Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [135]
…Kat Mueller was startled to see the amber light stop blinking, sure that meant the final Resonator was in place. She could only stand and wait either for an order from Picard, or for an instruction from the Iconian device itself. Telling herself she could be patient, she watched the board and the holographic representation of the universe. She studied the console, checked a cracked fingernail, adjusted a stray hair from her usually perfect style, rechecked the console, checked in with the Trident, bit her lip, and did everything possible to avoid tapping her foot. Nothing seemed to change until…
…the purple lights on the graphic shaded to a deep royal color and Deanna Troi’s eyes grew wide. The graphic began displaying alien typography that was characters, symbols, and some odd blend of the two. All the lights blinked in unison once, twice, and then stayed lit. She couldn’t tell what it meant but figured the machinery was performing as programmed. She would remain patient. If this mission taught her anything, it was learning to wait with grace….
…All Picard could think about was his friend Donald Varley. Had his colleague not discovered the Iconian homeworld, they would not have had the past decade to learn more about the legendary people. It cost Varley his life and that of his crew aboard the Yamato, but it gave them an advantage when it came to dealing with the Petraw. Had they shown up posing as Iconians without that knowledge, many would have been susceptible to the pitch. Now he stood on this dead world, watching the console go through the motions, and continued to wait for a sign that he needed to act.
The light show changed once more as one after another, the alien words faded from view one site at a time. When the graphic cleared, the purple lights began to wink off, again one at a time. It seemed that the graphic was deconstructing itself. Perhaps it meant the link was being broken that the gateway network was shutting down.
Picard’s eyebrows rose in surprise as the lights shifted, pulsating a bit, and then a face greeted him. He did not recognize the human features, but it structurally matched the Iconians he had met, what, days ago? It was a placid, female countenance and seemed to be waiting, much like Picard and the other members of the unusual coalition.
It spoke, but in a language Picard had never heard before. After a sentence, it seemed to wait for a reply. Then it tried again, this time with another language. Again the silent wait and again another language. Picard let out a breath, hoping it would reach a language he knew. Wisely, he held out his tricorder and recorded the exchange, hoping it would help linguists at Starfleet Command. Minutes slipped by and he tried to retain his good humor but it was growing first frustrating, then irritating that he could recognize not a single syllable. The computer interface seemed not to share his feeling and for a moment, he considered asking Data to join him. Before he could act on the notion, he recognized a word.
It was Vulcan.
The Vulcan people dated back further than humans, but not the two hundred thousand years that would make them contemporaries of the Iconians. Then, a distant lesson came to mind. It was speculated that the Vulcan people might have ancestors dating back to the war-torn planet that existed some five hundred thousand years gone by. By the Iconians’ time, the language