The Tapiola has beamed down science facilities - lab units and prefabricated shelters. A hastily-assembled outpost is taking shape on the hillside above the steadholding. I stand outside it now, with T'Pia, and the Klingon commanders.
It's the first time I've seen T'Pia in person. The red-haired Vulcan is small and neat, almost finicky in her appearance, brisk and businesslike as she goes about her work.
I am content to let her. I am bruised, grimy with dust, and still reeking of the tellurium compound. But, then... so is everything.
"Rrueo supposes it is a deep-seated thing," Rrueo says. The Ferasan looks every bit as beaten-up and bedraggled as I do - perhaps more so. "Sulphur and tellurium both have the same valence as oxygen, so creatures that metabolised oxygen... had to learn, very early in the evolutionary process, to notice and avoid those substances. More than an instinctive aversion... a chemical aversion...."
"Quite." T'Pia doesn't wrinkle her nose, but I think if she wasn't Vulcan, she would. "With the disappearance of the - overlord - the tellurium compound has reverted to its normal stereochemical structure, and thus binds normally with our nasal chemoreceptors."
"Or, to put it more simply," says Rrueo, "now, it stinks. And worse than stinks - Rrueo can confirm that the telluric masses beneath the surface are breaking up and decomposing. They will release toxic tellurium compounds into the surrounding soil. Rrueo does not know if the colony will survive this."
"We will render all possible assistance," says T'Pia. "That is a point of which you should be aware. While your ships were out of communication, the Undine launched a surprise attack on Earth and Qo'noS. In the aftermath of that, an armistice has been agreed between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The war, effectively, is over."
R'j turns sharply towards her, silvery eyes flashing. "What?"
"You will, naturally, wish to confirm this with your own command authorities."
R'j's mouth works. "Naturally," she says. "And of course, I will do so. But it is only a formality. S-s-s-s-s. If one more thing were needed to make this whole enterprise an exercise in abject futility -"
She stalks angrily away, muttering Mlkwbrian phrases that the universal translator either can't, or won't, convert. T'Pia quirks one eyebrow.
"She is aggrieved," says Rrueo. "She desired a glorious success for her cunning plans.... She often makes cunning plans. Sometimes, they work, but more often the universe... regrettably fails to cooperate."
"Indeed," says T'Pia.
"If there's an armistice in place," I say, "we can bring in Federation help - I have contacts in the disaster relief agencies, they can assess the ecological damage, maybe work out ways to help -"
"That would be useful," says T'Pia. "My preliminary assessment, though, is that too much of this world's arable land is now compromised. The most probable outcome is that the Tiazan colonists will need to be evacuated."
"At least the Empire will have troop transports free," mutters Rrueo.
"They may well be needed." T'Pia's tricorder beeps. She pulls it from her belt, consults it. "Excuse me. There is a problem with the geophysics probes, and I must attend to it." And she marches off, stiff-backed, neat and highly polished. I feel like a reject as I watch her go.
"Geophysics," says Rrueo. "That reminds Rrueo... how is Harley Haught?"
"Dr. Haught? Oh, he's doing well - we transferred him to King Estmere's sickbay, and he's on the mend. My medical officer did have a few comments, but -" I don't think Samantha Beresford's remarks about "ham-fisted Klingon butchers with duct tape and glue" really bear repeating.
"Medical officers are never satisfied. Rrueo is glad to know Harley Haught is recovering." Rrueo runs one claw over her drooping whiskers. "One cannot carry a man all day and stand guard over him all night without developing a certain proprietary interest."
"Thank you for that, at least," I say.
"Rrueo suspects you would have done the same, in the circumstances. Allied, against the unknown... or the Undine...."
Something catches my eye; a movement, on the hillside below us. I turn my head. A small figure is plodding up the hill - the child, Nejje. Rrueo and I exchange glances. We go down towards her.
The girl's face is wan, tearful. She looks up at us. "Everything smells," she says. Down here, the garlicky reek of the tellurium compound is stronger. In the fields, it must be hardly bearable.
"I know," I say. "I'm sorry."
"Everything smells, and the plants are all brown, and dying.... What happened? Was it the Grau? The book said everything would change -"
"Little one." Rrueo squats down on her haunches, so that her head is on a level with Nejje's; she regards the child with a sort of compassionate gravity. "It was not the Grau, it was all of us. We did not, perhaps, intend to do this thing... but Rrueo is not so sure that she should regret it."
Tears gleam in Nejje's eyes. "I don't understand."
"We have brought you a gift, little one. It is not a gift you wanted, perhaps, but it is a great one. We have overthrown your overlord, and we have brought you freedom. Freedom is a good thing, a great thing, but it is never a comfortable thing. Listen to Rrueo, little one. The overlord no longer controls you, and you can make your own choices from now on."
"But what good is that?" Nejje cries. "What use is it to be free, when the plants are all dying, and the water is foul, and -"
"We can help," I say. "We will help... that's my people's way. To help, but never to control."
"Freedom is never easy," says Rrueo. "You can make your own choices, but those choices may be hard. You must be strong, little one. Rrueo can see things... Rrueo knows you have it in you to be strong."
"Strong enough," I add, "to decide for yourself what's written on the next page in that book."
Nejje looks from one to the other of us, her face woeful. Then, she seems to reach a decision. "I will be strong," she says, and steps forward, wrapping her arms around Rrueo's neck, burying her face in the blue fur. Rrueo submits to the embrace, purring softly.
After a minute, Nejje lets go, and steps back. "Should I thank you for the gift?" she asks.
"Thank us, or curse us," I say. "Or maybe both."
"That is the way, with this particular gift," says Rrueo.
Nejje nods gravely. Her tears seem to have stopped. "I will go back to my parents," she says, "and the Steadholder, and we will - decide what to do." She turns around and marches back down the hill. There is a definite air of determination about her.
Rrueo watches her go. "Rrueo has never borne a child," she says pensively. "The exigencies of military life always seemed to preclude it.... Sometimes, Rrueo regrets - Well. No matter." Her tone brightens. "In any case, R'j is Rrueo's friend, and sometimes that is very like having a difficult child. Rrueo must go to her, and soothe her ruffled feelings." She straightens up, and throws me a sketchy salute. "Until we meet again - ally."
And she lopes away. I watch her go, for a moment. Then I turn, and go off to look for my own problem child.
---
I find Ronnie in the small building we've rigged as a makeshift mortuary. She is gazing down at the stasis tube that contains the withered body of Martin Hudson. She looks up, briefly, as I come in, says, "Oh. Hi," and resumes her contemplation of the corpse.
I stand beside her, silently.
After a while, Ronnie says, "He never liked me, you know. Martin. He thought I was too young, thought he should have got the centre seat himself... oh, he never said it, but I knew. I knew."
"I suppose we can't all be lucky with our execs," I say.
Ronnie turns to me with a funny look on her face. "Mmm, yeah," she says, and falls silent again.
Another long pause. "Have you figured it all out yet?" I ask.
"No. Yes. Sort of." Ronnie shakes her head. "There was something inside the Rift, that much I get. It was an extra-temporal intelligence, something like the Bajoran Prophets, fair enough, it would pretty much have to be, living in a temporal anomaly, right? Dear God," she adds, "don't let the Bajorans know you've killed something like one of their Prophets. You'll never hear the end of it, and your ears will be black and blue."
"They're blue already," I point out.
"Whatever. Why are Bajoran religious rites so like Ferengi oomox? - Don't answer that."
"The Rift entity," I say, "somehow attached itself to a human being."
"It needed a human mind," says Ronnie, "to make sense of linear time. I think. And the whole business with the tellurium compound... it needed some specific deformations of normal spacetime to stay in this reality. That's what I guess, anyway. The warp physicists can have a field day working out all the details. That's what we pay them for." She shakes her head. "And, somehow, it wasn't enough. The creature needed something more, something else, to keep its anchor in the real world."
"Being extra-temporal," I say, "it could already see the point at which the - anchor - would fail. A crisis point in its own timeline."
"Yeah. And it needed someone else who'd been through the Rift. And... I might very well be the last one left. Tallasa and Saval and the others wouldn't count, we broke the darn Rift on our last attempt. That book of prophecy even said as much."
"So that must have been what Q meant -"
"When she said it was all about me, yeah." Ronnie scratches irritably at the skin by her Borg implant. "Except it wasn't all about me, was it? Turns out I was just the side show, distracting the beastie while you and Buxton went in through its back door and threw the ring into Mount Doom. Sneaky little hobbitses."
"Um, what?"
"Oh, look it up later. Point is, Q was - well, I don't know if she was lying, exactly, but she wasn't telling the truth the way I'd understand it."
"Q never does."
"Yeah." Ronnie sighs noisily. "Other stuff I don't understand. How did it affect Two of Twelve? Did the spatial distortions screw up my Borg neural circuits, or what?"
"Is she -?"
"Oh, back to normal. Now. Maybe a bit quieter. It's coming to something, though, when I've got a voice in my head telling me to go and get myself assimilated, and it's a relief to hear it."
I say nothing.
"And another thing," Ronnie goes on. "The bits of stuff out of my past. Why? Was it Martin, influencing the thing, trying to send me a warning? Or the thing itself, trying to bait me, trying to make some sort of mystery it knew I couldn't resist? Or both? Or maybe neither - some sort of communication, in a way we couldn't understand. Wuther-quotle-glug."
"Um, the translator didn't get that last part."
"Wasn't meant to. That's the point. Entities with no point of correlation with our intelligence, so everything they say is just... wuther-quotle-glug. Universal translators are all very well, provided you're all from the same universe to begin with." She shakes her head.
"Martin Hudson wasn't from another universe," I say.
"No. No. Just an ordinary guy, Martin."
"So what did he mean? When he said the other one was cleverer?"
Ronnie stares at the corpse in the stasis tube. Chronologically, I remember, she is two hundred and eighty years old. Just at this moment, she looks it. When she speaks, her voice is quiet and hollow.
"Wish I knew, kiddo. I wish I knew."
No comments:
Post a Comment