Ronnie Grau is uncharacteristically quiet as she follows me back to the transporter room. Perhaps it is the presence of Thyvesh that quells her, as he shambles beside us. It is enough to disturb me, I know.
Thyvesh. My oldest surviving friend, if I have friends.... The Suliban augment has stayed in hiding for years, occasionally calling for meetings, more often sending me information that he has gleaned with his - vision. It has been enough help for me to carve out a substantial career for myself with Republic Intelligence... and to help the Republic itself, in the desperate struggles that have taken place.
But Thyvesh has always remained hidden, in the background. Until now. Until... whatever happened at Priyanapari... appears to be happening again.
So, we are a silent trio, until we are crossing the main concourse on our way to the transporters. Then Ronnie asks, directly, "So what was the big secret at Priyanapari?"
"You never saw it," said Thyvesh. I do not know if it is a question or a statement. Perhaps, neither does he.
"I don't know what I saw," says Ronnie. "Let's face it, my memory could be rewritten at any moment, couldn't it? I know I remember the stuff that I told you, but -" She shrugs. "Someone bobbles something, somewhere in the past... and my memories of that past would change to match, wouldn't they?"
Thyvesh laughs. "Welcome to my world," he says.
"But it's not your world, is it?" says Ronnie. "The difference is, you remember the alternate timelines. Your memories may be jumbled up, but they're not... subject to editing."
"Ah. Not entirely. I do not see everything." Thyvesh slaps the side of his head. "The universe is very big, you know. It won't all fit in. And what I do see... is sometimes... scrambled. Not easy to interpret."
"I guess not," says Ronnie. "So is that why you won't answer my question?"
"Ah." Thyvesh stops in his tracks, his head hanging. He seems to think, and when he speaks, it is only after some internal struggle. "There are at least three possible time tracks for Priyanapari. In one of them, the system is empty and safe. In another, there is a weapon there, one which can unmake time itself. In yet another, there is...." He shakes his head. "Something much worse."
For the first time, I speak, addressing Ronnie. "Which do you remember?" I ask.
Ronnie looks at me, very sharply. I remind myself not to discount the intelligence inside her mutilated and eccentric head. "I wish I knew," she says. "I didn't see everything. And what I did see is... optional, it seems. Conditional. That's why I'm asking."
"Clear answers. Yes," says Thyvesh. "Clear answers, always valuable, much to be prized. It's unfortunate that they're also impossible.... We should go," he says to me.
Ronnie sighs. "Good luck," she mutters.
"You seem perturbed," I say.
"Well, it's the existential uncertainty," says Ronnie, "it gets to me. Also," she adds in sour tones, "the Temporal Prime Directive."
"What about it?" I ask, though I know the answer already.
"T'Mev and her blonde chum have already started their temporal incursion, right?" says Ronnie. "They are in the past, now... if 'now' is the right word. Anyway. They could be going to the Stygmalian Rift, couldn't they, with the chronometric beam Saval worked out, to shut it down... and they could be beaming T'Pia's counter-frequency at me, the one that pulled the Rift entity out of my head. It could all be shut down, way back, a hundred and fifty years ago... no Rift entity, no time warps, no Siohonin invasion, no massacres in the name of Sebreac Tharr...."
"And you would have been dead for a hundred years, at least, when you were urgently needed to defend Andoria from the Hegemony," I point out.
"Point," says Ronnie. She sighs. "That's the trouble with meddling in time, isn't it? You can't cherry-pick the good bits." She shoots a hard glance at Thyvesh. "Can you?"
Thyvesh's voice is as bleak as hers. "If I could choose my life," he says, "do you think I would have chosen this?"
"All right," says Ronnie, "so, we've all got to play the cards we're dealt... know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run. All right. Well, you two make damn sure you know when to run... and try and leave my personal deck in some order I'll recognize, will you?" And without waiting for an answer, she turns and stalks away.
---
I see Thyvesh settled into the guest quarters, and then I go to the bridge.
Everyone stares at me when I walk in. I have changed my clothes, and am wearing the black uniform with gold trim which I affect when I wish to show determination. My crew, who know me, know that uniform means trouble ahead. I see Subcommander Aitra's face, already careworn, sprout new worry lines as he sees me... Zdanruvruk, the Reman science officer, eyes me narrowly... Ril'ell, the waifish tactical officer, rolls her eyes... even the android, Ruby, raises an eyebrow and purses her lips slightly.
"Progress?" I ask.
"Course set for Priyanapari," Aitra reports. "Standard cruising speed only."
The adapted battle cruiser Messalina has a bizarre configuration, like a hollow crown of thorns wrapped around the pulsing green glow of a Borg warp core... she can attain high speeds using the subtranswarp drive, but this time she is staying at conventional warp speeds. Because she must allow her consort to keep pace.
"What of the Virgo?" I ask.
"Commander Teadoursi reports all systems in readiness," Ruby says. "Temporal shielding has been extended and synchronized with our warp field." She calls up an image on the screen. "The Virgo is... as you see, sir."
T'Mev's ship - commanded by her Rigelian exec while she herself is away in the past - is an elegant scarlet shape, like the calyx of some exotic flower. The captured and converted Na'kuhl science vessel has temporal technology, including the temporal shields that would answer some of Ronnie Grau's concerns... subquantum chroniton signature buffers that can support the details of one timeline while a ship, or an individual, is part of another. Truth be told, I am unsure how they work. Technically, some of this technology has not yet been invented....
But as long as it works, now, I suppose I need not be concerned. "ETA at Priyanapari?" I ask.
"Eight hours at current speed," says Aitra.
Messalina and Virgo have passed through the Federation's network of transwarp gates, which includes a secondary hub near the now-disused K-22 station. We have a clear run at Priyanapari, now... and I can only speculate as to what we may find when we reach it.
I am not the only one who is speculating. "Sir," asks Aitra, "what do you expect to find there?" He is one of the few who know there is - or was - something of significance in that system.
"Truthfully," I say, "I have no idea. I have been there before - with Thyvesh - and, at that time, I performed some kind of... temporal intervention. But I had no temporal shielding, at the time. So... whatever I did, it cancelled out the whole timeline - including whatever incident provoked the intervention in the first place."
Aitra looks baffled for a moment. "Thyvesh," he says. "Would he know?"
I shake my head. "Thyvesh sees many alternative futures and pasts," I say. "But he cannot now say which possible past was real before we changed it. All the possibilities - as I understand it - are equally unreal."
"Oh," says Aitra. He looks, if anything, more baffled.
I can hardly blame him.
---
I should sleep, but I cannot. I try to lose myself in details, the minor administrative trivia of running a starship... but I am continually distracted by the approaching star in the centre of the viewscreen.
Priyanapari. An obscure name in some local star catalogue. Also, the name given to the one marginally habitable planet out of six. A class L world, with considerable vulcanism, as if it were much younger than its parent star's age would suggest.... How much interference has there been, to the timelines around Priyanapari?
Priyanapari. I came here, once... and then, I did not. Thyvesh warned me to stay away. He told me the bare bones of the story, claimed that it was all that he could tell me... and he said that he owed me a debt. One I have been collecting on, ever since. But I do not know - cannot know - what it was I did for him.
Do I, now, have to do it all over again? Or is it a different threat that I face?
Questions with no answers. And the star swells and brightens on the viewscreen, until it is no longer a star, but a sun, and I feel the faint shudder as Messalina drops out of warp.
"Commencing standard system-wide sensor sweep," says Zdanruvruk. The elegant scarlet shape of the Virgo drifts slowly across the screen. "Receiving telemetry from our consort," Zdan adds with a grunt. "They've got some pretty fancy chronometric devices... they'd need them, of course."
"Naturally," I say. "Tell me when you have readings on the planet. Let's know what we have to deal with."
"Our arrival in-system was on target," Aitra says. "We're about three million kilometres from the habitable planet."
Zdan grunts again. "Not that habitable - I'm not seeing much in the way of life signs." He leans forward, hunching his shoulders. "That -" He raises his head, and his forbidding Reman features are creased into a scowl. "That can't be right."
"What is it?" I ask.
"These readings -" Zdan waves an exasperated hand over the science console. "This doesn't make sense."
"Three million kilometres?" I ask. Aitra nods. "Well, then. Let's see the problem. Give me a visual."
A featureless disc appears in the viewscreen. "Magnify," I order.
The disc becomes larger... and is still featureless. Zdan is muttering over his instruments. I frown. The planet is showing... as a perfect circle, perfectly white, perfectly unblemished.
"That's..." Zdan swallows loudly. "That's not a planet, sir."
I turn to him. "Then what is it?"
"If I'm reading the feed from the Virgo correctly.... It's a temporal anomaly. A stable anti-chroniton rift, where the planet ought to be." Zdan shakes his head. "Almost stable. It's growing. Incredibly slowly - no more than a centimetre a second - but growing."
"You are saying," I say slowly, "that the planet has been consumed by a rift in time."
"That's... what it looks like, sir," says Zdan.
I nod. I refuse to be shocked. Whatever we found here, it was going to be... disturbing. In one way or another.
"What are we going to do, sir?" asks Aitra.
"Remain calm," I say. "Consult with the Virgo... see what, if anything, needs to be done. A centimetre a second," I add, reflectively. "The universe is expanding faster than that... I am not sure that it constitutes a problem."
Every head on the bridge turns towards me. "Thyvesh spoke of a weapon that destroys time," I say, "and also of something much worse. That -" I point to the featureless circle on the screen "- may, in fact, constitute some sort of victory."
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