III
In the blue depths of that unnamed ocean, Riker takes his badge - carefully, almost as if it were a precious gift from his wife - and places it in the sand beside Tom's, underneath one of the shells. The shell sits apart a little from the others, so hopefully they'll recognize it again when they need to get in contact with the Enterprise (provided Q hasn't broken the connection in a fit of pique in the meantime). Will manfully ignores the tantalizing pearlescent shimmer emanating from deep inside the mollusk, and carefully avoids getting near the fronds.
Tom looks over the clam bed; it is almost peaceful now, with the sand all settled and most shells open again. A small, soft cloud of translucent jellyfish drifts up from their temporary shelter among the big mollusks. Tom follows several small schools of yellow-and-purple fish with his eyes as they swim in the empty space the clams have created between the weeds, and then suddenly it hits him.
"The weeds," he says through the bubbles. They have to talk louder now that the communicators don't help anymore, and enunciate more clearly. He tries hard to ignore the way the water feels in the back of his throat when he talks, where it fees like it should be choking him but doesn't. Evolution-driven panic is a hard thing to overcome, and he really wishes Q had addressed that aspect when he pulled his transformation routine.
"They're quite neat, aren't they?"
"Neat?" Riker frowns. He's gotten used to his XO's often odd turn of phrase, but this observation seems rather … inappropriate to the seriousness of their situation. A bit like calling a Nausicaan fuzzy.
"Neatly planted," Tom elaborates, sensing his Captain's incredulity. "Sharp edges and clear space in between, almost like they're lining a street."
A street, if that's what it is, that is paved with enormous snapping clams. Obviously not one designed to be walked on, but swum over. Tom flippers upwards a little ways for a better vantage point.
"There's more of them, those roads, if that's what they are - over there, and there." He points to Riker's left and right, slowly, so as not to start spinning in the water. "All leading in the same direction, almost like spokes in a wheel."
"Could be just coincidence," Riker burbles. "The Forests of Eloria send out seedlings in a straight line. Looks like a spider web when you see it from a shuttle. Maybe that's how these clams procreate."
"Probably you're right," Tom agrees. "Let's follow the path anyway though, unless you have any better ideas, Captain."
Riker shrugs – he doesn't - and they swim off, careful not to get their flippered feet too close to the clams.
…..
They follow one of the clam paths quite a ways when suddenly it dips sharply, leading down what can only be described as an abyss. The walls of the crater-like opening are virtually covered with more clams, hanging on the near-vertical slope thanks to some small miracle of biology. Without a moment's thought, Tom shoots down into the deep bowl, Riker a mere afterthought in his wake.
It doesn't take long before the darkening blue of the ocean's depths gives way to shapes, which in turn resolve into what looks like …
"Buildings?" The word leaves Riker's mouth in a single silvery sphere of incredulity.
Tom doesn't say anything; it would probably come out as a bit smug, and his newly acquired (if still intermittent) sense of self-restraint tells him that now is not the time. Instead, he heads straight towards the first of two towers that stand atop a solid barbican. Crenellated walls extend on either side, beyond visual range; they are looking what seems like a fortress, fitted snugly into an indentation on the ocean floor that could have been made for it.
One of the towers seems damaged, almost as if a large creature has taken a bite out the top, although an enormous mound at the bottom – topped by weeds, and home to a myriad of tiny fish that swim in and out of individual boulders - suggests that probably the enemy was merely decay and old age. Or a hurricane that whipped up the seas to the very bottom, as they are capable of. Tom shudders at the thought.
Storm coming.
The entire structure is encrusted throughout with corals, moss and things that look like plants but based on his biology classes are probably animals that just can't be bothered to move around much. The whole thing looks ancient, as if it has rested on the ocean floor for millennia, perhaps longer. The effect of the growths everywhere renders it difficult to make out individual stones or building blocks; all outlines are blunted with decay, as if poised to blur into legend before their very eyes.
"I wonder how long ago this sank," Riker breathes. "And why. No evidence of a major geological event."
The two Starfleet officers come to a halt before the open gate – of course there is no evidence of a door anymore, not even hinges. Tom's inner history buff takes over with a vengeance and he heads towards the opening; entirely forgetting his place in the Starfleet food chain, he beckons Riker to follow him.
"Whatever we're supposed to find down here, this is as good a place as any to start looking," he bubbles with excitement. "I mean, for all we know we're looking at the lost continent of Atlantis, or something like it. Maybe we can find out what made it tick, or got it drowned."
Belatedly, he adds, "Maybe that what he wants to know."
Riker shrugs and follows his enterprising XO; he really can't think of anything better to do and besides, it's pretty clear that Tom is the expert when it comes to diving off the deep end.
The scene that unfolds before them once they move past the barbican reminds Tom of those artificial environments some people create in decorative fish tanks, the kind that abounds in fake pirates' chests or sunken castles. Except this sunken castle is the real thing – wide streets, lined with buildings in much the same state of repair and encrustation as the gateway, softened by things that have claimed it as their own.
Thousands of fish – in shapes that range from the thinnest, undulating string to spiked, tufted and veiled phantasms, all extravagantly coloured – drift in and out of the ruins in small clouds. A handful of bigger, darker specimen move in deliberate and solitary grace among them; occasionally one drops the you-can't-see-me-because-I'm-slow-and-harmless routine and snaps at an unsuspecting victim, resulting in the brief and spectacular panicked dispersal of a rainbow cloud or two. Playing the odds of their great numbers, the denizens of the schools soon recombine into their favourite formations though, and settle back into their well-rehearsed dance.
As Tom watches this silent world of deep aquamarine, schools change course as if on command, causing a sudden flash of yellow or purple-and-white as a thousand bellies or backs catch a drop of sunlight that has somehow found its way into the depths. With a beat of his heart he realizes just what he is looking at, and he wishes more than anything that Miral could be here to see what he does: The single tear that leaves his eye unbidden mingles with the salt water of his childhood dreams.
Riker senses his XO's distraction and grabs Tom's flipper to get his attention, not unsympathetically. He points at the cave-like entrance to one of the buildings, a vague shape as derelict and coral-rich as all the others.
"Did you see that?"
Maybe it was intended as a whisper, but the slowness with which the Captain utters the words just makes the bubbles larger as they drift up towards the surface.
"See what?"
Tom forces himself back into the now and looks to where Will is pointing, but all he can see is mossed stone, corals and water. And two long seaweeds on either end of the doorway that manage to look somewhat decorative - for all the world as if someone planted them there on purpose, like the potted cedars that his mother likes to fuss over on the front porch of his parents' estate.
"Something big just … poked its head out of the entrance, looked at us and then went back in really quickly."
Tom would shake his head, except he knows that any such extraneous movement just causes the body to change direction.
"Nope, nothing. But if there was something, the fish don't seem too bothered by it."
It's true, the curtain of drifting creatures regularly parts to avoid the two humans – or whatever it is Q has turned them into – but neither they nor the swarm of red-and-silver algae suckers feeding greedily off the moss beside that doorway have budged.
Tom swallows. If it was a predator that Will saw, surely the local vegetarians and krill eaters wouldn't be quite so complacent; he's seen what the snap of a single bully can do. He looks around, willing his eyes to penetrate first the darkness behind the door, then the vista behind the buildings within their ken, but he sees nothing that fits the Captain's description.
What he does see is something else entirely. It must have been a spire once, with a top that probably went missing eons ago, maybe even before this world was claimed by the ocean. Still, despite its loss the building that looms against the darkening, distant background is taller than any of the others, drawing his gaze almost magnetically.
Now Tom is not the anthropologist that Chakotay is, but even he can tell when a building has particular significance to a community (whoever that might have been). Size and location are usually the give-away. He points at the structure and says a single word, but the sea swallows any nuance as to whether it was meant to be a statement - or a question: "Temple."
Not awaiting the Captain's consent, Tom makes a few determined strokes towards the direction of what he firmly believes must be the place that holds the answers. Something small and dark emerges from between the clamshells that continue to line the open ground – he has started to think of them as cobble stones – and snaps at Tom's flippered feet. He kicks at it and keeps swimming.
The First Officer's evident desire to investigate a tall, crumbling structure may be crazy and dangerous, but Will really doesn't see much in the way of other options. And so he follows, with a reflexive grumble about Tom and his lousy ideas that leaves his mouth like a curtain of purest crystal.
…..
The corridors of the Enterprise are buzzing with activity. Security teams are busily directing traffic as the ship's well-trained personnel head for the escape pods. There is no mad scramble; anything more than ten minutes to evac is a luxury. Children and civilians first, as always.
Through the open door of the shuttle bay where he is modifying Flyer One with the help of a small engineering team – B'Elanna is busy with the stabilizers - Harry catches a glimpse of Libby and manages to hold her eye for a short but meaningful second. She is clutching Baby Tommy to her chest in the old-fashioned sling Tom and B'Elanna have given them, and is holding an excited and bouncy Miral Paris by the hand. Harry sighs deeply and turns his attention back to his work, cursing Q and all of his kind without holding back in the least.
The transporters, it turns out, still function within the confines of the ship, which makes it easier to load up the two tanks Dr. Crusher insisted they bring with them. A small oxygenation device is attached to each of them, and since they have to fit two of the tallest men on the ship, they pretty well take up the Flyer's entire aft section.
"You don't know what shape they might be in when you find them," Beverly had said quite reasonably, but Harry knows what his best friend will say when he gets stuffed into a glorified aquarium - especially while someone else gets to pilot the Flyer. First Officer or not, Tom Paris still has a major possessive streak when it comes to flying that particular shuttle and when you combine that with his well-documented claustrophobia, the picture of him in that tank is not a pretty one. There'll be water on the floor, that's for sure, and Harry for one doesn't feel like mopping it up.
The modifications finally complete, Mike Ayala and Marc O'Reilly climb in for pre-flight checks. The pilot wants to cut them short but this is important, and Harry as the ranking officer onboard tells him – politely – that since he hasn't done this before, he better familiarize himself with the changed instrumentation.
The ship's corridors are quiet when five minutes later, they cut through the force field and out of the airlock. Harry's breath hitches a little when he realizes that they never even entered the planet's atmosphere at all; but as a result, they also don't see the whitecaps that are being whipped up now by a strengthening breeze.
A thousand feet down, and the seabed is coming up, O'Reilly announces, his voice pregnant with disappointment. The stories he'd heard about the Commander's undersea flight – the water there apparently never ended, and there were wondrous sights, silent leviathans of the deep. They might as well be in a swimming pool here.
Harry, himself the most open of books, catches on rather quickly to the source of the pilot's dismay, and shoots him a reproachful look.
"Good," he says firmly. "At least Tom and the Captain don't have to deal with pressure issues on top of everything else."
O'Reilly, chastised, makes a show of nodding with guilty relief, and starts fiddling with the console to bring the Flyer to a standstill just above the bottom.
It doesn't take Ayala long to locate the command team's comm badges, and even less time to figure out that they are no longer attached to the command team.
'Must have ditched them to avoid Q spying," he says in that matter-of-fact, minimalist way of his that, as Harry has learned, never goes beyond the relevant and essential. Like Seven of Nine without the complex syntax and no spandex, as Tom likes to say.
Harry nods and returns his attention to the ops console. The news just keeps getting better.
"Guys - there is something down here all of a sudden that seems to be blocking out life signs. I can't even read normal fish anymore. When we came down, we came down right through a clump of big ones. Now, nothing."
Ayala does a few checks of his own, and confirms what Harry has noted.
"I can't even read them anymore, either. And they didn't seem ready to leave their dinner."
"Sonics, thermal, theta band and other spectrums – all the other sensor readings either feed back, or get absorbed by the water. Can't even get the topography of the place. And it only started when we went below a hundred meters depth. Above that, things were fine."
Harry keeps trying, but he's beginning to get the idea that nothing the Flyer's instruments can throw out will work.
"Some water, huh," Ayala remarks drily. "No wonder even Q has trouble with it. Strange the comm badges worked as long as they did."
"Visual? Do we have visual? Maybe we could just look. They can't have gone far," O'Reilly suggests helpfully, and puts on the Flyer's external illumination without awaiting Harry's orders. It only takes a second for him to acknowledge that this was probably a mistake, as a thousand sharp points of light slice back at them through the screen, coming at them from the ocean floor like so many photonic knives.
'Screen off," Harry snaps, and it is only with the most heroic of efforts that he bites back an unkind expletive at the end of that. After all, it isn't like anyone could have anticipated that particular show. Luckily, the pilot still had his hand on the console and can reset the screen to dark by touch, since all three of them are temporarily blinded.
"Any ideas?" Harry asks, being fresh out. But he doesn't want to give up, either. His best friend and Captain are out there, and if Q tires of letting them play fish people, they will drown before they can get back to the surface. Despite O'Reilly's complaints they're pretty deep here and it would take some time to get back to the surface.
"Maybe we should just stay here and wait till they knock on the hull," Ayala suggests. "If we keep the parking lights on low they'll find us, even if we can't track them."
And so they wait, Harry painfully aware that the remaining crew of the Enterprise will have one less vehicle available to escape the planet while they are sitting here idle on the ocean floor. The letter "Q" has never been as unpopular with Lieutenant Kim as it is today.
…..
By rights the interior of the temple – if that's what it is – should be dark, with only one or golden droplets of sunlight finding their way down through the open spire. But oddly, it isn't. The walls are emitting a greenish glow that reminds Tom of the inside of a Borg cube, except warmer, much more natural, and far more welcoming.
"Bioluminescence," he says wonderingly, more or less to himself, even as Riker pulls up beside him.
"Isn't that a bit unusual, this far down?"
Will is getting better at that whole talking underwater thing, or else Tom is getting used to filtering out the bubbles from where they form around the words.
"Yeah," he says, "it is."
May as well have a look – anything unusual is worth investigating in this search for a drop of truth in an ocean of questions. Tom shoots his long body up to the wall with a few quick flicks of his feet and a casual thrust of his arms.
Tom likes that motion, always has, and being able to just do it without having to come up for air afterwards makes him feel ridiculously free. He resists the urge to spin a little as he glides through the water. But now he knows, really knows, how dolphins feel and why they sometimes shoot out of the water and do somersaults and twist in the air, for the sheer joy of it. He forces himself to bite back that feeling, forces himself to stay focused and professional.
But dammit, it feels good to be down here. Almost like something, or someone, is plucking at the very strands of his DNA like a harp, making his body and his mind sing.
Of course, he remembers the last time he felt this way, and the price he paid when he followed that siren lure … He reaches the wall and this time, he is determined not to founder on the rocks. No, sir. Tom Paris is a Starfleet officer, focused and professional, right down to the flippers.
But before turning to his chosen task he turns around – the buddy system of the diver, once ingrained, is as impossible to forget as Starfleet's rule on never going solo on an away mission. He is relieved to see that Riker is still well within visual range, having set to investigate something that almost looks like an altar in the centre of the temple, or whatever it is. He seems to be prodding it, looking for any kind of opening or indication as to its purpose underneath the layer of marine life that covers it. Tom waves to his Captain and turns around when he sees the answering wave.
The source of the mysterious light seems to be a kind of lichen – a layer of green algae under a crust of something that could be a fungus, sifting the water for microscopic nutrients and turning it into … light? Tom stares at it for a while, trying to figure how all this works, and comes to the amateurish – not to mention highly unorthodox - conclusion that what he is looking at must be a kind of reverse photosynthesis (would you call that photogenesis?). The perfect thing for a submerged world, where even the brightest day is filtered into shimmering twilight, and darkness a velvet black.
Perfectly sustainable energy. Could that be what Q is interested in? Hardly, Tom decides after about a nanosecond. Q can cause supernovas with a snap of his finger and light up galaxies with a flick of his wrist. But the thought crosses Tom's mind that Captain Janeway would have given her eyeteeth for something this simple to keep Voyager lit; Kes and her nurturing touch would have made it glow so, so bright.
Not to mention that Jarvis in biosciences would give his left testicle for a sample. It would sure be fun offering him a trade ...
So since he is already here anyway, Tom takes the back of his thumb nail to the wall to scrape off a little bit of the lichen, to stick into his pocket in case they get out of this adventure alive and with their scientific curiosity intact. It won't come off as easily as he thought though and so he puts his flippered feet on the ground and into the sand for additional purchase.
It doesn't take very long for him to realize that this was a mistake.
No sooner do the soles of his feet touch the seabed floor that he feels his skin penetrated by tiny spikes, and a sharp heartbeat's worth of pure pain lances through his entire nervous system. He suddenly feels rooted to the ground and all he can do is look down at the creature that emerges with a few lazy flaps from its hiding spot right under the sand.
What he sees is flat and red and purple, with a dozen or more arms – a bit like the pizza-sized starfish in the deep, crystalline waters off Haida Gwaii (why are those things even called fish?). The far-too-many arms are encrusted with tiny spikes that now effectively pin him to the floor like some kind of evil Velcro. Paralysis spreads up his legs with each new heartbeat, and Tom silently curses his too-efficient circulatory system. The spikes will likely soon start secreting some vile substance, to dissolve and slowly digest what they caught; for the next few weeks, the thing will dine like a king.
As it turns out, he foundered after all.
Tom instinctively emits a rather large number of bubbles to attract Riker's attention; the buddy system should work both ways, but he feels his body shutting down already. With fading energy he starts to take inventory of what remains important just now: Regret at what he will not see again - the Enterprise, safe; his daughter, growing; B'Elanna's eyes, flashing - battles with a surprising satisfaction that it, that he, should be coming to an end here, in the sea.
The siren's song still fills his mind, seemingly louder and sweeter than ever - the song of the sea he first imagined he heard as a child. Bloody cliché, he thinks as he feels his muscles give out to the point where he can't keep upright, and starts sinking to the ground. Surely you can come up with something more original at a time like this, Tommy Boy?
With his eyes darkening now, Tom only vaguely senses the shadow that is approaching through the waters. It is coming for him like an arrow, the same way that he had shot towards that wall.
Riker? No, not that good a swimmer.
His instincts balk, and he wants to reach for the phaser that sits on his hips but might as well be in the weapons locker on the Enterprise. He manages to twitch a little finger, but that's about it. Then his gills stop working too, and all of a sudden the possibility of drowning becomes very real.
He doesn't know when everything changes, but it does, and the panic stops - just stops. The hands that lift him off the ground and rip his feet off those lethal spikes are strong and the hair that brushes his shoulders, bare under that Starfleet-issue grey tank top, is long and soft, a liquid cloud.
Suddenly, the song is everywhere.