Chapter 9 – What have we done?

That evening, Marty commanded, "Computer, pull up a book called, The Human Pioneers of Lafa II." He then hit his communicator. "I'd like to speak with Dana MacKenzie, on the Cookie. Visual, please."

"Connecting you now," replied the relayer.

"Hey!" Mack called out, once she saw it was him. "What's going on?"

Marty fought not to just blurt it out and tell her everything he had just learned about them. "I, uh, it's, um …."

"Confidential stuff, right?"

"Yeah."

"Are you still orbiting Kreetassa?"

"We are," he confirmed, "and I can get leave. I'd, um, I'd like for you to come here, Mystic."

"Oh?"

"It would mean everything to me."

"Then I'd better come, eh? The fifteenth, like we'd been talking a little about?"

"Sure, a week from now would be great. Tell me how your Kreesta practice is going."

"Ugh. I'm not even eating, but it's still pretty gross. I half-suspected that the Tellarites were just putting us on, but it looks like they really do play it. It's broadcast on the viewer. Our match will be, too."

"So I can see you playing?"

"You'll see me, personally, coaching, although I'm not so sure what I'll be doing on the day of the match. But yeah, I'll be there."

"Good. I can't wait to see you," he admitted.

"Yeah, I feel the same way. Straight Arrow, you've always been good to me. You've always been there for me."

"Well, of course I would be."

"I, no, so many people, they abandoned me. But you, you stuck it out." Her voice broke a tad."

"Mystic, what brought this on?"

"I dunno, perimenopause, probably. But I really do mean it. You've really been amazing, Marty."

He thumped his own chest once. "The Straight Arrow's gotta come through, y'know."

"This is more than that, and you know it."

He was quiet for about a minute. "I, uh, you know I wouldn't, um, I wouldn't be there for, for just anyone." Now it was his turn for his voice to break a little. They gazed into each other's eyes, across the light years.

She bit her lower lip. "I, I'm sorry. I guess it's the stress of this damned game coming up. That's mixed with seeing you for the first time in a good two decades, and it just gets me all, I dunno, introspective."

"Know thyself."

"I know you, too, Marty. I, um, I'm a little loopy, maybe. I'm just; I really wanna see you already. These few days are gonna take forever."

"You'll have the game, Black Sheep. The time will pass. I can guarantee that."

She glanced at the chronometer on her desktop unit. "Look, I'm gonna let you go, before I get even weirder. You, uh, we'll talk, okay?"

"Definitely. G'night."

"Good night, Straight Arrow."

The connection had been cut not thirty seconds when there was a communications chime, another visual coming in. "Mystic, uh …" he began, but it wasn't Mack on the other end of the line.

It was a younger woman, with brown hair and brown eyes, and a slight build. Tamsin Porter. "Hello, Martin!" she enthused. Then she caught herself. "Oh! Can I call you that? I hope I can call you that! Please say I can call you that."

"Uh, it's all right."

"Oh! Great! Well, your ship is here, and so is mine, and we were going to go on a date so I took the initiative – I hope you don't mind. Do you mind? Please say you don't mind."

"It's okay."

"Oh! Good! I took the initiative so that we could start planning. I mean, planning more, that is. I've already got tickets to the biggest and brightest and absolute best amusement park on Kreetassa so that we can go on the big roller coaster! This is going to be such fun! And then …."

"Uh, Tamsin? Tamsin?" Marty put his hands in the shape of a capital T. "Time out for a second."

"Oh! Yes, yes, of course!"

"I'm not a fan of amusement parks or roller coasters."

The very slightest trace of annoyance and disappointment crossed her brow, for a mere fraction of a second. If Marty had blinked, he would have missed it. "Amusement park? Did I say amusement park? I must have meant Klingon opera!"

"I'm, uh, I'm not a fan of that, either."

"Oh! Then Parrises Squares? Karaoke? Rock climbing?"

"Let's just, uh, let's just get dinner tomorrow."

"Of, of course. I should have known you'd be working hard, and you'd be tired. Dinner is great! Sushi! Let's get sushi! Or Mexican. Or Italian. Or deli. Really, we can get whatever you want, Martin."

It was a supreme effort of will for Marty to not roll his eyes at the, seemingly, thousand and one conclusions that Tamsin kept jumping to. "Sushi's fine," he replied, teeth clenched a bit.

"1700 hours?"

"That's kinda early," he pointed out.

"Oh! Well, I thought you would like early. Then early to bed, you know!"

Whether that crack meant that she thought he was such a geriatric that he desperately needed his rest – or that she wanted to start having sex with him as soon as possible – either explanation was far from satisfactory. "1900 hours, okay?" He fought to not be cross with her.

"We could make a night of it! We could go bar hopping! Or we could listen to live jazz! Or go to the Observatory! Or …."

"Let's just have dinner. I have responsibilities."

"Then I'll have to get you back early, back to your quarters! Then I'd tuck you in, and sing you a lullaby!"

"I thought I said no karaoke," he replied, deadpan.

She was mortified for a split second. "Oh, you are a funny man, Martin Madden! I can't wait! Tomorrow night's going to be epic! When will I go to the Enterprise?"

"Um, I'll come and get you on the Talos. See you then. Madden out." Before she could respond or even wish him a good night, he had cut the connection. He shook his head. "Computer, divert all calls from Tamsin Porter to voice mail, regardless of urgency level. Authorization Madden Delta 614."

Acknowledged

"Pull up book."

There is an audio option.

"That sounds interesting. Who's reading the book?"

The author.

"What's the author's name?"

Leonora Digiorno.

"What? Uh, wait a sec. Computer, list everyone in history with the surname Digiorno-Madden."

In order of birth – Thomas Digiorno-Madden, Neil Digiorno-Madden, Jennifer Leonora Digiorno-Madden, Martin Kevin Digiorno-Madden, Dino Digiorno-Madden and Phoebe Ryan Digiorno-Madden.

"Is the last one a married name?"

Affirmative

"No more?"

Affirmative

"Wait a second. I don't recall a Phoebe. Did Dino have more than one wife?"

Working

"I bet I've got even more cousins than I'd thought."

Affirmative. Dino Digiorno-Madden had two wives. The first was Phoebe Ryan. The second was Kirsten Morrow.

"Did both wives have children?"

Affirmative. But the surname for all of Dino Digiorno-Madden's offspring was Madden.

"So that's when and where we dropped the name. Uh, computer, begin the reading."

An older woman's voice, across the centuries, began to speak.

It began, not with a quest for religious freedom, or a grab for land, or a desire to create a utopian society or even on a lark, with people just looking for adventure and a change of scenery. No. It began with a kiss.

It was – let me go back – to the very beginning. It was December third, 2102. And a boy was born, to Jeremiah and Lena Beckett Hayes. They named him Douglas Jay. This was Ganymede. But it wasn't the Ganymede you and I know, for it was another universe, another side of a proverbial pond. The radiation band – unlike our twenty-one centimeters – it was twenty. And in a place where the odds were about three to one that you'd have a boy, a boy was born. And two days later, also on Ganymede, but on our side of the pond, a boy was born, to Jeremiah and Lena Beckett Hayes. They named him Jay Douglas. The boys were what we call counterparts. They were, physically, identical. But on the side with so many boys, there was a comparable spike of testosterone, and so things were skewed. And on our side, where literature and art and agriculture and peace are valued, on the other side, war and fighting and violence and exploitation – those things were valued instead.

=/\=

In his own quarters, Geordi worked on the radiation band detector. It was not a terribly complex bit of equipment; it was really just a wand with a wireless connection to his PADD. He waved it over himself. "Huh." He read off his PADD's small screen. "20.9999946. I wonder if this thing is working right."

=/\=

In her quarters, Mack fretted and even wept a little. "Why is this bothering me so much?" she asked no one. "What the hell is going on with me?" There was a message from Hobie. She stared at the header without opening it. "Not now," she muttered. "I can't handle this right now, dammit."

=/\=

In his own quarters, Picard stared out of the viewing portal. "Pandora's Box," he mused. "I wonder what else those admirals know of ionization diffusers and pulse shots and radiation bands. Could their actions have brought about this radiation band cycling in the first place?"

=/\=

A meeting was held, in person. Two women sat across from each other. One of them was Admiral Nechayev. It was her office. "Harriet," she began, "our operative reports that the ionization diffuser on Dana MacKenzie's ship has not been used in some time."

"Good," replied Harriet Caul, the head of Section 31. "Do you have a lot of data on the device?"

"Not as much as I would have liked. And, much like most crude models we've seen, it appears to run on ionizing radiation."

"Hence our problem."

"Precisely," concurred the admiral. "However, it's only a very small burst of ionizing radiation. Otherwise, it reflects chi spectrum radiation, and uses it for masking."

"We can use chi spectrum radiation for pulse shots," stated Caul. "So this device could be prototypical. We could have a cloak that isn't a true cloak, thereby still adhering to the letter, if not the spirit, of the Treaty of Algeron. Further, we'd be able to achieve a good, stable cloak without the kind of interphasing experienced by the Pegasus."

"Such is my understanding as well," the admiral confirmed.

"We'd have a means for accurately firing pulse shots, to go to, at least in theory, the Mirror Universe, and without an ion storm or a wormhole. We could go from anywhere, and at any time. We could also, perhaps, reverse a pulse shot and close off Mirror Universe access to our own."

"Possibly. That is a matter for scientists to determine. We'd have to be careful with that, though. Our allies, the Calafans, would not want their Mirror Universe access tampered with, not after they'd only won it back a little over two centuries ago."

"Yes," Caul agreed, "their Mirror Universe High Priestess, Yimar. Do we know if any sort of a modified pulse shot would be able to open a portal to some universe other than the mirror? The Calafans only seem to go to the twenty centimeter band, and to no other."

"I do not know," admitted Nechayev. "I imagine some form of adjustment and refinement would prove necessary."

"If we can get a handle on how to get into any universe, then we'd know how to keep the others out of ours."

Nechayev nodded. "That seems to be a most reasonable assumption. We will continue to monitor. If MacKenzie's engineer proves to be as adept and talented as we have been led to believe, then it would behoove us to bring him into our confidence and have him tackle the problem."

"One step at a time. If I am right, there are other devices that could prove just as, if not more, useful to us. The original inventor, that Gorn, what was his name again?"

"Szish."

"Szish, yes, that's right. Well, I suspect," Caul informed her, "that the entire vessel, and its many inventions, was being built for the eventual purpose of being able to move among various universes. Whether this Szish character thought he could smuggle to and from universes, or escape the law or otherwise hide, well, I can only speculate in that area. And, absent a séance, no one can ask him about it, anyway."

"Right."

"Keep doing what you have been doing. If they do come through, and even if their intentions are hostile, there is also the very real possibility that they would be all right with negotiating. Madden might turn out to be the right man for that job. He'd certainly have more in common with them than the rest of us would."

Nechayev got up. "That is an intriguing idea. I shall keep you informed."

Caul got up, too. "Madden seemed to take it all fairly well. Others might not be so sanguine. His cousin – can we trust a former convict?"

"We may have to, before this is over." Nechayev saw her guest out. Returning to her office, she commanded, "Computer dim lights to 85% illumination."

She sat down, and put her head in her hands. She was quiet for a while. "I could lay a wager that our behaviors precipitated this." She sighed. "There were our experiments with pulse shots. Our research into ionization diffusers – we did that, despite the fact that we signed a treaty, long ago, assuring that we would not do as much." There was a pause. "We have been busy, even as we pay almighty lip service to the idea of the anti-cloak technology treaty, the Treaty of Algeron." She shook her head.

Getting up, she looked out a viewing portal. To no one, she asked, "What have we done?