Three - Michael Jan Friedman [24]
“On the other hand,” said Picard, “if change came in an orderly fashion, something might be made of the existing power structure. Kirk left it to the Vulcan to effect that change, if he could.”
“Unfortunately,” Ben Zoma interjected, “Kirk never found out if his advice bore fruit.”
“That is correct,” said the captain. “He could only guess as to whether the empire of his counterpart survived, and in what form. And we are no better off in that regard than he was.”
[68] The three of them pondered the information for a moment. Then Wu spoke up.
“There wasn’t any ion storm present when our guest appeared. However, the anomaly was generating a considerable amount of particle turbulence.”
“And we haven’t been able to identify the depth of the anomaly,” said Ben Zoma. “For all we know, it extends into that other universe.”
“Or some other,” Wu pointed out. “There’s mathematical evidence to suggest the existence of an infinite number of universes. Lieutenant Asmund could have come from any one of them.”
Picard had already embraced that possibility. Otherwise, he would have left the woman in the brig.
The more compelling question, at the moment, was how Lieutenant Asmund had beamed onto the Stargazer. Had the anomaly indeed interfered with her transport, sending her from universe to universe instead of from ship to ship?
And was her captain wondering now what had become of her? Without any knowledge of cross-universe transits, was he trying his damnedest to figure out where she might have gone—and how he could get her back?
Perhaps he was. But without help from Picard, the task would almost certainly prove impossible. For that matter, it might prove impossible with his help—but he owed it to Lieutenant Asmund and her captain to try.
And he owed it to the Federation as well—in the event that their visitor’s arrival here wasn’t an accident [69] after all, but something less innocent—regardless of which universe she had come from.
“I will ask Mr. Simenon to see if he can find a way to reverse the transport,” Picard told his officers. “If anyone can do it, he can.”
“Amen,” said Ben Zoma.
Acting security chief Pug Joseph had never felt so strange in his life. The woman he was escorting to her quarters looked and sounded so much like the Asmund sisters, he felt he should be able to speak to her the way he spoke to them.
Like a friend. Like a person he worked with day in and day out. Like someone he trusted with his life.
But he couldn’t. Despite appearances, the woman beside him was a stranger. And until the captain could confirm where she had come from and under what circumstances, Joseph had to treat her with a healthy dose of suspicion.
“Can you tell me something?” she asked as they made their way down the corridor.
“Not if it’s anything that could be considered strategic information,” Joseph told her.
“It’s nothing like that,” the woman assured him. “I just wanted to know what the other Asmunds are like.”
“Oh,” said Joseph. “That.”
“I mean, what kind of officers are they? Are they engineers, like me?”
The security chief didn’t see any harm in answering. “One is our helm officer. The other is our navigator.”
“I see,” the woman said, her eyes narrowing as she [70] considered what he had told her. “Funny. I had an interest in both those areas before I went into engineering.”
“Funny,” he echoed. But really, no funnier than anything else about her.
“Are they good at what they do?” she asked.
The security chief rolled his eyes. “They’re the best. And I’m not just saying that because they’re my fellow officers. Any other captain would give his right arm to have Gerda and Idun on his bridge.”
The woman looked at him. “Gerda and Idun?”
“Those are their names,” he said.
“How interesting. And what do Gerda and Idun do when they’re not on duty?”
Joseph smiled. “That’s the kind of thing I’d rather they told you, if you know what I mean. It’s not a