Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (55 page)

“Your guarantee,” she said. “That’s good to know.” She gathered her data wafers together and slipped them into her attach6 case. “The Lexington is going to take me back to TNC 65813 before you get to Neural III,” the admiral said. “I have a feeling I’m going to be studying that particular black hole very carefully in the next while, trying to figure out where—and when—Cochrane’s going to come back.” McCoy grinned. “Well, who knows? Maybe they’ll name the black hole after you, Admiral.” Kabreigny simply stared at the doctor, then said good-bye to Kirk and Spock, and left.

As soon as the doors had slipped closed behind her, Kirk turned to McCoy. “Naming a black hole after an admiral? What were you thinking of?.” McCoy looked hurt. “That’s not any black hole. We’re in it.

And Cochrane is in it. And that other Enterprise is in it. Right now. And for the next century.” McCoy’s smile returned. “Sort of makes you think, doesn’t it?” But the concept stopped Kirk cold. He put a hand to his temple.

“Gentlemen, I hate time travel.” “It is not logical to have an emotional reaction to what is a natural outgrowth of the laws of physics.” Kirk started for the door. “Mr. Spock, I think it’s time you took a long, relaxing leave. We’ll send you back home to visit your parents.” As the doors swept open before them, Spock fell into step to one side of the captain, McCoy to the other.

“Good idea, Jim,” McCoy agreed. “Spock and Sarek can discuss logic all day, and play poker all night.”

,.Doctor, I do not understand why you continually—” But Spock stopped talking as Kirk suddenly laughed, for no other reason than that he was alive, and on his way to the bridge of his ship.

There was still so much more to be done.

And he intended to do it all.

U.S.S. EIfTERPRISE NCC-1701-D THE GAMMA CANARIS REGION Stardate 43924.1 Earth Standard: May 2366

“How are you feeling?” Picard asked.

“That is not an appropriate question,” Data replied, “considering that I have no feelings to begin with.” Picard smiled. La Forge looked up from his tricorder. “That’s Data, all right. No sign of the Thorsen personality at all.” Data looked around the shuttlebay. The Preserver object was where Picard had last seen it, on the equipment cradles, near what was left of the counterfeit Borg artifact.

“Where is the Thorsen matrix?” Data asked.

“Back in the Preserver object,” La Forge answered.

“I can detect no programming residue from the Thorsen matrix in me,” Data said. “Is the ship’s computer system similarily free of residual effects?” La Forge closed his tricorder. “Completely. A personality matrix isn’t like a program. It’s like human brain waves—analog, not digital—so it can’t be duplicated the same way. Only transferred. Like you and Lore.” La Forge disconnected the positronic leads from Data’s open scalp and closed the access port there, carefully positioning Data’s hair back into place. “Of course, when the Thorsen matrix downloaded itself from the computer into you, it left programming codes behind, blocking access to certain ship functions, but that was all. And those codes were erased when we did a full restart of the system.” Data got up from the workbench he had been lying on and checked his hands and arms, assessing his condition. u ‘The last thing I remember, I was sitting at the science station, trying to communicate with the matrix.” “‘And as soon as it realized that you were a better host than the ship’s computer, it downloaded itself into you.” Data moved his head back and forth in a series of short, jerky movements. “Geordi, have I been struck recently?” he asked.

La Forge looked away. “Uh, Worf tried to push you away from the controls.” “I hope I did not do anything inappropriate while I was not myself,” Data said.

“You bear no responsibility for what happened,” Picard replied.

Data gave him a curious look, concentrating on the splint on Picard’s hand and wrist. “Geordi, how did you induce the matrix to leave my system and return to the Preserver object?” La Forge finished stowing away the delicate tools he had used on Data. “You were switched off, Data. When I made the connection back to the object, the matrix was drawn to the system where it could function. I didn’t switch you back on until all connections were broken. Your backup subroutines restored your own matrix, and Colonel Thorsen, or what used to be Thorsen, is now trapped.” “What will you do with the object now?” La Forge looked at Picard.

“One of the hardest things I will ever do,” Picard answered.

He walked over to the wondrous silver object and for the final time put his hand on it, wondering what other hands had touched it when it first had been forged. There was still not enough evidence to tell if it was a true product of the Preserver culture or not. Picard tried to tell himself that that should make what he had to do easier. But it didn’t. The only positive side to acquisition of the object was that he had had full sensor recordings made of its inscriptions, and of its provocative diagrams of science as yet unimagined. The real archaeologists would appreciate those.

Though how they’d react to the news of what an amateur had done to the object was something Picard would rather not deal with at the next conference he attended.

He slipped off his communicator pin and placed it on the object. Two versions of the same warp function now adorned it—the Cochrane delta of his pin, and the alien version inscribed in its surface.

He stepped away.

Data was beside him. “Is it necessary to destroy it, Captain?” “It nearly destroyed this ship, Mr. Data. And the creature inside it nearly destroyed humanity three centuries ago when it had its chance to control the world.” He looked at the android, knowing how human in fact Data was because of the compulsion Picard now felt to explain himself. “‘The evil that men do lives after them,’” he quoted. “Thorsen died centuries ago; now it’s time for his evil to die as well.” He spoke to the air. “Picard to Transporter Room Four.” “O’Brien here,” the transporter chief answered.

“Lock on to my communicator, Mr. O’Brien. One object.

Unknown composition. Set for wide-beam dispersal. Maximum range.” “Transporter locked,” O’Brien acknowledged.

Picard took a last look at the object, so hauntingly beautiful, so full of mystery, of promise. “Watch carefully, Mr. Data,” Picard said, overcome with deep melancholy. “This is a lesson in life.

Checks and balances.” “Good and evil,” Data said. “I understand the equation, even if I do not feel the deeper meaning behind it.” Picard nodded. Three and half billion years of history about to vanish. When would this chance ever come again? He looked at Data. “Then… could you… Mr. Data?” “I understand, sir.” The android looked at the object. “Mr.

O’Brien: Energize, please.” The transporter harmonic filled the shuttlebay. The silver object dissolved into mist, into time, taking with it the past and the future.

Picard sighed and turned away from the empty equipment cradles. The galaxy was safer now that it had been a moment ago, but that didn’t help make him feel any better.

He left the shuttlebay, thinking that some days he didn’t like his job at all.

Beverly Crusher called him hours later, during the middle of ship’s night. She told him it was urgent. He came at once to Cochrane’s stateroom.

Dr. Crusher was there, in her blue medical coat. A medical kit lay on a table nearby. And in the bed, Zefram Cochrane, a giant of his time, now out of time, his eyes turned to stare without seeing to the stars beyond the viewports, just as they would have appeared to someone on the surface of planetoid 527, one hundred years ago. The Companion lay beside him, her hand in his, eyes closed, barely breathing.

“They’re going quickly,” the doctor whispered.

“Is there nothing you can do?” Picard asked. There had been too much death this voyage. Any death was too much.

Crusher shook her head. “I told him earlier that we could try putting them both into transporter stasis and get them to a starbase to try some experimental treatments, but he said no. And I have to respect that.” “He’s come so far,” Picard said. “Done so much.” “No one ever does it all,” Crusher said softly, to comfort him.

“No,” Picard agreed. “I suppose not.” He sat with the doctor then, at her side, in the darkened room, keeping watch on the passengers from another age.

Sometime in the hours that followed, beneath the starlight, the doctor took the captain’s hand. It felt right. To reaffirm life so close to death.

Sometime in the hours that followed, Jean-Luc Picard stared out at the stars, trying to remember the first moment he had noticed them. As a child, he supposed, in the fields near his home.

Walking out with his parents. He would always remember his parents. One generation to the next. But now even more genera. tions whispered within him, the final echoes of Sarek and the minds the legendary Vulcan had touched in his long life. Picard reflected upon that expanse of time, and wondered what his own legacy would be. How it could possibly measure up to all that had gone before.

Sometime in the hours that followed, Beverly Crusher squeezed his hand. “Jean-Luc,” she whispered. “Look.” Picard turned his eyes from the stars and looked across the stateroom where Cochrane and the Companion lay.

But there was something different. Something about the lighting.

The bed was glowing. Their forms were glowing.

Picard stared in amazement. A glowing halo of some dazzling golden energy was rising from the Companion’s frail body. It danced in delicate rhythms, casting flickering fairy light on all that was in the stateroom.

Cochrane slowly turned his head to the light. Picard could see the strain on the man’s face as he looked up into that energy.

Cochrane let the Companion’s fingers slip from his grasp and raised his hand instead to touch the cloud.

The cloud coiled around him, ephemeral, translucent, heart-breakingly alive with color.

Cochrane turned his head back to the windows, to look out to the stars, a smile of wonder growing on his face as all sign of struggle left him.

The cloud slipped down the length of his arm, merging with him just as it had separated from the Companion. His entire body shone with a steady inner light.
i} “Can you hear them?” he whispered in a voice full of love.

And to Picard’s amazement a voice that was more than a voice 53 answered back with equal love, I do. Cochrane lowered his arm. Slowly the glow faded from his :~ body. Slowly Picard realized that Zefram Cochrane’s journey had at last come to an end.

Picard sat there a long time in the ship’s night, with Beverly Crusher beside him. Both touched by the incredible sense of peace and completeness in what they had witnessed. He put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder. There was still so much more to be done.

But just for now, just for this stolen moment, they could rest.

The Federation would endure.

CHRISTOPHER’S LANDING, TITAN Earth Standard: March 19, 2061

As the guests gathered around the musicians on their dais in the assembly hall, Zefram Cochrane stepped outside the governor’s home and into the comparatively vast space of the dome built beside it.

He could smell rich soil, reminiscent of Earth but with a faint after-scent of something different, something alien. In time, he knew, the area beneath this dome was intended to be a park.

Cochrane stepped off the patio and onto that alien soil. It felt loose and crumbly beneath his boots, but in the light gravity of Titan, he did not sink into it as much as he had expected.

As he walked across the thus-far barren soil, he thought of the gravity of Titan, of Mars, of the moon, and of Centauri B II. He had walked on all of them, felt the pull of four different worlds.

How many more would he feel in his lifetime?

He stopped beneath the center of the dome. At the age of thirty-one, he had accomplished a feat of which humans of centuries past could not conceive, and which humans of centuries to come could never repeat.

He should be content with that, he knew.

But he wasn’t. Not yet.

As the music started up in the governor’s home, Cochrane looked up through the slabs of transparent aluminum, to where the floodlights outside the dome lit the thick, churning clouds of Titan.

Most of the time, this moon’s atmosphere was completely opaque, but with night coming on, Cochrane had heard that there was a narrow window in which a high-pressure ridge moved with the terminator, clearing the sky for only a few minutes, sometimes creating a brief opening through which to see the stars.

That’s what Cochrane wanted to do right now, to be away from the meaningless noise and confusion of the party held to honor him.

He longed to see the stars again, only hours after he had seen them last.

It was a foolish desire on his part, he suspected. But who could explain the needs of the human heart?

He waited expectantly beneath the dome, eyes fixed on the heavens, so far unseen.

In time, he knew, he’d have to go back to the party. He had to talk to Micah Brack. He should catch up with events on Earth over the year he’d been gone. But that was all in the future.

For now he would see the stars. It was as simple as that.

Long minutes passed as he gazed up at the twisting of the atmosphere, watching the spikes of illumination from the floodlights disappear into dark shadows as the gaps between the blowing cloud banks grew larger.

He thought of all that countless humans had accomplished to make it possible for him to be standing here this evening. He thought of all that would happen in the future because of what he had done.

He wondered how many others might stand here after he was gone, just as he did now, looking up, seeking the stars. The distant roar of the wind diminished.

Between the day and the night, the clouds lessened.

The sky above turned dark.

High above Zefram Cochrane, the stars began to appear, and for just one moment, a fleeting instant of the time his life would span. Zefram Cochrane was certain he heard those stars sing.

He wondered if anyone else could hear them.