Do Comets Dream? Part 8

Thanet.

On the bridge, a welter of information and images was being relayed as Captain Picard watched, and his crew a.n.a.lyzed.

Tanith was a beautiful world and, apart from its strange orbit around a double-star system, could have been the twin of Thanet. But Tanith's civilization was no more. Images of wasteland came flooding in from the ship's computer as it verified Data's coordinates.

There were mountains sheared into plateaus. Pockmarks of bombardments. Tanith's atmosphere, once rich in oxygen, had become a soup of poisons. And the destruction was clearly man-made. Tanith's death had been caused by a hail of comets-comets just like the one that was now heading toward Thanet. Comets that contained many types of destructive weapons, from primitive thermonuclear devices to viruses to the biological wherewithal for a kind of reverse terraforming-the metamorphosis of a friendly world into an uninhabitable deathworld.

The horror of the present contrasted with the images that were being gleaned from Data's transmission and which were appearing on screen. They were not images of the pinpoint clarity that would be produced by a Federation computer, but blurred sometimes, and sometimes fringed with a prismatic field; the mechanisms of image retrieval and transmission were clearly quite alien, and had the flavor of a biological origin.

Meanwhile, there was Deanna Troi. She and the girl had already beamed aboard the comet, and a third series of images was being transmitted now, so that the bridge's viewing area was now a jigsaw puzzle, the pictures complementing each other, contradicting each other too, sometimes.

Picard watched as Deanna and Kio inched their way down the narrow corridor, their footsteps spiraling with the changing gravity. There was something about those walkways that reminded him of his own subjugation to the Borg-the dehumanizing horror of it lived inside him, would always be with him. Even in his dreams of childhood, the idyllic vineyards of his youth, there was always a machine. Watching. Never letting go. What that child must be going through, Picard thought.

The innermost chamber irised open, and he saw the child.

I cannot weep. I cannot feel. I have no eyes. I have no limbs.

But I see eyes. But I see limbs.

They do not exist.

I see a young boy floating. I see limbs. I see eyes. I see a tear roll down his cheek. Isn't that you?

Limbs? Eyes? Flesh is an illusion.

Deanna wept.

Data watched the sailors say their good-byes and leave the pier. A robot, hovering in the air, sang military slogans as it swam past them, pa.s.sing out flyers that appeared to advertise a military draft.

Thanetians are your foes, the robot sang. The only good Thanetian is a dead Thanetian.

He found that with a bit of selective bank switching, he was able to read the thoughts of those characters in the drama whose bodies were also inhabited by the Enterprise crew members from the distant future and the members of the research team-Adam, Ta.r.s.es, Halliday, and all the others were functioning as a sort of mirroring algorithm, al lowing the information expressed in the form of human thoughts to be read as word-based data.

Now he was in Artas's mind: Gotta hurry home. Where's Mother? The big day coming soon. So much excitement. So much riding on it all. Don't want to disappoint her. ...

Hal-Therion sar-Bensu: Danger to the world. The boy is our great hope -perhaps our greatest.

She was standing by the water's edge, blowing the boy a kiss, a beautiful dark-haired woman with curiously intense eyes- "Mother!" Artas cried out.

Data's gaze followed the boy. His mother, he realized, was being played in this simulation by another member of the Enterprise.

Artas ran through the crowd into the arms of Counselor Deanna Troi, laughing as she embraced him.

A young girl stood beside Deanna, a girl with the face of Kio sar-Bensu; behind her, three fierce-looking women stood guard. She was watching the longship intently, waiting for someone. When Indhuon appeared behind his younger brother, she waved at him; but he averted his eyes.

"I'm in," Deanna said, "and seeing the ancient planet through the eyes of-the boy's mother. Appropriate enough."

Picard listened, and behind him the amba.s.sador sat, consternation written all over his face as the mult.i.tasking viewscreens alternated between the viewpoints of various characters, all the images linked through the central conduit of Data's mind. It was almost as though Data's consciousness was editing the raw footage of these people's lives into a continuous story with all the excitement of a well-written holodeck program. The other crew members, too, sat riveted by the story.

"Now I'm in," came Kio sar-Bensu's excited voice. "Oh-this is beautiful-like a dream version of our world."

"Witchcraft! Heresy!" the amba.s.sador muttered.

"I'm someone very important here," Kio continued. "This woman here is the mother of Artas, a boy everyone is calling 'The Great Hope.' But even she defers to me. And my father is-look, there he comes!"

They saw him on screen now-wearing the face and somatype of Dr. Robert Halliday, but the robes of a very high official indeed- "A Shivan-Jalar!" the amba.s.sador gasped. "They exist only in our mythology-why, the High Shivantak himself communicates with the spirit of one, within the holiest of holies, which only he can enter."

"So Thanet had a sister world once, a planet not too far away, who shared its culture," Picard said.

La Forge continued to report the results of his research. "Tanith," he said, "doesn't exist. What's left is uninhabitable. The atmosphere is stripped away mostly, what's left is poisonous gases, the oceans evaporated, the continents pockmarked-I'll put it on screen."

A collage of a devastated planet appeared next to the lush image of the seaport.

"Can that really be the same world?" Picard said.

"If those coordinates are accurate-or even relatively accurate," La Forge said. "There's no other world, dead or alive, that falls into that range."

Amba.s.sador Straun was struggling to frame a question. "H-How-long ago-are the images we're seeing?"

"The ruined world is now, Your Excellency," La Forge said. "The living images you're seeing are-five thousand or so years-I can get an exact fix based on the positions of key stars in the simulated evening sky-five thousand point zero seven years old."

It hit them all at once. Picard saw that they all knew it. No one had to say it aloud.

The people in those images had only a few days to live.

Chapter Seventeen.

Angels ARTAS AWOKE. Today was the day he'd been waiting for. He was the fastest, the brightest. He had pa.s.sed the penultimate test, and there was only one remaining.

I am the one, he thought, who will redeem my people.

Tanith's striated sunlight streamed in through the screens. He rubbed his eyes. Yesterday was wonderful, he thought. I rode in the Great Shivan-Jalar's private barge. His Mult.i.tude actually smiled at me-actually shared with me apiece of his private candy! He sat up, looked at himself in the mirror-pool at the foot of his bed, preening in front of his image. He was twelve years old, and by the end of the day he hoped to win a great prize-the privilege of never seeing his thirteenth birthday.

Then-something strange happened.

The mirror pool began to shift and swirl. A kind of smoke started spiraling from it, and the reflective mirrorstuff started shimmering. Grumbling, he reached down to see if he could adjust the settings.

And then, suddenly, there was another boy in the room, stepping out of the mirror pool. He wore alien clothing, no tunic but a double-legged second skin that hugged his legs, and an upper covering of the same stretch fabric. Embarra.s.sed that he was not yet dressed, Artas quickly donned his tunic, with its clan markings, which told everyone who he was and let those who must defer to him know their place.

The alien boy had no clan markings at all.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

The boy's lips moved, but nothing came out. He seemed to be struggling with a shiny handheld device. His hands were not webbed.

"Is this the final test that I'm supposed to undergo?" Artas asked.

No answer.

"Are you a haunting, sent by one of my rivals?" Again, no response. Artas knew that many of the boys he grew up with were now his enemies, so coveted was the position of great thanopstru.

"Finally!" the other boy said. "I got a fix on the translation. This dialect of yours is Thanetian, but it's a very ancient form. I couldn't get it to congruency right away."

"You're a Thanetian?" Artas gaped. This was the ultimate horror-the enemy materializing in his very bedroom on the day of the final test!

"No, no. I'm Adam Halliday. I-"

Artas flung himself at the stranger, pummeling him with all the strength his boyish frame could muster. But there was nothing there-the alien boy was insubstantial. Artas found himself banging his fist against the wall.

"Are you all right, Artas?" came a voice. His mother.

Adam put a finger to his lips.

"I-I think so, Mother," the boy said.

"I come from the Federation," said Adam.

"You're just a dream, a figment of my imagination. They said I would dream dreams. It's in the Panvivlion, you know. Why am I telling you this? The Panvivlion probably sent you. You're my quest vision. Naturally. I've got the race this afternoon."

"No, listen," Adam said. "I'm a tourist, sort of. I'm eavesdropping on you, five thousand years in the future. You've already become the great thanopstru and-"

"So I will win the race?" Artas could hardly contain his excitement. "I'll be chosen? Everyone tells me I will, but-"

"C'mon, Artas," Adam said. "Listen. A bunch of us are watching your world through your eyes and the eyes of people around us. But no one here knows it. It's a computer simulation that approximates reality-I think. But this old Tanithian technology's pretty advanced, so I don't know whether what I'm seeing is really happening or if it's really well simulated. Thing is, no one except you can see any of us."

"Why are you here?"

"I don't know. Because I can't help it. I'm sitting up here in a holodeck sort of a chamber inside a mechanical sea dragon, and I'm watching all this stuff happen to you people, and I just had to reach out. I don't want you to die. Look, I'm having the same problems as you up here in the far future. I have this strong intuition thing that scares off everyone-except that android guy I met a day or two ago, he's hard to scare 'cause he doesn't have any emotions at all. You're kind of like me. And you're going to throw away your life." Artas suddenly knew who this person was. He shuddered. "You're Saraniu," he said. "The tempter." Artas thought of calling Indhuon, sleeping only a room divider away, but did not want to wake his brother, who had important things of his own to think about.

"Think, Artas!" Adam cried. "I'm a kid like you, and I know what it's like to be different, to be lonely. Look, if I was working for the Federation I wouldn't be talking to you like this-I'd have to follow the Prime Directive, I couldn't tell you anything about my world, my future-"

He was speaking in riddles again. This was a nonsensical vision, something you'd get from downing too much peftifesht wine.

"Go away," Artas said.

The image was suddenly gone, and the boy was gazing once more at his own reflection.

Taruna esSarion was on the verge of tears; she had often felt like crying in the past few days. She was proud of her son, of course, but she also knew that before he was sent into the sky in glory to wreak the ultimate vengeance on the Thanetians, he would first have to- Enter the deviving chamber.

That was how the priests referred to it. The deviving chamber. Artas would have his life functions, one by one, turned off. Finally, only the brain would be functioning, and its neurons would be fused into the artificial nervous system of the thanopstru.

And her son would become more than just a person-he would become the savior of the world.

Artas walked into the dining area of the small living quarters they shared on the four hundredth floor of the prost.i.tutes' quarter of the city. How frail he seemed. In an hour would come the final test. She knew he would win, he had to win-but at the same time she hoped against hope that he would fail.

"Do you want to eat, son?" she asked him.

Her other son, Indhuon, was still resting; but he too would have important work to do, if Artas won the position of thanopstru. Indhuon would be one of the last people with whom Artas would interact, as he descended into the cylinder of devivement in order to become one with the Deathbringer.

He nodded. She poured him a helping of the thin gruel and crushed bread that was the prescribed morning meal for a son of a woman of the pleasure caste, a woman who had no prospects in life unless her offspring could attain admission to the guild of weaponry-and great prospects if her son had the gifts that could elevate him to the status of thanopstru, the star of death.

So much terror, so much hope tied up in this one frail child-she resisted the impulse to hug him hard to her, to crush him against her body; she knew that he would not want that today. He needed to think of otherworldly things, to ready his mind for the great test.

They looked at each other, mother and son.

And then she couldn't resist any more. She took him in her arms. He did not resist, but part of him seemed aloof. She did not weep, and nor did he, but she knew they were both clenching back tears.

Then it happened.

Looking out of the high window, over the sparkling bay whose water glittered in the twin sunlight, she saw a mist form-swirl-condense into the shape of a woman. A woman in a strange, mannish uniform, without a single caste-mark at all, unless it was that peculiar emblem on her breast.

How was she floating there? There was no balcony.

Taruna was about to speak, but the alien put a finger on her lips.

"I'm not really here," she said. "The boy cannot see me. I'm just a voice inside your mind, a voice from the future."

"Are you a-" Taruna hesitated to use the word angel. Angels belonged to an ancient past. "Are you a messenger?" she asked.

"No," she said. "I am only here to observe."

"A guardian angel," Taruna whispered. "One who watches."

"I didn't mean to intrude. I'm just a series of neural impulses that somehow managed to skip through subs.p.a.ce into your mind-I'll try to hide. I was released because of the flood of emotion when you-when you hugged Artas."

"Who, what are you?"

"I am Counselor Deanna Troi," she said. She was strangely beautiful, with her ringlets of dark hair and her-unwebbed hands-a sure sign that she was not of this world.

"What caste is Counselor?" Taruna said in her mind, bewildered. "I do not understand."

Troi said, "You love him so much. Don't stop loving him. Your love is what I felt, anchoring him to the real world, when I stood in the dark chamber at the heart of the comet and saw your son-"

"You saw him? In a vision?"

"No-in the flesh-" and Taruna saw, with aching clarity, a vision of her son, naked, frail, floating in a nutrient liquid behind a clear wall-and a single tear welling up in one eye-and all around him machines, cold and dead-and though she had always known what the heart of a thanopstru must contain, she had never seen it, could never have seen it-a terrible grief stabbed at her.

"I wish I could stop history," said the woman who called herself Counselor. "But in your world I'm only a ghost-I have no reality at all."

"You're a devil creature, a tempter, I know it now," Taruna said. "Don't tell me you saw my son in a living death-he's about to step through the paradise gate, he's about to save us all, he's going to be a martyr, he's going to be reborn as an angel.

"Artashki," she whispered, using his baby name. She thought he would wince, but instead he came back into her arms.