The Escape (4 page)

She knew he could function in strange circumstances. Despite his youth, he had strength. The secret was to tap it.

"Find out where we are," she said, her voice almost a whisper, as if she was afraid someone might hear them.

Kim glanced down at his tricorder. "How do I even start?" he asked, also very softly.

"Start with the ships beside us, then go to the people." B'Elanna really didn't really care what order he worked in, so she had given him the order that seemed the simplest. Although here nothing seemed simple. And they all would have to be thinking clearly, and acting quickly. Behind her, Neelix hadn't moved at all. His tiny, spotted hands grasped the edge of the door. His knuckles were white. "You all right?" she asked. "Ghosts," he said. "Look at all the ghosts. I told you this place was haunted." "I doubt those are ghosts," B'Elanna said.

"Mr. Kim?" Kim nodded. "They are very real.

Everything here is real." He sounded as if he had hoped he was dreaming. No such luck.

TW-O men and a woman, all wearing bright green smocks over purple pantaloons, stopped in front of a ship three down. They were talking and laughing. The woman had silver hair piled over a meter above her head. One of the men motioned at it. She nodded and took the hair off, revealing a head of black hair closely cut to her scalp. Then she tucked the silver wig under her arm and climbed the boarding ramp to the ship. The men followed her.

"Clearly the ship took us somewhere," B'Elanna said. "And it used a method faster than any we know. Kim, find out where, and how far away from Voyager we are.

Kim silently did as he was told, his handsome face a 36 picture of concentration. B'Elanna wiped a bead of sweat off her neck. Ten minutes ago she was wishing she had worn a coat; now she wished she had on her lighter uniform.

"The surrounding star positions are the same," Kim said. He sounded uncertain. "Sort of." "'Sort or?," Torres asked.. "Can you be a little more specific than "sort or?" He glanced up at her. She recognized the look. She had seen it on his face when they were walking through the Ocampa settlement underground, soon after they had been forced to come to the Delta Quadrant. He was still new enough to space travel to find most things unbelievable. A drawback some days. A benefit others. She waited, uncertain which it would be this time. "I want to say I'm looking at the same stars as I was before we got onto the ship. We're still in the Delta Quadrant, but-was "Mr. Kim," Torres said, "I don't need an astronomy lesson. I asked you to define 'sort of." Define it. This is not an essay exam. This isn't even an exam.

It's a simple question." "But the answer's not that simple. The stars are exactly where they should be, if they were younger. It's as if-was He stopped, apparently unable to fini sh.

B'Elanna understood. She didn't want to, but she thought she understood. She quickly used her own tricorder to do the figuring as Kim did the same.

Within a few seconds she had the answer.

"Three hundred and ten thousand years," she said softly. 37 "What?" Neelix said. He had taken his hands off the door and was wringing them together. "Three hundred and ten thousand years what?" The edge of panic in his voice echoed the feeling in B'Elanna's stomach.

She decided to ignore that feeling. It would get in her way. She made her voice as calm as Tavok's. She was beginning to understand how the Vulcan and the captain managed to sound relaxed even under stress. "We've jumped into the past of this planet by three hundred and ten thousand years," she said.

"That's not possible," Neelix said. He moved away from her until his back hit the frame of the ship. Then he tugged on the flamboyant shirt he wore. "Frankly, if it's all the same to you, I would prefer to believe in ghosts. Yes. Let's make all these people ghosts. Ghosts are a much better idea than time travel, don't you agree"...ea@.

Torres wasn't sure if she did agree.

Now that she was getting past her shock, she was finding this situation fascinating. She was slowly starting to understand just a part of what this huge facility was and she was growingcomv, very impressed.

These ships were time shuttles.

All these people around them were traveling through time as if it were commonplace. And from the looks of this station, it was. Somehow they had boarded a working shuttle in the far, dead future and got sent here, to this time.

"I'm afraid that we have to rule out the ghosts, Neelix, and accept time travel. It's our only chance to get back home," Torres said. She turned to KirLike "We 38 I THE ESCAPE had to have done something to trigger this ship to jump. We need to find that trigger." "How about if I just go back inside and wait for you folks to come up with an answer. I missed a good nap to be here. I wouldn't mind sleeping my way through your solution. In fact, that sounds very good. I'm going back inside now." Neelix backed through the door, keeping his gaze on the strange people around him.

"Don't touch anything," B'Elanna said. "Just go back in and sit-was She stopped suddenly. A clear picture went through her mind of Neelix plopping down on the ship. "Check the seat that Neelix sat in. There might be sensors in the chairs." "Let's do it quickly," Neelix said, and nodded in the direction of the bottom of the ramp. One of the humanoids, a tall man wearing a bright orange jump suit, stood with his hands on his hips looking stem and slowly shaking his bead at them.

At closer look B'Elanna could see that he had bright blue eyes, set very wide on his face, a nose that seemed almost smashed flat, and at least eight fingers. The orange coveralls did very little to mask his strength of upper body.

B'Elanna thought the size of him would compare well to a Klingon warrior's.

"You are not authorized to be here," the man said.

Torres replaced her tricorder and held out her hands in what she hoped was a universal gesture of conciliation. "We know," she said. "We-was "You have to come to Control." "Actually," she said. "We'd rather go back. We didn't expect-was 39 "Your appearance here is a violation of Control Ordinance 852.6l." "We're sorry," Kim said. He glanced at B'Elanna. "We didn't mean to. We accidentally triggered-was "Any eighthundred violation requires the presence of the violators at Control. If you don't come with me voluntarily, we'll take you by force." "We volunteer!" Neelix said, holding up his hands as he came out of the ship. "We volunteer, don't we, frsThat' Torres sighed. She never volunteered to get into trouble, yet it always seemed to happen.

"Let's move," the man said. "We need to deal with this violation quickly. That ship has to be off the platform in three hours. We're expecting the Real Time ship to return then." Torres glanced at her companions, hoping they understood better than she did. Kim shrugged.

Neelix had his hands above his head and was marching forward, following the strange man. When Neelix got off the ramp he stopped beside the man. He barely came to the man's waist. Torres could see Neelix's strangeness register on the man's face; then it seemed to fade into unimportance.

"Hurry," the man said. He whirled and walked away as if he expected them to follow him.

"It seems we have no choice," Torres said.

She indicated that Kim should be first behind the man in orange. Neelix dropped into line next and she brought up the rear, carefully marking in her mind exactly how to get back to the exact ship they had arrived in.

She just hoped she got the chance. 40

THE ALARM CHIMED THROUGH THE WARM RUMOR OF Drickel's hilltop home, rousing him from his afternoon nap on his favorite couch.

That alarm hadn't gone off in years and he'd almost forgotten how much its soft, gentle chimes annoyed him.

"All right, all right," he said. "Alarm off." The chimes stopped and the faint lyrical sounds of Period Three flutes filled the house with soothing harmonies from the best musicians of Rollingburg's Retreat.

He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. The green of the living room, with its scattered sofas and seating arrangements, blended into the green of the plush jungle outside. The walls were large windows that provided him with a clear view of dozens of different animals. Beyond the jungle, he could see a range tall, new, and very rough mountains in the distance.

Some days he focused the window on the mountains.

During others, he buried the view deep into the forest. Before he had gone to sleep, he left the view turned to a shadowy undergrowth that let in little light. The cool, moist darkness looked inviting, but he had an alarm to answer.

He cursed silently and comdialed up a broader view. The day itself was warm and sunny and the mountains beckoned in the distance. Often he woke himself by exploring the top of the mountain range, focusing on water, and letting the sparkle take him. The diversity was one reason why he had settled in this Period. He loved the peacefulness of it.

Chasing damn alarms made him angry.

After six-point-seven years of Real Time, he still got angry. That last alarm had taken almost two days of his Real Time and forced him to go to a cold Period during winter months. It took almost a week of Real Time after his return to shake the trauma of the experience from his bones. He had received a commendation for that little adventure. But the commendation had been small recompense for the days of chill.

Saunas, steam baths, and cutting wood in the hot jungle sun hadn't warmed him. He finally had to ask Medical for a balm to get the winter out of his system. No use complaining. The alarm had sounded and he had to respond. He supposed he shouldn't be so angry at earning his salary now and then. Without the Watchman job he would never have afforded this beautiful, house.

He stood, stretching his tall frame and loosening tight muscles. He had just finished his first workout of the day before his nap. His loose-fitting green warmup suit was a bit gamy, and his headband had stuck to his forehead.

With one last longing glance at the lush jungles and the rocky mountains in the distance, he tapped a seven-digit code into a small console on the wall near the entrance to his kitchen. He used the console every day to report in. Food and supplies also came thanks to that console, and occasionally he received calls from friends. But it felt odd to his fingers to be punching in his security code again.

He first looked for a date on the readout, then sighed. Of course they would send him somewhere cold and dark. Seven and a half million years in the future. Couldn't someone mess with the Time Stations in the summer months? Probably not.

The stations were abandoned after the Second Expansion Period and the ships looked ripe for the taking. At least he wouldn't have to deal with his own kind. There were only a few really crazy folks who lived that far up the time line, and most of them were a million or so years even farther into the future. Real nut cases who seemed to find the desertlike periods enjoyable.

Much as he hated where he was heading, he appreciated the fact that he would be alone. His own people sometimes interfered when faced with an interloper.

Better to handle it alone. Much better. Maybe he would earn another commendation.

Another commendation would bring a significant 43 raise in pay. He would be able to install view windows in the west wing of the house.

Enough dreaming. He had to respond to the alarm first.

The readout showed that no one had lived anywhere near the alarm for thousands of Real Time years.

He'd had some experience with this specific Period. The only creatures that triggered alarms were PlanetHoppers. They were always the most difficult to handle. Their cultures were sophisticated enough to allow them to travel through space, but still primitive enough to limit that travel to physical movement.

Often PlanetHoppers would see things like the old Time Stations as places to be plundered, thinking them truly abandoned. The last time he had been to this specific Period he had spent five Real Time days howling like a jungle cat before realizing that the PlanetHoppers thought the wind made the sound.

Fortunately he had other tricks that sent those nosy little PlanetHoppers back to their Vacuum Ships.

He tapped in his response code, informing the Mean Time Control that he was headed for the alarm, then turned and walked quickly through the comfortable green hallways to his bedroom. There, he doublechecked the readout on the secondary display.

Of course. A part of the planet and a time of year there almost as cold as his previous alarm. He would need all of his warm clothing. I "Why couldn't these trespassers pick the summer side? Or at least springside?" he muttered. "Would that be too much to ask?" 44 Since he had lived alone for the past sixteen years of his Real Time, no one answered him.

He tossed his pack into his bedroom transport booth, and punched in passage to the closest Time Station. His only hope was that he could make this mission quick.

The inside of the building was even warmer than outside. Torres brushed hair off her ridged forehead and wondered how she had ever felt cold.

Kim gasped beside her. Neelix, mercifully, was silent. The orange-suited man who had brought them here herded them together as if they were Romulan sheep.

He didn't have to. All three of them had stopped once they came through the door.

The building was unlike what Torres had expected, although if anyone had asked her what she had expected, she would have been unable to answer. She had not expected the teeming mass of people. So many people, in fact, that they had ceased being individuals and had become a sea of color and sound, moving back and forth like waves. Concentrating on the people was too overwhelming. She concentrated on the building instead. The man had brought them into a huge hall with staircases on its north and south faces. The ceiling was twice as high as the ceilings in Voyager, and it was a sparkly white. After a moment, she realized that what she had taken as sparkles were actually tiny lights embedded into the ceiling tiles. The white motif went throughout the building with limited success. Once 45 the white reached shoulder height of these odd people, dirt and smudges marred it. Tiny drawings covered the floor. At first Torres thought the drawings graffiti. Then she realized that they were diagrams leading the first-time traveler to the booths that clustered together in various segments of the huge hall.