On the other hand, if it had not been Harriman—which seemed far more likely—then who or what had it been? Had it occurred only in Vaughn’s mind, or had it been real? And if real, then how had it been accomplished, and why? Again, most important, what effect would it have on his mission?
What most troubled Vaughn was the agreement between what he had perceived and what his tricorder scans had shown. If it had not been Harriman, or at least a human male, then either both Vaughn and the tricorder had been fooled, or Vaughn’s perception of the tricorder had been fooled. Either way, it left the accuracy of the two most valuable tools he had right now—the tricorder and his mind—in doubt.
As Vaughn hiked up the gradient, leaning into the slope, his thoughts wandered again from Harriman’s apparent presence here to those dangerous days spent with him— What? Sixty-five years ago?He remembered with horror the catastrophe of Ad Astra,in which lives and hopes had been lost. He recalled the mission to remedy the damage done, to avert the unwinnable war…the success, but at a cost. Vaughn had still been a young man then, in his thirties, and naïve.
No, not naïve,he thought, a word that carried negative connotations with it. Innocent.Back then, he had believed in the virtue of fighting evil, without really understanding the toll that such fighting could take.
Now, alone on this planet, he shook his head and laughed, with not humor but curiosity. He had not thought about Tomed— reallythought about it—in years, perhaps decades. And yet for the last few hours, he had come back to it again and again. All this time later, he found that those ancient emotions could still take hold of him, as though he were experiencing them for the first time. He knew now that he would always carry within him the simple hollowness of the tragedy, along with the complicated sorrows that came from fighting in the shadows.
Underneath the gray skies, Vaughn marched alongside the road, up the incline. Pebbles crunched in the dirt beneath his boots, a sharp contrast to the spectral hum still pervading the air like the aural equivalent of mist. As he approached the summit of the upgrade, a shape became visible in the distance, slowly climbing into view. Vaughn’s hands balled into fists, a symptom of the adrenaline that began to course through his body. If he had reached the complex around the pulse already, then he would have an entire day to determine a course of action to save the Vahni.
But as Vaughn topped the rise, he saw only a single structure. A dark tower of some sort, it sat perhaps another kilometer away, reaching up from the center of the roadway itself. It appeared to be about as tall as the road was wide, its base measuring about half that size. Vaughn pulled out his tricorder and attempted a sensor scan, but the interference from the energy made it impossible.
Vaughn kept his gaze on the structure as he continued walking, looking in particular for movement. He saw none. He wondered about the purpose of the structure. Considering its placement, he speculated that it might have functioned as a checkpoint of some sort. He looked for openings in the side facing him, and saw a rectangular doorway at ground level, and several narrow slits in a vertical line above it. With its dark coloring and slightly irregular edges, it appeared to be constructed of stone and—
Vaughn stopped. He checked the tricorder again, but still could not take a reading. It didn’t matter. He had drawn close enough now to recognize the structure. It was identical to the tower at the center of the Vahni city.
In less than a quarter of an hour, Vaughn had reached the tower. When he had come within half a kilometer, he had been able to scan the structure: stone and mortar, four stories tall, a single doorway, and a stairway that ascended up the inside walls to the roof. He did not have the readings of the actual Vahni tower—why would he?—so he could not compare the two structures, but his memory found them indistinguishable.
What’s going on?Vaughn wanted to know. Was he in a holosuite somewhere, or was this all occurring in his mind? Maybe he still lay back in the wreckage of Chaffee,unconscious or even comatose, imagining all of this.
Except…this did not seem like a holosuite or an illusion or a dream. Of course, he understood that he might not be able to prove such a belief one way or another. It had been more than a day since the shuttle had gone down, though, and all of the events since then—finding Prynn alive, treating the badly wounded ch’Thane, walking for kilometers across the empty land, passing through the city—had all seemed real. But then, so too had Harriman.
Standing beside the doorway, Vaughn patted a hand against an outer wall of the tower. The stone felt cool to the touch, hard, rough. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the sensations remained.
Vaughn pushed one side of his coat back, allowing him to draw his phaser. He tapped at the control surface on the top of the weapon, configuring it to a powerful but nonlethal setting. He turned around to face back the way he had come, leveled the phaser, and fired. A shaft of yellow-red light streaked into the surface of the roadway, at a point about ten meters away, its high-pitched whine loud in the almost-quiet of the empty landscape. Vaughn shot the beam for ten seconds, then released the trigger. The point on the road at which he had fired glowed red. He checked the tricorder and read liquefaction of stone composites and binding materials. It proved little, he knew, though it at least seemedto lend credence to the reality of his surroundings.
Turning back toward the tower, Vaughn stepped away, raised the phaser, and fired again. He held the beam for longer this time. When he stopped, a section of the wall glowed red. He worked the tricorder once more, scanning the tower. Again, he read liquefied stone in the affected—
A life-form showed on the display. Vaughn adjusted the scan and located it on the roof of the tower. It read as Vahni Vahltupali.
Vaughn slipped the straps of the water containers from his shoulders, lowering the containers onto the roadway. Then he unburdened himself of the bedroll, also setting it down on the road. He reset his phaser to heavy stun, then strode back to the tower. Cautiously, he moved through the open doorway, his weapon poised at the level of his waist. Inside, the air felt slightly cooler than the air outside, and slightly damp. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust fully to the dimmer lighting, then turned to his left and started up the stone stairs that ran along the wall. The setting matched his recollection of the tower on the Vahni world.
Climbing the stairs as quietly as he could, he took three minutes to reach the top. He stood with his back to the inside wall, beside the open doorway that led out onto the roof. He consulted the tricorder again, verifying the presence of the Vahni. Then he closed and pocketed the tricorder, raised his phaser higher, and stepped through the doorway.
Ventu—or somebody or something that looked just like him—stood on the far side of the roof, a cloth bag at his feet. Vaughn slowly moved forward, observing and saying nothing. As he did, a flash of color and form flowed across the Vahni’s body. “Again, you are welcome,” came the slightly mechanical voice of the translator. Vaughn peered down at his chest and saw only his tattered uniform under his open coat, but not the optical mesh that had comprised part of the Vahni translation devices. Nor did the interface between the mesh and the universal translator hang in a small casing at his side.
Vaughn looked up. “Who are you?” he demanded.
All at once, the tower thrust sideways, surging to Vaughn’s right. He and Ventu were thrown from their feet in the opposite direction. Even as he fell, a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him, just as it had back in the city with Harriman. He dropped the phaser as he brought his hands up in time to break his fall, but the left side of his forehead impacted the stone floor of the roof. Explosive sounds pounded the air around him, sounds he knew to be the products of a quake. He had lived through all of this before.