Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 24

Boothby and his fellow "Groundskeepers" had not told any of this to the alternate Voyager crew they had encountered, finding it too shameful. The only reason he was confessing it now was because the Doctor had discovered it when he visited fluidic s.p.a.ce. Apparently, the Groundskeepers who had approached him had suspected him of being not a spy, but another duplicate soldier returning from a branching universe, another cell in a growing cancer. They had been surprised by what they had actually found, though they had quickly adapted and neutralized his self-destruct mechanism before he could trigger it. But apparently Boothby had come to some kind of peace accord with the other Voyager, and he had intervened on the Doctor's behalf.

The Doctor, his secret-agent self now fully reintegrated into his neural matrix, picked up the story. "Essentially it's resulted in a civil war over there. Although it's not brother against brother, it's self against self. Duplicate selves are fighting, even killing each other over the right to claim their place in the social order. Only the strongest copy gets to survive. And the leaders are endorsing this...extroverted suicide because they think it's the only way to resolve the crisis. Except the number of duplicates keeps multiplying."

"Then it seems the solution is simple," Rosh said. "Keep out of our universe."

"It's not that easy," Boothby said. "We still have to fight off the Borg. And remember, we're fighting Borg from more than one timeline. Every time your universe splits, the invasion gets worse on our end. We have to take the fight to your universe, no matter the cost."

"What about your attacks on the Voth? On us?" Rosh demanded.

"Keep your shorts on, son, I'm getting there. Now, as I was saying. Things might not be quite so bad for us if not for you clever people on Voyager. In one of the timelines, you not only made an alliance with the Borg against us, you gave them the nanoprobe weapon you developed. They started hitting us d.a.m.n hard after that, and we had to fight like n.o.body's business just to survive. Eventually," he said solemnly, "we had to set off a string of Omega molecules in that timeline and the few new ones that had branched off of it. Blew up half the Borg, stranded the rest at sublight. Wasn't much fun for the rest of the people in this part of the quadrant, I'd imagine."

Janeway stared in horror, while the others just looked confused. "What's an Omega molecule?" Harry asked.

"That's a question for another time," Janeway said, her tone commanding him to drop it now. Delta Coalition or no, she still intended to return to Starfleet one day and thus remained bound by her Starfleet oaths-including the one commanding strict secrecy about the most destructive force ever discovered.

"Now, there was another group of timelines," Boothby said, "where Voyager used their nanoprobe weapon against us once, to force us into retreat, but didn't give it to the Borg afterward. We left that branch of your universe alone for a while, since it was leaving us alone and we were busy with the fight elsewhere. Once we wiped the Borg out in the other timeline, we turned our attention back to Starfleet. After all, it had been a Starfleet crew, your counterparts, that created the nanoprobe weapon. We needed to find out if they were planning to invade us next. But they'd kicked our b.u.t.ts, so we decided to take the sneaky approach. And that's how I became the handsome devil you see before you now."

"But how does this explain your attacks in our timeline?" Rosh asked.

"The Borg here were nearly as bad as in the first one, once they got their own version of a nanoprobe weapon. As for the Voth, well, we figured we couldn't take any chances."

"But you've made peace with Voyager in that other timeline," Janeway interposed. Boothby hadn't quite gotten around to explaining this part before. "So why are your forces attacking the Coalition so aggressively now?"

"It wasn't my decision, Captain. I've been trying to convince the leaders.h.i.+p to back down, but they've been through h.e.l.l this last year, and we're not a forgiving people to begin with. Besides, there are a lot of timelines. I can only tend one plot at a time. I managed to convince them to lay off the timeline where I made peace with your other self, Captain, since there's no immediate threat from there." He gave a heavy sigh. "But even that is temporary.

"Borg aside, Voth and Federation aside, the very existence of your universe is seen as a threat to the stability of ours. The hardliners don't believe coexistence between us is even possible. The weak must perish, and a universe that can't make up its mind about its own history is mighty weak in their eyes. So they want to destroy your galaxy. One timeline at a time."

Silence filled the room. "Can they even do that?" Harry finally asked.

"Our universe has a lot more energy to spare than yours," Boothby said. "Your galaxy's just about the size of our universe, so destroying it should be enough. It'll take time, of course; Omega molecules don't grow on trees, so it'll be a few months before they have any more to spare. So for now, they're going about it the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, one planet and colony at a time. And they're starting in your block of timelines, since we've already got so much of our fleet here from the war with the Borg.

"You'll be the first to go-but the hardliners won't rest until they've wiped out your galaxy in every timeline they can reach."

13.

"It's been months since I asked myself if we made the right decision," Janeway said. "If we would've been better off if we'd made that deal with the Borg. Now, I'm not so sure."

Chakotay didn't pause in ma.s.saging her soapy back-his own quiet way of offering comfort. Although his dwelling was modest for a government official, he'd made sure to have a sizable bathtub installed for her benefit. But Janeway was too busy studying the flexible (and waterproof ) display sheet in her hand. To prove his claims, Boothby had provided information from the other timelines the Groundskeepers had visited, information that included copies of Voyager's logs. The timelines fell into three major "sheafs," as he had described, and Janeway found it simpler to think in terms of only three timelines.

She knew that, right now, her focus should be on the threat of galactic destruction, on a.s.sisting Boothby's efforts to find a diplomatic route to avert the crisis. But it was impossible not to be preoccupied with the knowledge of her own life in other histories-alternative paths that had actually happened, that were happening right now in other facets of reality. She knew that everyone else who had been entrusted with this information must be similarly affected. Perhaps it wasn't so self-centered; getting a feel for what it was like to confront one's alternate lives could help her understand the plight of the Groundskeepers and see a way to a solution.

She recognized one of the alternate histories as the one Kes had described jumping backward through nearly two years ago. The Borg-Groundskeeper war had only just started escalating then, so it was the earliest divergence the Groundskeepers had experienced. In that history, Kes had lived out her life aboard Voyager, and so had Tom Paris, who had become her husband. But Janeway herself had not lived to see it, dying with B'Elanna Torres in an attack by a race called the Krenim.

But before then, they had needed to get past the Borg. "True," Chakotay said, not looking up from her back. "We made an alliance with the Borg and gave them the nanoprobe weapon once they'd escorted us through the heart of their s.p.a.ce. Whereupon they immediately double-crossed us and would've a.s.similated us if a Groundskeeper attack hadn't let us slip away." After which, apparently, they had salvaged a transwarp coil from a Borg wreck, allowing them to jump several thousand light-years closer to home and away from the Borg threat. That had undoubtedly saved them from the Groundskeepers' later Omega-particle attack.

"But as a consequence," Janeway said, "the Groundskeepers devastated this part of the quadrant to stop the Borg. And we endured a 'year of h.e.l.l' at the hands of the Krenim."

"And we lost you."

"But we still had Tom. And Tuvok, and Carey and Vorik..."

"And lost others. How can we say one life is worth more than another? All I know is, I'm glad you're with me in this life."

"They destroyed trillions of lives in that history. Because of events I set in motion."

"That was their choice. You're not to blame-whichever you we're talking about." Chakotay reached over her shoulder and tapped the display sheet to bring up records of the other sheaf of timelines. "Meanwhile, in this version of history, we made our deal, but the Groundskeepers attacked us before we could finish the weapon, and the Borg double-crossed us and used Voyager to invade fluidic s.p.a.ce. The Borg didn't get the weapon, but they remained a major threat once the Groundskeepers were driven out. And we lost Kes to some kind of accelerated evolution."

"But most of us lived, Chakotay. We stayed together as a family."

Chakotay came alongside her, met her gaze solemnly. "As a family, Kathryn? You and I were still just colleagues. Annika was buried beneath her Borg persona and never fell in love with Harry. Neelix had to live without Kes. Lyndsay Ballard was killed, along with Clemens, Pratt, and others. And the Delta Coalition never existed."

She matched his gaze. "So you're saying you were right to talk me out of the Borg alliance."

"You tell me. It could've gone either way. In fact, it did. All these histories are real. Every one is better for some people and worse for others."

"So what are you saying? That none of our choices matter?"

"No," he told her gently. "That our choices are all we have. We can't know, we can't control, how the random factors of the universe will shape the consequences of our choices. The same choice can lead to a universe where the Borg are a major threat and most of the crew is still alive, or one where this whole region of s.p.a.ce has been blasted back to the impulse age and Kathryn Janeway is dead. So we can't let our fear of the consequences keep us from making choices. All we can do is try to be true to our own hearts."

Smiling at his words of comfort, Janeway pulled him to her. As always, it was bittersweet. She loved the life she had with him, but she still felt an obligation to get her s.h.i.+p home, to report to Starfleet, to reunite her crew with their families one day. She believed she could persuade Chakotay to come with her when that time came-but she didn't know if she should, when he had built such an important role for himself here, made so many friends and connections among the Vostigye and their allies. How could she choose when the time came? She couldn't abandon her home forever, but how could she ask him to abandon his?

Annika shuddered as she reviewed the alternate history files that Harry had shown her. "I can't process this. I've been trying so hard to cope with the Borg memories and thoughts in my head...and this, this other me likes being a Borg! She calls herself Seven of Nine!"

Harry tilted his head, studying the log image on the display sheet. "I like her fas.h.i.+on sense."

Annika glared, but Harry grinned back, letting her know he was just teasing to break the tension. He knew how much she looked forward to the day when she no longer needed to wear her dermal sheath under her clothes. Apparently this "Seven of Nine" had considered modesty and comfort irrelevant and had worn the body-hugging garment with nothing over it. Annika blushed every time she looked at the picture.

"Her clothes are irrelevant," Annika said, then caught herself and blushed. "I mean, what about her thoughts? Her feelings? Does she remember anything about Unimatrix Zero? About me, my whole life?"

"You couldn't remember her, either."

"There was no 'her.' Just a meat puppet for the Collective."

"Apparently there was more to her than you think. I don't want to push you, but you might want to think about taking a closer look at your Borg memories. Maybe there's something worthwhile there after all."

Annika pouted, then changed the subject. "What I can't get over is how we ended up on the same s.h.i.+p in two different realities." In the third one, the "Year of h.e.l.l" timeline, the Borg had also chosen "Seven of Nine" as a liaison with Janeway on the Borg cube she had visited, but that Seven had never been forced to beam aboard Voyager and so had never been severed from the Collective. She had probably died in the Groundskeepers' Omega attack, if not sooner. "What are the odds?" She grinned at Harry. "Do you think we were destined to be together?"

"It's a nice thought, but I don't think we're 'together' in that other history." In fact, the Harry of the "Seven of Nine" timeline seemed to be in a total rut-still a lowly ensign, still unattached, still languis.h.i.+ng in Tom Paris's shadow. Not that he blamed Tom for that, of course. He would give a great deal to be in a timeline where his best friend was still alive. But he wouldn't give up Annika even for that.

He contemplated the paradox. "Maybe it's not such a coincidence. The logs from those other Voyagers say you were-Seven was-stored in an enclosed chamber in the heart of the cube. And she-you-seemed different from other Borg, with more personality and autonomy. Maybe there was something special about you, your function in the hive. That could explain why you were chosen as a liaison in those timelines, and that's what led to you ending up on Voyager in one of them. As for here, maybe being in the heart of the cube is what let you and the others survive when it was crippled. And we both ended up with the Vostigye because they're the ones who do the most to help out refugees. So it's not such a coincidence."

She smiled. "But it was your s.h.i.+p that found me, Harry. I like to think that's destiny. And don't try to reason me out of it," she said, putting a hand over his lips. "I want it to be destiny. I want it to be magic. Because Seven of Nine would hate that."

Harry nodded. "Okay by me." And she kissed him, and he realized that she had been magical to him all along.

B'Elanna flung the display sheet at the Doctor. It pa.s.sed harmlessly through the hologram and shorted out against the force field across her cell door. "Why did you show me this?" she demanded.

"I thought you might like to know things could be worse. You could be dead."

She turned away from him. "What's so bad about that? At least Tom would be alive."

He came around to face her again. "Have you been taking your medications? Clinical depression is a chronic condition, and I'm seeing some rather overt symptoms."

"You think my pain is just a chemical imbalance? I lost everything that mattered to me. I killed innocent people. I almost killed my own friends. What makes you think I deserve to feel better?"

"Oh, just my own Hippocratical reasons," he gibed. His eyes roved over her, and she knew he was scanning her. These Vostigye mobile emitters had medical tricorders built in, and although the Doctor still used the face and voice of Lewis Zimmerman as a holographic interface for his humanoid patients, he no longer felt the need to mimic humanity to the point of wielding a conventional tricorder and scanner, one machine reading another machine in a triumph of conceit over efficiency. "Yes, your serotonin levels are disturbingly low. You've been a naughty girl."

She stared. "I'm in prison. What do you expect?"

"I expect B'Elanna Torres to be intelligent enough to listen to her doctor's orders," he told her, morphing one finger into a hypospray and applying it to her neck, the drug being shunted from the pharmasynth unit in his emitter. "There. Your neurotransmitters should stabilize soon. Then you'll only have to deal with your genuine guilt instead of the neurochemical exaggeration thereof. If you're going to punish yourself, at least you should do it with your wits about you."

Her eyes thanked him for not trying to cheer her up. "So. These other histories. You're still just a hologram aboard Voyager."

"So it seems. And in one, I've spent most of the past year offline." He shook his head. "I can't imagine going back to only having one body, one locus of perception. It was so limiting."

"And I'm still chief engineer in one of them."

"And Mister Paris is still helmsman. You two are apparently quite the item there."

"But in the one where I died, he bounced right back and married Kes. The little s.l.u.t. I always knew he had a thing for her."

"I'm sure it was after a respectable period of mourning."

"But in the other one, he didn't get together with me until Kes left. Was I just leftovers to him?"

The Doctor studied her. "Your neurotransmitters are still settling down. Your memories seem a bit compromised. As I recall, you two were flirting shamelessly with each other for months before we encountered the Groundskeepers. People were taking bets on when you'd finally stop deceiving yourselves and get on with it."

B'Elanna sank down onto the bench. "They were right. I should've admitted my feelings when I had the chance. Maybe it could've made a difference. Kept me out of this cell."

"Or it could've gotten you killed. Causality's funny that way." He put a hand on her shoulder. "My advice is not to dwell on it. There are countless realities out there, besides the ones the Groundskeepers have been able to access. They apparently can only access timelines that have branched off from ones they were already visiting at the time. There are bound to be realities out there in which we've all been destroyed, or were never born at all. You'll just cause yourself needless anxiety by dwelling on alternate possibilities."

That's easy for you to say, Doctor, she thought as he left the cell. But what else can I do when this reality is intolerable?

"Am I going to lose you?" Neelix asked, his tone bordering on panic. He stared at Kes as though he expected her to begin s.h.i.+mmering out of corporeality at any second.

She placed her hand on his. "Neelix, don't worry. There's no cause for concern yet."

"Yet. It took a few days for your symptoms to show up over there."

"They weren't symptoms. They were part of a metamorphosis."

"Either way, I lost you. Or he lost you. Or he lost her. Oh, now I know why temporal physics gives the captain a headache!"

Kes smiled. It all seemed quite simple and obvious to her now, but she could sense that he was in no mood for a detailed explanation. "I haven't interacted as much with the Groundskeepers as I did in that timeline. So my powers haven't been amplified nearly as much."

"But that Boothby-"

"Is in human form. His telepathy is dormant. As long as I don't have direct telepathic contact with the Groundskeepers or visit fluidic s.p.a.ce, I should be fine."

"But you were connected with the Doctor in fluidic s.p.a.ce."

"And I have felt a bit more energized since then. Things are coming a bit more easily to me. But that's all."

Neelix frowned. "You know, I hadn't thought about it...but in that first timeline, you never had any power surge at all, did you? Even though you had about as much contact with the Groundskeepers as you did here."

Kes nodded. "I believe that's because in that timeline, I hadn't yet been exposed to the temporal energies that affected me later in life. When I came back to this timeline, and the other one that branched off from it, I must have still carried a residue of those energies even after the Doctor purged them. I think that made me more receptive to the psionic energy of fluidic s.p.a.ce." That, she believed, explained the difference in the way the Borg alliance had ended in the other two timelines. In the original history, which the crew was calling the "Krenim" or "Year of h.e.l.l" timeline, the alliance had proceeded as planned and the Borg had been given the nanoprobe weapon, with ultimately devastating consequences for the quadrant. In the other, the so-called "Borg" timeline, the temporal energy in Kes had made her more attuned to the Groundskeepers, so they had sensed the plan in her mind and sent s.h.i.+ps to destroy Voyager. Whereupon the Borg cube had sacrificed itself to save Voyager and the nanoprobe data it bore, which had led to Seven of Nine and the other drones taking Voyager into fluidic s.p.a.ce, which had triggered Kes's metamorphosis into...something more, something that she could not quite identify even with all her enhanced abilities and knowledge.

Something that had been forced to leave her friends, to leave Neelix, for their own protection. The thought that she might undergo such a metamorphosis herself was disturbing, however intellectually intrigued she might be by the prospect. She was happy with the life she had, and there were too many people who depended on her, professionally and personally.

Most of all Neelix. Leaving him now would devastate him, and she couldn't do that to him. Or to herself. Learning of the other timelines had just made her more committed to marrying him. At least he was alive in both the other main histories. In the original one, he'd suffered a similar crisis with his donated lung, but the Doctor had developed an effective replacement by that time; while in the other, he had actually died in an alien attack but had been revived by a Borg nanoprobe therapy that had apparently reversed the aging of his lung. But in both those histories, he had lost her, either to circ.u.mstances or to another man, and it seemed he hadn't found anyone else. He deserved better than that. She was so eager to marry him and let the elogium take its course, but the crisis with the Groundskeepers had forced them to defer those plans.

"Well," Neelix said, "I'm not sure whether to be glad that happened to you or not. On the one hand, it made you the extraordinary woman you are today. But you were always extraordinary. And it could take you away from me forever."

"Ohh, Neelix." She stroked his cheek. "Not forever. If my other self became what I suspect...I may not have been with you in body, but I promise you, I would always be with you in spirit. I'd find a way to watch over you."

She kissed him, and then she was with him in body for a good long time. Truth be told, she wouldn't want to lose that any more than he would.

Well, she would just have to avoid fluidic s.p.a.ce at all costs. It was as simple as that.

14.

"The field collapser is ready," Kilana reported to the figure on the viewscreen. "However, the arrival of the emissary from fluidic s.p.a.ce has altered the council's plans. They are now a.s.sembling a diplomatic mission to try to make peace with these so-called Groundskeepers."

Minister Odala frowned. "Fools. Do they not see that there is no compromise where survival is at stake? The Scourge will not compromise, and neither must we."

"I agree completely, Minister. The Voth are truly a wise people." Odala smiled beneficently, and Kilana bowed her head-as much to hide her own disgust as to pretend reverence. These Voth considered themselves superior beings, but they were just another breed of lowly solids, untouched by the transforming power of the Founders. Indeed, they were perhaps the most solid of all solids, utterly rigid in their way of thinking and brutal in their enforcement of it. They represented everything the Dominion existed to stamp out.

Kilana quashed the fierce yearning for home that threatened to overwhelm her. She could not lose control now, not when dealing with the p.r.i.c.kly Voth elder. "I a.s.sure you, I am doing everything in my power to persuade the council to deploy the weapon."

"Persuasion will not be enough. The Coalition council is too much under the influence of these humans. Their duplicity will be the downfall of us all. We must make certain the weapon is deployed. You must obtain it for yourself."

Kilana hesitated. "It would not be easy. The weapon is heavily guarded; I would probably lose several Jem'Hadar."

"So? Is that not what they are for?"

Technically, that was correct. But Kilana had to admit that she had grown fond of her little band of Jem'Hadar over their years together in this benighted backwater of the galaxy. True, it had hardly been reciprocal. Jem'Hadar held Vorta in little esteem, obeying them only because they were the voice of the G.o.ds. Out here, sixty thousand light-years from the Dominion, Kilana no longer had the direct backing of the Founders, and maintaining her troops' loyalty had been difficult. She had been bred by the G.o.ds as a diplomat, a seductress, a gentle persuader who disarmed her opposites with her vulnerable charm and delicate beauty. And such skills had served her well in dealing with races like the Rectilians and Gh'rrrvn. More importantly, they had let her cajole a Haakonian biochemist into devising a means of synthesizing the ketracel-white enzyme that the Jem'Hadar needed to survive. But her control over their white supply earned as much resentment as obedience from the Jem'Hadar, and in order to keep them in line-and to survive against the likes of the Krowtonan Guard and the Vidiians-she had needed to learn how to be tough, cold, and ruthless.