Do Comets Dream? Part 9

"I want to hear the song again," he said.

She knew at once what song it was-the lullaby she had once sung to him each night, so he would go to sleep and she could go off on her night rounds, the profession that those of her caste practiced.

Sleep, my baby, sleep, And tomorrow I'll bring you a copper ring And the next day I'll bring you a silver chain And the third day I'll bring you a crown of gold.

Sleep, my baby, sleep, And I'll pluck the twin suns for your eyes And the twenty moons for your fingers and toes.

By the G.o.ds of death, she loved this child.

His eyes were closed. She wondered if he was feigning slumber-a last effort to remain a child, perhaps, knowing that from today he would no longer be one, even if he lost the race.

Oh, you are beautiful, Taruna esSarion thought, and wondered what the boy's father was doing; they could not, of course, have anything like an exchange of letters, or even be seen to recognize one another in the street; such things were forbidden between one as exalted as he and a mere woman of the streets.

If only.

"Counselor Troi! Counselor Troi!" It was the voice of Dr. Crusher echoing through her skull. "You slipped out of focus for a moment-your life signs-"

Yes, Deanna thought. Step back. The wave of empathie vibration had almost sucked her in, had made her seem to-partic.i.p.ate-in the simulated past. Or had that meeting with the boy's mother really occurred? At what point did the dailong's virtual creation cross over into actual real history? Mustn't let the welter of emotions get to me- "There," came Beverly's voice again. Now she knew that it was coming from the Enterprise, and that she and Kio sar-Bensu were still in the inner chamber of the comet, linked somehow to the mind of this boy and to a moment in ancient history.

"Troi here. I'm fine. I'm going back in."

"Are you sure?"

"I saw into that woman's heart," Troi said. "I want to see it through."

Troi closed her eyes. Suddenly she was in the great plaza of Tanith's capital city, making her way toward the first of many tiers of parapets, packed with citizens chanting slogans.

Chapter Eighteen.

The Race ARTAS LET GO of his mother's hand as soon as they reached the first of seven parapets, representative of the Seven Ages of the Universe. He did not want to appear to be a mama's boy now, not with the fate of the world perhaps resting on his shoulders. Especially not in front of his big brother.

On the parapet were gathered thousands of men, women, and children, all wearing the corona of hatred in their hair, all waving the red-bordered flags of destruction which the city government had been handing out that morning.

A chorus leader whipped up the chanting: Whom do we despise?

Thanet! Thanet!

Why are they our enemies?

Killers of babies! Slaughterers of the innocent!

How long shall we hate them?

Forever! Forever!

Glittering on the seventh parapet, on a plinth of gold and diamantine, sat the vessel itself, a perfect sphere of s.h.i.+ny silvery metal. Soon the winner of the final test would shed his mortal body and become the soul of the great sphere, and be winging its way toward the enemy.

Artas could barely contain himself. Only for a split second did he look back at his mother, who looked away and did not meet his gaze.

On the third parapet, the place of the High Priests, the s.h.i.+van-Jalar sat enthroned on the back of the skeleton of a megamarton, its tusks upraised and holding up a flaming red banner with the sigils of the High Castes of Tanith. His daughter, Ariela, sat beside him, taking notes on his august words, whispering them into a palm device; the device, as it happened, contained the consciousness of Commander Data, who was still the interface between past and future, transmitting information and images back to the Enterprise.

From the parapet, the s.h.i.+van-Jalar could hear the tumult below, could feel the force of the people's emotion. That force was a powerful thing-if only-if only emotion alone could bring the war to an end, could force the final destruction of Thanet!

The counselors who sat around him, on their various lesser thrones, were stiff, impa.s.sive, all awaiting his word. Then the s.h.i.+van-Jalar smiled a little, and everyone seemed to relax.

My father, Ariela thought, more powerful than anyone in the world-even his smiles are watched, a.n.a.lyzed.

"If only you had been with me on the longs.h.i.+p, my daughter," said the s.h.i.+van-Jalar. "There was a young navigator-a wonderful match for you, I think. One Indhuon esSarion-yes, yes, I know the mother is a wh.o.r.e, but the brother, I understand, is a prime candidate for thanopstru."

"Really, Father," said Ariela, "I do have the right to seek my own mate."

The counselors looked discreetly away, not wis.h.i.+ng to intrude on a moment of domestic strain.

Her father clapped his hands.

"Sire," said the first minister, lifting his censer up and wafting a powerful woody perfume over his master's nostrils, "the hour is ripe; perhaps we should proceed to the final test?"

"In time. A thousand years ago-" His Transcendence rose up, placed his palms upward in the gesture known as drawing-wisdom-from-the-sky. "-my ancestor undoubtedly sat on such a parapet, meditating on the very purpose of his existence. This time it's different-this time it's the very end of the Thanetian civilization, the final annihilation of those we have been taught for millennia to hate and fear. I think that it's only appropriate for me to ask aloud the question that I know has tormented all of you from time to time, which you do not dare utter for fear of a heresy trial.

"The question, my wise friends," he continued, "is why? Why are we fighting a race that appears to be exactly like us?"

Everyone looked very uncomfortable, and even Ariela wondered whether her father was going too far in testing the limits of the counselors' orthodoxy.

The s.h.i.+van-Jalar smiled. "I will tell you the answer today," he said, "on the eve of our victory, which may also be our defeat, for if the Thanetians have not spent the last millennium developing weapons as powerful as ours, I would be most surprised. The answer to that burning question that flirts with heresy, my friends, is that we are all fools. I've prayed on this, I've downed the zul potion in almost lethal concentrations in order to communicate with our ancestors, and I've come to the realization that none of this was necessary."

The first counselor, the one who had said it had always been so, said, "Your Transcendence, for the s.h.i.+van-Jalar to speak heresy is unthinkable, because you embody orthodoxy in your very person. And yet-"

"Speak your mind, j.a.pthek, you may never get another chance."

"Sire, I've often thought that perhaps the G.o.ds ... are simply toying with us-they've created this duality between two worlds, five thousand years apart in s.p.a.ce travel, though only instants away from each other by subs.p.a.ce communication-in order to test some theorem about balance and imbalance."

"Interesting," said Hal-Therion. "So your way out of the Unspeakable Dilemma is-that we are but playthings of destiny. Anyone else?"

"I think," said the second counselor, clearing his throat, "that whatever Your Transcendence says must be the truth; for does not the Panvivlion state that 'the lips of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar are the lips of G.o.d'?"

"Even I do not know if that is so," said the s.h.i.+van-Jalar, "and really, I ought to know."

"But if His Transcendence actually doubted-"

"I think that's what I'm trying to say, old man," said the sage. And Ariela suddenly realized that her father was not joking after all. "Now, today, on the eve of everything-I find myself wrestling with heresy."

"Your Transcendence, even the legendary Tarsu of Saierion struggled with the dark forces before coming face-to-face with the s.h.i.+ning hardness of truth," said the first counselor in whining, solicitous tones.

"Silence! I have said the unsayable-now, all of you, do your duty!"

Ariela was paying full attention now. Her father was challenging the others-a challenge that might in ancient times have been met with mortal combat, but that today tended to end more with a wager and a forfeiture of a token payment. Would anyone take the bait?

"Go ahead," Hal-Therion said. "Depose me."

The counselors rose up. This was serious! Such a move could delay everything, cause chaos in the governance of the planet, even prevent the choosing of the thanopstru! She could see them all thinking hard now, wondering whether this was their chance to seize power-as her father had once himself done-or whether it was an elaborate bluff, a test of loyalty. Last time, after such a test, the purge of the priestly ranks had lasted weeks, and several hundred had met their end in the auto-da-fe of glory. Ariela knew she must act quickly to defend her father's position-and her own.

She rose to her feet. "No, counselors!" she cried. And in the singsong voice that was used to recite verses from the ancient religious texts, she quoted: "Always, on the brink of the s.h.i.+ft in the cycle of the times, there will be a moment of wavering-a time when all possibilities seem equally possible. Do not hesitate to choose the path of death, for the end is ever the gateway to the beginning."

"Well spoken, Ariela sar-Bensu!" said the wheedling j.a.pthek. "You have returned us all to reality with a single well-chosen sacred text."

The moment of tension pa.s.sed as the counselors sat back down. But when she met her father's gaze, she saw in his eyes a kind of imploring, a desperation: it was as if he was saying to her, amid all this pomp, dressed as he was in robes and feathers and furs and precious metals and all the panoply of a G.o.d-on-earth, "Please, daughter, let this cup be taken from me." And Ariela wept, but inside, for sorrow was an emotion that dared not show its face on this, the happiest of days.

"Look!" she said, changing the subject abruptly. "The race has begun!" And she pointed down toward the second and third parapets.

"I can't watch anymore!" Amba.s.sador Straun shouted. "s.h.i.+van-Jalars professing heresy, some obscene mirror planet I've never even heard of locked in a fratricidal war with my own world-it's all trickery!"

He stormed from the bridge; concerned, Captain Picard took a moment to go after him personally. After asking the s.h.i.+p's computer, he located the man pacing about in an empty corridor.

Quietly, leaning against a bare wall, the amba.s.sador was weeping.

Gently, Picard touched him on the shoulder. "Courage, Your Excellency," he said softly. "We must play this thing through till the end."

"If this is truth, why could I not have lived a lie?"

"We all want truth, Mr. Amba.s.sador. And sometimes the truth comes with ... pain that seems unbearable. Come, sir. Let's put a good face on it all, no matter what we learn."

"You don't understand."

"On the contrary," said Picard, "I do understand. Perfectly." Picard thought of the Borg. Something in his eyes must have convinced the amba.s.sador.

The amba.s.sador allowed himself to be led back. Picard had a gla.s.s of peftifesht wine replicated for him; the amba.s.sador downed it in one gulp, without even worrying whether it had been correctly brewed for a member of his caste.

Grimly, they continued watching.

Indhuon esSarion was summoned up to the transcendent parapet level, a place of crystal pennants and peac.o.c.k thrones. He did not want to meet the gaze of any of the high counselors, all of whom belonged to immeasurably higher castes than did he himself. But the daughter was a different matter. She sat at the foot of her father's throne, her fingers darting nimbly over a handheld device on which she was recording-what? Great matters of state, no doubt. And she was a striking girl, no older, perhaps, than Indhuon himself.

And inside Indhuon's mind, a pa.s.senger sat-Lieutenant Simon Ta.r.s.es, equally entranced by the daughter of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar, who seemed the very incarnation of Kio sar-Bensu.

Kio! he called out in his mind before he could stop himself.

To his amazement, a gentle voice whispered in his thoughts. Simon, it said, fancy meeting you here-five thousand years from home, and who knows how many pa.r.s.ecs.

How is it that we're talking? he thought.

The gentle voice of Commander Data explained the interface.

I thought we'd never meet again, Kio said. I thought-and then-so much is happening now-The voice died away.

I am sorry, Data said. There is only a finite amount of data I can process, and my highest priority is communicating to the Enterprise. So any other exchanges will have to remain on a lower priority for now.

The Enterprise was Simon's highest priority too-or it should be, he chided himself. It would be, he determined. He would just have to put Kio out of his mind and concentrate on his duties, which at the moment seemed to involve watching an amazing spectacle through this Indhuon person's eyes. As a.s.signments go, it's not too bad, he thought. Crowded parapets stretched below him arrayed according to the major caste divisions, with the priestly ones here at the very top; Indhuon could not have dared come here save for the summons of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar's daughter. The sight was as new to Indhuon as it was to Simon, and so the young ensign was able to experience the full wonder of it. Here on the upper level, guards held many-tiered parasols of sheer iridescent reptile skins above the counselors, who strutted and preened yet quailed when the s.h.i.+van-Jalar so much as glanced in their general direction.

The only one he dared look at was the girl. And how she stared at him! There was magic there. Yes. They had met once or twice, in the cafeteria at the telepathy training summer camp, but she of course had been in the upper-caste food line, dining on deli cacies that a prost.i.tute's son could never dream of eating. The thought of those lips biting into the soft sh.e.l.l of a zerulax egg-he had put it from his mind. Except once-his arm brus.h.i.+ng against hers as the two food lines converged in an X because that year's enrollment was so overcrowded, with the war effort reaching its climax- And then she'd said, "I heard that."

"I didn't say anything."

"Don't bother denying it. We're in telepathy school. You know you said it."

"It?"

"You know."

And suddenly they had come between them, three enormous cloned nursemaids with fierce expressions, black gowns and wimples, each brandis.h.i.+ng a hand-sized laser prod.

"Do not address the daughter of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar directly, lower-caste sc.u.m!" one said.

"I wasn't-"

"Heresy of deed," said the other, "is punishable by a year's cryogenic suspension!'

"Heresy of thought," cried the third, "is entirely up to the pleasure of the Mindprober General."

Since then, he had thought of her night and day. He never expected he would be up here, on the s.h.i.+vantic parapet, gazing right into her eyes. She put a finger to her lips. Then, her father still preaching the finer points of theology to his counselors, she slipped away and came up close to him. Immediately, there were nursemaids, but she dismissed them with a flick of the wrist.

"Come for a walk with me," said the most powerful teenaged girl on the entire planet, "and we'll talk. I've been following your dragonboat races since the summer camp ended. I watched the tel-vid of the citywide compet.i.tion last week. I was thrilled. You know I went to the dock just to see if I could catch a glimpse of you?"

"I thought you wanted to see my little brother-he's the 'great hope,' after all," Indhuon said, unable to keep the envy completely out of his voice.

"Oh, don't think of him that way," she said. There she went, reading his mind again. "Soon he'll be a s.h.i.+ning symbol of Tanith's glorious destiny, whereas you and I will-oh! Do you want to kiss me?"

"In front of all these-"

She smiled. "These parapets are more labyrinthine than you think. For instance-"

She took him by the hand. The cloned nursemaids gasped, but did not dare approach. She led him to an area behind her father's throne; it was shaded by a petrobanyan tree with spreading branches that took root in the floor, so that the tree was like a many-chambered cave. Crystalline flowers sprouted from crevices and crannies, in eye-popping hues of cerulean, crimson, and fiery yellow. She tugged at his elbow; they ducked behind a wide column of living rock, veined with amethyst and citrine, and despite the ma.s.sed heat of twin suns, this was a cool place, and she held him tight against the stone; she was warm and the stone was ice-cold against his back, and he himself was all hot and cold at once, and when her lips touched his it was a sensation almost akin to an electric shock; but he didn't mind.

The outpouring of emotion brought Simon to the surface for a moment and he found himself, inside the shared body, pa.s.sionately kissing Kio in her shared body.

Simon's voice whispered from his mind to Kio's.

This is wrong. You don't want me. Or if you knew me, really knew me, you wouldn't want me.

He could sense her smiling, somewhere in the back of his head-a tickling feeling, almost.

Five thousand years in the past, the ill-fated young ones kissed again. Did they somehow know their days, their hours were numbered? Was that what charged them with such powerful emotion? Or was it just the primal need that propelled all humanoid species toward something called love?

He didn't have time to worry about it, because suddenly the three nursemaid clones came charging into the sanctum.