Dyson Sphere - Charles R. Pellegrino [40]
“I have come,” she said at last, “to help as much as I can.”
As Worf set the shuttle down in a perfectly white square, Picard thought of the fragility of porcelain, and reminded himself that once shattered by the moving sun, the Sphere could not be mended. Guinan’s words therefore puzzled him, because she would know better than anyone that not very much could be done for the inhabitants of Dyson. Yet she was not here simply to explore.
“I came to help,” Guinan continued, “that’s all.”
The clouds parted when they came out of the shuttle, revealing a blazing sun and a white-surfaced city of collapsed porcelain towers and terraced pools. A breeze rose suddenly from the sea and screamed thinly through the ruins. The sun had stopped in the sky, much as the Bible said it once stopped for Joshua; and because of that miraculous paradox, that miraculous inertia, it was going to actually set—in a manner of speaking.
How to turn back the miracle?
That was the question.
Picard and Guinan came to the edge of a canal, then gazed down into water that was as blue as a steel mirror. Guinan took his arm and pulled him back from the edge. He glanced at her questioningly, then looked back in time to see a large squid-like creature rising from the smooth surface. It put out tentacles onto the white walkway, pulled itself halfway out of the water, and seemed to wait.
“Intelligent beings,” Guinan said. “I felt their presence from the shuttlecraft when we were inside the Sphere.”
Picard saw others darting underneath the water, some moving so swiftly that he could barely glimpse them. Calmly, he asked, “How many of these people do you suppose live here?”
“Around only these islands?”
Picard nodded.
“I don’t have to suppose. I am picking it up now. Thousands. Five or six thousand.”
Picard felt the muscles of his face tighten. “And how many more—across the expanse of this entire sea?”
“Billions.”
“Nooo…”
“And that’s just one race.”
“I don’t think the authors of the Prime Directive visualized this situation, do you?”
Guinan said nothing. This time she did not even shake her head. Like a skilled bartender, she seemed to realize that her role was to be part philosopher, part psychiatrist, and part psychic.
“I wonder if they know what will happen,” Picard said.
Guinan gazed intently at the creature for a few moments. Its tentacles were moving in what looked like signals of some kind. “They know,” she said, “that a great danger is coming. My sense of them is that they know something is wrong, and has been wrong for a very long time. They have been dying off for millennia. When I tell you there are a few billion of them, I’m telling you that their numbers are down to billions.”
Picard’s communicator chimed and he tapped it. Worf, calling from his post at the Feynman, said, “Captain, Commander Riker says we have to get the Darwin out of here in the next ten hours. If we cannot, he will send in more shuttlecraft, or else come in himself.”
“There’s still time,” Picard said, feeling the sun against his face. It felt stronger than it had only a few minutes ago; but surely he was only imagining this, he decided, as the sea breeze strengthened and the clouds closed off the sun, and then the temperature dropped suddenly, soothingly. A moment later, he forgot the heat.
Next to him, Guinan was silent and seemingly preoccupied with the alien squid.
“Guinan?” Picard asked.
She raised a hand for silence. He waited. Finally she looked at him and said, “I’ve been listening to some of their stories. They have a lot to tell.”
“If they can’t survive,” Guinan said, “it is their hope to be remembered. I