Until a minute ago, they had known their places in the universe. They were women, officers, Klingons by temperament if not by blood. And twins, identical to each other in almost every aspect of their being.
Now it seemed possible that at least one fact of their existence—one very important fact—might be in need of reassessment. If the woman in the brig looked the way Refsland and Joseph had described her, Gerda and Idun were no longer the only two of their kind.
Somehow, there was a third.
But despite what she had heard, Gerda wasn’t ready to believe it—at least, not yet. First, she wanted to see the evidence with her own eyes.
Picard ignored the subtle buzz of the brig barrier and waited for the woman to respond.
“First off,” she said, “my name is Asmund. I hold the rank of lieutenant on a ship called Stargazer.”
Stranger and stranger, the captain thought. “This vessel is called Stargazer. And I’ve got two Lieutenant Asmunds serving on my bridge—but you’re not either one of them.”
The woman absorbed the information. “And one of your officers is Pug Joseph, but not the Pug Joseph I know.”
Picard frowned. “Go on.”
“As to how I got here…I can only tell you I was beaming onto a ship called the Crazy Horse, with which we had arranged a rendezvous so I could return to Earth on personal business. The transport procedure seemed to go as it always does—except I wound up here instead of on the Crazy Horse.”
Picard mulled what the woman had told him. “Not a very enlightening account.”
The newcomer seemed to stiffen. “With all due respect, Captain, I’m giving you the facts as I know them. If this sounds a bit strange to you, rest assured that it sounds just as strange to me.”
Picard saw the look on her face—one of resentmentand indignation—and wondered if he was being unnecessarily suspicious. But then, it wasn’t every day another Asmund showed up on his ship.
Of course, there was an explanation at hand, if an extremely bizarre one. On at least one other occasion in Starfleet history, a seemingly routine transport had resulted in a crossing to another universe. If it could happen once, it could have happened a second time.
The captain hadn’t mentioned the possibility because he wanted to hear the woman’s story first. But now that he had, it was sounding more and more like she had experienced a reprise of that other ill-fated transport.
“Tell me,” he said, “this Stargazer on which you serve…is it part of a fleet?”
“Yes,” she said. “We call it a Star fleet. It’s the military and scientific arm of a loosely organized union of planets called the Confederation.”
Well, Picard reflected, there is at least a small difference between our two universes, even if it is a matter of only a few letters.
“And is there a dominant member in your…Confederation?” he asked.
The woman shook her head. “No. That’s the whole point—that every member world is equal to all others. Some worlds are less active in the organization, but that’s by choice.”
It was the answer Picard had hoped to hear.
He went on to ask his guest other questions, focusing in more narrowly on interstellar politics. Judging from her responses, her universe had its share of conflicts. But for the most part, it was an orderly place with long-observed treaties and well-patrolled borders.
And no trace of tyranny, apparently. At least, not in the union called the Confederation.
Picard mulled everything the woman had said. Then he asked a question that was more to the point of his inquiry. “Have you ever heard of a man called Kirk?”
“Yes,” said Lieutenant Asmund. “Why?”
“He was…my hero when I was a boy.”
It was stretching the truth, to say the least. But then, he needed an explanation, and that was the first plausible one that came to mind.
The woman shrugged. “Kirk was a starship captain. A good one, too, according to the histories I’ve read. He died some fifty years ago, fighting Klingons in the Mutara sector.”
Picard was familiar with the incident. But in his universe, Kirk had survived and gone on to play a key role in the Khitomer Conference, where the Federation and the Klingon Empire finally began to put aside their differences.
“Anything else?” asked Lieutenant Asmund. “My grandmother’s recipe for oatmeal cookies, perhaps?”
The captain had to smile. “My apologies. But I have discovered, in my short tenure as commanding officer of this vessel, that people are often not what they seem. I’m forced to apply that standard to you as well.”
The woman nodded. “Apology accepted. And believe me, I understand the need to be wary. But I assure you, Captain, I’m not here for any nefarious purposes. Nothing would please me more than to get back on that transporter pad and be returned to my own Stargazer.”
“I am sure that’s true,” Picard told her. “However, considering we do not know precisely how you got here, it may be a tricky matter to get you back.”
The lieutenant didn’t look happy with his response. “I was hoping you would say something else,” she admitted, “but I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I can tell you this,” he said. “We will do everything in our power to return you to your place and time of origin. However, in case that endeavor takes some time—”
“Or never happens at all,” she interjected fatalistically.
“In case of either of those outcomes, I invite you to make yourself as comfortable as you can here on the Stargazer. Though in line with my earlier comments regarding appearances, I feel compelled to supply you with a security escort.”
“No problem,” said Lieutenant Asmund. “He or she will be useful as a guide, if nothing else.”
Picard nodded. “I am glad you see it that way.”
Joseph, who was standing just outside the barrier, was the obvious choice for the woman’s escort. After all, he was the highest-ranking security officer on the ship.
He had become a little too personally involved with the last visitor he was asked to guard—Serenity Santana of the mysterious Magnia colony. But with that experience under his belt, Picard was certain the security officer wouldn’t allow himself to be fooled again.
“Just one other thing,” the woman said. “You mentioned that there are a couple of Asmunds on your ship. Bridge officers, I believe.”
“That is correct.”
I’d like to meet them,” the newcomer told him, “if that’s all right with you.”
The captain didn’t see any reason to forbid it. And he knew that Gerda and Idun would want to meet their counterpart.
“I think that can be arranged,” he said, “once we get you out of the brig and into some proper quarters.”
Chapter Five
BY THE TIME Picard returned to the bridge, Second Officer Wu had arrived as well. The way she looked at the captain told him she had already heard about their unexpected guest, and was as eager as anyone to learn more about her.
Picard smiled to himself. When Wu first came on board the Stargazer, her drive and intensity had led to some misunderstandings between her and the rest of the crew. Fortunately, that had changed, and she was now settling in nicely.
“Commander Ben Zoma, Commander Wu, join me in my ready room,” the captain said.
Then he entered the room himself, deposited himself in the plastiform chair behind his desk, and called up the file he required. Almost instantly, he found himself looking at a historic set of logs.
“Please,” he said without looking up, “have a seat. I will be with you in a moment.”
Picard took a moment to read the logs presented to him, refreshing his memory of the events contained in them. As he might have predicted, he had recalled some of the details and forgotten others—including one very important one. Finally, he looked up at his officers.
“Our guest,” he said, “claims not to know how she got here. The last thing she remembers is being transported
off a ship called Stargazer.”
“Really,” said Wu.
“And the next thing she knew,” Ben Zoma asked, “she was standing there in front of Refsland?”
The captain nodded. “Something like that. It sounds far-fetched, I know. But as she and I we were talking, I recalled something I had learned about at the Academy—an incident in which another apparently simple transport resulted in a bizarre, cross-dimensional transit.”
Wu’s eyes lit up. “Captain Kirk.”
Ben Zoma pointed at Picard. “That’s right. The Halkan system, wasn’t it?”
The captain nodded. “Sixty-six years ago, Captain James Kirk and his vessel, the Enterprise, were engaged in a diplomatic mission to the Halkan system when an ion storm moved into the area. A rather severe ion storm.
“Kirk, his chief medical officer, his chief engineer, and his communications officer were to transport down to the Halkans’ planet to conduct negotiations for dilithium mining rights. However, the storm interfered with transporter operation and landed the four of them in another universe, while their counterparts from that universe wound up spitting curses from the brig on Kirk’s Enterprise.”
Ben Zoma stroked his chin. “So in that case, there was actually a trade-off—Kirk’s people for their counterparts—as if there were some kind of law of conservation of transported matter at work.”
“Interesting,” said Wu.
“At any rate,” Picard continued, “Kirk and his people found themselves in a frame of reference where the Federation was a repressive empire rather than a league of worlds brought together by mutual consent. Impersonating their counterparts, they managed to return to their proper universe, at which time their counterparts were returned as well.
“But before he departed the other universe, Kirk advised the counterpart of Spock, this Enterprise’s first officer, that the regime in power couldn’t go on. If it didn’t mend its barbaric ways, the captain said, it would invite a revolt—the likeliest result being a dark age in which no one would prosper.
“On the other hand,” said Picard, “if change came in an orderly fashion, something might be made of the existing power structure. Kirk left it to the Vulcan to effect that change, if he could.”
“Unfortunately,” Ben Zoma interjected, “Kirk never found out if his advice bore fruit.”
“That is correct,” said the captain. “He could only guess as to whether the empire of his counterpart survived, and in what form. And we are no better off in that regard than he was.”
The three of them pondered the information for a moment. Then Wu spoke up.
“There wasn’t any ion storm present when our guest appeared. However, the anomaly was generating a considerable amount of particle turbulence.”
“And we haven’t been able to identify the depth of the anomaly,” said Ben Zoma. “For all we know, it extends into that other universe.”
“Or some other,” Wu pointed out. “There’s mathematical evidence to suggest the existence of an infinite number of universes. Lieutenant Asmund could have come from any one of them.”
Picard had already embraced that possibility. Otherwise, he would have left the woman in the brig.
The more compelling question, at the moment, was how Lieutenant Asmund had beamed onto the Stargazer. Had the anomaly indeed interfered with her transport, sending her from universe to universe instead of from ship to ship?
And was her captain wondering now what had become of her? Without any knowledge of cross-universe transits, was he trying his damnedest to figure out where she might have gone—and how he could get her back?
Perhaps he was. But without help from Picard, the task would almost certainly prove impossible. For that matter, it might prove impossible with his help—but he owed it to Lieutenant Asmund and her captain to try.
And he owed it to the Federation as well—in the event that their visitor’s arrival here wasn’t an accident after all, but something less innocent—regardless of which universe she had come from.
“I will ask Mr. Simenon to see if he can find a way to reverse the transport,” Picard told his officers. “If anyone can do it, he can.”
“Amen,” said Ben Zoma.
Acting security chief Pug Joseph had never felt so strange in his life. The woman he was escorting to her quarters looked and sounded so much like the Asmund sisters, he felt he should be able to speak to her the way he spoke to them.
Like a friend. Like a person he worked with day in and day out. Like someone he trusted with his life.
But he couldn’t. Despite appearances, the woman beside him was a stranger. And until the captain could confirm where she had come from and under what circumstances, Joseph had to treat her with a healthy dose of suspicion.
“Can you tell me something?” she asked as they made their way down the corridor.
“Not if it’s anything that could be considered strategic information,” Joseph told her.
“It’s nothing like that,” the woman assured him. “I just wanted to know what the other Asmunds are like.”
“Oh,” said Joseph. “That.”
“I mean, what kind of officers are they? Are they engineers, like me?”
The security chief didn’t see any harm in answering. “One is our helm officer. The other is our navigator.”
“I see,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing as she considered what he had told her. “Funny. I had an interest in both those areas before I went into engineering.”
“Funny,” he echoed. But really, no funnier than anything else about her.
“Are they good at what they do?” she asked.
The security chief rolled his eyes. “They’re the best. And I’m not just saying that because they’re my fellow officers. Any other captain would give his right arm to have Gerda and Idun on his bridge.”
The woman looked at him. “Gerda and Idun?”
“Those are their names,” he said.
“How interesting. And what do Gerda and Idun do when they’re not on duty?”
Joseph smiled. “That’s the kind of thing I’d rather they told you, if you know what I mean. It’s not a security issue or anything. It’s just—”
The woman held up her hand. “You don’t have to explain, Lieutenant. I understand.”
Of course you do, he thought. If she couldn’t, who could?
Ensign Andreas Nikolas was heading for the science section, where he was supposed to help with the sensor scans they were running there on the anomaly.
It wasn’t a bad assignment, considering Nikolas was sort of curious about the anomaly, and had already learned the ropes in that section when Lieutenant Valderrama was in charge. His only reservation was the officer in charge now.
He’d heard some strange rumors about Lieutenant Kastiigan—that he had a fascination with death or some such thing. Not being familiar with Kastiigan’s species, the ensign didn’t know if all Kandilkari were like that or not.
However, he found it unsettling to work under someone who was a little too willing to sacrifice his life. With that kind of attitude, Kastiigan might not be too concerned about the lives of those around him either—and Nikolas was going to be working as closely with the guy as anybody.
Oh well, he thought. At least it would look good in his service file. “Perished in the line of duty when his superior cranked the neutrino spectrometer too high”…
Before he could elaborate on the idea, he came around a bend in the corridor and saw someone approaching him from the other direction. Two someones, actually. Pug Joseph and one of the Asmunds, either Gerda or Idun.
Whichever twin it was, she was wearing a leathery gray tunic, boots of the same color and texture, and formfitting dark-blue pants. And it wasn’t just the way she filled out her ensemble that caught Nikolas’s eye.
He had never seen either of the Asmunds wearing anything but a uniform or a set of gym togs. Never. And as the ensign was pondering that observation, something happened that seemed even mor
e odd to him.
The woman in the gray tunic smiled at him.
No—it was more than a smile. She was positively beaming at him, as if she had never seen anything so pleasing before in her entire life.
But the Asmunds didn’t smile at anyone. At least, not in his experience.
It caught Nikolas completely by surprise—so much so that he doubted the evidence of his own eyes for a moment. But as he stared back, he saw that he hadn’t imagined it.
The woman was still smiling at him. At him.
Then, before he could say anything, she was gone around another bend in the corridor, along with Mr. Joseph. And Nikolas was left with his mouth hanging open.
Impossible as it seemed, one of the Asmunds had favored him with a smile. But he didn’t have the slightest clue which of them it was—Gerda or Idun.
As far as Nikolas was concerned, they looked exactly alike. If there was a way to tell them apart—other than the way they wore their hair, or where they sat when they were on the bridge—he was unaware of it.
But he needed to know which of them he had seen. Because once he knew that, he could find out what that smile had been about.
With that in mind, the ensign bolted after the woman. Unfortunately, he came around the bend too quickly and almost knocked over Lieutenant Ulelo.
Muttering an apology, Nikolas tried to disentangle himself from the com officer. However, it took longer than it should have. And by the time the ensign resumed his pursuit, the object of it had already entered a turbolift.
“Wait!” he blurted.
But it was too late. The doors had already begun sliding together. All Nikolas got was a glimpse of blond hair and blue eyes before the doors closed completely.
Damn, he thought, and hit the heel of his hand against the duranium bulkhead in frustration. Idun—or was it Gerda?—had gotten away.
Then he realized that it didn’t matter. All he had to do was catch up with Pug Joseph later and find out which Asmund he had been walking with.
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