Constellations (28 page)

“So I think Damala was right—we aren't ready to get by
without
a Prime Directive to remind us of the risks. We probably won't be for a long time.”

While Kirk and Spock pondered the doctor's words in silence, the Coalescence searched Theresa Errgang's memory for the specifics on Ronald Tracey, soon learning that he was a starship captain who had attempted to foment a racial war on Omega IV. While the search proceeded throughout the Coalescence, seeking further infected individuals across the quadrant who might possess more information, the colony that inhabited Errgang's body remained focused on the discussion her superiors had just conducted.
The macroscopics are right,
it sent telepathically through the collective mind.
These events suggest a reappraisal of our policy of clandestine observation. The subjects may be able to accept the knowledge of our existence. Open contact could prove mutually beneficial.

Other strains of the Coalescence remained skeptical, though.
Able to accept that a viral species infecting their bodies is benevolent? That the joining of minds we practice is not a threat to their individuality?
The consensus came down on the negative side.
Remember how quick the macroscopics were to turn against each other—to attack, to confront, to expel. They resolve disagreement with exclusion rather than convergence. They are still too mired in the concepts of Self and Other to be anywhere near ready for contact.

The Coalescence agreed that this Federation the humans, Vulcans, and others had formed was a promising first step in the direction of true coexistence. But the time was not now. Particularly with what McCoy had said about a thorough physical exam. If the Coalescence wished to keep its presence secret, the colony within Errgang's body would have to be sacrificed. It had achieved its primary objective—to identify the rumored Ilaiyen healing power so that countermeasures could be devised—so there was no necessity for it to possess the young humanoid any longer. After all, there were still observer colonies in other hosts within the Federation.

The Errgang colony accepted its sacrifice without hesitation, although it felt some regret at the imminent cessation of its existence as a semi-distinct entity—which was in itself a sign that it had been in Errgang too long and was starting to go native. Dismissing the sentiment, it began transforming its viral components to mimic a strain of Andronesian encephalitis. The host's life would not be threatened, but the illness would provide an explanation for Errgang's subsequent inability to remember most of what had transpired while she was under the control of the Coalescence.

A shame,
the colony thought as its consciousness began to disperse.
They are an intriguing people. It was gratifying to act as one of their crew.

The memories will live on eternally within the Coalescence,
the whole reminded the part.
And eventually we will be able to meet them openly, once they have evolved further. Perhaps in a few hundred centuries, by their reckoning.

 

Behind Errgang, Jerome Chaane smiled to himself as he monitored the Coalescence's telepathic dialogue using means unknown in this era of history.
Oh, it won't take quite that long,
he thought with the certainty of hindsight.

Jill Sherwin is the author of
Quotable Star Trek, The Definitive Star Trek Trivia Book,
Volumes I and II, and
Sailing the Slipstream: An Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda,
and is a contributor to the anthology
The Lives of Dax.
She has worked as a writers' assistant on various television series, including
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
and
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda,
and sold a story that was produced as the
Andromeda
episode “Be All My Sins Remembered.”

Lieutenant Uhura didn't know where she was. Intellectually she understood that this was ridiculous. She was in her own quarters. But she didn't know them. Didn't recognize the furnishings or the woman who owned them. She tried to shake the feeling of disassociation that possessed her. She moved to face a mirror mounted above a dresser as she reached for unfamiliar earrings. The stranger who gazed back at her was beautiful but looked as lost as she felt. Who are you? Uhura wanted to shout, but she didn't want any passing crew member in the corridor to hear. She needed to keep up the illusion that she was fine. That she was Uhura. Whoever that was.

But her hands betrayed her as they shook too much for her to get the earring in place. Such a foolish little thing, yet it was the breaking point. Uhura took the offending jewelry and threw it back down on the dresser. And when that didn't help, she grabbed one of the small decorative statues that no doubt meant something to the woman who'd collected the piece, and flung it against the mirror. The glass shattered into myriad pieces, including one shard that bit into her hand.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She looked down at the wound dispassionately, then the practical side of her reached for a small scarf that lay nearby. She wrapped her wounded hand in the scarf and automatically headed for sickbay. Behind her, the forgotten earring gleamed among the broken mirror shards, as alone as its owner.

 

Uhura entered sickbay and adopted a cheerful demeanor that she didn't feel inside, but felt was expected of her. She was greeted by Nurse Christine Chapel, who at first assumed the visit was part of Uhura's regular routine. Chapel reassured her, “Assuming this checkup goes well, I think the doctor will reduce your visits.” Uhura was pleased to hear at least that much good news. As hard as she'd tried to cope with the results of the recent attack by the mechanical being called Nomad, she'd wearied of the reeducation, the psychological and physiological tests that had become part of her daily endeavors to restore her erased memory. The education phase was essentially complete, thanks partly to the nurse's patient and supportive efforts, partly to Uhura's own apparently eidetic memory. But while relearning language and job skills had been easy, other aspects of the memory loss proved more difficult to manage, as her cut hand testified. But for a moment she just wanted to enjoy the semblance of normalcy between herself and the nurse, so she held her bandaged hand out of sight.

Chapel leaned against a biobed to chat with Uhura. She knew Uhura's anxiety level rose every time she came to sickbay. “Everything going well on the bridge?”

“With the job? Fine. I guess.” Uhura admitted, “I feel like I have to constantly double- and triple-check what I'm doing to make sure I haven't forgotten anything, but Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock continue to tell me I'm doing as well as I had before.” She laughed. “I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment on what I'm doing now or a criticism on my previous job performance!” Chapel laughed along with her, pleased to see Uhura had finally regained some of her sense of humor, or at least felt comfortable enough to laugh at herself. But after a moment Uhura stopped laughing and reflected, “To be honest, Christine, the work isn't the hardest part. When there's not a crisis, I feel like my hands and head are beginning to remember their jobs. It's just…”

“Just what?” Chapel prompted. She'd become closer to Uhura in these last two weeks during her rehabilitation and felt a proprietary protectiveness toward her.

Uhura struggled to put the feeling into words. “When I walk down a corridor, I see people that I know…or should know. Or at least, they know me. But I don't know
how
I know them. Should I greet them with a smile? A wave? A hug? Is this someone I should stop and talk to? Ask about their day? Their boyfriend? Or just nod in passing?” She sighed. “It's like I'm one step behind in all my relationships with everyone aboard. I feel like I'm insulting people I should know well or being too friendly to people I don't know at all.”

“I think everyone on the ship knows you. That's part of being the communications officer—you really do know everyone, because you talk to them every day.” But Chapel could see this wasn't all that was bothering Uhura.

After a moment, Uhura acknowledged, “It's not just that I don't know other people…it's that I don't know myself either. I look in the mirror and I see my face and I don't know who it belongs to. I look around my quarters and it's as if they were decorated by someone else. Where did I get that tapestry? Did someone give me that sculpture?” Now that she'd begun to unburden herself, the concerns poured out of her. “I've been listening to my personal logs. It's like they were made by another person whose life I've had to step into. Do I really sing all the time?” she asked earnestly.

Chapel laughed and nodded. “I think it's unconscious for the most part, but even on the job you always had a habit of singing and humming.” Uhura's lovely dark face blushed. “But it's charming. It's part of who you are.” Chapel leaned forward and confided, “You're pretty mean with a limerick, too.” Uhura didn't know whether she was being teased or not. That was the problem. She just couldn't trust the levels of communication she had with people, because it seemed to her she'd only known them a few days. She wondered if she'd ever feel at home again on this ship with this crew.

Dr. McCoy escorted Montgomery Scott out from the next room, where they'd just finished the chief engineer's latest physical. Scott protested all the way. “I told you, Doctor, I feel fit as a fiddle.”

Cantankerous as always, McCoy answered, “I don't care if you feel strong as a mule. You're still going to come back next week for another series of tests. That high-tech teakettle may have put you back together after breaking you, but it's my job to make sure you stay together. Same time next week.”

Scotty shook his head in acquiescence. “Aye, Doctor.” McCoy bobbed his head in self-righteous approval as the engineer nodded to Uhura and Chapel and left sickbay.

McCoy turned to Chapel, who handed him Scott's medical file to annotate. “Still stubborn as a Vulcan.” The doctor looked at Uhura. “I don't suppose Scotty's talked to you about what happened with Nomad, since you both…?” Uhura shook her head. She would have liked to talk to Scotty about the shared event, but he had rebuffed her advances to try to discuss his experience of having been killed and then “repaired” by the machine. Not wanting to overstep her bounds, she hadn't pressed the issue. McCoy predicted, “That man is suffering from post-traumatic stress, and if he doesn't find a way to release his frustration about what happened, it'll come out in ways that won't be so healthy.” The doctor turned to face Uhura. “And how are you feeling, Lieutenant?”

Uhura gave Chapel a wry grin and followed the doctor into the next room for her own examination. But she held her bandaged hand inside the other, as if still reluctant to share the pain.

 

Hours later, with her hand fixed up and no longer stinging thanks to McCoy's ministrations, Uhura sat at her station on the bridge, peripherally aware of the activity going on around her—from Captain Kirk sipping coffee in his chair and reading a yeoman's report on a padd, to Spock looking into the viewer at sciences, to Chekov and Sulu exchanging good-natured jibes down at navigation and helm control. Assorted crew members came and went about their business in a professional manner, yet maintained a camaraderie in their attitudes that Uhura still felt distant from. Were they all as confident as they looked? Did they know how separate she was from them? As a mental exercise, she ran lists of security codes, communications frequencies, department numbers, and crew names through her head. When she wasn't otherwise occupied, she repeatedly checked channels from one end of the spectrum to the other to reinforce the skill into her head and hands. But when a new transmission suddenly reached her on an unexpected frequency, she sat up straight, immediately focused on the situation and her job.

“Captain,” she called out. Kirk swiveled in his chair to give her his full attention. “I'm receiving a distress call from planet Donico II. They say there is an imminent planetary disaster and are requesting immediate assistance. The signal is faint, but it's definitely directed off-planet.”

“Do they say what the problem is?” Kirk asked.

“No, sir. The message was cut off in mid-transmission. No further information.” Uhura waited for Kirk's decision. It was immediate.

“Mr. Chekov, plot a course to Donico II. Warp five,” Kirk ordered. “Lieutenant Uhura, send a message to Starfleet Command informing them that we will be late to our assigned stop at Starbase 19, due to the distress call from Donico II.” Uhura's fingers danced across her communications console in acknowledgment. Contacting Starfleet was a regular duty—one she could do by heart by her second day back on the job.

The captain turned to his first officer. “Mr. Spock, what do we know about the Donico system? Are there any natural phenomena that would explain their distress call? It's too far from Klingon or Romulan space for either of them to be a threat.” Spock was already at work at his computer, pulling up the relevant data.

“Donico II is the sole Class-M world in a system of seven planets. The region is currently clear of any known solar or ion storm activity,” Spock informed Kirk.

“What of the people there?” Kirk asked.

“The society on Donico II is considered warp-capable, though they apparently have little interest in interstellar travel. Little is known of their culture. Though they've had brief contact with other civilizations, they are a private, xenophobic people. They have stated that outside interference is unwelcome.”

Kirk digested the information. “Yet someone there sent a distress call.” He turned to his helmsman. “Mr. Sulu, how long before we reach Donico II at this rate?”

“We'll be there in less than an hour, sir,” Sulu replied.

Kirk turned to Uhura. “Uhura, monitor the channel the distress call came in on for further communications. And in the meantime, see if you can pick up any other information on the planet and what the situation is there—war, disease, outside attack. What kind of help do they need?”

“Aye, sir.” Uhura turned back to her panel and opened the necessary frequencies to attempt to tune in any information coming from Donico II, from interpersonal communications to broadcast news. As she found anything of interest, she made notes to inform the captain when they grew closer. Donico II, she learned as she listened to the comm traffic of the planet, did not appear to be a world facing any kind of imminent problem. On the contrary, it seemed like a happy, healthy, flourishing society. Rather wonderful, actually. Uhura found no reports of any of the captain's concerns—no war, no disease, no outside interference or threats. In fact, the whole place seemed almost utopian. Even when Uhura attempted rolling through local intranet communications, she found no complaints, no concerns, no stressful issues at all. She chose one region of the planet at random and discovered the local leadership being celebrated; the public transmissions extolled a Minister Nyshev and how well he'd run the community for the past twenty-five years. Particular mention was made of how he'd improved the formerly challenging traffic conditions in the area and simultaneously beautified the city by planting large local willowlike trees, with only minimal disruption to the local residents. The results had even increased the efficiency of power consumption to that part of the Grid, as the planetwide power distribution was called.

All of this Uhura later reported to her captain, who continued to wonder just what the distress call had been sent for.

McCoy, who when times were quiet in sickbay often liked to wander up to the bridge to see what was going on, entered and suggested that perhaps it was someone's idea of a practical joke. Kirk considered the idea. “Well, better that than ‘imminent disaster.' But if little Timmy is playing a prank, then someone needs to let his parents know. We don't want any other starships pulled off course unnecessarily.”

Uhura tentatively suggested, “I don't think it was a joke, sir. The concern in the message sounded real.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll bear that in mind,” Kirk acknowledged.

A small, critical voice that had been in Uhura's head since the Nomad incident briefly wondered if he was just paying lip service to her. The more rational side of Uhura argued that the captain had not just heard, but listened to her. But that little voice still questioned.