Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 23

But Raneed was more thoughtful. "He need not reveal himself then. If he finds such a prospect, he may return to report it, and then perhaps a separate mission may be undertaken."

"Perhaps," Kilana agreed. "But his priority must be strategic intelligence."

Rosh found this a reasonable compromise, and so did most of the others. The motion pa.s.sed: the EMH would become a spy in fluidic s.p.a.ce, authorized to look for diplomatic prospects but enjoined from revealing himself while there. If his mission was compromised, the mobile emitter would self-destruct; after all, the Doctor had other emitters and plenty of other selves to spare. It would be a relief to send a spy on such a dangerous mission without actually putting that spy's survival at risk.

Rosh only prayed that the mission would ensure the Coalition's survival as well-and that he would not have to give the order to annihilate a universe to do it.

When informed of the decision, the Doctor was adamant that his Hippocratic Oath would not permit him to engage in a mission intended to bring destruction. Kes sympathized, but managed to persuade him that if he didn't go, there would be no chance of a peaceful resolution. "All right," he eventually said. "But whatever my orders may be, I'm going there to look for a way to reverse the weapon's effects, not to enhance them. A deterrent, I can live with. And more to the point, so can they."

Kes was confident she could run interference between the Doctor and those on the council who might differ with his interpretation of the mission. After all, she was an essential part of making it work. And it was Moskelarnan, the research vessel dedicated to Moskelar Station and placed under her command for this mission, that would deliver the Doctor to fluidic s.p.a.ce. With help from Annika Hansen-now sadder and more serious than she had been-Moskelarnan's deflector array was modified to generate a resonant graviton beam calibrated to the subs.p.a.ce signature of the fluidic universe. One s.p.a.cetime orbifold later, a quantum singularity opened, its event horizon glowing blindingly white as energy poured across the differential between universes, the fluidic continuum possessing a greater energy density.

But the rift couldn't be kept open long, for fear of detection. As soon as it stabilized, Kes ordered her crew to beam in the Doctor's mobile emitter-not the tiny original which still held pride of place in Voyager's sickbay, but a bulkier Vostigye-built unit able to fit inside the torso of one of the Doctor's avatars. The hologram it now projected was that of a member of Species 8472, hopefully accurate and nondescript enough to avoid drawing attention. Once the copy of the Doctor within the emitter confirmed his arrival, Kes ordered the graviton beam reduced to minimal strength; the rift closed, but enough of a link remained to allow its quick reopening in an emergency, and to allow Kes to maintain telepathic contact with the Doctor. Though I still find it remarkable that you can read the mind of a computerized being, he sent to her. Rea.s.suring, though. Does this mean I have a soul? And if so, how many do I have?

Kes chuckled. "I'll get back to you once I figure out if I have one."

Closing her eyes, Kes could perceive what the Doctor perceived-a universe of fluid, yellow-green with bioluminescence, cloudy with density variations and microparticles, with larger specks floating through it. Everything here is biological, the Doctor reported, interpreting the readings of the emitter's built-in sensors, which had been calibrated to cope with the scattering effect of the inhabitants' bioelectric fields, though their resolution was still limited. I think those particles are a sort of plankton. Would it look odder if I tried to eat some or if I didn't?

"Is there anyone there to see you?"

I'm not sure. There are some forms moving in the distance...it's hard to make them out... She sensed annoyance. I'm thinking too much like a humanoid. I'm essentially an aquatic life-form here. Sound is more useful than sight. She sensed him boosting his audio receptors. Fascinating, he sent after a moment. This universe is pervaded with sound. Distant calls, large bodies moving...maybe some kind of currents flowing...a literal music of the spheres, do you suppose, Kes? I wonder if the 8472 have opera. Imagine a song that propagates across an entire galaxy! Although the Doctor had grown away from his former fascination with humanoid hobbies such as dance and painting, he'd retained his love of music.

"It's a lovely idea, Doctor, but about those moving forms...?"

Oh, yes. Moving my way, and fairly sizable. Wait a minute...there are smaller forms congregating around me. She could perceive them too; some of the specks were circling around him, darting in to taste his skin. Kes, I think they're antibodies of a sort! If fluidic s.p.a.ce functions like a single organism, it must have a sort of immune system. But why would a universe need defense against outside intrusion?

"It's a very dense and energetic universe," Kes answered, drawing on the expertise she'd absorbed from the cosmologists aboard ship. "Other universes might be drawn to it, with rifts forming naturally."

Or maybe it isn't all one organism. Do we really know that the fluid fills the whole thing? Maybe it just has big liquid blobs in place of galaxies.

"No, then there'd be centers of gravity pulling things toward them and they would've collapsed into solid ma.s.ses, even with the repulsive dark energy. The fluid has to be uniformly distributed."

Come to think of it, with no gravity and no solid surface, what am I doing with three legs? Or any legs? She sensed him thrashing a bit. These stubby things aren't good for swimming. My body's not very streamlined, either. She felt his concern; the big forms were drawing closer. If his emitter wasn't giving off the correct electrochemical signature...

But Kes could do nothing about that, not at this range, anyway. Instead, she concentrated on projecting the right telepathic "scent" onto him, the same sense of presence she'd gotten from her intermittent contacts with Species 8472. The approaching forms were now becoming clear as bioships of a kind, though Kes could sense a telepathic ambience to them as well, recognizing that they were more animals than vessels. They didn't seem to have any of the tripeds aboard. But they were animals with a lethal bioelectric defense. I hope you're telling them "h.e.l.lo," the Doctor sent.

Whatever she managed to do must have been effective, for one bioship went on its way while the other pulled up alongside him, opening an orifice/hatch in invitation. "It's accepted you, Doctor. I think it's offering you a lift."

Should I go in?

"Yes. There are no other sentients aboard, so you should hurry before it decides to go on its way."

The Doctor entered just before the orifice irised shut. Inside, the bioship/animal resembled the one described in Chakotay's reports from that first 8472 contact, except for the lack of gravity and the presence of the pervasive fluid throughout its interior. The Doctor drifted backward as it accelerated, so he grabbed for a handhold on what looked like a set of interior vertebrae. Once its motion stabilized, he looked around. No windows. How do I see where I'm going?

"Try touching an outer wall and getting a sound picture."

He did the best he could, but it only gave a vague sense. Kes broadened her perceptions, taking in his full surroundings. "See that opening in the wall with the luminescent tubes running through it? I think it's a neural interface. Try grasping it."

He did so, with no result. I feel silly. I'm a hologram-I don't have any nerves.

"Be patient." Reaching her mind toward the interface, she linked with its perceptions and fed them to the Doctor. Now they both had a full sensory experience of the journey as the bioship perceived it, primarily with sound, scent, and electrical impulse, with vision as a secondary component. It had monochromatic color perception, since all the light in this universe was yellow-green.

But the creature's other senses gave her a richer perception of fluidic s.p.a.ce, and she committed it to her eidetic memory for later a.n.a.lysis, hoping it would provide some physical insight allowing a less destructive defense to be devised. From this perspective, it was a richer, more complex environment, its fluid divided into distinct currents and convection cells like an ocean's, though Kes was unsure what could drive such currents without gravity. Perhaps thermal differentials, with some parts of fluidic s.p.a.ce being hotter and more energetic than others. There were no stars here; the energy that warmed this universe was the residue of its Big Bang, a cosmic background radiation a hundred times hotter than that of Kes's universe, since fluidic s.p.a.ce had expanded so much less, attenuating the heat of its birth to a far lesser degree. But some parts must be warmer than others, as the activity of life generated and transferred heat.

This is extraordinary, the Doctor said. The different convection cells seem to host different types of organisms. There seems to be a correlation between the shape and size of the convection cells and the organisms they host. And the currents between them appear to be delivering nutrients, removing waste. It's almost like the organs and blood vessels of a body, but divided by flow patterns and density differentials rather than walls of tissue.

Soon it became evident that the bioship was heading for a particular convection cell, moving sideways in the current flow so as to pa.s.s across the interface and be shunted into the cell. Inside the cell was a dense concentration of large structures; Kes had to remind herself that they were alive, for they were immense, the size that living things could reach only in weightless conditions. But she sensed acoustically that they were hollow, and inhabited.

"Doctor, it's a city! I'm sensing hundreds of thousands of Species 8472, and other creatures of various types."

I'm not sure if I'd call it a city or a biome. It's almost like a school of immense fish. Indeed, the whole agglomeration of creatures moved in a stately gavotte, independent ent.i.ties cooperating as a single unit. Smaller forms moved among the large ones, interacting, exchanging who knew what, and still smaller forms pa.s.sed between them. The bioship spiraled in to become part of this unending dance, and opened its orifice once it was immersed.

"You should probably get out now, Doctor," Kes sent, "before the rush-hour crowd climbs aboard."

I was tired of being a straphanger anyway, he replied, letting go of the interface conduits and pulling himself along the wall until he reached the exit.

Through the Doctor's senses, Kes saw thousands of 8472 swimming through the motile city. Except they weren't the 8472 she was familiar with, the kind the Doctor was emulating. Instead of heavy tripedal legs, they bore three large, ribbed, triangular fins on their lower bodies. Their hands were much like the Doctor's, except webbed. The rear plates of their heads were swept back, better able to accommodate the tilting of their heads perpendicular to their bodies as they swam. Now, that design makes sense for this environment! the Doctor said. So what am I, and why am I so different?

"They feel the same telepathically," Kes said. "They're the same species, in mind, at least."

Could the tripeds we've encountered have been specially bred to function in our environment? Am I a soldier home from the war instead of just a nondescript Scourge on the street?

"It's possible. This could complicate things."

You're telling me. Uh-oh...I've got company. Some 8472-or 8472 and a half-are swimming this way.

"Just act natural."

I'm an artificial intelligence holographically disguised as a three-legged alien and swimming in a parallel universe made of lime gelatin! How do you define "natural"?

"Calm, Doctor. Remember, you're in no danger."

The rest of me isn't. But this little part of me would like to return to the whole intact! If you were a finger, would you be sanguine about getting amputated?

"I'm trying to communicate with them. Just try to play along."

She sent recognition and query to the swimmers. They responded without words, but in the tone of security guards demanding identification. "They want you to stay where you are."

With this anatomy, that's the easy part!

One swimmer had a smaller organism attached to it like a lamprey. It pulled it off and extended it toward the Doctor. "Don't let it touch you!" Kes called. His holographic skin might not have whatever chemical or thermal properties the organic device would test for. Better an unidentified fugitive than a confirmed Coalition spy.

The Doctor pulled back and began dog-paddling away at his best speed, such as it was. He headed for the nearest crowd of finned 8472. If I can get lost in the crowd, I can change to look like one of them.

"It's worth a try."

But something big suddenly swam into his path, a flat, translucent creature like a cross between a manta and a jellyfish. The Doctor looked around wildly for another way out, but the creature began to fold itself around him, reaching out tendrils to grasp him. "Open the rift!" Kes called to her crew, praying he was still in transporter range.

But then she felt the shock that went through his mobile emitter as the tendrils touched him. "Doctor!" she called. But his presence was no longer in her mind.

Something else was, however. It was the 8472, probing back along the telepathic signal she was sending, trying to get a taste of what was on the other end.

Kes shut them out with her mental shields and sighed, ordering her crew to activate the emitter's self-destruct system. "No contact," her tactical officer reported. "I can't confirm self-destruct."

"Shut down the deflector array," Kes ordered, resigned. There was no choice but to abandon the mission and hope the destruct command had gone through. Kes tried to take comfort in the knowledge that the Doctor's core consciousness was still intact. But it was this facet of him she'd been linked with, this one who'd feared destruction. This one that she had to condemn to his fate. She would have to live with that.

But could the Coalition live with the consequences of his exposure?

12.

With the capture of the Doctor's avatar, the hardliners began pushing for immediate construction of the subs.p.a.ce field generator to collapse fluidic s.p.a.ce. Janeway and Kes, with help from Chakotay, did their best to talk the council out of it, but Kilana argued that time was too short to wait for a less apocalyptic solution. Her eloquence, and her carefully calculated appearance of vulnerability and fear, carried the day in favor of constructing the doomsday device.

Their urgency seemed to be borne out when a quantum singularity was detected on the outskirts of the Vostigye home system. Only one ship emerged, but the destructive power of even a single bioship was well known, and thus a fleet was sent to intercept, with Voyager as its flagship.

But instead of engaging them in battle, the vessel came to a stop as the fleet approached. "Stand ready," Janeway ordered the other captains. "There's no telling what they intend."

"Captain!" Surt reported from ops. "They're hailing us. Voyager specifically."

Janeway frowned, trading a look with Harry. "They've never tried communicating other than telepathically before," her first officer said.

"Maybe they wanted to be sure we heard their ultimatum." Janeway rose from her chair, steeling herself. "On-screen."

Her composure wavered when the visage of the Doctor appeared, standing in what looked like the interior of a bioship. Unlike the ones described in Kes's report, this one seemed to have a gaseous atmosphere and artificial gravity. "Ah. There you are, Captain. I'm happy to report that there's no need to launch the rescue mission you were undoubtedly planning to undertake," he said.

It certainly seemed unlikely that Species 8472 could fake that supremely sarcastic tone. Still, Janeway had to be sure. "Bridge to sickbay."

"Sickbay here, Captain," came a voice identical to the one from the bioship. "I know what you're going to ask, and you needn't worry. I'm receiving feedback from him already, and I can confirm that he really is me." He paused. "Oh, my. I've just synchronized memories with him, and he's got quite a little surprise for you."

On the screen, the other Doctor rolled his eyes. "Just like me to steal my own thunder. I was hoping to ease into this, but...Captain Janeway, there's someone here I'd like you to meet."

The Doctor stepped aside and another figure came into view-a wizened figure she'd never expected to see again in her lifetime, certainly not on this side of the galaxy. The incongruity of his presence was so great that she could not even bring herself to say his name. "Harry...are you seeing it too?"

Harry was on his feet now as well, gaping. "Groundskeeper Boothby?"

"Don't let your mouth hang open like that, son," the gaunt, elderly man said. "You'll let flies in. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way." His eyes shifted to Janeway. "And before you ask, Captain, I'm not the same Boothby you knew back at Starfleet Academy. But then, you're not exactly the same Kathryn Janeway I met a little while back. Though I'm sure you still like roses just as much."

A chill ran through her. At the Academy, the real Boothby had often given her fresh roses for her quarters. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"It's a long story. And an embarra.s.sing one for my people, I'm afraid. That's right," he told her. "I'm a member of what you call Species 8472." His gruff features took on an impish grin, so like the genuine article. "Quite a trick, isn't it?"

The story told by Boothby-there was nothing else to call him-was remarkable. Apparently, the immensely complex genome of Species 8472 enabled them to alter their bodies in almost any way with the right chemical and enzymatic therapy. The soldiers sent to battle in the Delta Quadrant had been altered to function in environments with air and gravity, mimicking the conditions aboard the Borg vessels that had invaded their s.p.a.ce, and their ships had been modified to match. This was why the tripeds encountered in the past seemed so mismatched to their fluidic environment.

But their transformational capabilities had served another purpose as well. Boothby had been part of a project to infiltrate Starfleet Headquarters on Earth-apparently Species 8472's reach extended even that far-to conduct reconnaissance and evaluate the threat humanity posed to them. Essentially it had been similar to the Doctor's spy mission, but on a larger scale, with hundreds of tripeds undergoing transformation into Alpha Quadrant species. They had impersonated everything from cadets to admirals, but he, their leader, had chosen the form of the man who had tended the grounds of Headquarters and Academy alike for generations-a man at once inconspicuous and universally trusted, the ideal infiltrator. (It made Janeway wonder how many secrets the real Boothby must have accrued over the decades.) The astonishing thing was that, according to the ersatz Boothby, this infiltration had been in response to an attack that Voyager had launched on Species 8472 in conjunction with the Borg-even though Voyager had never formed such an alliance.

"He's saying he comes from an alternate timeline?" Kyric Rosh asked Janeway as they entered Voyager's observation lounge, where Harry, the Doctor, and the 8472 emissary waited. The councillor had come aboard to debrief the visitor, not willing to risk letting an 8472 into Kosnelye but willing to take a personal risk in the hopes that Boothby's professed mission of peace was genuine.

"Actually I'm from another universe," the disguised emissary told him in Boothby's gravelly voice. "But last time I visited your universe-let's say I saw a different side of things. Where I come from, we only have the one timeline, but yours seem to multiply like tribbles. And that's the root of the problem."

Rosh shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm a little confused on the difference between a universe and a timeline."

"Harry, would you care to explain?" Janeway asked. She would've tried it herself, but the theory had too much in common with temporal physics, and she could do without the headache.

"Yes, Captain. Councillor Rosh." Harry rose. "Well, a parallel universe is just another place-a physical realm that's somewhere else in higher-dimensional s.p.a.ce, with its own separate laws of physics, its own separate stars and planets-or not, as the case may be," he said, nodding to Boothby, "its own distinct inhabitants and history. But an alternate timeline is just another quantum facet of our own universe. It's physically the same place, but with a different history."

Rosh was still confused, and Harry tried to clarify. "It's like...are you familiar with the Schroedinger's Cat paradox?"

"I believe the Vostigye equivalent is Kamornen's Box," Janeway interposed.

"Ah, yes. The animal that's both alive and dead."

"Essentially," Harry said. "Quantum physics says a single particle can be in multiple different states at once. A radioactive atom, say, can be both decayed and undecayed. But set up a switch so that the decay releases a poison capsule, put it in a box with a cat-and is the cat alive or dead? Or is there a way it can be both at once? The paradox is whether a cla.s.sical object like a cat can behave like a quantum particle.

"The thing Schroedinger overlooked, and Kamornen understood, is that the cat is made up of individual particles too, so it's a quantum object just the same. Each of its particles reacts to both states of the radioactive atom, and is in two simultaneous states as a result.

"But for a while, the question was: how do all the different states of those different particles add up to the reality we see? One theory was that they all averaged out to a single large-scale, cla.s.sical state, similar to the way the individual motions of the atoms in the air around us average out to a single temperature and pressure. Supposedly, that's what makes a multiple quantum state seem to collapse into one when you measure it, the cat to be either alive or dead when you open the box-the particle's state doesn't really collapse, but the measuring device or the cat averages out to just one state, so it looks like the particle is in either one state or the other.

"But the other theory was that the different states aligned and reinforced each other in what's called a coherent superposition, so that the whole macroscopic system-the atom, the poison, the cat, the scientist, and everything that interacted with them-ended up in two distinct states at once, each isolated from the other, effectively splitting the universe into two different realities: both made up of the same particles, but experiencing different histories from that point on. When you measure a particle, it still looks like it collapsed into one state, because you can only see the state that aligns with the timeline you're in. One copy of you sees a live cat, the other sees a dead cat.

"Now, the problem with the second idea," Harry went on, "was that it's hard to get so many particles' quantum states to align like that. You can create a coherent superposition made of a large ensemble of particles, but just the general jostling it receives from the particles around it can cause that coherence to break up and collapse into a single average state. Like a sand castle in a sandstorm-you can build the sand into two or more different towers, but when the storm hits, they'll collapse and blend together again. Now try doing it with a whole universe's worth of particles."

Rosh frowned. "But we know alternate timelines do exist."

"That's right. We now know that when a coherent superposition forms, the two macroscopic states shift into slightly different subs.p.a.ce phases, giving them enough stability to survive as separate realities. That's also how two temporal copies of the same person can interact as though they were physically separate beings-essentially the subs.p.a.ce phase shift splits their bodies' quantum waveforms in two."

Rosh held up his hands. "This is all intriguing, but what does it have to do with Mister, uh, Boothby's presence?"

"Like Boothby said, fluidic s.p.a.ce doesn't have alternate timelines," Harry went on. "We believe it's because their universe is so much denser than ours. Any particle existing in a multiple quantum state just interacts with too many other particles right from the start. The 'sandstorm' is so heavy that you can't build the sand castle in the first place, and so the subs.p.a.ce phase shift never happens. Our universe is constantly splitting into alternate quantum states, alternate histories, but in Boothby's universe, it all averages out to a single cla.s.sical state."

"So there we were," Boothby said, "minding our own business, when a big ugly cube showed up and started talking about a.s.similating us. Naturally, we fought off the infection. And when more of them came through, we decided to take the fight out to them. Imagine our surprise when some of our troops came back-and then came back again."

"They were duplicated," Janeway clarified. "While they were in our universe, something happened that created a new timeline, splitting them into duplicate selves. But their home universe didn't undergo the same split. So both sets of duplicates returned to the same reality, shifted just enough in phase that they couldn't collapse together anymore."

"Remarkable," Rosh said.

"That wasn't the word we used for it," Boothby said. "If we normally used words, that is." He cleared his throat; no matter what, the alien remained in his Boothby character. According to what he'd told Janeway, the infiltrators had practiced their human personas so long and hard that they had become second nature to them. "The thing you have to understand is that our universe is a carefully balanced whole. We're not like you, with all these big empty voids keeping you insulated. What's bad for one part is bad for everybody. That's why we have to keep our universe pure, to fight so hard against contamination. It's the same reason your body has to kill off infections. Maybe you've got nothing personal against the germs, maybe they're ent.i.tled to live off in a pond somewhere, but once they get inside you and start to multiply, it's kill or be killed."

"And that's your species's function?" Rosh challenged. "To kill?"

Boothby threw him a sour look. "We're the brains of the outfit. Our job's to take care of the place. Tend the flowers, water the trees...trim the weeds. I guess you could say we're the groundskeepers." He smirked. "Got to be easier to say than 'Species 8472.'

"But we Groundskeepers are part of the whole, too. And it's all about the balance. We all have our own jobs to do, and we all get our fair share of the pie. A nice, neat, orderly system." He fidgeted. "Or it was, until some of us started coming back beside ourselves. Now there are too many of us. And the more your universe keeps splitting off new timelines, the worse it gets on our side. There are three, six, sometimes dozens of each individual wrestling over the same job, the same place in society, the same share of food and resources. All with the same perfectly good claim to it, since they used to be the same individual."

He fell quiet, as though he could say no more. Janeway was surprised it had been this easy for him; the first time, he could barely get the words out, and the Doctor had related most of the tale. Apparently this situation was a profound embarra.s.sment to them. They prided themselves on their strength, their fitness to defend their realm, and the weakness of being divided into conflicting selves was intolerable. "The weak will perish"-that was the telepathic message Kes had gotten from them at first contact. It had been as much a justification as a threat-they saw this universe as the source of their own weakness, and they needed to prove their strength by conquering it or else die to pave the way for a stronger copy of themselves.