Текст книги "Cathedral "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

26

Two hundred and fourteen,Joseph Sisko thought, updating his tally as he carefully made his way down the antebellum mansion’s polished hardwood staircase. One-hundred and twenty-three.

Keeping track of the numbers had become a daily ritual, one that Joseph observed every morning as soon as he realized he was awake. He had become religious about it from the beginning; it had given him something to focus on other than the procession of new aches and ailments that each new day brought. No matter that carrying the ever-increasing weight of those days threatened to crush his frail bones. He hadto count the days, dragging them with him wherever he went.

Two hundred and fourteen. One hundred and twenty-three.The first figure represented the number of days that had elapsed since his only son, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, had disappeared into that damned alien hellhole near Bajor.

The second marked the span of days since Benjamin’s only son—Joseph’s beloved grandson, Jake—had gone into the wormhole after his father, only to be swallowed up without a trace as well.

Passing through the broad atrium and into the kitchen, Joseph contemplated the sunlight that streamed in through the French windows, and yet brought him no joy. The August day—was it August already?—was already shaping up to be hot and muggy, but would surely be easier to face after he’d had his morning cup of coffee. He glanced up at the old-fashioned analog clock hanging above the range. Twelve fifty-five.

Afternoon coffee, then.He shrugged, then set about grinding the beans, ignoring the cold, persistent ache in his fingers, his neck, his shoulders. His soul. Morning. Noon. Night. What was the damned difference?

He paused as the water boiled and the coffee brewed, looking around the kitchen. Nothing of any consequence had changed here in years. On the far wall, above the sink, hung a framed photograph of the façade of his restaurant. The building that housed Sisko’s Creole Kitchen for the past quarter-century had been a landmark in New Orleans’ French Quarter for more than two hundred years. For Joseph, working in his kitchen among his loyal staff—serving a daily procession of new and regular customers—had always provided refuge from life’s troubles. During later years, marked by heart trouble and too-frequent entreaties from employees, friends, and customers that he slow down, he found in the charming old building a comforting reminder of easier times, when Judith and Ben were still children. In those days, he’d never heard of shape-shifters or the Dominion, and never had cause to consider the casual damage that Starfleet could inflict on ordinary people who were just trying to make lives for themselves.

I raised you to be a chef, Ben. For all the good it did me.

On the shelf beside the sink lay an upended plastic bottle, its cap askew. The heart medicine. Joseph had been planning on getting the prescription refilled for the better part of a week now, but it hadn’t seemed all that urgent. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he heard Ben’s voice rising in wrath: Damn it, Dad! Ask somebody on your staff to help you. Can’t you cooperate just one time?

The glare from the early-afternoon sun revealed the thickening patina of dust that covered the picture’s glass frame. He reached up to touch Ben’s inscription of one of Joseph’s own favorite aphorisms: “Worry and doubt are the greatest enemies of a great chef.”His finger came away streaked with a paste of old dirt and cooking grease. Searching his memories, he found he couldn’t recall the last time he’d given this place a really good cleaning. Perhaps this, too, simply didn’t matter all that much anymore.

A few minutes later, Joseph stood before the kitchen sink, holding a mug of hot, strong coffee in his hand. The hand trembled sharply, and a copious splash of near-boiling liquid forced him to place the cup on the counter. Cursing, he plunged his scalded hand beneath a stream of cold water—and glimpsed his own reflection in one of the metal pans he’d left on the drying rack.

He shut the water off, staring at the gaunt image he’d been trying so hard to avoid seeing in the bathroom mirror over the past few months. He wondered when exactly he had decided to stop shaving, but couldn’t recall. And when had his hair gone so completely white?

Joseph lifted the pan and stuffed it haphazardly into one of the kitchen’s lower cabinets. The motion seemed to have displaced several other objects located farther back on the shelf; he ignored the sounds of tumbling crockery.

The house stood silent again, except for the thready beat of his own heart and the hum of the wall clock that tirelessly measured out his remaining hours and days.

Was I supposed to do something today?He picked up his coffee, more carefully this time, and considered the coming evening without any real enthusiasm. The dinner crowd would arrive tonight, just as it always had, first in dribs and drabs, and later in waves. It would be just another night, indistinguishable from the years of nights on either side of it.

Enough of this.He set his half-full cup aside and pulled his thin cotton robe tightly around his narrow frame. Opening the blinds above the kitchen sink, he looked out into the vegetable garden. The sight immediately jogged his memory, bringing the day’s agenda to the front of his thoughts. Walking to the back door, he slipped his feet into the work boots he’d left on the mat. Grabbing the gardening gloves from the peg beside the door, he ventured outside.

Jays and yellowhammers sang through the green canopy of longleaf pines and cypresses as Joseph deliberately picked his way down the narrow stone steps, wary of falling. Soon he was approaching the neat, green rows that had called to him from the kitchen window. Looking closely, he could see that all was not well in the garden today. Ropy, hairy strands of grape-scented kudzu vine had wormed their way through the neatly manicured rows of squash, cayenne peppers, and new potatoes, like some implacable Jem’Hadar road-building project. We can send starships to the ends of the galaxy. But we still can’t do a blessed thing about these damned weeds.

There was something oddly reassuring about that.

Donning his gloves, he knelt on aching knees, pausing as his heart began to race disconcertingly. Minutes later, after he was satisfied that the worst of the discomfort had passed, he thrust his gnarled fingers into the black earth and got to work.

Gabrielle Vicente let herself into the house with the emergency key that Judith Sisko had surreptitiously given her during her visit last Easter. That day, Mr. Sisko’s daughter had asked every member of the Creole Kitchen’s staff—out of earshot of her father, of course—to keep a particularly close eye on Joseph. Gabrielle had been among the first to notice the old man’s gradual deterioration since he had learned of his son’s disappearance last Thanksgiving. Then, some four months later, when his grandson Jake had also gone missing, Mr. Sisko’s decline had grown precipitous.

She stepped into the foyer, fearing the worst. “Mr. Sisko?”

There was no reply. Other than the clicking of her flat shoes on the ancient hardwood floor, the house was as silent as a tomb. The thought made her wince, and she banished it.

She continued calling out as she made her way through the large living room and entered the kitchen. A cup of coffee sat on the countertop beside the sink. She touched it, noting that it was still warm.

She heaved a sigh of relief.

Then she raised her eyes to the kitchen window and looked out across the vegetable garden.

Joseph Sisko lay sprawled in the dirt, silent and unmoving.

27

Captain’s Log, stardate 53581.0

TheDefiant has finally passed the apex of its mission of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant. As we loop past the mysterious alien artifact—whose precise status as either a cathedral or a religious anathema I leave for better minds than mine to determine—our new heading will take us beyond System GQ-12475, bringing the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole ever nearer. At last we are homeward bound.

But our investigations of this still largely unknown quarter of the galaxy are far from finished; theDefiant’ s new trajectory will carry us through dozens of sectors into which no Alpha Quadrant humanoid has ever ventured before. The wonders and terrors of these past weeks haven’t blunted the desire of the crew to see what lies over the next hill, and the one after that. The feeling of anticipation I sense from everyone aboard remains nothing short of exhilarating. Even—or perhapsespecially —among those whose lives were most profoundly affected by our encounter with the alien cathedral: theDefiant’ s first officer, Lieutenant Ezri Dax; chief medical officer Julian Bashir; and Lieutenant Nog, my chief engineer.

The readings, measurements, and holorecordings the crew has taken of the cathedral ought to keep the Federation’s best physicists and architects—and maybe even the psychiatrists as well—busy for decades, if not longer. I find myself almost wishing it were possible to tow the thing home—until I stop to consider the havoc the artifact wrought among my crew.

Since sovereign jurisdiction over the object has been claimed by both the D’Naali and the Nyazen—two local sentient species who have for millennia used armed spacefleets to enforce their conflicting claims—it is my judgment that any further visitation by Starfleet personnel would be inappropriate. Certainly, neither group wants us around, at least at present. Perhaps one day the D’Naali and the Nyazen will reach an accord and invite us to investigate the object further. But until that time, my official recommendation to Starfleet Command and the Federation Council is to enforce a strict hands-off policy. And gods help any other alien crew that should happen to blunder into it.

Julian Bashir stood on the Defiant’s bridge as Vaughn finished recording his log entry. On the viewer, a recorded image of the alien artifact hovered, its infinitely shifting, eye-deceiving surfaces still stubbornly guarding its secrets.

Most of them, anyway.

Across the bridge, Nog paced back and forth before the engineering console, examining data on a padd he held and periodically comparing them to the console’s readouts. He was no doubt doing his best to evaluate and expedite the repairs made necessary throughout the ship by the weapons of the Nyazen and D’Naali fleets. Although it had been only hours since Bashir had reattached the engineer’s biosynthetic left leg, Nog was already moving about with a surprising degree of confidence, refusing to use the cane he’d been offered in the medical bay. He had yet to speak in any great detail about his personal experiences inside the artifact, at least to Bashir. But judging from the spring in Nog’s step, it was hard to tell that the events of the last couple of days had ever happened.

You have to look into his eyes to see that,Bashir thought, feeling a surge of sympathy for his young friend’s renewed physical loss, as well as a twinge of guilt. Ezri and I obviously got the better part of whatever bargains we struck with the multiverse. At least we’re both whole.

The turbolift doors slid open, and Bowers strode onto the bridge, right beside Ezri.

Ezri Daxonce again, now that the symbiont had been restored to her. It had been a near thing, so weakened had Ezri become because of her lengthy separation from the symbiont. But once Bashir had realized that the alien artifact had somehow restored his talents, he had become immovably determined to save the woman he loved. Of course, her own subjective experiences inside the artifact—to say nothing of her tenacious hold on life—might have contributed at least as much to her survival as had his and Krissten’s efforts.

Dax smiled brilliantly at Bashir as she handed a padd to Vaughn, who was sitting in the command chair, gazing abstractedly at the floating space construct’s haunting image.

“Ship’s status report,” she said, every inch the spit-and-polish executive officer. When he didn’t respond immediately, she added, “Sir?”

Vaughn took another moment to accept the proffered report. “Excuse me, Lieutenant. That object lends itself to woolgathering.”

She nodded, gazing out into infinity with Vaughn. “I know what you mean. You ought to see it from the inside.”

“I can’t tell you how badly I’d like an opportunity to do just that. As horrific as some of what you’ve told me sounds, the opportunity to confront one’s alternate selves—to take shortcuts onto the roads not taken—well, it’s hard not to find certain aspects of that compelling.”

As Vaughn spoke, Bashir saw the commander’s blue eyes fill with some unaccustomed emotion—regret, perhaps?—as they strayed toward Ensign Tenmei, who busied herself at the conn station. It was no secret that Prynn was Vaughn’s daughter and that, until fairly recently, a great deal of familial tension had existed between the two. But these weren’t matters one could simply ask one’s commanding officer about.

Bashir decided to broach something less sensitive. Gesturing toward the mysterious object on the viewer, he said, “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Setting Ezri’s padd aside, Vaughn turned the captain’s chair in Bashir’s direction, “Always,” he said, though his expression had grown guarded.

“Sir, I couldn’t help but notice that you left something rather significant out of your log entry just now.”

The commander raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes, sir. I’m speaking of our interference in the conflict between the D’Naali and the Nyazen.”

“Interference?” Vaughn repeated, steepling his fingers in front of his salt-and-pepper beard and arching an eyebrow. “Defined how?”

“By our direct participation in combat against the D’Naali,” Bashir said, glancing quickly toward Shar at the science station, who appeared to be listening attentively to this exchange. While Bashir had been reattaching Nog’s biosynthetic limb, Shar had visited the medical bay, where he had brought them both up to speed on almost everything that had transpired during the away team’s foray into the artifact.

“We didprevent the D’Naali from blowing the object up,” Bashir continued.

The commander chuckled, shaking his head. “Not at all. From what I observed, the Nyazen didn’t get particularly vigilant about guarding the cathedral until after wearrived. I think that’s because the D’Naali never truly had the ability to do any real damage in the first place. If they’d had that kind of power, then they would have found a way to destroy the cathedral thousands of years ago. One side would surely have wiped the other out long before now. The D’Naali themselves probably never believed they’d get the upper hand in their ancient little war—until Sacagawea informed them of our plan to use relays to beam an away team into the cathedral.”

Bashir allowed a tiny smile to tug at the corner of his mouth. “We didfire a few shots their way, sir.”

Vaughn matched the smile. “They seemed in need of a little…demonstration of our sincerity, Doctor. But remember: we never actually scored a hit. The balance of forces between the Nyazen and the D’Naali remains intact. And we recovered you and the rest of the away team.”

Bashir found he couldn’t fault Vaughn’s reasoning, and some subtle shift in the commander’s demeanor told him it might not be such a good idea to try. Instead, he merely nodded and glanced in Nog’s direction; he noticed that Nog, too, had been listening with interest—and seemed eager to make his own contribution to the discussion.

Vaughn had evidently noticed the same thing. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

Looking down at his inanimate leg, Nog said, “Sir, there’s still one main question about the, um, cathedral that nobody’s been able to answer yet—even with the translation of the alien text.”

“And that is?”

“What’s it for?”Nog said, an overtone of pain in his voice.

Bowers spoke up, his arms folded as he leaned against the bulkhead beside the tactical station. “The text gave us a pretty fair idea of why the thing’s builders made it. They wanted to tap into unlimited power, but they couldn’t control it, and they lost their homeworld because of it.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Nog said, shaking his head. “What I want to know is…what is the thing now?What exactly has it becomeduring the half-billion years since it was built? And why?”

Ezri bit her lip, evidently considering Nog’s questions carefully before attempting to answer them. “For starters, whatever intelligence still drives the thing is strongly telepathic. And it appeared to use issues and problems each of us was already struggling with as the tether connecting us to our alternate selves in those other universes.”

Shar chose that moment to break his silence. "As far as the ‘why’ part of the question goes, I’d attribute a lot of it to the phenomenon of emergent properties. Because of its original function as an interdimensional energy tap, the object has always connected with and searched through many parallel universes and alternate dimensions. Therefore its ability to allow people to address alternate versions of themselves may be purely accidental—an emergent outgrowth of its original purpose, abetted by the object’s built-in multidimensional physical topography."

Bowers flashed Shar a that’s-sure-easy-for-you-to-saylook before responding. “You’re saying you think that thing’s just…an accident?”

“Precisely. Just as the universe itself may be.”

Looking at Shar, Vaughn nodded sagely. “That makes perfect sense, Ensign. Still, the existence of a miraculous cathedral could be interpreted to imply the existence of a miraculous cathedral builder. And, by extension, some sort of Grand Plan. Those with great faith rarely believe that anything happens entirely by accident.” Bashir saw the commander turn his expectant gaze upon him, as though anticipating a debate.

But once again, he merely nodded. Prior to his own experiences inside the object—no, the cathedral—Bashir would have been inclined to dismiss its mystical ramifications out of hand.

Now he wasn’t quite so certain.

Tenmei finally transferred her attention from her console and spoke to the room. “I’m hearing the word ‘cathedral’ bandied about so often here that I’m beginning to think some of you have developed genuine…religious feelings toward this artifact.”

“Would that be such a terrible thing?” Vaughn said, a vaguely paternal smile playing on his lips.

“Not necessarily. Look, I don’t mean to criticize anybody’s private beliefs, but isn’t it just possible that everyone’s subjective experiences inside that thing were just…manifestations of the subconscious, like dreams?”

“I certainly hope so,” Ezri said almost inaudibly. Bashir wanted to ask her what she meant, but the bridge seemed the wrong place to pry into the matter.

“What little we know about the away team’s experiences does bear some resemblance,” Shar said, “to the neurologically created ‘ghosts’ that some people report seeing during so-called near-death experiences. These ‘cathedral experiences,’ so to speak, may merely have been subconscious surrogates for whatever objective process severed each person’s ties to the other alternate quantum dimensions.”

Bashir was surprised at how ambivalent he felt about that. Ezri said nothing, but looked doubtful.

Vaughn resumed staring directly into the infinite, as rendered on the viewer. “Perhaps we’ll never understand the extent of the object’s capabilities. Rather like the riddle of existence itself.”

Hence the need for faith,Bashir thought, mildly surprised to find himself so sanguine about the notion. At least on certain occasions.

Aloud, he said, “There was a time when my inquiries into imponderables like this would have been limited solely to the cold equations of science. But ever since the cathedral brought me face to face with…my self,I have to wonder whether those equations, by themselves, can ever be sufficient again.”

“Maybe there’s more to the universe than that,” Vaughn said, nodding. “More than we can see or measure.”

The entire bridge crew subsided into a thoughtful silence, with the exception of Shar, who was wordlessly keying something into a padd.

Bashir smiled as he watched the science officer work. No mystical experience, it seemed, could ever entirely displace those comforting, cold equations. But it was nice to have more than one thing to believe in.

From his seat at the bridge’s main science station, Shar watched and listened, semidetached from his friends and colleagues as they debated the purpose behind the alien artifact—as though its havinga purpose were some immutable, foreordained law of nature.

Why is it that most humans can’t simply accept the universe as the cold, uncaring place that it really is?

Still, he thought he was finally beginning to understand the human religious impulse, at least on a certain visceral, reflexive level. How tempting it must be to believe that the artifact is some sort of divinely created holy object. Based on what the away team had reported so far, it might even conceivably provide a gateway into some parallel universe in which Thriss still lived. A place in which he and his bondmates would all survive, ameliorating Andor’s bleak future by contributing that most precious of all gifts—a child.

A child who will now never come to be.

Eager for the solace of work, Shar reached for a padd, keying in commands with fingers stained indigo with blood not his own.