Despite her anger, Harry had to acknowledge that Khala had a point. True, it was one thing to grow tomatoes in your backyard as a pleasant and tasty diversion to supplement your food supply. It was another thing to stubbornly depend on the fickleness of the seasons for your continued existence. Any type of doctor in that society would probably rely on chants and herbs to heal his patients. He’d never swap the Doctor for that. What was in the water? The air? How could you tell without instruments? How could you make sure everything was safe?
But her scorn for the arts and spirituality of the Culilann disturbed Harry. He’d woken and slept to the haunting music of his mother’s various instruments and her singing. He’d mastered dozens of instruments in his childhood. He loved reading good books and tending flowers simply for their scent and loveliness. Art of every sort was in Harry’s blood, and it pained him to realize that this lovely woman walking beside him not only did not share his love for art, she scorned it and anyone who valued it.
“Do the Alilann have no art at all? Nothing to adorn their walls, or tables?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as small and sad as he felt.
“Of course we do,” she said, laughing at him. “We have designers. They program images and colors on the computer, and every family has at least one or two.”
Harry brightened a little. Even that was something. He briefly recalled a sunny afternoon when he was a toddler. The sun streamed into his room as he messed happily with wet, sloppy, vibrant dollops of color on white paper. Khala had never done that.
He decided to change the subject, though he was still curious about her customs. “I’m surprised you’re so friendly to us, actually, since your race has a deep history of being abused by alien races.”
“That was a long time ago,” Khala replied, smiling sincerely at him. “We think hatred or fear based simply on race, rather than how that race interacts with us, is foolish.”
“Boy, I agree with you there,” said Harry, almost too heartily. He was so pleased that they’d found some common ground.
“Thanks to our technology, we have extensive communications systems, weapons to defend ourselves if necessary, and interceptors to prevent any aliens we’ve missed in the conventional manner from falling into the hands of the Culilann.”
“What do the Culilann do?” Harry sobered at once.
“They have almost a cultural memory of the Strangers who made war on us and infected us,” said Khala. “Without instruments to ascertain if a race poses a threat, then every strange person they encounter has to be viewed as a threat. They have something they call the Ordeal. It’s positively barbaric.”
Khala shuddered, then continued. “They put them in a pit in the center of the village square, dug especially for that singular purpose. A wooden grate keeps them trapped. They are doused with water in a so-called ‘ritual bath,’ then the Culilann do nothing for these poor interlopers other than pray for them for a certain amount of time. If they survive the Ordeal, they are considered harmless.”
Harry couldn’t believe it. For the first time, he shared Khala’s dislike of the Culilann.
“And it doesn’t even work!” exclaimed Khala, as if this were the final straw. “Simply because someone is strong enough to endure a physical ordeal doesn’t mean they aren’t carriers of a disease that might be harmless to them but fatal to us. That’s why we have interceptors, Harry. To find and rescue aliens before they are subjected to the Ordeal.”
They stepped into the turbolift. “Engineering,” said Kim. There was a slight whirring sound as the turbolift moved smoothly into action.
“I wouldn’t want to be stranded in a Culilann village,” said Kim honestly. It was the one thing he could find to wholeheartedly agree with Khala about.
* * *
The light from the sphere glinted on the metal of Seven’s facial implants, turning the silver hue to shiny purple. It was kind of pretty.
“You look good in purple,” said Torres.
Seven did not react. Torres guessed she was uncertain as to how to reply, and smothered a grin. One of these days, Seven was going to catch on to something known as “teasing.”
In the meantime, their new way of looking at That Damned Ball was starting to yield results, although they had not, as Torres had sarcastically predicted, gotten everything wrapped up by lunchtime. Immediately after they had finished watching the tricorder recording, Torres had adjusted the sensors to scan on the very narrow band that had enabled Telek to locate the Shepherds in the first place. That seemed like such a long, long time ago. Had it really been only a few days? Torres shook her head. Her concentration was being affected by the dark matter the Romulan ships had spewed into their systems. They had to get it out soon.
The scan had yielded immediate results. They were now able to control, to some extent, the amount of power in the orb. At one point, Torres thought she had come perilously close to actually shattering the “unbreakable” sphere. The purple light had grown in intensity and the timbre of the humming sound had soared upward several octaves. She’d shut things down immediately and they’d all stared at each other, damp with sudden dewings of panicky sweat.
They had realized they would have to create another container, similar to but far larger than the sphere. And that container, too, must be unbreakable. But how to get the dark matter in it in the first place?
It was Seven who finally put them on the right track.
“The Bussard collector,” she had said.
Telek’s brow had furrowed in confusion. “I am not familiar—”
Of course. Smart as he was, he’d only been here for a few days, and he’d been hard at work on the dark-matter problem.
“The Bussard collector is a set of powerful electromagnetic coils located at the front of the warp engine nacelles,” Torres explained. “We’ve used it before to gather up emergency fuel. When the ship is traveling at high speed, the coils generate an electromagnetic field that collects stray atoms of interstellar hydrogen. We can reconfigure the coils, direct them toward the spots where the dark matter is collected, beam it into the Shepherd orb, and from there into … into whatever we come up with to contain the stuff.”
Telek had frowned. “We cannot dematerialize dark matter. I explained this to you before.”
“So, how else do you propose getting the dark matter into the orb?” Torres challenged. “We can’t just pluck it like grapes on a stem, you know.”
Telek did not answer immediately. Finally, he said, “Can the transporter be adjusted to resonate on the same frequency as the Shepherd technology?”
It was Torres’s turn to hesitate. “I think so,” she said. “We can try, anyway. It wouldn’t be dangerous. Either the stuff will dematerialize or it won’t.”
It was a relief, almost a joy, to finally have part of the puzzle to work on. They notified the captain of their progress, and Janeway gave her blessing. They then sprang into activity, enlisting everyone in engineering for assistance.
It was into this bustling hive of activity that Harry Kim brought Khala.
“So, this is the warp core,” Torres heard Khala saying. She glanced up from her console and nodded a cursory greeting. She expected Harry to give their unusual guest a quick tour and then get out of the way. He must realize how busy they were here. When he didn’t, she stepped up to them and forced a smile.
“Khala, I’d love to give you a tour myself, but we’re really very, very busy down here. Nonessential personnel should …” She faltered, realizing she couldn’t think of a way to put it politely. “Should consider themselves nonessential,” she finished lamely.
To her surprise, Kim and Khala exchanged grins. “I think you’ll find Khala more essential than you imagine. Her people are more technologically advanced than we are, and she’s a physicist on her homeworld. I’ve already acquainted her with the whole dark-matter problem, and she’s offered to help.”
Torres looked at Khala with new respect. “At this point, I’ll take whatever hel
p I can get.” Quickly, she brought Khala up to speed. The pretty blue woman followed everything, nodding now and then and occasionally asking for clarification. When Torres was finished, Khala stepped up to the floating sphere.
“The dark matter, as I understand it from what Harry has told me, does not exist in any single universe in its natural state.”
“That is correct,” affirmed Telek.
“And when it is fully pulled into a single universe,” Khala continued, “it is then mutated and rendered harmful. Therefore, in order for the dark matter to be rendered again harmless, it must be removed from a single universe. The logical conclusion is—”
“That Damned Ball is a complete universe unto itself—or else a universe that’s all the universes,” blurted Torres. “But … how? How can that be, and how the hell are we supposed to make one ourselves?”
“We will,” declared Telek. “We must. Tialin said we could. The orb is the key to understanding everything we need to know in order to complete the quest she charged us with.”
“Tialin appears to have a very high opinion of us,” said Seven. “I hope it is justified.”
Something was nagging at the back of B’Elanna Torres’s mind. Something she’d either studied at the Academy or heard of since then. She liked things she could understand, get her hands on, make work at her command. Esoteric theories about alternate universes, the mirror universe, bubble universes, shadow universes—
Bubble. Sphere. Orb.
That Damned Ball.
It was the key to understanding how the Shepherd technology worked—
“Oh my God,” said Torres. “I think I’ve got it. This ball, the orb in which Tialin appeared, your apparatus, Telek, they’re all little universes unto themselves!”
“Like my wormholes!” said Telek, catching B’Elanna’s excitement.
“A bubble,” continued Torres. She turned slowly and regarded the pulsing warp core with renewed interest. “A warp bubble universe. It’s been created before.”
“That is correct,” said Seven. “Stardate 44161.2. Ensign Wesley Crusher and Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge created a static warp shell universe based on Kosinski’s theories and equations. Crusher’s mother, Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher, was trapped by the warp shell and found herself in a universe of her own making.” At Torres’s expression, she explained, “Captain Picard was assimilated by the Borg. I have done a great deal of research about the history of the Enterprise.”
She gazed levelly at Torres. “The incident proves that while such a shell can be created, it cannot be made stable. It required the assistance of an alien called the Traveler, whose species has the ability to exploit the interchangeability of time, space, and thought, to rescue Dr. Crusher. I do not think placing massive quantities of dark matter inside such a bubble universe is a wise idea.”
“But somehow the Shepherds have done it,” protested Torres. “They must have the same ability as the Travelers. They gave us the key to understanding their technology!” Angrily she snatched the glowing, hovering orb from midair and waved it under Seven’s nose. “Tialin said we could do it.”
“We can,” said Khala quietly. “We have conducted such experiments ourselves at great length. We, too, were never able to make it quite stable, but with the Shepherd technology as given to us with the orb, I think we could do it.”
As one, they all fell silent. Torres knew precisely what was going through their minds because she was certain it was the same as what was going through hers: all the myriad things that could go wrong, any one of which could spell death.
Oh, the theories sounded solid enough. They’d sound better over a cup of raktajino and a pile of sandwiches at the end of a long shift, when they would remain precisely that—theories, not something they were going to try to put into action.
Torres felt certain that the Bussard collector could be adjusted to perform as needed. Telek’s theory about the specific frequency could easily be tested in action with no danger. It was only if everything worked according to plan that there would be risks.
What if they couldn’t stabilize the warp shell after all? Or what if it seemed stable, then collapsed? How would the warp drive work with a mini-universe in its heart that was filled to the brim with dark matter?
The only thing worse than failing was not to try.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
CHAPTER
6
JEKRI GAZED AT HER REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR AND decided she did not like what she saw.
She was in full dress regalia, and the uniform hung limply on her slim frame. She had lost weight these past few weeks. She was not surprised. Her mind had been consumed with thoughts first of recovering Telek R’Mor and capturing Voyager, then with suspicions about the arrogant Shepherd ambassador. A further strain had been her need to hide the latter thoughts. She did not put anything past Lhiau. Murder was entirely possible if he thought Jekri Kaleh posed any kind of real threat.
Her face was pale, the cheeks hollow, the eyes encircled by darkness. She scowled and reached for a seldom-used stash of cosmetics. She did not like to wear them; such vanities were for softer females, not for the chairman of the Tal Shiar. But it was important that she draw as little attention as possible, and her present haggard appearance would not pass unnoticed. After applying a base coloring to give some warmth to her sallow skin and some quick swipes of green to tint her cheeks, she scowled even further. She looked dreadful. This would attract more notice than her unadorned, tired-looking face. Jekri washed off the cosmetics and scrubbed her face clean. Better.
She ran a quick comb through her short, silky black hair, and she was ready.
Why a banquet? There was little enough to celebrate. Earlier, the Empress had demanded hourly reports from Jekri’s team of scientists and spies. Jekri recalled the image of the weeping Empress and realized that even though she, Jekri, had not made the hourly reports from time to time, there was no contact from the royal household about the lapses.
The Empress hadn’t noticed.
Jekri frowned at her image in the mirror. She had not gotten where she was without trusting her hunches, and now the prickling at the back of her neck was telling her that something either was very wrong or was about to go very wrong.
And whatever it was, it concerned the Empress.
* * *
The banquet was held at the palace. By the time Jekri arrived, proudly unescorted, most of the other guests were already present. She took a small goblet of blue Romulan ale from a server’s tray. Sipping the potent beverage carefully—Jekri never allowed herself to become intoxicated at formal gatherings—she surveyed the room with a silver-eyed gaze that missed nothing.
The magnificent entry hall was festooned with colors and decorations, all as fierce and proud and commanding as the Romulans themselves. No pretty ribbons or flowers here. No, there were shields and armor from ancient times and bold swathes of rich-hued fabrics. Music came from somewhere—live performers, a luxury only the rich could afford. It was soft and lovely, designed to soothe the guests and encourage them to eat, drink, and talk freely.
Jekri would do none of these.
She looked for any survivors of the disastrous attack on Voyager. If there were any, they would be hailed as heroes, despite the debacle. They would be honored, simply because there had once been so many and now were so few. Jekri saw none, and felt a twinge of grief. Either none had survived or they were too ill to attend. Whichever it was, it was sobering.
There were a few of the senators, chatting pleasantly, drinks and small appetizers in hand. Their faces were bland and fixed in polite expressions. Jekri wondered why they bothered. Everyone here tonight, even the lowest-ranking among them, was a key political figure in some way. Everyone had an agenda. No one was the bland, polite guest he or she so desperately wished to appear. At least she didn’t bother with the pretense. She was the Little Dagger, and everyone knew daggers were sharp.
Verrak had not been
invited. He was not of sufficiently high rank. For that, Jekri was sorry. She had come to rely upon him over the years they had spent working together, and trusted him as she trusted few people.
The Praetor caught her eye. He paused in midsentence and his face grew flat. He nodded coolly.
A chill raced up her spine. Keeping her gaze locked with his, Jekri returned the nod of acknowledgment. She recalled the words of the Praetor: I think you may have overlooked something, and I think you need to get back into the Empress’s good graces very, very quickly. And I think, Little Dagger, that you need to watch your back. She returned to scanning the room.
“You’re slipping, Little Dagger,” came the nasal, high-pitched drawl of the Praetor. Startled, Jekri whirled. He had managed to come up behind her completely unnoticed.
“Either that or your stealth skills are improving,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “Have you tried the ale yet, Praetor? It’s quite a superior vintage.”
“The Empress’s cellars are stocked with nothing less than superior vintages, and always have been,” replied the Praetor quietly. His dark eyes flitted about the room. He did not look directly at Jekri. “It’s not like you to waste time in idle conversation.”
“It’s not like me to be at formal functions at all,” said Jekri. “Yet the Empress seemed adamant that I attend, even though I have her work to be about.”
“It’s not at her command you’re here,” said the Praetor. He nodded toward a small circle of people who had entered the room in a cluster. At their center was the tall, handsome alien calling himself a Shepherd. Lhiau laughed and beamed and in general tried to conduct himself like a jolly ambassador. It made Jekri’s stomach churn.
“It’s at his.”
Jekri’s heart lurched. Her face revealed nothing, of course; she would not let it. Why did Lhiau particularly desire her here tonight? What nasty little surprise was in store for her?
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