PRECHANCE TO DREAM Page 9

  Wesley’s mouth twitched in mock horror. “Geez, I hope not.”

  “Very well, Gina,” Data said. “You and I shall make another attempt to find an exit . . .”

  “Thank you, sir!” She clapped her hands in anticipation. “I’m ready to go.”

  “. . . after an adequate sleep period,” Data said, completing his interrupted sentence. “We have had a long and difficult day and rest is required.”

  Gina let out a disappointed sigh, then smiled to herself as she remembered what it was like to be a little girl and have her parents tell her she couldn’t go out and play because it was bedtime. That’s pretty much what Data just did . . . Her warm feeling of nostalgia quickly chilled. She caught herself wondering, Will I ever see my parents again?

  * * *

  “Uh, Commander Riker, you’re pacing,” said Chief Engineer La Forge, watching the first officer cross back and forth in front of the big observation windows in the conference lounge.

  Riker knew exactly what he was doing. He also knew why. Simple. He just didn’t like to sit still. Not now, not ever. He couldn’t begin to count the boyhood scoldings he had absorbed from teachers exasperated by his fidgeting. As he’d grown up, he’d concentrated on harnessing that unquenchable fount of nervous energy, channeling it, learning to skirt the ragged border separating bold action from recklessness. Sometimes the line was hard to find.

  With a sheepish smile and a sigh, Riker dropped into a seat. “Geordi, I’m afraid patience is not exactly my strong suit. But I am better than I used to be, believe it or not. You know who’s the most patient man I’ve ever met?”

  “Captain Picard,” Geordi said without an instant of hesitation, his words declaring a truth, not asking a question. He knew. So did everyone aboard the Enterprise.

  “The man is a master,” Riker agreed with a grin. “It took me a while to appreciate it, though. Remember when we all started aboard the Enterprise? We’d get into some pretty tight spots, and I would be sitting there on the bridge thinking, Fire the damn phasers, and he’s sitting there, as cool as you please, like he’s got forever to make a decision.”

  Geordi nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. That imperturbability of his did take some getting used to. Every now and then, I’d sort of remind myself, here we are serving with a living legend.”

  “I must admit to wondering once or twice whether he was more legend than alive. But I learned something from observing the captain that I never quite realized before.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “That action doesn’t have to be explosive to be effective—and the first solution isn’t always the best solution.”

  Still, times like the present could push Riker’s developing patience to the breaking point. The Enterprise had been orbiting Domarus Four for nearly a day. Not only was the shuttle still missing—so was Picard. Riker and his officers were proceeding in logical and orderly fashion . . . without result. He would gladly trade patience for a bolt of inspiration.

  Unfortunately, there were no such thunderbolts in Geordi’s latest sensor report now displayed on the table-top computer screen.

  “I don’t get this, Geordi,” Riker said, staring at the data. “There’s no indication of any life down there that bears even the remotest resemblance to human life. Why can’t our sensors find the captain?”

  Geordi’s sigh betrayed his frustration. “Ever since we started searching, there’s been an uneven but continuing increase in electromagnetic emissions surrounding Domarus Four.”

  “Any luck figuring out a source for that?”

  “I’m sure it’s something on or in the planet. But we can’t pin it down to anything specific.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because whatever it is, it’s interfering with our scanners.”

  Riker rubbed his eyes. “Geordi, it’s been a long day. As long as Captain Picard’s missing, I’m not going to get much sleep. I don’t get sleep, I get cranky. And believe me, you do not want to see me cranky.”

  “I believe you, Commander.”

  “I’m sure you do. Now is there anything you can do about the sensors?”

  “If we can chart a predictable rate of increase for those electromagnetic emissions, we might be able to program a compensation curve. But first we have to try to get a handle on the emissions rate, and that’ll take time and—”

  “Patience,” Riker finished, an ironic glint in his eye. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  It had been dark for almost two hours now, and Picard rolled onto his back, crinkling the leaves he’d gathered as a rudimentary mattress to cushion the hard ground beneath him. A faint breeze whispered through the treetops bordering the clearing, and Picard’s crackling fire cast a dancing glow across the campsite. Above him, the stars twinkled with piercing brightness.

  The constellations were not those of Earth, but Picard had seen many an alien sky, and he had learned firsthand that the heavens teemed with life. From where he lay now, he might not be able to pick out Orion the Hunter or the crab or the lion or the Great Bear, but he had been a star traveler long enough to think of all the stars—even those he couldn’t name—as friends.

  Not that he’d always regarded the stars so warmly. With a private smile, he recalled the first time he’d slept out of doors, when he was four—in the yard of the Picard home, with his playmate Louis, brother Robert and Robert’s friend Claude.

  “Claude . . . what a troublemaker,” Picard said aloud, addressing the stars with a rueful shake of his head. Claude had told little Jean-Luc that the stars were tiny fireballs waiting to fall on him and burn him to a crisp while he slept. And what did my big brother do?

  Before he could answer his own question, Picard felt the ground shudder beneath him, as if some distant giant had taken one step and paused. Then, stillness.

  “Robert went on to convince me that thousands of children were incinerated each year by voracious falling stars,” he murmured with a chuckle—a chuckle cut short by a new tremor, more forceful than the first.

  This one did not stop. As the distant rumble rolled closer, Picard sat up suddenly and recognized the oscillation of a major planetquake building under him. Loose stones skittered down the hillsides bounding his campsite. Was he about to be buried under a landslide?

  He got to his feet, but the quake’s wildly increasing magnitude threw him to the ground—ground that heaved and split around him as a sinkhole yawned open, and the quake roared in his ears. With frantic hands, he clawed for a hold on soil and grass that kept collapsing beneath him, tumbling into the widening rift. Despite his struggle to escape, he knew he was being sucked down, and the dirt falling into the chasm after him quickly began to bury him.

  Then, as spontaneously as it had begun, the roaring stopped. Picard forced his reeling mind to orient itself. He was on his back, head pitched down, half-entombed. He opened his eyes and blinked into the soil resting against his face. He could still see the stars. He spat out a mouthful of dirt, and forced his arms up toward the sky, hoping he could dig his way out. But every motion brought more dirt down into the hole, down onto his body. Can’t move—can’t get out— don’t panic!

  Then he felt something hard and rough against his outstretched hand, and he heard an insistent voice from above.

  “Grab it, Picard.”

  Arit. . . where the hell did she come from?

  Taking care to limit his movements and not bring more soil cascading down, he obeyed and closed both hands around the sturdy tree branch extending down to him.

  “Hold it tight.”

  He applied all his remaining strength to that grip, then felt himself being hauled out of his grave. The dirt around his legs tugged back as if fighting his release. Finally, he was pulled free and he used his knees to push himself away from the sinkhole. Arit, who’d been stretched out on her stomach, got to her feet and stepped back carefully until they were both back on solid ground.

  Then they both collapsed, chests heaving
from the strain of the rescue.

  Hoisting himself up on one elbow, Picard spat out another mouthful of grit and tried to speak. But the best he could manage was a hoarse whisper. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “We are even, Picard.”

  “Even? I—I don’t understand.”

  “For the food,” Arit said.

  “Food? There was no price for that food.”

  “There’s always a price.”

  “In that case, Captain Arit, our trade was hardly even. All I gave you was a meal. You . . . you gave me my life.”

  Neither captain knew if they were truly on safe ground, nor if any aftershocks would come along to swallow them up. But they were too exhausted to move and they fell asleep where they lay.

  And neither one heard the atonal, distant jangling that filled the air as a pair of twinkling splinters of light materialized, hovering a meter apart in the night sky above the ruined campsite. And even if they had, they would not have known that the two points of light, one a deep gold, the other an angry crimson, were speaking to each other, in a way no human could understand.

  The golden one flared. :You should not have done this, Mog.:

  :I was only doing what we are meant to do, Ko—Shaping the World. They should not have been in the way.:

  :You knew they were here. You could have been more careful. This place did not have to be shaped at this moment,: the gold one said.

  :And who is at fault, Ko? I am not. You should never have brought them here. These things should be destroyed.:

  :No! They must not be damaged. They are Life.:

  Now the crimson one spun furiously. :How dare you call them Life! They are not like us—they contaminate our World—they are not like us—they are not Life.:

  :You show your ignorance, Mog. Just because they are not like us does not mean they cannot be Life.:

  :Then why have we not seen them before? Tell me that, oh Brilliant One,: said Mog sarcastically. :Were they hiding in the rocks?:

  :They may have come from other than our World, Mog.:

  :That is blasphemy! There is NOTHING other than our World! This is all that exists.:

  :Is your mind really so small, Mog? How wondrous it must be to know everything there is to know. Do you know what lies in the darkness beyond what we can see? Many of us agree with me—many believe that much lies beyond the Great Darkness.:

  :You should not have brought these things here,: Mog repeated, his fiery shape spinning threateningly.

  :That is not your decision,: Ko said. :This is my Communion—my vision will lead.:

  :The Elders may differ—especially now that you speak of demon worlds out in the Great Darkness. They are not pleased with what you did before the rest of us awoke from Interval—taking these two things from their containers—holding the other things and their small container inside our World—:

  :They are not THINGS!: Ko exploded. :They are Life, and I will prove it.:

  :How?: Mog challenged derisively. :They do not have the intelligence to speak to us.:

  :Maybe they speak differently. I will find out how to communicate with them, and I will PROVE that you are wrong, Mog.:

  :Very well. Because this is your Communion, I will give you two cycles, Ko. If you have not taught these things to speak by then, I will destroy them as the poisonous things they are, before they can taint our World any more than they already have.:

  :No!: Ko flared in protest. :Two cycles may not be enough.:

  :Two cycles is all you will get. A majority of the Elders support me. If you do not agree, you will be removed, Ko, and the things will be snuffed out NOW.:

  :Then I am forced to agree. But I WILL do what I say, Mog—just to prove you wrong. And now I say it will not even take me two cycles.:

  The confrontation ended when the crimson glimmer of energy flared forcefully and winked out. Left alone, the gold one dimmed and fluttered low over the sleeping bodies of Picard and Arit, like an impossibly tiny star fallen from the cosmos. Ko wondered what they really were. And she wondered if she had let Mog force her into a challenge she could not win.

  Mog was right about one thing—to many of their population, Ko’s ideas were blasphemy. The majority did believe without reservation that their World was everything; nothing else existed. The very thought that their faith might be wrong, or incomplete, terrified many. But not all.

  It was true that they had never directly encountered anything that called their faith into question. But some had questioned it nonetheless, Ko among them.

  We are of this place, said the Orthody, the canon of the faith. We cannot leave the World. We must remain here for all Communions to come. That is truth. So, then, why would the Creator bother to make other worlds? If we cannot go to them, they do not exist.

  Ko found it hard to argue against the Orthody. But she still had her lingering doubts—there may be things of which we simply do not know . . . if we do not ask questions, how will we ever know?

  Such inquiries were not welcome. But Ko felt they had to be made, and she had decided long ago that when her turn came to lead the Communion, she would not shrink from the task. Not that she’d had any idea how to go about testing the Orthody. After all, it was a physical fact that Ko and those like her were bound to their World. They could not escape it, could not explore beyond it.

  And, as far as they knew, nothing from beyond the Great Darkness had ever come to them.

  Until now. The long rest known as Interval had not yet been due to end, but something had intruded. Some force had jostled Ko awake early. And she had risen and seen the things she believed to be Life, moving about on her World.

  But by the time she’d found them, they were already about to leave. She’d tried to speak to them, but they did not understand. Nor did she understand the sounds they made. But she was certain, beyond all doubts, that they were an answer to her questions. She desperately wanted—needed—to communicate with them, whatever they were. But how?

  She hadn’t wanted to hurt them, and could not voluntarily stop them. Sadly, she had been watching them go when the small container became ensnared by the larger container. And even though she had no common language with the live things, she had been astonished to feel the colors of hostility, the shades of danger. Ko considered that revelation to be certain proof that she and all these live things shared much despite being such different forms of life.

  Then the second large container had arrived. The colors had darkened and she was afraid to wait any longer. With no time to think, Ko had acted on her first impulse—preserve the few in immediate danger! So she took the small container and put it in a place of safety.

  From the beginning, her only desire had been to gain time to establish contact with these new Lives. She had to learn to understand them, to get them to understand her. What was so wrong with that? This was not some hypothetical debate. They were here—and Mog and his kind could no longer ignore the existence of something they had never known before.

  But Mog and his faction could destroy them. And they would, unless Ko could accomplish what she’d set out to do . . . to make this one dream real.

  Chapter Eight

  “HEY, KEN—do you need some help?” Wesley Crusher leaned his lanky body out through the shuttle’s side hatch, looking across the cavern to where Ken was busy collecting additional rock and mineral samples. Wes waited for a reply, then frowned when none came. He must have heard me . . .

  Then again, Ken Kolker had a way of getting so wrapped up in whatever he was doing that it was quite possible that a volcanic eruption might escape his notice until molten lava steamed past his toes. So Wes hopped down and walked over to where Ken squatted on one knee, carefully chipping a few small chunks out of a blue mineral vein running irregularly along the cave wall. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “I heard you the first time,” Kenny muttered without looking up.

  “Oh. Well, is there?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? I ju
st thought—”

  “If I wanted any help, I’d have said yes, now wouldn’t I?” said Ken, with a distinctly chilly edge in his voice.

  “Sure. I guess.” Wes considered a retreat to the shuttle, but decided to press forward with small talk. He really had no idea what was bothering his friend. “Data and Gina should be back soon. Do you think they’ll find a way out?”

  Ken’s eyes remained on his work. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Is there something wrong? If there is, we’ve obviously got plenty of time to talk about it.”

  “Nothing’s wrong, Wesley.”

  “Are you sure?” Wes asked again, not really certain that persistence was his best choice.

  Ken answered with a derisive snort as he glared up at Wesley. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

  Wesley blinked in surprise at the current of sudden hostility running beneath Kenny’s answer. “A clue about what?” His mental reflexes told him to back off, but his smattering of command training reminded him to resist that easier course. It didn’t take a boy genius, or any other kind of genius for that matter, to grasp the fact that there was an obvious problem here, and it had to be dealt with.

  Ken turned back to his rock chipping. “You know what I sometimes feel like calling you?”

  “What?”

  “Beemots.”

  A perplexed furrow wrinkled Wesley’s brow. He had no idea what Kenny was talking about. “Beemots?”

  “Yeah. B-M-O-T-S,” Ken said, spelling out the letters. “Big Man on the Starship.” Ken stood up and brushed the coating of dust off his knees.

  Wes wasn’t sure whether to be hurt or mad. Actually, he felt a little of both. “Why?”

  “Because you’re an ensign with a uniform.”

  Wesley’s arms folded defensively across his chest. He felt an embarrassed flush coloring his face. “Hey, I’m not the first person in history to receive a field commission.”

  “You are on this ship.” Ken paused, as if weighing options—should he continue, or drop it here? He decided to go with a touch of deliberate nastiness. “Do you ever wonder if you got that field commission because your mother is buddy-buddy with Captain Picard?”