Star Trek: Dance of Chameleon and Mirror
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From: Alara Rogers <ajer@delphi.com>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: Dance of Chameleon and Mirror (repost) (with APOSTROPHES!)
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 94 20:06:57 -0500
Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
Lines: 620
Message-ID: <5iyx+Q5.ajer@delphi.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1b.delphi.com
I posted this a few days ago, and in a fit of vanity read it when
it finally came up on the net. Imagine my horror when I discovered
it had no apostrophes! So much for Microsoft Word's SmartQuotes;
they don't translate into ASCII. I've fixed the problem and reposted
the story. Enjoy!
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I've been working off and on (mostly off) on the following vignette
for months. Recently I read the Generations script and realized it
contradicts the entire premise of this story, so I had to rush to
finish it before it became moot (it's not contradicted yet;
nothing's canon until we see it on our screens!) So here we are.
Despite the fact that they are using different names, the main
characters in this are TNG characters. One is even a semi-regular.
I promise.
Dance of Chameleon and Mirror
Mairi was in her office in the Library, trimming the profuse
bushes that grew around her seat, when she sensed his arrival.
She turned slowly. The entity had changed his form; gone
was the attractive male of her own species, replaced by an
implacable and improbable being of glowing ice in humanoid shape.
And it had been close to fifty years since she'd last sensed him.
But she knew who he was.
"You."
"Me," he replied, in a mocking cold voice.
Mairi set down the pruning laser. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" he repeated. "Why, what makes you think I
want anything? Perhaps I just came to visit. After all we meant
to each other, are you saying I can't visit?"
"I'm saying you should go. Now." Her hands came up in a
gesture she hadn't used in fifty years.
The entity shook his head. "You won't catch me with that
trick again, my dear."
"I know more than one trick, Ashke."
"As do I." He circled her slowly, the amused tone gone from
his voice. "I came to give you a warning, actually."
This was highly unlikely. Mairi shook her head. "I may be
younger than you. That doesn't mean I was born yesterday."
"Oh, but it's true." He stroked a palely glowing hand over
her bushes. Deep within the glow she could see darkness, and
stars. It was one of the more ostentatious of his forms. "Such
care you take with these. Such pride. Almost as if you had
personally created them."
"By the terms of the Questioners' treaty with my people, you
can't touch us. That includes our property," Mairi said coolly.
"Leave my plants alone."
"Would I stoop to destroying harmless plants? Your plants
are nothing to me." He turned back to her. "You changed your
name again."
"Mairi." It meant "decision-maker". "I grew out of the old
one."
"I liked the old one better. Do your people change their
names every fifty years?"
"Whenever we change roles," she said. "And I should have
given you a new one, too."
He shrugged. "I like Ashke."
"It doesn't fit you anymore. If it ever did."
When he had first come to her, fifty years ago, he had
identified himself as a Questioner-- a poor translation of an
untranslatable concept that defined his species' name, as well as
the name their individuals used in dealing with mortals. Mairi
had thought it was rather impersonal to call an individual by his
species' name, so she had named him Ashke-- a trickster god from
one of the many mythologies her people had had. At the time, it
had seemed appropriate. Ashke was a harmless trickster whose
games were generally aimed at gaining or imparting knowledge, and
so Ashke of the Questioners had first appeared. By the time she
understood how malicious, how thoughtless and arrogant, he could
be, he had grown used to the name. "You should have been Diir,"
she said now, using a word for a force of implacable chaos.
"Such trivialities," he said. "We're here discussing names,
when the future of your entire species is at stake."
Her eyes narrowed. "You aren't permitted to touch my
people."
"Did I say I would touch them? I don't intend to harm a
single cell on their miserable mortal bodies. But I'm not the
only danger in the universe, Mairi."
"No. You're not." She picked up the pruning laser and bent
over her bushes again.
"Listen to me!" He caught her hand. His touch burned--
Mairi yanked her hand away.
"Don't touch me."
"As you wish. But listen to me."
"Why?"
"Because your pathetic species is about to be destroyed.
And by sparing me a few minutes out of your undoubtedly pressing
schedule, perhaps you can avoid it. I'm sure those plants will
live if you stop pruning them for half an hour."
She turned to face him. "If you want to talk to me, take a
form I can look at without hurting my eyes."
Ashke vanished in a brilliant splash of light, reforming in
the image of her father. His sardonic smile would never have
been seen on her father's face, though. "Is this better?"
"Not if you want me to listen to you."
With an ostentatious sigh, he transformed again, taking the
handsome male form he had worn when first she knew him. "Enough
games, Mairi," he said. "I have a purpose here. And if I get
bored, and leave before I've achieved my purpose, it won't be me
that suffers."
She faced him, arms folded. "I'm listening."
"Are you?" Now that he had her agreement, he seemed in no
hurry to get to the point. "I wonder. For someone who makes a
living at that, you do it so poorly. Or is it merely me that you
cannot listen to?"
"It's hard to listen when nobody's talking."
"Oh, is that what happened?" He stared at her a moment, the
intensity of his gaze frightening. Mairi merely gazed back
evenly, until he looked away. "Well. It's of no consequence
now, I suppose." He began to pace. "This is the warning, and I
grant it only once, so listen closely. Within a century, a
disaster will occur. Your civilization will topple and your race
will be destroyed."
Mairi frowned. "That's helpful," she said, meaning that it
wasn't. "What kind of disaster?"
He spun suddenly to face her, a huge malicious grin
splitting his face. "Sorry! The Questioners' treaty with your
people forbids me to interfere. I can't tell you anything else,"
he caroled.
Mairi's face tightened. "Then why did you tell me what you
did?"
"Because it's no more than you could determine for yourself,
if you chose to look," Ashke said coldly. His eyes narrowed.
"You think this is a game, don't you? That I'm making this up to
torment you? Check it for yourself."
"Is this another elaborate attempt to get me to use my
powers?" She stepped closer to him, staring into his face.
"You're still fascinated with my people and our abilities, aren't
you?"
Ashke shrugged elaborately. "In the sense that a hideous
accident is fascinating, perhaps," he said. "And no, this is not
an elaborate attempt to see you use your powers. I saw them
quite well enough last time."
"Yes. You did." She put as much quiet menace into the
words as possible.
His eyes narrowed again at the implied threat, but he didn't
speak of it. "Check it or don't, Mairi. I really don't care.
Should you choose to examine for yourself, I will wait right
here." In a flash of light, he was sitting in a previously
nonexistent rocking chair, over by a table full of books.
"Why wait? If you can't tell me anything more, and you
don't care if I believe you or not..."
"Oh, but I do care." He smiled oh-so-slightly. "I want to
see the expression on your face when you realize I'm right. And
I haven't yet made my offer."
Whatever his offer, she didn't want to hear it. Gifts from
Ashke were always suspect. But it was unlike him to lie in an
obvious fashion, and she could in fact check it. She supposed,
on the chance that he was telling the truth, that she had to.
Some of the Adepts of her people used tools for this, foci.
Crystal balls. Glowing candles. Drugs to aid in meditative
trancing.
Mairi used none of those things. She was one of the most
powerful Adepts of her time, and all she needed was a quiet mind
and few distractions to be able to see inside. In an adjoining
room, she sat at a plain wooden table, studying the grain, trying
to shut out the intrusive sense of Ashke's presence in the
Library garden. The grain formed loops and lines, like the lines
under the fabric of reality, like the lines of each life
stretching forward and backward and sideways through time. She
stared at the lines until they took on a life of their own, until
she knew she was looking at the lines of those closest to her and
not the wood grain at all.
Backward, backward, toward the roots where all her people's
lines emanated from. She saw her race as a branching tree, lines
growing in profusion from the thick trunklike source that was the
combined line of all her race. That line she scanned forward,
into what those who were not Adepts would call the future. Thick
branches, green leaves, the implacable force of growth-- and then
a break, a charred stop, as if lightning had hit the tree of
life. She stared in horror, scanning the line forward. The
trunk of her race tapered to a slender thread, the lines
emanating from it pruned down to a mere few thousand out of
billions.
In theory she could have scanned sideways-- time, like
space, was multi-dimensional, and the lines she saw were not the
only ones possible. In theory she could have checked to see if
there were any temporal dimensions where the lines of her people
continued on, and perhaps she could even have spun the tree,
wrenched things over so that it was *her* people, her existence,
that would continue. But the latter was an abuse of power
anathema to her, and the former required a quiet mind... so the
horror of seeing the end of her people took the sight away. She
could not regain the equilibrium she needed to see again.
For several seconds she sat, staring at the woodgrain in
horror. Ashke had not lied. Her people were going to die,
billions of them cut down by the lightning bolt of sudden
genocide. She took several deep breaths, trying to center
herself again, and failing. She had thought she'd seen horrors,
in close to eight hundred years of life. She had seen nothing at
all.
Mairi stood up and went back into the Library garden. Ashke
turned to look at her. A satisfied smirk spread across his face,
and she wanted to hit him, to physically wipe the smirk away.
She wondered what he'd do if she spun his line now, if she locked
him out of the universe as she'd once threatened.
"What is going to happen?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "Can't tell you. That would be interference.
By the rules of *your* treaty."
Her eyes went very small, very focused. "Is that all you
came here for? To give me a useless warning?"
"Perhaps," he said casually. "Why, do you think you deserve
more than that?"
"You still think you have reason to hate me."
"Think? I wouldn't call it 'think', my dear. I'd put it in
the category of immutable physical law."
"All I did was hold up a mirror. It wasn't my fault you
didn't like what you saw."
"I don't think so." Ashke stood up, the rocking chair
vanishing behind him. "What color is a chameleon on a mirror,
Mairi?" He walked over to her. "I merely matched your
expectations."
"I didn't expect you to do what you did."
"Nor did I expect what *you* did."
"I know. You didn't think anyone could threaten you."
He stared at her. Softly he said, "I admit, I didn't
realize you could threaten me, but the fact that you could was
not what surprised me. It was the fact that you did."
"What else did you expect me to do, after what you did? I
had to protect my people."
"Yes, yes, your people, your people, your marvelous people.
I'm truly sorry you were too stupid to understand what I was
trying to say, and that you were too primitive to do other than
resort to treachery to deal with it--"
"Treachery?" She frowned at him. "What are you talking
about?"
"If you don't know, then there's no point in my telling
you."
Mairi shook her head. Treachery was not the term she would
have used. Treachery implied that he had trusted her, that he
had considered her a friend. That was not the way she remembered
things. If he *had* considered her a friend, he had a downright
psychotic way of showing it. But then, considering what she knew
him to have done to friends, perhaps that wasn't so unbelievable
after all. "We're talking at cross purposes, Ashke. What are
you still here for?"
"Why, I've come to offer you aid. To show you that I can
let bygones be bygones." His tone hardened. "Or at least, to
prevent your people from suffering the consequences of your
actions."
"My actions will bring the disaster?"
"Your actions prevent me-- or anyone else-- from moving to
help you." He moved away from her and began to pace again. "As
lower species go, yours is an intriguing one. Arrogant, self-
centered, immature and know-it-all--"
"Are you sure you're not speaking of your own kind?"
He ignored the interruption. "--but interesting, for all
that. I'd *rather* not see it destroyed. But I can only take
action if specifically invited to by one of your species-- one
who understands the consequences, and is willing to pay the
required price. You, in fact."
"So you want something from me. What's the price?"
Abruptly he was standing in front of her, leaning down into
her face. "*You* are the price, my dear Mairi."
"Me. In what sense, me?" She looked up at him, firmly
standing her ground.
"Grant me permission to save your people and release
yourself from the terms of the treaty. Give yourself over to me,
and I'll save them."
His body language could almost have spoken of sexual desire,
but she was fairly sure that wasn't what he wanted her for.
"Give myself over to you for what?"
"For whatever I want to do to you," he said coldly. "You
betrayed me, Mairi. My price... is that you pay me back for
that."
Now Mairi stepped backward, twisting her head from him in
disgust. She knew what Ashke's idea of vengeance entailed. She
had helped one of his own kind, one who had been his best friend,
recover from suicidal despair because Ashke had "paid her back"
for the crime of loving a mortal man more than she'd loved him.
"You are a twisted, spoiled brat," she said. "You imagine that
trivial injuries are terrible ones and demand a far
disproportionate vengeance, like a child who wants his mommy dead
because she won't give him a toy. You think for a minute I'll
hand myself over to you?"
He looked taken aback. "On what basis do you say that?"
"On the basis of Azi Martikale." She saw his face change.
"I met her, Ashke. The one you mentioned had betrayed you. I
found out what her so-called 'crime' was, and what you did to her
in revenge. You didn't tell me that part of the story, did you?"
"I told you almost none of the story, and it was a mistake
to tell you as much as I did. I was advised that you could
help... obviously a cruel practical joke on my advisor's part."
"*I* could help *you?* You already had your revenge. You
destroyed an innocent person's life because your best friend had
the temerity to decide she wanted a part to her life that didn't
include you."
His face was white, with rage, she thought. "Is that what
Azi told you? Is that what you believe?"
"She was in too shattered a condition to lie. Who am I
supposed to believe, you?"
"Obviously you've made up your narrow little mind without
knowing all the facts. Which is typical of you, and I should
hardly expect any differently."
"So what's the other part of the story, then? What's your
personal justification for what you did?"
Ashke turned away from her. "None of your business," he
said softly. "You believe whatever you like, Mairi. The point
is. Whether or not I am a 'twisted, spoiled brat', I have the
power to save your people. You don't. So, shall you nobly
sacrifice yourself to me to rescue them? Or shall you refuse me,
because the idea that I should desire revenge on you offends you
morally-- or simply because you don't want to get hurt-- and doom
them all?"
"If we have to rely on you for help, we're already doomed,"
Mairi said quietly.
She knew what he wanted. She knew Ashke too well. In his
script, she would accept-- because she'd have to; he knew
perfectly well that if it came down to a choice between her own
life or her entire race's, she would sacrifice herself. And he
would keep her alive, in some kind of subtle torment, while he
rescued her people. And then he would show her what he had done.
And she would see that in the process of saving their lives, he
had destroyed all that was good and valuable about them, and she
would know that the blame was hers for giving him permission.
And then he would release her, to spend the rest of her long
life blaming herself.
"No, Ashke. I see through you. If we're fated to die, then
whatever you do to save us will end up destroying us somehow.
And if there's some way we can survive, accepting help from you
instead of working through it ourselves will damage us." She
shook her head. "It's wrong to go around manipulating the cosmos
the way you do. It's wrong for you to impose your will on
reality like you do. And if we participate in that wrongness, we
become no better than you-- and that opens the door for us to
abuse the power *we* have. Better we all die than that."
"I see." He studied her, expressionless. "Then so be it.
I leave you to your fate."
In a blinding flash of light, he vanished.
For several seconds, Mairi stared into the space where he
had been. Finally she turned and left the garden, left the
Library entirely, and headed for the sprawling, interconnected
complex of houses which was her family's home.
Mairi's people liked to live with their families, given a
chance. They were also immensely long-lived. The complex
included over ten main houses, with additions and wings and
refurbished attics piled on as homes for returning adult
children, interconnected underground by a maze of tunnels and
additional living quarters. For this marriage, Mairi had asked
that her husband come to live at her family home-- she had lived
in the two previous husbands', but she felt she'd done enough
traveling for now.
Her current husband, a biologist, was working. She peered
in on him as he used various instruments to study a tissue
sample, occasionally turning to dangle a toy in front of their
infant daughter's face. The baby, happy in her basket by her
father, laughed delightedly.
Both of them would probably die, Mairi thought, and the pain
of it wrenched at her heart. *Little one, have I failed you? To
bring a child into the world is to make a pact with her that the
world will not end, that she will live to grow up. If I'm seeing
the lines right, you'll still be a baby when the end comes...*
But she hadn't failed yet. Mairi turned away before either
of them could see her and headed to the center of the house,
where her father lived.
Father was an ancient Listener/Adept, ancient and wise. All
her life Mairi had tried to be like him. In terms of Adeptitude
she had surpassed him centuries ago-- it was why she had been
chosen to watch Ashke when he'd first come to their world, that
she was one of the most powerful Adepts currently alive. But
power was nothing without wisdom. As old as she herself was, as
wise in the ways of guiding others, Mairi needed her father's
reassurance that she had done the right thing.
The old man looked up as she entered. His dark brown skin
had started to become leathery with great age, and his hair had
turned brittle and white, but his eyes were still bright and
sharp. "Antay," he greeted her with her childhood name. "It's
been a while since you've come down to see your old father."
"Too long, Tada." She kissed him on the cheek, then sat
down in a plush formchair in front of him. "I just had a visit
from Ashke."
"Didn't he do enough damage the last time?"
"Apparently he didn't think so. He came to give me a
warning, Tada. He said our people would be wiped out within a
century." She grew somber. "I checked, and it's true."
Her father drew inward, thinking. "So."
Quickly, leaving nothing out, Mairi explained to him the
full details of the encounter, of Ashke's offer and her refusal.
She did not ask her father to validate her decision. If he
thought it worth validating, he would tell her so.
"Well." Her father considered for several minutes. "You've
become a spokesperson for our people since the whole thing with
Ashke first began, Mairi. I thought it was good for you. About
time someone recognized your abilities. And I think you're good
at it. But you're not happy making decisions that affect the
lives of others, are you?"
She wasn't sure what this had to do with their predicament,
but she knew very well that Listeners rarely came straight to the
point. "Not really. But it wouldn't have mattered in this case-
- whether I was Decision-Maker or not, it still would've been me
Ashke came to."
Her father nodded. "That's true... it was written from the
basis of your last encounter." He gazed at her evenly. "Do you
ever think perhaps you handled that one badly?"
She considered. "Occasionally," she admitted. "Angering
Ashke probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done-- but
what was I supposed to do, give in to him? You remember what he
demanded, what he was like..."
"I remember," her father said, nodding. "He was arrogant,
obnoxious, self-centered, demanding... all the signs of a spoiled
child. Or else the signs of a child in pain. He never did tell
you why he came, did he?"
"He dropped some hints, but when I tried to draw him out he
wouldn't come. I thought I'd wait for him to come to me... and
then things went sour long before that happened." She took a
deep breath. "You're right, I know. Ashke's a kid. I shouldn't
have let him get to me... but he's a kid with a lot of power, and
a lot of knowledge, and a lot of experience in hurting people.
Were we all supposed to obey the demands of a spoiled child just
because he has power?"
"Is threatening him the way to educate and guide a spoiled
child?"
"I just don't see what else I could have done. I tried,
Tada. I was reasonable with him for years, but he just got worse
and worse... And you didn't meet the one whose life he destroyed.
Ashke's capable of tremendous evil. I didn't know just what he
was capable of at the time. I know now. And if I hadn't
escalated it to the point where his hands were bound by the
treaty... who knows what might have happened?"
Her father nodded again. "If you believe that, then you can
feel confident that you did all you can do. I believe you
handled this situation well, given the lines behind it; if you
directed those lines in the only way possible, then no blame can
attach to you for anything."
"But did I direct them the only way possible?"
"You must answer that, Mairi. As you've answered it to me,
and to others, you must answer it to your own heart."
She nodded. She'd known that, but every so often even a
Listener needed to hear it again.
"As for the other... we're not defeated yet, Mairi. We can
tell the Council, and we'll research the possibility of a natural
disaster."
"Right. And I can go offworld and keep my ears open. If
there's a powerful conquering race coming this way, there'll be
refugees, advance travelers, and a lot of rumors."
"Yes." He smiled at her. "We'll find a way to survive,
Antay. Even if it means we leave our world behind, our people
will survive."
Three weeks later she was in space.
Most of her children had agreed to help, traveling offworld
in various directions to try to find evidence of a hostile power
moving their way. Only her baby Raina had been left behind,
staying in the care of her father. Mairi wondered if she would
ever see the child again, and if she did, would Raina still be a
child? Her people were long-lived; childhood lasted fifty years.
But she could easily be away fifty years.
Over the next ten years Mairi traveled, tending bar in one
place, teaching language in another, working as a volunteer
counselor in a third-- low-paying, low-status professions where
she could keep her head down and hear all the rumors. She heard
about the expansion of the people from Earth, whom she knew she
was destined to meet again someday, and their growing Federation
of peace. She heard about the arrested development of the
Klingon Empire, as internal troubles and a godlike race kept them
from warring on the Federation. She heard about the
adventuresome people of Willic, moving out from their tiny world
into the grand galaxy, and about the growing economic power of
the Ferengi Alliance. She heard nothing at all about a new
conqueror race.
Until finally she sensed it, from a thousand light-years
away. She was working as a journalist at the time, and was in
the middle of an interview. Hastily she ended the interview and
booked passage on a charter ship, making her way back across the
stars she'd passed. It was close to a year of fits and starts
before she reached her home.
Nothing remained.
From orbit, she stared in horror at the viewscreen, that
showed her huge gouged-out tracts, craters where the cities of
her people had been. She scanned the planet for sentient life
and found none. There were huge carbon deposits, showing areas
where millions of bodies had been vaporized, and there were
skeletons exposed to the air, picked clean. There were birds
still, and plants, and trees. But no sentient life, none of her
people alive.
She dove inside herself to study the lines, and saw that
some had escaped. Some lived. Even some of her own children.
But the line of her smallest child was too small to see, and her
last husband was dead, along with her father, along with her
family, her species... On a plain of her world, deeply buried,
someone had left a message crystal. Mairi went there.
The message crystal had recorded the last moments of its
owner. Standing on the gouged-out ground, holding it in her
hand, Mairi saw black-clad cyborgs, soulless and empty, pour
across the land, killing and consuming all that stood in their
path. Entire cities were gouged out and carried to their giant
cubical ships, sinister, unnatural black moons in low enough
orbits to be seen in the sky. Thousands of people were
transformed, their souls cored out and replaced with hard
machinery, but their memories intact and used against those they
loved. The maker of the crystal had been an Adept. When the
soulless ones, the Borg, came for him, he had suicided rather
than allowing the possibility that the Borg could use an Adept's
powers once they'd taken his soul.
Despair, horror, shock overwhelmed Mairi as the message
ended with its maker's death. She sat down heavily on the empty
ground and began to weep hopelessly for her lost people.
Then she sensed him. And she stood, and wiped the tears
away, and brought her hands up in a gesture of power. "Show
yourself!" she snarled.
Ashke appeared, no different than she'd seen him ten years
ago, in a brilliant flash of light. "Happy now?" he whispered.
"Bring them back," she said. She knew it was wrong, knew
what she was asking was an obscenity, against all the laws of her
people, and she didn't care. What had consumed them was also an
obscenity. "Bring them back, Ashke. I accept your offer."
"It's a little late for that."
She shook her head wildly. "Time means nothing to you. I
know that. You can stop it from happening now as easily as you
could have before. Bring them back!"
"Oh, Mairi." He chuckled. "What would your people say if
they could hear you now? How the mighty have fallen."
"You want me to beg?" She fell to her knees in the dirt,
looking up at him with burning eyes. "You want me to grovel? To
crawl? I'll do anything. This shouldn't have happened, it
couldn't have happened, it's too horrible, I'll do anything,
Ashke, anything. *Please!* Please, if there's any decency in
you..."
"But I made the offer. And you refused me." He smiled
coldly. "My own people's laws forbid me to interfere now."
"You *have* to!"
"I don't *have* to do anything." H knelt down in front of
her and took her chin in his hands, cruelly gentle. "You killed
them, Mairi," he said softly. "You had the opportunity to save
them all, and you refused it out of pride. You'll never know,
now, what I would have demanded of you. Perhaps it wouldn't have
been so bad. Perhaps I wouldn't have hurt you badly at all,
certainly no worse than what this has done to you. But you'll
never know." He stood. "Did you know, I saw your daughter in
the garden, as the Borg raped the Library. Her father was
already dead, gutshot by a disruptor blast. She was so small, so
fragile and terrified. And such power in one untrained-- you
know, she saw me? I wasn't even manifested, but she sensed me
there. She pleaded with me to save her, but..." he shrugged. "I
had to tell her that her mother had forced me to agree not to
interfere with her people. If there had been an adult there,
someone capable of giving informed consent to release me from the
treaty, well... but there wasn't. She was too young to give
consent. Nothing I could do." He shrugged sadly. "And then the
Borg broke in..."
"*Stop it!*" she screamed at him, her mind filling with
horror at his tale. Raina wouldn't have understood why the
treaty was made or what it was intended to bind. She would have
known only fear and need and a man telling her that he couldn't
save her because her mother had forbidden it, her mother who had
abandoned her to die... She grabbed him around the waist,
tugging at his clothing. "What do you want? You want to torture
me? To kill me? I give you permission, anything you want, if
you'll save them..."
And he smiled, and flowed out of her embrace as if he were a
mirage. "No, my dear. I think I have what I want."
And he was gone.
For seconds Mairi stared after him, the brilliant flash of
his departure imprinted on her retinas, turning the gray world
red. And then she folded over onto the ground and wept
hysterically, as tides of darkness crashed over her mind and she
longed to die.
After some time she was spent, the tears gone, the darkness
receded. The world was gray and cold now, no warmth or color
inside it. She was wise enough to know that that would change
someday if she lived, that the color would return and she would
find joy in life again. But for now, she needed a cold reason to
survive.
She understood now what Ashke's goal had always been. He
had known she would refuse his offer-- he had not given her
enough information to do otherwise. If she'd known what would
happen... If she had known her people were facing, not merely
death, but consumption by a soulless overmind... perhaps she
would have made a different choice. Or perhaps she would not
have, but she would have known what the choices were. Ashke had
made the offer because she would refuse it, and because her
refusal would torment her once the disaster occurred. It had
been an exquisitely planned revenge. It deserved an exquisitely
planned response.
With incredible focus, she sought out Ashke's line. It was
impossible to miss, once she sought for it, a thick steely line,
impervious to the sideways splitting of mortal lines, impervious
to the possibility of death. It extended backwards farther than
she could see, into the dim reaches of prehistory. When she
scanned it forward, however, she found a tiny hairline weakness,
within the possible range of her lifespan.
Slowly, carefully now, she worked on that weakness, rotating
his line through the realms of possibility. He would notice, if
she tried to lock him out of the universe again. He would notice
if she did anything overt, anything sudden. But while he *could*
see the future, his powers were only active, only direct-- he
could see nothing if he did not actively look for it. And he had
no reason to believe his future would hold anything the past did
not.
His line thinned at the weak point and shattered, splitting
off into the thousand possibilities of mortality, and she smiled.
There were places where it recovered, where he survived what she
had just done. There were places where it did not. All she had
done was alter the probabilities of an event in his future, so
what had been unlikely now became almost certain.
Almost as an afterthought, she moved her line to intersect
his there. They would meet again, during the period of Ashke's
greatest vulnerability, and she would see then what fate moved
her to do. Perhaps she would have an opportunity to pay him
back. Or perhaps by that time she would feel no desire for
revenge, and regret what she had done to him. This was, after
all, not the act of a wise and responsible creature. Someday
maybe she would regret.
Right now she didn't care.
Her name would have to change, she thought. She would not
again make a decision for another than herself. The name she'd
used in young womanhood struck her, the name that simply meant
"listener", and she nodded. As she had been once, so she would
be again.
She stood up and touched the automatic transporter device on
her waist. A moment later there was a shimmer in the air of her
world, and then the last sentient life was gone from the world
forever.
From: Alara Rogers <ajer@delphi.com>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: Dance of Chameleon and Mirror (repost) (with APOSTROPHES!)
Date: Fri, 2 Sep 94 20:06:57 -0500
Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
Lines: 620
Message-ID: <5iyx+Q5.ajer@delphi.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bos1b.delphi.com
I posted this a few days ago, and in a fit of vanity read it when
it finally came up on the net. Imagine my horror when I discovered
it had no apostrophes! So much for Microsoft Word's SmartQuotes;
they don't translate into ASCII. I've fixed the problem and reposted
the story. Enjoy!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been working off and on (mostly off) on the following vignette
for months. Recently I read the Generations script and realized it
contradicts the entire premise of this story, so I had to rush to
finish it before it became moot (it's not contradicted yet;
nothing's canon until we see it on our screens!) So here we are.
Despite the fact that they are using different names, the main
characters in this are TNG characters. One is even a semi-regular.
I promise.
Dance of Chameleon and Mirror
Mairi was in her office in the Library, trimming the profuse
bushes that grew around her seat, when she sensed his arrival.
She turned slowly. The entity had changed his form; gone
was the attractive male of her own species, replaced by an
implacable and improbable being of glowing ice in humanoid shape.
And it had been close to fifty years since she'd last sensed him.
But she knew who he was.
"You."
"Me," he replied, in a mocking cold voice.
Mairi set down the pruning laser. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" he repeated. "Why, what makes you think I
want anything? Perhaps I just came to visit. After all we meant
to each other, are you saying I can't visit?"
"I'm saying you should go. Now." Her hands came up in a
gesture she hadn't used in fifty years.
The entity shook his head. "You won't catch me with that
trick again, my dear."
"I know more than one trick, Ashke."
"As do I." He circled her slowly, the amused tone gone from
his voice. "I came to give you a warning, actually."
This was highly unlikely. Mairi shook her head. "I may be
younger than you. That doesn't mean I was born yesterday."
"Oh, but it's true." He stroked a palely glowing hand over
her bushes. Deep within the glow she could see darkness, and
stars. It was one of the more ostentatious of his forms. "Such
care you take with these. Such pride. Almost as if you had
personally created them."
"By the terms of the Questioners' treaty with my people, you
can't touch us. That includes our property," Mairi said coolly.
"Leave my plants alone."
"Would I stoop to destroying harmless plants? Your plants
are nothing to me." He turned back to her. "You changed your
name again."
"Mairi." It meant "decision-maker". "I grew out of the old
one."
"I liked the old one better. Do your people change their
names every fifty years?"
"Whenever we change roles," she said. "And I should have
given you a new one, too."
He shrugged. "I like Ashke."
"It doesn't fit you anymore. If it ever did."
When he had first come to her, fifty years ago, he had
identified himself as a Questioner-- a poor translation of an
untranslatable concept that defined his species' name, as well as
the name their individuals used in dealing with mortals. Mairi
had thought it was rather impersonal to call an individual by his
species' name, so she had named him Ashke-- a trickster god from
one of the many mythologies her people had had. At the time, it
had seemed appropriate. Ashke was a harmless trickster whose
games were generally aimed at gaining or imparting knowledge, and
so Ashke of the Questioners had first appeared. By the time she
understood how malicious, how thoughtless and arrogant, he could
be, he had grown used to the name. "You should have been Diir,"
she said now, using a word for a force of implacable chaos.
"Such trivialities," he said. "We're here discussing names,
when the future of your entire species is at stake."
Her eyes narrowed. "You aren't permitted to touch my
people."
"Did I say I would touch them? I don't intend to harm a
single cell on their miserable mortal bodies. But I'm not the
only danger in the universe, Mairi."
"No. You're not." She picked up the pruning laser and bent
over her bushes again.
"Listen to me!" He caught her hand. His touch burned--
Mairi yanked her hand away.
"Don't touch me."
"As you wish. But listen to me."
"Why?"
"Because your pathetic species is about to be destroyed.
And by sparing me a few minutes out of your undoubtedly pressing
schedule, perhaps you can avoid it. I'm sure those plants will
live if you stop pruning them for half an hour."
She turned to face him. "If you want to talk to me, take a
form I can look at without hurting my eyes."
Ashke vanished in a brilliant splash of light, reforming in
the image of her father. His sardonic smile would never have
been seen on her father's face, though. "Is this better?"
"Not if you want me to listen to you."
With an ostentatious sigh, he transformed again, taking the
handsome male form he had worn when first she knew him. "Enough
games, Mairi," he said. "I have a purpose here. And if I get
bored, and leave before I've achieved my purpose, it won't be me
that suffers."
She faced him, arms folded. "I'm listening."
"Are you?" Now that he had her agreement, he seemed in no
hurry to get to the point. "I wonder. For someone who makes a
living at that, you do it so poorly. Or is it merely me that you
cannot listen to?"
"It's hard to listen when nobody's talking."
"Oh, is that what happened?" He stared at her a moment, the
intensity of his gaze frightening. Mairi merely gazed back
evenly, until he looked away. "Well. It's of no consequence
now, I suppose." He began to pace. "This is the warning, and I
grant it only once, so listen closely. Within a century, a
disaster will occur. Your civilization will topple and your race
will be destroyed."
Mairi frowned. "That's helpful," she said, meaning that it
wasn't. "What kind of disaster?"
He spun suddenly to face her, a huge malicious grin
splitting his face. "Sorry! The Questioners' treaty with your
people forbids me to interfere. I can't tell you anything else,"
he caroled.
Mairi's face tightened. "Then why did you tell me what you
did?"
"Because it's no more than you could determine for yourself,
if you chose to look," Ashke said coldly. His eyes narrowed.
"You think this is a game, don't you? That I'm making this up to
torment you? Check it for yourself."
"Is this another elaborate attempt to get me to use my
powers?" She stepped closer to him, staring into his face.
"You're still fascinated with my people and our abilities, aren't
you?"
Ashke shrugged elaborately. "In the sense that a hideous
accident is fascinating, perhaps," he said. "And no, this is not
an elaborate attempt to see you use your powers. I saw them
quite well enough last time."
"Yes. You did." She put as much quiet menace into the
words as possible.
His eyes narrowed again at the implied threat, but he didn't
speak of it. "Check it or don't, Mairi. I really don't care.
Should you choose to examine for yourself, I will wait right
here." In a flash of light, he was sitting in a previously
nonexistent rocking chair, over by a table full of books.
"Why wait? If you can't tell me anything more, and you
don't care if I believe you or not..."
"Oh, but I do care." He smiled oh-so-slightly. "I want to
see the expression on your face when you realize I'm right. And
I haven't yet made my offer."
Whatever his offer, she didn't want to hear it. Gifts from
Ashke were always suspect. But it was unlike him to lie in an
obvious fashion, and she could in fact check it. She supposed,
on the chance that he was telling the truth, that she had to.
Some of the Adepts of her people used tools for this, foci.
Crystal balls. Glowing candles. Drugs to aid in meditative
trancing.
Mairi used none of those things. She was one of the most
powerful Adepts of her time, and all she needed was a quiet mind
and few distractions to be able to see inside. In an adjoining
room, she sat at a plain wooden table, studying the grain, trying
to shut out the intrusive sense of Ashke's presence in the
Library garden. The grain formed loops and lines, like the lines
under the fabric of reality, like the lines of each life
stretching forward and backward and sideways through time. She
stared at the lines until they took on a life of their own, until
she knew she was looking at the lines of those closest to her and
not the wood grain at all.
Backward, backward, toward the roots where all her people's
lines emanated from. She saw her race as a branching tree, lines
growing in profusion from the thick trunklike source that was the
combined line of all her race. That line she scanned forward,
into what those who were not Adepts would call the future. Thick
branches, green leaves, the implacable force of growth-- and then
a break, a charred stop, as if lightning had hit the tree of
life. She stared in horror, scanning the line forward. The
trunk of her race tapered to a slender thread, the lines
emanating from it pruned down to a mere few thousand out of
billions.
In theory she could have scanned sideways-- time, like
space, was multi-dimensional, and the lines she saw were not the
only ones possible. In theory she could have checked to see if
there were any temporal dimensions where the lines of her people
continued on, and perhaps she could even have spun the tree,
wrenched things over so that it was *her* people, her existence,
that would continue. But the latter was an abuse of power
anathema to her, and the former required a quiet mind... so the
horror of seeing the end of her people took the sight away. She
could not regain the equilibrium she needed to see again.
For several seconds she sat, staring at the woodgrain in
horror. Ashke had not lied. Her people were going to die,
billions of them cut down by the lightning bolt of sudden
genocide. She took several deep breaths, trying to center
herself again, and failing. She had thought she'd seen horrors,
in close to eight hundred years of life. She had seen nothing at
all.
Mairi stood up and went back into the Library garden. Ashke
turned to look at her. A satisfied smirk spread across his face,
and she wanted to hit him, to physically wipe the smirk away.
She wondered what he'd do if she spun his line now, if she locked
him out of the universe as she'd once threatened.
"What is going to happen?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "Can't tell you. That would be interference.
By the rules of *your* treaty."
Her eyes went very small, very focused. "Is that all you
came here for? To give me a useless warning?"
"Perhaps," he said casually. "Why, do you think you deserve
more than that?"
"You still think you have reason to hate me."
"Think? I wouldn't call it 'think', my dear. I'd put it in
the category of immutable physical law."
"All I did was hold up a mirror. It wasn't my fault you
didn't like what you saw."
"I don't think so." Ashke stood up, the rocking chair
vanishing behind him. "What color is a chameleon on a mirror,
Mairi?" He walked over to her. "I merely matched your
expectations."
"I didn't expect you to do what you did."
"Nor did I expect what *you* did."
"I know. You didn't think anyone could threaten you."
He stared at her. Softly he said, "I admit, I didn't
realize you could threaten me, but the fact that you could was
not what surprised me. It was the fact that you did."
"What else did you expect me to do, after what you did? I
had to protect my people."
"Yes, yes, your people, your people, your marvelous people.
I'm truly sorry you were too stupid to understand what I was
trying to say, and that you were too primitive to do other than
resort to treachery to deal with it--"
"Treachery?" She frowned at him. "What are you talking
about?"
"If you don't know, then there's no point in my telling
you."
Mairi shook her head. Treachery was not the term she would
have used. Treachery implied that he had trusted her, that he
had considered her a friend. That was not the way she remembered
things. If he *had* considered her a friend, he had a downright
psychotic way of showing it. But then, considering what she knew
him to have done to friends, perhaps that wasn't so unbelievable
after all. "We're talking at cross purposes, Ashke. What are
you still here for?"
"Why, I've come to offer you aid. To show you that I can
let bygones be bygones." His tone hardened. "Or at least, to
prevent your people from suffering the consequences of your
actions."
"My actions will bring the disaster?"
"Your actions prevent me-- or anyone else-- from moving to
help you." He moved away from her and began to pace again. "As
lower species go, yours is an intriguing one. Arrogant, self-
centered, immature and know-it-all--"
"Are you sure you're not speaking of your own kind?"
He ignored the interruption. "--but interesting, for all
that. I'd *rather* not see it destroyed. But I can only take
action if specifically invited to by one of your species-- one
who understands the consequences, and is willing to pay the
required price. You, in fact."
"So you want something from me. What's the price?"
Abruptly he was standing in front of her, leaning down into
her face. "*You* are the price, my dear Mairi."
"Me. In what sense, me?" She looked up at him, firmly
standing her ground.
"Grant me permission to save your people and release
yourself from the terms of the treaty. Give yourself over to me,
and I'll save them."
His body language could almost have spoken of sexual desire,
but she was fairly sure that wasn't what he wanted her for.
"Give myself over to you for what?"
"For whatever I want to do to you," he said coldly. "You
betrayed me, Mairi. My price... is that you pay me back for
that."
Now Mairi stepped backward, twisting her head from him in
disgust. She knew what Ashke's idea of vengeance entailed. She
had helped one of his own kind, one who had been his best friend,
recover from suicidal despair because Ashke had "paid her back"
for the crime of loving a mortal man more than she'd loved him.
"You are a twisted, spoiled brat," she said. "You imagine that
trivial injuries are terrible ones and demand a far
disproportionate vengeance, like a child who wants his mommy dead
because she won't give him a toy. You think for a minute I'll
hand myself over to you?"
He looked taken aback. "On what basis do you say that?"
"On the basis of Azi Martikale." She saw his face change.
"I met her, Ashke. The one you mentioned had betrayed you. I
found out what her so-called 'crime' was, and what you did to her
in revenge. You didn't tell me that part of the story, did you?"
"I told you almost none of the story, and it was a mistake
to tell you as much as I did. I was advised that you could
help... obviously a cruel practical joke on my advisor's part."
"*I* could help *you?* You already had your revenge. You
destroyed an innocent person's life because your best friend had
the temerity to decide she wanted a part to her life that didn't
include you."
His face was white, with rage, she thought. "Is that what
Azi told you? Is that what you believe?"
"She was in too shattered a condition to lie. Who am I
supposed to believe, you?"
"Obviously you've made up your narrow little mind without
knowing all the facts. Which is typical of you, and I should
hardly expect any differently."
"So what's the other part of the story, then? What's your
personal justification for what you did?"
Ashke turned away from her. "None of your business," he
said softly. "You believe whatever you like, Mairi. The point
is. Whether or not I am a 'twisted, spoiled brat', I have the
power to save your people. You don't. So, shall you nobly
sacrifice yourself to me to rescue them? Or shall you refuse me,
because the idea that I should desire revenge on you offends you
morally-- or simply because you don't want to get hurt-- and doom
them all?"
"If we have to rely on you for help, we're already doomed,"
Mairi said quietly.
She knew what he wanted. She knew Ashke too well. In his
script, she would accept-- because she'd have to; he knew
perfectly well that if it came down to a choice between her own
life or her entire race's, she would sacrifice herself. And he
would keep her alive, in some kind of subtle torment, while he
rescued her people. And then he would show her what he had done.
And she would see that in the process of saving their lives, he
had destroyed all that was good and valuable about them, and she
would know that the blame was hers for giving him permission.
And then he would release her, to spend the rest of her long
life blaming herself.
"No, Ashke. I see through you. If we're fated to die, then
whatever you do to save us will end up destroying us somehow.
And if there's some way we can survive, accepting help from you
instead of working through it ourselves will damage us." She
shook her head. "It's wrong to go around manipulating the cosmos
the way you do. It's wrong for you to impose your will on
reality like you do. And if we participate in that wrongness, we
become no better than you-- and that opens the door for us to
abuse the power *we* have. Better we all die than that."
"I see." He studied her, expressionless. "Then so be it.
I leave you to your fate."
In a blinding flash of light, he vanished.
For several seconds, Mairi stared into the space where he
had been. Finally she turned and left the garden, left the
Library entirely, and headed for the sprawling, interconnected
complex of houses which was her family's home.
Mairi's people liked to live with their families, given a
chance. They were also immensely long-lived. The complex
included over ten main houses, with additions and wings and
refurbished attics piled on as homes for returning adult
children, interconnected underground by a maze of tunnels and
additional living quarters. For this marriage, Mairi had asked
that her husband come to live at her family home-- she had lived
in the two previous husbands', but she felt she'd done enough
traveling for now.
Her current husband, a biologist, was working. She peered
in on him as he used various instruments to study a tissue
sample, occasionally turning to dangle a toy in front of their
infant daughter's face. The baby, happy in her basket by her
father, laughed delightedly.
Both of them would probably die, Mairi thought, and the pain
of it wrenched at her heart. *Little one, have I failed you? To
bring a child into the world is to make a pact with her that the
world will not end, that she will live to grow up. If I'm seeing
the lines right, you'll still be a baby when the end comes...*
But she hadn't failed yet. Mairi turned away before either
of them could see her and headed to the center of the house,
where her father lived.
Father was an ancient Listener/Adept, ancient and wise. All
her life Mairi had tried to be like him. In terms of Adeptitude
she had surpassed him centuries ago-- it was why she had been
chosen to watch Ashke when he'd first come to their world, that
she was one of the most powerful Adepts currently alive. But
power was nothing without wisdom. As old as she herself was, as
wise in the ways of guiding others, Mairi needed her father's
reassurance that she had done the right thing.
The old man looked up as she entered. His dark brown skin
had started to become leathery with great age, and his hair had
turned brittle and white, but his eyes were still bright and
sharp. "Antay," he greeted her with her childhood name. "It's
been a while since you've come down to see your old father."
"Too long, Tada." She kissed him on the cheek, then sat
down in a plush formchair in front of him. "I just had a visit
from Ashke."
"Didn't he do enough damage the last time?"
"Apparently he didn't think so. He came to give me a
warning, Tada. He said our people would be wiped out within a
century." She grew somber. "I checked, and it's true."
Her father drew inward, thinking. "So."
Quickly, leaving nothing out, Mairi explained to him the
full details of the encounter, of Ashke's offer and her refusal.
She did not ask her father to validate her decision. If he
thought it worth validating, he would tell her so.
"Well." Her father considered for several minutes. "You've
become a spokesperson for our people since the whole thing with
Ashke first began, Mairi. I thought it was good for you. About
time someone recognized your abilities. And I think you're good
at it. But you're not happy making decisions that affect the
lives of others, are you?"
She wasn't sure what this had to do with their predicament,
but she knew very well that Listeners rarely came straight to the
point. "Not really. But it wouldn't have mattered in this case-
- whether I was Decision-Maker or not, it still would've been me
Ashke came to."
Her father nodded. "That's true... it was written from the
basis of your last encounter." He gazed at her evenly. "Do you
ever think perhaps you handled that one badly?"
She considered. "Occasionally," she admitted. "Angering
Ashke probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done-- but
what was I supposed to do, give in to him? You remember what he
demanded, what he was like..."
"I remember," her father said, nodding. "He was arrogant,
obnoxious, self-centered, demanding... all the signs of a spoiled
child. Or else the signs of a child in pain. He never did tell
you why he came, did he?"
"He dropped some hints, but when I tried to draw him out he
wouldn't come. I thought I'd wait for him to come to me... and
then things went sour long before that happened." She took a
deep breath. "You're right, I know. Ashke's a kid. I shouldn't
have let him get to me... but he's a kid with a lot of power, and
a lot of knowledge, and a lot of experience in hurting people.
Were we all supposed to obey the demands of a spoiled child just
because he has power?"
"Is threatening him the way to educate and guide a spoiled
child?"
"I just don't see what else I could have done. I tried,
Tada. I was reasonable with him for years, but he just got worse
and worse... And you didn't meet the one whose life he destroyed.
Ashke's capable of tremendous evil. I didn't know just what he
was capable of at the time. I know now. And if I hadn't
escalated it to the point where his hands were bound by the
treaty... who knows what might have happened?"
Her father nodded again. "If you believe that, then you can
feel confident that you did all you can do. I believe you
handled this situation well, given the lines behind it; if you
directed those lines in the only way possible, then no blame can
attach to you for anything."
"But did I direct them the only way possible?"
"You must answer that, Mairi. As you've answered it to me,
and to others, you must answer it to your own heart."
She nodded. She'd known that, but every so often even a
Listener needed to hear it again.
"As for the other... we're not defeated yet, Mairi. We can
tell the Council, and we'll research the possibility of a natural
disaster."
"Right. And I can go offworld and keep my ears open. If
there's a powerful conquering race coming this way, there'll be
refugees, advance travelers, and a lot of rumors."
"Yes." He smiled at her. "We'll find a way to survive,
Antay. Even if it means we leave our world behind, our people
will survive."
Three weeks later she was in space.
Most of her children had agreed to help, traveling offworld
in various directions to try to find evidence of a hostile power
moving their way. Only her baby Raina had been left behind,
staying in the care of her father. Mairi wondered if she would
ever see the child again, and if she did, would Raina still be a
child? Her people were long-lived; childhood lasted fifty years.
But she could easily be away fifty years.
Over the next ten years Mairi traveled, tending bar in one
place, teaching language in another, working as a volunteer
counselor in a third-- low-paying, low-status professions where
she could keep her head down and hear all the rumors. She heard
about the expansion of the people from Earth, whom she knew she
was destined to meet again someday, and their growing Federation
of peace. She heard about the arrested development of the
Klingon Empire, as internal troubles and a godlike race kept them
from warring on the Federation. She heard about the
adventuresome people of Willic, moving out from their tiny world
into the grand galaxy, and about the growing economic power of
the Ferengi Alliance. She heard nothing at all about a new
conqueror race.
Until finally she sensed it, from a thousand light-years
away. She was working as a journalist at the time, and was in
the middle of an interview. Hastily she ended the interview and
booked passage on a charter ship, making her way back across the
stars she'd passed. It was close to a year of fits and starts
before she reached her home.
Nothing remained.
From orbit, she stared in horror at the viewscreen, that
showed her huge gouged-out tracts, craters where the cities of
her people had been. She scanned the planet for sentient life
and found none. There were huge carbon deposits, showing areas
where millions of bodies had been vaporized, and there were
skeletons exposed to the air, picked clean. There were birds
still, and plants, and trees. But no sentient life, none of her
people alive.
She dove inside herself to study the lines, and saw that
some had escaped. Some lived. Even some of her own children.
But the line of her smallest child was too small to see, and her
last husband was dead, along with her father, along with her
family, her species... On a plain of her world, deeply buried,
someone had left a message crystal. Mairi went there.
The message crystal had recorded the last moments of its
owner. Standing on the gouged-out ground, holding it in her
hand, Mairi saw black-clad cyborgs, soulless and empty, pour
across the land, killing and consuming all that stood in their
path. Entire cities were gouged out and carried to their giant
cubical ships, sinister, unnatural black moons in low enough
orbits to be seen in the sky. Thousands of people were
transformed, their souls cored out and replaced with hard
machinery, but their memories intact and used against those they
loved. The maker of the crystal had been an Adept. When the
soulless ones, the Borg, came for him, he had suicided rather
than allowing the possibility that the Borg could use an Adept's
powers once they'd taken his soul.
Despair, horror, shock overwhelmed Mairi as the message
ended with its maker's death. She sat down heavily on the empty
ground and began to weep hopelessly for her lost people.
Then she sensed him. And she stood, and wiped the tears
away, and brought her hands up in a gesture of power. "Show
yourself!" she snarled.
Ashke appeared, no different than she'd seen him ten years
ago, in a brilliant flash of light. "Happy now?" he whispered.
"Bring them back," she said. She knew it was wrong, knew
what she was asking was an obscenity, against all the laws of her
people, and she didn't care. What had consumed them was also an
obscenity. "Bring them back, Ashke. I accept your offer."
"It's a little late for that."
She shook her head wildly. "Time means nothing to you. I
know that. You can stop it from happening now as easily as you
could have before. Bring them back!"
"Oh, Mairi." He chuckled. "What would your people say if
they could hear you now? How the mighty have fallen."
"You want me to beg?" She fell to her knees in the dirt,
looking up at him with burning eyes. "You want me to grovel? To
crawl? I'll do anything. This shouldn't have happened, it
couldn't have happened, it's too horrible, I'll do anything,
Ashke, anything. *Please!* Please, if there's any decency in
you..."
"But I made the offer. And you refused me." He smiled
coldly. "My own people's laws forbid me to interfere now."
"You *have* to!"
"I don't *have* to do anything." H knelt down in front of
her and took her chin in his hands, cruelly gentle. "You killed
them, Mairi," he said softly. "You had the opportunity to save
them all, and you refused it out of pride. You'll never know,
now, what I would have demanded of you. Perhaps it wouldn't have
been so bad. Perhaps I wouldn't have hurt you badly at all,
certainly no worse than what this has done to you. But you'll
never know." He stood. "Did you know, I saw your daughter in
the garden, as the Borg raped the Library. Her father was
already dead, gutshot by a disruptor blast. She was so small, so
fragile and terrified. And such power in one untrained-- you
know, she saw me? I wasn't even manifested, but she sensed me
there. She pleaded with me to save her, but..." he shrugged. "I
had to tell her that her mother had forced me to agree not to
interfere with her people. If there had been an adult there,
someone capable of giving informed consent to release me from the
treaty, well... but there wasn't. She was too young to give
consent. Nothing I could do." He shrugged sadly. "And then the
Borg broke in..."
"*Stop it!*" she screamed at him, her mind filling with
horror at his tale. Raina wouldn't have understood why the
treaty was made or what it was intended to bind. She would have
known only fear and need and a man telling her that he couldn't
save her because her mother had forbidden it, her mother who had
abandoned her to die... She grabbed him around the waist,
tugging at his clothing. "What do you want? You want to torture
me? To kill me? I give you permission, anything you want, if
you'll save them..."
And he smiled, and flowed out of her embrace as if he were a
mirage. "No, my dear. I think I have what I want."
And he was gone.
For seconds Mairi stared after him, the brilliant flash of
his departure imprinted on her retinas, turning the gray world
red. And then she folded over onto the ground and wept
hysterically, as tides of darkness crashed over her mind and she
longed to die.
After some time she was spent, the tears gone, the darkness
receded. The world was gray and cold now, no warmth or color
inside it. She was wise enough to know that that would change
someday if she lived, that the color would return and she would
find joy in life again. But for now, she needed a cold reason to
survive.
She understood now what Ashke's goal had always been. He
had known she would refuse his offer-- he had not given her
enough information to do otherwise. If she'd known what would
happen... If she had known her people were facing, not merely
death, but consumption by a soulless overmind... perhaps she
would have made a different choice. Or perhaps she would not
have, but she would have known what the choices were. Ashke had
made the offer because she would refuse it, and because her
refusal would torment her once the disaster occurred. It had
been an exquisitely planned revenge. It deserved an exquisitely
planned response.
With incredible focus, she sought out Ashke's line. It was
impossible to miss, once she sought for it, a thick steely line,
impervious to the sideways splitting of mortal lines, impervious
to the possibility of death. It extended backwards farther than
she could see, into the dim reaches of prehistory. When she
scanned it forward, however, she found a tiny hairline weakness,
within the possible range of her lifespan.
Slowly, carefully now, she worked on that weakness, rotating
his line through the realms of possibility. He would notice, if
she tried to lock him out of the universe again. He would notice
if she did anything overt, anything sudden. But while he *could*
see the future, his powers were only active, only direct-- he
could see nothing if he did not actively look for it. And he had
no reason to believe his future would hold anything the past did
not.
His line thinned at the weak point and shattered, splitting
off into the thousand possibilities of mortality, and she smiled.
There were places where it recovered, where he survived what she
had just done. There were places where it did not. All she had
done was alter the probabilities of an event in his future, so
what had been unlikely now became almost certain.
Almost as an afterthought, she moved her line to intersect
his there. They would meet again, during the period of Ashke's
greatest vulnerability, and she would see then what fate moved
her to do. Perhaps she would have an opportunity to pay him
back. Or perhaps by that time she would feel no desire for
revenge, and regret what she had done to him. This was, after
all, not the act of a wise and responsible creature. Someday
maybe she would regret.
Right now she didn't care.
Her name would have to change, she thought. She would not
again make a decision for another than herself. The name she'd
used in young womanhood struck her, the name that simply meant
"listener", and she nodded. As she had been once, so she would
be again.
She stood up and touched the automatic transporter device on
her waist. A moment later there was a shimmer in the air of her
world, and then the last sentient life was gone from the world
forever.
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