Dark Matters_ Shadow of Heaven (Book 3) - Christie Golden [44]
Through its connection with the ship, it knew where the other cubes were, and departed. Again and again it enveloped a cube, purged it, and moved on. Their numbers were almost uncountable, but the Entity partially existed outside time and space and the vast distances were nothing to it.
It was done. The Borg were cured. They would not contaminate others they assimilated with the mutated dark matter, though some might feel that Borg assimilation was something worse. It was not the Entity's place to decide such things. It merely had a task, a task far greater than any single individual's needs: a task that would save or doom everything, from the smallest microbe to beings nearly as vast as itself.
The Borg were cured, free to pursue their own task. It did not sit well with the Entity, and it puzzled over the moral dilemma as it drifted to the next place where the wrong things dwelt.
CHAPTER 1O
THE DOOR TO CHAKOTAY'S QUARTERS BUZZED ANGRILY. Quickly he stepped to answer it, wincing at the annoying sound.
"You're prompt," he told Ezbai.
"Promptness is a virtue," the young Interceptor replied.
"I'm almost ready. Have a seat." Chakotay indicated a utilitarian stool while he sat on the edge of the bed to put on his boots.
"You've had nothing to eat or drink since last night?" asked Ezbai.
"Not a drop nor a crumb."
Ezbai smiled, relieved. "Oh, good. Our doctors are very adamant about that Food and hydration alter the baseline chemical makeup of your system, and if you'd had anything I'd be in the Implementer's office in a heartbeat."
Chakotay stepped down on his boot to fit it snugly onto his foot. "I've noticed that. He comes down pretty hard on you."
Ezbai flushed blue. "Oh, no, not really. He's that way with everyone. He's exacting, that's all. By the way, please let me apologize for the testing you underwent. With the hand sensor. From what I understand about your customs, you probably considered it rude. It's just our way, we do it to everyone."
'I understood," said Chakotay. "You think it's a necessary precaution. Every culture has its ways and traditions." Like the Culilann, he thought, his own choice of words vividly recalling images and faces. He glanced down at the young man walking beside him as they traveled through the labyrinth of dark corridors. Ezbai seemed a little scattered, but sincere. Unlike the Implementer, Ezbai struck Chakotay as someone he could talk to.
'Tell me how the Culilann and the Alilann came to be so separate," he asked, and Ezbai did. He spoke of an ancient people who were nearly decimated by beings from another world, and how there had been two reactions to the disaster. One branch felt that it was divine punishment for forsaking the ways of the ancestors. Their response was to renew their dedication to the old ways. They became the Culilann, the "seekers of tilings of the world." Another group wished never to be vulnerable to such attacks again, and redoubled their efforts to advance their technology. Thus were born the Alilann, the "seekers of things unmade." Both of them showed how deeply the alien attack had scarred them, despite their naturally friendly natures. The Culilann had the Ordeal, and the Alilann had their truth-tester and array of defensive weapons. They were more alike than they wanted to think, and this division both saddened and angered Chakotay.
And now there was evidence of murder prompted by this division. He almost wished he hadn't come bringing the news of the mutated dark matter. The Implementer, rather man face the unpleasant reality that someone among the Alilann was taking intolerance to a new and violent level, had latched on to the dark matter as a perfect scapegoat Chakotay had a bad feeling that things were going to