Part 8 (1/2)
Somehow controlling the panic that threatened to overwhelm him, he tried to think back to the last thing he remembered.
And realized he had no conscious memory at all.
No past.
Not even a name!
For what seemed like an eternity, he stood frozen, unable to move or even to generate a rational thought beyond the obvious: Where am I?
Who am I?
But then, almost as quickly as his mind had emptied, a torrent of memories came flooding back, threatening to drown his still-struggling consciousness.
Limp with a relief that did not question the source of the memories, he thought: I am Sarek of Vulcan, amba.s.sador toNo! Not amba.s.sador! Arbiter! Supreme Arbiter of the Federation and- Alliance, not Federation!
He shook his head violently as he tried to make sense of the returning memories: The Borg. The Vortex. The Alliance Council.
But what was this ”Federation” that had suddenly appeared in his mind, like a parasite that had attached itself to his returning memories? What- But it was not something that had just appeared, he realized, and with the realization came the beginnings of calmness and control. The ”Federation” was just one small part of a long string of illusory memories that had plagued him for decades.
Memories of dreams.
Dreams that were not even dreams, merely shadows of dreams that he must have had even though he could not remember ever actually having them.
How could he have forgotten, even for an instant? He had been victim to them throughout most of his adult life, he now remembered. At odd times, day or night, on the rare occasions when he allowed his mind to wander, he would find himself ”remembering” events that had never happened, events that couldn't have happened, events totally at odds with his true memories and with the world around him but otherwise virtually indistinguishable from his real memories.
He had, he remembered now, tried at various times to dismiss them as visions, which Vulcans, having limited telepathic abilities, were sometimes subject to, but that illogical effort had always failed. The most he could logically say was that they might conceivably be memories of visions, but of visions he could not consciously remember having had in the first place.
In the end, his only salvation had been to tell himself, as he did now, that the false memories were simply products of his subconscious and that therefore they were nothing more than a rare and peculiar form of dreaming, a series of wish fulfillment fantasies produced by his subconscious. What else could they be but fantasies, he had asked himself a thousand times? They had simply seeped up from his subconscious through the imperfectly formed barriers all Vulcans erect early in life to keep their emotions from breaking free of the prison of their inner, secret selves and into the real world of their logical, conscious minds.
He could not allow them to be anything else, just as he could not allow the momentary lapse of memory he had just suffered to be anything more than that: a lapse, a brief misfire of a cl.u.s.ter of otherwise healthy neurons.
It was his only choice if he wished to retain his sanity, if he wished to retain his ability to make logical decisions and act upon them.
And now-now, with the possibility of a Carda.s.sian attempt to unseat him growing daily-he needed that ability more than ever.
Without it, without all the logic and decisiveness he could muster, the Alliance could well be doomed. Without it- ”Arbiter Sarek?” Commander Varkan's uneasy voice penetrated his whirling thoughts. ”What is it you wish?”
Sarek came to himself with a start as he realized how long he had been standing silently before the viewscreen.
And remembered why he had contacted Varkan. He had decided to cut this ludicrous ”mission” short.
”Prepare to return to Alliance Prime,” he said. ”I will join you on the bridge in a moment.”
Signing off, Sarek broke the connection and thumbed open the door to the corridor. He had wasted more than enough time on this fool's errand, he thought grimly as he strode toward the bridge, the memory of his recent lapse slipping more deeply into his subconscious with every step.
Eleven.
PICARD, HAVING decided a private conversation with Guinan was essential, had just exited the turbolift a few dozen meters from her quarters when Riker's voice came through his combadge.
”Captain, to the bridge.”
Wondering briefly if he should summon Guinan to the bridge for whatever was happening, he spun about and stepped back through the still-open doors of the turbolift.
”On my way, Number One. What is it?”
”Andor has just come within sensor range, Captain.”
”And- ?” Picard prompted impatiently as the turbolift shot upward.
”And you'd better have a look, sir,” Riker said, his grim tone changing Picard's annoyed impatience to stomach-twisting apprehension.
The door opened on the bridge, and he strode through.
And stopped abruptly as his eyes went from Riker, rising from the captain's chair, to the viewscreen.
The image filling the screen was fuzzy, indicating the object-the planet Andor, the first Federation planet that lay along their path from Arhennius to Earth-was barely within sensor range.
But the image was clear enough-and growing clearer by the second as the Enterprise drew closer at nearly warp eight.
Borg cubes, dozens of them, hovered around the planet like a malignant cloud.
His heart pounding, Picard could not keep from shuddering visibly. To him the Borg were not only the impersonal evil they were to most who encountered them, even to Guinan, who had been pa.r.s.ecs distant from her homeworld when the Borg, having apparently found it una.s.similable, destroyed it overnight. To Picard, they were a very personal evil as well, a horror that had lived on in his nightmares since those terrible days when he had been a Borg. Again and again he had relived those times, cringing inwardly as his will was relentlessly beaten down by the networks of implants and by the neverending pressure of the legions of slave minds in the collective, which itself had been anathema to the tiny fragment of humanity that he had somehow managed to hold onto throughout the entire ordeal. There were still nights when he awoke to find himself screaming silently as he struggled to pull free, like a man submerged in carrion-infested quicksand that was not drowning him but was leaching its way into his body, literally absorbing him bit by bit while he remained fully conscious, aware of each and every sickening moment.
Pulling in a deep breath, he forced himself to at least appear calm.
”How many, Number One?”
”Sixty-seven so far. There may be more hidden in the shadow of the planet.”
”And the status of the planet, Mr. Data?” he asked, his voice as flat as his body was tense.
”The conversion of the planetary ecosystem is not yet complete, Captain. There is still five percent free oxygen, but increasing levels of methane, fluorine, and carbon monoxide have already rendered the atmosphere unbreathable for anything but a Borg.”
”How long...” Picard began but, uncharacteristically, let his voice trail off.
”We have never before observed the Borg's planetary transformation process in action,” Data said, ”so there is no reliable method of estimating the time remaining before the transformation is complete.”
”Nor how long it's been going on already,” Riker said, his face a stony mask as he watched the image. He swallowed. ”How many Andorians are there?”
”None,” Data said, studying the sensor displays. ”There are, however, approximately two billion Borg. Sensors indicate most were, before their a.s.similation, Andorians.”
Alone in her dimly lit quarters, Guinan listened to Picard's brief announcement concerning the fate of the Andorians. She knew it was time-past time for her to tell him the whole truth. Every moment she waited, the chances grew greater that he would learn it elsewhere. If that happened, the trust they had shared for even longer than he remembered would be, if not broken, severely damaged. It had already been damaged, but not, she hoped, beyond repair.
And yet even now, knowing she had no choice, she could not entirely free herself from the paralysis induced by the oil-and-water combination of emotions that had been eating at her like acid from the moment the Enterprise had emerged from its jolting pa.s.sage through time.
For it was in that moment she had felt history rearranging itself around her, felt its countless elastic threads s.h.i.+ft and intertwine and stretch almost to the breaking point as they were woven into new and radically different patterns.