Issue 17 - August 1996

What is science fiction music? Electronic music is the obvious candidate, and it comes with a good pedigree. The very first electronic instrument - the theremin - was used in some of the earliest SF films, and later films such as Blade Runner are also notable for their electronic scores. Modern techno and industrial musicians often employ science fictional imagery, as did the pioneers of electronic music before them (eg. Kraftwerk, Rick Wakeman). Science fiction authors (L Ron Hubbard) and directors (John Carpenter) have also experimented with electronic music.

On the other hand, filk music (essentially folk music with SF

lyrics) has a higher profile in SF fandom - there have even been conventions devoted to it. Another type of SF music is the classically-inspired orchestral style heard in most science fiction movies and TV shows. Since 2001, the image of space ships and stations floating in space will always be associated with The Blue Danube. We may never know what the music of the future will really sound like until the future is upon us, but it seems to me that every genre of music has something to add to the appreciation of science fiction.

Issue 17 is Ibn Qirtaiba's third special fiction issue (after issues 3 and 11), with two excellent short stories by Will Sand and Mensan William Sternman, and the third installment of Of Kings and Pawns. Issue 18 will continue the feature on fiction with two more new short stories. Enjoy them, and feel free to send me your comments.

Contents

Short story: End of the Line by Will Sand

Short story: Past Imperfect by William Sternman

Serial: Of Kings and Pawns, part 3 by Kevin Karmann

Short Story: End of the Line © 1996 Will

Sand

Lucas Hertle gritted his teeth as he stepped into the power-shower. He hated this part.

From all six surfaces of the stall, hundreds of jets blasted alternating hot and cold water at him. As always, he tried to stand still, but he soon abandoned dignity and jump/danced his way through the three minute process.

He enjoyed the drying-off cycle though, as all flakes of dead skin were forcefully blown away. He emerged more-than-clean, slightly raw even, and donned the drab, formless robe waiting for him.

He was now ready to meet his father - for the last time. The corridor he followed was carved out of unpolished granite and led to a stone amphitheater. This was as far as a scrubbed public was permitted.

Blister lights embedded in the rock roof set off bright and shadowed alcoves. In one of the latter, his father sat on a stone bench, staring at a gray wall.

Hell's smells, Lucas thought, he's aged ten years in as many months. Once tall, the senior Hertle now was merely elongated, stretched past a stress point. Thin and wrinkled, he looked washed up on the shore of some invisible sea, rejected by life. As indeed he was. No banishment is as complete as a diagnosis of A-T-E, Allergic-To-Everything. His very surroundings reflected his condition. One didn't so much exist in a SUB

(Sheltered Underground Barracks), as persist. Barely. Overloaded by consumer toxins in the past, his beleaguered immune system could tolerate no further exposure. In the cities the syndrome was epidemic, but only a scant few million could afford isolation.

Despite his haggard appearance, Lucas knew his father could last like this for years. He wondered if he himself would. Lucas tried not to strut his tall, sturdy health as he entered the alcove. His father turned his head and nodded.

"It's about time. I have a blood-filtering appointment in half an hour." Lucas knew his father's life consisted of little more than meals, naps and a constant attention to health.

"Hi, Dad." Lucas was relieved; his father recognized him. But he realized how treacherous Alt3 was, more so even than simple Altzheimers. Ten minutes from now his father might lose his very identity. It had happened during their previous visit.

"How are you these days?" Lucas tried to sound cheery. Daniel Hertle merely tossed his head, as if to say look around you.

Lucas touched his father's shoulder, got no response, and sat across from him. Already they had nothing to say. His father wouldn't be much interested in weather he could never again experience.

Well, Lucas thought, let's get down to it.

"I'm going into space," he announced proudly. If nothing else, the expense of leaving earth affirmed one's importance.

"That's good," his father answered. And just sat there, no questions, no interest.

Why, at age forty, am I still hurt by his inattention? Lucas thought. When will I give up trying to get his approval?

Momentarily bristling, Lucas stubbornly repeated himself.

"I'm going into space, Dad."

His father looked at him oddly. "I heard you." No inflection. Lucas knew what it was of course, what his father could never forgive. You would think that a black man would have some insight into prejudice. If anyone, he should understand that homosexuals are a fellow victimized group; that tolerance for one is tolerance for all. That I'm his son.

Yet Lucas was aware that the casualties of intolerance are often the least tolerant themselves.

But Lucas brought up none of this. They'd had this discussion, maybe too many times. What is a man but his habits and hopes, prejudices and regrets? As long as his father kept his prejudices, he would still be Daniel Hertle. And that was better than the nothing he became more and more often. So, Lucas mentally sighed and pushed on. On to details. Details and facts. In that neutral ground they sometimes met. All that passed between them, passed there. Lucas felt a kind of love in that small sharing. He liked to think his father did too.

"I'm going as a tracker. You remember..." (ouch, that's not the word to use with an Alt3 patient) "...you know about my grant work at NOSTAR." He watched for some sign of recognition.

"That's the National Office of Science, Technology And Religion. That's where we learned how to `tag' electromagnetic radiation."

His father nodded vacantly, so Lucas expanded.

"Just like environmentalists used to track an animal's movements by tagging it, we devised a way to put a marker on light particles and other energy sources, like electricity."

"Animals?" His father looked puzzled. Lucas hoped he wasn't fading into an Alt3 spell. At one time he had been as sharp as any of his fellow Cabinet members.

He explained. "Yeah, like..." well, there hadn't been much in the way of other species around for the last century... "like cockroaches - if you want to know where they go when you can't see them."

"Who cares!?"

Lucas started to answer that when he noticed a small smile work its way to his father's face. That cheered Lucas far out of proportion to the small event.

"Okay, you're with me. Well, we got around to playing with other energy releases, to see if we could track them, too. Like from engines or bombs. Of course, the heat component just disperses into the environment; what we hoped to track is the propagation of the electromagnetic particle-wave. We were consistently successful.

"All of this was directed toward the big one - could we identify and track the energy release that occurs upon death?

One instant a person or a cockroach," he glanced at his father, hoping for a smile, "is animated with the spark of life, then the next, is reduced to a slab of organic goo. Where does that energy go?"

His father stirred, sitting up straighter, showing some energy of his own. He interrupted his son.

"I know about that - the life-energy surges out of the person and soars into the heavens. The tracking research spawned a new religion."

He shrugged before continuing, a little embarrassed by his sudden enthusiasm. "Getting old you notice things like that. You become a little death-orientated."

"Dad, new information like that gets your attention no matter what your age. Anyway, for a few weeks there, before we could get a better track, it was thought that the life-energy returned to the sun and was eventually re-cycled back to earth, to another person."

Lucas continued, deciding to take a chance. "Some of us were eagerly waiting for the first confirmation of a black homosexual being reincarnated as the daughter of a white bigot."

But his father ignored that, wistfully quoting the hyperbole of that short-lived new religion: "Èveryone will revel in a whirling pool of joyous energy, bubbling in a frenzy of joined well-being, unassailable within our supreme host, the Sun. Reduction without loss. Gain without doubt.'" Lucas hated to burst that bubble which momentarily had invigorated his father, so waited a few moments before going on.

"Before long, it was discovered that this radiation of human energy was not drawn to the sun, as first assumed. From everywhere on earth, these energy releases coalesced to form a single stream, which then raced into deep space. Extrapolation of the direction of this line of energy has revealed no obvious destination."

"Just one line, you say. Is it going to heaven or hell? Or just a black hole?" His father paused. "So, you're going out there to track it down. The ultimate adventure." A quick glance proved his father wasn't being sarcastic, and Lucas beamed. "There'll be five of us: pilot, engineer, doctor, theologian, and myself, the tracker. The instruments will be set to automatically stimulate our retarded metabolisms once we reach the energy stream's destination. We'll reach optimum velocity in..."

His father interrupted him. "So, son, you've come to say goodbye." He opened his arms.

They awoke to a becalmed ship. Torrie Clair, the pilot, ascertained their position: nowhere. No where, that is, that had ever been plotted, viewed or calculated. There were no individual stars to be seen.

She looked back over the automatic record. All she could tell her four companions was that they were between galaxies, in dead, uncharted space.

Lucas raised his head from his instrument-bank, where he had been single-mindedly busy. "Nothing. We've lost the energy-stream."

Torrie thought not. "No, we've just out-run it. Automatic as everything had been set, this ship can't stop on a dime."

"Granted, but look `behind' us. There's absolutely nothing there that isn't here, which is nothing." Lucas felt himself shaking inside. He hoped it was a side-effect of having his metabolism retarded for - what? - centuries?

Torrie, who doubled as navigator, gave him a 'Let's not panic, now' look. She addressed them as a group.

"I'll just plot back. We'll find that stream again within the hour."

And they did. Then they shot back and forth a dozen times over-shooting its actual termination point. That was because it terminated no where, into nothing; it simply disappeared. One instant, one millimeter, it was there, racing along at the speed of light, and the next it wasn't.

They gathered around the dinner table. If they had a moral leader, it was Torrie. If they had a morale leader, it was Buke (pronounced, he insisted, 'bouquet').

"When's a discovery, not a discovery? When the discovery is that there's nothing to discover." Buke looked around at the disconsolate faces of his shipmates. "When's an explorer, not an explorer? When he's not exploring. I don't know about the rest of you explorers, but I'm ready for another nap. Set the alarm for four centuries and turn out the lights." Torrie tiredly shook her matted brown hair at the short, smiling man across from her. "I wouldn't be so upbeat about returning to Earth if I were you. Just think how out-of-date your engineering will be after nearly a millennium," she pointed out wryly.

Lucas ignored this banter. "Are we sure we've tried everything?"

During the past hours, they had beamed everything they could think of at that junction of stream/no stream, looking for

'shadows'. But nothing blocked anything they threw at it.

"Perhaps it leads to an alternate universe or a parallel reality," ventured Lucas. "Is that possible?"

"Well," Torrie dryly quoted, "'you can't disprove the invisible.'"

Jeremy Coffer cleared his throat. They certainly didn't expect a technical idea from their rotund theologian.

"We are brain-storming, right. I mean, any idea, no matter how bizarre..."

"Yeah, yeah, let's hear it." Although they often worked together, there was always some tension between scientists and theologians, and Torrie was stressed out enough to let some of it show in her tone.

Jeremy cleared his throat again. This must be a doozy, Lucas thought.

"Well, there's one particle beam we haven't tried." Jeremy looked around the room for help and found it in the ship's doctor, Akame Ishii.

She snorted derisively. "Who wants to go first?" When the others stared at her blankly, Akame explained.

"Jeremy's suggesting we send a volunteer across." She watched the smile disappear from Buke's face and continued.

"Yes, we moniter an energy-release generated from one of us. If it also nose-dives into the `junction', the cross-stimulation might reveal something about the nature of the junction or what lies beyond it."

The doctor pushed a pen&screen to the center of the table. "The terminally depressed or giddily altruistic can sign up here." There were other ridiculing retorts but Lucas saved the out-numbered theologian from further reproach.

"Wait, that gives me an idea. We've carefully paralleled the stream all the way here. How about we take a pass through it?

We briefly fire the engines, coast through, and fire again to stop. The physical bulk of the ship will momentarily distort the flow of human energy, without the potentially disastrous disruption caused by introducing the force of the ship's propulsion - we can try that later if we want to. We need to shake things up a bit, get a reaction."

This idea met with instant enthusiasm. At least it was something to do. Buke summed up their approval with a parody:

"Make it so!"

Immediately after the pass-through, the five of them became six.

Their intruder was tall and muscular. They could tell because he was also nude.

"I have given myself form," he smiled at each in turn, "and language."

The color he gave himself was a burnished yellow; his eyes, hair and nails were a deep ochre.

While the others just stared dumfoundedly, Torrie found her voice.

"Who are you?"

"I am Here."

She let that go. "What do you want?"

"You made me notice you."

When Torrie floundered, Lucas picked up the conversation.

"We have followed the expired life-energies of our kind to this place."

"I know. That is quite an achievement, one worthy of my attention."

Sweat was forming on Lucas' face and hands. Although the creature displayed no hostility, he felt there was risk here. But they had to play this out.

"We seek answers."

After a short silence, the man-form spread his arms graciously.

"Then ask questions."

Jeremy stepped forward. "What draws our souls to this spot?"

"The energy that pleasures me consists not of `souls'. There exists nowhere souls." He frowned. "There is dead matter and there is dead energy. The cessation of existence is just that." While that announcement necessarily disconcerted the theologian, Lucas merely pushed ahead.

"Do you come here because of the energy, or does the energy come here because of you?"

"Because of me." He gave a short bow.

"What becomes of the energy?"

"I enjoy it." A big smile. "It has a special, rare flavor; an exquisite tickle."

"Are you alone?"

"I am all there is." He shrugged. "I am the only one here," he added, as if to amplify.

Fascinated, Lucas was compelled to ask.

"Are you God?"

"I am not a repository of truth. If there is something-that-knows, it is not I. However..." He raised his eyebrows.

"I use you. Does that make me your god?" He appeared to savor that thought, before continuing.

"If so, I am a god with but one commandment: `Be fruitful and multiply!'" He laughed. "And you have obeyed most extravagantly."

In a self-parody of grandiosity, he spread his arms above his head, a gesture that took in a universe. "I let there be Light." He smiled at them. "From that sowing, I reap you." Lucas thought those were pretty good qualifications. Though thoroughly awed, he was obsessed with curiosity. "Where do you come from?"

"I willed myself into being." He shrugged. "In time, I perfected myself." He sighed. "In more time, I became bored."

"Are you why we exist?" The supreme question: Did you create us? But Lucas wasn't so bold as to ask it so nakedly.

"I am why everything exists," he declared immodestly. "I have designed a template that will produce desirable energies. Different areas, different stellar systems, ripen at different times. This is your time, though it is nearly over." Jeremy was clearly in pain. "Is our existence merely that of fattened cows for you to ingest?!"

"I have no need to maintain a metabolism. A more appropriate analogy is that you are a benign addiction that relieves my malignant boredom." He ostentatiously licked his lips. "Yours is a titillating nectar that can be produced by no other means. So very sweet..."

That mocking tone alarmed Lucas.

Jeremy's shoulders sagged and his head hung low as he murmured,

"Then all history, all human aspiration, struggle and sacrifice amount to nothing... just a kind of drug distillation process... a long line of cocaine..." That last word was uttered with a hint of defiance that Lucas thought unwise. The being pursed his lips. "Tell me, of what use is existence without pleasure? You give me pleasure. I gave you pleasure. Sunsets and sex and such. Without me, you would have had nothing, would be nothing. I let there be you." He pointed at them.

"You are fuel the way your dinosaurs were fuel, with lives of your own. You've had your day in the sun." He was speaking directly to the theologian now. "So don't make yourselves out to be such victims." There was irritation in his stern look.

Beyond exasperation, Jeremy exclaimed, "I don't understand..."

"Then I will give you understanding." He dramatically extended his right arm and issued a series of pronouncements:

"Your ship will carry you no farther.

"Your computers will lie dormant.

"Your stores will convey no taste.

"Your entertainment facilities will not function." He paused in his petulance, as if thinking. "And I think I'll take color from you, too." His yellow remained the only color among shades of gray.

"Why are you doing this," Torrie demanded.

"To give you understanding - understanding of boredom; of me, before I conceived of you."

He shot them a haughty look. "Let's see what you are capable of conceiving."

He stood exalted before their shocked silence. Through the fear that threatened to cloud his mind, Lucas saw the being ever more clearly. A flair for the dramatic, a self-absorptive pride, a willingness to exploit, and now, a treacherous petulance: were these not familiar traits? He steeled himself for what he might next hear."But I know the limits of your collective imagination." He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, suddenly weary of them. "Long before your year's supplies run out, you'll wage violence on each other for something to do. And the last of you will unleash his mind upon himself." He shook his head disdainfully. There were no more questions, no more understanding to be gleaned. They watched wide-eyed as his righteousness dissipated and his mood turned light again.

"Oh, and one last thing," he announced. "You, my discoverers, deserve a reward for your ingenuity. This is my pledge to you: I will not harvest your individual energies when they are released. I will allow them to drain into entropy. For your unprecedented accomplishment, I offer this gesture of respect." Lucas reflected on those words, 'gesture of respect', and thought of his father, and their last farewell. The god-form was fading, leaving gray in its wake. As he watched it leave, Lucas thought, I don't need your acknowledgement...

...and shouted, "WE DON'T NEED YOUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT!"

...and heard, from that vortex of final color, a god giggle. Back to Contents Back to Index

Short story: Past Imperfect © 1972 William

Sternman

"I'm going to wipe you out of existence, you stupid cow," Gerald said as he adjusted his breastpocket handkerchief once more to make certain that only half an inch showed. Rising on his toes, he squinted into the mirror above the chest of drawers. He plucked a grey strand angrily from his sleekly groomed black hair and rebrushed it. Then he positioned the silver-backed brush precisely between two combs on the chest.

"You don't seem terribly concerned, Elsie," he observed acidly as he turned to the woman in the rumpled bed. Glaring at his wife with deliberate distaste, Gerald drew a gun from his coat pocket and extended it toward her.

Elsie's hand fluttered to the flouncing mass of platinum ringlets that covered her head. "Oh, dealing," she squealed,

"you do the cutest things sometimes." Gerald jerked his hand down. "Why is it," he asked tightly,

"that in fifteen years of marriage you have never once been able to take anything I've done seriously?" Elsie pursed her mouth placatingly. "But really, darling, if you shot me now, you'd never get away with it."

"But I have no intention of shooting you now, Elsie dear," he explained with exaggerated patience, sliding the gun back into his pocket. "I'm going fifteen years into the past to snuff out your silly little life." He drew his thin lips back into a complacent smile.

"You know, darling, you really do dress much too elegantly to be just a lab technician."

Gerald took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. "Don't you understand, you stupid cow, that I've done the impossible? I've invented a time machine."

"Oh, darling, have you really?" Elsie explained, clapping her hands. "Oh, how really clever you are!"

"Is that all you have to say?"

"But darling, I don't understand. What do you want me to say?" Gerald's shoulders quivered as he gasped for breath. "If you hadn't tricked me into marrying you, I would have gotten that scholarship. Not that vapid cretin Fred Marsh. Why didn't you pick on him, he was so crazy about you?" Elsie examined her fingernails. Then, folding her hands serenely in her lap, she stared levelly into her husband's eyes.

"I would have gotten that scholarship," he panted. " I would have been top of my class. I would have been picked by the Institute for special training. And I would be head of the Institute today." Gerald heaved his lungs full of air. "Well, my bovine friend, when I come back from performing my little service to humanity, I will be head of the Institute. And then when I tell them I've invented a time machine in my basement, no one will dare laugh at me."

Elsie puckered her face into an exaggerated pout. "Is Mommy's widdle boy still upset over that?" she crooned, patting the rumpled bedclothes beside her. "Wet Mommy make it aw better again, just wike she did wast night."

"It's senseless trying to talk to you about anything. You're too damned stupid." Turning abruptly on his heel, Gerald strode out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Eyebrows arched, Elsie took an emery board from her night table and began to trim her scarlet fingernails.

Gerald hesitated at the foot of the basement stairs to peer gloomily at the man-sized black metal box. Then he stepped into his time machine and yanked the door resoundingly shut behind him.

Squeezing himself on to a narrow bench, he hunched over the control console. He tapped a long, thin bar that instantly bathed his face in amber light. His fingers punched the coordinate buttons.

Abruptly the box shivered as it heaved itself into the isochronous continuum. A mournful resonance echoed through the cramped compartment, then sighed away into nowhere. Squinting at the flickering lights of the instrument console, Gerald patted his coat pocket once more to make sure the gun was still there.

The box shook again and lumbered to a stop. One by one the lights guttered out until only the amber panel glowed. Gerald tapped it, pushed open the door of the box, and stepped out into a world that had been dead for fifteen years. It was the kind of quiet spring night on which the eighteen-year-old Gerald would walk alone for hours. In the distance, always in the distance, he could hear a few crickets placidly conversing. The breeze that lightly touched his face was balmy and exhilarating; the darkness, blurred and sadly friendly.

Sighing, Gerald strode across the spongy lawn to the dimly lit house. As he bounded up the steps, each one creaked in a different key. He hurried across the large porch to a rocking chair in a far corner, perched on the edge of the seat, and waited.

After a while, the lights in the living room sprang on, throwing long, bright rectangles across the dark porch. Gerald slipped his hand into his coat pocket and took out the gun.

A shadow glided into the ribbon of light in front of the screen door as it squealed open and a slender young woman in a white dress walked out.

Gerald extended the pistol, then jerked his arm back. Craning forward, he squinted at the girl's thin face, softly framed by the blond hair that rippled to her shoulders. But that couldn't be Elsie! He didn't remember her being pretty. Well, maybe she had been once, but she had certainly turned into a cow.

He lifted the gun a second time as a short young man slouched into the light. Gerald yanked his arm down again. It looked like the great love of Elsie's life, that vapid cretin Fred Marsh. Damn it! Now Gerald would have to wait until he was gone.

"You're being very foolish, my dear," the young man said airily. "You're passing up the match of a lifetime. I hope you realise that."

In the darkness, Gerald pursed his lips contemptuously. What a pompous ass that Fred Marsh was! No wonder Elsie had fallen for him.

The young woman forced her mouth down into an exaggerated pout.

"I'll regret it all my life," she replied, aping his light tone.

"For Christ's sake, Elsie, will you be serious?"

"I'm sorry," she snapped. "It's a little difficult sometimes knowing just when to take you seriously."

"Well, I'm serious now." Sighing, the young man stared sulkily across the dark lawn.

The young woman flicked her cascading blonde hair back from her shoulders. "Just exactly what is it you want me to say, anyway?"

"What I want you to say?" he shouted. "I don't want you to say anything. You've said quite enough already, thank you." He swung around abruptly to face her. "I thought you loved me."

"I don't love you when you act like a spoiled child."

"Is that why you won't marry me?"

"I do not intend to spend the rest of my life catering to your every shifting mood because you can't bear to be opposed. When I do have babies, I want them to grow up eventually." She closed her eyes wearily. "Oh, darling, don't you see? We'd grow to hate each other. And I couldn't bear that. Because I do love you, so much."

She opened her eyes again and, laying her hand gently on his shoulder, smiled tenderly at the scowling young man. "Besides, darling, if I did marry you, you'd have to give up your scholarship."

In the rocking chair, Gerald took a deep breath. She told Fred Marsh that! And yet she was perfectly willing to let Gerald sacrifice that very same scholarship to marry her. Selfish cow!

She deserved to be exterminated.

The young man lurched toward her. "You're not telling me the truth."

She backed quickly away until she bumped against a railing post. Then, sitting against the bannister, she folded her hands serenely in her lap and levelly returned his glare. The young man's blazing eyes darted away from her placid face to his own feet. He frowned at them for several minutes. Then his shoulders slumped as he sighed deeply. "Help me, Elsie," he whispered.

Gerald slowly filled his lungs with air.

"Please, Elsie, please."

Suddenly Gerald was gasping for breath. Why had all this become so painful for him to watch?

The young man dropped abruptly to his knees and buried his face in the woman's dress.

As she gazed down at the boy clutching her body, the woman very slowly unclenched her hands and placed them lightly on his heaving shoulders.

Panting, Gerald clutched his gun. It all seemed so hauntingly familiar, as though, somehow, he had once lived through all of this himself.

"Elsie," the young man cried, "please marry me, please. I'm so afraid of failing. Don't make me take that scholarship, Elsie, please, please, please."

No, Gerald thought desperately, his own body heaving convulsively as he struggled to catch his breath. That isn't how it happened. It can't be.

The young woman leaned her head back against the post and squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, my God," she moaned. "Don't do this to me, Gerald don't do this to me." Gerald sprang from the rocking chair. "That whining coward isn't me," he screamed. "It can't be me. It's Fred Marsh!" Flinging his shaking arm toward the sobbing young man, Gerald fired the gun.

Elsie stretched luxuriantly on the bright green grass as she savored the warmth of the summer sun oh her eyelids. What a wonderful day to be alive, she thought. What a wonderful day to celebrate a fifteenth wedding anniversary.

A door squealed open.

Languidly Elsie pushed herself into an upright position. Leaning on one arm, she shook her long, rippling blonde hair out behind her. "Is that you, Gerry?" she called.

"Sure thing, Mom. Who'd ya think it was?" Smiling, Elsie turned to watch her blonde, fourteen-year-old son, all elbows and awkwardness, as he loped down the creaking porch steps and across the lawn. He flopped down on the grass beside her. "Sure got it soft, don't ya, lady?" he asked, grinning.

Elsie's smile deepened. "You bet your sweet life I have," she answered, poking him playfully on the jaw.

Above them, a husky male voice asked, "How ya feelin' today, old lady?" The man knelt beside them, his blue eyes twinkling. Breathing deeply, Elsie lifted her face once more to the sun.

"Very old. And very happy." She lowered herself slowly back on to the grass. "And sad."

Her husband bent his freckled face over hers. "I know, El." Reaching up, she slid her arms around his neck and ruffled his crinkly red hair. "Oh, Fred. Every anniversary I can't help wondering all over again What reason could anyone possibly have had for shooting poor Gerald?"

Back to Contents Back to Index

Serial: Of Kings and Pawns, part 3 © 1994

Kevin Karmann

Last time, on Star Trek: The Next Generation : A temporal distortion is detected outside the Enterprise, and soon afterwards a blue police box materialises on its bridge. A man and a girl walk out, and the man warns Captain Picard that the Larian ambassador the Enterprise is carrying, Diplomat Strame, is actually a dangerous criminal known as the Master. After briefing the crew, Picard concludes that they can trust none of their visitors, despite Troi's assertion of Strame's honesty. But when Troi returns to her quarters it is clear the Master has already placed her under his hypnotic control. And now, the continuation...

[Beginning of Act II]

(Scene of the Enterprise flying through space. The captain's ready room is then shown, with Picard sitting behind his desk. The door chime buzzes.)

Picard: "Come."

(Diplomat Strame [the Master] walks in.)

Strame: "We met when I first came aboard, but it is a custom among my people to acquaint ourselves with the ones in charge. Your Counsellor Troi was a good start in this area, but it is your trust that I value most."

Picard: "That is quite flattering, but trust is a thing that develops over time. It must be earned."

Strame: "That is true. That is why my people have the custom of looking directly in the eyes of those who we are talking. We find it enriches that trust. Would you look deeply into my eyes?"

(Picard looks directly into Strame's eyes.)

Strame: "Very good. You see, you must trust me. You need to trust me. Placing your trust in me, is something you have to do."

Picard: "I...must trust you. I..." (Turning away.) "This is nonsense! You are trying to hypnotize me." (He reaches to tap his communicator.)

Strame: "I am so sorry, Captain. I failed to realize. I am slightly telepathic and sometimes I unintentionally use it. It should cause no problems with empathes, such as your own Counsellor Troi. I did not mean to offend." Picard: "You understand, then, that I must alert my Security Chief, Mr Worf, of this, as well as the rest of the crew." Strame: "I quite understand. Good day." (Strame leaves.) (The scene changes to the bridge. The turbolift whooshes closed

[assumably after Strame]. Picard then can be seen coming from his ready room.)

Picard: (He walks over to Worf.) "Alert the crew to be careful of Diplomat Strame. He has demonstrated some type of telepathic hypnosis."

Worf: "Aye, sir."

(Picard walks down to the Captain's seat and sits down. Riker, who had been sitting in the Captain's seat, moves over to his usual place to the captain's right.)

Riker: "A problem?"

Picard: "Yes, Number One. It seems the more I get to know of our guests, the less I think of each of them. However, for now I would be satisfied to have that...thing" (indicating the TARDIS) "off my bridge."

Riker: "I think that can be arranged." (He taps his communicator.) "Mr O'Brien, there's an object here on the bridge that would be better suited for storage in Cargo Bay 4. Worf will send you the coordinates."

O'Brien <voice>: "Aye, sir."

(The TARDIS can be seen glimmering in the transporter beam. The beam gets stronger for a second and then diminishes.) Riker: "Is there a problem, Mr O'Brien?" O'Brien <voice>: "I don't think it can be transported, sir. I've checked and rechecked my readings and as I transport it, it seems bigger on the inside than on the outside." Picard: "It would appear there's even more to this Doctor than time travel."

Riker: "Well, then, we'll just have to find another way to move this thing. Maybe anti-grav units."

(The scene changes to Engineering. Geordi sits in front of a terminal to the right of the matter/anti-matter reaction chamber. Data stands by him, also observing the schematic Geordi has called up on the screen. The schematic is of a ship. The matter/anti-matter reaction chamber pulsates as it normally does.)

Geordi: "I just don't get it! We've been over these readings at least twenty times already. There just doesn't seem to be any weak spots to this form of cloaking."

Data: "However, the Larian ships have some form of shielding or cloaking ability that allows our sensor scans not to function, there should be a way to penetrate that field." Geordi: "Data, how many times has the Federation come into contact with the Larians?"

Data: "At present, only eight encounters, including the message that called the Enterprise to meet with Diplomat Strame's ship at Starbase 129."

Geordi: "Only eight encounters in twenty-eight years?" Data: "That is correct."

Geordi: "There must've been some indication of what Larian ships use to hide their interior from our scans. With technological advances alone, the different configurations of the ships would have given some indication. Where are the schematics of the other ship types, anyway?" Data: "There are no other ship designs." Geordi: "What?"

Data: "Only one type of Larian vessel has ever been encountered. In fact, there is no difference in design for any of ships."

Geordi: "No difference at all?"

Data: "Every detail is exactly the same for each ship." Geordi: "That's impossible!"

Data: "None the less, the ships are identical in all respects. Perhaps the Larians have developed a way to produce identical ships."

Geordi: "What about Strame's ship? Haven't the staff of Starbase 129 discovered anything about it?" Data: "It disappeared soon after his arrival." Geordi: "Disappeared?"

Data: "The exact words in the Starbase log were 'vanished into thin air.'"

Geordi: (He yawns.) "This all seems too bizarre, Data." Data: "Considering the manner in which the Doctor's TARDIS

seems to work, the disappearance of Strame's ship should not be surprising. That is assuming, of course, that the Doctor is, in fact, Larian. However, your exhaustion indicates that we should continue this later."

Geordi: "I guess you're right, Data. We've been at this for hours." (He gets up and, with Data, leaves Engineering.) (The scene shifts to sickbay. The Doctor is just getting up from an examination bed, the readings from which Doctor Crusher is studying. A nurse escorts Ace into the room.) Nurse: "She's completely human."

Ace: "That's what me and the professor have been trying to tell you. He's the Time Lord!"

Doctor: "And fit as a fiddle, I believe if the readings are correct."

Crusher: "You can read these diagnostic beds?" Doctor: "Oh, that's a skill I picked up once." Crusher: "You were right about your health. It seems you are in perfect condition - for a Larian."

Doctor: "Or a Time Lord."

Crusher: (She sighs.) "Or a Time Lord. Nurse Sladen will escort you to your quarters." (The nurse, The Doctor, and Ace leave.) (Crusher studies the readings on the wall a bit. Within a minute after the Doctor's departure, "Strame" comes in and walks up to Crusher.)

Strame: "Doctor."

Crusher: (She turns.) "Oh, Diplomat Strame. I wasn't expecting you."

Strame: "I just spoke to your Captain. I'm concerned about his health. Here, look in to my eyes." (Crusher does so.) "It is important that you do as I say."

Crusher: "I will do as you say."

Strame: "Good. Your Captain has a very strong will. I would wager the Klingon does also. The android and the blind man would be impossible to control. But with you, Counsellor Troi, and, once I get a chance to talk to him, Commander Riker, I'll have a fine hold on this crew." (He laughs.)

[End of Act II]

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