Do Comets Dream? Part 5

"It's a machine," Lisa Martinez was saying in awe.

"Machine or animal," said Halliday. "The Thanetians aren't terribly particular. After all, they believe that the entire universe is a machine-a machine that cycles back to its starting point every five thousand years. They've got a sort of clockwork view of reality, don't you see."

Sentient or not, it was awe-inspiring. Almost enough to allow Simon to forget the expression on Kio sar-Bensu's face when she had been forced to return to her world.

Chapter Ten.

The High s.h.i.+vantak "DO NOT SPEAK of him again!" Kio's father was berating her as the two of them waited in the antechamber of the High s.h.i.+vantak's audience hall. They had been waiting for perhaps an entire moon-turn-it certainly seemed that way.

"Father," Kio said, "he never touched me in an impure way. He's a Federation officer, Father-they have codes of honor, too, though you may consider them all to be barbarians. It was me, Father-I wanted him to!"

She had to admit that she rather enjoyed the look of horror in her father's face. She hadn't been able to get a rise out of him in years, and now, all at once, she was sending him into tizzy after tizzy. Perhaps he does love me after all, she thought.

"It's not enough that I've been made to lose my way in the s.h.i.+vantak's theological labyrinth like some laboratory rodent," he said, pacing back and forth, "not enough that I've been unable to enter a proper state of inner calm so that I can receive the world's ending with true joy in my heart-not enough that I've thought the unthinkable, I've actually suspected the infallible s.h.i.+vantak of heresy-but my daughter has to choose this moment to rebel." So distraught was Straun that he actually collided with the wall, knocking a sconce askew, spilling liquid fire on the polished jasper floor. An attendant hastened to scrub it, muttering a mantra of omen-aversion as she wiped the tendrils of cool flame with a gilded sponge.

"Father, Father," she said softly.

A man had entered the antechamber. It was the High s.h.i.+vantak's chamberlain. He wore a robe of black anatir feathers, and held the Orb of Judgment in his left hand. His countenance was grim.

"Lord Kaltenbis!" Straun said, kneeling as was appropriate before one whose brow bore the caste-mark of M'Thartush. "When will he see me? There is so much to report, so many questions that need answering, questions that could undermine the very fabric of-"

"Silence!" Kaltenbis shouted. The orb glowed. "His Radiance will not see you."

"He will not-"

"Not now, not, perhaps, ever, considering we are only a few moon-turns from the end of time. Yet, I am to tell you that he has considered your report fully. And farther, I am to tell you that in my right hand"-he shook one flowing sleeve, and a sealed decree slid into his hand-"I bear your fate. This is-but you will already have grasped the implications from the glowing of my orb."

Kio gasped. Suddenly her father's discomfiture had a.s.sumed far more dire dimensions.

"Yes, it's an edict of execution with a finding of heresy. Shall I read it to you? I'll just go through the highlights: Straun sar-Bensu, being employed within the ecclesiastical demesne of the most high, etc. etc. etc., stands condemned of contemplating the breaking of the great circle-" etc., stands condemned of contemplating the breaking of the great circle-"

"I?" said Kio's father. "I? I was the most loyal believer until-why, the High s.h.i.+vantak himself-"

"Absurd," said the chamberlain. "You impute fallibility to the infallible-I should burn you at the stake with my own hands!"

Kio whispered urgently in her father's ear, "Father, now you see how treacherous they are. You see that they've used you to keep their noses clean while you take the fall for daring to find out for them the thing they most want to know-the thing it's forbidden for a citizen of Thanet to even think-they want to know if the Federation is telling the truth! Because, even if it destroys you and half the world-they want to cling to power! Half a world is better than none!"

She put her arms around her father's prostrate body. He was weeping now, his face racked with great sobs. Furious, Kio sprang to her feet. She looked the chamberlain right in the eye. "Look what you've done to him-look what you've done to this whole world-you are going to swallow the truth whole-and spit out a lie-you don't believe a word of the Panvivlion. Hypocrite!"

"Don't make things worse for us!" her father whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "The shame of it-thank the great powers that the world will end anyway, and my being burned at the stake only shortens my life by a day or two."

"Arise, Straun sar-Bensu," said Lord Kaltenbis. "The decree of execution is but what I carry in one hand. But with the other I can give back what I shall have taken away."

He shook his other sleeve: another decree. Deftly, he switched the orb into his other hand. The second decree was not bordered with red, the sign of the purifying flames of execution; it had a green border. And the seal of the High s.h.i.+vantak was on that one as well.

"In my other hand," said the chamberlain, "I have an alternate edict. The sentence of execution is hereby commuted until after the end of the world. Your honor is safe, as at that time you will have no goods to seize, no good name to besmirch. In return for these few days without shame, you shall continue to engage the Federation."

"Engage?" Straun said, his expression of terror and despair turning into one of bewilderment.

But Kio saw what the lord chamberlain meant right away. There had been two possibilities: the great truth of the Panvivlion, and its opposite-the unthinkable. Between these two incompatibilities there must be a middle way. A loophole.

"You want my father to save you," she said slowly.

"We want him to continue to-examine the theological incongruities, to see if we can arrive at a more accurate interpretation of the Panvivlion," said Kaltenbis.

"And what could he gain from that?"

"He will gain-his life."

"I think my father will want more than his life. I think that he will want something higher-a change in caste."

"But caste is decreed by birth!"

"The High s.h.i.+vantak," said Kio, "is the embodiment of the Panvivlion; the truth made flesh; he is infallible. Why can't he just command a change?"

"I shall raise the matter with the High s.h.i.+vantak," said the lord chamberlain, and it dawned on Kio that a man so unaccustomed to questions easily crumbled in the face of a challenge. Even a challenge presented by an insignificant seventeen-year-old girl.

"Father," she whispered, gently pulling her father back to his feet, "we're going to have to revisit that Captain Picard again. And we're going to have to keep our minds wide open."

Chapter Eleven.

The Comet CALM RULED ON THE BRIDGE of the Enterprise. The officers at their stations, patiently monitoring the unfolding situation. La Forge was ready for the captain's signal to unleash, with surgical precision, the mighty power of photon torpedoes on the rogue comet. Counselor Troi watched; though this was a routine operation, she had had a strange foreboding about it.

On impulse power now, the s.h.i.+p moved with an eerie majesty through a gaseous mini-nebula that, though its matter was so thinly spread out that, bottled up on Earth, it would be considered a perfect vacuum, here s.h.i.+mmered with the borrowed reflection of a far-off star cl.u.s.ter. Thanet's sun, Klastravo, was veiled by the nebula, its light diffuse and mysterious.

"Another star system," Picard mused, "another civilization hurtling toward a doom perhaps created by its own folly-"

Truly, Troi thought, the human condition is a universal constant-everywhere we go, we see the same glories, the same frailties. She could sense the captain's frustration.

"The comet, Captain," said Commander Riker, glancing down at his array of computer information. "Closing in, trajectory as predicted."

"On screen," said the captain.

The image came into focus-a thing of lethal beauty. Its tail glowed against the starstream.

"Impressive," said Riker.

What a welter of emotions that one word held, Troi thought. The boyish enthusiasm for the exotic phenomena of s.p.a.ce-that was still there inside the mind of the mature commander, coolly sizing up his opponent. A man versus a s.p.a.ce-borne object the size of a hundred stars.h.i.+ps.

"And it will surely make for an impressive display," said Worf. "Can we blow it up now?"

Picard nodded to his second-in-command. "Commence destruction of the comet," Riker said, and La Forge initiated the sequence.

"Five minutes till impact," he said.

"Four minutes, fifty seconds," the computer continued the countdown.

"Wait, Commander!" La Forge said suddenly. "There's a signal coming in from-a Thanetian craft-asking permission to beam aboard-it's the Thanetian amba.s.sador."

Riker said, "We do have plenty of time, Captain. The amba.s.sador ought to be a witness to this; it's routine for us, major history for them."

"Agreed. Escort him to the bridge," Picard commanded.

He summoned Deanna Troi to his side. "Do you sense anything?" he asked softly as Amba.s.sador Straun emerged from the elevator, flanked by ensigns. Behind him walked the daughter, whom everyone had last seen desperately pleading for asylum.

"Confusion-ambiguity," she said, sotto voce, reaching out, sensing the man's emotions whirling within the alien's mind. "He can't believe he's here. But-the daughter's mind-set is more interesting. She's almost a different person-reborn-in charge of herself and her surroundings."

"Greetings, Captain," said Amba.s.sador Straun. "The High s.h.i.+vantak sends me as a religious observer to your rites of exorcism. They may be futile against the Pyrohelion, which has been ordained since time began five thousand years ago, but he has asked that every moment of our history be officially recorded, even up to the final millisecond." He stopped to stare at the comet, which now filled the screen, almost eclipsing the fiery globe that was Klastravo.

"I'm sorry to speak out of turn, Captain Picard," said Kio sar-Bensu, "but there's an added bonus. If the world should be destroyed, as the Panvivlion predicts, we would still be observing, and we would not actually be on the world; there might be a loophole, you see."

"Sacrilege!" Straun could barely get the word out, but his daughter went on speaking.

"And in that case," she said, "I would humbly resubmit my pet.i.tion for asylum, this time as a sentient being without a homeworld."

"And I'm sure your pet.i.tion would be approved," said Riker.

An ensign showed the visitors to some seats. Again, Picard asked Commander Riker to start the destruction.

"Initiate the sequence," Riker said.

"Sequence reinitiated," La Forge said. "Five minutes."

The computer resumed the countdown. Four minutes, fifty seconds-forty-thirty-three minutes, ten seconds- "No!" Troi shouted suddenly.

She had reacted before even realizing what she was reacting to-a harrowing pang of loss and disillusion-a cry of pain that had lasted for millennia and could not be heard because there was no organ of speech to cry out-the desolate, stifled wailing of a lost child.

"What is it, Counselor?" Picard asked.

"Trust me on this, Captain! Stop the sequence!"

Picard nodded. Riker held up his hand. Sequence on hold at two minutes, twenty-seven seconds, said the computer.

"Something is alive on that comet!" said Troi. "It's so-intense, so-" A wave of nausea now. She almost buckled from the impact of it.

Riker was speaking now. "Captain," he said, "imaging suggests some kind of hollow chamber inside the comet-in the shape of a perfect octahedron."

"An artificial comet, then," said Picard.

"With some kind of intelligence, perhaps," La Forge said.

"More than intelligence-it has emotion," Troi gasped. "Raw, unfiltered emotion that's built up over thousands of years-"

"The Panvivlion was right!" cried Amba.s.sador Straun, coming to life suddenly. "This is no natural phenomenon that a few concentrated bursts of light can dissipate. This is the hand of the G.o.ds! Of course it has intelligence-of course it has emotion-this so-called comet is the G.o.d of the Last Days, the Inconsolable, the Eater of the World, he that is called Sorex Pyrohilael, he whose name can only be uttered by-"

"Nonsense, Father," said the daughter, "I'm sure they'll find an explanation for it all in due course."

"Due course! They only have two days."

"A lot can happen in two days," Deanna found herself saying. "Miracles have happened in a lot less."

"Miracle or not," the captain said, "the presence of a life-form changes the equation entirely."

Then he turned to Troi, who was still reeling from the onslaught of emotions from the heart of the comet. "Do you think-"

"I know what you're going to ask, Captain," Troi said. "You want me to go in closer."

"You're the only one who-can feel with it."

"Of course. I'll do it."

"I want the transporter room on standby to beam you back the instant you reach a threshold you cannot safely tolerate," Picard said. "And-Riker will be with you."

On screen, against the sea of stars, the comet continued to streak toward Thanet, and Klastravo burned bright, a beacon of death.

Chapter Twelve.

Artas THEN, IN THE FINAL HOURS, he thought he could hear another voice.

Not the harsh metal-voice that denied him his childhood; this seemed softer, this seemed, in the end, soothing. A flash: dark hair, ringlets, deep haunting eyes. But it was not his mother either. It was a stranger. She knew neither his name nor even his species.

She spoke to him across the gulf of s.p.a.ce. And time as well perhaps, though time had little meaning to him anymore.

She said to him, I'm coming. Hold on a little longer.

And he said, "Will you sing to me?"

And the voice said, If I can.

He said, "And will I put my arms around your neck, and will you hold me?"