Far Beyond the Stars

by Steven Barnes

  The others were taken aback, and looked at Benny as if afraid that this blow would crumble him, but instead, the announcement only seemed to fuel his anger. "You're firing me?" Benny asked.

  "I have no choice, Benny," he said. "It's his decision."

  "Well, you can't fire me," Benny said. "I quit. To hell with Stone and to hell with you."

  Julius looked downright alarmed. "Try to stay calm," he said.

  Herbert, Albert, and Julius came up alongside Benny, sensing that it might be a good idea for them to get between him and Pabst.

  "Calm, Benny," Herbert repeated in what he must have hoped was a soothing voice.

  "I'm tired of being calm," Benny said. "Calm's never gotten me a damned thing."

  The sheer blast of fury from Benny was something that none of them had ever seen. And Pabst, clearly, was taken aback. This was not the calm, intelligent but malleable Benny he was used to. "I'm warning you, Benny—if you don't stop shouting, I'm calling the cops."

  Benny's hands opened, and then clinched again, and then hooked into claws. His voice dropped to an ugly rasp. "Call them," Benny snarled. "Go ahead. They can't do anything to me. Not anymore." He looked around the room as if he was looking at strangers and they looked back at him, realizing that in core, key ways that they hadn't let themselves consider, had never let themselves consider, Benny was a stranger to all of them. "None of you can," he said.

  Herbert reached out for him again, but Benny broke away. Everyone stepped back. They had no idea what he might do next—and knew only that they didn't want him to do it to them.

  Benny stood in the middle of the room, alone, his fists clinched. He made no move to step toward them, gave no indication that he wanted to hurt. No, he was the one hurting. He was the one who was damaged. There would be no shattered furniture or broken bones. The anger began to fade, and they saw beneath it the fear and loneliness of a man who had worked long and hard to earn their company, and now understood that he had never truly had it.

  "I'm a human being, god dammit!" he said. He fought to hold the emotions back, but they burst out of him like a dark, muddy torrent. And caught in that morass were the reflections of stars. So many. So beautiful. So impossibly distant. "I … exist."

  He paused, and seemed almost to be listening, as if to some music that only he could hear. "You can deny me all you want but you can't deny Ben Sisko. He lives!" His eyes were defocused, locked, lost on some faraway point, some place beyond their time, a world on the other side of the universe. "He lives," Benny whispered. "That space station … those people . . . that future … they exist!" He pointed to his head with one trembling brown finger. "In here," he said. "And in every one of you that read it."

  They said nothing, and Benny blinked. They stood before him, but simultaneously, almost as if superimposed over them, were the forms of the others, the characters that he had cloaked them with in his story. Major Kira. Quark. The others. They were all there, waiting to be born, calling to him. They were real. This was fantasy.

  "You hear what I'm telling you?" he whispered hoarsely. "You can pulp the story but you can't destroy the idea." He blinked hard. Where was he? In the offices, or … where? "That future is real," he said, but he took a step backwards, and wavered, as if that outburst, those words, this walk to the office, perhaps that story itself had extracted some essence from Benny Russell, and without it, he might no longer live at all. As if the story he had told were more real than he. "I made it real!" he raised his voice, until he was almost screaming. Spittle flew from his mouth. "It's real!" he screamed again. The two words were some kind of desperate magical incantation, a final, futile attempt to keep the story, his dream, those thousands of pulped magazines alive.

  "It's REAL!" The last word became a sustained howl, one that must have split his throat, one that pierced the air, pierced their brains, a howl of rage, and pain and loss that echoed on and on and spoke of death, and hopelessness, and worst of all, betrayal.

  CHAPTER

  37

  A CROWD HAD GATHERED at the front door of the Arthur Trill Building. An ambulance with a white cross painted on its side waited there, its back doors hanging open.

  Slowly, without haste, in fact with an almost funereal calm, two ambulance orderlies emerged from the building pulling a stretcher.

  Strapped to the stretcher was a Negro man whose hand and feet twitched like a dreaming dog's, a man whose eyes stared sightlessly at the sky, whose face was infused with some terrible mixture of wonder and fear.

  He could not speak, had nothing to say to the people who gazed at him, wondering what strange mixture of alcohol and drugs might have reduced him to such a state.

  There was something surreal about the scene. Something unnaturally quiet. And for Benny, he could see their mouths move, but could not hear them, almost as if he was separated from them by a sheet of glass. He heard …

  Nothing. Who was he? And who were they? And where was this strange and wondrous place that he had found himself?

  The two ambulance orderlies carried him into the back of the vehicle, and then sat, staring at each other, moving in perfect synchrony, as if this were an action that they had rehearsed many, many times.

  They did not look at him. They did not speak.

  They merely stared straight ahead into each other's faces, like an odd mirror image.

  The back of the ambulance opened, and a man stepped in. Benny felt the weight as the springs sagged, felt the shadow looming over him. The two attendants didn't seem to notice. Nor did the driver, who began to ease out into traffic.

  Tied to the stretcher, Benny blinked hard and looked up at the newcomer, recognizing him even in the upside-down configuration. The Preacher.

  He sat next to Benny, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. He smiled, and the smile was comforting; it was, in fact, an expression of profound respect, the affection of one warrior for another. "Rest, Brother Benny," the Preacher said. "This is but one battle in a war that started long ago, and will continue long after you're gone."

  Benny closed his eyes. Against the blackness of his inner lids, stars shone like jewels. He opened them again, and lay his head to the side, looking down at his body. His suit had disappeared. He recognized the uniform he wore. It was Ben Sisko's Starfleet dress uniform. Medals shone upon his chest, medals he had won in another place and time for valor under fire. For courage in the face of the enemy.

  The Preacher smiled. "Don't despair," he said. "You've walked in the path of the Prophets. There's no greater glory."

  His eyes focused on a red and purple rectangle of cloth and gilt. What was that ribbon? He thought he recognized it. It was Bajoran, and rare as a black pearl. It was given for courage, and the risk of life, in the winning of a great and lasting peace.

  He felt an odd calm stealing over him. If this is death, he thought, then I will not resist it. But he knew that that was not it, either. Then if it was not his life, and it was not death either, then what?

  Benny didn't know. He looked back up at the Preacher. "Tell me, please," he said. "Who am I?"

  "Don't you know?" the Preacher said.

  Quite quietly, without any fuss, the ambulance drivers were fading away. Before they vanished, they smiled. The walls of the ambulance dissolved, and in the gaps there was only a vast and silent expanse of stars.

  "Tell me!" he cried, confused but already sensing the answer.

  He looked around, but he was alone. There was nothing but Benny, and the infinite stellar display. Then, out of that void, came the Preacher's voice. Comforting, eternal.

  "You are the dreamer," the Preacher said. "And the Dream."

  SHUFFLE

  CHAPTER

  38

  BENJAMIN SISKO opened his eyes, blinking against the light of Deep Space Nine's sterile infirmary walls. Where? What?

  Bashir. Kasidy. Joseph Sisko. Jake. All were right there, waiting, their eyes anxious. He was back in his own world—if he could truly call it that.


  Kasidy Yates threw her arms around him, her lovely brown face taut with concern. "Ben!" she cried, her voice ragged. "Thank God!"

  Sisko struggled to sit up, and she tried to help him. He wasn't quite strong enough to do it, and ended up back on his elbows, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear it. "What happened?" he asked.

  Doctor Bashir approached him, scanning with a tricorder in an attempt to get a reading. "You slipped into a coma," he said. He looked calm, but Sisko knew that beneath that practiced exterior churned a sea of emotions.

  "How long was I out?" Sisko asked.

  "Only a few minutes," Bashir said.

  "Seemed like forever to me," Joseph Sisko said soberly.

  Bashir stared at the tricorder's readout panel, puzzled and fascinated. "That's interesting."

  "What is it?" Sisko asked.

  "Somehow, your neural patterns have returned to normal."

  Jake grinned with relief. "That's good, isn't it?"

  "It's very good," Bashir said. "I just don't understand how it happened."

  "Well, doctor," Sisko said, feeling greater strength flowing back into his body with every moment. "Let's not inspect our gift horses too carefully, shall we? We should take our miracles where we find them."

  CHAPTER

  39

  THE RAKTAJINO WAS EXCELLENT, every sip worth savoring. Sisko stood by the window in his quarters, staring out at the stars, quietly enjoying the moment and Kasidy's company.

  They had spoken of several things, but he knew that Kasidy had been circling, circling around some subject that she was as yet afraid to approach directly.

  Soon, she would no longer avoid it.

  The stars … he thought. I've seen them so many times. Why do I feel that I have never seen them at all?

  "There's one thing I still don't understand," Kasidy said, finally breaking the silence between them, as he had known she would have to do.

  He smiled. "Just one?"

  "For the moment." She paused. "If what you experienced was another vision from the Prophets—what was it they were trying to tell you?"

  Indeed, he had thought on this himself. What could he say? They had—mostly—agreed that the abnormal neural patterns had been caused by an induced vision, but what to make of all of this?

  He chose his words very carefully. "At first," he said, "I thought it was their way of reminding me how far the human race has come, that however dark things might seem, they used to be a hell of a lot worse."

  He paused. "But then I started wondering . . . .," his voice trailed off.

  "Wondering what?" she asked.

  He seemed about to answer when the door chimed. "Come in," Sisko said without looking over.

  It opened and Joseph Sisko entered. With grave courtliness he kissed Kasidy's hand, then studied his son's face.

  "How're you feeling, Son?"

  "Okay."

  "Are you leaving now, Joseph?" Kasidy asked.

  "I'm done packing," he said. "Transport leaves at eight in the morning."

  "I wish you could stay longer," she said. "We're just getting acquainted."

  "There'll be another time. I've got to get back to the restaurant. My customers have never gone this long without me."

  Benjamin thought about his father's cooking, and another sudden longing swept him. To have had the time for one of his father's elegant yet simple culinary masterpieces … that was a gift he would give himself, and soon. Time passes so quickly, he thought. Treasure the gifts you are given. Like family.

  And like the magnificent woman who had stolen his heart.

  His father was still watching him, his expression faintly humorous. "The question is, son—what are you going to do?"

  "The only thing I can do," he said. "Stay here and finish the job I started. And if I fail … at least I'll go down fighting."

  "'I have fought the good fight,'" Joseph quoted. "'I have finished the course. I have kept the faith.'"

  Sisko squinted at his father, startled. "I've never known you to quote scripture."

  "Just full of surprises, aren't I?" He paused. "And so are you. It sounds like this dream you had helped you sort things out."

  "I suppose it did. But I've been wondering … what if it wasn't a dream?" he said. "What if this life we're leading … all of this … you and me … everything … what if it's all an illusion?"

  Her mouth opened, and then closed again. Kasidy stared into his face as if searching for reassurances, and failed to find them. "You're starting to scare me, Ben."

  He smiled, and squeezed her hand tightly. He nodded. "I'm scaring myself a bit. But maybe, just maybe, Benny isn't the dream—we are." He thought about that, and liked it. It had symmetry. "Perhaps, we're nothing more than figments of his imagination."

  Benjamin Sisko looked out at the stars, and as he did, the wormhole opened again. A tiny freighter darted out, carrying what cargo? From where? He assumed they existed, yet he saw only the shell of a craft, and from that his mind had extrapolated a home planet, and lives, families, fates.

  All from a momentary glimpse.

  In a moment, he had tasted the entire life and hopes and aspirations of a man completely different from him, and yet …

  And yet the same. How dare he assume that man might not exist? Or perhaps they both existed in different times, in different worlds, but through the gift of the

  (Preacher)

  Prophets, each had been given a momentary glimpse of the other. A blessing? A curse? Who could ever say such a thing. All of life is both, and neither.

  "Ben?" Kasidy asked, still peering up into his face.

  "For all we know," Sisko said, "at this very moment, somewhere, far beyond all those stars, Benny Russell is dreaming of us."

  He slipped an arm around Kasidy and stood with two of the human beings he loved most in all the world. He thought of Cassie. And of the Preacher. And of their very different, oddly similar gifts of faith.

  Benjamin Sisko gazed out at the stars, and remembered Manhattan skies. His reflection, glimpsed briefly in the window, was of another man, from another time. A simpler man, but no less complex. A man who fought no world-spanning battles, but a warrior nonetheless.

  Benny Russell lives, he thought. As long as I remember him, he lives.

  And perhaps as long as he remembers me, I live as well.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Why I Decided to Write a Book in a

  Month; Or, How Star Trek Changed

  My Life

  Steven Barnes

  I find myself at the end of this writing project feeling somewhat surprised that I would do such a thing. Well—specifically that I would do it at this point in my life, a time of pressure and stress, near the holiday season now (as I write these words it is December 12), and willing to push myself at a time when I am usually starting to slack off, becoming somewhat contemplative about my life, and beginning to make plans for the next year.

  To answer the question, I have to go back a few years, and before I do that, I would like to say something:

  Star Trek fans have one hell of a lot to be proud of. You changed the world, my world, in ways you may not know.

  Onward.

  It has been very strange growing up in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. There is so much to love here—but also much to be disappointed with. I was born in 1952, and if there is any most central reason I began to write, it is that there was no father in my home, and I needed to find images of men doing manly stuff. My mom did the best she could but she was (very much) a woman, and simply couldn't teach me certain things. So I looked to the stories of Conan the Barbarian, and Mike Hammer, and James Bond, and Leslie Charteris's the Saint. And there was something very interesting about all of these he-man worlds: no black people needed apply.

  It was positively grotesque. When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote that "White men have imagination, Negroes have little, animals have none," he was doubtless merely expressing the attitudes of the time. That
didn't make it any easier to read, and I would have put that Tarzan novel down if I hadn't so desperately needed the emotional vitamins within. True, as Kay Bass rightly points out, there aren't enough female characters with spunk and grit, but girls aren't required to "prove" themselves in aggressive, violent competition in order to be considered "feminine." Little black boys and little white boys want pretty much the same things out of life, across the board, and most of what we do in life, we learn from watching role models.

  Don't believe it? You learned to walk and talk and ride bicycles by watching others do it. Shouldn't black children be able to learn by watching white heroes, you say? Well, obviously—and yet the more levels of logical abstraction between you and the role model, the more difficult it is to empathize. Trust me, sit in a Hollywood pitch meeting, and watch the executives try to sandwich a white character into a black story, parroting the wisdom that "audiences won't identify." And what happens if they don't? Why, the accepted, hard-learned wisdom is that they won't go into the theaters.

  Well, come the 1960s or so, and black characters began appearing in science fiction, horror, and action films. But do you know what? They usually existed only to die horribly, and usually to protect white people. (And whatever feminists say about the parallels between sexism and racism, there is no similar pattern of women dying in movies to protect men. Quite the opposite, in fact. Male lives are cheaper than women's, and minority lives cheaper than white.)

  The list of films using these nauseating images unfortunately encompasses some of Hollywood's best. The following is a very partial list of movies which contained a 100% black fatality rate, often in the noble protection of the white lead: The Alamo, Spartacus, Full Metal Jacket, The Dirty Dozen, Alien I, II, and III, any James Cameron film . . .