Part 11 (1/2)
The monitoring station blinked through a sequence of readouts, and all three of them maneuvered into position to see the screen. Melora and Reg hung back in order to let the senior engineer reach the actual controls.
The readouts were going by too fast for Barclay to gather much from them, but he could see that Zuka Juno was keeping up with the scrolling code. The senior engineer kept a placid expression on his face, but Reg could see his eyes das.h.i.+ng back and forth, up and down across the screens. Those pale, wise eyes couldn't hide his immense disbelief and fear.
”Stop it for a second,” ordered Pazlar.
The old engineer's hands hovered over the instruments, but they halted and began to tremble. With alarm, Melora reached over his shoulder and began pounding on the board, but her actions had no effect whatsoever. Screens full of obtuse computer code kept scrolling past, with no way to stop it, no way to end it.
”It's frozen, isn't it?” demanded Melora.
The elder Elaysian was certainly frozen, floating in front of the screen, staring at it as if it were his tombstone. Angrily, Melora grabbed him by his billowing white robes, spun him around, and shook his body. In her grasp, the once arrogant engineer now seemed as frail and helpless as the oldest spires on Gemworld.
”You can't stop it, can you?” shouted Melora, tears welling in her intense blue eyes.
He gulped and finally seemed to hear her. ”Uh, no,” he answered in a cracked voice. ”It's encrypted ... in an endless loop.”
”Can you break the encryption?”
”No.” He shook his head, then buried his face in the billowy sails under his arm.
Seeing this reaction, Reg twisted his hands nervously. He wanted to pace, but his feet dangled in midair; so he kept clapping his hands as he spoke. ”It's just as we suspected ... only worse. Somebody sabotaged the sh.e.l.l, then they encrypted it so n.o.body can fix it. This may look bad, but I'm sure Data or Geordi can break the-”
”No one can break it,” answered Zuka Juno, snapping out of his stupor. ”Only those who put it on-maybe not even them.”
”And who put it on?” asked Melora.
He turned away evasively. ”That's hard to say.”
”No, it's not,” she insisted. ”Only six beings had access to this level of programming-the six senior engineers. Isn't that right?”
”You've got to give me time to think about all of this. The repercussions-” Juno couldn't finish the sentence, and his face reverted to a stunned mask of fear.
”The repercussions are that everybody on this planet is going to die! Everybody on the Enterprise is going to die!” Melora laughed derisively and tossed her silky blond hair. ”I apologize, Reg. I told you it couldn't be possible that someone from Gemworld could destroy their own planet, but that's apparently what happened.”
Barclay cleared his throat, trying to find something to say in response to this devastating news. ”Well, my people almost destroyed their own planet. We survived because we're like you. We just kept trying to hold things together. Of course, Earth is younger, not quite as fragile as Gemworld is.”
”Yes,” grumbled Pazlar. ”One tiny bit of corrupted code, and billions of years of history and survival are about to vanish. What are we going to do about this, Engineer Juno?”
The old Elaysian shook his head slowly, eyes wide, as if he had just seen his own mortality. ”It's not just the fractal program,” he murmured hoa.r.s.ely. ”There's also the rift out there.”
”But if you stop collecting dark matter,” said Reg, ”you have a chance to stop it before it destroys everything.”
No sooner had he said those words than he remembered Data's report to Captain Picard. The sh.e.l.l was designed like a human being, not a machine. It was not a collection of subsystems that could be turned on and off as needed; it was a single ent.i.ty, designed to compensate for changing conditions but never to stop working. At the moment, it was compensating for a fractal growth program run amuck by sucking all the dark matter from another dimension. One of the keepers of the secrets had betrayed them.
Zuka Juno looked at Reg with a mixture of shock and horror. ”I have to convene the Exalted Ones and ask for their opinion.”
”There's no time for that!” snapped Pazlar. ”We've got to get the other senior engineers back here!”
”Uh ... one of them is a ma.s.s murderer,” Reg reminded her. ”Did all six of them have access to this room?”
”Yes,” answered Zuka Juno, ”except for the Gendlii, of course, who must send a proxy. The Lipul engineer has access via the crystal stream behind these panels.”
”Okay, the Gendlii is out,” said Reg, making a mental note. He wasn't sure what a Gendlii was, but he was glad to hear that at least one of the six engineers could be eliminated from suspicion. ”Who is his proxy?”
”Tangre Bertoran. Perhaps you know him.”
”Oh, we know him,” Reg a.s.sured the engineer. ”I think it's time to contact the Enterprise and tell them the bad news.” He lifted his hand to strike his combadge, but Juno reached out and grabbed his wrist. The old engineer's grip was surprisingly strong.
”Please, think about what you're doing,” begged the elder Elaysian. ”There will be panic ... a complete loss of faith. We must keep this a secret for now, until I can inform the Exalted Ones. We must prepare our people first.”
”I think they're mature enough to know the truth,” said Melora. ”Go ahead and contact the Enterprise, Reg.”
”I want to find the one who did this,” insisted the aged Elaysian, his hand and his voice shaking with anger. ”If we act too quickly and bring in your crew, he might be driven away. Give us a moment to handle this internally-a small delay won't affect anything. Please.”
He seemed so sincere that Reg was forced to glance at Pazlar. She seemed torn by indecision, and Barclay could understand how they might want a short period to digest this news before outsiders got involved. ”All right,” he said, ”but we'll go with you.”
Juno gave them a weak smile and pointed to the blinking monitor station. ”Perhaps I should stay here and do what I can-maybe there's something I've overlooked. You go, my son, to the Exalted Ones and speak to them in my place.”
”Do you think they'll believe me?” asked Reg. ”n.o.body has so far.”
”They will if you carry this.” The senior engineer pushed off from the monitoring station and floated to the small red panel above them. He extracted the violet shard and handed it to Reg, brown lanyard and all.
The crystal twinkled for a moment when Reg held it, and he flinched. But it didn't burn or hurt him; in fact, it felt strangely cool and energizing. It was like holding an icicle with his bare hands. The shard was about the same size as an icicle, and Barclay was reminded of winters back in the midwest, when he used to throw s...o...b..a.l.l.s at the icicles hanging from the rain gutters.
Melora proudly put the fiber lanyard around his neck and tightened it like a noose. ”You're a proxy for a senior engineer,” she said. ”That's a great responsibility.”
”Are you ... are you sure you want to do this?” asked Reg doubtfully. ”I don't have much experience being a dignitary.”
”You are the one, my son,” insisted the elder engineer. ”You diligently tried to warn us about this when no one was listening; now you must continue this thankless task. With that gem, they will know you have my blessing. Hurry.”
”Come on, Reg,” said Melora, taking his hand.
The lanky engineer grasped the violet shard with his other hand, certain that someone had made a mistake. It felt as if they had given him the key to the city, but for all the wrong reasons. Although Reg was honored, he didn't want to be the voice of doom for all of Gemworld.
Lying on metal girders were seven corpses in black body bags bearing Starfleet insignia. The funeral took place in a cavernous s.p.a.ce in the Enterprise that was occasionally used for sporting events, such as soccer. Three of the deceased were members of a field hockey team which had reigned as champions of the Enterprise for two years. It made sense to hold the service here, thought Picard, since it was going to be a bit different, anyway.
Because they couldn't use the transporter or torpedoes to dispose of the bodies in s.p.a.ce, as was traditional, they had fallen back on a little-used but acceptable alternative method. Captain Picard was a traditionalist when it came to funeral services-and he had performed a great many during the war-so he was uneasy about these changes.
The crowd was large, consisting of almost everyone who wasn't on active duty. They stood in a semicircle around the six small pyres. There was an air of quiet, except for a few sniffles. Will Riker was speaking, reading the name of each fallen crewmember and listing his or her accomplishments. Picard recalled faces, especially Yontel's, and snippets of conversation in pa.s.sing. Now those youthful personalities were gone, and the ent.i.ty that was the Enterprise was diminished.
Commander Riker finished reading the biographic part of the program, and he nodded to the captain. Picard cleared his throat and lifted his chin, all the better to project his stentorian voice.
”Around the turn of the last millennium,” he began, ”a fleet of one hundred thirty-one sailing s.h.i.+ps had a race on one of Earth's oceans-from Sidney, Australia, to Hobart, Tasmania. As the race progressed, a storm blew in, but there are often storms in those waters. Most of the yachts plowed ahead, hoping to win the race. But the storm quickly turned into a rare hurricane, such as was never seen in those waters before. Scores of s.h.i.+ps were disabled or capsized.
”For two days, primitive aircraft performed hundreds of daring rescues. When it was over, six sailors from three different vessels had perished. Two of their bodies were never recovered.”
The captain scanned the array of faces, skin colors, and species, marveling at the incredible variety of his crew. Despite their many differences, they were closer now to each other than they were to their own families, and each death affected every one of them. Picard noted the absence of Counselor Troi, who would normally be moving among them, giving comfort and consolation where needed. By now, all of them knew of her distress, and it had to be one more worry they shared.