Chapter 9:
Jean-Luc Picard shifted uncomfortably, standing outside of a sliding, crimson colored door, not much different than hundreds of others lining the corridors of the Enterprise. They were perfectly normal doors, and they were aboard his own ship, but there was an indefinable air of alieness to the place that didn't exist anywhere else on the ship – not even inside the dark, stone-walled Horta quarters. He hesitated, fidgeting, for almost a full minute, before finally and severely squashing the feeling, and pressed the door chime.
The door sprang open before he even had a chance to announce himself, and he was hit with a wave of warmth from within that was as much mental and spiritual as it was physical. But again, it was still inexolerably alien. "Come in, Jean-Luc, I've been expecting you."
Stepping forward to allow the door to slide shut behind him, Picard blinked while his eyes adjusted to the low light in the room. Veiled, almost silky material draped from the ceiling to the floor, creating barriers and patterns of shifting light and shadow that flitted across his vision. Brushing aside one of the thin curtains, he took a tentative step into the main room of the modest quarters.
Guinan looked up from where she was seated easily on one side of the couch, which she had placed directly facing the window. Her old quarters aboard the previous Enterprise had been located along the upper side of the ship's saucer, which created the appearance of a gently sloping skylight. On this ship, however, the rooms were located on one of the saucer's flanks, so the window was a tall, flat panel that covered a large part of one whole wall. A bright blue and white curve filled the lower half of that window at the moment, and thanks to the web of holographic imagers in the transparent aluminum pane, stars could still be brightly seen in the distance. Those same imagers prevented the window from reflecting back the dozens of candle flames that otherwise would have ruined the view.
Shifting a little, Guinan motioned towards the other half of the couch; on the low table in front of it, a steaming cup on a small ceramic saucer wafted an aroma that Picard immediately identified as Earl Grey. "Sit," she said in the same soft, even tone she'd greeted him with. As he did, he couldn't help but smile at her attire – even in her quarters, she was still wearing one of her trademark hats, this one a deep blue with a narrow base and tall, wide top.
He was at a loss, suddenly feeling uncomfortable again in the lagging silence. She hadn't requested his presence, and he hadn't called ahead to ask if it was a good time. He'd felt like he had to come anyway, knew even what it was he wanted to hear from her, but couldn't begin. Lifting the cup, he stared into the tea moodily.
"It's beautiful," she said at length, gazing out at the planet below. "It's much like our world once was." Before the Borg came, went unsaid, but hung in the air like some great unseen weight. There was another small eternity of silence before she spoke again. "You came to ask me about Q." Her tone was once again flat, even; not a question.
"I've meant to ever since this all started," he replied truthfully, setting down the teacup untouched. "Most of the times he makes an appearance, his intentions are transparent, even if they are malicious and irresponsible. This time is different somehow. He hasn't even made an appearance since we first left our dimension, and that boy has been nowhere to be found ever since we arrived here. It isn't like him."
"No, it isn't," she agreed. After a beat; "How do you define what is like him, Jean-Luc? Intellectually, you know how powerful he can be, but I think at the same time, you've forgotten."
One of Picard's eyebrows went up. "On the contrary, Guinan, this whole situation has made me more aware of it than ever."
"I don't think it has," she countered, her shaking head somehow not disturbing her unlikely headpiece in the least. "You know that he can do anything he wants to, but you are still trying to find a pattern to his behavior. You haven't considered that there is no pattern to follow."
"I refuse to accept that. The universe is wrapped up and constructed of patterns. Q is unfailingly obnoxious, arrogant, amoral, and convinced of his own inherent superiority. Those traits are patterns."
Guinan shook her head again. "Jean-Luc, you are trying to outsmart a being who knows your thoughts before you do. He is all of the things you ascribe to him, and much more." This time, a hint of repellence slipped into her otherwise level tone. "Which is why you cannot predict his actions. He will do what you least expect – and then do something else entirely when you stop to think about what it is that you are not expecting. He will always be one step ahead of you."
Picard frowned irritably. "I've bested him before, Guinan. He is not infallible."
"Of course he's fallible. But have you really beaten him at his own game? Think carefully."
"At the conference where I was giving a presentation about the ruins of Tagus III," Picard dredged up from memory almost immediately. "He created an elaborate duplication of Sherwood Forest, and I beat him at his own game."
"Did you really?" Guinan retorted almost immediately. "Why did he create that scenario?"
Picard squirmed imperceptibly. "He claimed he was returning a favor – by trying to prove a point about how I felt about Vash." He was a very private man, and wouldn't have confided even that much to many people, but gossip about that incident had floated around the ship for months despite his best efforts to lay the rumors to rest. It hadn't helped that some of them had been true. Guinan, he knew, was not one for groundless chatter, but the fact that she probably already knew made it easier to talk about.
"Did he succeed?" Guinan asked quietly.
That wasn't the question he'd been expecting, and it threw him for a moment. He started to deny it, but the memories were too clear in his mind, even now – though he wasn't fond about admitting that Q had been right. "Well, yes," he began, "but I really don't see what that has to do with anything."
"It has everything to do with this, Jean-Luc." She paused to make sure he was really listening. "Don't you see? It's in your voice even now. You didn't believe him for an instant – so, he made sure that he was telling the truth then, just to prove your first assumption wrong."
And not only that, a small, traitorous voice whispered in Picard's mind, but in the end, Vash went off with him, and not with you. He winced then, both at the truth in Guinan's words, and the internal betrayal of his own thoughts. Worse still, he knew that for at least the next few days, he'd be stewing over every encounter he'd ever had with Q, trying to prove her wrong at least once. "Point taken. But as interesting as that is," he said, forcibly dragging the conversation back in a direction he wanted to take, "it isn't really relevant to this instance."
"No, it isn't," she said smiling slightly. "It is worth being aware of, though."
"What I need to know now, is whether this is real, or another game of his."
"Can't it be both?" She sighed now, looking back out the window. "I can't tell you if he's merely testing you, or simply delighting in the chaos he's causing for his own amusement. But I can tell you this; the Q Continuum is not the only collection of beings on such a lofty plane of existence, so I can't reassure you that he's lying about the M Continuum. However, I can tell you that this is all real. That planet and those people down there, along with our new traveling companions, are very real. This is no Sherwood Forest."
Picard managed a wan smile at that. If anyone else had said such a thing with so much certainty, he might have dismissed it out of hand. But she had been the only one among his entire crew who recognized the shift in an entire timeline when they'd encountered the Enterprise-C, and he still could not begin to grasp her true abilities, or knowledge, which gave her words more weight in his mind. "Then I suppose you're right. It doesn't matter anymore why he's put us here, only that he has." When she didn't immediately reply, he absently picked up the cooling tea, and drained the cup in one gulp. He stood then, intending to return to the bridge, but she stopped him short by speaking again suddenly.
"Jean-Luc, there is no love lost between Q and myself… you know that. Even so, I think this time, there's more to it than just a test. Those people from Babylon 5; they're all very important for some reason, I don't pretend to know why. I doubt it's any accident."
Pausing at the doorway, Picard nodded thoughtfully. "Thank you, Guinan." As usual after a talk with her, he knew he had some serious thinking to do, and sighed at the thought. He had more information now than before, and a gut feeling was telling him that Guinan was right: there was something much larger going on here than was usually involved where Q was concerned. More unfortunately, that could be saying a great deal.
*****
"What do you think now, Henry?" Nate Caudell's voice was low, and it was the first time anyone had spoken since shortly after overtaking their quarry. The objects of their pursuit, four oddly dressed people who'd been ambling past field, stream, forest, and thicket, were now a distance ahead of them, lost to sight around another of the road's meandering turns. Now, just approaching the outskirts of Rocky Mount – marked by an increase in the concentration of small farmsteads and plowed fields at the roadside – Caudell was more sure than not that they'd been successful in remaining hidden from view, themselves. He hoped they had, at least, especially given the pains they'd taken to stay quiet and hidden while on horseback: no mean feat.
Henry Pleasants shrugged easily. "I don't know yet, Nate. They're suspicious characters, alright, I'll give you that. But they don't look much like Rivington men to me. I'm the first to admit I'm no expert on those bastards, though." Had it not been for Mollie's presence, he might have added a few more choice epitaphs to that comment. The only thing that perhaps mitigated his hatred of the Rivington men was the smug knowledge that it'd been he who'd been ultimately responsible for their defeat. He took a second futile glance through the trees with a pair of meticulously neat field glasses. "The men look like they might be military," he acceded. "Those canteens look army-issue."
"Canteens?" Caudell said, surprised. "They didn't have any canteens when they left with Dempsey." It was a minor concern, but it worried away at him along with the other oddities those people had demonstrated so far.
"You sure you ain't seein' things, Nate?" Ruffin Biggs commented, not a little grumpy. "I'm only here on account of you said it was more of them. I owe them a little payback," he said with a pointed glance at his left foot, short by several toes now, "but I think you're wrong, and damn me t'hell if I lie."
Caudell searched their faces, before turning a pleading look on his wife. "You know more about the Rivington men than anyone, Mollie. What do you think?" He forbore even hinting at how she'd gained that knowledge, preferring to bury those memories in the dark, unkinder recesses of his mind.
She looked oddly nervous to be suddenly at the center of attention, and looked away, at nothing in particular. "They don't look or sound like 'em," she said at length. At Caudell's betrayed expression, Mollie straightened self-righteously in her saddle. "Well hell Nate, what'd you expect me to say? They don't look like 'em, and they don't have those peculiar accents. But I think we should follow these folk anyway, because there's something uncanny about 'em, all right."
He didn't look entirely soothed, but Henry Pleasants saved him the trouble of replying to that.
"She's right about that much, by God." He paused to take a swig from the canteen at his hip. "On one hand, I don't much care for spying on people for a few oddities. Almost seems indecent, like we're trading in their freedom so we can feel a little bit safer. On the other hand," he allowed, "if these people are really what you think they are, Nate, then we've got to make sure they don't get anywhere near Richmond. They tried for the President once, and they could be making another go of it."
"So what do we do?" Biggs asked into the thoughtful quiet that followed.
None of them suggested simply walking up and asking outright. If Caudell was wrong, they would simply look foolish – but if he was right, the consequences could be quick and fatal. The newspapers had been full of stories about the attempted assassination of President Lee at his inauguration, and while none of them had been clear on just what kind of weapon an "Oozie" was, they did know enough to not want to end up at the wrong end of one.
At that moment, they rounded a bend in the road, and Caudell pointed out their quarry, now walking around the corner of a building on the town's outskirts.
Pleasants quirked his lips when he saw the direction they were headed, and finally gave an answer to Biggs' question. "Now, I think we check to make sure that we all have enough money for train fare."
"Something bothering you, Mr. Garibaldi?"
Michael Garibaldi turned his head back to a front facing, just in time to avoid a collision with Marcus. "Huh?"
Sheridan gave him a concerned look. "You've been practically walking backwards for the past couple of miles. Any reason for that you'd care to share with the rest of us?"
Ignoring the light, amused tone, Garibaldi directed a scowl at the road behind them. "I think we're being followed. It started a little while ago. I heard hoof-beats, maybe some voices from back there."
"Why didn't you say so?" Crusher asked, brushing damp strands of hair out of her eyes. Though they could hear the bustle of a town somewhere ahead of them, the road was empty at the moment, and she withdrew her tricorder from the depths of her handbag.
While she turned on the small whistling scanner, Marcus's brow furrowed. "Followed? Don't you think that's being just a touch melodramatic?" He had to get the words out between gasps, breathing having become much more difficult over the past hours for everyone except Garibaldi. He was perspiring openly, having abandoned his dirty, soaked, handkerchief after wiping his face with it approximately nine thousand, seven hundred and forty-three times, more or less. Eventually he'd realized that he was just smearing the noxious mix of dust and sweat more evenly across his face, and gave it up as a lost cause.
"They're probably just going the same way we are," Sheridan allowed, clearly doubting his own words.
"There are four of them," Crusher noted, squinting at the tiny readout in her palm. "Three men and a woman, all mounted on horseback, about eighty meters behind us."
There had been a small amount of traffic moving in the direction they were coming from, but that was infrequent, and without exception, either mounted or at least in some kind of horse-drawn conveyance. It had been long a time since Sheridan had been on Earth, and an even longer time since he had ridden a horse on his parents' farm, but he remembered enough to know that riders traveling in their direction, even at a walk, should have long since passed them.
Garibaldi shoved his hands in his deep pockets, shook his head bemusedly, seeming to pluck the thought right out of the air. "Like I said, we're being followed."
"Obviously we were less discreet than we should have been," Sheridan said.
Crusher looked more concerned than he sounded, but it was Marcus who spoke, after mulling it over. "Would you like me to hang back, spring a little surprise on them? At least keep them busy long enough for you to escape while I bravely sacrifice myself for the good of the mission?"
"Marcus…" Sheridan began warningly. The Ranger's twisted sense of humor usually picked the most inopportune moments to manifest itself.
Glancing between the captain and the wide-eyed doctor, he shrugged. "It's not a problem, really. After our little run-in with King Arthur, I've gotten quite fond of the whole 'for God and Country' attitude. It's an invigorating feeling, actually."
"Marcus," Sheridan repeated, more sternly this time, "I appreciate the offer, really, but somehow I don't think that'd be the wisest move right now."
"On the other hand, if you really insist, I'd be more than happy to sacrifice you for the sake of the mission," Garibaldi quipped, earning a glare from both Sheridan and Marcus.
At that moment, several people appeared at the curve of the road in front of them, where the only sign of the town of Rocky Mount was a gradual increase in the number of structures, and a noticeable smoothing of the road under their feet. Crusher carefully buried her tricorder back at the bottom of her handbag, and handed her canteen to Garibaldi, who already had both his and Marcus's slung about his neck. It wouldn't do to stroll into town bearing such an unladylike accoutrement. They'd clearly drawn too much attention to themselves already.
Sheridan doffed his hat politely to the first group of homespun-clad townsfolk they passed, who returned the favor without seeming inclined to start a conversation. That suited Sheridan fine.
Somewhere close by, a loud, wailing whistle rang out sharply, then again, and several more times in succession. Glancing down at a tug on his sleeve, Sheridan caught Crusher's murmured, "At least we won't have to ask for directions," as she waved toward the sound with her free hand.
They stumbled upon the railroad station more by chance than design, coming upon the shabby, weather-beaten building as they turned a street corner, with Garibaldi still glancing over his shoulder for their unseen pursuers every few steps. Beyond the ramshackle building, the tracks were straddled by a groaning, wheezing mass of coal-black iron – a battered locomotive. At some distance behind it, a line of passenger cars were being manually hauled into position to be latched on by a team of shouting, swearing workers. Whether or not they were slaves, Sheridan couldn't tell – all were evenly coated in a thick oily grime of sweat and soot, which made their natural skin color nearly impossible to distinguish at a distance.
Garibaldi raised an eyebrow, and sidestepping a few feet, got a glance between the passenger cars and the engine of the muddy brown Tar River, and the wood and brick buildings running right up to the banks on the opposite shore. A flag flew over the courthouse there, but unlike the striped one at Nashville, this one was a much more recognizable Stainless Banner; a Confederate battle flag situated at the top left corner of a field of white.
Sheridan meanwhile climbed the creaking wooden steps to the splintered platform, and glanced about, searching for something resembling a ticket counter. A squeal of the wood behind him told him that Beverly Crusher was just as curious as he was – and just as determined to be at the fore of their mission. What he found was a booth, also made of wood grayed by age and the elements, occupied by a wrinkled, gap-toothed old-timer. The line in front of it was short, but also apparently slower than it appeared. With a resigned sigh, he took his place at the end, behind a nervous little man in a frock coat.
Watching as the heavily muscled workers coupled the passenger cars to the coal tender behind the locomotive, Garibaldi had forgotten their situation for a curious moment, and was only reminded of it when Marcus suddenly elbowed him in the ribs.
"What?" He grumbled at the Ranger without looking.
Marcus tossed his head, gesturing over his shoulder with his chin. "Don't look now, Mr. Garibaldi, but we've got company."
There was time, perhaps during the height of the Roman Empire, for a period lasting no more than ten minutes, when the words, 'don't look now' were actually spoken literally. Garibaldi, of course, immediately spun on his heel, catching two people in his gaze. Both were a few inches shorter than himself, but nearly everyone seemed to be. The older-looking bearded man was stocky and thick-set, with a short, limping gait, while his companion was dressed in a set of clothes that must have seen better days. The pants were a light grey in the places that weren't hastily patched up, while the tunic was a butternut color with two distinctive upside-down chevron stripes on the sleeves. Unfortunately, he couldn't see much of that person's face, courtesy of the battered forage cap yanked down with the brim pulled low.
That's a uniform! Garibaldi realized with some alarm. Given the state of it, he didn't think that person was active military, but in this situation, it wouldn't pay to be wrong. These people would bear watching, but dismounted, he had only his own suspicions to tell him that these two had been among the four following them on the road.
As if they sensed him thinking about them, they both glanced his way briefly, their pace faltering slightly before they went on, climbing the platform steps.
"Let me guess," Marcus said at his absolute drollest, "you don't like this."
"Damn right," Garibaldi returned sharply.
"Are they with the group following us back on the road?" the Ranger asked, voicing Garibaldi's still-strong suspicion. "This doesn't bode terribly well for us if we've been spotted already, you know."
Garibaldi snorted. "Tell me about it. Can't say I look forward to riding this monstrosity," – he jerked a thumb at the wheezing train engine behind them – "to the next town. We should have walked straight there from the first town we passed through."
Marcus groaned. "Mr. Garibaldi, you may enjoy marching thirty-five kilometers in a day on a chokingly dusty road in the most awful heat imaginable, but just how much use do you think we'd be to anyone by then?"
"Maybe," Garibaldi allowed grudgingly. "But when we decided to go through this, we didn't know what to expect. Now that we do, I was thinking; shouldn't our plan be changing to match what we're seeing? I don't like that transporter of theirs much, but it would save a hell of a lot of time, and God only knows what's going on back home while we're out here playing historian." He grunted softly, still keeping a wary eye on the two men who'd gotten on to the ticket line behind Sheridan and Crusher. "Ask me, we should find a quiet spot, bounce over to whatever dump of a town we're supposed to be going to, find the bad guys, and beat some heads."
Brushing some of the dust from his originally foppish clothing, Marcus frowned distastefully. "As appealing as that sounds right now, we don't even know that there are any 'bad guys.' Besides, you have to admit that this is at least a little fun." He quailed at the dark look Garibaldi shot him. "Or not," he corrected. "Where's your sense of adventure? It's not every day that we get to go back in time."
If anything, Garibaldi's expression turned even grimmer. "I think I could do with less time-traveling, myself. If I'd known the price of a little help from our local alternate universe was to get tossed around in time and space like a Centauri ducat at the gaming tables…" He left the sentence hanging there, but Marcus could sense more lurking behind the words.
"You seemed perfectly happy with our friends here after they'd finished putting you back together," he observed.
"Yeah, well that was before we got dragged along for the ride." He stopped, and it was a few minutes before he spoke again. But when he did, it was on another matter entirely. "You know what the worst thing is, though?" The question sounded rhetorical, so Marcus let it pass. "On the White Star, now that they've finally installed some private quarters, they were nice enough to put kitchens in them – only there's no ingredients for anything but flarn. On the Enterprise, I can literally get my hands on anything edible I want; only they're so used to getting their food from machines, that they've got no galley and no kitchens in those giant quarters." He shook his head wondering at the irony of it all – the facilities and the ingredients, but no easy way to put them together into a homemade batch of Bagna Cauda.
"Fate's a cruel old bitch, Marcus, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," he sighed.
"Garibaldi?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you trying to make up for not having Susan down here with us? I haven't been this depressed in hours."
Henry Pleasants chewed his lower lip in concentration and looked thoughtfully past his companions to where the sun was drifting lower in the sky, lengthening shadows casting bars of light and dark across the nearly empty street. Most people in town were headed in for supper, although on the farms it would be hours yet before it grew dark enough to call it a day's work.
"Are you absolutely sure about what you heard?" he asked again.
Ruffin Biggs bobbed his head enthusiastically, while a wide-eyed Mollie Caudell said, "I wasn't standing but an arm's length behind! I heard them clear as day when they asked for four tickets to Rivington."
"Paid for 'em in gold too, Henry," Biggs added a heartbeat later.
"Yes, they do seem to have a lot of that, don't they?" Pleasants mused, only half in amusement. "Wouldn't surprise me if they paid Dempsey well for his services, and he just happened to forget to tell us about it."
Nate Caudell snorted wryly, and grinned. "We'll just have to ask about that on the way home, seein' as I'm the one who told him to give them a ride. I think I should get a piece of that."
"We do know more than we did when we got into town," Pleasants said, steering the topic of conversation back to the matter at hand.
"Right," Caudell agreed. "There's four of them, and they're all going straight to Rivington on the Wilmington and Weldon, here," – Pleasants punctuated that with a derisive grunt, still not having forgiven them from firing him because of his lenient stance with the black workers under his charge – "and we know that other differences aside, they act odd, spend gold like Rivington men, and they're all as big as Rivington men."
"One other thing, Nate," Pleasants added, drawing a curious look from his friend. "We know that there's at least four of them. Remember the canteens? Somewhere along the walk here, they picked up four army canteens, but there's no other stores but Lile's between here and Nashville, and they didn't loot those from any farmer."
Mollie's eyes widened again. "Damnation, Henry, you think there were more of 'em on the road we didn't see?"
"I don't know. It's a moot point now, though," he replied, shrugging. Implicit was, No one shot us in the back as we rode past, did they? "How long until the train leaves?"
"Ten minutes, by their schedule," she told him, suddenly triply glad that she'd finally got the knack of reading. Ruffin Biggs, like many of the men in their county, was illiterate.
"Good, that gives us at least twenty minutes," Pleasants said, earning some knowing laughs. He looked at the sign on the building whose porch they were standing beneath, and which they'd purposely chosen as their rendezvous point after Mollie and Biggs had scouted out the train station. Unlike every other building in town, a string of copper wires ran outwards from the rooftop, along a series of tall wooden posts that quickly disappeared through a purpose-cut lane in the trees at the edge of town. "Nate, Mollie, you wait here. Ruffin, make yourself useful, and get back to the train station, keep an eye on our suspects. I'll be right back."
Biggs grumbled, but stumped off in the direction of the station. Pleasants took himself into the building's main room, where gas lamps were being lit by one of the workers. Grabbing a piece of stylus and a sheet of paper, he wrote out a brief message, then paid the telegrapher, and sat back to wait. It didn't take long before the man came out of the back room, staring warily at the words "War Department" printed at the header.
Coming back out into the fading but still-bright daylight, Pleasants read the tersely worded message, and cursed softly.
"What is it, Henry?" Caudell didn't know who it was his friend was sending telegrams to, but he knew that look and dreaded it.
Pleasants crumpled the message, wincing. "It seems we've been drafted. Welcome back to the army."
"Drafted?" Mollie's voice was confused and plaintive. "Can they do that?"
"I don't rightly know. I don't think so," Pleasants said grimly. "But are you really going to tell General Forrest, 'no,' to his face?"