Strike Zone Part 28

"You are?"

"Yes."

"Oh." That was of no help whatsoever. It was like trying to have a conversation with Data on a bad day ...

Data! Of course! This thing was a machine.

"Are you a machine?"

"If it will help you to describe me that way."

Geordi sighed. "How would you describe you?"

"In terms you can understand?" She paused. "The welcoming committee."

"Did you welcome the Kreel?"

"No. They were merely a means to an end. They were not ready to meet us. We did not wish to meet them. But they brought you here, and so served our purpose."

"Served your purpose?" Geordi said incredulously. "They took your weapons and went crazy with them! They cost lives!"

"Lives cannot be cost," she replied. "They are merely different forms of energy, and energy cannot be destroyed. It's all the same."

"Look," said Geordi, trying to come at it from a different angle, "What's the big deal about this room? Why all those protective devices and everything for an empty room?"

"This room isn't empty."

"Well, what's in it then?"

She sounded so peaceful as she said, "Everything."

"What?"

"This room has no boundaries. It goes on forever, to all sides, to infinity. That is why it was important for you to enter here. You, Geordi La Forge, can see things as they really are."

"Uh-huh," said Geordi slowly, not understanding. "So?"

"Others would enter this room and see things as they think they are. It would drive them quite mad."

"Yeah. Well look, I have to admit I'm not feeling exactly too stable right now, myself. Would you at least tell me what purpose is being served by my being here."

"That's simple."

"I'm glad something is." Geordi sighed.

"When you entered this room, it served to summon them."

"Who?"

"The Cognoscente."

The star face floated before the Enterprise, ma.s.sive beyond all measuring.

"This is ... " Picard licked his lips, cleared his throat, and started again. "This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Stars.h.i.+p Enterprise. Identify yourself please."

There was a long pause. And when the face spoke it was without words, and yet they all understood.

We have a variety of names. We prefer simply the Cognoscente.

"Who ... are you?"

We are those who have been waiting for you. We created this planet, with all its weapons, as a test to see how you would handle hostilities between two races. To see how well you could impart the lessons you've learned.

"Ah!" said Data brightly. "A test! I was right. Geordi won't be at all pleased."

"Oh no," moaned Picard. "Not a test."

"Oh yes, sir," said Data. "I was very certain that ... "

"Shut up, Data."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you saying," Picard said, anger building slowly, "that all this-all the death, all the destruction and suffering-has been yet another test to keep beings like yourselves amused."

Not just this test. There have been other instances of death and destruction and suffering. They have always been for you to learn and grow.

"What?" said Picard, incredulous. "You've ... done things like this before."

Always for a reason.

"Your reasons."

Yes. So that you could grow. And now the testing is over. Now we are here to take you by the hand. To- It all came cras.h.i.+ng down on Picard. All the tension, all the anger, all the fury, and now this-this d.a.m.nable cavalier att.i.tude by yet another race that fancied itself to be the judge and jury of mankind.

"NO!" shouted Picard. "I have had it! We have had it! All of us! We are sick to death of mysterious Alien races who think they know better than us! Who think that we're little white mice to run through mazes for their amus.e.m.e.nt!

"We are not test subjects! We are not guinea pigs! You, all you blasted 'superior' races, have the gall to arrange these ma.s.sive, insane tests and act as if your ability to manhandle us makes you better. It does not! We have come this far, not because of beings like yourselves, but despite you all! Despite all those throughout history who have called us barbarians and sought to judge us. We have brought ourselves this far and we'll bring ourselves further still.

"And you can keep your hands to yourselves, and you can keep your tests to yourselves! Is that understood! We will not be threatened! We will not be pushed! We will not jump through hoops, and we will not, repeat, not, be subjects of tests anymore. Do you understand? No ... more ... tests!"

There was a long and ominous silence from the star face.

And then, it smiled.

Congratulations. We had hoped you would say that. That ... was the final test.

Picard and Riker stared at each other incredulously.

"I don't think you got through, sir," said Riker.

Picard spun around and faced the screen again. "Now wait just one minute!"

"Captain!"

The shout of alarm came from Data, who had manned the tactical station. "Sensors detecting a-a rip!"

"What?"

And then they saw it too.

In front of them, beyond the planet designated DQN 1196, the fabric of s.p.a.ce seemed to tear open, a thin horizontal rent that actually was light-years across.

And it started to drag the Enterprise toward it.

And far off in the distance, the star face of the Cognoscente was laughing.

Geordi felt the room begin to shake beneath his feet. He looked around frantically. "What's happening?!"

"We're going home." She sighed. "It's been so long."

"But my s.h.i.+p! The Enterprise! I've got to get back to her!"

"Well," said the voice, "it should be here somewhere. Everything else is. Maybe you'll find it. Maybe not. I have to leave now."

"Wait!" shouted Geordi. But there was no answer.

Geordi started to run.

"Full reverse thrust!" shouted Picard. "Engine room, give it everything you've got!"

The warp engines of the mighty stars.h.i.+p blasted away from the spatial rip and the entire s.h.i.+p shook under the strain, as the warp nacelles pushed the s.h.i.+p one way, while forces they could not begin to understand fought to drag them the other.

Beneath them, the planet began to break up. Huge chunks of its terrain swirled off, spinning and spiraling away to be sucked into the huge maw of nothingness that had appeared. And beneath the places where the planet had been ripped away, there shone through huge metallic areas that glinted in the light produced by the face of a million stars.

And now that face, too, was breaking apart. The stars fell out of their alignment, returning to the positions in the galaxy that they must have always been maintaining, for certainly that had been a ma.s.sive illusion.

"We're being pulled in!" shouted Marks.

"No. We'll make it," said Picard with incredible calm. Here, here was something he understood. The Enterprise, fighting a battle of wills, of strength-a battle that she would surely win.

Now the facade of the planet was completely gone, and its true nature was revealed. A solid metal sphere, gleaming, beautiful in s.p.a.ce, and then it too was pulled toward the hole. It gave no resistance, happy to be going home.

Geordi La Forge ran, ran as if his life depended on it. Somehow he sensed something closing in behind him and he leaped frantically, desperately into the darkness ahead of him.

He cut through the darkness and was surrounded by light.

He crashed headlong into the protective s.h.i.+eld around the matter/antimatter blender.

"Mister La Forge!"

He looked up and was astounded, but somehow not too astounded, to find himself in the engine room. The engines were going full blast. "What's happening?" he demanded.

"We're at full reverse thrust," said the a.s.sistant engineer. "We're in trouble."

"What else is new?" said Geordi.

The gleaming planet disappeared from view, and the rift in s.p.a.ce opened wider, as if to receive it?

No. As if to give a final view of what was through there.

They gaped in astonishment as they had a glimpse, just the briefest glimpse, of beauty beyond imagining. Cities floating and gleaming in s.p.a.ce, circled by s.h.i.+ps as large as planets and yet magnificent and graceful. The shape of the future, of the glory that was to be mankind, there for the asking, there for the touching ...

And it was gone.

One moment it was there, the next-vanished. The rift had closed itself off, and whatever secrets, whatever wonders lay through there, would remain there. Untouchable and unknowable.

Picard sagged back in his chair, his face drained of all emotion.

"My G.o.d, Number One ... what have I done?"

Riker considered it very carefully. "You've done one of two things, sir, or perhaps both ... neither of which are quite so bad."

Picard looked up, and Riker had never seen him look so shaken or so vulnerable. "And they are ... "

"Either you've prevented us from having something we were not ready for ... and you yourself have stated the dangers of what can occur when that happens."

Picard nodded ruefully. "No matter how far we advance, every so often we run up against just how little we've learned. What's the other possibility, Number One?"

"Well ... it may sound strange ... but you might have just told off our parents."

Chapter Twenty.

"MIRRORS, CAPTAIN. I did it all with mirrors."

They had gathered in the sickbay-Picard, Riker, Troi, Data, and Worf, all surrounding the remarkably resilient Klingon known as the Honorable Kobry. Gava stood nearby, smiling gently.

"Seriously, Kobry," said Picard. "How did you-"

"Survive? Honestly, Captain, one does not reach my age without picking up a few things." He held up his hand. "This ring, for example."

"With the pills," said Picard. "For your health."