Mary Mac heard a familiar voice, a voice filled with resolve and yet hidden trauma. And the voice said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She smiled and called out, “That figures.”
Data turned and looked at her, his face calm and composed as always. His gold skin glittered in the half light. “Pardon?”
She pointed at the Guardian. “That moment. It’s one of the most popular.”
Data nodded slowly and looked back. On the screen, the crew of explorers was drawing closer to its leader and then, moments later, shimmered out of existence. “That’s not surprising, I suppose,” said Data. “Although there are many moments from history that would be far more impressive in their scope, the history of James Kirk and the crew of Enterprise would certainly hold some degree of fascination. People would probably feel more empathy toward someone who is closer to their own frame of reference. What I find interesting is how primitive the transporter technology was.”
Mary Mac looked at him in surprise. “You know, Commodore, I’ve seen so many people watch this moment. The story of Kirk’s ordeal with the Guardian, and what he sacrificed for the sake of history…it’s become so well known. One of the few modern-day legends we have. And I’ve seen so many reactions, ranging from hysterics to mourning. I’ve never heard anyone just comment on the technology…especially not when they’re seeing it for the first time.”
Data glanced at the screen. “It’s not the first time. It’s the second.”
“When did you see it before?”
“When it was displayed on the Guardian, one point three minutes ago.”
She blinked in surprise. “You were able to make out something that played on the Guardian himself?”
“Of course. The image feed may be rapid for you, but for me it’s relatively sluggish. Still, I wished to see it on the replay screen in the event that I missed some sort of nuance. But I didn’t.”
She shook her head. “You are a rather different customer than we usually get around here, Commodore, I must admit. Most people don’t quite know how to react when they see their ancestors brought to life, or shadows of life”—she gestured to the Guardian—“before their very eyes.”
“Understandable,” said Data. “However, the difference is…I have no ancestors.”
“You were made. Other androids existed before you, even if not in direct lineage. If they’re not ancestors, what would you call them?”
He considered it a moment. “Precedents,” he decided.
She smiled broadly and clapped him on the back. “Come on. We have dinner up back at the compound. We’d be honored if you joined us.”
“I’d like to touch it.”
Her hand stayed on his back, but her expression slid into a puzzled frown. “Touch what?”
“The Guardian of Forever.”
“Whatever for?”
He looked at her in such a way, with his gold-pupiled eyes, that Mary Mac felt a slight chill. The same sort that she had felt when she first stood in the presence of the Guardian.
As if he had been reading her mind, Data said, “To be honest…I’m not entirely sure. The Guardian and I…we are rarities in the universe. We are each one of a kind.” He shifted his gaze to the Guardian. “For a brief time I had a brother…but he’s gone now, although part of him”—he tapped his forehead for a moment—“remains with me. For an even briefer time—forty-two years ago, to be exact—I had a daughter…but she was barely here long enough to establish her presence. I sense in the Guardian a kindred spirit.” He looked back at Mary Mac. “Would you consider that funny, Doctor? The notion that something inhuman would try to lay claim to something as human as a spirit?”
“No,” she said quietly. “No, I wouldn’t think that’s funny at all. But…look. Getting within range of the Guardian…it’s not exactly regulations. In fact, it’s against regulations.”
“I am very aware of all Starfleet regulations, Dr. Mac. My programming makes me incapable of violating them. What is prohibited is unauthorized use of the Guardian, especially for the intention of altering or changing time lines. I don’t wish to use it. I simply want to…”
He paused, and for someone as clearly articulate as Data, it seemed very odd for him to be pausing, trying to find the right words. “To connect with it,” he said finally.
She studied him for a moment, then showed her white teeth. “All right, Commodore. Although frankly, I’m taking a big chance here of getting my ass handed to me.”
Data frowned and looked at her buttocks, but she quickly made a dismissive wave. “Not literally.”
She stretched out an arm and placed her palm flat against the control padd that stood outside the Guardian. As she did so, Data looked with curiosity at her upper arm. “How did you acquire that bruise, Doctor? It’s very peculiar.”
She glanced at where he was looking. Sure enough, there was a small abrasion on her upper right arm, perfectly round and about as large as if one made a circle from the thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know,” she said in mild surprise. “Must have banged it against something.”
She dismissed it mentally and looked back at the control platform. A thin beam of red light shot out from it and scanned her right eye, feeding the retinal pattern into the compound’s central data banks. It came back with a Priority Alpha clearance. A moment later the force field faded, the steady hum of the generators disappearing. Now there was nothing but the crying of the wind.
Commodore Data slowly walked forward, approaching the Guardian with as close to trepidation as he could possibly come. He stopped several feet away. “Who are you?” he asked.
The vast, round portal flickered as a voice spoke with a booming, all-encompassing vastness that seemed to come from everywhere at once. “I am the Guardian of Forever.”
“Are you a Guardian in the sense of a preserver? Or a Guardian in the sense of a protector?”
“Both…and neither.”
Data cocked his head slightly. Mary Mac, for her part, had quietly activated her wrist recorder. Any direct communication with the Guardian could result in some unexpected new insight. She had conversed with the vast portal on a number of different occasions, and every time there was some new nuance to its replies.
“How is such a self-contradictory assessment possible?” Data asked.
“Since I am possible…then all is possible.”
Data considered this a moment. “Are you saying that you are the keeper of time and protect it from trespass…but since every man’s fate is in his own hands, you really cannot protect it from those who wish to affect it.”
“All living beings affect the flow of what is. I am but one portal through time. There is an infinity of others.”
This response brought a startled glance from Mary Mac. Data didn’t turn his attention from the Guardian.
“Are you saying there are others like yourself?”
“Of course. In every moment of time that there is…then I am there. As you exist within all the moments of your lifetime. But you exist in the individual moments. I exist in all.”
“Holy Kolker,” whispered Mary Mac.
“You transcend all boundaries of time and space?” asked Data.
“No. I do not transcend them.”
“What, then?”
“I define them.”
Data looked back at Mary Mac. It was a curiously human move. It was almost as if Data wanted to reassure himself that she was still there. Then he looked again at the Guardian.
“May I touch you?” asked Data.
“You have free will. Do as you wish.”
Data paused, then walked up to the rocklike surface of the Guardian. Without hesitation, he placed his gold palm against it.
The lights throbbed beneath his hand. From the chill that cut through the air, he had expected that the Guardian would feel cool, even cold. Instead it pulsed with an odd sort of warmth. Data lifted his hand for a moment and could feel no heat being radiated from the Guardian’s
surface. But when he placed his hand against it again, there it was, entirely self-contained.
“Very curious,” he said.
He stayed that way for a long moment, then stepped back. “I would like to talk again at some other point.”
“All will occur,” replied the Guardian.
Data turned and walked back to Mary Mac. She watched him with curiosity. Anyone…“normal,” for want of a better word…would have walked away while glancing repeatedly over his shoulder at the Guardian. But Commodore Data, having decided to take his leave, was now completely focused on the next order of business.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” said Data.
Mary Mac inclined her chin slightly toward the Guardian. “Did you understand any of that?”
“I have an interpretation that I believe to be fairly accurate. I’d be most interested in comparing my conjectures with those of the other members of your research team.”
“Hey, that’s what you’re here for. To check up on us and keep Starfleet apprised of our progress. The invitation to dinner is still open.”
“Thank you. I’ll just check with my ship first…. Commodore Data to Enterprise.”
Mary Mac stood and watched him as he held a conversation with thin air.
“Good. I will be remaining on the planet surface several more hours. Be sure to keep the ship sufficiently outside the range of the temporal distortions, since we’re uncertain of the effect long-term exposure could have…. I’ll want Science Officer Blair joining me…. Very well, then, as soon as he’s completed them…. Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. Commodore out.”
He turned and looked back at Mary Mac, who shook her head. “I can’t get over that,” she said. “That comm-chip implant so that you can hear each other inside your heads.”
“A two-second procedure to install. Inserted with a hypo spray. Impossible to lose, so we can remain in touch with each other at all times. Plus increased privacy for communications. Had I wished to, Doctor, I could simply have whispered my replies and you would not have been able to hear any of it. However, there was nothing particularly confidential about this communiqué.”
“What’s it like?” Mary Mac looked skyward as if she could detect it with the unaided eye. “The Enterprise, I mean.”
“The Enterprise?” Data paused. “In many ways, the Enterprise 1701-F is similar to the 1701-D upon which I first served. It is larger, more powerful, more maneuverable. Crew complement of two thousand twenty-three people.”
“And you’re in command.”
He nodded slightly. “There is that, of course. And yet, in some ways…I find myself thinking of the past, more and more often. I suppose, as one acquires more memories, that is natural.”
“Yes. It is. Certainly—just like yourself—not without precedent.”
Two
There was nothing desirable about Starbase 86.
It was far removed from the more frequently traveled space lanes. Visitors were rare, commerce even rarer. The facilities were not exactly top of the line.
Starbases served a variety of functions: ship repair, stopping point, rest and relaxation, observation of the territory around them. At its most basic, a starbase was a signpost of the United Federation of Planets that said, “We are here. We are thinking about you and are here to help you.”
Starbase 86 filled all of those requirements…adequately. Nothing more than that, and nothing less. It was simply good enough.
Once upon a time, the commanding officer of Starbase 86—and since the term 86 meant something had been killed, the starbase had been nicknamed “Starbase Dead End”—would never have settled for good enough. In fact, he had lived his life by the axiom “Good enough never is.”
But that viewpoint had been held a long, long time ago, by a man who was somewhat different from 86’s current CO. A lifetime ago, in fact. Someone else’s lifetime.
He stared out the viewport of his office, watching the lights of stars that, because of the time required for light to travel, might have been extinguished years ago. How odd, he mused, to be looking at something that was no longer there. And yet it had reality. Every sense that was available to him told him that the stars were still there. But that didn’t mean anything.
“Sometimes,” he said to no one in particular, “seeing isn’t believing.”
There was a chime at the door. He made no move to answer it at first. What was the point? What was the rush? If he didn’t respond now, sooner or later the buzz would just sound again. And again. Things happened whether he wanted them to or not. That was a hard lesson that he had also learned.
Sure enough, the chime repeated. This time it was accompanied by a worried “Admiral? Admiral Riker? Are you okay?”
Riker permitted a small smile to tug at the edges of his bearded mouth. The voice was unmistakably that of his second-in-command, Lieutenant Dexter. Dexter always sounded a bit apprehensive, and Riker knew precisely why. Dexter was something of a hypochondriac—not to the point where it interfered with his ability to function, certainly, but he was preoccupied with medical well-being. Not just his own, either, but that of everyone around him.
As a result, Dexter was always clucking after Riker, inquiring after Riker’s health, and generally making a polite but determined nuisance of himself. In a way, Riker supposed that it was something of a blessing. Certainly Riker himself didn’t care all that much about his well-being. He was seventy-three years old, and although he wouldn’t refuse the idea of seventy-four and onward beyond that, neither did he particularly welcome it. It would simply happen or it wouldn’t. The rest was of little consequence.
The longer Riker didn’t respond, the more apprehensive Dexter would get. Probably the lieutenant was already conjuring up images of an unconscious or even worse, a dead Riker, sprawled out on his desk or under it. He even knew precisely what Dexter would do upon finding a deceased commanding officer. Dexter would undoubtedly drop to his knees and proceed to lecture the corpse.
“I told you you weren’t taking good enough care of yourself,” he’d say, shaking his thin blond head. “I told you that you should take more of an interest in yourself and the running of the starbase. But would you listen to me? No. You wouldn’t. And now look at you, with the average life span being 114 years, and here you are, barely half that, dead as a burned-out star.”
“Come in, Lieutenant,” said Riker.
Dexter entered before Riker finished the last syllable in lieutenant. He coughed nervously. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Riker spread his wrinkled hands broadly. “I have nothing but time.” Then he pointed off to the side. “See there? Loads of time.”
What he was pointing at was virtually the only thing he took any pride in at all: a large, ornate grandfather clock, Swiss construction, made in the early twentieth century. It had been fully restored and was in perfect working order. It stood in one of the corners of Riker’s fairly austere office, and its pendulum swung slowly, back and forth, back and forth. Each swing was accompanied by a resonant ticktock.
The sound affected different people in different ways. Riker found the noise calming, even reassuring. Dexter—Riker could tell—thought it was damned distracting. The lieutenant would cast repeated, annoyed glances at the clockpiece whenever he was in Riker’s office.
“Yes, sir. Loads of time. As you say, sir.” Dexter fingered his thinning hair nervously. “There’s some, um, matters to bring to your attention.”
Riker sat down behind his desk and half-swiveled the chair so he could stare out at the stars. Rarely did he look at Dexter anymore. He had in the beginning, back when he’d taken on the command of the starbase three years ago. Dexter had been one of the few humans he ever spoke with. He’d considered that a blessing. Now he was bored.
Riker’s head settled into his hands. His beard, mostly gray but with a few strands of brown still peppering it, felt brittle against his palms. He raised one hand and ran it experimentally through his gray hair.
Strands came out between his fingers, more strands every day, it seemed. He could have treatment done to prevent it, of course. But what was the point? Whom was he trying to impress? Dexter? Surely not. Himself? Hardly.
“The surveying ship Chance will be coming in next week,” Dexter said, consulting a small computer padd in the palm of his hand. Mostly it was there for security; Dexter’s remarkable memory enabled him to recall all information almost instantaneously. But he was anal retentive enough to want to have the printed confirmation in front of him, just in case. “They had a synthesizer malfunction and will be putting in for new supplies and synthesizer repair.”
Riker nodded. “Make sure our food stores are adequately stocked to resupply.”
It was purely a cosmetic order. He knew damned well that Dexter would already have attended to that. But it was something to do other than just sit and nod his head as if it were going to fall off.
“Yes, sir,” said Dexter neutrally, as if Riker’s order were a novel idea. “Also, a communiqué from Starfleet. They complained that we were not processing our forms 1021-JKQ rapidly enough.”
Riker raised an eyebrow in mild amusement. Amazing how much gravity Dexter could attach to something that Riker considered so utterly trivial. “Not fast enough?”
“No, sir.”
“How much faster do they want it?”
Dexter blinked owlishly. “They are supposed to be filed within forty-eight hours of departure of any ship that’s Constellation class or larger.”
“And we’ve been taking…?”
Nervously clearing his throat, Dexter tapped his computer padd and said, “We’ve been averaging three weeks.”
Riker stared at Dexter gravely. “My God. This could spell the end of the Federation as we know it. And I’ll have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life.”
Dexter blew air impatiently out between his colorless lips. “It’s not a laughing matter, Admiral.”
“I don’t recall hearing laughter, Lieutenant. Not even so much as a mild guffaw. It may have been a while since I laughed, Mr. Dexter, but I do distinctly recall what it sounded like.”