The Folded World Read online

“She isn’t certain. But it is no accident, she says, that people die each time. Same with the rain. They’re trying to reduce our numbers, she says. Cut us down.”

  “Why, Gillayne?”

  “Why fill our heads with lies? They want to keep us stupid. Well, ignorant. So we won’t know how to fight back, she says. So we’ll keep selling them our crops and livestock for a pittance.”

  “Who? The cities?”

  “According to Margyan, even the cities are ruled by someone else.”

  Aleshia’s head was too cluttered with the things Gillayne was saying. It was as though her friend were giving her a hundred threads, all unspooled, and she couldn’t grasp the end of even one of them and follow it all the way. “But then, why kill us?”

  “They’re coming for us, she says. Won’t be long, now.”

  “How does she know all this? And why doesn’t anyone else?”

  “She says she knows because she watches and listens. As for why the rest don’t know—maybe they do. Maybe they just refuse to see—or to admit that they do know.”

  “And who is it who’s coming for us? Who rules the city-dwellers, according to her?”

  Gillayne swung a hand toward the sky. “Them! The ones who stay away.”

  “There is so much I don’t understand,” Aleshia said.

  “Talk to Margyan, then. She is friendlier than people say. She’s lonely.”

  “She looks so—”

  “What? Haggard? Worn out? If you had lived the life she has, why, you would look that way, too.”

  “I’ll go then,” Aleshia said. “To Margyan’s. I want to know the truth. I need to know it.”

  “You were always like that,” Gillayne said. “Even as a little girl.”

  “Well, I haven’t changed, then.” Aleshia looked at the rain, pattering against the ground, dissolving the carcasses of those caught out in it. When will it end? she wondered. She was hungry; she and Gillayne had been trapped under the metal roof for hours.

  She would wait a while longer. As long as it took.

  If Gillayne was right—or if Margyan was—then every hour underneath a roof of tin was, at least, one more hour of life. And those, it seemed, might be fewer all the time.

  • • •

  Kirk and Spock went to the briefing room. McCoy joined them there a couple of minutes later, and Kirk laid out the plan for him.

  “Jim—” McCoy said.

  “Bones, we’ve got to get to that ship, and there’s no other way to do it.”

  “It sounds like suicide, Jim.”

  “That’s why I’m going alone.”

  “The hell you are!”

  “The doctor is right, Captain,” Spock said. “You are the commander of this ship. You cannot go, alone or otherwise.”

  “I will not order anyone else to undertake a mission like this.”

  “Jim—”

  The doctor’s protestation was cut off by the door buzzer. “Come,” Kirk said.

  The door whooshed open and Perkins stepped inside quickly. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

  Kirk waved to the empty chairs around the table. “Have a seat.”

  The Federation diplomat shook his head. He was a walking bundle of nerves. He had a soft, round face, unlined and devoid of hair. His body was also soft and round, his clothes billowing like balloons mostly full of water. His eyes darted this way and that, as if watching for pursuers. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face. “You can speak freely in here,” Kirk assured him. “Our privacy is assured.”

  “Gonzales would kill me if he knew I was here.”

  “Nobody’s getting killed,” Kirk said. “Now, what did you want to see us about?”

  Perkins paced about the room as he spoke. “It’s what they won’t tell you,” he said.

  “Gonzales?”

  “Yes, and Minister Chan’ya. She knows, but I don’t know that the rest of her party does. It’s classified, you see. Very, very classified.”

  “Above my level?” Kirk asked.

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  “But you’re going to tell me anyway? You understand what the consequences of that could be.”

  “I do. But I also understand the possible consequences of not telling you. That’s not something I’m willing to do.”

  “All right, then,” Kirk said. “What is it we need to know?”

  “The McRaven’s mission,” Perkins said.

  “I admit I have wondered about that. It seemed to be headed toward Ixtolde.”

  “It is. Was, rather.”

  “To what end?” Spock asked.

  “Do you know the name Albert Tsien D’Asaro?”

  “It doesn’t ring any bells,” Kirk said.

  “An inventor,” Spock said. “From Rouen, France, on Earth.”

  “That’s right,” Perkins said, obviously surprised and impressed at Spock’s knowledge. “More recently of Muscatine, Iowa, in North America. He has worked on methods of increasing crop productivity that repair and enhance soil rather than leaching the nutrients from it. He is not well known, but he is highly respected in his field, and he has many friends on the Federation Council. He’s been appointed ambassador to Ixtolde.”

  “But Ixtolde’s Federation membership isn’t confirmed yet,” Kirk said.

  “Right again. That’s why his trip was so secret. While all the attention was focused on the Enterprise, he was going ahead of us, to get a head start learning the Ixtoldan language, their customs, the lay of the land, if you will. The idea was that when they were confirmed—which everyone believes is just a matter of time—he would be ahead of the game. And his particular scientific skills might help Ixtolde, since they’ve had issues with widespread famine there. The Council hoped he could help with that quickly, before another growing season passes.”

  “So if he doesn’t make it—”

  “If he doesn’t make it, the Federation will appoint a new ambassador. But the schedule will be thrown off, the growing season will come and go, and potentially thousands of Ixtoldans will die before we can get somebody else there with his background and knowledge. He was the right man for the job, and the urgency is extreme.”

  “Who knows about this?” Kirk asked.

  “Just Minister Chan’ya. She’s the one who set it up with the Ixtoldan government.”

  “But she’s been pushing us from the beginning to abandon the McRaven and hurry on to Ixtolde.”

  Perkins let out a sigh that seemed to bubble from deep within. “I can’t pretend that I understand the minister’s agenda. I suspect that what she puts first is Minister Chan’ya, and every other consideration comes in a distant second.”

  “Are you saying that she’s workin’ against the interests of her own people?” McCoy asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Perkins replied. He chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “I don’t always understand how her goals line up with theirs, that’s all. But there’s so much about Ixtolde that I don’t know—that none of us know. That’s part of why D’Asaro was going there ahead of us, and the entire reason for our trip. Minister Chan’ya’s actions might come into clearer focus after we know more about the place and its inhabitants. For now, I’m as much in the dark as you are. I just thought you needed to know that the ambassador is on that ship.”

  “I appreciate that, Mister Perkins,” Kirk said. “And I’ll do everything I can to get him safely off it.” If, he left unsaid, it’s not already too late. We can only hope to reach it in time.

  • • •

  When Perkins was gone, Kirk turned to the others. “Now do you agree that I have to go?”

  “It still could be somebody else, Jim,” Bones said. “It doesn’t have to be you.”

  “I disagree. My first responsibility is to the Federation, not just to the Enterprise. If the Council is concerned about potential famine on Ixtolde and has sent someone to help avert it, then I have to do whatever I can to make sure that he gets there.”

  “The ambassador
is probably dead,” Spock pointed out. “Those electrical impulses are faint and likely do not represent organic life-forms.”

  “But we don’t know that,” Kirk insisted. “We don’t know how the unknown nature of the fold affects what our instruments are picking up. And we won’t until we go there in person and find out.”

  “As the ship’s science officer,” Spock said, “I must point out this is a unique opportunity to study a phenomenon never before encountered. I must insist on accompanying any mission into the dimensional fold.”

  McCoy planted his palm against his forehead. “Well, if you’ve both gone nuts, I guess I gotta go over, too, just to keep an eye on you. There’s gotta be somebody sane along, to make sure you two survive the trip!”

  Kirk started to respond, but stopped himself before he got a word out. He gave his answer another moment’s thought. Finally, he said, “I guess that’s settled, then. The three of us, and a security team. All volunteers—nobody gets ordered onto a mission like this. I wouldn’t say it’s certain suicide . . . in fact, I wouldn’t say there’s anything the least bit certain about any of it. Except, perhaps, for uncertainty. That, I’m pretty sure, is the one thing we can count on.”

  Nine

  Miranda Tikolo was one of the first to volunteer when Captain Kirk announced the landing party. She wanted to get away—away from the ship, away from Paul O’Meara and Stanley Vandella and Ari Bevilaqua. Of the three, Bevilaqua was the least demanding, the most willing to let Tikolo be herself, without expecting her to devote all her time and energy to just one relationship. Bevilaqua was easy to be with, comfortable as old, broken-in shoes.

  But the petty officer wanted distance from her, too. She needed time to think, and space in which to do it. So she signed up for what the captain stressed would be a very dangerous mission. She made it down to the hangar deck with time to spare, moving awkwardly in the environmental suit they had been ordered to wear, and watched the engineering crew preparing two shuttles for service. She was engrossed in the preparations when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

  “Miranda,” Vandella said. Like her, he wore an environmental suit, and carried his helmet under his arm. “I am delighted to see that we’ll both be on this mission. It sounds like an exciting one, doesn’t it?”

  “You didn’t know I’d volunteered?”

  “How could I?”

  She didn’t say anything, but she noted that he had not actually answered her question. And the real answer was, there were any number of ways he could have known, including simply asking the captain or any of his staff, or checking the sign-up log, or speaking with someone who had been there when she’d agreed to the mission. The fact that he had dodged the question meant he would likely dodge her follow-up, which would have been, “Did you volunteer just because you knew I did?”

  But she didn’t ask it, because the doors opened and another group stepped into the hangar deck, including Captain Kirk, Commander Spock, and Doctor McCoy. “Oh, joyous,” Vandella said, sarcasm fairly dripping off the words.

  “What?” she started to ask. But then Paul O’Meara stepped out from behind Spock and McCoy. From his angle, Vandella had been able to see him first.

  “Oh,” she said.

  O’Meara strode up to them and stopped before Miranda, a smile pasted to his face that looked every bit artificial. “Miranda,” he said. “Stanley. What a surprise.”

  “Well, given what the captain said about the circumstances, I felt I could hardly decline. Apparently we all felt that way.”

  “Looks like,” O’Meara said.

  “If this is going to be a problem—” Tikolo began.

  “No problem,” O’Meara said. “The captain needs backup. That’s what we do.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Vandella added. “I know there’s some . . . rivalry, here . . . but we are professionals, after all. Whatever our feelings for you, they needn’t interfere with our duty.”

  “They’d better not,” Tikolo said. She wanted to trust him, to trust them both. But trust was hard to come by lately. She suspected it had to do with her trauma. Before that, she had been able to love and trust Eric Rockwell completely, and after, those feelings seemed like distant memories, like dreams that dissipated upon waking, no more easily grasped than a fistful of water.

  “All right,” she said, relenting. She didn’t like it—part of her reason for volunteering for the mission had been to be away from these two, to get a change of scenery, see some different faces. But they were right. They were professionals. Landing parties were a crucial part of the job.

  Before she had a chance to say anything more, the captain addressed the group and everybody fell silent. “Thank you for being here. I told you before you signed on that this would be a dangerous mission. I need to stress that. There’s a possibility that none of us will make it back here. Of course, I believe we will.

  “The Enterprise has been in tough places before. Some have given their lives for this ship, and we all knew what the risks were when we enlisted. That said, I’m looking at this as a rescue mission. We’ll be counting on you to keep yourselves and each other safe, and to do the same for anyone we find on the McRaven. We don’t know what we’re going to encounter when we get into what Mister Spock calls the ‘dimensional fold,’ but on the way over, he’ll explain what he has been able to deduce about it. And, as I told you up front, we’re not entirely sure how we’re going to be able to get back to the Enterprise. We have an idea—we just won’t know if it will work until we try it. You can still back out now if you want. I’ll understand completely if you do.”

  For a brief instant, the idea of taking the out the captain had offered flitted through Tikolo’s mind. Sending Vandella and O’Meara into the dimensional fold, whatever that was, would have the same effect as her going in without them. She would be away from them for a while, free of their constant pressure, able to think things through more clearly.

  But she couldn’t make a decision like that on such a purely personal basis. This was duty, and she owed Captain Kirk her loyalty and her service. She stayed put.

  So did the eleven other volunteers. She had expected no less.

  “I guess that’s settled, then,” Kirk said after a moment. “Helmets on. Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

  The away team secured their helmets, split into two groups, and boarded the shuttles. Tikolo joined the group getting into the second, forcing O’Meara and Vandella to ride in the first, without her. They would just have to fend for themselves; she wasn’t going to make it easy for them to get in the way of her alone-time.

  • • •

  Christine Chapel looked up from the computer screen, letting her gaze float toward the ceiling as she tried to wrap her thoughts around what she had learned. She sat that way for only a few moments, though; there was an obvious urgency to the information, and it had to be shared with Doctor McCoy as soon as possible. She only hoped she wasn’t too late. She punched the sickbay’s intercom controls and paged Doctor McCoy, but instead of his voice, Uhura reported back. “His shuttle has just left the hangar deck,” the voice said. “Do you want me to patch you through?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. Cutting the connection, she added, “Damn it all!”

  “What’s wrong?” Neola Aimenthe asked. She was a medical assistant who was helping Chapel in sickbay.

  “Oh, I was hoping to catch him before he boarded the shuttle. I don’t want to talk to him there—they’re so small, and there’s no privacy. People are entitled to have their medical records kept private.”

  “Of course,” Aimenthe said. She was small and dark, with eyes that might have appeared furtive in a less open face. As it was, they made her look lively, if a little unfocused. But she knew her medicine, and Chapel thought she’d make a fine ship’s doctor one of these days. “It’s about a patient?”

  “Miranda Tikolo,” Chapel said.

  “Oh, she’s nice. Troubled, though.”

>   “That’s not the half of it,” Chapel said. “What I just learned . . .”

  “What?”

  Chapel hesitated. Aimenthe was part of the medical team, just as much as she was. She hadn’t been around for as long as Chapel or Doctor McCoy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be trusted. “I’m not even sure Tikolo knows, herself. I doubt that she does, in fact.”

  “Knows what? You make it all sound so mysterious.”

  Chapel let out a sigh and tapped the top of the computer. “When she was just a year old, her parents divorced. Her mother remarried, fairly quickly, and her father—I suspect this was one of the issues that caused marital problems in the first place—had a psychotic break. Miranda was not quite three years old. She was home one night with her mother, her new stepfather, and her older stepbrothers and sister. Her biological father came to their home, enraged. He had a knife hidden in his coat. The stepfather opened the door, and Miranda’s father slashed his throat. He stepped over the man and into the house. His ex-wife charged but he buried the knife in her eye, straight to the brain. Then he started in on the kids.”

  “That’s awful!” Aimenthe said. She had her fist up in front of her mouth. “I mean, awful doesn’t begin to describe it, but—”

  “I know,” Chapel said. “I’m not sure there are words in our language, or any other. The stepsister grabbed little Miranda, who was just a toddler, and carried her into a bedroom. She hid her in a closet, behind some coats, and closed the door. When she got back into the main room, her brothers were both dead. She was next.”

  “And Miranda?”

  “I’m coming to that. A neighbor noticed three days later that he hadn’t seen anyone in the family, and he called the authorities. They discovered the bodies, and found Miranda in the closet. Her father confessed as soon as they approached him. He said he didn’t know where the toddler had been hidden, and he was afraid to spend any time looking. He would have killed her, too. Miranda had not budged from the closet for those three days, and she didn’t talk for seven weeks after that. But she didn’t seem to remember anything about what had happened, didn’t remember the murders, her father, anything. That night was a complete blank for her. As far as I can find out, she’s never been told. The records were sealed because she was so young. She was adopted soon after, by the Tikolo family, and they never even told her they weren’t her biological parents.”