10. The Dreamer
On the screen of the bridge, warp stripes of stars are passing around the bow of the starship Voyager. Beside the helm, near the screen, a dimly shimmering contour pops up. It outlines the spherical holocom of the bridge of about one meter across. Two telescope eyes look at the empty holographic shell and then turn to port, where Seven transfers data from the astrometrical console. Suddenly three stars appear in the large hologram. A quick-motion clip shows two of the stars orbiting at close distance around their common center of gravity. The third star lies further off and travels more slowly on an elliptical orbit around the binary star system.
"The data transfer from the astrometrics laboratory is complete, Captain," reports Seven.
Janeway gets up from her seat and goes forward to the virtual holographic model. "Let`s hope it`s actually the system the Hirogens call the Three Stars!"
"It`s the only triple star system in the sector."
Janeway nods. "The trade map of the Akrrung also indicates that this could be the place where our people have been taken. They put the note on it: Organic material only."
"The Akrrung probably referred to the planet Miser, the only inhabited planet in the system."
Seven zooms in on the more distant of the three stars until schematically the five orbits of its planets become visible. Then she magnifies the second innermost planet. Janeway looks at Ceph and points her hand at that planet inside the 3D map.
The pattern of stripes collapses on the screen into individual luminous dots. Three of these stars are much brighter than the stellar background. Two of them are located on the left, close to the edge of the screen; the third one shines with increasing brightness in the center. A brown-grey planet with individual green islands appears laterally in front of the bright star and shortly afterwards Voyager swings into orbit around that planet.
E-Bug fades in schematic representations of spaceships on the screen and sensor readings next to them. Janeway rises an eyebrow.
"We`re obviously not the only visitors here."
Seven interprets the displayed data. "There are nine alien ships in orbit. Three of them show signatures of the Akrrung. The others are of unknown design, but according to their equipment they are merchant ships."
E-Bug marks a place on the planet`s surface.
"This is the only larger settlement on this side of the planet, Captain," comments Carey. "It could be the trading post we`re looking for."
Janeway turns around to the OPS. "I`ll beam down with an away team. Take the bridge, Lang!" Janeway goes aft to the lift. "Mr. Carey, you will accompany me! And," her 30-centimeter holocom pops up and she pushes E-Bug`s icon to her own; immediately E-Bug`s holocom opens, too, displaying the message, "as well does Mr. E-Bug!"
He closes his holocom and follows Janeway and Carey into the lift.
In the dusty backyard of a group of one- and two-storey buildings made of clay bricks, a humanoid pulls a chain. His shoulders are slim, and he has an oval, almost rotationally symmetrical head with tiny ears. At its other end, the iron chain chokes itself around the neck of a furry being the size of a beaver. The small creature stems against the forced movement and receives a kick from the humanoid. Suddenly the humanoid is distracted by a process of materialization that occurs a few meters beside him.
The glimmering shapes of three persons become visible. A moment after the bodies of Janeway, Carey and E-Bug have restructured, E-Bug`s side feelers strike in all directions, sparking wildly. Janeway and Carey throw themselves on the ground. The humanoid with the oval head drops the chain and screamingly runs through a narrow passage out of the backyard.
"What`s the matter with E-Bug, Captain?" calls Carey.
"This was probably his first trip with a transporter. I hadn`t thought of that; we should have prepared him for it. Remind me to explain the technology to him as soon as we get back!"
While Janeway and Carey look after the escaped humanoid, E-Bug`s side feelers lie on his flanks again. The antennae on his temples continue to swivel violently back and forth and his tube-eyes twitch to different sides. Janeway and Carey rise. They wipe off the dust from their uniforms. The furry creature scrapes its front legs at the loop of the chain, wipes it off and disappears into a hole at the foot of a clay-brick wall.
Janeway opens her tricorder. "A large number of different bio-signatures are displayed behind this building."
His two humanoid companions leave the backyard. E-Bug follows them. In the walled passage, it gets dark.
In E-Bug`s perception, the visual circles of his tube-eyes direct forward to the bright exit. As he passes through it, the scenery opens to 180 degrees. Innumerable small spots of moiré-like patterns begin to fluctuate in his field of perception, where also the two visual circles are embedded. One of them directs towards the most intense pattern. It shows a fleshy humanoid with a face full of wrinkles. One of his arms is pulling on a chain, while the second arm, gesticulating violently, points to the upright, four-legged being that is pulled back and forth at the other end of the chain by its alternating tension.
Janeway and Carey look into a market with disgust and horror on their faces. There at market stands on both sides of the street, where all kinds of creatures are offered for sale with loud shouts. These beings are chained or trapped in cages.
"Captain, aren`t these market traders an old acquaintance?"
Janeway nods darkly. "It noticed it. They`re all members of the species of the Akrrung!"
They walk down along the street, past various humanoid buyers. Most of them have slim shoulders and oval heads. They carry equipment with them to scan the creatures offered for sale. This process leads to the examined convulsing jerkily.
Carey clears his throat and spits into the dusty ground.
"I have never understood why highly developed civilizations need slaves. Species who are capable of space travel should be able to develop any kind of machines that are necessary for lower occupations!"
"Highly developed civilizations need raw materials. When they exchange them with more backward peoples, it is not uncommon that they prefer to hand over slaves rather than technical products. They`re in fear of losing their technological advantage and their source of cheap raw materials."
Janeway looks at a cage in which small, furry beings are crammed one on top of the other.
"Besides, most of them don`t seem to be destined for slavery."
Carey`s nostrils widen. "They will be slaughtered - for a piece of fur or meat!"
The three continue along the road. Suddenly, they are approached by a trader.
"Is this yours?"
He points to E-Bug, who deliberately marches on four extremities behind Janeway and Carey. Across the rusty brown skin of the Akrrung`s face, horizontal wrinkles stretch from the forehead to the bald back of the head.
"I offer twenty Distar!"
One eye tube aims at the merchant, the second one at his living merchandise, that is penned into several cages.
"We have no one to sell!" answers Janeway coldly.
With one hand, the merchant reaches out to them three of the rod-shaped means of payment, while his other arm continues pointing to E-Bug.
"Thirty Distar!"
"No!"
Janeway turns away from him and walks on.
"Look, Captain - over there!" shouts Carey. "The Akrrung who looks like a general, with a dozen medals on his jacket!"
"I see it too ... the third part from above!"
Janeway and Carey hurry to a table. Behind it, an Akrrung is boosting several humanoid slaves.
"Which species are you interested in? For the Dorsikan? He is perfectly suited for mining due to his radiation resistance."
"This part -" Janeway points to the jacket of the Akrrung. "May we have a look?"
The Akrrung pulls off the flat structure and hands it to her.
"Ten Distar - a good price!"
Janeway rubs off a crusty coating. "Almost half has broken away," she whispers to Carey "dirty and blood-smeared ... But it`s definitely one of our communicators." She looks back at the Akrrung. "Where do we find the person to whom this badge belonged?"
The trader notices the communicators on the uniforms of Janeway and Carey. He takes a step backwards.
"I give it to you! Keep it and go on ... It costs you nothing!"
Janeway fixes him. "What do you want for the information?"
He pinches his eyes together, looks to the left and to the right. Then he bends over the table.
With a suppressed voice he demands, "One hundred Distar!"
Carey shakes his head. "We have no such money, Captain."
Janeway tries to negotiate. "Can we pay in kind - fuel, food, or something like that?"
The Akrrung gives a sign of refusal. "I take Distar only!"
He points to a few sticks of the currency lying next to him on the table. Behind Janeway a tube-eye directs at the silver bars. Then E-Bug`s head retreats.
"If we try to sell the tricorder and our phasers?" Carey suggests.
"We`re not going to give any Starfleet technology to these people - and certainly no weapons!"
Janeway turns back to the trader. "We are in possession of valuable armor ..."
In the rear of a neighboring stand, a wooden cage is filled with furry creatures who have muzzles strapped over their faces. A being of the same species appears from a hole at the foot of the wall behind the cage. It slides along close to the sandy ground, up to the bars. Its mouth opens and it lays strong teeth on the wooden rungs. Inaudible in the noise of the market, they break fibers out from the material of the grating. Tough and grim, the teeth rasp millimeter for millimeter through the bars.
A twitch goes through Janeway`s body and she moves to the side. A moment later Carey curses and makes a leap to the other side, while E-Bug pushes his way between the two forward to the table. With the claws of his front extremity, he scatters a thick bundle of money sticks on the table. The eyes of the Akrrung grow large; he grabs the sticks and stows them in his coat. Then his neck stretches, and he beckons Janeway towards him. They put their heads together and whisper. Janeway nods. After a while, they separate.
"What did he tell you, Captain?" inquires Carey.
"I`ll let you know as soon as we are back on Voyager." She looks at E-Bug. "Where did he get that money?"
At the neighboring stand, a riot breaks out as a trader tries to hold back his furry merchandise that escapes through a hole in the back of its cage.
Behind Janeway and Carey, several market stands away, three oval-headed customers drag a fleshy Akrrung behind them on a chain. He has a rusty-brown face furrowed by horizontal wrinkles and he stems furiously against his buyers. From the open cages of his orphaned stand, armadillo-like beings jump out and go into hiding in the swarm of the market.
In an oval field of perception spanning about 120 degrees a few fluffy, white cirrus clouds appear scattered in a blue sky, from which a glowing sun shines down and makes the air flicker above the desert ground. The glistening light reflected from the sparkling grains of sand drenches watery blur across a field of vision and forces an aperture to narrow from above and below forming a slit. Transparent fingers wipe in front of the view until the elements of the landscape reappear in clear contrasts. Dry herbs nestled close to boulders and tall, sturdy cactuses with few branches form the sparse vegetation of the barren landscape, through which a narrow track winds. It rises from the desert terrain as a sandy hollow path, curves between cactuses and scree of rocks and climbs a ridge in two serpentine arches.
Accompanied by violent wheezing, the gaze is dragged up the hill. For a moment it lingers resting at the crest. Then the optical view floats down on the other side of the hill, swaying from tosses of the downward chasing movement. It follows wheel tracks in the sand that run straight through the open gate of an area fenced with rusty wire rods. The gaze hurries past car wrecks that are stacked one upon the other like piles of old shoes. Only a few paths cross this scrap yard. In its center stands a small guard`s house. Its tin roof is covered with rust-brown stains and rough clay bricks emerge from the whitewashed walls where the plaster has fallen off.
The gaze turns sideways to the unfolded door of a wheelless body of a car standing in the sandy ground. The hands of two arms reach forward, pull the upper and lower bolts out of the door hinges, grab the door, tug it out of the frame and carry it to a pile of vehicle doors already removed. With a swinging fling, the arms throw the frame on top of the pile. The two arms dismantle another door in the same way and throw it onto the pile as well. The view turns in careful deliberation to the left and to the right. Finally, it wanders around a collection of bonnets covering a vehicle whose emblem shines out under two metal parts put above. Again, the arms appear, remove all metal sheets not belonging to the vehicle and open the exposed orange bonnet of the car. Two fingers pull the oil stick out of the engine block. Shiny black oil covers the lower end of the stick.
"Not fresh, but enough for the cylinders," mumbles a male voice.
The angry vocal sound of a woman, deep and full, approaches from the background. "Handy-Boy! Where the hell are you?"
The gaze hectically jumps to the guard`s house and its door crack gaping darkly. Then the visual perspective hurries back to the car. Hands close the bonnet.
From afar the call of the woman sounds again. "What are you doing now?"
Suddenly, the throbbing of a dull impact; struck by something the gaze jerks and races downwards towards the bonnet. Then it stops abruptly with a bang. Thereby orange-painted sheet metal deforms immediately in front of the eyes, due to the collision with a nasal bone.
"Damn!" the male voice comments on the incident.
Slowly the orange surface is moving away again, while two arms are stemming against it.
"Bring me fresh lubricating oil - and hurry up!" calls the female voice imperiously from behind. Then it suddenly takes on the sound of a manically lurking anticipation. "I need it ... now!"
The gaze turns to the side, downward to the front wheel. There a small oil can made of pink-painted tin rolls back and forth in the hollow of a short piece of rusty gutter; after a recent landing, it has not yet come to rest. The can is dented by an impact on the side and smeared with light brown, transparent machine oil. The mantle of the jug tapers upwards to the lid, from which a curved snorkel emerges. For elastic flexibility the snorkel is corrugated in waves and ends in an oval thickened nozzle. Sideways from the can, a slender lever is straddled off by a thick spring that surrounds the pressure cylinder for the pumping mechanism.
A hand reaches for the can and stops its swinging. The hand becomes a fist; its fingers grasp the can and lift it up into the center of the gaze. Tendons of the back of the hand protrude. Forearm muscles swell with trembling vibration. A rapid movement throws the pink oiler aside. The hands then pounce upon metal sheets, which land on the neighboring pile of parts in a rattling noise. In a hurry the hands dig up an orange convertible, with no top and no side doors. The gaze is shifted into the interior; it focuses on the instrument panel. Two fingers turn a key. With stammering gasps, the engine struggles through to the right fuel-air mixture.
In the broken facets of the shattered side mirror, the cubistically fragmented contours and sumptuous fillings of two deep-black, oily shining legs approach with angry thuds from behind. They protrude from a wide and rounded, inflated, light-pink fabric with dark green dots. Two fleshy arms glittering with drops of sweat stretch out in the jagged-cut mirror image.
With a rattling sound, the engine finally reaches the state of self-ignition. White smoke puffs from a gap under the bonnet. The fingers are released from the key, the hand embraces the thick button of a lever. The car gets into motion with a rumble. It pushes disassembled radiator panels to the side and tires leaned against them. In the central rearview mirror of the windscreen, bulbous fingers stretch out towards the bright-pale skin of a slim neck.
"Stop right there! You can`t escape me!"
Tires squeak. Fuel tanks and shock-absorber springs are thrown to the side. The car rushes into a narrow alley between scrap mountains and sets course for an exit of the scrap yard. In the rear-view mirror, a shape appears that looks as if nature formed a Valkyrie out of onyx and breathed life into it. It strikes out as for a discus throw. Immediately after, a flying tire approaches at a high angle and crashes to the ground just behind the rear of the car. The next moment the bumper breaks through a fence gate, which is pushed open explosively. The car races into the open country. A rapid view back perceives in the mirror as clouds of dust are swirling behind the car, while the booming motor vehicle rattles along the desert path and hurls a cascade of stone gravel in the curves. The car turns around a rock, turns into a hollow path, gets out again and - makes an emergency stop.
Before the cabriolet comes to a halt, it has already slipped several meters between two piles of scrap parts. The hand on the lever shifts hastily. The engine howls. Scratching sand forward, the front wheels drive the car backwards. In a tight bend, it turns around and races back into the desert. At the entrance to the hollow, it deviates sideways and takes a path up to the crest of the hill. On the other side of the ridge, the car follows serpentine turns downward and steers into a sandy track leading through rocky terrain. It covers several hundred meters, turns around a sandstone monolith and - brakes again violently. The locked tires kick up a cloud of sand, between a mountain of tires and a hill of removed rear seats. The car stands still. Two palms of hands beat manically against the steering wheel. The next moment also the field of vision hits against the wheel at its center, sounding the horn. Then the optical perspective is torn away again from the steering wheel. It recognizes bulging fingers in the mirror that have embraced the pale-white neck and throw the whole head out of the car. The gaze clashes head-on into the desert sand. Its grains are so close to the perception that they melt into a blurred, grey continuum that darkens as a shadow is cast over it. The gaze toughly and laboriously works its way to the side, accompanied by a scraping scratch. While it is still moving, the perception meets the smooth surface of the emblem on an olive-green, laced rubber boot. In the boot`s arched mirror-like shine, the gaze recognizes its own nose ploughing through the sandy soil. In the convexly distorted surroundings, a slender male body lies in the sand and sitting on it are two monumentally rounded and oily shining buttocks, with spread legs and boots stemmed into the sand. From above, massive arms reach for the man`s blond, short-haired head and pull it up against two huge, buxom upper-body parts swelling out of a light pink fabric dotted in dark green, pressing from both sides around the back side and the ears of the pale-skinned head.
"I told you, Handy-Boy: you can`t escape from me!" it sounds down on him in overpowering femininity, while in the reflecting emblem of the rubber boot, exhalingly panting, Tom Paris`s mouth blows a hole into the sand.
From different directions, the light of three suns illuminates the starship Voyager on its orbit around the brown-grey planet with green islands. The starship flies over the twilight zone between day and night and shortly thereafter enters the nightly semi-shade of the planet Miser, which eclipses its nearest sun. Resembling two glistening bright evening stars lying close together, the other two suns of the triple system shed their light from afar upon Miser`s night side. Its geological formations reflect contours with an eerie glimmer upwards to Voyager, resembling nightmarish grimaces.
On the screen of the bridge the night side of the planet shining in the twilight lies sideways below Voyager.
Seven reports, "We are now above the indicated position, Captain."
E-Bug fades in a point on the image of the planet and zooms it larger. The point becomes a circle, with an outline that appears somewhat brighter than the plane inside. Next to it appear measurement data, which Seven interprets.
"A force field ... Quite large ... An area of half a square kilometer is thereby shielded."
Janeway rises from her chair. "Any signs of life?"
"Negative. The scanners cannot penetrate the field."
"What kind of force field is that? Can we beam somebody through it?"
"It`s electromagnetic - too strong to let a transporter signal pass without correlation loss."
"Do you think a shuttle could fly through it?"
"Maybe, if the shielding of the hull is strengthened and the force field around the shuttle is weakened by counter-phase emissions."
"Try it! - Mr. Carey, you will support Seven in this!"
"Aye, ma`am."
Janeway touches her communicator. "Captain to engineering!"
"Captain?" calls Torres`s voice.
"Meet Seven in the shuttle bay! We need to modify a shuttle`s hull. Seven will explain it to you."
"Understood. Captain, if we`re going down to look for our people, I`d like to be with the away team."
"All right. - Janeway out."
She goes forward, closer to the screen, and looks at the circular force field, which glows on the night side of the planet. Suddenly the holocom of the bridge pops up. The doctor`s shining face appears in oversized dimension.
"Transporter room to the Captain!"
"Doctor, what`s so important that you appear to me as a hologram?"
"You may remember the disabled being I`ve been trying to treat for two months?"
"Certainly. Has its condition improved?"
"Its circulation becomes more unstable every day and I have long since exhausted all my knowledge to cure it. But now Mr. Peri has made a suggestion that might heal the being."
He pushes his face a bit to the side. Next to him Peri`s head appears in the holocom. Janeway smiles.
"That`s fine. Why don`t you try it?"
The doctor`s face gets clouded with worry. "I`d like to do that, but ... you see ... the transporter would have to be modified - a little."
Janeway raises her hand while her smile fades away.
"Stop! I`m on my way."
She hurries to the lift. "Take the bridge, Lang!"
"Aye, Captain."
In the transporter room Peri works on the interior of a console that has been opened at its backside. Next to him assists Naomi. She holds a tricorder with both hands, which she turns so that Peri always has visual contact to the display while he carries out soldering and rewiring with four hands. Behind them the doctor is standing, together with an officer on duty, whose facial expression fluctuates between amazement and worry.
Peri straightens up so that he has access to the console`s user interface. He starts a transport process. A shoe matching a right humanoid foot stands on one of the transporter pads. It dematerializes and reappears in the same place a moment later. Simultaneously, a shoe of the same model materializes on the neighboring pad, but its shape has a left-footed design.
The sliding door opens and Janeway appears.
"What`s going on here?"
With limping steps, the officer on duty moves to the side and makes room for her. "Captain, I assumed Mr. Peri was authorized."
Janeway looks towards the open console and turns to the doctor with an expression of angry disapproval.
"I thought I had made it clear enough that we were discussing this before you take action."
In a whining voice the doctor tells her, "Look, Captain, Mr. Peri had already started when he called me; but he can certainly undo the modification quite quickly if you wish."
Janeway`s gaze turns on the two shoes.
Naomi calls in a pleading tone, "We do must help the being, Captain. Otherwise, it will die!"
Janeway bends sideways and downward to see past Peri`s erected segments and the doctor`s legs.
"Naomi Wildman! What do you have to do with all this?"
"You gave me the job of designing the apartments for the alien beings together with Peri, Captain. All the apartments are finished, including that of the sick being. But it cannot live there if it cannot move!"
Janeway stares back at the two shoes. Without looking at him, she asks: "Explain to me exactly what you intend to do, Doctor!"
"See, Captain, we believe that half of the being`s body has been amputated. And now we want to replace the missing part with a symmetrical copy."
"You want to clone this being and then patch it up with its clone?" Janeway exclaims with a skeptical voice mingled with horror.
"The copy wouldn`t directly be a clone, since it would be a mirror image of its original prototype."
"But this image would be an independent being created to serve as a spare part!"
"We do not know that. At the moment we are of the opinion that the being in sickbay is not a complete being at all, and its replicated mirror image would also be merely a partial organism. Only together the two parts may form a complete individual."
Janeway scrutinizes the doctor with a doubtful look. "How do you know you can connect the two parts so that they grow together correctly?"
"I can`t tell for sure; but I have examined the site where the amputation took place. Bone tissue and nerve fibers show an extremely high degree of irritability and vital growth. According to all cases known in medicine, such sites grow together very well."
Janeway`s strict and sinister gaze wanders back and forth between the doctor and Peri.
"I do have a strong suspicion that you two want to play Frankenstein."
An expression of despair deforms the corners of the doctor`s mouth and multiplies the wrinkles on his forehead.
"Captain, at every single day since this being has been aboard Voyager I have racked my brains about how to help it. What we`re planning here is the last attempt ... the ultimate hope -"
Silently Janeway stares at the transporter`s console.
Then she declares: "All right, try it!"
Shining with hope, the doctor turns to Peri and makes him understand with gestures to start the process. The officer on duty limps forward and removes the two shoes. The right one he puts on his right foot.
Peri activates the transporter. Shortly afterwards the asymmetrical being appears on the pads, lying on the ground, while next to it its mirror image materializes. The two of them pedal helplessly, each with a single front leg and a single hind leg, without being able to stand up by their own strength. The doctor runs forward.
"Lieutenant Chapman, help me!"
Together they try to raise the two creatures. Janeway and Peri follow them. Supported by the four persons, the two semi-creatures are pressed together with their flanks, so that the strip-shaped, arched outgrowths of their vertebral columns touch each other. Naomi hands the doctor a medical scanner and he connects the reddened and scarred ends of those excrescences. Finally, he switches off the tool. The doctor and his helpers carefully release the two halves of the unified being, which - on four legs - unsteadily and shakily feels its way across the surface of the transporter pads.
"It can walk!" shouts Naomi with joy.
On the shuttle bay, Carey mounts a flat aggregate from outside upon the hull of a shuttle. Its loading gate is open. Inside the small vessel, Torres reads data from a display while making adjustments. Seven has removed a panel from the sidewall and modifies the circuit underneath.
"What do you think, Seven," Torres ponders. "May our people be down there?"
"That`s possible," Seven replies coolly.
Torres turns her head with an expression of indignation.
"Doesn`t the prospect to see them again make you happy? Don`t you miss them?"
"When my contact with the collective was interrupted, I missed the community with millions of drones. I learned to deal with it."
"You compare our friends with drones?"
"For me the spiritual connection with these - drones meant security ... intimate familiarity."
Torres stares at Seven with eyes widened in disapproval. Seven remounts the facing back into the sidewall and touches her communicator.
"Shuttle bay to Captain!"
"Go ahead, Seven," answers Janeway`s voice.
"Modifications are complete."
"Very good! Is B`Elanna with you?"
"I`m here, Captain," confirms Torres.
"Fly with Carey into the target area! But don`t take a risk. If the force field endangers the integrity of the shuttle`s hull, turn around immediately! We`re going to look for another option then. And take Ceph with you as a pilot! It might get bumpy."
Torres turns her head sideways, from where several stalked eyes are looking over her shoulder.
"He`s already here, Captain."
"Good luck, B`Elanna!"
"Thank you, Captain."
Seven leaves the shuttle. Carey comes aboard and sits down at the tactical console. Torres enters the target area on a display and determines its coordinates. Then she moves aside and gives Ceph a sign to take the helm.
The shuttle`s rear gate closes. The docking clamps of the small vessel are released; it disengages from its anchorage and floats to the lock of the shuttle bay. The gate opens and reveals the glowing night side of the planet below the starship. The shuttle enters free space through the atmospheric containment field, while the field draws a flickering contour around the small ship that moves from its bow to stern. Then the lock of the hangar closes again.
In rapid descent, Ceph steers the shuttle towards the planet. It dives into its atmosphere, which creates a red-hot glow on the outer hull around the cockpit window.
"Shuttle to Voyager!" reports Torres. "We`re approaching target coordinates. Sensors detect scattered electromagnetic radiation. The force field is stronger than we thought, Captain. It ionizes the surrounding atmosphere!"
Flashes of lightning strike the shuttle; it quakes.
"What was that, B`Elanna?" shouts Janeway`s voice.
"I think the shuttle acts as a condensation nucleus in the charged atmosphere - we`re triggering lightning!"
"Are the anti-phase field emitters working?"
"They are at maximum power ... But the weakening effect on the surrounding field is not sufficient!"
Further violent impacts shake the three crew members at their seats. They cling to the consoles with their hands and arms. Sparks spray from the ceiling. The trajectory of the shuttle begins to roll more and more violently.
"We`re losing control, Captain!" shouts Torres.
"Turn around immediately!"
Torres pushes Ceph`s arm aside and tries to reverse the course.
"Controls are not responding!"
Janeway`s voice commands, "Captain to transporter room! - Beam the away team back! ... Energize!"
At their seats in the shuttle, the three crew members begin to dematerialize.
In a transporter room, an officer is standing at the controls. Her tense gaze jumps back and forth in hectic anxiety between the displays on the console and three transporter pads where materialization processes are flickering. Initially, they get more intense, then they weaken again. Finally, two patterns disappear and only one person materializes. B`Elanna Torres looks to the side.
"Where are the others?"
"I couldn`t get a lock on all three signals; the interferences were too strong! I had to redirect Lieutenant Carey to transporter room 2 to get full transporter power for each of your two patterns."
"Where`s Ceph?"
"I`m sorry, Lieutenant, I lost him."
Torres runs to the console and retrieves the data. In horror, she stares at the officer on duty.
In another transporter room, Peri is undoing his modifications on the opened console. Suddenly a materialization process takes place on one of the pads in front of him.
Carey appears, shouting anxiously, "B`Elanna? ... Ceph?"
He quickly runs to the exit. Peri raises his head from behind the console. With big, rigidly staring eyes he follows Carey`s movement through the room until he disappears in the corridor, with the sliding door closing behind him.
On the bridge, Janeway is standing at the OPS near Seven. Carey and Torres hurry out of the turbolift.
Torres shouts, "Captain, Ceph wasn`t beamed back!"
"I know. The sensors were monitoring the shuttle data until it penetrated the force field. Then we lost contact."
Seven points to a display. "I`m reading the signature of a generator at the edge of the force field. That may be the source of the field."
Janeway takes a look at the data.
"Can we turn off that source with the phasers?"
"I would not recommend this. When a field of such magnitude collapses abruptly, the effects on life-forms inside are incalculable."
"What do you suggest?"
Torres hurries to E-Bug at the controls of the sensor phalanx.
"If we knew how that generator works -"
She carries out measurements. The results are visualized on the viewscreen of the bridge, next to the image of the force field dome. E-Bug activates a drawing tool and sketches circular rings around the force field. Then he opens a periodic table and draws the sign for nitrogen and the value 77 degrees Kelvin to the rings. Seven raises an eyebrow.
"I understand." She turns to Janeway. "Mr. E-Bug suspects a superconductor as the primary component for the generator."
Torres stretches out her hand towards the screen. "If that`s true, then we could modulate the strength of the force field by changing the temperature of the coolant for the superconductor!"
Janeway frowns. "What do you want to achieve by that?"
"The field might act as a transmitter that also radiates inwards! We could use the modulations to activate the holocom in the shuttle and transmit information!"
"You may be right - if the shuttle was not destroyed and Ceph would be able to receive our message," Janeway replies. "But how can Ceph contact us?"
Seven raises her head. "The force field has a well-defined geometric shape. It should be possible to stimulate discrete vibration patterns by modulations."
Torres adds enthusiastically, "Like on a membrane, with nodal points where the field strength gets zero!"
Janeway nods. "That would open windows at the nodal points. If we`re lucky, Ceph`s able to answer through a zero-field spot. Start immediately!"
Torres goes to Carey. "Reduce phaser power to 15%, Joseph, and widen the beam to a circle that covers the outer ring of the force field!"
Carey reaches onto his panels with one hand and makes the adjustments. He hesitates several times and finally continues with the other hand. Torres is surprised.
"Is something wrong with your hands?"
"I don`t know ... a strange feeling," he replies. "Is the scattering radius large enough?"
"We`ll see in a moment. Fire at a pulse rate of two hundred megahertz!"
With two fingers Carey begins to initiate the firing sequence. He hesitates again.
"Is there a problem?" Janeway inquires.
"No, ... I don`t think so -"
He activates the phasers. All eyes turn to the screen. On the zoomed-in dome of the force field, a pattern of surfaces becomes visible that are demarcated against each other by lines.
"An oscillation mode was created, Captain," reports Seven. "Communication should now be possible."
Janeway lifts her head. "Computer, holocom message from Captain to Mr. Ceph. - Status report requested!"
Against the background of an acoustic white noise, castanet-like sounds from suction cups click.
"Listen ... he`s alive!" calls Torres. She points to the holocom of the bridge. "He`s trying to make a video transmission!"
Overlaid by optical disturbances, the inside of the shuttle appears. The shuttle`s rear boarding gate opens. At some distance a large round building complex becomes visible in the pale night light. The shuttle itself stands in a sloping position on the roof of a neighboring building, which is connected to the main complex by a pole scaffold.
Janeway walks forward and reaches into the holocom. She pulls the profile pictures of the missing crew members from a database and activates a film clip. In rapid succession each image appears, enlarged for a moment in the center. Shortly after the clip is finished, Ceph appears in the holocom. The twelve eyeballs scatter apart on their stems and look radially in all directions.
Torres nods. "He will search for them."
The optical perspective of the transmitted holo image moves away from the shuttle. Then it goes out in flickering noise.
"We have lost radio contact," Seven reports. "Mr. Ceph is now outside the narrow range we were able to transmit through the radio window."
In the semi-darkness of a room, just above the loamy floor covered with grains of sand, the perspective of a gaze shifts slowly forward, accompanied by the soft crunch of a sliding movement. A bedspring creaks and immediately after a snoring sound rattles. The movement of the gaze on the loamy ground freezes.
An ant crawls through the field of vision. Grains of sand roll to the side that are in the way of its six marching legs. The small being stops for a moment. Its head, set with pincer-proven jaws and two oval, dark brown complex eyes, turns to the side, towards the view that is so close to the ground. The two feeler sensors, waving slowly, pick up a scent. Then the head turns forward again and the ant moves away from the field of vision.
The latter resumes its migration as well. It glides from the semi-darkness of the clay soil towards the opening of the room flooded with glistening daylight. The open door is surrounded by a light grey wooden frame, covered with holes of rotten broken-out splinters. The border to daylight is getting continuously closer. Two arms shift forward and the floor recedes a bit.
Suddenly, a battery of bedsprings creaks. The perspective twitches. The fingers stretched to the door frame spread out as if in a reflex action.
Lurkingly and luringly calls the deep and full, female voice: "It isn`t time to close and knock off yet, Handy-Boy. Mommy wants her dessert ... now!"
With a jerk, the gaze directed on the ground is pulled backwards a bit. The elbows of the arms plough through the dusty sand. The gaze rushes desperately towards the daylight, while the hands hurry to the lateral beams of the door frame. Fingers claw in vain into the rotten wood that gives way, crumbling and breaking, under the power of the overwhelming pulling force. Immediately before the fingers finally lose their hold, the gaze, like in a last rebellion, stretches up from the ground to the glistening light beyond the door, up into the open air and even further, looking for the sky. But instead of the firmament appears - floating freely in the air - a shapeless mass. A dozen wagging eel-like snakes protrude from it that carry on their upper ends - instead of heads - mere eyeballs.
A hardly suppressed scream sounds and the fingers break through the rotten wood. In rapid momentum the gaze races backwards over the ground, flying diagonally upwards. It passes a rusty steel frame and a half-covered row of interconnected spiral springs, before finally being pressed deep into the dull darkness of a dusty grey mattress with a faded pink floral pattern. Immediately afterwards, the field of vision is torn up again and turned to the ceiling in a furious pirouette of 180 degrees. Swaying, the gaze wanders downwards, where enormous dark shining thighs, like the rubber-gristly jaws of a toothless whale shark, cling with force around a slender, white-skinned abdomen. Then the view becomes increasingly obscured as from above a face approaches, whose shape can only be recognized by the coating of sweat beads. Two damp, bulging, dark violet lips emerge from the face. With a greedy smile full of anticipation, they open and let a strip of white brightness shine. Two nostrils appear, swelling for a moment. Then the face approaches further. Hugely fill the sparkling white corners of two eyes the field of vision, framing large, round and shiny black pupils inside of which something is teeming.
All of a sudden everything visual begins to crumble, like a picture that fragments into tiny pixels whirling away. The face dissolves, even its darkness and the entire, heavily burdening figure. Then the ceiling and bare walls of the room and the glistening bright surface framed inside the wooden door. In the surrounding junkyard, piles of stacked chassis, car tires, gear units disappear, and the light blue hazy sky follows them, along with its parching sun. Only the monotonous semi-darkness of a hospital-like, separated compartment remains and - like the haunting deja vu of a nightmare - a dozen telescope eyes curiously waving in front of the visual field. Hands try to fend them off.
"Go away!"
Two tentacles cling to powerless arms and press them upon the stretcher on which Tom Paris lies. Ceph`s body is sitting on Paris`s abdomen. A third arm touches the communicator attached to a fourth arm and produces clicks with suction cups pressed together and quickly separated again.
Janeway`s voice calls. "Mr. Ceph ... we can hear you, but we have no video transmission."
Spellbound, Paris stares at the communicator.
"Captain ... Captain Janeway?"
"Ensign Paris, is that you?"
Torres`s voice shouts, "Tom! ... How are you? ... Where are you?"
Paris lifts his head from the stretcher and looks around.
"Got no idea. An octopus with stalk eyes holds me tight ... He`s got one of our communicators!"
"That`s Ceph. He`s been looking for you and the others."
Janeway explains, "Mr. Ceph belongs to our team, Tom. Trust him! Are there more of our people with you?"
"I don`t know, Captain. I feel like I just woke up from a year-long dream. Maybe I`m still dreaming -"
"I assure you, Ensign, you are awake! Though it doesn`t matter whether you believe me or not; just follow my orders: Try to get a picture of the facility and see if you can find more from our crew! Then go to the shuttle; Mr. Ceph will take you there. Report to me as soon as you`ve looked around! If you don`t get transmission contact, change your position. There`re only a few spots where we can establish transmission windows."
"Understood, Captain."
"See you soon, Tom! - Janeway out."
Paris`s gaze moves away from the communicator. His eyes follow the anatomy of a tentacle, from its origin on Ceph`s body to its end wrapped around a wrist.
"OK, Mr. - Ceph. As I understood my ... our ... Captain, we`re to have a look around here."
Paris stares from one of his fixed wrists to the other. Several eyes follow his gaze. Ceph hesitantly releases his manacles, grabs to the ceiling and pulls himself up. Paris breathes deeply in and out.
"That`s much better!"
Uncertain like someone who has spent a long time in a hospital bed, he straightens up. An infusion needle is still stuck in the vein on the inside of his elbow and a tube leads to a bottle hanging from a tripod. Paris pulls the needle out of his vein, tears a piece of cloth from the bed sheet and presses it against the bleeding hole in his blood vessel. Then he turns his legs out of the bed and stands upright. He walks two steps and staggers in a fit of dizziness. A tentacle reaches from the ceiling under Paris`s armpit and prevents him from falling over. Shortly thereafter, he stands upright again and taps his hand on the grab arm.
"Never mind ... It`s all right again!"
The tentacle cautiously withdraws. Paris looks at his stretcher. Behind its head-end a metal helmet is dangling from a thick bundle of cables. The bundle disappears in a passage through the wall. Next to it there is a door. Another, thinner strand of cables leads from the helmet to the foot of the stretcher, where a console is attached. Ceph pokes Paris at the shoulder and swings out of the compartment into a transverse corridor. Paris follows him on insecure legs. The corridor is curved in both directions, so that the end is not visible. Next to the compartment Paris was held in sleeping state there is another compartment where a four-legged creature lies on a stretcher. It is connected to an infusion tube and a metal helmet is put over its head. From this, a thick bundle of cables leads through the wall behind the head, while a thinner bundle is laid to a console at the foot end of the stretcher. Ceph lowers himself from the ceiling so that his eyes reach the monitor display of the console. He plays on the controls using the end of a tentacle. With a sinister look, Paris observes the legs of the creature starting to twitch on the stretcher, as if it was plagued by a terrible appearance in a dream. Paris knocks on Ceph`s arm and walks on.
Along the curved corridor, one compartment follows the other almost endlessly. In each one lies a creature set to sleep, wearing a metal headgear fitted with signal lines. Ceph and Paris see beings of the most diverse morphology, while they hurry forward. Suddenly two figures appear in front of them. Ceph grabs Paris by the arm and pulls him into a dark niche, where supply hoses hang from the ceiling. Two slim humanoids with rotationally symmetrical, oval heads approach. They stop in front of the consoles of several stretchers. Thereby one of them retrieves data, while the other activates an image on a display he carries with him. He holds the image in front of the console`s monitor for a moment. Then the two go on to the next compartment.
Finally, the two humanoids disappear behind the curvature of the corridor. Ceph swings out of the niche, to the head of the stretcher of the nearest compartment and further to the adjacent wall. He opens a door, peers inside, and gropes for the ceiling of the room behind. One eye looks back at Paris.
"Is there anything to see?" he whispers as he follows Ceph.
They enter a circular hall about 100 meters in range. From all sides bundles of wires penetrate from the walls and run on the floor to the center of the room, where a large opening in the ground is visible. Ceph swings towards it. Paris follows him and tries not to trip over the wires lying on the floor. He looks at Ceph, who is a few meters ahead of him. Suddenly Ceph stops on the ceiling. All eye stems point stiffly downward into the opening on the floor. Shortly afterwards Paris looks down as well.
In a 20 meter large, liquid-filled pool, a huge, pale-yellow organic mass rests. Its surface is covered with brain-like whorls and furrows. Every single cable of the bundles leads into the pool. Their ends are attached to the countless brain convolutions with suction contacts.
Paris knocks on a hanging tentacle and points to the tricorder that Ceph carries with him. Ceph takes it off and hands it down. Paris opens the device and levels it at the brain mass. Two eyes stretch to look at the display as well. While Paris scans the pale bulk, he shakes his head several times.
Suddenly one arm pushes against Paris`s shoulder and another one points downward along the inner edge of the pool. In the depth, along the pool wall, distorted and shadowy outlines of oval headed humanoids are visible below the surface of the liquid, sitting around the brain structure. They wear helmets on their heads, from which cables run to the large brain.
In Voyager`s sickbay, the doctor and Peri observe as the steps of the being they have symmetrically supplemented with a second half are getting continuously steadier. Naomi Wildman leads the being in a circle around a sickbed, on a leash attached to a collar around one of the two heads.
The sliding door opens. Joseph Carey enters sickbay, with a suffering expression on his face.
Naomi calls out to him, "Look at it, Lieutenant Carey! It can walk all by itself! It can also sit on the floor and get up on its own."
A component of amazement mixes into Carey`s serious face that barely covers his concern, however.
"Can I talk to you for a moment, Doctor?"
"Certainly, Mr. Carey."
Without looking at Carey, the doctor continues with a proud glow in his eyes, "Isn`t it unbelievable! A few hours ago I connected the nerve endings of two separate organisms histofusionally, and now the two brains are already collectively controlling coordinated motion patterns of all four extremities! This is a historic triumph of medicine!" He lifts his head a little further. "I understand it - so to speak - as a sign to dedicate my future studies even more intensively to the exo-biology of foreign life-forms!" He pauses in consideration and his pride mixes with generosity as he turns to Peri, who stands erected beside him. "However, I would also like to acknowledge that our Mr. Peri," he puts his hand on Peri`s shoulder segment, "has by no means insignificantly contributed to the solution of the present case!"
Peri also turns his head. He directs his big rigid eyes, over which he has put his filigree faceted glasses, towards the doctor.
Carey scratches his belly with his left hand. "Maybe you could just do a check-up on me, Doctor?"
"Do you feel sick?"
"I don`t know; do I not seem ... changed ... to you somehow?"
The doctor grins. "I can`t see anything unusual, except that today you scratch your belly with your left hand instead of with your right!"
Carey looks anxiously at the fingers of his left hand on his stomach.
"It`s not just that, Doctor. I also operate the consoles with my left hand."
The doctor reaches for the scanner. "That`s strange, though; your personal file doesn`t say that you`re left-handed."
"I`ve been right-handed since I was born!"
The doctor moves the scanner along Carey`s arm up to the shoulder.
"Your right arm shows no sign of disease." Then he scans over Carey`s head. "You have neither a tumor nor a metabolic anomaly in your motoric cortex."
He then moves the scanner down the trunk. Puzzled, he stops.
"There`s something weird, though, Mr. Carey -"
Carey asks worriedly, "Is it bad, Doctor?"
Without answering the question, the doctor scans Carey`s chest.
"That`s phenomenal! It seems I`m making a second important discovery today!"
Peri also looks at the scanner`s display.
"Doctor, what`s the matter with me?" shouts Carey anxiously.
Merrily, the doctor tells him, "You`re indeed the first human person, Mr. Carey, to whom it fits!"
"What fits -?"
"The good old saying: he carries his heart at the right spot! When did you first notice your left-handedness?"
"This morning, after the failed shuttle mission ... After I was beamed back."
Naomi still leads the symmetrically supplemented being through sickbay and speaks to it in a praising tone. The doctor`s eyes follow the two, but no longer in cheerfulness and pride. Horror and contrition deform the corners of his mouth and deepen wrinkles of his face as he turns his head and looks into Peri`s expressionless, facetted eyeballs.
Janeway is sitting at her place on the bridge.
Paris`s voice calls, "Paris to Voyager! - Can you hear me?"
"Go ahead, Mr. Paris!"
"Captain, there`s a huge building here with about five hundred living creatures inside, wasting away in a dream state. It seems that their cortical waves are directed to a monstrous brain in the center of the building."
"Are there any of our crew members among them?"
"Unfortunately not, Captain. I was the only one. We`re now in an adjoining building, in front of a facility that supplies the whole complex with energy."
"Can you turn off the power?"
"I think so."
"Do you see any danger for the sleeping persons?"
"They`re probably going to wake up, like I did."
"Are there guards who might pose a threat to you?"
"There are a few who look like medical personnel. I think they`re unarmed."
"All right! Bring the generator power down! Do it slowly, if possible. Raise to orbit with the shuttle immediately after! If there are any problems, we`ll beam you up."
"Aye, Captain!"
The screen shows the planet`s surface, which is in bright daylight meanwhile, and the circular dome of the force field. The amplitude of a signal faded in near the dome decreases. At the same time, the force field on the screen becomes transparent. From the technical console, Torres turns to the captain.
"They`ve been successful! The force field has been disabled."
All around the huge circular building, living beings from a large variety of different species enter the morning light of the planet. Some immediately start to run away into the wooded surroundings, others stagger uncertainly to the boundary of the facility. Many hold extremities before their blinded eyes. Over a scaffold, two figures climb onto the roof of an adjoining building, one of them, fast and agile with five arms, the other one cumbersome with two arms and two legs. Below them, oval-headed humanoids in white coats run out of the building. With their hands raised, they try to drive back the released beings.
On the Voyager bridge, the voice of Tom Paris reports again.
"Captain ... we have a problem!"
"Are you under attack? Shall we beam you up?"
"No, we`re already in the shuttle."
"Is it damaged?"
"I don`t know ... I don`t think so."
"So, what`s your problem, Ensign?"
"It`s that stalk-eyed squid! He won`t let me take the helm!"
"Let Mr. Ceph fly, Tom! It was a hard landing and if there were any damages, Ceph knows best."
"Captain, do you think I`ve forgotten how to fly a shuttle?"
"Ensign Paris, you just woke up from a long sleep. The flight could get bumpy. Fasten your seat belts well - in the co-pilot`s chair! That`s an order!"
"Aye - Ma`am -!"
Janeway`s elbow props upon the armrest of her chair, with her forearm sticking up and her fingers rubbing against her forehead as she turns to the technical console, where Torres tries to suppress a grin.
From the kitchen, Neelix carries a huge tray to the casino`s only table, which was arranged by shifting together all the individual dining places. About thirty crew members have taken a seat on both sides of the gala table, with Tom Paris sitting in the middle.
"So, will you tell us now what you dreamed of?" demands Torres.
"That would take far too long and would certainly just bore you."
The doctor inquires with interest, "Mr. Paris, you spoke of an organism consisting of brain tissue only. Were you able to examine it more closely?"
"It was strange, Doctor. According to the scan of the tricorder, it looked like a huge, dense network of nerve cells. However, no hierarchically subordinate brain parts could be detected, nothing that would resemble our brain stem or diencephalon. The whole thing looked like a single, large mass of cerebrum."
The doctor lifts his index finger. "That might explain why that brain is so hungry for stimulus patterns that are created in dream states of other beings. Dreams are inspired and guided by emotional motifs that come from hierarchically deeper brain areas, which are probably missing in the case of that being." The doctor turns to Janeway. "I would like to examine this neural entity more closely, Captain. It would be fascinating to explore whether rudiments of older cortex layers can still be found, which may give a hint how this creature has developed to its present state."
Janeway shakes her head. "I regret, Doctor. It`s too late for that. Though I find it reprehensible in what way this life-form abuses others, I must confess that I would also have liked to talk to it. Not about its anatomy, but about its ship`s technology. That building where Mr. Paris was held was part of a starship. Two hours after we turned the generator off, that ship left the planet - and accelerated to a speed beyond our warp scale!"
Janeway turns to Paris. "By the way, there are indications that the slave trade on the other side of the planet is disintegrating. Tell me, Tom, when was the last time you saw our people?"
"That was when the Hirogens took us to that slave market. As soon as they drove us out of their ship, we made a rescue attempt. We outnumbered them, but we had no weapons. Fighting was hopeless, so we tried to flee. We were under fire immediately. Many were injured. Commander Chakotay was hit very hard. We made up the rearguard. He ordered me to leave him behind." Paris`s gaze takes an expression of despair. "Believe me, Captain, I would not have obeyed that order if I had seen any chance for him."
The cheerful mood at the table has vanished. It becomes quiet for a while.
Then Janeway inquires: "What happened after that?"
"We tried to hide in the city, ... in that market. But the merchants helped the Hirogens in their hunt for us. I was knocked down. I don`t know what happened afterwards."
Paris rubs a scar near his brow broodingly.
"But there is one thing I remember. One of the merchants spoke of a bulk purchaser who wanted to take over a complete package. I think he called him ... Aldaran."
Seven raises an eyebrow. "The Aldarans are an open cluster of about three thousand stars. It`s eleven light-years from here."
Janeway nods resolutely. "We`ll follow that trail! - Ensign Paris, you have to agree with Mr. Ceph which one of you is going to take over the next shift at the helm!"
Smiling, Paris puts his arm around Torres`s shoulder. "I think this time I`ll give precedence to my five-legged colleague."
The starship Voyager flies through space at warp speed. Only a few windows on the saucer module are illuminated. The light is extinguished behind one of the windows.
In the semi-darkness of a crewman`s quarters, a ball of about 20 centimeters in size lies on the bedside table. Next to it the fingers of two hands massage the auricles of Tom Paris from below and a purring voice begs: "Come on now, tell me what you dreamed of! ... What did she look like?"
"What makes you think something like that? I told you, it was a nightmare ... and she was very different from you!"
Torres grabs him by the shoulders, turns him to the side and on his back. She throws herself upon him. Her hands wrap around his throat.
She hisses, "So it`s true, you are dreaming of another woman!"
He gasps as he tries to loosen the grip of her hands. "It`s not what you think ... Actually she resembled you a lot!"
"What are you talking about? You say it was a nightmare and she reminded you of me?"
Again, she grabs him, rolls him to the side and herself under him. The sound of their breathing grows more violent. It mixes with a swelling rubbing noise of arms struggling to embrace body parts. Finally, the breathing gets heavy and calm; twitching movements ebb away.
In the dim darkness of the room, Torres`s head is turned aside. Under the lash of her half-opened eye, a dull drop detaches, in which Chakotay`s face shimmers. His eyes are closed.
