Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“What if we had more power?” Will asked. “Say, the amount of power that could be generated by all of Commander Donatra’s missing ships?”

“That would give us considerably more options,” Jaza said. “With a couple of dozen warp fields operating in tandem, we might be able to coax the protouniverse back across the rift and into the same extradimensional space where it formed in the first place.”

“But we don’t even know where my ships are,” said Donatra. “We might or might not recover them. So unless it would somehow jeopardize our ability to use the rift to return home, we may well have no option other than simply destroying this thing.”

“Good answer,” Tchev grunted. Troi surmised that the Klingon captain took personally the severe damage the rift had inflicted on his ship, and that he wasn’t above taking a bit of revenge. “A brace of Titan’s quantum torpedoes ought to be ideally suited to the task.”

Jaza and Pazlar exchanged worried glances, and the Bajoran then busied himself by restoring the holographic image of the colorful spatial rift, its bright energy tendrils slowly rotating in the space above the center of the conference table in place of the defunct planet.

“Maybe, or maybe not,” Jaza said. Troi noticed that his emotional aura was growing increasingly jangled as he appeared to consider the risks of poking and prodding the phenomenon. “The truth is, we don’t know what effect destroying an emerging protouniverse would have on the rift itself. Or on the space that contains our ships, for that matter. Or even on the space on the Romulan Empire side of the rift. I have to agree with Dr. Cethente—we can’t do anything that might risk taking this thing’s destructive potential back home with us.”

“To say nothing of the risk of getting us all vaporized because we’ve gone off half-cocked,” Pazlar added. “We’ve already seen the damage the rift’s chaotic energy discharges can do to nearby ships.” Troi heard grumbling coming from Tchev, whose ship and crew had already learned that lesson the hard way, as Pazlar continued. “We need more information before we can do much of anything.”

Vale caught Donatra’s eye. “Speaking of more information, Commander Donatra, I’m curious to hear what your crew has learned about our current, ah, situation. And yours, Captain Tchev.”

“We’ve had little opportunity to do scientific research here,” Dekri said acerbically. “Our ship was incapacitated almost immediately.”

Donatra shook her head. “I’m afraid we’ve uncovered very little data of concrete value either, at least so far.” She turned toward Will and grew more serious. “Other than our scanner readings, which we’ve already transmitted to your staff, everything we’ve learned so far about the Bloom—about the spatial rift, rather—has been rather…metaphysical in nature.”

Jaza looked surprised, and Troi could tell that his curiosity was roused. “Metaphysical?”

Donatra turned and fixed her gaze squarely upon Titan’s sole Neyel guest. “Mr. Frane?”

Frane, who had been studying a tall, red chess piece he had apparently picked up from one of the nearby game boards, returned Donatra’s stare warily, his hooded eyes large.

Setting the piece on the tabletop before him, he looked around the diversely populated room, clearly still overwhelmed by so much alien contact in such a short span of time. Though Troi sensed that her proximity to him was having a calming effect, being called upon to speak was bringing to the fore all of the young man’s intense feelings of trepidation and vulnerability.

His moment of indecision having passed, Frane rose, apparently taking his cue from Jaza, who had remained standing as he oversaw the briefing.

To Jaza, Frane said, “You claim that this…spatial rift is giving birth to a new universe.”

The Bajoran smiled, but shook his head slowly. “Not precisely. Our best hypothesis is that a new universe is emerging from outside the boundaries of this universe—from the same ‘ocean’of de Sitter space on which our own universe ‘floats,’so to speak.”

“De Sitter space?” Donatra asked as the Klingons exchanged blank glances.

“De Sitter space is a meta-etheric medium. A sort of ‘overspace’ that contains this universe, as well as countless others,”Cethente said in clear, crystalline tones. “Federation scientists have named it after the Terran physicist who first hypothesized its existence several centuries ago. At any rate, the rift has become an entry point for a newly formed universe, one that will soon displace a significant volume ofthis universe as the emerging protouniverse expands and develops.”

“New universe form in this manner all the time, by the way,” Jaza added. “They’re a little bit like bubbles that form in water. They come into being somewhere virtually every nanosecond, expanding countless orders of magnitude as they develop. As they grow, these ‘baby universes’ sometimes pass through portions of ouruniverse, or other universes, depending on a given universe’s particular interactions with de Sitter space. An interspatial rift like the one that brought us here represents such a passing interaction.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Tchev observed, looking at Donatra. “Your mad praetor’s thalaron weapon creates a spatial rift in Romulan space, which just happens to toss our three ships here, along with a new universe, only a few weeks later. That sounds like quite a coincidence.”

Cethente chimed in, as it were. “Not really, Captain Tchev. Not when you consider the subspace topology of this region of our universe in relation to many others. Neyel space is ‘downhill’ from our respective origin points, as well as in relation to many other spatial regions in this universe. It appears that this region of our universe lies ‘downhill’ from the perspective of de Sitter space as well. So the ‘baby universe’ out there has simply ‘rolled downhill’ toward us on its way toward being born.”

Frane, once again gripping the red chess piece, seemed to consider all of this for a protracted moment, then shrugged. “That isn’t so,” he said at length.

Jaza’s curiosity was obviously becoming piqued even further. “Excuse me?”

“You say we are witnessing the birth of something new. But uncounted millennia of local legend contradicts this.”

Troi felt Frane freeze as he noticed that the room had again fallen silent—and that everyone’s eyes were suddenly upon him, her own included.

“Go ahead, Mr. Frane,” Troi said.

The Neyel took a deep breath and again set the chess piece down on the table before him. Though Troi perceived that Frane was still nervous, her encouragement had obviously bolstered the younger man’s confidence.

“The rift is not introducing anything new to Neyel space. It merely heralds the long-prophesied return of something unimaginably ancient. Something that may be older than the universe itself. It is the Sleeper, at last awakening.”

Will’s eyebrows rose. “The Sleeper?”

“Apparently a deity in which many of the races indigenous to this region believe,” Donatra said. “This ‘Sleeper’ is said to slumber for billions of years, waking only periodically.”

Frane, still standing, nodded. “And when It wakes, It ceases to dream. But all the worlds that surround it are part of that dream. Like Newaerth, the first world to vanish as the Sleeper begins stirring from its long ages of slumber.”

Vale’s eyes grew huge. “Are you suggesting that this galaxy and everything in it is just a part of this ancient god’s dream?”

“Yes,” Frane said, nodding. “And when the dream ceases…” He trailed off meaningfully.

Despite Frane’s unscientific claims, no one in the room was smiling. Troi realized that everyone present was thinking of the planet that the young Neyel had called Newaerth. The disappearance of Newaerth and its entire system was essentially beyond dispute now. Had some cosmic Sleeper inadvertently destroyed it, simply by rolling over during its fitful slumbers? Would that casual destruction spread farther and wider once the mysterious entity came more fully awake?

Troi recalled a very old story from Earth that her father had told her when she was a little girl. For centuries, the Hindus had believed in a deity known as Brahma, upon whom the existence of the entire universe depended. To Brahma, a day and a night lasted more than eight billion years, far longer than either Betazed or Earth had existed. During Brahma’s periods of sleep, he would dream into existence the entire universe—which would be destroyed each “morning,” setting off the next iteration in an infinite cycle of cosmic death and rebirth.

That story had both frightened and fascinated her on some primal level, perhaps because she was half-human. Maybe it’s no wonder,Troi thought, that a similar belief would be attractive to others who have Terran blood in their veins.

“Ridiculous,” Tchev spat, glaring at Frane. “Mere superstition.”

Donatra chuckled. “That’s a curious observation, coming from one whose people bash each other with ceremonial stun sticks and worship statues of dead warriors.”

Tchev rose, his leather-gloved fists bunched on the table. “PetaQ!”

Will, still seated, moved not a millimeter. “Let’s all settle down, folks,” he said, smiling like a kindly innkeeper. “We all have better things to do than snipe at one other.”

“Agreed,” Donatra said, apparently both unfazed and unchastened.

“You’re not actually giving any credence to this…aboriginal fantasy, are you, Riker?” Tchev said, gesticulating in wild frustration.

“I’m simply trying to learn everything I can, Captain,” Will replied. “Even ancient legends might shed some light on our current situation.”

“Nonsense,” said Donatra.

Jaza cleared his throat, signaling that he was still in charge of the scientific end of the meeting—and perhaps also betraying his Bajoran reticence about dismissing fervidly held religious beliefs out of hand. Tchev reluctantly sat, and everyone else who had risen immediately followed suit.

“I’m sure we can all agree that now is not the time for a metaphysical debate,” Jaza said. “We need to consider the facts before us calmly, and arrive at a solution to this problem.”

“What we need,” Tchev said, stabbing a finger at the holographic display, “is to destroy this ‘protouniverse.’ Once we’ve finally figured out how to get ourselves home, of course.”

“Again, I have to concur,” Donatra said, a sour expression on her face.

“That would seem to be our most prudent course,” Akaar said.

“I’m not a big fan of the wholesale destruction of entire universes,” Will said, sounding the same note of caution that was already coming through loud and clear to Troi’s conscience. “Even one that’s apparently still in an embryonic form. But with so much at stake, I agree that we may find that we have no better choice.”

Troi detected a sudden, extreme change in the emotional timbre of the scientific team. Jaza and Pazlar were again glancing uneasily at one other, and even Cethente’s usually placid aura seemed to grow almost turbulent. The uncomfortable silence that ensued spoke volumes.

“Gentlemen?” Will prompted.

Jaza cleared his throat. “Captain, I would have agreed with you, if only reluctantly.”

“ ‘Would have’?”

“Yes. Until we compared the energy signatures and thermodynamic readings of this protouniverse with the one DS9’s crew discovered a decade ago. They’re substantially similar.”

“Meaning?” Vale asked.

“Meaning that this new universe,” Jaza paused to nod in Frane’s direction, “or this awakening Sleeper, if you prefer, is already showing signs of life.”

“And intelligence,” Pazlar added quietly.

Troi’s mouth fell open involuntarily at this entirely unexpected revelation. This was undoubtedly the reason the members of the science team had just experienced such emotional discomfiture. It was obviously far too recent a discovery to have made it into any of the already-distributed reports and summaries.

The room erupted in a gabble of raised voices, as everyone present radiated varying intensities of incredulity. Will, to his credit, displayed a healthy undercurrent of wonder that made her smile in spite of her own shocked reaction.

Troi noted that one of the strongest disbelieving reactions was coming from Vale. “Thiscontinuum was already almost ten billion years old before the first signs of life appeared on Earth,” she said.

“Or Qo’noS,” Tchev said, nodding in agreement.

“So how could any life, intelligent or not, appear so quickly in such a young universe?” Vale concluded.

Cethente spoke up. “Time flows at varying rates in different universes, Commander. The equivalent of many billions of years may have already passed within the confines of this protouniverse.”

“The Sleeper emerges from his slumbers only after billions-year-long intervals,” Frane said, delivering this pronouncement in the same matter-of-fact manner that Jaza or Cethente might make a scientific report.

“So what are you saying?” Vale asked, facing the science team. “That this…baby universe is giving off something that looks like brainwave patterns?”

“Not exactly,” Jaza said. “But there are other easily-recognizable signs of emergent life, and these generally converge with intelligence. Highly organized replication patterns that occur far more frequently than nonliving processes could possibly account for. Nonrandom energy generation and consumption curves. Vast pockets of accumulating negative entropy, as well as numerous other extreme and sustained environmental disequilibriums, similar to those we can detect at galactic distances, in such things as the spectra of M-Class planets. So far as we know, those sorts of environments cannot come into being except via biological processes.”

Troi offered a tentative nod, granting at least part of Jaza’s point. “But we’ve founds lots of blue planets where microbes and plants are the crown of creation. The biological processes that create M-Class environments don’t necessarily imply the existence of intelligence.”

“No, but we’ve turned up other patterns that do,”Cethente said. “For instance, we’ve detected complex, highly organized, orderly releases of power. Not to mention significant, otherwise unexplainable releases of neuromagnetic energy.”

Jaza nodded. “Taken together, these readings look a lot like the ones taken ten years ago aboard DS9. And just like that incident, it’s a safe bet that thisprotouniverse has already developed at least some sort of awareness.”

“He is awakening,” Frane said. “The Sleeper rises. Soon, His dreams will cease. Along with all the corrupt works and sins of my people.”

And maybe along with the entire Small Magellanic Cloud as well,Troi thought, shuddering as she picked up a momentary burst of fear-tinged exultation from Frane. Did some part of him really want such a catastrophe to come about? The notion caused her an intense sensation of revulsion, which struggled mightily against the compassion she automatically felt for all such troubled souls. She breathed a quiet prayer of thanks to the Old Gods of Betazed that the latter might remain stronger than the former.

“The Red King,” Vale said, her light brown eyes fixed on the chess piece that Frane had set back upon the tabletop.

“What?” Troi asked before she even realized she was speaking.

“From Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking-Glass.The Red King dreamed all the characters that appeared in the book, from the Tweedle boys to Alice herself. But if the Red King were ever to wake up…” She trailed off, just as Frane had done.

Frane raised the red chess piece toward Vale, as though in salute. Troi realized only then that the piece was indeed the king. And that the Neyel had comprehended Vale’s literary allusion.

“The Sleeper,” the Neyel said. “You understand.”

“I suggest you save your literary symposium for another time, Commander Vale,” Tchev said with a low snarl.

“Agreed,” Will said, glancing significantly at his first officer, who acknowledged his mild rebuke with a silent nod.

“Does it really matter whether this is an exotic physics phenomenon, or the Sleeper coming awake, or some creative dreamer out of ancient Terran literature?” Jaza asked. “No matter how we look at it, the potential result is the same: destruction on an almost unimaginable scale.”

“Also, we appear to be unable—and some of us are almost certainly unwilling—to simply killthis ‘Red King,’ ” Donatra said, her dark, intense gaze locking with Will’s. The Klingons cast expectant looks at Titan’s captain, and Troi sensed her husband’s increasing desperation over the prospect of finding a morally defensible course of action.

Will’s combadge chirped perhaps half a second later. “Bridge to Captain Riker,”it said, speaking in the precisely enunciated voice of Zurin Dakal.

“Please excuse me,” Will said, then stood and tapped his combadge. “Go ahead, Cadet.”

“I think I have good news, sir. The long-range sensor nets have picked up dozens of bogies, apparently flying in formation at high warp. They are on an outbound trajectory from a G-type star system located less than five light-years from our present position.”

“Configuration?”

“Exact configuration isn’t determinable at this range, Captain. But the warp signature readings are consistent with those of Romulan singularity drives.”

Donatra rose, her dour face suddenly flushed green with emotion. Her voice, however, scarcely rose above a whisper.

“My fleet.”

Troi saw that Jaza was quickly entering commands into his tabletop console controls. He then consulted the display of a padd he was carrying. “I’m tapping directly into the main science station,” he said.

Whatever he saw in the padd’s tiny screen was making him scowl in perplexity. His Bajoran nasal striations seemed to spread upward vertically across his brown forehead until they nearly reached his hairline.

“Are we sufficiently clear of the rift’s interference to hail them?” Will asked the cadet.

“I think so, sir.”

“Then do it, Cadet.”

“Aye, Cap—”

“Belay that, Cadet!” Jaza shouted, prompting every head in the room to swivel in his direction. Surprise filled the room as quickly as a wildfire fed by pure oxygen.

“Captain?”Dakal said, his own confusion evident even over the tiny combadge speaker.

Troi knew that the usually reserved senior science officer would never have countermanded one of the captain’s orders without an extremely good reason. But what was it?

“Stand by, Cadet,” Will said. To Jaza, he said, “Well, Commander?”

Still scowling at his padd, Jaza said, “I’m seeing a peculiar oscillation in the warp signatures of those ships.”

Without any prompting, Pazlar and Cethente began consulting padds of their own. Though the expression on the Syrath’s exoskeletal “face” remained as unreadable as ever, both he and his Elaysian colleague shone with the same feeling of shocked recognition Troi was sensing in Jaza.

“Peculiar in what way?” Donatra asked. “Are those my ships or not?”

Jaza nodded slowly. “They’re Romulan ships, all right. But their warp signatures seem to have been slightly modified, at least in comparison with that of the Valdore.”

“Modified how?” Will said.

Jaza paused to tap another set of commands into his padd, and then into his tabletop console. In the space above the table, a jagged network of red and blue lines superimposed themselves over the image of the spatial rift.

“These are the same entropic patterns that argued in favor of extant intelligence within the protouniverse,” Jaza said, and touched yet another tabletop control.

Then the image of the rift morphed into that of a sleek Mogai-class Romulan warbird. The colorful overlay of jagged lines remained in place.

“And these are the oscillations I noticed in the Romulan warp fields.”

“They’re the same,” Donatra said. “But what does that mean?”

A bizarre notion occurred to Troi then. Through the link she shared with Will, she knew with certainty that he had tumbled to it as well.

“The Sleeper must have taken control of those vessels,” Frane said, articulating Troi’s flash of insight, though he was obviously seeing reality through the prism of local mythology. “The ships are its arms and legs now. Perhaps they will be used to help cleanse M’jallanish space of our people’s sins. Maybe that was why those ships attacked my father’s military fleet the moment we saw them emerge from the Sleeper’s embrace.”

“So our Red King is… sleepwalking?”Vale said, shaking her head.

“Apparently. For now, anyway,” Will said. Then he frowned. “But if some sentient force living in that protouniverse really has taken control of Donatra’s fleet, then why didn’t it grab the Valdore,too? Or Titan?”

“It may be nothing more than random chance,”Cethente said. “Perhaps the same element of chaos that determined how much damage each of our ships would sustain during their passage from Romulan space.”

“Or perhaps this…Sleeper finds something uniquely attractive about large conglomerations of Romulan warp fields,” Jaza said with a speculative shrug. “After all, Romulan warp drives are based on artificial singularities, whose physics superficially resemble that of emergent protouniverses. A large concentration of such singularity-driven warp fields coming into sudden close proximity might have gotten the entity’s attention in a way that our three vessels simply couldn’t.”

Will’s blue eyes widened. “So you’re saying that the Romulan fleet is… possessed,Mr. Jaza?”

“Well, I’m not claiming that the Kosst Amojanis running riot in the Small Magellanic Cloud, sir. But for want of a more scientific term than ‘possession,’ yes.”

Donatra looked as though she were about to become physically ill. Clearly she lacked any better explanation for her fleet’s bizarre behavior. And she was just as obviously in anguish about the fate of her crews; if some inscrutable alien intellect had indeed seized control of her fleet, all of the personnel aboard those vessels might well already be dead.

Will touched his combadge again. “Chief Bolaji.”

“Bolaji here,”said the conn officer.

“Plot an intercept course, Chief. We’ll leave at my signal, best speed. I want to drop out of warp just outside the Romulan fleet’s sensor range and stay inconspicuous. If they dodetect us, I want them to think we’re nothing more than a sensor shadow.”

“Aye, sir. Are you expecting combat?”

“I sure as hell hope not, Chief. Riker out.”

“Aye, Captain. Bolaji out.”

Troi saw Will and Tuvok exchange a silent look and equally silent nods. Then the Vulcan tactical officer rose and quietly exited the room. Must be checking on the weapons systems,she thought. Just in case.

Donatra turned to face Will. “I must return to the Valdoreto confer with Commander Suran. We will depart when Titandoes, and follow a parallel course.”

“That’s exactly what I was going to suggest,” Will said, nodding. “Your warp signature will make it easier to pass ourselves off as a sensor shadow if your fleet manages to detect our approach.”

Tchev stood, as did Dekri. “We will return to the Dugh,”said the Klingon captain. “As will the rest of our crew. My people will not participate in this… targhunt.”

“Your vessel is so much wreckage,” Donatra said. “She would only slow us down. You might consider abandoning her.”

Dekri sneered openly at Donatra. “We will not leave her to the tender mercies of whatever scavengers frequent these parts. We will make such repairs as we can before attempting to re-cross the rift.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to post the Dughnear the rift while Titanand Valdorego hunting,” Vale said. “Somebody ought to keep an eye on it close up. And watch for more escape pods from the Neyel ships.”

Tchev nodded to Will. “We will remain vigilant until you return, Captain. Or until we complete sufficient repairs to attempt a return voyage through the rift.”

“All right,” Will said. “Make sure they have a working subspace transmitter, Mr. Vale. And whatever other assistance they might require.” He turned to Donatra again. “If you have no objections, Commander…”

Donatra shrugged. “What is the human expression? ‘It’s their funeral.’If they wish to hasten theirs by attempting to cross the rift unassisted, then it is none of my concern.” Troi sensed eager anticipation of the Klingons’ departure lurking beneath the commander’s calculated display of indifference. Donatra clearly cared not a bit whether or not the Klingons survived their captain’s perhaps reckless decision.

Frane rose as well then, the red chess piece clutched so tightly in his hand that Troi thought it might shatter. His pleading gaze was solely for Will.

“I wish to remain aboard Titan.And I want all the other survivors from the Neyel fleet brought here as well. There are only about twenty of us.”

Will looked toward Donatra, who merely responded with another “suit yourself” shrug. He crossed to the Neyel then and took the large gray hand he offered in a firm clasp.

“My diplomatic officer will issue guest quarters for your people, Mr. Frane,” Will said. Troi made a mental note to confer with Tuvok about security issues as she set up accommodations for Titan’s new guests.

Frane’s stiff features smoothed into a grateful smile. Troi experienced a sensation of something akin to joy, a feeling that made her think of long-overdue family reunions.

Disengaging his hand from the Neyel’s, Will crossed back to Donatra. “It’s going to take several hours to reach the fleet’s current position. It might be a whole day before we actually catch up to them.”

“I’ll make sure we’re on the lookout for Neyel military patrols along the way,” Vale said.

“Good,” Will said, nodding. “According to Excelsior’s reports, they weren’t a very trusting bunch.”

“And after we catch up to the Romulan ships, what then?” Vale wanted to know.

The room fell silent yet again. A cloud of uncertainty permeated the observation lounge. Still, Troi could sense Will’s faith that he would find an appropriate course of action, that a better explanation than “possession” could be found for the behavior of Donatra’s fleet. Titan,the Valdore,and the Dughwere going to need the help of those ships and their crews if they were to stand any real chance of getting home in one piece.

And Troi knew that the clock was ticking relentlessly toward the time when even the combined power of Donatra’s fleet wouldn’t be enough to save them.