Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (57 page)

“A most remarkable man,” the Vulcan said.

“A most remarkable life,” Riker agreed.

The Vulcan nodded, her silence acknowledging how little words could convey about some subjects. She closed her case. “The cylinder is filled with nitrogen,” she explained. “It would be best if, after opening it, you used archival storage methods for the letter inside. I would be pleased to provide the latest guidelines at your convenience.” Picard thanked the Vulcan and she departed.

“Well? Aren’t you going to open it?” Riker asked.

Picard ached to do exactly that. But he said, “Not here, Will.

Up there. Where his words belong.” Riker smiled softly as he nodded. “I understand.” Picard held the cylinder as Cochrane held the laurel branch, as if it were the frame of something much bigger, unseen, still in the future. “The three ages of the Federation,” he said softly.

“Cochrane, Kirk, and us.” The envelope was fat. The letter inside must be long, rich with detail, with… who knew what secrets there were to be shared only by those who commanded starships?

“I wonder what the next ages will bring?” Picard asked. “And to whom they’ll bring it?” For a moment, he could almost hear the stars answer him.

THE ARTIFACT New Stardate 2143.21.3

The ship moves through domains of space unimagined by Cochrane, powered by engines incomprehensible to Scott or La Forge. But all three engineers would recognize its destination, deep wit/tin the voids between the galaxies.

The captain of the ship holds up her hand to the main bridge view wall and with her thumb blots out the Milky Way as it recedes from tter. sidewarp factor 55.

“Beacon signal converging as predicted,” her data officer announces. “Dropping to warp speed.” The ship slows to a relative craw/as the main viewer switches to the forward scan. Against a.vprin/,’ling of distant galaxies, one blue beacon stands out as the ,~’hip closes. “Moving to sublight… and relative stop.” The ship hangs tens of millions of light-years from any star, from am’ matter larger than a grain of dust, except for the silver.s’tructure dead ahead, the structure whose presence was made known to them by sidespace radio after the final inauguration ceremony and all spacefaring cultures in the Milky Way had been joined in one grand Federation. That, so the current theory went, had been the trigger for the invitation.

The translator tanks identify markings on the side of the ,s’[rttcture as consistent with similar markings recorded on so-ca/led

Preserver artifacts. The Cochrane delta is there among them.

Science tanks confirm that the radiation signature is consistent with postulated controlled-access corridors to multiple universes.

The captain shakes her head in amazement. “Multiple universes,” she says to her data officer, the words, the entire concept, still unreal to her. The data officer holds his hands ready over the control surfaces. “Do we accept the invitation, Captain?” The captain stares into the beckoning doorway of the silver structure between the galaxies, contemplating an infinite ocean of time and space into which life couM expand, its fate no longer tied to a single world, a single galaxy, or now, even a single universe.

“Helm, full ahead,” she orders. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.” Like another explorer centuries before her, who stood on the brink of an equal adventure, her eyes blur with tears even as she laughs, the reason for either response a mystery to her, rooted deep in that which makes her human.

In the language of the time, the ship is called Enterprise, and she slides forward, accepting the invitation, once more going where none has gone before.

For even here, even now, the adventure is still just beginning….

ELLISON RESEARCH OUTPOST Stardate 9910.1 Earth Standard: ~ Late September 2295

Kirk took his hand from the Guardian and for a moment felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe.

The Guardian seemed to spin around him. Vortices of stars.

Images of gateways unimaginable. Paths and possibilities and multiple universes— “Captain?” He became aware of the Vulcan standing close to him. The impossibly young lieutenant commander with the tricorder slung against her hip. He had not heard her approach over the duraplast sheeting.

“Did you require something, sir?” Kirk tried to answer but his throat was dry as dust, as if he hadn’t spoken for days. It struck him that he had no idea how long he had been standing by the Guardian, listening toto what? ‘ ‘ ‘ “How—” He coughed to clear his throat and began again.

“How long have I been here?” he asked. He glanced over his shoulder to see the Vulcan attempt to hide her concern.

“Beside the Guardian, sir?” “Touching it,” Kirk said.

The Vulcan’s hand played over her tricorder. Kirk could see she was struggling with her desire to turn it on.

“Only a moment, sir,” she said. “I thought you said something to me so I came back and…” She fixed him with an expression of curiosity that was more familiar to Kirk than she would ever know. “Sir, did… something happen?” Kirk shook his head. He could say that he had asked a question and the Guardian had answered, but whatever had been related had apparently been only for him. If it had happened at all.

Kirk closed his eyes again and the myriad images the Guardian had somehow shown him burst across his mind’s eye as if a clam had burstu u.. as ifa dam had burst.

He heard the echo of Micah Brack saying those words to… to… Zefram Cochrane? Had it really been Cochrane he had seen, there on Titan? Was Brack really Flint, the immortal human Kirk had met so many years ago? Or had some trick of the Guardian, some alien static charge somehow flashed through him, weaving together his own disparate memories of forty-five years in Starfleet, creating an illusion, nothing more?

Kirk heard the Vulcan switch on her tricorder, heard it scanning, and made no move to stop her. He had no idea at all how much of what he had seen, experienced, imagined, been shown, was real. Perhaps the tricorder would have an answer. “Is anything different?” Kirk asked.

“No, sir.” Kirk’s trained ear could hear her disappointment, though few others who were not from her world could have done the same.

Kirk held his hands together, squeezing his fingers. The hand that had touched the Guardian felt stiff, as if he had held a position too long, for centuries.

Then he realized he had felt this way before.

Ten years ago, in San Francisco, when Sarek had come to his apartment seeking information about Spock, his son.

Kirk had undergone a mind-meld with the ambassador that night, and the aftereffects had been much the same as what he felt now—memories not his own colliding with half-remem- bered dreams from all the other minds Sarek had touched in his life.

The other captain had felt the same way, Kirk suddenly remembered. The other captain in the other ship, the other Enterprise.

For an instant he had an impression of that other captain, standing by a monument of… of… it was gone as quickly as that.

Kirk rubbed his hands across his face, as if waking from a long sleep. The tricorder still trilled behind him but he suddenly felt certain that it would discover nothing.

Had he really seen a past he could never have known? Had he really seen a future that he would never be part of?. A future now seventy years distant, a thousand years distant? Was there a difference in whatever time stretched on beyond his own years?

Could he believe anything he had seen or was it all just an indulgent dream of self-justification?

Sarek would know, Kirk thought. He felt certain that the ambassador’s thoughts were somehow woven through all of this, as if through the Guardian the normal limits of space and time and causality had been sundered and a mind-meld of a different order had occurred, between Kirk, between the other captain, between the Guardian itself, all minds linked by some agency unknown.

He tried to recapture the details, but they were lost in the tapestry the Guardian had woven for him, until he only saw the larger pattern, the grand design.

The need for life to continue.

The certainty that life would.

Above the gentle wind, the subtle silence of the ancient stones, Kirk heard faint, familiar music play.

He turned to see two shimmering pillars of light swirl into existence upon the dust of this world. And as the figures within took shape, became whole, through a trick of the transporter nimbus that surrounded them, he seemed to see them as they had been almost three decades ago.

Commander Spock. Dr. McCoy.

At the beginning of their adventure.

Then the transporter effect vanished and his friends as they were now came for him.

McCoy stood by his captain’s side and stared at the Guardian.

Spock nodded politely to the young lieutenant commander and then it was as if she did not exist.

“Captain Sulu sends his regards, Captain. The Excelsior is at your disposal.” Kirk took a last look at the Guardian.

“C’mon, Jim. It’s time to go home.” McCoy reached out to touch Kirk’s shoulder.

“I know,” Kirk said, “I know,” and with his friends at his side, he walked to the edge of the sheeting, stepped again onto the soil of this world, and readied himself for what would happen next.

Whatever it would be.

The story that the Guardian had shared still resonated within him, and even as the details fled, he was left with what he had always known—that his journey would be ending soon.

But he realized at last that one thing had changed—perhaps the Guardian’s gift—the new recognition he had that though his journey would be ending soon, the journey itself would never end.

However small, that knowledge made a difference.

Kirk stood between his friends. Held the communicator. The last time for so many things. But not for everything.

“Kirk to Excelsior,” he said. “Three to beam up.” The gentle chime of the transporter claimed them then, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and together they dissolved into the quantum mist and were swallowed by the light.

The young Vulcan stared a moment into the space the three legends had occupied. Looked at their footprints in the ancient dust, then shook her head as if suddenly chiding herself that what she thought wasn’t logical.

She turned her back on the Guardian and walked to the research huts.

Alone once more in its solitude, the Guardian watched her go, waiting patiently, silently, as it had for eons, until another would come who was worthy to ask it a question.

It would be a long wait, the Guardian knew. But eventually another would come.

There was so much of the story still to be told. And not even the Guardian knew how it would end.