Part 3 (1/2)
”Yes, it's a stirring sight, Captain,” the amba.s.sador, seated on the captain's right, was saying. ”It's so sad that it must all end soon.”
Silence fell. It was time for the real business of the evening.
Picard glanced across to Counselor Troi, seated at his left. She gripped the double goblet hard; no doubt she was experiencing Straun's feelings of hopelessness and fear.
”Must,” said Picard, ”is a difficult word-when one is speaking of the destruction of an entire civilization.”
”Yet it is something we have been taught all our lives to expect, Captain,” said the amba.s.sador. ”It is no great burden to know that our existence is circ.u.mscribed, that the circle must one day close upon itself, that we are both the end and the beginning of things.”
”Even when that end is so easily averted?”
”Averted?” The amba.s.sador seemed appalled. ”It is indeed an honor, a miracle, that the G.o.ds have afforded us this glimpse of the greater universe at the moment of our destruction. But no, of course we do not seek aversion. That would be heresy!”
”Heresy?” said Picard.
”The High s.h.i.+vantak would never permit such an outrage.”
”And yet, Your Excellency,” said Commander Data, ”we have the High s.h.i.+vantak's letter.”
A holographic scroll appeared in the air above the dining table. It bore the great seal of the s.h.i.+vantak himself.
We thank you for your enlightening us, the doc.u.ment began, about the nature of things beyond. If what you say is true, let it be tried. Let us at least have a chance for life.
The amba.s.sador gazed at the doc.u.ment-and seemed ever more confused and mortified as he skimmed the words. ”This must be a forgery,” he whispered. ”You are trying to subvert all we believe in.”
”I fear that it is not,” Picard said.
The amba.s.sador's consternation was genuine, Picard realized, not some diplomatic feint. There was more going on here than met the eye. Perhaps this was not going to be a quick errand of friends.h.i.+p after all.
Amba.s.sador Straun continued to stare at the hologram. Deception! he thought. Now who was deceiving whom? Was it these aliens, and did they have some strange agenda of galactic domination? No scripture mentioned what might happen if the world were not to be destroyed every five thousand years. The Thanetians would surely have no moral right to exist-perhaps they could even be reduced to a zombie-like state of slavery.
An even more frightening possibility was that it was the s.h.i.+vantak himself who- No! The holiest of the holy, profaning the very beliefs he existed to protect-beyond belief! And yet- Nothing, thought Amba.s.sador Straun, is certain anymore.
In a subdued voice, he said, ”I will listen.”
Picard said, ”Mr. Data will explain the situation, and Mr. La Forge will show you how we propose to solve it for you.”
Straun listened.
”Your Excellency,” Data said, ”there is a belief on your planet that all civilization comes to an end every five thousand years with the coming of a fiery star, a harbinger of destruction whom you call Deathbringer. The belief is so deeply ingrained as to have the force of fact. And there are other facts that seem to lend support to your cyclical view of history. For example, your recorded history is only five thousand years old, and there is definite archaeological evidence of a huge cataclysm at the very beginning of your history.”
”Of course it has the force of fact!” Straun exclaimed. ”Why would it not?”
”Please hear me out, Your Excellency,” said Data. ”I have a.n.a.lyzed all the information available to me so far, and the descriptions of the Deathbringer in your scriptures and in your literature and art are about ninety-seven point two percent consistent with the hypothesis that this instrument of destruction is in fact some kind of comet. Comets, as you know, are satellites with a highly eccentric orbit that brings them very close to the sun, then carries them far off beyond the boundaries of the star system. A five-thousand-year orbital cycle is not uncommon. Perhaps, the cataclysm of five thousand years ago was a near-collision of some kind during the comet's last cycle. If so, it would explain the belief in a five-thousand-year cosmic cycle, and also why civilization seemed to start up so quickly and so abruptly from what seems to be almost nothing.”
Straun sat in stunned silence, but he could see that Kio was listening, not in shock, but in awe and-hope. He wanted to stalk out of the room at once, to call out the full forces of the antiheresy league with its inquisitions, dogma trials, and executions of false prophets, but the hope in his daughter's eyes was something he could not turn his back on.
The future is the past, said the opening lines of the Panvivlion.
If she really believed in a future, the amba.s.sador thought, could he dare to take it away from her?
For her sake, he continued to listen.
Now it was the dark-skinned one's turn to speak. This man, an engineer or scientist, it seemed, wore a strange prosthesis about his eyes, as did the Priestesses of the Oracle when they breathed the sacred fumes of Ar-Jan-Fang in order to interpret the commands of the G.o.ds. Perhaps it too had some kind of oracular function. Certainly it lent him an aura of religious mystery, and when he spoke his words were full of multisyllabic conundrums such as the priestesses were wont to insert into their utterances in order to render perfectly simple prophecies more dramatic-sounding.
”We have confirmed,” he said, ”that there is indeed a cometoid object on a trajectory that would intersect the inner Klastravo system within a few hours. We can antic.i.p.ate actual collision with Thanet in about seventy-seven point three standard hours.”
”So our scriptures are correct,” said Straun, as relieved by the confirmation of his beliefs as he was mournful about the death of Kio's dreams of a bright future.
”Yes,” said La Forge. ”But the collision won't happen, sir. The prevention of comet disaster is pretty routine; we can fine-tune our phasers to pulverize it long before it reaches Thanet's...o...b..t.” As he spoke, the hologram of the s.h.i.+vantak's missive vanished and was replaced by a schematic of the Klastravo system. They had plotted the Deathbringer's path; a fiery comet was winging its way toward their planet, the whole represented in miniature with such lifelike accuracy he could almost reach out and cup the entire world in his hand.
There it was. The end, as foretold, as sung about in a thousand odes. The Deathbringer inexorable, implacable. But then, from the edge of the viewing area, a stars.h.i.+p materialized. The Enterprise. A few quick bursts of light, surgical in their accuracy, and the Deathbringer was no more. Just like that.
”Would you like to see that again?” La Forge said.
Amba.s.sador Straun nodded numbly. Seeing was believing, but the third and fourth replay were not enough for him. His master-the High s.h.i.+vantak-already knew of this. He had sent him-an undersecretary, a n.o.body-into this place. Straun was being set up for a heresy trial-he was sure of it! But what difference could all of this plotting make so near to the end of the world? Unless the s.h.i.+vantak did not plan for the world to end! Unless the unthinkable were true-and in his heart of hearts, he knew it must be. The ”s.h.i.+vantak was a consummate politician. If there was a way he could cling to power, to life, and an undersecretary could be sacrificed, a heretic who had somehow manipulated the aliens into saving the world-a heretic who could be made a scapegoat-it made a twisted sort of sense. Set up to take the fall!
Or am I just paranoid? he wondered.
”Forgive me,” he temporized. ”It is all so overwhelming.”
”Perhaps-something familiar will ease your mind,” Picard said. He clapped his hands; the hologram of the Klastravo system dissipated. In its place was a platter of poached ca.s.sowary eggs topped with whispering algae from the snowy slopes of Ilimantang. The kind of delicate dessert that graced only the tables of High s.h.i.+vantaks and their priestesses of nocturnal pleasure.
”Not that familiar,” he said wryly. He had always wanted to try Ca.s.sowary eggs. If he still believed that his life, that his very world, was coming to an end, he probably would have reached for one. But now his arm felt numb and his stomach roiled. The past hour's events had caused the amba.s.sador to lose his appet.i.te for even the most intriguing confections.
Reflexively he glanced at his daughter, hoping to find comfort in her beautiful face, but her eyes were fixed upon that boy-that crewman. Wonderful, he thought sourly. She's falling in love with a barbarian, and a low-status one at that. Couldn't she at least have picked a high-ranking officer. Now she would not just die in shame. She would live her last moments in shame. Just wonderful.
Picard's voice intruded on his thoughts.
”We have the Federation's formal response to the s.h.i.+vantak's letter,” said Picard, and two crew members in dress uniform entered the holographic chamber bearing a gilded chest on a silver tray covered with feathers. They bowed in keeping with Thanetian custom, and handed the tray to the amba.s.sador, who waved his hand over it three times and inclined his left wrist in the formal gesture of acknowledgment.
He then waved it away, and the two crew members retreated with it to the background.
”I shall carry the message to my master,” he said.
But who was his master now? Was the s.h.i.+vantak now a heretic himself-and thus no longer worthy of allegiance? Amba.s.sador Straun kept these mysteries in his heart, and bowed humbly even as he cursed these aliens for trampling on everything he had ever believed in.
Chapter Seven.
Artas AND STILL HE FLOATED.
Subtly, imperceptibly, the dreams were changing. The voices were strident, urgent. He wanted to wake up. He hadn't felt that way before, not since the journey began.
He dreamed of lights. Twinkling red lights. More voices. Alarms. Levers. Switches. Twisted ribbons of metal glistened in the half-dark. This was very different from the fields, the ocean. Usually his dreams were nothing but warmth, nothing but softness. His dreams were there to help him forget the cold hard metal prison that was his whole existence ... but now, something impinged upon that inner paradise. Something was changing. The journey was truly ending.