The War of the Prophets Read online

  vessel, complete with the usual bold yellow sign warning about variable gravity

  fields, and the stacks of modular shipping crates marked with the Starfleet

  delta and standard identification labels. Other than the fact that the lighting

  was about half intensity, and the air unusually cool, Bashir could almost

  believe he was on a standard Starfleet cargo ship in his own time. Only the

  Starfleet emblem on the crates confirmed that he and the others from the Defiant

  were still in the future.

  Interestingly enough, that emblem, though under­standably different from the one

  used in his time, was also different from the emblem Captain Riker had worn on

  his uniform, and that had been emblazoned on the Klingon cruiser. That

  identifying mark, Bashir recalled, had placed a gold Starfleet arrowhead against

  an up­side-down triangle of blue. But here on this ship, the arrowhead was set

  within a vertically elongated oval, its width matching the oval's. The arrowhead

  itself was colored the red of human blood, the lower half of the oval teal and

  the upper half gold—as if the colors of the k'Roth ch'Kor, the ancient Klingon

  trident that was

  the symbol of the Empire, had been merged with the more recent symbol of

  Starfleet.

  But rather than give himself a headache trying to fathom the political

  permutations that might have led to the two different versions of the Starfleet

  emblem in this future, Bashir set that particular problem aside. In­stead, he

  directed his attention to the conversations going on around him—five now—and his

  mind was such that he could effortlessly keep up with each at the same time. In

  all except one of those conversations, Bashir heard relief expressed, primarily

  because of the familiar surroundings.

  The single conversation that was more guarded was that between Jadzia and Worf.

  Klingon pessimism and the Trill's seven lifetimes of experience were obviously

  enabling the two officers to come to the same conclu­sion Bashir's enhanced

  intellect had reached: They were in more danger now than when the Defiant had

  come under attack.

  Bashir wasted little time contemplating what might happen in the next few

  minutes. His primary responsi­bility was to his crewmates, and to the few

  civilians who had been evacuated from Deep Space 9 to the De­fiant and then

  beamed here.

  He rapidly assessed the fourteen others for obvious signs of injury or distress.

  Nine of them were either Defiant or DS9 crew members, six in Starfleet

  uni­forms, three in the uniforms of the Bajoran militia. The other five,

  including—Bashir was surprised to see—the unorthodox archaeologist Vash, were

  civilians; three of these human, the other two Bajorans.

  He also noted, without undue concern, that the med­ical patch on the side of

  Jadzia's forehead was stained

  with blood and needed to be replaced. Without a proto­plaser he had been unable

  to close the small wound; the dense capillary network beneath a Trill's spots

  made them prone to copious and unsightly—though not life-threatening—bleeding as

  a result of any minor cut or scrape in the general area.

  Close by Jadzia's side, Worf was uninjured and un­bowed. His uniform was soiled

  by smoke, and one side of his broad face was streaked with soot. His scowl was

  evidence not of any wound to his body, but rather to his sense of pride and

  honor—outrage being his people's traditional response to captivity.

  Bashir also observed that Jake Sisko, who was cur­rently engaged in listening

  carefully to Worf and Jadzia's conversation without taking part, also seemed

  unharmed. The tall, lanky young man had been helping out in the Defiant's

  sickbay when the group transport to this ship had taken place. It was a

  blessing, Bashir thought, that at least none of the Defiant's surviving crew or

  passengers had required critical medical atten­tion before their doctor had been

  kidnapped.

  Then again, the last he himself could recall from his own final moments on the

  Defiant's bridge was that there were still some antimatter contact mines

  attached to her hull, so there was no way of knowing if the ship or any of the

  crew and passengers not transported here still survived.

  Then a hoarse female voice interrupted his thoughts. 'This isn't good, is it?"

  It was Vash, and automatically Bashir reviewed her condition. The last place he

  had seen her had been in Quark's bar, when the three Red Orbs of Jalbador had

  moved themselves into alignment and somehow trig-

  gered the opening of a second wormhole in Bajoran space.

  Vash, an admittedly alluring adventurer and archae­ologist of questionable

  ethics, was still in the same out­fit she had worn in the bar—no more than an

  hour ago in relative time—as if she were prepared to trek across the Bajoran

  deserts in search of lost cities. She no longer toted her well-worn oversized

  shoulder bag, though. Bashir guessed it must be either back on the Defiant or

  left behind in the mad rush from Quark's and the subsequent mass beam-out to the

  evacuation flotilla.

  Vash waved an imperious hand in front of his face. "You keep staring at me like

  that, I'm going to think one of us has a problem. And it's not me."

  "Sorry," Bashir said, flushing. "I didn't see you on the Defiant. There were

  some injuries from the evacua­tion, and ..." He shrugged. It was pointless to

  say any­thing more. It was quite likely Vash was used to people staring at her,

  for all the obvious reasons.

  "I was hustled into the Defiant's mess hall right after I was beamed aboard."

  Vash frowned. "What the hell happened?"

  Bashir told her as succinctly as he could. The old, apocryphal legends of the

  Red Orbs of Jalbador had turned out to be correct, at least in part. A second

  Tem­ple—or wormhole—had opened, though since they were now twenty-five years or

  so into the future the part of the legend about the opening of the second Temple

  causing the end of the universe was clearly and thank­fully not correct. Bashir

  was about to describe the at­tacking ships and what Captain Thomas Riker had

  said about the War of the Prophets, but Vash interrupted.

  "Twenty-five years? Into the future?"

  Bashir nodded. "It happens."

  "Not to me."

  "Think of it as archaeology in reverse."

  Vash's eyes flashed. "This isn't fanny, Doc. The longer we stay here the more

  likely it is we'll learn about the future, and the less likely we are to have

  someone let us go back." She looked over at the crates. "Especially if some

  bureaucrat at Starfleet has anything to say about it."

  "That's true," Bashir agreed. He glanced at the main personnel doors leading

  into the interior of whatever vessel they were aboard—one of the two surviving

  at­tack ships, he had concluded. "But on the plus side, no one from this ship

  has attempted to communicate with us. That could suggest they're also following

  Starfleet regulations, and want to keep us isolated for our return."

  "You don't really believe that."

  "And why not?"

  "If they wanted to keep us isolated, why beam us off the Defiant?"

  "We were under attack. The Defiant might have bee
n destroyed."

  "Attacked by who?" Vash asked, and Bashir told her the other half of the story,

  about Thomas Riker in the Opaka and the three attacking Starfleet vessels.

  "That makes no sense," Vash said when Bashir had finished.

  'Things change. Twenty-five years is a long time."

  "How things have changed has nothing to do with our current situation," Vash

  told him. "If this is a Starfleet vessel, how long do you think it would take

  some technician to run a search of the service record of the Defiant?"

  "Your point?"

  "C'mon, Doc. Did that strange transporter scramble your synapses? If the

  historical record shows the Defi­ant disappeared with all hands when DS9 was

  de­stroyed, then we're not going back. It's that simple."

  Bashir bit his lip. Vash had reached the same conclu­sion he had. There were a

  few unresolved issues, how­ever. "This ship we're on was probably one of the

  ones involved in the attack. If it's been damaged, the Defi­ant's service record

  may not be available. The delay in any attempted communication could be a result

  of hav­ing to wait to hear back from Starfleet Command."

  Vash looked skeptical. "I never took you for much of a dreamer."

  Before Bashir could reply, Jadzia, Worf, and Jake had joined them.

  "Julian," Jadzia said teasingly, "a dreamer? Like no other, complete with stars

  in his eyes."

  Bashir did not respond to Jadzia's banter. She had been trying to act as if

  nothing had changed between them since she had married Worf. But it had. Though

  until these last few weeks, when Jadzia and Worf had sought his counsel on the

  likelihood of a Klingon and a Trill procreating, Bashir had almost convinced

  himself that Worf was only a temporary inconvenience, not an insurmountable

  barrier. In time, he had reasoned, Jadzia would tire of her plainspoken Klingon

  mate and begin to seek more sophisticated company. But know­ing her as he did,

  even he could not fantasize a time when Jadzia would tire of her child-to-be, or

  deny that child a chance to know its father.

  So there it was. His heart was broken, and his suc­cess at hiding his misery

  from Jadzia was one of the few advantages of having an enhanced intellect: Only

  his ability to master advanced Vulcan meditation tech­niques was sparing him

  public and personal humilia­tion.

  "Vash is concerned that the longer we wait here," Bashir explained, "the less

  likely it is we'll be allowed to go back to our own time."

  "Allowed?" Jake asked in alarm.

  Jadzia put her hand on the young man's shoulder. 'To go back, Jake, we're going

  to need access to ad­vanced technology."

  Jake looked confused. "What about temporal sling­shot?"

  Jadzia shook her head. "We didn't get here by sling­shot, so we don't have a

  Feynman curve to follow back to our starting point. Any attempt we make to move

  into the past will result in a complete temporal decoupling."

  Jake stared at her, not a gram of understanding in nun.

  Worf took over. "It would be like entering a planet's atmosphere at too shallow

  an angle. Our craft would skip out, away from the planet, never to return."

  "Though in our case," Jadzia continued, "we would skip out of our normal

  space-time and ... well, then it becomes a question of philosophy, not physics.

  But if you think about it, if anyone with a warp drive could go back in time

  wherever and whenever she wanted, half the stars in the galaxy wouldn't exist. I

  mean, a century ago Klingons would have gone back in time a million years and

  dropped asteroids on Earth and Vulcan to eliminate the Empire's competitors

  before they had ever evolved."

  Jake glanced at Worf. "Really?"

  Worf shifted uncomfortably. "It was a different time. But yes, I have heard

  rumors of the Empire dispatching

  temporal assault teams to destroy ... enemy worlds be­fore the enemy could

  arise."

  "What happened to them?" Jake asked.

  "We do not know."

  But as Bashir anticipated, Jadzia found so simple an answer unacceptable. "As

  far as we can tell," she said, "the physics of it is pretty straightforward. Any

  given time traveler moving from one time to another at a rate greater than the

  local entropic norm, or on a reverse en-tropic vector, has to move outside

  normal space-time along a pathway called a Feynman curve. Now, if the past the

  traveler goes to is not disrupted, the Feynman curve retains its integrity and,

  provided the traveler can find it again, the way is clear to return to the

  starting point. However, if the timeline is significantly dis­rupted, the

  Feynman curve collapses, because its end point—that is, the traveler's starting

  point—no longer exists. It's like cutting the end of a rope bridge."

  Bashir was curious to see how Jake's imaginative mind would tackle Jadzia's

  elegantly defined problems of temporal mechanics. Though strict causality did

  not exist at the most fundamental levels of the universe, it was the defining

  characteristic of macroscopic exis­tence. Indeed, that was one of the chief

  reasons why the warp drive and time travel took so long to be discov­ered by

  emerging cultures. Even though both concepts were rather simple, requiring

  little more than a basic atomic-age engineering capability to demonstrate, the

  ideas of faster-than-light travel and time-like curves in­dependent of space

  could not easily be grasped by minds narrowly conditioned by primitive

  Einsteinian physics—any more than Newton could have conceived of relativistic

  time dilation.

  Jake's young face wrinkled in concentration. "Hold it... it sounds as if you're

  saying that the Klingons could have traveled back in time and destroyed the

  Earth."

  "There's no reason why they couldn't," Jadzia agreed. "In fact, several of the

  temporal assault missions Worf mentioned could have succeeded. It's just that if

  they did destroy the Earth in the past, the present they came from—in which the

  Earth had not been destroyed—no longer existed, so they could never return to

  it."

  "But..." Jake said uncertainly, "... the Earth does exist."

  "In this timeline," Jadzia agreed. She smiled indul­gently at Jake. "What you're

  struggling with is what they used to call on Earth the grandfather paradox. It

  was a long time ago, before anyone thought time travel possi­ble. Yet early

  theorists imagined a situation in which a time traveler could go back in time

  and kill his grandfa­ther before his father was conceived. No father meant no

  son. No son meant no time traveler. But no time traveler meant that the

  grandfather hadn't been killed, so the fa­ther was born, the son became the time

  traveler, and..." Jadzia smiled as Jake finished the paradox.

  "... and the grandfather was killed." Jake's expres­sion was thoughtful. "But...

  you're saying that can happen?"

  "There's nothing to prevent it The difference be­tween what the Einsteinian-era

  physicists thought and what we know today, from actual experimental

  demon­strations, is that no paradox results."

  "How's that possible?"

  "Two solutions are suggested, but neither is testable—so both have equal

  validity. One solution is that if you, s
ay, went back in time and killed your

  grandfather, a temporal feedback loop would be estab­lished that would collapse

  into a hyperdimensional black hole, cutting the loop off from any interaction

  with the rest of the universe. The end result would be as if the events leading

  to the feedback loop never hap­pened. The second solution states that the

  instant you killed your grandfather, you'd create a branching time­line. That

  is, two universes would now exist—one in which your grandfather lived, and one

  in which he died."

  "But if he died, then how could I go back and kill him?"

  "You can't, Jake. Not from the new timeline. But since you came from the old

  one, there's no paradox. How­ever, because the Feynman curve you followed no

  longer exists, you are trapped in the new timeline you created, with no way to

  get back. In effect, you're a large virtual particle that has tunneled out of

  the quantum foam."

  Jadzia put her hand on Worf's shoulder, a gesture of familiarity that caused an

  unexpected tightness in Bashir's throat. "A few years ago," she said, "when Worf

  was on the Enterprise, he encountered a series of parallel universes that were

  extremely similar to our own. Some researchers suggest that those parallel

  di­mensions have actually been created by the manipula­tion of past events by

  time travelers."

  Vash put her hands on her hips and sighed noisily. "Do the rest of us have to

  know this for the test? Or does any of this hypothetical moonshine have anything

  to do with our situation, right here and now?"

  Bashir sensed Jadzia's dislike of Vash in the Trill's quick reply, though her

  words were polite. "It has everything to do with our situation, Vash. From our

  perspective, we've traveled into our future. But from the perspective of the

  people who live here, we're in­truders from the past who—if we return—could

  pre­vent this future from ever existing."

  "It wouldn't just be a split-off, parallel dimension?" Jake asked.

  "It might be," Jadzia allowed. "But then again, this present might just wink out

  of existence, along with everyone in it. Remember what happened on Gaia, to the

  people who were our descendants? If this was your present, would you be willing

  to risk nonexistence for the sake of a handful of refugees from the past?"

  As Jake thought that over, Worf added, "Several years ago, the Enterprise