So, he had. After all my lectures about privacy.Kaldarren was embarrassed to admit it now to himself that he hadprobed his son: a light touch, nothing more.
The surprise had come the instant a finger of his thought brushed along the contours of his son’s mind. Jase had blocked him. Blockedhim: It was as if Kaldarren stood on the other side of a pane of milky glass, unable to see through to what lay beyond in his son’s mind.
How did Jasedo that? How long has Jase beenable to do that and me not even know? DoesJase even know, or is it reflex?
Aloud, Kaldarren said, “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I assumed that telepathy is a constant. That was foolish, probably. We know that some species have no known telepaths, and that one species’ telepathy may be far cruder than another’s. It’s also possible— probable,in fact—that there was something here once, a long time ago, but there isn’t now. Time wreaks havoc on many things, Chen-Mai, not just stone statues.”
“No!” Chen-Mai hurled the negative like a spear. “I presume thisprobability. You’re not the right telepath for the job.” Chen-Mai’s upper lip curled, revealing a line of yellowed teeth. There was a gap between Chen-Mai’s two front teeth, and when he spoke, Kaldarren saw the tip of the smaller man’s tongue undulating, like a fat worm.
“You’re not strong enough,” said Chen-Mai, his tongue working against his teeth. “Maybe I need a better, stronger telepath.”
“Very possibly,” said Kaldarren, soberly. “Certainly that’s your choice.”
“Choice.” Chen-Mai’s features corkscrewed. “Maybe, but I don’t have time, ormoney. Oh, but money doesn’t mean anything to you Federation people.”
“That doesn’t stop us from needing resources, or pursuing a dream. Money isn’t the only motivator, Chen-Mai.”
“Well, it is for me. I have an employer who will be very unhappy if I don’t keep my end of the bargain, and Iwill be very unhappy not to get my money.”
“We still have four days before the next Cardassian patrol.”
“Are you saying you’ll find it by then?”
Kaldarren hesitated. “Possible, but unlikely. Chen-Mai, we may have to face the fact, however unpleasant, that the translations are in error.”
Chen-Mai’s mouth opened in protest, but Lam Leahru-Mar stirred. “What if it were shielded in some way?” the Naxeran said. His frills trembled, and he smoothed them down with his left index finger in a slow, meditative gesture. “What if there isa portal, but there’s something that blocks you from finding it? If I built something that powerful, that’s what I’d do.”
Chen-Mai exhaled a noisy snort. “And where’s the power source?”
“There’s all that magnetic disturbance in the mountains,” Mar offered. “Maybe it’s shielding a power source deep underground.”
Chen-Mai gave the Naxeran a withering look. “If that were the case, there ought to be an energy signature. No machine is so perfect it doesn’t have a signature.”
Mar turned his sleek black face toward Kaldarren. “What about the ion storms? The radiation? Could they interfere?”
It was tempting to pawn off his failure on that, but Kaldarren shook his head. “It shouldn’t. Honestly, I don’t know.”
There was, of course, one possibility none of them had voiced: Chen-Mai and Mar because they wouldn’t have considered it, and he because the idea filled with him with an icy dread. What if the portaldidn’t want to be found? Or what if the portal didn’t want Kaldarrento find it, or only wanted him to find it on its own terms? A strange way to think of a machine, but telepathy was more than intimacy. Telepathy was a form of becoming something distinctly different from what you were. When a telepath touched another mind, a little piece got left behind—like a fingerprint, or a footstep in cooling tar—and imprints, done often enough for long enough, became permanent and were not washed away. So it stood to reason that a device, one attuned to and used by enough telepaths over a long period of time, might itself become…selective, perhaps even sentient.
A machine with a soul.Kaldarren suppressed a shiver. He doubted Chen-Mai would understand that,so he opted to stick to the obvious. “Let’s face facts. We’ve based this entire operation on ancient Cardassian legends. Legends aren’t facts.”
“But they’re something,”said Chen-Mai. He was pacing again. “And there’s something here. Why would the Cardassians bother patrolling otherwise?”
“It’s disputed space. The Federation’s been haggling with the Cardassians over this region for years.”
Chen-Mai gave a dismissive, backhanded wave. “But the Cardassians are stretched so thin between their expansion and their conflicts with both the Federation and the Klingons, it makes no sense to worry about a region they can’t legitimately lay claim to, even if they did have bases here once, like this biosphere. But they still patrol, and why? Because there’s something here.”
“They could just be spoiling for a fight. All Federation incursions are supposed to be cleared first.” Kaldarren sighed. “Even discounting that, your somethingcould be anything. Or what if they patrol because this is the way Cardassians do things?”
Mar spoke up. “Kaldarren’s got a point. If there’s something here, why not put a contingent on the surface instead?”
“Am I supposed to know how, or what a Cardassian thinks?” Chen-Mai raged. “Ask Kaldarren! He’sthe telepath!”
Kaldarren was tempted to point out that telepaths weren’t all-powerful; Vulcans couldn’t meld with Cardassians, and he couldn’t read a Breen. Instead, he held up the masked statue. “Look, Chen-Mai, I can’t even tell you with any certainty whether this is Hebitian, or Cardassian, or, well, take your pick. Just because these artifacts happen to be on a dead planet in disputed, possibly Cardassian, space doesn’t mean that the people who used to live here are connected to Cardassia, or the Hebitians.”
“That’s not what the legends say.”
Kaldarren made a face. “The Cardassians claim that the Hebitians mayhave been telepaths. Anyway, claims aren’t proof. If true, why aren’t there modern-day Cardassian telepaths? Betazoid telepaths trace their powers back in evolutionary time. Our telepathy didn’t evolve outof us; it got stronger.”
Chen-Mai leaned forward on his knuckles. “Ah, but that’s the key, don’t you see? The Hebitians evolvedon Cardassia. They’re telepaths. Somehow, they developed a psionic portal, a gateway attuned to individual neural patterns. A properly attuned telepath activates the portal, and poof!”He leaned back, throwing his hands up and splaying his fingers, as if releasing birds. “Here one second, there the next. It explains howthey got here.”
“Ifthese ruins are Hebitian,” said Kaldarren. “A big if.That still doesn’t answer why these portals aren’t on other worlds, or why Cardassians aren’t telepathic.”
“I don’t know, and it’s not my problem,” said Chen-Mai. “All I know is, the Cardassians watch this planet—not just this region but this planet—and I think it’s because they’re worried somebody will find and then use the portal.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Kaldarren said, his weariness settling on him now like a heavy blanket. They were arguing about a phantom. “Find this magical portal and access it, if I can? Other than the specs, what are you’re going to do if we find it?”
Chen-Mai’s jaw set. “You don’t need to know. Your job is to find the portal. Figure out how it works. Then you get what you want, and I get what I want.”
I don’t know what I want anymore.“And what if I can’t, Chen-Mai?” Kaldarren fixed him with a searching look. He enjoyed seeing the smaller man flinch away, worried that Kaldarren might be probing. However tempting that might be, however, Kaldarren wouldn’t reach into Chen-Mai’s mind unless he had no other choice. Probably awfully slimy in there.