Perchance To Dream Part 14

Chapter Twelve.

"I'VE NEVER SEEN anything like this network of tunnels," Gina said as she led Ken back through the underground labyrinth. "It's hard to believe all this formed naturally."

"You know, I was wondering about that. Not that I have so much subterranean experience, but there seemed to be almost a system here-though I couldn't even begin to make any sense out of it. That's why I wasn't too nervous when I realized I was lost."

"You mean, you figured if there really is a system at work here, somebody would find you?"

"Pretty much."

Gina gave him a searching look. "So you weren't scared out here by yourself?"

"Maybe a little, at first. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was actually kind of peaceful, in a way. I got to thinking, wondering ... if maybe death is something like this."

As they bent down to crawl through a narrow stretch of the pa.s.sage, she glanced at him quizzically. "You lost me on that one."

"I mean, maybe death is like walking down a tunnel that gets more and more narrow ... kind of cool and dark, and quiet and private."

"But what about all those near-death or back-from-the-dead experiences people tell about-there's always a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The only bright light here was this-" She briefly flashed her light in his eyes. "So what did you find at the end?"

"Nothing. I mean, maybe it's like I'm still alive, so I never got to the end. Or maybe there isn't any end." He was quiet for a moment. "Oh, h.e.l.l, I don't know."

"No," Gina teased, "they say h.e.l.l would have fire and brimstone."

They emerged from the narrow confines of a branch tunnel. Gina's calm confident stride left no doubts that she knew exactly where they were headed. "You know, you left your poetry notebook out," she said.

"I did?"

"Aha! So it was a poem you were writing the other day."

"So?" His tone was plainly defensive.

"So, nothing."

"Did you read any of it?" he asked, steeling himself for a barrage of ridicule.

"No. I found it in the c.o.c.kpit." She paused. "And I put it away with the rest of your stuff."

Now Kenny seemed insulted. "You mean you didn't read it? Why not?"

"You seemed to want to keep it private. So I respected that. Not that I wasn't curious ... I mean, you don't seem like the poetry-writing type," she said as they sidestepped a pool a few inches deep, fed by water that trickled down the tunnel wall and collected in a shallow depression.

"Well, I wasn't. But I once did a computer project a.n.a.lyzing the symmetry of rhymes."

Gina seemed to regard that to be a tenuous link at best. "And that's how you started writing poems?"

"Yeah. What's so strange about that? Don't you think there's a lot of art in science and science in art?"

"I don't know. I never really thought about it that way." She was a little surprised to hear something that thought provoking out of Kenny. Maybe there's more to him than I thought ... "Tell me something."

"What?"

"Why don't you want anyone to know you write poetry?"

"I don't know," he said with a short shrug. "You said it yourself-people just don't look at me and think 'Ah, he's a poet!' "

"Y'know, I've liked to draw and paint ever since I can remember. But when I was little, I'd do it in secret, in my room with the door shut. When I started school, I wouldn't do art when all the other kids did."

"Really?"

"Mm-hmm. No matter how my teacher tried, she just couldn't get me to draw in cla.s.s. I was one stubborn little kid, and I just didn't want anyone to see my stuff."

Ken gave her a quizzical look. "Why not?"

"I don't really know. For some reason, I just got it in my head that these drawings were mine, something private. Not something to be shared."

"What made you change your mind?"

Gina smiled. "My grandma. She found one of my paintings. It was a picture of the mountains outside our town. You know how other people put their kids' art up in the kitchen or someplace like that?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my grandma had this painting framed in this gorgeous antique wooden frame ... and she made a big deal of telling me that she loved the painting so much that she was going to hang it in her bedroom, next to her bed, so it would be the last thing she'd see when she went to sleep at night, and the first thing she'd see when she got up in the morning. And she made me promise to show all my pictures to her. And that's when I knew that whatever else I did, I'd always want to be an artist."

"That's a nice story, Gina."

"Yeah." She looked him straight in the eye. "If people don't see you as a poet, maybe that's because you won't let them. Maybe you should change that."

"Picard, you said yourself that you've detected nothing down there that could be called sentient life," Arit insisted as she paced around the curved table in the Enterprise conference room, circling behind the captain, Riker and Dr. Crusher.

Picard peered calmly over his steepled fingers. "Not conclusively, perhaps. But the indirect evidence does seem to point in that direction. Would you disagree with that?"

Arit stopped and gripped the headrest of her chair. "All I will agree to is that some force we don't understand appears to be present on the planet and in the orbital vicinity of Domarus. Nothing more, nothing less."

"With all due respect, Captain Arit," said Riker, "you sound like a lawyer."

She fixed Riker with a measured look. "Maybe that's because I have to defend my people's right to settle on an uninhabited planet that seems to belong to no one, and that no one but you seems to care about."

Picard shook his head. "Captain, no one is prosecuting you. And this contentiousness is getting us nowhere-" The rolling beep of the intercom interrupted him, followed by Engineer La Forge's voice over the speaker.

"La Forge to Captain Picard."

"Picard here. Have you completed that c.u.mulative evaluation of our sensor readings?"

"That's why I'm calling, Captain. We'll need maybe another hour to get it together."

Picard scowled. "I thought you expected to be done by now."

"Well, we would've been-but sensors just started picking up a big jump in energy cycling from Domarus."

"Energy cycling?" Arit repeated, not sure what Geordi meant.

"Right," Geordi said. "Production and utilization."

"Mr. La Forge," Picard said, "do you have any idea what might be going on down there?"

"Not yet, sir. But we're doing our best to figure it out."

"Very well. Report to the conference lounge as soon as you are ready. Picard out." He faced Arit, who had finally sat back down. "Captain, let's cut to the heart of the matter. I want my missing shuttle and crew members back-and you need a home for your people. If I did not believe we could achieve both, I would not have invited you to remain on the Enterprise."

"And I wouldn't have accepted if I didn't also believe we could both get what we want."

"Well, then, this sounds like a promising start."

"A start," Arit said wearily as she tried to rub the fatigue from her eyes. "That's all we're seeking, Picard-a place for a fresh start."

Beverly stared at the Teniran commander. "Then why won't you let us help you find that place?"

"It is not-" Arit began, then stopped, rubbing one lower fang against her upper lip as she sighed in frustration. "It is not an easy thing for us to reveal our vulnerabilities. You would understand if you knew our recent history."

"How can we know your recent history," Beverly said, not without compa.s.sion, "if you won't tell us?"

"And, not to be insulting, Captain Arit," Riker said, "but we already know your vulnerabilities. We know the condition of your s.h.i.+p."

"Perhaps you do, Commander Riker. But none of that changes the core of our dispute-you remain opposed to our goal."

"On the contrary," Picard said with a raised finger. "We want to avoid any actions around Domarus that may hinder the retrieval of our missing shuttle and crew members, of course. But beyond that, our opposition is based solely on one point-the need to be certain that no sentient life forms already exist on Domarus Four. Now, you were absolutely correct when you said you have every right to keep your past confidential-"

Arit cut him off, shaking her head as if trying to clear it. "And Commander Riker was right-you already know our weakness. And I can't ignore the fact that you have not taken advantage of that knowledge." She allowed herself an ironic chuckle. "Even if you were hostile, we don't exactly have anything you could possibly want. It's just dawned on me how liberating it is to realize you've got nothing left to defend."

Arit took a deep breath, paused at her internal crossroads, then chose her direction. "You were also correct, Captain Picard, when you said that we've traveled a hard road."

"Are you ready to tell us about it?"

"Yes, I suppose I am," she said with a nod, and she seemed relieved to be sharing the burden at last. "Unpredictable changes in our sun caused catastrophic climate changes that turned our farmlands to desert, brought on terrible rains that flooded the lowlands, whipped up devastating storms everywhere. Nothing could be done. Our scientists tried. The only fortunate aspect of the whole disaster was that we did have enough time to plan an evacuation of most of our people before Tenira became totally uninhabitable."

"How large a population?" Crusher asked.

"Not large compared to many planets-about ten million."

"That is small," said Riker.

"That's because our land ma.s.ses are small compared to a lot of worlds, so we had to develop strict population control and balance long ago."

Picard frowned. "Ten million may const.i.tute a small population, but it is a sizable evacuation. Where were you going to go with ten million people?"

"Well, we were ready to split up and live wherever we could, hoping someday we could rea.s.semble all our people-or at least their descendants-on one world. But then one of our trading partners, Ziakk, offered us a planet in their star system. A savage, untamed world-but habitable for people willing to put in a lot of hard work."

"They offered it to you, just like that?" Dr. Crusher asked.

"So it seemed at the time. They wanted this planet developed, but they said they did not have enough Ziakkans willing to make the kind of sacrifices required of pioneers."

Riker sipped a steaming cup of coffee. "But you took it?"

"There's an old Teniran proverb, Commander Riker: 'the starving beast can't be too picky about whose garbage he eats.' That's a fair description of our situation. The Ziakkan offer looked like the answer to our prayers-a place all Tenirans could be together."

"But something obviously went wrong," Picard said.

"Yes it did, Captain. It turned out the Ziakkans didn't want partners, they wanted slaves. Tenirans are not slaves," Arit said with fierce pride. But she turned pensive again as she recalled the events that followed. "We declared our independence-and they declared war. Biological war. We had no time or resources to build adequate defenses ... within six months, most of our people were dead. Including my husband."

"Attempted genocide," Crusher said in a horrified whisper.

"Very nearly successful. Those of us who survived realized we couldn't win, so we fled. The Glin-Kale and her five thousand pa.s.sengers are all that is left."

Beverly blanched as she tried to grasp the magnitude of the Tenirans' loss. "Five thousand left out of ten million? That's unbelievable, an unbelievable tragedy."

"But true. Now perhaps you can all understand why Domarus is so important to us."

After an awkward silence, Picard exhaled a contemplative breath and spoke softly. "The Federation will help you find a home, Captain. If not here, somewhere else. But I will offer you a promise: the Teniran people will not be doomed to wander."

"Gina, I thought you said we should hurry back to the s.h.i.+p."

"Oh, come on, Kenny-I want you to see this. It's not like it's out of our way."

Gina and Kenny were struggling to keep their footing as they made their way up through a steeply inclined section of the tunnels. As Kenny was about to press his argument against any detour, however slight, his right boot skidded on some loose pebbles and he flung a hand out to grab the cave wall for support.

"Not that I've got any choice other than following you," he groused.

She gave him a smile of supremacy. "That's right."

"So what's so special that I have to see it?"

"You'll see."

He c.o.c.ked his ear. "Sounds like a waterfall."

They reached the trail's crest, then followed the gentle downhill slope. The echo of cascading water grew louder, approaching a roar. Without warning, Gina stopped and Kenny b.u.mped into her.

"Kenny-be careful-" she shouted over the thunder of the water.

As she warned him, she tipped her flashlight down, revealing that the trail ended in a ledge no more than a meter ahead of them. Kenny gasped when he saw how close they'd come to tumbling over the rim. Then, when she widened her beam and fanned it out in the darkness, he simply gaped in wonder.

The overlook opened onto a towering cathedral of rough rock, streaked with glimmering veins of minerals, reds and golds and greens and blues, in patterns of such astonis.h.i.+ng geometry they almost had to have been planned. If the grotto had a ceiling, it was lost in the darkness hundreds of feet above them, far beyond the range of their searchlights. A silver ribbon of water tumbled over a similar ledge across the cavern, twenty meters away from where they stood, and plunged into an abyss so deep they couldn't see the bottom.

"So," she yelled, "what do you think of my discovery? Pretty incredible, huh?" With more than a little glee, she watched as Kenny blinked in amazement several times before he could answer. And she took pleasure from the fact he seemed to have lost all his fear of being underground. He actually seemed as awestruck as she had been when she found this place.

"This is ... wow!" he finally managed to say.