangerous.”

  “Aww,” Garcia said. “So you mean there isn’t some pit where you can drop something straight down and have it hit you on the head?” The women laughed.

  “In fact, there are a few such enclosed conduits that function as generators, drawing electric power from a metal ball falling continuously at terminal velocity,” Vikei said. “Although they have feedback safeguards in place as well. I would be happy to show you one.”

  “Just a generator?” Krotine sighed. “I was hoping for something more like indoor skydiving.”