TRADING SPACES
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Trip sat in the mess hall, his piece of pecan pie untouched in front of him. He poked at it with a fork, then poked the other side, just for symmetry. Somehow it didn't seem as appetizing as usual. He scraped the pecans off the top and piled them up one by one until the tower toppled over. He grunted and started over again.
"Commander, are you all right?"
His new tower bit the dust. "Travis! Don't sneak up on a man and his pecan pie!"
"Commander, have you ever seen the movie American Pie?" asked Travis.
"Travis, what in tarnation do you want?" He looked at the remains of his piece of pie and sighed, deciding that it was a lost cause.
The young helmsman snickered for a moment. "You seemed sort of down earlier," he said, breathing deeply and looking as if he were trying very hard not to grin.
"Well, Travis, how would you expect me to react, knowing my best friend is possessed by an alien from two thousand years in the past who just tried to electrocute himself?" Trip stopped himself when he saw the look on Travis' face. "Sorry, Ensign, I guess I am a little wound up. Want some pie?"
"Uh, no thanks." The ensign picked up the plate and tossed the remains into the recycler. "I think he thought his gods would save him or something. Take him back to his time."
"Maybe," said Trip.
"Why not just let him?" asked Travis. "I mean, he's obviously longing to get back there. Why can't we?"
"The captain and I talked about that right before we went. I never expected him to try anything like that though. Captain Archer says it's too risky to just try and set it off again. If it somehow switches minds then it's taking too much of a chance that he'll just go somewhere at random."
"Oh."
They sat in silence for a moment. "Have you been reading that journal of Malcolm's?" asked Travis. Trip shook his head. "Hoshi showed me some. He's confused. He can't decide if we're real or not. She hasn't translated the part with the alien writing yet, but she thinks he's turning into Tobin, or what he thinks is Tobin."
"Damn it all. I feel so helpless," Trip said, slamming the table with his fist so hard that Travis jumped.
"T'Pol said-" Travis swallowed hard. "T'Pol said that if we do manage to get him back he might not know us. He might think he's gone crazy again."
"Now where the hell does she get off psychoanalyzing us-" began Trip, but the sudden wail of the emergency alert cut him off. Both officers jumped up and ran headlong to the bridge, the ship's decks shaking beneath their feet.
Archer glanced their way with a worried look when they burst out of the turbolift. Travis, breathless, relieved Crewman Hart at the helm, and Trip joined T'Pol at the science station.
"What's going on, Captain?" asked Trip. The alarms shut off as suddenly as they'd begun.
"There's a ship firing on us," said Archer. "Or at least they were. They just stopped all of a sudden."
"They're hailing us," said Hoshi. Her eyebrows knitted, and she looked up at Archer with an amazed look.
"What is it?" he asked, tapping his foot impatiently on the deck plating.
"They're using the same language that Malco- that Tobin uses, only much more clearly and slightly different in structure."
"Put them through, then," said Archer. Trip knew him well enough to know that he really didn't care about the structure of their language. He simply wanted to talk to them.
"Captain Archer?" asked the alien. Trip glanced at Archer; the man matched Malcolm's description of Tobin's people exactly. Green skin, four fingers, brownish hair, everything fit. "My name is Gram Utla, Captain Archer, representative of the idun'yll of Lekai, formerly of Triry, the planet we are orbiting at the moment."
"Yes. How do you know my name?"
"We know much about you," he replied. "You are Captain Jonathon Archer, and your Vulcan's name is Subcommander T'Pol, and Hoshi Sato and Trip Tucker and Travis Mayweather..." The alien leaned forward into the viewscreen. "I must say, I did not really think you were real. I thought perhaps you were the fantasies of a madman. Yet here you are... sixty-four hundred eleven years, two months, and three days after the prophet Tobin Marat began his great writing, the Entreprisca. In our time, of course. I believe it's different in yours. There's a whole section of his mathematical calculations."
"The Entreprisca?" said Archer. Trip, himself a little shaken, watched as the captain's face went through about six different color changes. "You mean, we're a book written before we even existed?"
"Of course," replied the man. "The Northwind's teachings are the very foundation of our society. His knowledge is legendary, and now that his prophecies have been further vindicated he will be even more famous. He predicted the disaster that would force us to leave our planet and the home we would one day find."
Archer sat down heavily in his chair. Beside Trip, T'Pol raised an elegant eyebrow. Trip swore he could hear the words cultural contamination in his head.
"That, my good captain, is why we must insist that you turn over Tobin Marat at once," the alien said. "We cannot risk the good prophet going back in time with false prophecies."
"What?" cried Trip. "He's just a kid! What do you mean, go back with false prophecies? What are you going to do to him?"
"I don't believe you have any say in this, Mr. Tucker," replied the alien. "We will take him, whether you do it peacefully or not. Now, we know he is in another's body. Hand him over and we will not destroy your ship."
"That's one of my crewmen you're talking about!" said Archer, jumping up from his chair. "And we want him back, too!"
"I'm sorry, Captain," said the alien. "But we cannot allow chance to be taken with this. He must be handed over to us. The temporal chamber will close in another few days. Timing is essential. Cooperate or we will blow your ship apart."
"Hoshi, shut off the comm link," said Archer furiously. She tapped the keys and the screen went blank. "Trip, get Malcolm or Tobin or whoever the hell he is and get down to the surface. Travis, you take another shuttlepod and go down on a slightly different course. In fact, get two people in every pod and create a diversion."
"What should I do when I'm on the surface?" asked Trip, his heart hammering. He knew the answer, but he wanted to make sure.
"Get him to that chamber and electrocute him," said Archer bluntly. "We don't have time to make careful preparations. Whatever we do there'll be a prophet so I'm not worried about Tobin getting back."
"The problem is whether Malcolm gets back," said Trip, sparing Travis a desperate glance as they headed to the turbolift.
"Take Phlox with you," added Archer as the doors shut. "You might need him."
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"I was quite interested to see this planet," chattered Phlox. "T'Pol and Hoshi told me all about their adventure down in the caves, finding a two thousand year old book written by one of our own crew. Simply marvelous, that, can't believe it actually survived for that long-"
"Doctor," said Trip wearily, checking the readings on the shuttlepod controls, "please, can you let me concentrate for a moment?"
"Oh, certainly," replied the doctor. "I won't say another word."
Trip heard a muffled sigh of relief from Tobin, and would have laughed if the situation wasn't so urgent. Several smaller ships had detached themselves from the larger idun'yll vessel to come swooping after the shuttlepods. So far only one had tailed Trip; he'd managed to lose it in the heavy cloud cover.
"It's always raining," said Tobin mournfully. "It hardly ever rained before."
"Your descendants said something about a natural disaster. That might have caused it," replied Trip without thinking, then covered his mouth as he realized his mistake. Phlox peered out the front window.
"It appears rather like a large meteorite hit somewhere, a few centuries ago. The plant life has been able to regenerate, so it must have been some time ago," said the doctor. Trip swore.
"Doc! Shut up!" The shuttlepod rocked as he turned around to glare at the Denobulan. Tobin leaned back against the shuttle wall and gave Trip a long, smug stare, one that Malcolm made sometimes and always made Trip want to hit him.
"Where did it hit, Doctor?" asked Tobin. The doctor by now seemed to have learned his lesson, though, and clamped his mouth shut. Trip sighed and put the shuttle down. They were a few miles away from the temples in a rocky part of the mountains. He would have liked to set down closer, but he could see one of the other pods and a idun'yll ship chasing each other high above the entrance to the temples. It would be easier to sneak in on foot.
"Come on," said Trip shortly, having lost his patience with both Tobin and Phlox. He handed the doctor a phase pistol and stuck one in his own holster, hoping they wouldn't need them.
Tobin followed them, breathing hard as they scaled a steep hill. Trip knew perfectly well that the man still felt weak from his earlier bout with the cave, but he was still angry enough about the incident that he was not inclined to be forgiving. "Hurry up, Tobin," he called over his shoulder. Phlox, keeping up much better than Trip would have expected, trotted back down the slope to his patient and helped him up the hill.
Trip watched them, one eye glancing at the sky. Both the human and the idun'yll shuttles had disappeared, but he didn't want to take any chances. He saw a flicker of movement in the clouds and turned to look at it. Suddenly, down the hill, Phlox cried out, and before Trip could turn around, he felt a phase pistol jammed into his back.
"Tobin," he said. "What are you doing?"
He could feel the other man's breath on his cheek. "I will be a prophet to my people," said Tobin, voice low and dangerous. "I will know the faces of the gods. Turn around and start heading back to your machine."
Trip obeyed, turning slowly, and then when he felt the phase pistol slip a little on his back, he lunged backwards. They fell to the ground and Trip managed to get ahold of his own pistol. Tobin's arms were pinned, one behind him and one in between Trip and his own chest. He growled and struggled fiercely to get the bigger man off of him.
"Sorry, Malcolm," said Trip, and swung the phase pistol up and into Tobin's head as hard as he could. It didn't knock him out but Tobin stopped struggling just long enough to let Trip grab the other phase pistol and jump away. Shaking his head, Tobin launched himself at the commander, and this time Trip did manage to knock him cold with a punch so hard it hurt his hand. Unconscious, he could see no trace of Tobin twisting Malcolm's features. Trip shuddered.
"Are you all right?" said Phlox, staggering up the hill. "He took me by surprise, Commander. I do apologize." The doctor's head was bleeding, but he hadn't seemed to have noticed it.
"Don't worry about it," said Trip, still panting. He saw Phlox glance at Malcolm, and tossed the doctor the other pistol. "I guess we'd better head back to the shuttle and try flying in. He's not gonna be able to walk anywhere soon."
"Mr. Reed will have quite a headache when we get him back in his proper body," said the doctor, slinging one of Tobin's arms over his shoulder. Trip took the other one and they began a slow descent back to the shuttlepod.
"Stop right where you are," barked a voice from behind them when they
reached the bottom of the hill. A group of idun'yll, all heavily armed, stepped
out from behind the shuttle and aimed right for Trip and Phlox.
"Drop him now," said Gram Utla, walking towards the trio.
"What are you gonna do to him?" asked Trip. The idun'yll behind him swung its weapon in answer; Trip heard a dull crack somewhere along his shoulder and dropped to his knees, hissing in pain. Utla grabbed Malcolm's collar and jerked him away from the doctor.
"He's injured," said Phlox.
"Oh, don't worry," said Utla. "All we need is to wake him up and tell him the
prophecies. Our version of the prophecies." He delivered a vicious kick to the
body in his hand. "You see, our interpretation of our religion is a little
different. And if we can get the prophecy to say that our way is superior..."
His grin shook Trip down to the very pit of his stomach. "Well, now, then we'll
be the ones in power, instead of the wretched Doveheart. Long live the
Raven," said Gram Utla, and the others around him took up the cry. "Get
them tied up and see that they are well-guarded," he added, pointing to Phlox
and Trip. "We'll kill them all three together once we've gotten this one back
where he should be. I want them to watch their friend die."
"Leave him alone!" roared Trip as they picked up Malcolm and dragged him roughly towards their own shuttlepod. His only reply was another sharp blow to the shoulderblade, and he fell to the ground, doubled up in pain.
"Don't worry, Mr. Tucker," said Utla kindly from above him. "In a few hours you need not worry about him at all. You will all have gone to face our gods. May they be more merciful than your own."
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