Текст книги "Twilight "

Автор книги: David George

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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

43

Vaughn walked through the dead city. The heels of his boots pounded along the empty street, reverberating in the metal canyons formed by the tall buildings on either side of him. He moved quickly, steadily, the hard surface putting more strain on his back, legs, and feet than had the softer, undeveloped ground, but it also allowed him a faster pace. His hip still ached, but he ignored it.

Sleep had come easily to him last night, the result of a lifetime of “battlefield” service. Through the years, Vaughn had come to understand the value of rest in the fulfillment of missions, and he had trained himself to sleep under difficult circumstances. Last night had been different only in the dreams that had come. The nightmares.

Vaughn could not recall the images that had haunted his slumber, but he had woken with a start before dawn. Disoriented in the pitch blackness of this world’s night, it had taken him a moment to recall his circumstances. He had consulted his tricorder and seen that he had slept for little more than four hours. He had considered attempting to get more rest, but quickly abandoned that idea, finding himself wide awake and anxious to continue on his way.

It had taken him only a couple of hours to reach flat land and, shortly after that, the city. The collection of structures had risen before him like a small range of hills, low in the foreground, climbing higher in the distance. He had entered the city and made his way through it for three hours, choosing not to rest until he had left it behind him. Other than the sizes of the buildings, he had found little variation marking one area from another.

Now, Vaughn walked on through the city, surrounded by neglect. The buildings, whether one story tall or ten, showed that they had long been deserted. Dirt adorned their sides like spatters and streaks of brown paint—but not just their sides. Every building in the city stood open to the outside, every window shattered, masses of glass shards lying alongside walls like crystalline moats. Land vehicles likewise sat exposed, their own windows reduced to fragments. A patina of dust lay over everything like an immovable veil. Nobody had lived here for a very long time.

But the former inhabitants of the city had not abandoned their homes for some other place; they had left it for death. Bones littered the urban landscape, some scattered about as though strewn by some inimical force, others together in intact or nearly intact skeletons. The remains appeared to be those of humanoids, with two arms and two legs. The skulls were larger than that of a human, and the thoracic cavities were bound by ribs oriented not horizontally, but vertically.

Curiosity drove Vaughn to stop and explore the macabre scene, but he could not take the time away from his journey. Still, as he passed the skeletal remnants of the people who had obviously once lived here, the tricorder and his own eyes told him many things. Beside one fractured set of bones after another sat a handheld weapon. He saw affixed to buildings and lampposts numerous nooses, below which the skeletons of the hanged had fallen in heaps. Other collections of bones lay smashed in the street, the clear result of people plummeting from tall buildings to their deaths.

Vaughn wondered what had driven these people to kill each other, but even as he did so, he understood that no civil war had occurred here. For whatever reason, the hundreds of thousands who had lived in this city had chosen to abandon their homes in the fastest way possible. The fatal wounds caused by the handheld weapons had all been self-inflicted, the nooses had been strung up by those intending to sling them around their own necks, and nobody had been thrown from atop a building—they had all jumped. The population here, Vaughn was suddenly convinced, had committed mass suicide.

As he walked past the dead, he used his tricorder to study the city they had left behind. Readings put its age on the order of centuries, with indications that it had last been inhabited two hundred years ago. Machinery, also long dead, permeated the buildings. Computers and communications equipment spread throughout the city, through every structure and down into subterranean conduits. Circuitry junctions sat on street corners every few blocks, encased in large cubes that stood twice as tall as Vaughn, and that had been dusted brown through the decades.

Vaughn speculated that perhaps technology, or its misuse, had somehow brought these people to their demise, although he could not see how. The other lifeless cities that Chaffeehad flown over had been brought to their ends in different ways—by fire, by panic, by abandonment, by siege—and Vaughn could find no common element among them beyond the deaths of their citizenry. What little information he possessed failed to add up to any obvious conclusion.

At the next intersection sat one of the large circuitry junctions. Vaughn raised his tricorder and took sensor readings of the cube. Like the others he had scanned, this one housed a union of several citywide technologies. He recognized computer and communications relays, set in a sophisticated configuration, but he detected nothing that might send the entire population of the planet to its death, particularly in so many disparate ways.

Vaughn lowered the tricorder and glanced down the street. He was nearing the far border of the city, he knew, beyond which lay more open, undeveloped land. And somewhere close,he hoped, the site of the pulse.If he could put—

Something moved up ahead. Vaughn stopped immediately. He turned his head slowly, peering from one side of the street to the other. He saw nothing. His first inclination was to attribute it to the wind, but the air had been calm, not even disturbing the layer of dust coating everything here. Perhaps just a shadow then,Vaughn thought as he lifted his tricorder, intending to scan the street ahead of him. The result of a random swirl of the unceasing cloud cover—

Movement came again, and this time Vaughn saw its source. A half-block down, on the right-hand side, a figure peered out from around the side of a building. The face looked human. Vaughn watched the figure for a few seconds, and then it moved again, reaching a hand out and gesturing toward him.

No,Vaughn realized. Gesturing him forward.

Vaughn took a step toward the figure—toward the man—and stopped, waiting to see its– his—reaction. The man continued motioning Vaughn forward, and something about the way he did so seemed oddly familiar. Vaughn started ahead again, and as he did, he moved his thumb up onto the tricorder controls and activated a scan.

When Vaughn had closed to within twenty meters, the man held up his hand, palm out. Vaughn stopped. The man peered around, then gestured again, this time pointing across the corridor.

Corridor?Vaughn thought. The man pointed across the street.Vaughn looked there and saw nothing, but a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him. It seemed ludicrous to even consider that he had lived a sequence of events like this before, but the feeling remained strong. Suddenly, without thinking, Vaughn lifted his empty hand and pointed past the man. The man nodded, as though acknowledging Vaughn, and then he came out from behind the building and into the corridor.

Street,Vaughn told himself, but already his thoughts had moved past that. The man was wearing a Starfleet uniform. An oldStarfleet uniform.

And Vaughn recognized him.

The man turned and started running away, the clap of his boots on the pavement echoing in the empty street. “Wait,” Vaughn called, and sprinted after him. Still running, the man waved back toward Vaughn, as though to quiet him down. “John, wait.” The man reached the next intersection and rounded the corner, disappearing from sight.

Vaughn raced toward the cross street, already knowing what he would find when he got there. He would look where the man had run and see nothing. The man would have vanished, leaving no trace beyond Vaughn’s doubting of his own mental state.

Vaughn reached the intersection, stopped, and peered down the cross street. Almost a block down, the man continued to run, his footsteps still resounding. Vaughn took a step, preparing to follow, but then stopped again. He did not have time for this. Unless and until he could demonstrate that chasing the man would provide a means of stopping the pulse, he had to go on. For all Vaughn knew, he was imagining this entire encounter. And maybe that, some form of mass delirium, had been what had carried the people of this world to their ends.

Vaughn raised his tricorder and scanned the receding figure. The readings indicated a human male, in good health, approximately fifty years of age. Vaughn looked up again and saw now that the man had gone—perhaps around a corner, perhaps back to wherever he had come from. Perhaps back into the recesses of Vaughn’s mind.

In the dust coating the streets, Vaughn saw a set of footprints leading away from him, in the direction the man had taken. Vaughn followed them back down the street, tracing them to where the man had emerged from the beside the building. The footprints ended there.

Transporter?Vaughn thought. But that would hardly explain everything. Time travel? Holograms? Illusions or delusions? A sensor sweep revealed no residual energy readings, other than those present everywhere on the planet. No transporter signatures, no chroniton particles, no photonic emissions.

He replayed the scans that he had initiated when he had first started toward the man. He saw the same readings: a healthy, fifty-year-old human male. Then he played back the visual record the tricorder had captured. He worked the controls in order to display a magnified image of the man’s face. Vaughn recognized it at once: the long, narrow countenance, the angular features, the graying hair above the ears. He remembered the day– What? Sixty, sixty-five years ago?—when he and the man had run down the corridor of a starship together, making the same gestures they had just made in the street of this dead city. And Vaughn remembered all that had been lost back then, so many years ago.

He doubted his perceptions, and even his sanity. But he also suspected the technology running through the city, despite that his tricorder registered nothing functioning within its confines. Regardless of the explanation for whatever had just happened, though, it was time for him to move on.

Vaughn turned back in the direction he had been traveling before he had seen the man, and started walking again. He would be out of the streets in another hour, back into open land. He had to focus on his journey now, on reaching his intended destination and stopping the pulse from launching into space.

And still, as his footfalls bounced between the wasted buildings of this wasted city, he could not banish from his mind the image of the man he had just seen: Captain John Harriman of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

44

Kira reviewed the list of food and drink for the reception. She sat at the desk in her office, tapping at the padd, which emitted tiny electronic tones as she paged through the entries. The Bajoran selections pleased her, and included alva,shrimp, hasperatsoufflé, and mapabread with mobajam, along with several bottles of spring wine and a variety of teas. One other item at the end of the list caught her attention. “How did you get foraiga?”she asked. The delicacy was very difficult to obtain, even on Bajor itself.

“Colonel, I’ve been doing business in this system for more than a decade,” Quark said. “And I’m a Ferengi. I know how to get things.” He stood across from her, waiting for her to authorize his catering menu.

“You know how to get things,” Kira told him, “and you also know how to overcharge for them.” His greed never slackened, she thought as she looked at his charge for the foraiga.

“Fine, take it off the list,” Quark said, with what Kira took to be feigned nonchalance. “I thought Minister Shakaar would enjoy it, but if you think it’s too expensive…” He left his statement dangling, obviously probing for information.

“I never said Shakaar would be at the gathering,” Kira reminded him, offering a cold smile.

Quark patted his chest with one hand. “My mistake,” he said. “I guess I just assumed that all of this fine Bajoran food wouldn’t be for just you and Lieutenant Ro.” His voice seemed to catch when he mentioned Ro, but the sound was so slight that Kira might have imagined it. Perhaps the security chief had been giving Quark a particularly difficult time lately—something she would have to laud Ro for, if true. “Besides, you don’t usually wear your dress uniform.”

“All right. The foraigais fine,” Kira said, choosing to ignore Quark’s observation, and moving on to the rest of the menu. She could have—and probably should have—delegated this responsibility, but she liked Quark to know that she personally kept her eye on him. And with the importance of the summit, she wanted to ensure that the reception this evening would be a success. Of course, Kira knew virtually nothing about Alonis or Andorian or Capellan food, and Jadzia’s tastes had ranged well beyond her homeworld of Trill. “What’s this?” Kira asked, spying another item with a sizable price. “Kagannerra?”She highlighted the item on the padd, then leaned forward and held the device out to Quark so that he could see it.

“That’s a type of kelp,” he said, only glancing at the padd. “Very large fronds. Quite flavorful, I understand.”

“Kelp?”Kira said. She pulled the padd back and looked again at the price beside the item. “This is what you want to charge for kelp?”

“Excuse me,” Quark said, affronted—or pretending to be affronted, Kira assumed. “There’s not a lot of call for food for water-breathers on this air-filled station.” He held his arms out wide, as though to take in the whole of DS9. “I couldn’t find any food native to Alonis anywhere in the sector. I did manage to locate a shipment out of Pacifica that contained the kagannerraand some other items known to be enjoyed by the Alonis.”

“All right,” Kira relented.

“And I was lucky to find that,” Quark continued, as though Kira had not spoken. “The ship won’t even arrive at the station until two hours before the gathering. The fees I had to pay just to have the ship diverted to Deep Space—”

“All right, Quark,” Kira said, louder. She applied her thumb to the authorization control surface, then handed the padd back to Quark. He took it, and in the same motion, held out a Ferengi banking device, which had appeared in his hand as though from nowhere. She applied her thumb to the control surface on that device, sighing with exasperation. She found her dislike for Quark only exacerbated by having to do business with him.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said, unapologetically checking Kira’s thumbprint on both the padd and the banking device, as though she might have attempted to cheat him in some manner. “Perhaps if I’d had more time—”

“Yes, you’re right,” she said, cutting him off again, but this time, she actually regretted doing it. She had to admit that she had asked a great deal of him, calling him to her office late this morning, and then requesting his catering services for this evening. Remarkably, it had taken him only an hour to prepare a menu that included food and drink for people of five different races. He might be overcharging for his services, but he really did know how to cater a function. “Thank you, Quark,” she said. “Next time, I’ll try to give you more notice.”

Quark nodded. Their business at an end, Kira reached forward and activated the computer interface on her desk, intending to return to her work. When Quark did not move, though, she looked back up at him. “Something else?” she asked.

“Actually, I was just curious what the occasion was for a gathering of such an eclectic group of people,” he said. This time, Quark’s attempt at nonchalance was completely transparent. Given his avarice, it seemed clear that he thought there might be some sort of business prospect for him here—a supposition that actually worked to Kira’s benefit in this case. She had waited as long as she had to approach Quark about catering the reception as part of her general intention to keep news of the summit quiet for as long as possible. After the war with the Dominion, numerous powers had expressed concerns about Starfleet maintaining an exclusive military presence at the wormhole. Both the Klingon and Romulan Empires had been particularly vehement in their opposition to such an arrangement, although nothing had yet come of that opposition. The Tholians and the Gorn had also voiced apprehension about perpetuation of the status quo at Bajor, as had several other governments. The longer Kira could keep word of the summit from spreading, she thought, the better.

To Quark’s question about the reason for the gathering, Kira responded, “We’re celebrating my naming day.”

Quark tilted his head to one side, clearly annoyed. “If you don’t want to tell me, Colonel, that’s fine.”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“That’s fine.”

“Good,” she said, standing up behind her desk. “Then I won’t keep you from getting ready for the gathering.”

“Of course,” Quark said, and he finally turned and left. As soon as the doors closed behind him, the voice of Ensign Ling emerged from the comm system.

“Ops to Colonel Kira,”she said.

“This is Kira. Go ahead.”

“The Alonis ship,Arieto, is on approach to the station,”Ling reported. “They should be docking within the hour.”

“Acknowledged,” Kira said. “Let me know when the ship arrives.”

“Aye, sir.”The channel closed with a short tone.

Kira, still standing, idly tapped her desktop with her fingertips. She wondered what Quark’s reaction would be when he found out about the summit. She knew that he had long professed an aversion to the Federation, and if Bajor actually joined—

Kira realized something she had not previously considered. If Bajor did join the Federation, with its essentially moneyless economy, then Quark’s business would be…well, no longer a business, as far as he would be concerned. Deep Space 9 would officially become a part of the Federation, and there simply would no longer be an environment here in which to earn profit. Quark would doubtless have to leave the station.

A smile decorated Kira’s face at the thought of that greedy troll being forced to relocate. At the same time, though, she remembered vividly what it had been like to be displaced from her own home, something that had occurred with regularity throughout her life. And Deep Space 9 was Quark’s home; she was fairly certain that he had been a resident of the station for longer than anybody else. And right now, he had no idea that his life might soon be thrown into turmoil.

The smile faded from Kira’s face. She sat slowly down in her chair, surprised at the genuine sympathy she suddenly felt for Quark.

45

“It’s too dangerous,” Julian said. He had paced around the ready room and now stood near a far corner, as though seeking refuge from what Ezri had been suggesting. His features had grown tense, and she could see him shifting from disagreement and resistance toward anger. She needed to defuse the situation, not only for Julian’s sake, but for her own; in order to implement her proposal, she would require his support.

“Well,” she said, shrugging, “we can’t let Sam do it.” She motioned toward Lieutenant Bowers, who sat across the desk from her. He looked at her with surprise, and she smiled. “Unless you want to, that is.”

Bowers held up his hand and shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said lightly, matching her tone.

“Look, this isn’t a joke,” Julian said, walking back over to the desk. He did not laugh or smile, but despite that, and despite his words, she could see that the anger welling within him had eased for the moment, replaced by frustration. “There just isn’t enough evidence to justify what you’re proposing,” he told her, holding her gaze, as though he could convince her of the fact of his position through sheer force of will.

“You keep saying that,” Ezri said, “but it’s not really the case. Whatever that object in the Jefferies tube is, I sensed a mind when I came into contact with it.”

“That can hardly be considered evidence,” Julian said dismissively.

“You’re wrong,” Ezri challenged him. “It isevidence. Whether you find it convincing or not is another matter.”

“Then let me state it plainly: I don’t find it convincing,” he said.

“You’ve made that clear, Doctor,” she told him, her own anger rising. She took a beat to rein in her emotions. She would not persuade Julian to support her plan by fighting him. “There’s also the simple fact of the object’s appearance on the ship. It penetrated the hull and traveledto the Jefferies tube.” She glanced over at the computer interface on the desk. A view of the Jefferies tube showed on the display, the mysterious dark gray mass still lying along the bulkhead and down on the grating. The object had not moved since yesterday, since they had attempted to transport it. Ensign Gordimer had established a containment field about the location, although because of the object’s multidimensional nature, they could not be certain that such a measure would restrict its movement.

“We don’t know for a fact that it entered the ship through the breach,” Julian argued. “It might have emerged from subspace exactly where it is.”

“Even so, that would seem to imply some sort of movement,” Bowers observed, obviously seeing Ezri’s point. “And we also know that it moved within the Jefferies tube.”

“Movement isn’t proof of life,” Julian said, turning and walking across the room again. “Stars move, planets move, oceans move, but they’re not alive.”

“That’s not quite the same thing,” Ezri said after Julian had turned back toward her. “And no, the object’s movement isn’t proof that it’s alive, but it does suggest the possibility.”

“A ‘possibility’ isn’t enough to justify the risk you want to take,” Julian maintained.

“I think it’s more than a possibility that this thing is alive; I think it’s a probability,” she said. “More than that. I believe it isalive. I sensed a mental contact with it.”

“You were in a coma,” Julian implored her. “You might have dreamed that.”

“Yes,” Ezri said immediately, which seemed to surprise him. “You’re right. I might have dreamed it. But I didn’t dream the drop in my isoboramine levels.” Ezri had already voiced her opinion that the change in her body chemistry indicated that a connection had been made between Dax and the object.

“Your body and the body of the symbiont have a physical link, facilitated by the isoboramine,” Julian said, walking back toward the desk. “Even though you touched the object, no physical link was made between it and the symbiont.”

“Maybe a connection was made through subspace,” Bowers suggested.

“Maybe,” Dax agreed, looking over at the lieutenant. “But back in the pools on Trill, Dax communicated with other symbionts not by physical contact, but by energy surges. And there’s certainly plenty of energy around here these days.” She peered up at Julian. “You even said yourself that the object and the energy in the clouds and in the pulse might be related.”

“I did,” Julian admitted, “but that was only speculation. All of this is only speculation.”

“I think it’s more than that,” Ezri said. “And if I’m right about the object being alive, and about Dax being in mental contact with it, then I might also be right about it having knowledge of the pulse.” She took a breath and raised her hands up onto the desk, putting them there palms down. “Julian, Sam,” she said. “I’m not sure that what I want to do will work. Maybe the object isn’t alive, or maybe Dax won’t be able to communicate with it, or maybe we won’t learn anything that will help us stop the pulse. But I am sure—we’re all sure—that if another pulse launches into space, the Vahni civilization will be destroyed.”

“I know what’s at stake,” Julian said quietly. “But you can’t quantify life. You can’t say that risking one to save another, or even another four billion, is justified.”

“You also can’t qualifylife, Julian,” she told him. “You can’t say that it’s better to save Ezri Dax than it is to save even one Vahni Vahltupali.”

Julian leaned forward, putting his hands on the desk, his fingers splayed. “I can say that. It’s better for me.”

Ezri saw the love and the pain in his eyes. She understood what she was asking him to face, but she also knew that it was the right thing to do. “It would be better for me too not to try this,” she said. “I don’t want to die. That’s why I need you, to make sure that I don’t.”

Julian grunted and pushed himself away from the desk, again retreating across the room. “You don’t want to die?” he asked, and Ezri was surprised to hear skepticism in his voice.

“No,” she said, not knowing why Julian would even ask such a question. “Of course not.”

He looked at her anxiously, then looked away. She could see him holding something back from her.

“What is it?” she asked. Julian looked over at Sam, and Ezri gathered that he did not want to reveal what was on his mind in front of the lieutenant. “It’s all right, Doctor,” she said, emphasizing to him that this conversation, this disagreement, was wholly professional, and that it would not divide them personally. “You can speak your mind.”

“I am concerned, Lieutenant,” Julian said haltingly, “that your fervor to put yourself in harm’s way may be an overcompensation for the loss of Ensign Roness.”

Ezri felt momentarily stunned at the statement—at what sounded very much to her like a betrayal. Since returning to duty after Gerda had died, Ezri had performed her duties skillfully and without agonizing over the loss of a crewperson under her command. Off duty, though, in her quarters—in the quarters she shared with Julian—she had suffered. Continued to suffer. And Julian knew that.

She opened her mouth to respond, but Bowers spoke first. “Pardon me, Doctor,” he said, “but I don’t see any ‘fervor’ here. I just think the lieutenant has an understandable desire to do what she can to try to save the Vahni.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said to Bowers. She studied Julian for a moment and saw the pain still in his eyes—pain at the trauma she had undergone yesterday. “I’m not eager to do this because of the risk involved,” she said. “But you’re right to question me about that, Doctor, because you know how much the death of Ensign Roness has affected me on a personal level.” Ezri suffered the loss because Gerda had been a young officer with a long life and career ahead of her. And because Gerda had been her friend. And yes, because it had been Ezri’s orders that had sent the young woman to her death. Ezri had cried in Julian’s arms about it more than once, and he too had been emotionally affected by what had happened, perhaps even more so than she had. But even with all of that, Ezri had managed to find solace, and the strength to perform her duty, from her belief that she had made the right choices, given the right orders. Ezri would bring Gerda back to life in an instant if she could, but the two of them had saved tens of thousands of Vahni lives. Now Ezri wanted to save billions.

“I’m sorry,” Julian said. “I’m not questioning your ability to command…I just…”

“You don’t have to explain,” Ezri told him. “I understand.” She stood up. “But you’re wrong about my motivations. I was a counselor, and I know what’s going on inside of me. This has nothing to do with Gerda. This has to do with saving a lot of people, and me believing I may be able to help accomplish that.”

“But the risk…” he said.

“There’s risk in everything we do. But I believe that a direct, planned contact with the object—” She pointed to the display, to the image of the gray mass, without looking away from Julian. “—might allow Dax to communicate with whatever intelligence is behind it, and possibly find some means of stopping the pulse. And I believe that you’ll be able to keep me alive while I try. In my judgment, it’s a risk worth taking.”

Julian gazed at her and said nothing.

“Sam,” Ezri said, “what do you think?”

Bowers stood from his chair. He looked from Ezri to Julian. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s dangerous, and I have no idea how to measure the chances of success.” He turned back to Ezri. “But under the circumstances, I also think it’s a risk we should take.”

Ezri nodded to Bowers, then regarded Julian. He looked at her for a long time. Finally, he lifted his hands up at his sides, then let them clap back down against his body. “All right,” he said.