Star Trek: The Next Generation - 115 - The Stuff of Dreams

by James Swallow

  “Is this that good merlot you told me about?” Wesley was pouring a generous glass of the heady red for his mother and his former captain. “Shall we toast the new couple? To peace and long life?”

  Beverly took her glass as Picard turned back to look at her. “That’s perfect. Isn’t it, Jean-Luc? Perfect. Idyllic. Safe.”

  Picard took the glass offered to him without thinking about it. “Safe . . .” he repeated, and the others made the toast and took a drink.

  Wesley nodded appreciatively. “That is lovely. The stuff of dreams.” He gestured around. “Just like this place. I envy you, Captain.”

  “He’s not captain anymore,” Beverly noted.

  “I’m not . . .” Picard felt something come loose inside his thoughts. “I’m not here.” He stood up suddenly, and his head swam. He put out his hand for balance and it came down on a brittle thing that cracked under his weight.

  “Oh,” said his wife. “You broke your little ship.” The words echoed in his mind, from a different time and a different voice.

  The place-setting model was of a Danube-class runabout, and he had inadvertently snapped off one of the warp pontoons.

  Wesley gathered up the pieces. “We can fix this.”

  “No . . .” Picard shook his head, stepping backward. “We can’t.” A rising tide of anxiety built in him. “I have to go.”

  “You won’t stay for a dance?” said Beverly.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, Picard walked away as quickly as he could. The other wedding guests parted before him, flowing out of his way. He reached the back of the house, grabbed the handles of the big French doors, and turned them. Picard almost fell into the dim, cool interior of the house.

  All at once the doors closed behind him and the ambient noise of the party was gone.

  The house he was in was not his house, not the home where he had grown up. That building was gone, gutted by fire, lost to ashes. This house was unreal, like the illustration from some aged volume of Dickens. A period piece, oddly in the now and yet also in an idealized past out of the books Picard had loved as a youth.

  There was no illumination but the dull glow of moonlight across the windows. As he moved through it, he felt different. Younger.

  A moment ago, he had been an old man, decades hence. Now he was himself again, or so it seemed. His boots crunched on the carpet and he looked down. He was in a Starfleet uniform, but of a design he hadn’t worn since before the Borg Queen’s attack on Earth and the temporal incident with Zefram Cochrane’s Phoenix.

  Crumpled wrapping paper, once bright and gaily colored in red and green, disintegrated under his heels. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he picked out Christmas decorations, the debris of unwrapped gifts, and a tree decked in tinsel and baubles. Everything looked old and faded, the colors drained as if they had been bleached by the sun. All that was missing to complete the image of great neglect and abandonment was a layer of dust and the silken threads of cobwebs.

  He knew instinctively that this place was utterly empty, populated only by the ghosts of his memories. And Picard did remember now.

  He remembered being in this room, a blindfold falling from his eyes as his wife and his children greeted him, as René came and took his hand. Not his son, though, but the boy for whom he had been named. The nephew lost in the flames along with Jean-Luc’s brother Robert.

  Deep regret, strong and potent, welled up in him. He held on to it tightly, because he knew it was real. “Not like this place,” he said aloud. “None of this . . .”

  The nexus. Pieces of memory snapped back into order, a jigsaw of moments reassembling itself. It was harder this time, harder than it had been to resist the pull of the dream the first time he had fallen into the unreality. In the days after that initial encounter, in the aftermath of the Enterprise-D’s destruction and the final death of James T. Kirk, it had been easy for Picard to fill his thoughts with deeds to be done and reports to be made. But in the quiet moments, in the period between that mission and his eventual reassignment, there had been times when the pull of the illusion had weighed on him. In the darkest hours, he had even found some measure of understanding about what force had driven Tolian Soran to such dire lengths, to return to the nexus at any cost, no matter how terrible. Deanna Troi had helped Picard make sense of those thoughts, and for that he remained eternally grateful to her.

  But now he was here again, and all that he had put behind him was stripped away. What he had feared the most about coming face-to-face with the nexus once more had come to pass.

  I can’t stay here.

  He looked around, moving from room to room in the deserted house. “Guinan?” She had been there before, and that echo of his old friend had served as Picard’s compass, his guide. But there was no reply this time, and he slowly realized that whatever Guinan had left behind in the nexus to lead him out before, it was no longer there.

  A measure of understanding came to him. “Kolb . . .” Yes, that was what he was here for. Not for himself, but for his misguided friend. “I have to find him.” Kolb was lost, and in more than one sense.

  With regret, Picard went to the front of the house, to the big oak door that led out to the gardens beyond. It was hard to move at first, the wood swollen and stiff with disuse, but he put his shoulder to it, and with a squeak of rusted hinges, it came open.

  He caught a hot, arid wind in the face and brought up his hand to shield his eyes from a dazzling flood of yellow sunshine. Instead of stone, grass, and earth, sand gave under his boots and he stumbled forward.

  Picard half-turned and saw that there was nothing behind him, no house but a shallow rise of dunes, falling down to a wide stretch of open amber beach and blue sea. He cast around. In the other direction there were foothills and craggy mountains with an earthy brown cast—and a short distance from him, a cluster of domed tents and yurts around a stand of trees and a shallow lake. Life was there: people in loose, gray-purple clothes moved back and forth, some busy with animals, others engaged in conversation.

  Picard was still deliberating what to do when one of them, a woman with golden hair falling down to her shoulders, caught sight of him atop the dune. Even at this distance, he saw the change in her body language, the flash of a wide smile. She raised a hand and waved hello. Without thinking, Picard returned the gesture. The woman beckoned.

  “She’ll have something to drink we could share,” said a voice.

  Picard turned, startled by the sudden appearance of another person. A man stood behind him, above on one of the higher ridges. His clothes were similar in style and coloration to the people in the tent village, and the fat yellow sun was above the man’s shoulders, casting him in half silhouette. He wore a thin hood that shadowed the features of his face.

  “You look thirsty. The air here can dry you out, if you’re not used to it.” The voice. Picard knew the voice, the murmur of it and the quiet intensity, but he could not place it. “I think you’re looking for someone. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I know you.”

  “In a way.” One of the man’s hands vanished into the folds of his tunic and when it returned, Picard was surprised to see he was holding a vintage pocket watch, clearly of Earth origin. He flicked open the cover and scrutinized the time; then, like a conjuror working a trick, the watch disappeared again and he looked up, reaching for his hood as he walked down the line of the dunes. “It will be high sun very soon. We shouldn’t be out in the open.”

  The hood dropped and Picard’s breath caught as he found himself staring into the face of a man who had destroyed stars, tortured his crew, and in one iteration of history, killed millions of innocents. A man he had seen die in fire and flame. “Soran . . .”

  “In a way,” repeated the El-Aurian. “Come on, follow me. And we’ll see about helping you find your friend.”

  * * *

  Warily, Picard followed him down the slope of the dunes to the wadi and the tent village surrounding it. The people were a
ll El-Aurians, and they greeted Soran with nods and smiles. Picard didn’t see a single sorrowful face; everyone here seemed content and at peace. It was like the mood in the wedding pavilion, but different. Another kind of joy, perhaps.

  The woman with the golden hair greeted Soran warmly and led them both into a large domed tent. Picard was momentarily startled when two young children—both girls—exploded out of the shadows and hurled themselves at the El-Aurian.

  Soran’s face split in a peal of laughter as he let them bring him down, and for a moment they played at a little good-natured roughhousing before they let their father go.

  Father. Picard knew it was so without needing to ask. And the woman, his wife? She smiled back at him, offering a tray with a glass jug and drinking bowls. “Altair water?” she said. “It’s cool.”

  “Thank you.” Picard took the bowl and sipped at it; it was pleasingly refreshing after the arid air outside.

  “I’m Laya,” she said. “Welcome to our home.”

  Soran leaned in and kissed her. “My love, could you give us a moment? Jean-Luc and I have some things to discuss.” He seemed so alive, even in this small, ordinary moment, so different from the driven and severe man Picard had met years ago on the Enterprise-D.

  She nodded. “Come on, girls, help me with the chores.”

  The two children both made halfhearted groaning noises, but they went on their way, back through the tent flap, trailing behind their mother.

  Picard watched them go. “They are quite beautiful. I’m so sorry.” He recalled the look in Soran’s eyes, there atop the rocky outcrop on Veridian III, the spike of pain in his voice as he had talked about the family that had been taken from him.

  “Don’t be,” said Soran, offering him a seat on a low, oval cushion. “Here, sorrow doesn’t exist.”

  “But what does?” Picard sat and studied the other man. “You’re not him. I . . . saw him die.”

  “You killed him.” It was merely a statement, not an accusation. “I know he gave you no other choice.” Soran shook his head ruefully. “There was such pain in his heart, Captain. I think you saw that.”

  “You are the . . . echo of Tolian Soran, then?”

  A nod. “I’m part of him. All that is left now. I am what he left behind, the first time he entered the nexus.” He gestured out toward the village. “They are, too. Some of them were on the same ship as I was, taken through the gateway before the vessel exploded. Others are the echoes, as you call them.” Soran paused. “I think you understand him a little better now, don’t you? Now you have seen Laya and the girls, you know what it was he was trying to come back to.”

  “Yes.” Before, Picard had never really experienced the power of the tie between husband and wife, between father and child. Even though he had once lived an entire lifetime as a parent through a Kataanian memory trace, that had never been as real as the experience of marrying Beverly and fathering René.

  “I’m not asking you to forgive him,” said Soran. “Just understand.” The El-Aurian sipped at his water. “Tolian Soran lost something of himself in the nexus that first time. I think it might have been the better part of his spirit. Without it, without them—” He nodded toward the tent flap. “He fell into the darker reaches of himself. Do you know, when he came back, after Veridian III, he couldn’t recapture that peace?”

  “How is that possible?” said Picard. “That event never happened. History was altered.”

  “It was. But possibility is infinitely malleable in this place. Soran got his wish. He came back. But it was too late. He had changed too much.” The man sighed. “And now I am all that remains of a good soul broken by fate and time.”

  What Picard saw before him was like some strange parallel reflection of the man who had done such terrible things at Amargosa and Veridian. This Tolian Soran was who he could have been if his life had followed a different path, a man at peace. “Is that why you are here, now?” he asked. “To explain this to me?”

  Soran shook his head. “No. I’m going to help you. You have returned because you are looking for someone.”

  Picard nodded. “A friend. His name is Kolb. I don’t know why he has done this. I have to bring him back.”

  “Do you?” Soran cocked his head. “You know how the nexus works, Captain. If you want to leave it, you need only express the wish. If Kolb wants to stay, why not let him? Allow him what he wants and go back alone.”

  “He has to answer for what he has done.” Picard’s expression darkened. “Lives were lost.”

  “And you must know, yes?” Soran put down his bowl. “You are compelled. You can’t leave until you know his reason why.”

  Picard nodded. “That’s part of it.”

  The El-Aurian stood up and idly brushed sand from his tunic. “I can take you to Kolb, if that is what you want. Just promise me you won’t judge him. Let him make the choice that he needs to.”

  “I will try.” Picard got up. “Where must we go?”

  “This way.” Soran walked to the tent flap and opened it. Blinding sunlight flooded in as Picard followed him, and for a moment he was overwhelmed, unable to see anything.

  * * *

  He blinked and the glow faded, and with it went the arid sands, the wadi, and the El-Aurian village.

  Soran was leading him through a lush parkland of perfectly manicured green-blue grass, a vast leisure space set out in the middle of a modern cityscape. Picard glanced around, seeing the white towers of glass and steel skyscrapers out past the lines of tall, willowy trees that bordered the park. Sections of the commons were marked with statue gardens and large, freestanding art pieces, most of them abstract geometric shapes or spindly rectilinear forms. Overhead, a blue sky was populated by clumps of white cloud and the crisscrossing paths of skimmers and air-trams. Picard followed Soran down a stone path, and he nodded absently as another Starfleet officer passed him, walking the other way. The captain realized that he and the officer were in the more recent iteration of the fleet uniform, the gray shoulders accenting the crimson-colored tunic beneath.

  “You know this planet,” said the El-Aurian. “You’ve been here several times.”

  He had expected to find himself on Styris IV, Kolb’s homeworld, but this planet was too temperate, and there was only a single star in the sky. Picard’s gaze found a range of white-capped mountains in the far distance and suddenly he knew. “Those are the Kodian Peaks,” he said. “This is the colonial capital on Deneva.” Picard’s breath caught in his throat. “At least, it was.”

  “Not anymore,” said Soran. “Not outside the nexus.”

  “No,” Picard admitted. Deneva as it was in reality was no more than a ball of irradiated rock, sheathed in drifts of ashes beneath a ragged, tenuous atmosphere no longer capable of supporting life. A massed Borg assault a few years earlier, part of their final, brutal campaign of eradication, had claimed the planet in a horrific attack.

  A shadow crossed over them, something huge passing in front of the sun, and Picard’s skin crawled with a sudden chill. He looked up into the sky, his heart drumming, fearful that he would see the first of the enormous Borg tactical cubes pushing into orbit over the planet; but it was only the shade cast by a cloud, high up and caught by the wind. The shadow drifted away, and the warm touch of the Denevan sun returned.

  He heard deep, throaty laughter, and turned toward the sound. There, a few feet away from them in a sculpted knoll, a Styrisian woman and a young boy had bolted to their feet among the pieces of a picnic set spread on the turquoise grass. Doctor Kolb was emerging from a nearby copse of trees, open delight on his face.

  “Husband!” said the woman, smiling. “What a surprise! I didn’t know you were going to be on planet!”

  “I decided that I couldn’t be away from you two a moment longer,” he told them, pulling her into an embrace, then reaching out to touch his son’s head.

  “I understand him,” said Soran. He halted in the lee of a tall, oblate sculpture of white stone, and
Picard stood close by. “Your friend and I have shared the same horror.”

  “His family were on Deneva. . . .” Picard frowned, drawing it all into a whole. “If they were there when the Borg came . . .” The thought was unsettling. “I didn’t know. He never spoke of it.”

  “What you have is real, Captain,” Soran told him. “Your wife and your son. You could re-create them here with a thought, and as perfect as they would be, you would always know in your heart that they were false. It would gnaw at you.”

  “Yes, the knowledge that Beverly and René were . . . outside. That they would go on without me. I couldn’t live with that.”

  The El-Aurian pointed toward Kolb, who was sitting now, enjoying a fruit and joking with his son. The boy couldn’t have been much older than René. “Kolb has only the opposite of that to return to. The certain knowledge that all those he loved dearly are dead, and nothing he can do will ever bring them back.”

  Picard looked up again. The sun seemed to be moving far quicker than it should, and the daytime was changing too fast into early evening. “This is the day it happened,” he surmised. “The day the Borg destroyed Deneva.”

  “Kolb won’t allow that to happen,” said Soran. The evening became a brief flicker of night and suddenly the sun was rising again, slowing back to normal speed. No one seemed to notice the shift. “He will live this day over and over, timeless and perfect—”

  “And safe.”

  “Yes.” Soran pulled out the pocket watch once more and studied the face. “I’ll leave you here. This isn’t the end of the story, Captain. What happens next is up to you.” He gave Picard a nod. “Good-bye.”

  Picard caught him before he walked away. “Soran. I want you to know. I regret what happened with . . . you.”

  “I know,” he said, walking on without looking back. “So do I.”

  * * *

  Kolb had a chill-bottle of iced tea in his hand as Picard emerged from behind the sculpture and into the scientist’s line of sight. He saw the Styrisian’s mouth widen in a moment of shock. Kolb dropped the container, letting the contents spill across the grass.