Growing closer, Ezri recognized that the mounds weren’t the coral or rock formations she’d supposed; as her eyes adjusted to the goggles, she discerned several carved archways, one partially collapsed, a lump became a fallen dome and so forth until she realized she saw the remains of a city. All the way out here? Corroded skeletons—hundreds of Yrythny—lay beneath fallen walls and wedged in window frames. Swimming from ruin to ruin, the sights varied only minimally. Such destruction characterized worlds less evolved than this, usually those fumbling toward warp in the fossil and nuclear fuel stages. What happened here? A nuclear blast? She activated her sensors, and while waiting for the results to appear, Ezri asked Jeshoh to explain what she was seeing.
“You’re looking at the remains of House Tin-Mal, a social experiment of four hundred years ago,”Jeshoh said. “You see, Lieutenant, we’re not the narrow-minded elitists you might think we are. In fact, in the case of Tin-Mal, my ancestors were very progressive.”
“This was a Wanderer city, wasn’t it?”
Jeshoh retrieved a platter-size chunk of wall, carved with Yrythny pictographs and passed it to Ezri. Brushing off the sand, Ezri traced the story with her gloved fingertip, imagining that by so doing the tale was being written in her mind.
“Your translator program will confirm this, but this segment explains how House Tin-Mal rose from the sea off the Fès reef, glorious in its spires and towers, a testament to how wrong the Houseborn were to repress our brethren. They grew in numbers. Built more platforms. Advanced aquaculture.”
Among the litter on the sea floor, Ezri deciphered the rusted outlines of machine gears, tools, weapons and primitive energy chambers. Of course she couldn’t be certain, but the design exhibited the same original flair she’d seen in Luthia. The Wanderers didn’t seem content to make something work when it could work with panache. She had to admire their creativity, though she knew their boldness likely resulted in the disaster crumbling all around her. “They did this to themselves, didn’t they?” she asked, more to affirm her suspicions than to learn something new.
“Carelessness. Arrogance. Stupidity. Pick one. For all their intellectual capacity, the Wanderers decided their energy system wasn’t adequate so they began augmenting the existing infrastructure with incompatible technologies. There was an accident, an explosion and everything for a thousand kilometers was contaminated and destroyed. How many hatchlings died, the fish and plant life, the reef itself? None of it survived. Now, almost half a millennium later, the waters are still recovering.”
His mournful tone touched Ezri and she wished she could offer him consolation. During the time she’d worked with Jeshoh, his love for his planet informed his every word and action. She knew he believed in pressing forward, taking Vanìmel into a new era. For all his efforts, however, the consequences of the past reverberated through generations. How well Dax understood that truism! Wisps of memories—especially Lenara and Worf—drifted back for a wistful moment. And Dax was reminded that by constantly revisiting the past, one could easily be shackled to it. Time passed, circumstances and technology changed. As horrific as the Tin-Mal experiment was, Vanìmel had moved on, as had the Yrythny. Maybe the time to rethink this chapter in the past had arrived.
Though she had no doubt that Jeshoh spoke from knowledge and conviction, she had lived far too many lives to accept only one perspective on any situation. Expect a child to do an adult’s task, the task will be done as a child would do it, not as an adult. Ezri suspected the Wanderers had been set loose here with all the exuberance and idealism of youth, but with no practical experience. House Tin-Mal was doomed to fail before the first archway had been built. How to say this to Jeshoh? Audrid had always had a way of phrasing things just right. What words would she use? Ezri allowed Audrid’s steady nurturing nature to suffuse her before speaking again. “While the outcome speaks for itself, I can’t help but wonder if these Wanderers had been raised with the same opportunities and experiences as the Houseborn, would the outcome would have been different? Couldn’t they be taught how to be proper caretakers?”
“And in the course of teaching, how many more mistakes would they make? How many mistakes could Vanìmel’s fragile ecology withstand?”he argued. “I accept that Houseborn history is not without its ugliness. Pollution, destruction, squandering resources. And how we treated the Wanderers? I am ashamed by my ancestors’ ignorance. But now they have representation, education—everything they need to lead long, fulfilled lives. Is it so hard to understand why we don’t permit them to breed and pass on their weaknesses?”
Thick silence fell between them as Ezri searched for the right words, the only sound, faint echoes from far above them, of water curling up into frail crests, crashing into weak whispers.
* * *
So far, so good.
L’Gon waited for Vaughn in a cramped vestibule located down the hall from the main door. The dark paneling and orange-tinted lighting made it hard for Vaughn to see much. Squinting, he saw the brushed fold of floor-to-ceiling velvet draping, a plate bearing food scraps—greasy bones and skins sitting in a pool of bloody juices—and in the rear was L’Gon, clinging to a silken web. Vaughn’s misshapen face mirrored in the burnished surface of his eyes. The Cheka deigned to rise, instead gesturing with one of his slender legs for Vaughn to take a seat on a backless stool sitting beside his couch. The robot offered beverages, brought a bowl of fried cartilage to snack on.
L’Gon didn’t waste any time dancing around his payment demands. As soon as the robot delivered Vaughn’s drink, the Cheka listed them.
Because the Cheka’s vibrating metallic voice took some getting used to, Vaughn asked his host to repeat his request. Doubt I heard L’Gon correctly, hundred-year-old ears and all,he thought cynically.
“We want your cloaking technology.” With pincers affixed to the end of a leg, he clipped a fine filament suspending an amorphous chrysalis from the ceiling. L’Gon squirted sticky brown liquid into the sack, waited a moment, and then slurped up the liquefied contents through a tubule. Carelessly, he chucked it aside, biomatter dripping off his fangs onto the fine hairs growing around his spinnerets.
Vaughn’s face betrayed nothing. How the Cheka had come by his knowledge of Defiant’s cloak, didn’t matter at the moment. What did matter was that Vaughn treat the revelation as nothing unexpected. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“We don’t require the device itself,” L’gon went on, “just the engineering specifications and any parts we might find difficult to reproduce. In return, the matter load you require can be delivered immediately.”
Vaughn dropped his glass on a drink tray and stood up. “Thank you for your hospitality. I’ll let myself out.” He’d taken only a few steps when L’Gon stopped him with a question.
“You do understand how this process works? I have something you want, you have something I want. We negotiate.”
“I’ve made clear what I was prepared to offer in exchange for the matter load. So by all means, please let me know if you change your mind.” Vaughn turned back for one last look, though L’Gon’s hard-shelled thorax made reading body language impossible.
With silk thread extending from his abdomen, L’Gon lassoed fried cartilage from the tray, dousing it in gooey enzymes before lifting it to his mouth.
For a moment, Vaughn waited, watching L’Gon for a sign that he was interested in further negotiations, but saw no indication the Cheka wanted anything but lunch. “I’ll let myself out.” He left without another word, even to the android chasing stiffly down the corridor after him.