Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [91]
“Grown beyond it? What are you talking about?”
“Mac… think. Think about where we just came from, how we got here.” He was looking at her blankly, and she thought, Oh, my God, he really doesn’t remember… he’s got amnesia or something. It’s this place, it’s done it to him. Speaking faster, she said, “Two races, the Aerons and the Markanians, who were engaged in a centuries-long battle. Battling over their own version of paradise, a planet called Sinqay, and their battle of mutual extermination was aided by two Iconians, each with their own gateway devices. We all wound up on Sinqay, only to discover the planet was a desolate wasteland thanks to generations of fighting that had gone on previously…”
“Yes,” Calhoun said briskly, “and then both Smyts turned on their gateways, and it created some sort of force whirlpool that sucked us into the ice planet, where that gigantic gateway was waiting for us, and why are you telling me all this when I already know it?”
“Oh.” She felt a bit stupid for a moment. “I… I thought you’d, uhm… forgotten.”
“How could I forget?” he asked, as if she’d lost her mind. “It didn’t happen last century.”
“You’re missing the point, Mac!”
“Well, what the hell was the point?!”
“The point is that you can’t stay here!”
“Because you say it’s not real, and so I’d be wasting my time,” he said, and there was such bitterness and anger in his voice that she was taken aback by it. “Because it’s something that you can’t believe in, and therefore there’s something wrong with me for contemplating even for a moment embracing it. Because you have trouble believing in anything greater than yourself, and since that’s the case, you’d deny me the opportunity as well.”
She stepped away from him and, because she couldn’t look him in the eye, looked around at the vast plain instead. Rocks and craggy areas nearby them, and the endless vista of… of nothingness. In the distance she could hear the shouts and laughter of the Xenexians in the Keep, and even as far away as she was, she was able to pick up words here and there, all of them in anticipation of the next battle, and the one after that, and the one after that. Xenexian paradise. Death without permanence, the thrill of battle without the threat of long-term damage.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said softly. “Maybe… I’m afraid to believe in the reality of this place… because then it implies that other things… things I’m not… comfortable with… might also be real…”
He looked at her with confusion. “Why… ‘not comfortable’?”
“Because, Mac,” sighed Shelby, “things like heaven… or angels… or God… these are things that are, by definition, unknowable. I don’t… accept… the concept of “unknowable.’ Anything that is… I should be able to explore. To touch. To face. It’s right in the Starfleet credo, Mac. If it exists… I want to be able to boldly go there, even if no one has before. I don’t want anyone, or anything, putting up signs and saying, “This far and no further.’ If mankind can’t discover it, learn from it… what’s the point of it?”
To her surprise, he laughed gently at that. “Humanity is a very egocentric species,” he observed.
“Well, I guess we haven’t come all that far from a time when we believed the sun orbited us.” She’d been leaning against another rock, and she pushed off it and stood in front of Calhoun, taking one hand in each of hers. Not for the first time, she noticed how rough his hands were, and the corded strength in each of his fingers. “Mac… what I was saying before about the Aerons and Markanians… I was trying to make you realize that endless fighting is a useless way to spend one’s life. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Markanian or Xenexian. Even if this is all real… even if we’re