Do Comets Dream? Part 7

The Mortal That Was a Machine There shall come in the last days of the world a Thanopstru, that is to say, a Bringer of Death. And this shall be his sign. He shall s.h.i.+ne in the night sky like a sun, yet be tailed like a meteor. Brighter than the dancing moons shall he s.h.i.+ne, and the last days will be rich with the rus.h.i.+ng of dailong in the seas, and joyous with dancing. Be of good cheer. Ye are doubly blessed, who live in the days of the Thanopstru.

And in moments of terror or hards.h.i.+p, ye shall recite over and over the holy name of the Thanopstru, and from the certain knowledge of the coming cataclysm, you shall draw comfort, you shall find stillness without your troubled hearts.

-From the Holy Panvivlion ONCE MORE, CAPTAIN PICARD was poring through those field notes, trying to glean some bit of information they could fix on, something to explain the mysteries of Thanet.

And once more, the problems seemed to get more and more convoluted, the more one delved into them.

He looked up: he found himself face-to-face with Guinan. Somehow, she had known he needed to speak with her.

He said, "Look, it's easy to say, don't touch their belief system, don't upset their civilization. But then, I start thinking.

"If a man is dying of an incurable, painful disease-if he's suffering, if science cannot help-and he decides to pull his own plug-that's one ethical dilemma. But if he's in the prime of life, if he has nothing holding him back except an illusion-if he has so much left to give to the rest of the world, so much potential, so much art and literature, so much beauty-is it right to strip away that illusion?"

"Your call, Captain," Guinan said softly.

"I know it is," Picard said, and turned back to Halliday's field notes, feeling once again- "The aloneness," Guinan sighed. "Yes, I know."

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT:.

Dr. Robert Halliday's field notes The transcript continues: Last week, I went to a thanhalyrion, which is a sort of wake for the end of the world. There was more singing and dancing than you can imagine, and what amazed me was that, within the rigidity of their cla.s.s structure, there seemed to be more than a little fluidity. There was an intoxicating liquid called peftifesht wine, which made everyone very merry but seemed to have the side effect of relaxing the caste system.

At precisely seven minutes after the hour of Karambe Ascendant (the Thanetians measure time by the complex rhythms of their many moons) a beautiful woman-a virgin, I was told-emerged from an inner room into the atrium.

There was a sweeping spiral staircase in the middle of the courtyard that seemed to lead nowhere. The staircase leaned; it ended on a tiny parapet that overlooked the ever-present sea. Well, the celebrants immediately fell into a trancelike state when the virgin entered, and they immediately began to whisper, over and over, like a mantra, the word thanopstru. Well, words are just air, but you cannot imagine how terrifying it is to hear this word whispered, in unison, by a hundred people, rhythmically, almost like zombies.

The chanting crescendoed; it was more than a whisper now, it was a thunder-roar, and the young woman mounted the parapet, and suddenly, maybe it was a break in the clouds in the night sky, maybe it was a moment preordained by their astronomers, but there appeared at the zenith of heaven this glowing, many-tailed star-a comet, I suppose-and the virgin leaped into the sea.

And then the chanting stopped, and there was silence for a very long time as everyone at the party drank an entire goblet of peftifesht-and another, and another-while I, an alien and a xenoanthropologist, eager to etch every moment of this bizarre ritual onto the clay tablets of my consciousness, did not drink, and was perhaps the only halfway sober person in the entire courtyard.

Here's the strangest part: I know the girl jumped. I saw her dive, heard the splash when she hit the waves. Yet an hour later, when I asked the other witnesses how they felt about the death of one so young, they denied the whole incident! Indeed, there was such a legend of a virgin suicide in their mythology. A beautiful story, they said, but it was of the past, not the present. And, they a.s.sured me, it was fiction, not fact.

The Thanetians live in a world that in their own minds is fleeting, illusory; they do not believe that the real is real. This is in conflict with the Federation which is, on the whole, materialistic; the spiritual is often kept to one side. So, for all I know, n.o.body saw a young woman leap to her death. For all I know, they all edited it out of their collective thoughts; we need to have this peftifesht a.n.a.lyzed; I will include a sample in my next physical reports package-a.s.suming the planet is still here in a month.

I think I actually will down a goblet of that peftifesht before I start on the next chapter of these field notes.

"Computer," said the captain, "what's in the peftifesht?"

"Water, mostly," said the computer. "Water, simple carbohydrates, a few trace elements."

"Nothing that would get anyone drunk," Picard said, thinking of the vineyards of his childhood home-lost now, lost.

So even their native intoxicant worked by the magic of illusion, of autosuggestion. Culture was the primary imperative, not chemistry. The mind was master, not the world beyond.

He took a sip of the synthetic peftifesht. It was cool, a little cloying-and not intoxicating in the slightest.

Chapter Fifteen.

To Save a World "HE HAS SO MUCH to tell us," Deanna said, back on the Enterprise. "I have to go back in. There has to be a way to save him."

In the conference room, the atmosphere was serious. There was a profound conflict here; the Federation had standard rules for adjudicating such conflicts, yet these were sentient beings-a few million sentient beings-whose civilization and serf-image were at stake.

Picard had agreed to let the amba.s.sador and his daughter sit in on the meeting. The hours, of course, were ticking away. It seemed only minutes ago that they still had two days to figure out what to do. Now it was down to a few hours. He had sent in technicians-he hadn't dared risk sending Troi in again yet-and finally the s.h.i.+p's doctor.

"Dr. Crusher?" Picard turned to Beverly, who had just made a brief trip to the comet's heart, and who now appeared somber and dejected.

She said, "I've a.n.a.lyzed the boy's cell structure, the hard-wiring of his neurons to the silicon-based nervous system of the comet itself-and I've got to tell you, there's no way to free him. His brain has been soldered into the computer that runs that infernal weapon. It's appalling."

Picard watched the amba.s.sador, whose fists clenched and unclenched on the table. What he must be going through, he thought. It's all unraveling-everything he ever held to be ultimate truth. "You're saying that to remove the boy from the weapon would be-"

"To kill him, Captain," said Dr. Crusher.

"And yet," said the captain, "the needs of the many-" He was quoting the ancient adage that a great hero of the Federation had once uttered, giving his life for the life of his s.h.i.+p-all knew those words by heart, and all honored them.

"It's true," said Worf. "Yet honor demands that we exhaust all possibilities before allowing death to occur needlessly-"

Picard said, "Mr. La Forge?"

"Beverly is right, Captain," La Forge said. "We can't separate the boy from the comet without severing vital neural links. He's part of that thing now, a cyborg as it were."

Picard shuddered, remembering a time when he too had been joined to a great machine-a machine intent on destroying all individuality, all true sentience in the entire galaxy.

"But we'd just be killing him," said Counselor Troi, and Picard understood that she, of all the crew members, had actually felt what the comet felt, had been one with its emotions.

"As he would kill millions of others," Picard said, with relentless logic.

"Captain, there's a margin of safety still. An hour, half an hour-to find out what we need to know. We don't know what world this comet is from or why the boy welded to the machine is so clearly Thanetian in species. We ought to know these things."

Before we destroy him, Picard added silently. He winced. Perhaps the child's death was inevitable, but he would be d.a.m.ned if he wouldn't use every resource and every moment at his disposal to change the boy's fate.

La Forge spoke up suddenly. "Captain, Commander Data is contacting us from the planet's surface-just beneath the surface, actually."

"On screen," said the captain.

Data's face formed where there had been a sea of stars. He was seated-no, enveloped-in a chair that seemed to be made of flesh, with tentacles writhing about his arms and feet. Behind him, other members of the Enterprise away team, as well as Dr. Halliday and his son, seemed similarly tethered to a wall. The room resembled an organic version of a control room in a stars.h.i.+p.

"Captain," said Data, "the largest fauna on this world are not natural creatures at all. They are some kind of elaborately bioengineered cyborg, and they seem to contain records, racial memories, of Thanet's history beyond the five thousand years the Thanetians have themselves recorded. It seems they have been expecting us-or someone, at any rate. This technology parallels the holodeck technology, except that the neurons fired are of living tissue rather than inorganic in origin."

The bridge crew looked at their comrade on the screen, and then at each other, in wonder.

"Captain, I believe we are on the verge of understanding why this thanopstru has been launched to destroy Thanet. I am a.s.similating information as quickly as my positronic brain paths will permit. A few more hours ought to illuminate everything. There seems to be-some kind of communication between the dailong and the comet-one is controlling the other-it is uncertain which. We are seeing the past right now. With astonis.h.i.+ng verisimilitude. We were wrong about this world in many ways. It is not primitive at all. In fact, we are sensing the biography of the very life-form inside the comet now-and we are living through a simulacrum of its actual lifetime, five thousand years ago."

"I knew nothing of this!" said the amba.s.sador. "Does the High s.h.i.+vantak perhaps know something we do not know? Is our entire culture-an artificial construct?"

Suddenly the amba.s.sador's daughter spoke up. "Counselor, perhaps you will have need of-someone who understands the Thanetian language and culture. I think I should go with you. When I was younger, I trained with the dailongzhen of my community, hoping that I would one day catch and navigate a dailong myself-it's the only way a Thanetian can ever transcend the limitations of caste. I don't have much telepathic ability, but I could probably-help you with a few concepts."

"The inner chamber is very cramped," Picard said.

"This is our history you're unearthing. One of us needs to be there. If we didn't have a say in our past, and may not have one in our future," Kio said with pa.s.sion, "we should at least know what's going on."

Beverly Crusher said, "I could monitor her life signs remotely, and give the order to have her evacuated from on board the Enterprise."

He could have said no. Maybe he should have. But if the girl's own father, so overprotective when it came to an innocent romance, was willing to let her risk her life for knowledge, who was Picard to stand in the way?

"Make it so," said Captain Picard, sighing.

Chapter Sixteen.

Tanith LANDFALL NOW. Not Thanet. Another world. The longs.h.i.+p was pulling ash.o.r.e next to a gilded paG.o.da guarded by ten-story demons of stone. They were docking-and Simon Ta.r.s.es seemed to know what he was doing, Data observed, as he tugged at the ropes and made the sail fold up. The ancient technology was fascinating, mixed as it was with what seemed almost anachronistic, a sky busy with personal flying craft and larger rocket s.h.i.+ps, and what looked like an artificial moon with blinking lights that spelled out commercial messages in an alien tongue which Data was already devoting a small part of his brain to deciphering.

As Commander Data walked through the s.h.i.+p from stern to prow, it occurred to him that no one could see him. They were looking right through him, these people, Thanetian in somatype even though they appeared to be on a different world. Yet it was different with Ta.r.s.es, Dr. Halliday, Adam, and Lieutenant Martinez. They were moving among the sailors, smiling, chatting away in some native tongue. He had almost completed the decipherment of it, comparing it with millions of known language paradigms; his positronic brain was parsing, a.n.a.lyzing, breaking down phonemes, and rea.s.sembling the components of this language almost at the speed of light. Soon, bits of it were making sense.

There were two layers of reality here; though he was perceiving this simulacrum all about him, he was also in communication with the bridge of the Enterprise.

In one compartment of his mind, then, he was aware that Deanna Troi and the daughter of Amba.s.sador Straun were preparing to board the thanopstru, and that they would soon be entering, in some way, the comet's consciousness, which was linked through subs.p.a.ce to the great databases within the dailong.

Two of the Federation's party seemed vaguely aware of his presence.

"Adam?" he said. "Lieutenant Ta.r.s.es?"

The boy stopped. He appeared frightened.

"What's wrong, Artas?" Simon said.

"Nothing, Indhuon," said the boy. "It's just that-I think I just saw a ghost."

The names-and they were speaking the dialect of this world. Data realized that the crew members had a.s.sumed roles in this ancient drama, and that they were perhaps only subliminally conscious of their own ident.i.ties. Each was a hitchhiker inside an ancient soul. Data supposed that, as an android, he must be exempt from this.

Or was each of the crew members experiencing this show differently-was each of the members aware of himself, yet unable to communicate with the Enterprise members inhabiting other bodies?

He decided to continue gathering data.

"Captain," he said-no one reacted to the strange phenomenon of an alien creature touching a chest device and addressing the empty air-"we are on another planet. In a civilization somehow parallel with Thanet's but not entirely congruent with it."

La Forge's voice now in response: "Can you transmit any relevant data on the planet? Positions of stars and moons in the sky?"

"Yes," Data said. "Though I am subjectively experiencing this other world, I know that I am still actually interfacing with the dailong's central nervous system. I should be able to access its databanks and fill you in."

The boy that looked like Adam continued to stare at Data.

"Hush," said Ta.r.s.es-Indhuon, "there's no one. Come."

"Are you a ghost?" the boy said.

The wind was stirring as the boat was being moored to the dock. Silently and efficiently, the crew began to file out into the harbor. And such a harbor it was! Boats shaped like a hundred mythical creatures plied the waters. A golden dome peered above the waves, and now and then, from one of a dozen mouthlike openings, a s.p.a.cecraft would emerge; their s.h.i.+ps were shaped like spiders, or b.u.t.terflies with delicate, spindlelike antennae. There was a sunset-no, two sunsets-no, Data realized, the bloated, purplish sun was setting, the darker dwarf was rising; this was a world that survived precariously within the complex dance of a double star.

"I am not a ghost," said Data softly.

"Come away, little one," said the one who seemed to be Simon Ta.r.s.es. "You're talking to the wind again."

"I am not the wind," Data said. But he became aware that there was a susurrant undertone to his voice as it emerged from his artificial larynx, and that perhaps it might seem to be the whispering of the breeze.

The Ta.r.s.es-simulacrum blinked for a moment, as if not sure whether he heard something. But he soon seemed to dismiss what he might have heard.

Adam said, "But you know I can see things other people can't see. That's why I was picked for the dailong training program."

"And you are doing well at it," said Lisa Martinez, who was wearing the flowing robes of a dailongzhen. "I think that there won't be any problem progressing to the semifinals-an amazing find for someone so young! Your mother and sister will be so proud."

They stepped onto dry land now. Everything around them was similar to, yet subtly different from, the world of Thanet. The rigid hierarchy was in place, Data noticed; everywhere there were caste garments, and some made automatic deference to others of superior standing.

He heard the voice of La Forge now, echoing unnoticed in the air around him. "We've located the planet," he said. "Well-what's left of it, anyway."

"Tanith," came the voice of Dr. Beverly Crusher.

At that point, Dr. Halliday emerged onto the dock. He was wearing the most elaborate robes of all, and a headdress of monumental proportions. How appropriate that he had been incarnated here as so gaudy a specimen!

Data continued his communication with the Enterprise. "We have all a.s.sumed the roles of historic personages," he said. "Except for myself; I appear to have become a ghost."

The Adam-child, who was the only one who seemed to hear anything of Data's utterances, said, "I always knew this s.h.i.+p was haunted."

Then there was another voice, echoing in his head: "This is better than the wooden roller coaster at the Academy's museum of ancient amus.e.m.e.nts!"

"You can hear me, Adam!" Data said.

"There's a bit of me inside this other kid-his name is Artas. The bit that is my Adam-consciousness can communicate with you-and you can report what I see back to the Enterprise. I guess you're the all-purpose interface around here, Data."

The voice of Dr. Robert Halliday then reverberated in Data's mind, confirming Adam's a.s.sumption. "Apparently, I am inhabiting the body of one of the great sages of ancient Tanith, a man named Hal-Therion sar-Bensu. He is a distant relation of Amba.s.sador Straun."

"A relation?" Data asked. "But surely these are two different planets."

"Different the way two zygotes split from one might be? The worlds were sisters once. And as close relations often do, they fought. Bitterly and unrelentingly, for tens of thousands of years."

Starcraft were being launched from the golden dome that reared up from the heart of the city. He realized that almost all of the s.h.i.+ps were aimed at a single coordinate.