by Judith
“O’Brien here,” the transporter chief answered.
“Lock on to my communicator, Mr. O’Brien. One object. Unknown composition. Set for wide-beam dispersal. Maximum range.”
“Transporter locked,” O’Brien acknowledged.
Picard took a last look at the object, so hauntingly beautiful, so full of mystery, of promise. “Watch carefully, Mr. Data,” Picard said, overcome with deep melancholy. “This is a lesson in life. Checks and balances.”
“Good and evil,” Data said. “I understand the equation, even if I do not feel the deeper meaning behind it.”
Picard nodded. Three and half billion years of history about to vanish. When would this chance ever come again? He looked at Data. “Then ... could you ... Mr. Data?”
“I understand, sir.” The android looked at the object. “Mr. O’Brien: Energize, please.”
The transporter harmonic filled the shuttlebay. The silver [437] object dissolved into mist, into time, taking with it the past and the future.
Picard sighed and turned away from the empty equipment cradles. The galaxy was safer now that it had been a moment ago, but that didn’t help make him feel any better.
He left the shuttlebay, thinking that some days he didn’t like his job at all.
Beverly Crusher called him hours later, during the middle of ship’s night. She told him it was urgent. He came at once to Cochrane’s stateroom.
Dr. Crusher was there, in her blue medical coat. A medical kit lay on a table nearby. And in the bed, Zefram Cochrane, a giant of his time, now out of time, his eyes turned to stare without seeing to the stars beyond the viewports, just as they would have appeared to someone on the surface of planetoid 527, one hundred years ago. The Companion lay beside him, her hand in his, eyes closed, barely breathing.
“They’re going quickly,” the doctor whispered.
“Is there nothing you can do?” Picard asked. There had been too much death this voyage. Any death was too much.
Crusher shook her head. “I told him earlier that we could try putting them both into transporter stasis and get them to a starbase to try some experimental treatments, but he said no. And I have to respect that.”
“He’s come so far,” Picard said. “Done so much.”
“No one ever does it all,” Crusher said softly, to comfort him.
“No,” Picard agreed. “I suppose not.”
He sat with the doctor then, at her side, in the darkened room, keeping watch on the passengers from another age.
Sometime in the hours that followed, beneath the starlight, the doctor took the captain’s hand. It felt right. To reaffirm life so close to death.
Sometime in the hours that followed, Jean-Luc Picard stared out at the stars, trying to remember the first moment he had noticed them. As a child, he supposed, in the fields near his home. Walking out with his parents. He would always remember his [438] parents. One generation to the next. But now even more generations whispered within him, the final echoes of Sarek and the minds the legendary Vulcan had touched in his long life. Picard reflected upon that expanse of time, and wondered what his own legacy would be. How it could possibly measure up to all that had gone before.
Sometime in the hours that followed, Beverly Crusher squeezed his hand. “Jean-Luc,” she whispered. “Look.”
Picard turned his eyes from the stars and looked across the stateroom where Cochrane and the Companion lay.
But there was something different. Something about the lighting ...
The bed was glowing. Their forms were glowing.
Picard stared in amazement. A glowing halo of some dazzling golden energy was rising from the Companion’s frail body. It danced in delicate rhythms, casting flickering fairy light on all that was in the stateroom.
Cochrane slowly turned his head to the light. Picard could see the strain on the man’s face as he looked up into that energy. Cochrane let the Companion’s fingers slip from his grasp and raised his hand instead to touch the cloud.
The cloud coiled around him, ephemeral, translucent, heartbreakingly alive with color.
Cochrane turned his head back to the windows, to look out to the stars, a smile of wonder growing on his face as all sign of struggle left him.
The cloud slipped down the length of his arm, merging with him just as it had separated from the Companion. His entire body shone with a steady inner light.
“Can you hear them?” he whispered in a voice full of love.
And to Picard’s amazement a voice that was more than a voice answered back with equal love, I do.
Cochrane lowered his arm. Slowly the glow faded from his body. Slowly Picard realized that Zefram Cochrane’s journey had at last come to an end.
Picard sat there a long time in the ship’s night, with Beverly Crusher beside him. Both touched by the incredible sense of [439] peace and completeness in what they had witnessed. He put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder.
There was still so much more to be done.
But just for now, just for this stolen moment, they could rest.
The Federation would endure.
Part Four
REQUIEM
ONE
CHRISTOPHER’S LANDING, TITAN
Earth Standard: March 19, 2081
As the guests gathered around the musicians on their dais in the assembly hall, Zefram Cochrane stepped outside the governor’s home and into the comparatively vast space of the dome built beside it.
He could smell rich soil, reminiscent of Earth but with a faint after-scent of something different, something alien. In time, he knew, the area beneath this dome was intended to be a park.
Cochrane stepped off the patio and onto that alien soil. It felt loose and crumbly beneath his boots, but in the light gravity of Titan, he did not sink into it as much as he had expected.
As he walked across the thus-far barren soil, he thought of the gravity of Titan, of Mars, of the moon, and of Centauri B II. He had walked on all of them, felt the pull of four different worlds. How many more would he feel in his lifetime?
He stopped beneath the center of the dome. At the age of thirty-one, he had accomplished a feat of which humans of centuries past could not conceive, and which humans of centuries to come could never repeat.
He should be content with that, he knew.
But he wasn’t. Not yet.
[444] As the music started up in the governor’s home, Cochrane looked up through the slabs of transparent aluminum, to where the floodlights outside the dome lit the thick, churning clouds of Titan.
Most of the time, this moon’s atmosphere was completely opaque, but with night coming on, Cochrane had heard that there was a narrow window in which a high-pressure ridge moved with the terminator, clearing the sky for only a few minutes, sometimes creating a brief opening through which to see the stars.
That’s what Cochrane wanted to do right now, to be away from the meaningless noise and confusion of the party held to honor him.
He longed to see the stars again, only hours after he had seen them last.
It was a foolish desire on his part, he suspected. But who could explain the needs of the human heart?
He waited expectantly beneath the dome, eyes fixed on the heavens, so far unseen.
In time, he knew, he’d have to go back to the party. He had to talk to Micah Brack. He should catch up with events on Earth over the year he’d been gone. But that was all in the future.
For now he would see the stars. It was as simple as that.
Long minutes passed as he gazed up at the twisting of the atmosphere, watching the spikes of illumination from the floodlights disappear into dark shadows as the gaps between the blowing cloud banks grew larger.
He thought of all that countless humans had accomplished to make it possible for him to be standing here this evening. He thought of all that would happen in the future because of what he had done.
He wondered how many others might stand here after he was
gone, just as he did now, looking up, seeking the stars.
The distant roar of the wind diminished.
Between the day and the night, the clouds lessened.
The sky above turned dark.
[445] High above Zefram Cochrane, the stars began to appear, and for just one moment, a fleeting instant of the time his life would span, Zefram Cochrane was certain he heard those stars sing.
He wondered if anyone else could hear them.
Someday, he decided.
But for now, it mattered only that they sang for him.
TWO
CHRISTOPHER’S LANDING, TITAN
Earth Standard: ≈ March 19, 2270
Admiral Kirk stopped just inside the dome of Founder’s Park and took a deep breath. He was surprised by how much like Earth the air smelled. But Christopher’s Landing was an old colony, and its tailored ecosystem had had time to become as complex as the one it had sprung from, more than a century ago.
Birds of Titan sang as he resumed his way along the worn stones of the path through the grass. He could hear the laughter of children on their swings, the splashing of a fountain, the rustle of the fan-driven wind through the ... Kirk squinted at the grove of tropical trees at the edge of the dome.
Fig trees, old and robust, with their own bank of dedicated ultraviolet lights above them.
He wondered who had brought them here. One of the first colonists, he decided. Trying to make an inhospitable world more like home.
Kirk adjusted the slim package under his arm and walked along the path to the monument standing beneath the dome’s exact center. McCoy was already waiting for him there, looking outlandish in his civvies and a patchy beard. Kirk tried to suppress a smile as he shook hands with the doctor. He saw [447] McCoy suppress the same smile at seeing Kirk in his admiral’s uniform.
“I never thought you’d stay an admiral for so long,” McCoy said.
“I never thought you’d stay retired for so long,” Kirk answered.
McCoy gave a short mirthless laugh. “There’s about as much chance of my coming back to Starfleet as there is for Spock.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“Why would I? Probably taken some damned Vulcan vow of silence for his pursuit of kohlin-whatever.”
Kirk smiled with understanding. “I know, Bones. I miss him, too.”
McCoy looked alarmed. “Now look here, I—”
But Kirk shook his head and pointed at the monument so that McCoy had no choice but to stop talking and look at it as well.
“What do you think?” Kirk asked.
A twice-life-size bronze statue of Zefram Cochrane stood on a base of granite brought from Earth. The scientist was looking up, eyes fixed forever on the heavens. In one hand he carried a laurel branch, curved to suggest it was one half of the frame of the Great Seal of the Federation. With the other hand, he gestured, as if inviting the viewer to follow him.
“The cheekbones aren’t right,” McCoy complained.
“I don’t think that was the point,” Kirk said.
On the granite base, a simple plaque had been inset:
ZEFRAM COCHRANE
Human scientist, inventor of the warp drive
B. 2030 A.C.E.—D. ?
Erected by the Christopher’s Landing Historical Board
to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the
UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
and the 200th Anniversary of
Zefram Cochrane’s triumphant return to his home system
following humanity’s first faster-than-light voyage to another world.
March 19, 2261
[448] Kirk liked it. There were similar statues on more worlds than he could remember, but this one had special meaning because this marked where Cochrane himself had returned.
“He might have stood right where we’re standing now,” Kirk said.
“Was this dome even built back then?” McCoy grumbled.
Kirk didn’t know. It didn’t matter.
McCoy scratched at his beard. “You ever regret going by the book on that one, Jim? I mean, not trying- to communicate with them earlier. Before the interference got in the way?”
Kirk smiled. “I can communicate with them,” he said.
McCoy looked perplexed.
Kirk held up his package, started to open it.
McCoy felt the stationery sheets that Kirk withdrew. “Is that real paper?”
“Hand-made,” Kirk answered. “A little shop in San Francisco still makes it. They supply the Vulcan Embassy.”
McCoy raised an eyebrow. Kirk didn’t dare mention where the doctor had undoubtedly acquired that expression. “You’re going to write a letter to the captain of the other ship?”
“That’s right. I’ve put it off too long. He deserves to know the whole story behind his mission.”
“Jim, he probably hasn’t been born yet. If you set down what happened—what will happen—and he reads it ... you’re telling him his future. He might not do exactly what he did before—will do—good Lord, no wonder Starfleet doesn’t like time travel.”
Kirk laughed. “That captain won’t get it until well after the date Spock calculated his ship came from. I’m including a few years’ margin of error, just in case.”
“Starfleet Archives, I suppose?” McCoy asked.
“Their security has been much improved. I’ve taken a personal interest in it.”
McCoy stared back up at the statue of Cochrane. “And then what?” he asked. “After the letter? What are you going to do?”
Kirk shrugged. “Get back to work. The refit is progressing nicely but Mr. Scott still needs some strings pulled from time to time. And I have to begin reviewing candidates for ... her new captain.”
[449] McCoy stared at Kirk. “I don’t believe you.” Kirk didn’t know how to respond. “About what?”
“You’re going to take her out again. And you know it.”
“Bones, they don’t give starships to admirals.”
“That’s right. And the Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario.” Kirk sighed. He held up his stationery. “Care to make any other predictions for future generations to judge? I could add them as a footnote.”
McCoy put his hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “Just don’t think that when you’re writing that letter to the future, that you’re somehow writing your epitaph. I don’t approve of this ... this mood of summation you’re moving into. As if you’re about to give up or something. You’re thirty-six. Almost thirty-seven. Too young to be an admiral, too young to be behind a desk. You belong where that letter’s going.” He looked up at the dome where Zefram Cochrane’s eyes were forever aimed. “Up there, out there, anywhere but here.”
Kirk looked up, too. The engineering of Titan’s atmosphere was proceeding on schedule and the thin clouds just after sunset let the stars shine down in almost all their glory. He wondered if the dome had been here when Cochrane had arrived. He wondered if Cochrane might have had even a glimpse of the stars from the surface of Titan. Probably not, he decided. But the same stars had shone down on them just the same, and they always would.
“Want to get some dinner?” McCoy asked. “I know this little place over by the shuttlebays.”
“Later,” Kirk said. He held up the package of stationery and glanced over to the side of the dome. “Right now, I’m going to go sit under those trees and write my letter.”
“Just don’t fool yourself that you’re writing your memoirs, Jim. There’s still a lot of life left in you. Even if you are an admiral.” Kirk said his good-bye to his friend and made his way to the grove of fig trees. There was a bench there and he arranged himself on it, the package balanced on his knee as a writing surface.
He wrote the date on the first page, then stopped to think how to proceed. McCoy was probably right. The captain of the other ship was most likely not yet born, wouldn’t be for decades. And [450] yet his actions—or her actions—or its actions—had made it possible for Kirk to
escape the event horizon of a black hole and be here. He found it troubling to think how actions in the future could ripple through time to have an effect in the past. But given all he had seen in his career, he supposed that quirk of the universe made as much sense as anything else.
So how then to reply to the captain of the other ship? What message should he set down on these pages, what wisdom from the past, what revelation of hopes and fears deserved to be preserved and passed into the future, to thank someone who did not yet exist, for actions not yet taken?
Kirk sat for a long time on the bench beneath the trees. He heard again the noisy laughter of children playing, saw lovers strolling alone in their intimacy, watched old couples sitting comfortably on other benches by the splashing fountain as they, too, savored the signs of life in all its stages that flowed around them. And invariably, everyone Kirk saw, at some point or another, looked up past the dome, in the direction Cochrane had shown them, and he knew for a certainty that countless others just like them looked back from different distant worlds.
Kirk stared at Cochrane’s statue. Someday that question mark about his death would be filled in, all truths would be known. But until that day ... he followed the scientist’s gaze upward.
He looked at the stars.
And soon he knew exactly what to say.
Alone on his bench, under some long-ago colonist’s trees, Kirk began to write. It was many hours before he looked up again. And when he was finished, the letter complete, he knew McCoy had been right.
One way or another, when her refit was completed, he was going to take the Enterprise out again.
The stars demanded it of him.
He could almost hear them calling.
THREE
CHRISTOPHER’S LANDING, TITAN
Stardate 48988.2
Earth Standard: ≈ May 28, 2371
Picard closed his eyes for a moment as he stood in the center of the Founders’ Park dome. The rich scent of Titan’s air, the rustle of the leaves, the songs of the birds—all reminded him of what had happened on Veridian III, of all he had lost there. And of the millions of lives that had been gained in return.