The Folded World (12 page)

“So just about anything's possible, isn't it?”

Kirk glanced at the view outside again. “Possible, yes. But likely?”

Romer was right; no possibility could be entirely discounted. But the more reasonable explanation—if reason counted for anything within the fold—was that they were being deceived, the same way Kirk had been when he saw his uncle. He didn't know precisely how to explain it: mass hallucination? Mirage? Something more complicated, maybe even sinister? Without more investigation, he couldn't begin to say.

“I guess not,” Romer replied. She sounded wistful. “It's strange, though. The asteroid always seemed like a special place to me. The first place I actually walked on the surface of something that wasn't Earth. I was in love, I was full of wonder and thrilled to be part of Starfleet. I've been thinking about it, lately, and now . . . it's like I could step outside and be back there.”

“I do not recommend it,” Spock said.

Romer released a dry chuckle. “No, I suppose not.”

Kirk looked toward the doorway through which Bunker had disappeared. Still no sign of Tikolo and her party, either. He flipped open his communicator and tried to raise her, without success.

“We've been here too long already,” he declared. “Let's find them. Everybody stick together, and don't trust anything you see.” Remembering Spock's apparent encounter with the invisible, he added, “Whether you see it or not.”

Montgomery Scott figured that, whatever the away team was facing, by being left behind he had gotten the raw end of the deal. Of course he had to remain on board the
Enterprise
. That was the chief engineer's duty, after all. But no evil alien threat, he was certain, could possibly be as utterly terrifying as a bridge full of bureaucrats. And with the captain, Mister Spock, and Doctor McCoy gone, he was the one who had to deal with them.

Or die trying.

“Surely you understand, Mister Scott,” the one named Gonzales was saying. Or was it Rinaldo? They all ran together in his head, combining to form almost an entire human being. “In high-level diplomacy, actions speak louder than words. Words are also important, of course. But we can tell the Ixtoldans, until we're blue in the face, that their petition to join the Federation is important to us, that we take it seriously, and that we would very much like to include them in the community of civilized worlds. If our deeds fail to match our rhetoric, though, then our words might as well be meaningless babble.”

You said it,
Scotty thought,
not I.
He managed not to say it, instead blurting out, “It isn't like we're sittin' here enjoyin' the view! There's a reason the captain went to that ship!”

“There might have been,” the diplomat said. Gonzales, he was sure this one was Gonzales. “But by this time, that reason would seem to be moot.”

“You think we're just gonna take off without our captain and the landing party?”

“Of course not,” Gonzales replied. “But they could be recalled to the ship and we might still be able to meet our commitments.”

“So you missed the part where we canna reach them?”

“They will report in at some point, will they not? When they do, you need to tell them to return immediately to the
Enterprise
.”

“
If
they report in, I'll not be takin' orders from you!”

“Mister Scott,” another one said. This was Perkins, he knew that. “Mister Scott, Mister Gonzales is, most assuredly, not trying to command you to do anything. He's merely suggesting the most reasonable course of action to achieve our mutual goals.”

“You must've learned a different definition for ‘mutual' than I did. My goal is to keep the
Enterprise
steady while we wait for the away team to finish what they're doin'. Which, as I recall, is lookin' for one of
your
people.” He remembered too late that the presence of the ambassador aboard the
McRaven
had been
a secret, one the
Enterprise
officers were not supposed to know. To their professional credit, none of the diplomats allowed their surprise to show.

“We are, of course, concerned about Mister D'Asaro,” Rinaldo said. She sounded just like the others, as if they'd gone to pretentiousness school together. “Deeply, deeply concerned. But all available evidence seems to indicate that we're too late to help Mister D'Asaro, or anyone else with the misfortune to have been aboard the
McRaven
. Given that fact, the wisest course would be to do as Mister Gonzales suggests and make all due haste toward Ixtolde.”

“Precisely,” Chan'ya said. She and her retinue had also crowded onto the bridge. When Scotty had watched them emerge from the turbolift, he knew at once that they had orchestrated the moment, trying to intimidate him with their numbers. Having failed to dissuade the captain, they thought they could bulldoze the obviously more pliant chief engineer. “The fact that there are no life-forms aboard the
McRaven
has been determined. Rather than waste more time with a search-and-rescue mission when there is no one to rescue, surely the armaments on this ship and our own have the capability to destroy the
McRaven
and the ship she appears to be linked with. Then we could continue to our planet.”

“With all due respect,” Scotty said, “I dinna see any reason to destroy the ships, whether they're empty or
not. That would be a waste of our resources and yours. If we're leavin', why not just leave?”

“The ships seem to have some sort of gravitational pull,” Chan'ya replied. “Particularly that larger one. Their destruction would help other vessels resist that pull, and therefore the dimensional anomaly, would it not?”

“It might, at that,” Scotty had to admit. “But so would warnin' buoys telling ships to avoid the vicinity.”

“The captain and his team,” Chan'ya said. “They remain on the
McRaven,
no?”

“The anomaly disrupts our instrumentation,” Scotty said. “So we canna be sure where they are.”

“If they went onto the other ship, that would surely be reason enough to recall them?”

Scotty turned from the Ixtoldans to the Federation diplomats, finding no help there. He glanced at the rest of the bridge crew. Chekov was busying himself with instruments, Sulu watching in what looked like frank amazement. A ghost of a smile illuminated Uhura's face. “How many times can I say it? We canna reach them at the moment! They'll try to get in touch when they can, and we're still tryin' to get to them—we were, that is, until you lot came in and distracted us. When they're ready, they'll signal us and we'll fetch them back.”

Minister Chan'ya stared at him as if she were trying to read his mind. As far as he knew, she might
have been—he had no idea what sorts of telepathic abilities Ixtoldans might possess. None had been admitted to, that he knew of, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. “Something else?” he asked after a while.

Chan'ya's golden skin had reddened to a deep rose. She said simply, “Well and good,” then pressed her hands to her sides and swept toward the turbolift. The other Ixtoldans followed, though the Federation diplomats stayed behind. They'd plotted to arrive together; Scotty had hoped they would leave together, too. He liked dealing with engines, with machines. They had parts that fit together and worked in concert, parts that made sense. Sentient beings were something else altogether—that
sentient
thing, he guessed.

“You've insulted her,” Gonzales said, leaning in close to Scotty's face.

“Me?”

“You.”

“How?”

“The very fact that you don't know makes it clear that you belong in an engine room.”

At that, Sulu came out of his chair. “That's enough!” he said. “We have been trying our best to perform the mission and to meet your needs, but there's no reason to be insulting. I pride myself on patience, but you, sir, have pushed that to the breaking point.”

It took a lot, Scotty knew, to fray Hikaru Sulu's
nerves. Gonzales stepped back from his tirade, his eyes going wide, brows arching high. “Lieutenant,” he said. “I'm afraid that all our tempers are fraying.” He addressed Scotty again, offering the slightest dipping of his shoulders that could possibly be considered a bow. “My apologies, sir.”

Before Scotty could respond—before he could begin to formulate an appropriate response—Gonzales and his colleagues hurried to the turbolift.

Scotty was not sorry to see them go. He only wished he had time to rig the turbolift so they couldn't return.

•   •   •

Bunker raced down one deck after another. When he hit a ladder he dropped down, skating along the edges instead of using the rungs. Tikolo heard his footfalls as he hurtled down a corridor, one deck below.

She reached the ladder and spun around, sliding down the way Bunker had. She hit hard, flexing her knees to absorb the impact, released the ladder, and took off in the direction she'd heard Bunker running. She heard the rest of her team hit the deck and follow, but she was already wheeling around a bend.

“Bunker!” she cried. He wasn't so far ahead that he couldn't hear her. “Bunker, it's me, Miranda! Come back!”

A door slammed. She glanced over her shoulder, saw her people taking the curve. Vandella was in
front. He would be. He'd want to keep an eye on her. He seemed to be stuck on the idea that she needed to be rescued, somehow, needed a man—him, in particular—to protect her. She had tried to tell him that she'd already faced the worst, that whatever else came at her in her life could never be as terrifying.

So far, he showed no sign of understanding.

Tikolo darted through the doorway that Bunker must have taken. The hallway on the other side was narrower than the main one. At the end of a short stretch it took an abrupt turn; she couldn't tell how long it was beyond that. Thick pipes ran along one wall, close to the floor and near the ceiling. Built into the other wall were a series of steel doors that looked like lockers of some kind.

She paused long enough to let out a bellow. “Bunker!”

No response came, just the ever more distant patter of running feet.

What was he chasing?
She had no clue, had not seen or heard anything, even the couple of times she had caught a faraway glimpse of him. Whatever it was had led them a dozen decks down so far. She hoped they could find their way back when the time came, but the farther they went, the less certain she was of that.

“Miranda!”

Vandella's face was flushed, sweat popping out on his brow and upper lip. “Is he down there?”

“He came this way. I can't hear anything now.”

The rest of the team caught up. Tikolo didn't mind the opportunity to catch her breath, but she doubted that Bunker was availing himself of the same.

“Come on,” she said urgently. Break time was over. “He's getting away from us.”

“Careful, though,” Eve Chandler said. “No telling what's back there.” She was tall, with shoulders as broad as those of any man. Her hair was blond and cropped short, her face pleasant and open, with lovely green eyes. She was a natural leader; Tikolo wasn't sure why the captain had given command of the team to her instead of to Chandler, since she would have made the opposite choice.

Cesar Ruiz and Jamal Greene, two men she hardly knew, filled out the small squad. Greene had a tight, compact build and always made her think of a coiled spring about to release, while Ruiz was huge, with thighs almost as big around as her waist, upper arms that strained the sleeves of his uniform, and a blunt face that seemed to be all forehead and chin. Everyone had phasers drawn, since they didn't know what Bunker was chasing, or what might lurk behind any doorway or unseen corner of this strange vessel.

“I keep thinking he'll run out of ship,” Tikolo said.

“It's a very substantial spacecraft,” Vandella said. “If that's your plan, we could be here a long time.”

“My plan, Stanley, is that he'll realize we're his friends and he'll come back.”

“He'd better do it soon,” Ruiz said. “Captain'll be getting worried about us.”

“I've tried to reach the captain on my communicator,” Tikolo said. “Bunker, too. No luck, though.”

“Nothing works in this place,” Greene said. “I hope the phasers still do, if we need 'em.”

Tikolo pointed hers, a type-2 with a pistol grip, at an empty stretch of wall, where the corridor turned a corner, and squeezed the trigger button. A bright beam burst from it and hit the wall, where it exploded in a shower of sparks and a cloud of dark smoke. A bitter aroma filled the air. “Works,” she said.

“You might have given us some warning, Miranda,” Vandella said.

“Figured you'd know when I pointed the sucker what I was gonna do.” She twitched her head toward the corner. “Come on, let's find Bunker and get out of here.”

“Best idea I've heard all day,” Greene said. “Let's do it.”

Tikolo led the group around the corner, and then the next one. The corridor was unbroken, except for those locker-like doors, and when she tried a few of those, they didn't open—locked or rusted shut, or both.

But when they reached the third corner, they found only a blank wall. They fanned out, checked it for gaps or some sort of release.

“It appears to be solid,” Vandella said.

“So it does,” Ruiz agreed.

“I guess he didn't go this way,” Tikolo said. “I was sure he did.”

“If the instruments worked . . .” Greene began.

“Yeah, but they don't. At least, not with any consistency.”

“Where to now, Tikolo?” Chandler asked.

Tikolo jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Back where we came from. See if we can find him some other way.”