Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [27]
“No short-lived nuclides in the ash at all,” Geordi said as he made a scan of a half-buried building. “And I’m confirming Captain Dalen’s depressed radio argon levels—with near-zero on the carbon-14 scale. I’d say it’s every bit as old as she says it is, but it looks like it was buried here only last week.”
Picard glanced up at a row of circular windows with their wood and bronze frames still in place. They reminded him of the eyeless sockets of a skull; and he supposed that he might be standing in the square at Thera, ancient Atlantis itself, on the day Marinates found it lying in state in its pumice shroud, and lifted the shroud, and looked underneath.
“Captain,” Data called down from the Enterprise.
“Picard here.”
“One of the Dooglasse is ready to join you. Shall I have the Darwin beam him down?”
“By all means, Data.” As Picard watched, a figure materialized some meters away. It was the Dooglasse who called himself Jani, the smiling spokesman. He was about five feet tall, but seemed taller. He came forward now, extending a hand.
“Captain Picard,” he said, “thank you letting— join.”
Was there a trace of irony in the alien’s voice? This was, after all, his world, what was left of it, and he needed no permission to visit it.
“Transporter,” Jani said, “—ah!”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“Liked? Yes!”
The mind behind the pidgin speech was much sharper than it was letting on, Picard reminded himself.
“Look around?” Jani asked, gesturing.
“Of course,” Picard said, “by all means.”
Jani turned abruptly and headed for a group of buildings in the southern part of the square.
“I wonder what he’s looking for,” Geordi said.
“Troi?” Picard asked.
“My feeling,” she said, “is that he is looking for something he expects to find here, yet he feels out of place, alienated. I don’t get the sense that the Dooglasse are searching for anything specific. They’re just hoping to find something that will tell them who they were.”
They’re wandering around in the remains of their history, Picard thought, trying to imagine—almost as if it might be possible to remember—who they might have been. How many other races lived in the same predicament on the inner surface of this sphere? Thousands, perhaps millions, and with enough room to be unable ever to meet and compare notes. And how much of the same might be said of humankind and the Federation? How much was hidden or hopelessly lost about human, and human-old, galactic origins?
“Captain,” Geordi said, “I’d like to take some readings in those houses to the north.” He motioned toward a multi-storied building whose door, still on its hinges, seemed to have been thrown invitingly open. “Captain Dalen reports that she will have the ground floor propped up and excavated in two minutes.”
“I’ll go with you,” Troi said.
Picard nodded. The two officers moved away, leaving Picard with the Dooglasse.
It was getting on toward sunset. Picard glanced down at the Dooglasse officer standing next to him. The alien smiled up at him uncertainly, and Picard felt even more deeply now for Jani’s plight of unknowing. He could not help but feel more deeply, for there was something disturbing, on a deep instinctive level, about buildings that looked brand new, yet had last seen the light of Dyson’s sun more than a tenth of a million years ago. Their vacant windows put him face to face with the fundamental triumph and tragedy of the Dyson Sphere. There was no escaping it, once he had stood under the dome of the sky and felt the ash crunching under his own feet.
Up ahead, a puff of vapor emerged through the doorway, just as Geordi and Troi reached it. There also emerged a muffled shout—as spine chilling as it was shrill—like Horta laughter mingled with a scream.
It took Picard a full fifteen minutes to calm the Dooglasse down.
Geordi came