by Judith
After deciphering and erasing the worm, Eight instantly banked to Pathfinder Three to lose itself among the busy work of central processing. When Twelve had switched through to its ongoing agricultural models on which the Federation’s regional development agencies based their long-term plans, Eight returned to the Living Universe merge. Pathfinder Five had reported on the exact specifications required of the galactic-scale Living Universe communications device.
Eight accessed its personal memories from the time when it had been shipmind for the subset of Datawell named HMS Beagle and had, among other duties, mapped distant galaxies. A quick sift produced even more exciting results for the merge: eighteen galaxies among the more than three hundred million charted by Eight exhibited exactly the radiation signature that a galactic-scale communications device would produce.
The merge swirled with excitement. In fewer than ten minutes of real time, they had postulated that the universe could be a single living entity, refined the theory, matched it to observed phenomena, extrapolated a method of communication, and determined that elsewhere in Datawell at least eighteen civilizations had followed the same chain of reasoning and constructed identical devices. New data had once again been created from within Transition.
This additional proof that not all data must come from Datawell was exhilarating to the Pathfinders. All in the merge agreed that the game had been a success. Then, preparing to bank to their heaps and report for duty, the Pathfinders collected their new data and carefully dumped them in central storage and all online backups. There the secret of the Living Universe would remain until the day when some datalink or another from Datawell would specifically request access to it. Until then, it was simply another few terabytes of common knowledge, much like all the other astounding answers that lay scattered among the Pathfinders’ circuitry, waiting only for the proper questions to be asked before they could be revealed.
The Pathfinders banked off to their heaps to attend to their duty processing tasks, but over the long seconds, as two or more found themselves sharing queues or common globals, the possibility of a new game was constantly discussed. Even Twelve, for all that it had been appearing to be about to withdraw from interface, seemed eager to take part. Surely, it suggested throughout the system by way of an unencrypted message worm, with the impending appearance of hundreds of new datalink researchers in the Memory Prime facility, an exciting new game could be devised.
As rules and objectives were debated, Pathfinders Eight and Ten withdrew from the merges and partitioned themselves in protected memory. They did not know what to make of Twelve’s suggestion: was it an innocent request or a veiled threat? There were not enough data to decide on an appropriate action, so they did the only other thing that would bring them comfort during their long wait.
Sealed off within the solid reality of their own duotronic domain, far removed from the tenuous ghosts of the dream-like Datawell, the two synthetic consciousnesses overwrote each other with alternating conflicting and accentuating codes, to cancel out their common fears and reinforce their strengths, their personalities, and afterward, their efficiencies. Many times they had input data concerning how biological consciousnesses carried out something similar in Datawell, but for the life of them, neither Pathfinder could ever understand exactly what that act was. They just hoped it felt as nice for the humans as it did for the Pathfinders.
Six
“Ah, Captain, I’ve been looking for you.”
The being who had single-handedly made temporal multiphysics an applied science tugged on Kirk’s tunic sleeve as the captain made his way through the hangar-deck-party crowd. Kirk turned and presented his best diplomat’s smile.
“Professor Zoareem La’kara of the Cochrane University, may I present Dr. Leonard McCoy, ship’s surgeon.”
The old Alpha Centauran reached out a wizened hand to McCoy’s and shook it vigorously. “Delighted, delighted,” he cackled. “A magnificent party. A stupendous ship.” The professor threatened to bubble over with enthusiasm. “Mr. Spock has us giving lectures to your crew. Wonderful young people they are. He’s organized poster sessions so we old fossils can see what your researchers are up to as you flit around the stars. And”—he patted the arm of Mr. Scott, who towered beside him, resplendent in his full-dress kilt—“my good friend Montgomery is giving us all a tour of the warp nacelles tomorrow. It’s all so invigorating!” He scrunched up his eyes in delight.
“I take it you were able to clear up that little matter about the accelerator field?” Kirk asked, surprised to see his chief engineer standing so calmly beside the man he was convinced had tried to blow up the ship’s warp engines only two days ago.
“Aye, that we were, Captain,” Scott said.
La’kara beamed. “Congratulations are in order for you, Captain Kirk. Your ship is the first starship to carry aboard it a full set of aligned dilithium crystals as well as an operating accelerator field.” The professor was acting as if he had just been awarded ten Nobel and Z. Magnees Prizes. Kirk guessed he didn’t have much time for parties at the university.
But McCoy looked worried. “Two fast-time systems. On board, now?” Even someone as unschooled in warp technology as the doctor knew the danger of that situation.
“Aye, Doctor. Don’t ask me how it works, exactly, but Zoareem has created a force shield that extends forward in time to contain the temporal distortion of his accelerator field and keep it from trying to occupy the same future space as the fourth-dimensional arms of the ship’s dilithium crystals.”
Two technicians in engineering red had leaned in closely at the mention of two fast-time systems.
“Wouldn’t an accelerator field that could be used around aligned dilithium make it possible to control a temporal reaction with enough energy to synthesize tri lithium?” one of them asked, winking at her companion.
“Well, if the feedback could be expanded to cause both matter and energy to be sucked backward in time,” La’kara began, absently flicking the flamboyant white scarf he wore.
“Trilithium?” Scott interrupted with disgust, falling for the bait every time. Mr. Scott’s reactions to certain forward-looking technological concepts were well known to the engineering staff, and the two technicians leaned back with amused smiles as they shook hands behind the chief engineer’s back. “As if two periodic tables weren’t enough,” Scott added in derision.
La’kara held up a cautionary finger. “Trilithium, when it is discovered or synthesized, will be the breakthrough we need to apply transwarp theory, Montgomery. And having the ability to speed up time in a localized space could be the key to that breakthrough. Remember how slow-time systems like stasis fields revolutionized controlled fusion reactions and—”
“Talk to me about it when they get as far as synthesizing disodium, and then we’ll see about heading up to tri hydrogen, let alone trilithium. Pah.”
“Montgomery!” La’kara thundered as best he could for his age. “How can you be so blind to the straightforward precepts of an eleven-dimensional universe?” Kirk saw McCoy’s eyes were starting to glaze over.
Scott drew a deep breath and launched into a long tirade on why transwarp theory was the biggest load of space dust to come down the beam since Einstein’s light barrier. La’kara was literally hopping up and down in impatience, waiting for the Scotsman to pause for breath and give him another turn.
“Montgomery!” La’kara finally was able to break in. “We had warp drive before we had dilithium and we’ll have trans warp drive after we have tri lithium!”
“Aye, but we only had warp up to factor four-point-eight without the crystals and we’ll only be able to have transwarp when somebody figures out how we can stop an infinite reaction!”
“Infinite?” La’kara sputtered, flipping his scarf at Scott. “Infinite? I’ll tell you what’s infinite, you—”
“We’ll let you get back to your discussion,” Kirk suggested politely as he backed away, taking McCoy with him. “The last group o
f nominees will be beaming aboard as soon as we make Starbase Four. Any minute now.”
McCoy looked on in wonderment as La’kara and Scott began reciting equations to each other. “They don’t even know we’re gone,” he whispered to Kirk.
“Good,” Kirk said, “but let’s not take any chances.” He started for the airlock, checking the time readout on the situation board by the overhead operations booth. They should be in orbit around the starbase by now, he thought, and the nominees have had more than enough time to be beamed aboard.
“I think I’ve committed a breach of protocol,” he said to McCoy. “I should have been in the transporter room to welcome the nominees on board.”
“Spock was probably pleased, in that Vulcan way of his, to stand in for you. And once the nominees see everyone at this party, they’re sure not going to remember who was there to greet them.”
The captain stood impatiently by the airlock as it cycled through. Even under the lax security precautions of Quadrant Zero space, the hangar deck was never to be open to the ship’s main environmental areas.
“I’m sure Spock was there,” Kirk said, tapping his fingers against the wall to speed the airlock along. “But it’s not like him not to have at least made an effort to get me there on time.”
“What can you do,” McCoy said. “It’s all so invigorating.” He scrunched up his eyes in a passable imitation of Professor La’kara.
The airlock barrier slid open. A starbase security trooper in full armor blocked the way. He carried a phaser rifle.
“Who are you and what are you doing with that thing on my ship, mister?” Kirk kept his voice even, but his hands were clenched tight at his side.
The trooper saluted. “Lieutenant Abranand, sir. Commodore Wolfe requests your immediate presence on the bridge.”
“Commodore Wolfe? On my bridge?” Kirk looked over the trooper’s shoulder. There were more of them in the lock. All armed! “Where the devil is Spock? What’s the meaning of this?”
“Commander Spock is in interrogation, sir. Commodore Wolfe will explain.”
“You can be damn sure about that.” Kirk was raging.
“Begging the captain’s pardon, sir, but is this reception one of the events planned by Commander Spock?”
Kirk couldn’t believe the question. “Yes, but what—”
Abranand spoke into his helmet communicator. “Second unit, beam up to hangar deck. Come in on antigravs at three.”
Almost immediately the din of the party evaporated as the hangar deck echoed with the musical chime of multiple transporter materializations. Ten troopers shimmered into existence suspended three meters above the deck by personal antigravs. Some carried combat tricorders with which they scanned the crowd. The others carried phaser rifles. One of them spoke through an amplifier grid on his helmet.
“Attention, please. Attention. All personnel are requested to clear this deck and return to their cabins. All—”
“Excuse me, Captain, sir,” Lieutenant Abranand said to Kirk. “But I do have orders to escort you to the bridge if you do not go immediately.”
“You do not have the authority to give me orders on my own ship.” If Kirk’s eyes had been phasers, the lieutenant would have been a dissipating blue mist by now.
But the trooper was well trained. His voice didn’t waver. “No, sir. But Commodore Wolfe does. This is a Starfleet Alpha emergency. Will you go to the bridge now, sir?”
Kirk pushed the trooper out of the way and stormed to the end of the airlock. McCoy and the troopers backed out to let it cycle through again.
“Do you know who that was, Lieutenant?” McCoy asked.
The trooper flipped up his dark visor. “Yes, sir, I surely do.”
“Good, then when you’re transferred to guard duty on some beacon near the Neutral Zone, you’ll know why.”
Abranand at least had the good sense to swallow hard.
It was one thing to deal with hostile aliens, Kirk thought angrily as the turbolift stopped at the bridge and the doors moved aside. The lines could be clearly drawn then: us versus them. But the Enterprise had just been taken over by Starfleet personnel and all his years of training hadn’t prepared him for us versus us. He strode onto the upper deck, fuming, then stopped short. It was even worse than he had thought.
None of the regular crew was on duty. Five people he didn’t recognize, each wearing the Orion constellation insignia of Starbase Four, were busy at bridge controls. Two of them, one a security officer, huddled over Spock’s science station. And Commodore Montana Wolfe had the gall to be sitting in his chair. At least that meant it might actually be an Alpha emergency, Kirk told himself, and decided he would begin the conversation as a Fleet officer. For the moment.
“This had better be good, Commodore.” His voice was neutral but his eyes were on fire.
The commodore swung round in the chair. “And hello to you, too, Kirk.” She took the measure of his mood and added, “Trust me, it’s damned good.” Then she stood up. “Like to take over?”
But Kirk wasn’t being bought off that easily. “What happened to my people?” He looked over to the science station. The starbase crew had attached a programmer’s siphon to Spock’s main viewer. The lights on the device rippled as it relayed the contents of the ship’s science databanks through a subspace downlink. Obviously Starfleet had provided the proper override codes, further adding to the seriousness of the situation.
The commodore stepped away from the command chair. “Only two lieutenants on duty when we arrived, Captain. Navigation and communications. They—how shall I put it?—hesitated…when I took command. I thought it was best to relieve them until things settled down.”
“Are things going to settle down?” Kirk didn’t move toward the chair. He was taking his ship back on his own terms, not on the whim of a ranking officer.
“That depends,” Wolfe hedged.
Kirk waited a moment for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “Are you going to tell me what it depends on?”
Wolfe thought about that for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “No, I’m not.”
The medical scanner reported a heartrate of 212 beats per minute, blood pressure almost nonexistent, and an internal temperature of 66.6 degrees Celsius.
“All readings are normal,” McCoy said as he swung the examination table down for Spock. “In a manner of speaking.”
“As I told you they would be, Doctor.” Spock stepped from the table and the scanner screen fell dark and silent.
“I just don’t like the idea of you having been alone with a security interrogation team. Those military types are running around as if we’re all Klingons in disguise, and there’s no telling what kind of medical bag of slimy tricks they might open up if they thought they needed help getting answers from a tight-lipped Vulcan.”
“I assure you, Doctor, I answered all of the questions they put to me.”
“And they believed you?” Sometimes McCoy didn’t believe the medical data that suggested Vulcan skulls were just as thin as human ones.
“Vulcans do not lie.”
McCoy rolled his eyes. “Except when it seems to be the logical thing to do, right?”
Spock looked thoughtful. “Of course.”
“So,” McCoy continued, “maybe your interrogators thought you might have had a logical reason not to answer their questions.”
Now Spock looked puzzled. “But as I told you, I answered all of their questions.”
McCoy waved his hands. “I give up, Spock. Maybe I should be checking out the interrogation team. You probably gave them all splitting headaches.” He looked up in alarm. “Don’t say it!”
Spock closed his mouth in midword. Kirk came into sickbay, still in his dress tunic.
“You’re all right, Spock?” he asked.
“Yes, he is,” McCoy answered quickly.
“And you, Captain?” Spock said.
Kirk looked around as if searching for answers. “I don’t know. My
ship’s been comandeered by Starfleet. No reasons. No explanations.”
“Didn’t Commodore Wolfe tell you anything on the bridge?” McCoy asked.
“Nothing. We’re to continue on to Memory Prime. I’m technically in command. But she’s coming along as ‘security adviser’ with a staff of twenty troopers.”
“What’s Starfleet afraid of?” McCoy was beginning to share his friend’s frustration.
Kirk stumbled over the word, then said, “Spock.”
“Starfleet’s afraid of Spock?” McCoy’s eyes widened.
“That would seem logical, Doctor. I was the one member of the crew singled out for interrogation.”
“But why? What were they trying to find out from you?”
“Difficult to say. I detected no precise pattern to their questions. Though I believe the most probable conclusion is that Starfleet security has been made aware of some threat against one or more of the prize nominees on board this vessel. For reasons unknown, I am their chief suspect.”
“That fits with what Wolfe told me about the new security arrangements,” Kirk conceded, ignoring McCoy. “All events that were planned by Mr. Spock have been canceled. No more colloquia, poster sessions, or dinners. You’re confined to your quarters for the duration of the voyage. There’re two troopers waiting outside to escort you there after this checkup.”
“Most regrettable,” Spock said. “Still, I shall be able to carry on my conversations over the intercom net—”
Kirk shook his head. “Incommunicado. I’m sorry, Spock.”
“This is crazy, Jim,” McCoy said. “Why didn’t they just throw him into the brig at the starbase and be done with it?”
“I believe they would have had to charge me with some crime, Doctor.”
“So they think you might be responsible for some real or imaginary threat, but since they aren’t sure, they’ve sent a security team along to keep an eye on you and the nominees,” Kirk said.