Amaurot

Chapter 9: Convergence

"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present."

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton

The House in Jericho, Oxford, 2002

In a frenzy of rapid motion, Cassandra shot the bolts, slammed the chain on the door, fumbled the keys out of her pocket and locked it, ignoring the heavy knocking from the other side.  She swung round to look at Anastasia, who was leaning against the side of the hall, eyes wide and dazed.

"Well, I think we just found out who they are. Told you he was from the government."

"I recognised him. From before. Oh gods, I'm remembering..."

"Locutus, right? Bad sign. Nobody who calls themselves after a Latin verb is gonna be a nice fluffy person."

"So what do we do now?"

"You're asking me? I don't do planning sort of stuff! I follow you around and make bad jokes! I'm not supposed to come up with plans!"

"Cass, please..." Desperate sea-green eyes, full of confusion and pain.

"All right. I'll come up with a plan. We, er, we... we nip out the back and run like cowards?"

*******

Picard pounded on the door again, getting no response beyond a series of sharp clicks and thuds. He swung round, looking to the other members of the away team.

"They've locked the door."

Troi climbed the steps to stand beside him. "Captain, I couldn't read her."

Picard shot a questioning look across. If Deanna couldn't read her, that meant she was already Borg. Nevertheless... "She seemed perfectly human to me."

"I don't think she's connected to the Collective yet. She's still operating as an individual, with human memories."

Crusher moved up to join them. "But she called the Captain..." she trailed off, not wanting to use that name.

Troi dropped her gaze to the floor. "I think the memory blocks are starting to weaken. She's accessing some Borg memories along with her human ones."

Picard turned back to the door. "Then we don't have long before the Collective accesses them too."

*******

They ran through into the kitchen, another burst of pounding on the door following them, then out of the back door and into the garden.

"So which way now?"

Cassandra stood in the middle of the lawn. Go out of the back gate and left, and come out of an alley barely twenty yards from the front gate. And get spotted. Turn right, and walk down past the back of the terrace, and come out of a side street eight houses down. And get spotted. But have a better running start.

"We go right."

*******

Picard turned away from the door in frustration. "They're not replying."

Troi's eyes went wide. "Captain, I can still sense the other mind, the girl. She's terrified of you, and fiercely loyal to Dr Glass. I think she wants to protect her from you."

Crusher moved over, glancing up at the house's windows. "So what is she going to do? Lock herself in and wait for us to go?"

Picard's face tightened. "Then the Borg will get to Glass first. We need to make them listen to us somehow. We need to make them see we're not the enemy."

"We can't make them listen if they're determined not to," said Crusher.

"No, we can't." Picard glared at the locked door, as if hoping to make it open by force of will.

Troi stepped off the front steps, back on to the pavement, and glanced around. "Captain, the girl didn't strike me as the kind of person who'd be happy to be besieged. I sensed too much impulsiveness from her, too much nervous energy."

"Then, Counselor...?"

"I think they're going to make a run for it."

*******

Cassandra peered cautiously round the edge of the last house, then looked back up to Anastasia. "Scary Bloke's arguing with the ginger woman. The psychologist type's looking lost. I don't think they're going to spot us."

Anastasia frowned slightly. "The psychologist type?"

"Yeah. She's got that trying-a-bit-too-hard-to-look-approachable kind of dress sense. Like the people at the University Counselling Service do. That means either psychologist or social worker, and if I was a scary government bloke with a dodgy Latin codename looking for an escaped experiment, I wouldn't bring a social worker along."

"You're sure he's from the government?"

"Military, I'd guess. Maybe MI5 or summat. C'mon - if we move quietly we can be up Clarendon Street like a ferret up a trouser leg before they even spot us."

"You have such a way with analogies," murmured Anastasia.

"It's my Yorkshire roots showing. Right - on three, we go."

*******

"They'll run for it?" Picard asked.

 "Yes - there'll be a back gate. They'll try and lose us in the city centre, probably...." Troi trailed off, her ivory brow furrowing in puzzlement. "They're..."

She was staring with an air of bewildered yet furious concentration just past Picard's left shoulder. He swung round, Crusher following his stare, in time to see the two women dash out from a side street into the road.

******

"Oh bugger. They've spotted us."

Cassandra glanced sideways at her friend, who was frozen in place, eyes locked yet again on the bald man's. She reached out, grabbing Anastasia's wrist, oblivious to the feel of sharp metal underneath the leather sleeve.

"C'mon. You've stayed together so far, don't lose it now."

"Locutus... " she muttered. "Your archaic cultures are authority-driven..."

"Snap out of it!" Cass yelled. The other three were walking up the street towards them, with the cautious air of those approaching a wounded animal, trying slightly too hard to look unthreatening, to avoid making any sudden movements.

Anastasia's eyes were focused on nothing, staring blankly ahead. "We will now proceed to Sector 001, where we will begin assimilation of your culture and-"

"Anastasia!" In a fit of wild desperation, she stamped hard on the older woman's foot.

Anastasia swung round, wild hair flying, eyes suddenly alert again. "Ow! What did you do that-"

"Here's where we leg it!"

*******

Glass turned to face them, suddenly alive,  poised and ready for flight. Picard raised his hands. "I mean you no harm-"

"I've heard that before," growled the red-haired girl. Glass tapped her on the shoulder.

"O.U.P.," she said enigmatically, with the faintest hint of a nod. "Let's go."

The girl drew a ragged breath. "Gotcha."

And then they were running, across the road and up the next street, Glass in a swirl of black leather and hair, the other woman's heavy metal-plated boots hammering on the asphalt. Picard hesitated for a too-long moment of surprise, as Troi and Crusher moved up beside him.

"So what now?" Crusher asked.

"We try not to lose them." He broke into a run.

*******

They ran up the street, Anastasia veering left towards the yellowish stone wall of the University Press.

"The gate's up this way!" shouted Cass, pointing ahead as her companion pulled away.

"Forget the gate, this is urgent!" Anastasia halted beneath the high wall, lacing her leather-clad fingers together. "C'mon - you'll need a leg up."

"You can't get me over that!"

"It's only eight feet. Trust me. C'mon, or they'll catch up."

Cass, against her better judgement, planted one boot into Anastasia's hands and reached up, nearly falling backwards with the shock of finding herself propelled upwards with astonishing force. She corrected herself in time to grab the top of the wall and swing herself over, dropping to the tarmac on the other side with a jarring and less than graceful impact. 

A few seconds later, Anastasia pulled herself up by her arms, then swung elegantly over the wall to land effortlessly, catlike, beside her.

"How the bloody hell did you-" Anastasia was a pretty good cricketer and a competent fencer, but she'd never shown any sign of that kind of raw physical strength, let alone that perfect gymnastic coordination. "Oh, wait, I see. The wonders of cybertech again?"

Anastasia grinned wildly. "Isn't technology great? C'mon - we can get into the town centre, lose them and then go for the all-purpose Plan B."

"You're back quickly," Cass observed. More than that - she seemed suddenly supercharged, her previous lassitude replaced by a febrile energy, eyes suddenly sparkling with a consumptive brilliance.

"Something is. At least part of it's me. Whatever it is, I think I like being it. Let's go."

*******

Picard came to a halt as he saw Glass swing herself fluidly over the wall. He'd never thought of Borg as a particularly agile species, but with enhanced strength, machine precision and no bulky exoskeleton, it was perfectly possible that a Borg-human hybrid might move with such perfect predatory grace. There was no way he could follow them over that wall, but then he didn't need to.

He pulled the tricorder from his overcoat pocket, checking the scanning program Geordi had set up. A green dot representing Glass' Borg energy signature moved slowly east across a map of Oxford.

"She's moving east," he said, for Crusher and Troi's benefit.

"Heading for the town centre," Troi agreed.

He consulted the map again. "Then we can head them off on... Walton Street. They'll need to leave these buildings there to get any further east."

*******

They left the Press' main gateway at a saunter, moving with careful if slightly too rapid nonchalance.

Cass glanced around, trying to hide her nervousness. "I think we've lost them."

"Don't relax yet. They've got a choice of two ways round to go. So either they're lost in the back end of Jericho or they'll be round that corner any second."

"So let's move out, then? Into town and towards Plan B?"

Anastasia nodded, as the man in the suit and his companions rounded the corner.

"What did I tell you?" said Anastasia happily, and then turned and ran. After a fraction of a second's cognitive dissonance, Cass ran after her.

*******

Picard slowed from a flat run to a fast walk as they rounded the corner, in a possibly futile attempt to look inconspicuous. Glass and her friend were standing halfway up the street, in front of an overly-impressive neoclassical building of yellow-grey stone.

The tall woman stared at them for a moment, smiled knowingly, said something quietly to her friend, and then ran. The girl stared at them in bewilderment for a moment longer, then essayed a rapid double-take and took off after her friend.

Of all the things he'd considered going wrong with the mission, the idea that Glass might simply refuse to listen never even crossed his mind. Culture shock, he supposed grimly - the mindset of the twenty-first century was more different from that of the twenty-fourth than he'd imagined. He'd underestimated the undercurrent of paranoia and mistrust of authority figures that ran through this unstable period, in between the Second and Third World Wars.

They were running out of time, and there were worse things than looking conspicuous. Picard broke into a run.

*******

Anastasia leapt off the pavement, threading precisely through a gap in the traffic to reach the other side of the street. Cass followed, slightly behind, accelerating to catch up and to take advantage of the gaps she'd found. They charged onwards, past the curry house and the charity shop, and rounded the corner.

Cass risked a glance back, noticing their pursuers held back on the other side of the road by the traffic.

"We're losing them!"

"Yes, but let's not get complacent! Keep running!"

They hurtled up the street, past the Applied Mathematics department, scattering bewildered undergraduates.

"Where next?"

"Past the churchyard! Over towards the centre!"

Cass glanced back again - the other three had made it through the traffic and were now running up the street towards them.

"They're after us again! We've got to lose them!"

"That's the plan!"

Anastasia was making plans again. Good sign. Still slightly light-headed after the second shift in the power balance of their friendship in the past fifteen minutes, Cass followed Anastasia across the road, weaving smoothly through the traffic after her.

They slowed to a fast walk as they crossed the churchyard that sat in the Y-shaped junction where the two roads into North Oxford merged. Cass was aware that she was overheating and breathing hard - she was far too out of shape, had spent the past few weeks behind a computer barely remembering to eat and sleep. Anastasia had the air of someone who could keep doing this all day if she had to. Obviously the whole cyborg metabolism was far more efficient than the standard human one.

They passed the War Memorial and Anastasia plunged off into the traffic again, ignoring the pedestrian crossing bare yards away. Cass ran after her, barely avoiding the front wheels of the Cowley bus.

"Why the bloody hell did you do that? You could of got killed!"

"They're in the churchyard. Now. We need to lose them fast. Have you still got my keys?"

Cass trawled through the pockets of her faded black combats, wasting precious seconds before she came up with a bunch of keys on an Amnesty International keyring. "Here."

"Great." Anastasia took the keys, then ducked rapidly behind the bus shelter and up a flight of concrete steps.

Cass looked over to the churchyard, noticing their pursuers half-running across the pedestrian crossing. She followed her friend up the steps, finding her fiddling with one of the keys in the lock of a white-painted wooden door. "They're crossing the road! I think they saw me come up here!"

"Don't worry, they won't be able to follow us through here." Anastasia grinned knowingly, as the key clicked in the lock and the door swung open, letting them through into a small concrete courtyard lined with covered bike racks, glass doors in one side revealing a dingy reception area with shelves of pigeonholes and noticeboards covered with timetables, and a narrow passageway between two tall, ugly buildings leading off on the side opposite them.

"Where's this?"

"The Maths Institute's bike sheds. We can cut through to the Parks through here, and lose them that way."

A thump sounded from the door, and was followed by a short, angry burst of rattling. "And Scary Bloke's just found out it's locked. We'd better move before he thinks of heading for the Parks."

They ran up the passageway, delayed for a few seconds as they waited for the automatic gate at the other end to swing slowly open, then ran off across the back street. A flicker of something dark flapping in the distance caught Cass' eye.

"I don't bloody believe it! They went round and found the back street!"

Anastasia turned, pushing her long hair out of her face, in order to see their pursuers running towards them down the narrow back street at the back of the Maths Institute. "So they did. Let's run some more, I have another plan."

The tall woman took off again, in that smooth cheetah-like lope of hers, with Cass tagging at her heels. 

"Dr Glass! Please understand, we simply want to talk to you!" the bald man called after them.

"Don't believe him! There's an unspoken sort of 'after we shove some truth drugs in you and tie you to a chair with a bright light in your face' on the end of that sentence!"

"I don't! Less panicking, more running!"

The sound of running footsteps behind them began again, pushing Cass into a renewed burst of speed. At the end of the street, Anastasia turned left down a narrow alley, vaulting smoothly over the chicane designed to stop cyclists. They ran along the cobbled alley, between the high wall of pale stone and the backs of the tall Georgian houses.

"This'll take us back the way we came!"

"Trust me, there's a clever bit!"

They burst out into a small courtyard dominated by a gnarled old tree, the pale stone wall on two sides and a small half-timbered pub wrapped round the other two.

"The all-purpose Plan B? This is no time for-"

"No," Anastasia pointed at the tree. "This is the clever bit."

"What?"

"Follow me." Anastasia planted one foot in a hollow a few feet up the tree's trunk, grabbed a branch, scrambled up to a higher hole in the trunk, then to another of the lower branches, then to the top of the wall.

"You're mental!"

"Come on!"

The running footsteps were getting closer, so she hurled herself at the tree, mimicking Anastasia's ascent with markedly less grace. As their pursuers entered the courtyard, the pair dropped down on the far side of the wall, onto a damp and well-manicured lawn.

"How'd you work this one out?"

"This is Shaz's old college. I used this way in to crash the ball. If that doesn't lose them, nothing will. C'mon."

They crossed the college at a fast walk, Anastasia making the effort to slow to Cassandra's speed after the first quadrangle.

"Um, Anastasia?"

"Yes?"

"I've just had a really nasty thought. You know how they kept catching up with us? Well, suppose one of the implants is some kind of tracking device? Then we really can't lose them, ever."

"Possible. But no reason not to try. Let's just keep running for a bit longer."

They crossed the main quadrangle, and left through the main gate. Standing on the tree-lined street, Cass glanced around.

"Hey, I was wrong. We did... oh bugger, no. There they are."

The three pursuers emerged from around the kebab van, walking fast whilst glancing around curiously. The man had some kind of device, something flat and gleaming that looked like a PDA, which he was staring at, until the red-haired woman in the suit touched his shoulder and then indicated them.

"Oh bloody hell. Do we run again?"

"Might as well."

They fled down the street again, then turning the corner into the pedestrian precinct.

"Did you see that thing he'd got?"

"Yes. Looks like you were right."

"So now what?"

"I think we're going to have to talk to them, or possibly try beating them up. And try putting the all-purpose Plan B into action to get them off-guard."

"You sure?"

"Got a better idea?"

"Okay. Then where do we go for for the all-purpose Plan B?"

"The usual?"

"Suits me."

*******

The sky was turning a soft grey now, the sun hidden and a fine rain filling the air. They ran past the Sheldonian, the stone heads carved on the pillars between the railings staring blankly past them, then on into a crumbling side street lined with tall, narrow town houses painted in faded pastels. Here it seemed that Glass and her companion had vanished.

Picard slowed, reaching for the tricorder in his pocket. The green dot seemed to be further along the street and a little way to the south. Possibly she was in one of the houses, or had turned off down an alleyway.

Moving forwards, slowly and methodically, a narrow, cobbled alley opened before them, leading down a steep slope lined with eccentrically-shaped cottages painted strawberry pink to a small courtyard wrapped on three sides with black-and-white half-timbered buildings and filled with troughs of white  and near-black pansies.

Troi glanced down the alleyway. "She's down there." She pointed slightly to one side, apparently indicating the east side of the courtyard.

"In those buildings?"

"I'm not sure. She's still very frightened, but defiant. She feels cornered, but she trusts Dr Glass. I think they're ready to listen now."

"Then we'll talk."

He pocketed the tricorder and set off down the alley. Lace curtains hid the windows of the cottages, and bicycles stood against the walls. This place was an enclave of something older and oddly, charmingly melancholic within the twenty-first century city, still and almost eerie in the grey rainlight.

Just before the alley opened into the courtyard, a small passageway opened in the ice-pink wall, almost too low for Picard. On the other side, he caught glimpses of... trees, and fire, and people.

Troi came up beside him. "She's through there. Feeling a lot happier and more hopeful, for some reason."

He ducked into the passageway, and came out in an almost medieval scene. There was a courtyard, full of trees and wooden benches, with a brazier in the middle, here surrounded by the tall houses of Oxford, full of people drinking and talking. To the right, more black-and white buildings were draped across that side of the courtyard.

Crusher stepped out of the passageway on his left. "A pub. She led us all the way across Oxford to get to a pub?"

Troi smiled. "This was the plan. Glass' friend is feeling slightly triumphant, as if she's won a small victory. They did manage to get to the pub."

Crusher looked round the crowd in the courtyard, still shaking her head in slight disbelief. "So what now?"

Troi's smile widened slightly. "We go and look for her. I think the bar's through there." She indicated one of the half-timbered buildings.

"Then we look for her in there," Picard concluded. It did make an odd sort of sense. If she was going to confront them, better make it on home ground.

They crossed the courtyard, then entered the bar through a small black-painted doorway. Weaving their  way through the drunken patrons and low beams, they arrived at the bar. On the other side of the forest of brass and ceramic beer pulls, the tall, black-clad figure of Glass stood out amid the more mundane clientele.

"So that's a pint of Old Rosie's Scrumpy, a pint of Dark Island, a packet of salt'n'vinegar crisps and... what're you having?" She turned to direct a calculatedly bright smile at Picard.

*******

Geostationary Orbit, 2002

La Forge was starting to get anxious. It had been nearly an hour since the away team had beamed down. From the readings he was getting, their life signs were stable but heart rate was slightly elevated, signs of stress and physical exertion. It seemed like someone had been chasing them - maybe the locals had turned nasty. They hadn't tried to communicate with the shuttle, so presumably they hadn't had a chance to get out of the public view, but they were taking a long time. Maybe finding Glass wasn't as easy as they'f expected it to be.

Hugh stood a few feet away, organic eye flickering rapidly over an LCARS terminal. He'd stopped firing questions at La Forge after about half an hour, seeming to find his answers unsatisfactory. The young Borg had really been making an effort to understand his stumbling explanations of music, poetry, even cricket (although that had been a really tough one), but had obviously, on some level, not really got it. Geordi wished the captain had been around - if Hugh really wanted tutoring in the humanities, Picard was the person to ask.

"Hey, Hugh -"

The cyborg glanced up quickly, fixing him with that steady, aware gaze. "Yes, Geordi?"

"What are you reading?"

Hugh indicated the terminal with one white hand. "I'm trying to understand Anastasia Glass. I don't know enough about humans to understand some of the other things she's written, although they seem to be important to her. I'm reading her mathematical papers. I can understand them, and through them something about her."

La Forge looked up at his friend's pale, intent face. "Hugh, why is it so important to you that you understand her? It's not going to help them find her faster."

"I know. I find her... interesting." The Borg youth turned to La Forge, uncertainty showing briefly on his face. "I'm experiencing... curiosity about her. She is, in some ways, like me. She's slowly becoming an individualised Borg, experiencing something beyond anything she's known before. I want to know if I can help her through the transformation."

The uncertainty vanished, replaced by a sudden, deep surge of compassion and pain. "When my individuality infected my ship, I tried to help some of the other Borg adjust to it. In many cases, I didn't succeed. Some of them... they couldn't act without the hivemind guiding them. They didn't regenerate, and they... they starved to death. I tried to help them, but I couldn't save them all. When Lore came, some of the other Borg killed the ones who had no volition. I tried to stop them, but there were too many."

A long, shuddering breath, and Geordi thought for a terrible moment that his protege was going to be overcome by tears again. "Anastasia is coming to the transformation from the other side. She's an individual becoming Borg, not a Borg becoming individual. Still, I can help her. I have to help her. She's..."

Hugh met Geordi's eyes, seemingly desperate to make him understand. "She has an interesting mind. She thinks things the Collective would never be capable of. She understands about chaos, and she... she isn't afraid of it. It would be... a waste, a terrible waste for her to be assimilated, even if she didn't have this connection to the Machine. All the ideas she would never be able to have."

La Forge looked back at Hugh. That was more than compassion in his dark human eye. Everything he'd said about Glass seemed hauntingly familiar, the sort of thing he'd have said about Leah Brahms all those years ago. Yeah. Glass was intelligent, exotic, kind of striking if not classically good-looking, and vulnerable. Exactly the kind of person you'd expect a lonely, wounded, sensitive young man to fall for, all the while telling himself it was a purely intellectual admiration.

He really didn't know what to say, whether he should encourage his friend or try to talk him out of this. Who'd have thought that he'd end up trying to give brotherly advice to a lovestruck Borg? Hugh simply stood there, watching him with that calm yet intense stare, holographic eye shimmering golden-green, waiting for a response.

As it happened, he was spared the need to think of one, as an alert flashed up on the sensors panel. He glanced down. Incoming object, approaching too fast for a comet or meteor, heading... directly for Earth. Not good. He rapidly keyed in the commands for a refinement of the sensor sweep - mass, approximately 2.5 million metric tones, configuration...

Cubical.

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Hugh's face twist with a violent play of emotions - pain, fear, fury, a kind of ferocious protectiveness - and then settle into resolve.