by Gene DeWeese
“Proceed to the Guardian’s world immediately, Picard. It is your only chance.”
“But if you can destroy the Borg ships—”
“I cannot. I did destroy the one, and I believed I could destroy others, but I cannot. The weapons capable of doing so no longer exist. The Borg destroyed them all just moments ago.”
“How—” Picard began, but again Sarek cut him off instantly.
“You are wasting time, Picard.”
“Arbiter Sarek is correct,” Data said, not looking up from the data that streamed across his station’s displays. “Even if we proceed at maximum warp, we may not be able to reach the Guardian’s world, assuming it exists, before the Borg overtake us.”
“Go!” Kirk broke in. “I’m no fan of the Guardian, but like the man says, if you can’t throw me into the Vortex, it’s your only chance!”
Picard suppressed a scowl, but he knew they were right, Sarek and Kirk both.
“Very well. Ensign Raeger, maximum warp on a course to—to where we hope the Guardian’s world is.”
As the ensign briefly acknowledged the order and the coordinates that followed, Picard returned his attention to Sarek. “I assume,” he said after a moment’s silence, “that you fully understand what will happen if we succeed.”
“Of course, Picard. If you succeed, this timeline will cease to exist.”
Picard nodded in grim apology. “And you also understand that there is no guarantee that it will either be replaced by or transformed into one that is more palatable.”
“I am logical, Picard, not naive. And logic indicates that the chance is worth the taking. If you do not take it—or if you fail—you and I and the entire Alliance and dozens of other worlds will either be destroyed or assimilated, apparently within days at most, if the fleet now emerging from the Terran system is any indication. You and I have both seen enough of the Borg to know that that is not acceptable. Now go while you have the chance. I will do what I can to delay pursuit.”
Sarek raised his right hand in the familiar Vulcan gesture. Like Vulcan logic and honor, it was, not surprisingly, common to both universes. “Live long and prosper,” he said in an oddly soft voice in the moment before his image vanished from the viewscreen.
Twenty-Four
SAREK CUT the link to the Enterprise and contacted Alliance Prime immediately, no longer making use of the ultra-secure channels he had used with Deputy Arbiter Koval. At the same time, he patched the image on his own viewscreen through not only to Alliance Prime but to the bridge of the Wisdom and to all other Alliance ships. During the seemingly interminable moments it took for the links to snake their way through subspace, Sarek hurried to the bridge where an uneasy Commander Varkan awaited him.
When all reachable ships were linked, Sarek implacably overrode all questions and gave every commander the projected path and velocity of the cluster of ninety-three Borg ships that were setting off after the Enterprise.
For an instant, just an instant, despite what he had told Picard only minutes before, despite all logic, Sarek could not help but think of telling them to gather all ships around Alliance Prime or even Vulcan and fight to the finish.
But any such action was obviously pointless. No more than fifty ships could be mustered for each world, and fifty thousand ships would not be enough.
So he gave them their orders.
Their logical but suicidal orders.
To the commanders’ credit, virtually all obeyed without question, the Vulcans, Trill, Tellarites, and Klingons immediately, the Romulans after a brief hesitation. The only defectors were a half dozen Cardassians, who began an immediate race to return to Cardassia.
In the silence that followed, Sarek once again checked the progress of the Enterprise and of the leading Borg cubes. It was as he had feared: Unless the Borg were delayed several minutes, they would overtake the Enterprise before it could get within transporter range of the hypothetical Guardian’s world. The Enterprise had managed to nudge its warp factor up by a minuscule fraction, but it would not be enough.
Everything depended on the hundred or so Alliance vessels that could, at one point or another, fling themselves in the path of the Borg fleet.
With the ships underway, including the Wisdom, it was time to explain.
But first he spoke the words that would transport ex-councilman Zarcot from Interrogation directly to the bridge. Even an illogical, short-sighted fool such as he deserved to know why he was about to die—and a few moments to prepare for that death. Or to have the time to wonder, as Sarek himself wondered: Even if a new timeline was created to replace the disastrous one they believed they had inhabited all their lives, would they or anyone else ever know?
Even in dreams?
Kirk, like everyone else on the bridge, winced inwardly as the last of the distant Alliance ships—a scattered school of minnows throwing themselves in front of an oncoming swarm of sharks—flared and vanished from the Enterprise viewscreen. The Borg, except for a single temporarily disabled cube, were back to full speed by the time they swept through the last of the clouds of molecular debris that were all that remained of Sarek’s fleet.
“Sarek’s delaying action gained us approximately two minutes, Captain,” Data said. “However, unless our speed can be even further increased, the Borg will still be within weapons range before we can reach the Guardian’s world.”
Picard grimaced but did not contact engineering. Any such action, Kirk knew, would only be a distraction to Commander La Forge, who was already doing everything humanly possible to squeeze the last ounce of speed out of the warp drive. The chief engineer had already disabled a half dozen automated safeguards, trusting to his instincts to know when to throttle back temporarily, when to give one particular weak link a brief rest before pushing it once again past its design limits. He suspected that Scotty himself couldn’t have done better on the old Enterprise.
“At least Sarek and his people won’t be turned into Borg zombies,” Kirk muttered. His own so-called sacrifice—a single life that, by all rights, should already have ended—seemed pitifully small by comparison. Even if the Enterprise was able by some miracle to reach the Guardian, even if the Guardian did require something more of him than his death—
An almost inaudible moan cut into his dismal chain of thought. Looking to one side, he saw Scotty, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes barely slits.
“We’re not lost yet, Scotty,” he said automatically but so softly no one else could possibly hear, though he couldn’t help but notice that the one called Guinan glanced momentarily away from the viewscreen as he spoke. “We’ve gotten out of worse.”
But as he reached a hand out toward the engineer’s arm, Scotty turned abruptly and, with lowered eyes, hurried to the turbolift.
Stifling an impulse to follow and give the engineer a probably useless pep talk, Kirk turned back to the viewscreen.
And forced himself to face the truth.
They couldn’t reach the Vortex.
They couldn’t reach the Guardian, even if it did exist.
But one obvious possibility remained, a possibility that had been in the back of his mind from the start, as it doubtless had been in Picard’s and everyone else’s.
His own death, not in the Vortex but here and now.
It might do the trick.
Or it might not.
But it was better than no chance at all.
He leaned down and spoke softly in Picard’s ear.
“No! Kirk must not die here!”
The words erupted from Guinan’s lips like a cork from a bottle, driven by the sudden pressure of a “feeling” so intense it literally sent chills through her entire body.
And brought her own burden of guilt crashing down on her shoulders, making her physically sway under the weight. Picard, standing next to Kirk just inside his ready room, reached out worriedly to steady her.
“Guinan?”
She shook her head helplessly. Barring a miracle beyond
even anything she could imagine, they were all doomed to spend the remaining few hours of their lives in this misbegotten universe that should never have come into existence in the first place.
And wouldn’t have, except for her interference.
Suddenly, a sharp pain knifed through her temples, sending her lurching sideways, her knees almost buckling. Automatically grasping Picard’s still-outstretched arm to keep from falling, she felt the pain spread out through her head like a clinging spray of acid. In the same moment Picard’s ready room seemed to fade and ripple as if seen through a distorting lens, and a shadowy alien landscape wavered into existence in the near distance, completely surrounding her, extending to a distant, indistinct horizon.
“Jean-Luc,” she heard herself say as she collapsed into darkness, not sure if she was whispering or shouting, pleading or apologizing for the disaster that was enveloping them.
“Guinan!”
Brushing Kirk aside, Picard dropped to his knees at her side on the ready room floor. She was still breathing, but her pulse was elusive. Her eyes, squinting in pain when she had fallen, were now wide open.
And utterly blank.
His heart pounding, Picard tapped his combadge. “Dr. Crusher, transport Guinan directly to sickbay. Whatever’s happening—”
He broke off and hastily stood up as her body was enveloped in the glimmer of a transporter field.
“You have the bridge, Number One,” he said as he emerged onto the bridge and headed directly for the turbolift with Kirk close behind.
By the time they arrived in sickbay, Guinan was stretched out on a biobed, Beverly Crusher standing over her with a medical scanner.
“What is it?” Picard asked without preamble as he hurried to stand on the opposite side of the biobed while Kirk remained near the door. “What’s wrong with her?”
Dr. Crusher shook her head with an impatient “don’t-rush-me” look as she continued to move the scanner over Guinan’s head and torso.
After what seemed like hours to Picard, Crusher looked up. “Well?” he prompted when she didn’t immediately speak.
“All readings for which I have El-Aurian referents are normal, but—”
“Like the dead Narisian,” Picard snapped. “That’s not what I want to hear.”
“It isn’t what you’re hearing, Captain. Or at least it’s not what I’m saying. The Narisian’s organs were all completely functional but they weren’t functioning, like an engine that had been turned off. And she was dead. Guinan’s organs all appear to be not only functional but functioning perfectly. And she is entirely alive.”
“But unconscious. Why—”
Crusher cut him off with a shake of her head. “Not unconscious, Captain, at least not according to a neural scan. All indications are that she is fully conscious. If anything, her level of neural activity indicates she’s considerably more conscious than normal, even for an El-Aurian. Although that could just be her normal level of activity. I’ve never run a neural scan on her before.”
“So what do we do? Can you wake her up?”
She sighed impatiently. “I told you, Captain, she is awake. She just isn’t here.”
Picard was silent a moment as he looked down at the face of his friend. “If you could get comparison readings,” he said, “from her alter ego in this universe—would that help?”
“I honestly don’t know, but it couldn’t hurt. And talking to that other Guinan might be a good idea, anyway. Assuming the same thing hasn’t happened to her.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Tapping his combadge, he turned to the nearest turbolift. “Number One, I’m on my way to the bridge. Try again to contact the D’Zidran—if it still exists.”
“The D’Zidran is on screen, Captain,” Riker half shouted as Kirk and Picard erupted from the turbolift onto the bridge.
A chill gripped Kirk’s spine like an icy hand, overwhelming all his other conflicting emotions, as he looked at the viewscreen and realized what he was seeing there: the D’Zidran was close to, perhaps even in orbit around the Guardian’s world.
He had no idea how or why it had gotten there, but there was no question in his mind but that it was there. Nothing else could account for the way the image of the D’Zidran’s bridge undulated in and out of focus as if seen through the rippling surface of a wind-blown sea.
Which, in a sense, it was: a sea not of matter but of time, its very fabric warped and re-warped by the unfathomable power of the object on the surface of the planet; the Guardian of Forever.
Kirk had seen those undulations, had felt them as the old Enterprise—his Enterprise—sped through them. There could be nothing else in the universe—in any universe—quite like them.
The fact that the face of the D’Zidran’s commander was one that he recognized, not fondly, from his own past barely registered as Picard, a couple paces ahead of him, said:
“Commander Tal, let me speak with Guinan.”
Tal’s undulating image stared out of the screen silently, expressionlessly, while Picard’s words ricocheted through the subspace network to the distant ship. Finally, abruptly, Tal shook his head. “She is not here. She has transported down to the surface of a planet she called the ‘Guardian’s world’.”
Kirk’s stomach lurched at the words as he remembered what Scotty had said about this odd and ageless woman, about how she had been present at—had been instrumental in—each and every key incident that had led inexorably to the present situation.
And now she was on the Guardian’s world, where all time was, if the Guardian felt cooperative, instantly accessible.
What, he wondered with a new chill, was she up to now?
The view from space of the Guardian’s world had not prepared Guinan for the somber reality that enveloped her when the shimmer of the transporter energy faded. From the relative safety of high orbit, she had looked down on the sensor-produced images of the endless ruins, observing them objectively, noting with interest the countless different styles of buildings, the lack of any city-like pattern to their distribution. Even the so-called time ripples of which she had been warned had seemed less a danger than a distraction as they swept across the face of the planet, warping her vision as they now and then reached out and sent waves of distortion through the orbiting D’Zidran.
But here on the surface, low-hanging slabs of rainless, lightning-streaked clouds, threatening a storm that never came, seemed to isolate her not only from the D’Zidran but from the stars themselves. She was not just surrounded by the planet-spanning ruins but felt in danger of becoming a prisoner of this strange world, of being somehow absorbed by it.
And yet, despite the fear, despite the utterly alien surroundings, despite the bleak wail of an unseen, unfelt wind—a wind that blew through time itself?—she felt as if she was somehow familiar with this world, as if she was already connected to it in some way that was as inexplicable as the feelings that had brought her here.
At the same time, again without knowing how or why, she realized that more of her “ghost memories” had emerged from whatever shadowy corners of her mind they had been lurking in.
Particularly real and vivid were those associated with the one called Picard and with his world. It was as if she had lived two lives simultaneously, both leading inevitably to this time and place. She was barely able to tell where one life began and the other ended, which was real and which was imagined.
And there was more, she knew, far more than the memories of those two lives. She could sense the existence of other memories, other lives in other times, but they were still beyond her reach, like shadowy creatures that moved, not quite silently, through a dense fog that swirled all around her.
You are not a stranger to this place, a voice said in her mind, and she looked around, startled.
And saw the Portal.
There was nothing else the misshapen torus could be.
In the midst of a chaos of ruins from a thousand different eras, a thousand different civilizati
ons, it alone was…functional?
Alive?
It pulsed with energy, seen and unseen.
“How is it that you know me?” she asked, clothing the thought in words only out of recent habit. “I have never visited your world before.”
Not in your current form, perhaps, but the shell you wear is irrelevant. It is you I recognize.
“Are you the source of the…‘guidance’ I occasionally find myself subjected to?”
You receive guidance from no one but yourself.
“A future self?” she asked.
For you, as for me, there is no future and no past. There is only the eternal now.
She grimaced. This so-called Guardian of Forever was even less helpful than her feelings, what ever their source. The feelings at least told her what to do, even if they didn’t tell her why.
“Can you help us to restore this universe to what it was before the stranger from the future interfered?” she asked.
The play of energy around the irregular torus that was the Portal intensified, as did the lightning displays in the rainless clouds, now roiling and darkening even more, as if the coming storm could no longer be held at bay. Even the keening of the unfelt wind grew louder.
Finally, the voice returned to her mind. Through me it is possible to make all as it was. It is not possible to make all as it must be.
“I do not understand.”
You do not, and yet you do. You must look into yourself. The answer you seek is there, and there alone.
“You speak in riddles,” she said, uncomfortably conscious of the irony of the accusation. “I still do not understand.”
You must look more deeply. You must open the self you are now to all the selves you have been and will be.
And the Portal shimmered, seeming to become a mirror with a dozen facets, each reflecting a different image, but even as she tried to focus on them, they shattered into a hundred, then a thousand facets, until each facet was only an intense spot of sparkling light, and the entire Portal became a chaos of pulsing, crackling energy that part of her longed to plunge into while another part recoiled in terror.