Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation (8 page)

U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D STANDARD ORBIT LEGARA IV Stardate 43920.6 Earth Standard: May 2366

Picard knew the inevitable could be avoided no longer. Odds had nothing to do with it. Strategies were no longer applicable. The rules were firm.

His opponent continued to look downward, his thoughts unreadable. All Picard could hear was the faint hum of the environmental system’s fans in his ready room, the steady mechanical pulse of the Enterprise’s life-support systems at normal operation, on standard orbit of Legara IV. Picard revealed no emotion in his voice as he leaned forward to rest his hands on the table.

“I’m afraid it’s quite hopeless, Mr. Data. Stalemate in four.” The android sitting across from Picard blinked his artificial eyes as he finally looked up from the three-dimensional chessboard in the center of the captain’s desk. “I find it most remarkable,” he said. “That is the third stalemate you have forced on me in the past forty-seven minutes. I am aware of no other human with the abiliD7 to do that. Even Grandmaster Parnel of the—” “That’s quite all right, Mr. Data.” Picard tried to smile at his operations manager to show he had no real objections to a three-dimensional-chess history lesson, but the expression felt forced, as if he had forgotten how to move those particular facial muscles. In a sense, he supposed he had. “This has not been a test of my abilities.” Data reset the board with the efficiency of an automated construction drone. “I understand, Captain. You believe your proficiency in three-dimensional chess is a result of your recent mind-meld with Ambassador Sarek, who is, himself, a grandmaster many times over.” As quickly as that, all the pieces were restored to their starting positions. “Though the intrinsical-ly unpredictable nature of probability theory, or ‘dumb luck,’ as it is called, tends to put me on a more equal footing in games of chance. such as poker, I would look forward to a fourth round of chess with you. The opportunity to play a challenging game of logic with a human is one I am not often presented with.” Data patiently waited a few moments for his captain’s reply. “I mean no disrespect by that.” Picard gazed at the multilevel chessboard. Without conscious thought, a flood of opening strategies swept through his mind as if the logic of the game were instinctual to him. “Sir? Is something wrong?” Picard jerked his head up. “Poker?” he said. Had Data mentioned something about poker?

The android was most solicitous. “It is a card game, sir. I play each Thursday night with my fellow officers. If you recall, we have often invited you to join us.” The captain looked up to the ceiling of his ready room, trying to remember something about poker. Picard rubbed at the side of his face. He could still feel Ambassador Sarek’s fingers there, on the katra points of his nervous system. The effects of the mind-meld still trembled within him, though the maelstrom of emotions that had raged through him yesterday had now dwin-dled to slight, recurring eddies. But still his mind dealt with disturbing flashes of detailed knowledge of the ambassador’s life. t I
dcan would know how to deal with this, Picard told himself. A It/
time ()/’ training in mind-control techniques would permit the ca,sv setting aside of information obtained from other minds. And there were other minds. Sarek had mind-melded with hundreds of different beings in his more than two centuries of life, and the echoes of the psychic force of all their collective experiences now also reverberated within Picard.

“Captain Picard?” Data said more emphatically. “Shall I call Dr. Crusher?” Data’s familiar voice brought a moment of clarity. Picard shook off a sudden visual image of the red-tinged mountains of Sarek’s walled estate—not his. The only property in which Picard had an ownership interest was located in France. Picard tugged at his uniform to smooth nonexistent wrinkles.

“No, Mr. Data, I’ll be fine. It’s just that… from time to time I find myself overwhelmed by an unexpected memory from Ambassador Sarek’s past.” Data observed Picard carefully. Picard understood his purposeful gaze.

“But the memories are lessening in both strength and frequency,” Picard said firmly. “Both the ambassador’s wife and Dr.

Crusher have agreed that there will be no long-term, detrimental effects.” “I hope that that is true,” Data said. “It has been my observation that emotions can be confusing and dangerous when allowed to develop out of control.” Picard smiled at Data, and this time the expression came naturally. “And yet you still wish to experience them.” Data took on a thoughtful expression, one of his subroutines, Picard knew, designed to help the android relate to humans by providing subtle body-language cues to his thought processes. “It is, as the ambassador would say, a most illogical goal, but one to which I aspire, nonetheless.” “You sound as if you’re halfway there already,” Picard said with amusement, mixed with a sudden burst of friendship for his ofihcer, a feeling he shared to some extent with almost all of his command staff, but which, like Sarek, he too often allowed to remain hidden. Since he had first taken command of the Enterprise, almost three years earlier, Picard had enjoyed watching Data’s growth as a… person. There was no other word for it. To watch that complex intellect wrestle with ideas and ideals that most humans took for granted helped Picard see the universe through fresh eyes, innocent eyes. At the age of sixty-one, he realized he needed that rejuvenating experience more often. It was a law of nature that when growth stopped, stagnation set in.

For now, the Enterprise helped Picard keep that law at bay. But it was always out there, circling, like predatory norsehlats worrying a herd of vral, waiting to pick off the old and infirm.

Picard blinked, momentarily distracted. “Mr. Data, would you happen to know what a norsehlat is?” Data responded without hesitation. “A nonsentient predator native to the southern, high-mountain deserts of Vulcan, filling a similar ecological niche to that of the Terran wolf.” “I see. And a vral?”
‘In context with norseMat, I would presume the word vral is a plural form of vralt, which is a nonsentient herbivore, similar to a Terran mountain goat, again indigenous to the same areas of Vulcan as is the norsehlat, and thus its prey.” Data cocked his head. “Are you experiencing another of Ambassador Sarek’s memories?” “No, not a memory, really. An allusion. Referring to animals of which I have no personal knowledge.” Picard found that innocuous aftereffect much easier to deal with than the torrent of anguish that had stricken him in the first hours after his mind-meld. “It is a… most fascinating experience.” “Indeed,” Data commented.

Picard stared at his operations manager for a moment, experiencing a strong feeling of deja vu. Something about the conversation. something about seeing Data on the other side of a three-dimensional chessboard.. u Picard could almost put his finger on it… almost grasp that memory… almost— His communicator chirped. Picard tapped it. “Picard.” Riker’s voice emerged from the tiny device. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. but Ambassador Sarek’s party is ready to beam to the -‘h’rrimac. ” Picard stood. “On my way, Number One. I’ll meet you in the transporter room. Mr. Data, please relieve the commander.” Data left the ready room as Picard opened the storage compartment in which a folded dress uniform lay ready. Three days ago, when Ambassador Sarek had beamed aboard, Picard had had such hopes for their meeting. More than any being now living, Sarek had shaped the Federation, guiding it in its transition.

Under his direction, it had evolved over the past century from an expansionist cobbling-together of idealistic, often unrealistic worlds eager to forge an unprecedented alliance without a clear idea of how that could be accomplished, to a mature and stable institution for which each new admission was a further infusion of strength for the integrated whole.

In standard English, the Vulcans called that basic precept IDIC, one of the most profound philosophical cores of the United Federation of Planets. The acronym meant Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Simply put, it was a celebration of how simplicity could arise from complexity.

In physics, the matching term was “the self-organizing principle,” perhaps the most basic condition underlying the universe’s existence. Simply put, it was the tendency for replicating systems to arise from the chaotic conditions of the fractal boundaries that , separated domains of high and low energy.

In high-energy domains, physical bonds could not form. In low-energy domains, physical bonds once formed could not be broken. But somewhere between the two extremes, in the flux of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there existed domains where a balance could be achieved. And it was the same in the Federation, thought Picard with a sense of satisfaction, both in the institution and the role he played in maintaining it.

In the universe at large, between those domains of high and low energy, galaxies had coalesced like jewels on the cosmic strings formed in the first instants of the universe’s birth. In those galaxies, stars had condensed, then burst into life, shedding energy on their planets, creating pockets of still more boundary domains, neither too hot nor too cold.

In those domains, molecules had formed that could survive the more minor fluctuations of local conditions. Among those molecules that were good at surviving, some could replicate duplicates of themselves. Not perfectly, for that would lead to stagnation, but bnperfectly. For in imperfection, Picard believed, as did the Federation’s scientists, there was room for improvement; room l’or improvement inevitably brought change; and what was life but change—the constant shuffling of attributes and abilities to insure that life would continue, even to the extent that life on a planetary scale would evolve the capacity to affect the planetary environment such that it remained a suitable habitat.

Thus on a planetary scale, there was no distinction between life and habitat. Life itself and life’s home were like space and time—they could not be thought of as independent entities, only as different reflections of each other.

More and more, Picard knew, the restrictive use of the phrase “on a planetary scale” was being questioned by Federation scientists. Even “systemwide scale” was not broad enough for them. “Galactic scale” was better, for as life begat intelligence and intelligence begat technology, life spread forth from its origin points to propagate into more domains, creating more habitats.

But as Picard had discussed with Will Riker, in one of their t’requent philosophical debates, even thinking of life and its influence on a galactic scale was increasingly viewed in some quarters as missing the point. As in all things in the science of cosmology, at some point the study of the very large inevitably led back to the study of the very small, just as the analysis of the very complex uncovered the very simple principles from which complexity emerged.

Derived from that research, Picard had learned, there was a realization that was slowly spreading through the worlds of the Federation. He found he was almost ready to grasp it himself, like searching for a single misplaced memory a hairsbreadth out of reach. It was the notion that the self-organizing principle, the most simple principle in nature, which had led to all the forms and structures of the universe, also had its mirror in the affairs of intelligent beings.

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. In sociology and politics as it was in physics. From the simple came the complex.

From the complex came stability.

Picard believed the founders of the Federation had understood this intuitively. The horror of the Romulan War had truly been the last lesson in valuing life, in all its disturbing complexity, that humanity had needed to learn.

Those who had inherited the founders’ Federation had struggled to keep intact what had been forged at such cost. The first contact with the Klingon Empire in 2218, only fifty-seven years after the Federation’s birth, had been a trial by fire. But in that trial, what had been created in the Earth city of Paris in 2161 revealed its true strength. Through all the dark years of conflict with the Klingons that followed, until the rapprochement of the Khitomer Conference of 2293, all-out war did not break out between the Empire and the Federation.

The Federation had entered a new phase. It no longer reacted simply by learning from its mis[akes, it took action, truly going where no one had gone before, by learning from its triumphs.

Picard, who had not been born until 2305, twelve years after Khitomer, was a child of the new century, the era the poets had called “Technology Unchained,” when quality off life became paramount for all beings, not just an elite.

He had grown up in LaBarre, a small Earth city a short distance from Paris where the president of the Federation Council kept his official offices. Paris was a city continually enlivened by the constant stream of alien diplomatic missions. The Federation had been as much a part of young Picard’s early life as had the pastoral charms of his horne’s vineyard and winery, each an unquestioned condition of life which, to the child’s mind, had always existed, indistinguishable from the constancy of the sun or a parent’s love.

Those two images of sun and parents played in Picard’s mind as he felt the turbolift carry him to Deck 6 and the transporter room Sarek’s party would use. The sun: a force of nature, blind and unthinking. Love: a force of sentience, but equally primal.

Even in Sarek Picard had felt the unity that had arisen from the acknowledgment of emotion as essential to life—the same unity that linked the Federation to the universe it inhabited until, like space and time, like life and habitat, the two were inseparable.

Picard stepped through the sliding doors of the transporter room with a revelation in his mind, created from the images of the sun and the Federation of his childhood—two extremes: the logic of Vulcans, the passion of humans. Perhaps neither one could ever have achieved alone what they had achieved together.

Humans a domain of high energy, where structure could never form. Vulcans a domain of low energy, where structure once formed could never change. But together, on the boundaries of their separate domains, from the fractal chaos of their meeting and desire to work together, a new system had come into being.