The Future Begins Read online

  “Ah,” said Iamor, “you refer to our political terminology: ‘Witenagemot’ for the legislature, ‘thane’ for its members, and ‘high cyning’ for its head. No, these terms were selected by a Federation translation team. They were considered most indicative of the fact that we possess a thoroughly democratic government that utilizes the trappings of an ancient feudal one.”

  Scotty simply nodded. As the conversation trickled on to a small pause, he finally took a good look at the hall they were in. It was certainly not a room designed for such receptions, that much was clear. However, quite for what purpose it had been designed was a question he did not have a ready answer to. The ceiling was a good five meters above the tallest Kropaslin’s head, and in the center of it was a transparent dome that let in the murky light from outside. It seemed to be a cloudy day here in the planetary capital whose name he didn’t recall at the moment.

  The gathering hall sported a stone floor that must have been designed with a passion for art, because intricate patterns like these didn’t come natural to those who did not enjoy their work. Abstract shapes wound their way across the shining marble floor, like cubist snakes jointly sculpted by Salvador Dalí and Yeros of Vulcan.

  “Why did Nechayev so wish me to speak to you?” Iamor asked, changing the subject.

  “Damned if I know,” replied Scott, quickly adding a respectful “sir.” It wouldn’t do to cause an incident in the first ten minutes of the event. “You don’t happen to work in biotechnological engineerin’, do you?”

  “Alas, no,” Iamor said. “I am the head of the Agreement Party.”

  “Agreement Party?” Scott asked, a bit confused.

  “Did you not read the briefings we provided your delegation?” asked Iamor. “I was told information on our political structure was included in your briefing packet.”

  It was very possible that that information had been on the padd that Commander Piñiero had given him, but if that were true, it hardly mattered, as Scotty hadn’t even looked at it. He’d had too many technical journals to read. “Ah, I skimmed it.”

  “Well,” said Iamor, “our government is dominated by two political parties, known as Agreement and Consensus. Presently, the Consensus Party holds a majority in the Witenagemot, but three years ago—”

  “Sorry, Thane,” Scotty said, interrupting Iamor’s obvious enthusiasm for this topic, “but I’m an engineer. Politics is a wee bit over my head. I just know to show up on Election Day.”

  Iamor made a facial expression that Scotty was not sure how to interpret. “Very well then, Captain Scott.”

  “I don’t mean to be offensive, Thane, but if you want to talk politics, I’m sure Ambassador Morrow over there would be very keen to hear it.” Scotty gestured toward where the young diplomat he’d first met in the Gorkon’s transporter room was talking animatedly with a small group of seemingly very interested Kropaslin. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to check out the bar.”

  Upon arriving on the Gorkon, one of the first questions Scotty had asked Fleet Admiral Alynna Nechayev—the first, actually—had been “Why am I here?” There were others more suited for this sort of thing, people with, well, a real diplomatic background. Admirals, members of the Diplomatic Corps…even Nechayev herself.

  Her reaction had been dry and serious. “This is not a formal negotiation, Captain,” she’d said. “It is more of a way of reminding the Kropaslin of what we have to offer—and the other way around of course—in preparation for the actual negotiations. One of the things they have to offer us is their expertise in biotechnology.”

  Biotechnology—the one thing the Kropaslin could offer the Federation where they could be sure that the Federation would pay every price to obtain it. Despite extensive research in that field, Federation scientists still lagged behind species such as the Breen and the Azziz. They managed to incorporate elements of it in their technology, certainly—the bioneural gel packs used on some of the newer ship classes were evidence of that—but that was a far cry from having entirely biological vessels at one’s disposal, ships that you could basically grow in your own backyard while enjoying a quiet drink on your veranda, so to speak.

  Scotty had become somewhat familiar with the technology while working on the construction of the newest Enterprise, and that was when he had first come across a reference to Kropasar. Nechayev must have known about his interest in those people’s biotechnological accomplishments when she had picked him for this little “ice-breaker,” an informal get-together of Kropaslin and Federation luminaries to ease tensions, now that membership negotiations were once again in full swing. Before the war, Kropasar had applied to become a member of the Federation, but then the revival of Klingon hostilities and the subsequent Dominion War had changed the Federation’s goals. Since Kropasar was located a couple dozen light-years rimward of Omicron Ceti, far from the conflict zone, its admittance had fallen to the wayside, given the Diplomatic Corps had much more pressing matters to deal with.

  But now, the president had decided the time was right to get things back on track, which was why Scotty was here on the fourth planet of a star system with no name, just a number, searching for a drink.

  The bar, as Scotty had guessed, did not serve Scotch. However, one of the ambassadors, an El-Aurian, had recommended the Andorian ale, and Scotty soon held a glassful of that in his hands. Fortunately, it was a delightful vintage, possessed of a strong blue hue. Wandering over to the buffet, there was also an unsurprising lack of any good food. It seemed as though the Kropaslin had a big liking for foods imported from the Vega system, which was very unfortunate, as one of the many things he had disliked about Vega IX had been the food.

  What he really wanted was some haggis, but he hadn’t had a good plate of that for almost three years, since his time on the Enterprise-E; helping build a ship from almost the ground up meant you could hardwire the replicators just the way you liked. In the end, he reluctantly settled on a kebab of vegetables from Xaraka XII.

  No sooner had he began to munch on the kebab than he was approached by another Kropaslin. This one was taller than Iamor, rising to about two meters. “I hope you don’t want to talk politics, laddie,” said Scotty. “You are a laddie, right?” He frowned, realizing he had no idea how the Kropaslin genders were differentiated.

  “A what?” asked the Kropaslin.

  From the way the translator rendered the person’s voice, Scotty was willing to gamble that it was a she. Perhaps the taller ones were the females? “A laddie is a boy,” he said, “but you seem to be a girl.”

  “I am a bit older than a girl,” said the Kropaslin wryly. “Dr. Delasat Vantimor.”

  “Captain Montgomery Scott,” said Scotty. “I’d shake your hand, lassie, but…” He held up his hands, each of which was presently occupied holding something, and shrugged. “Not enough limbs.”

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Vantimor said. “I worked on the team that designed the special bioneural gel that was used on the Enterprise and the other Sovereign-class ships. Your reports and complaints made for…interesting reading.”

  “Lassie, let me tell you, interfacin’ alien gel with isolinear computer systems is a tricky job.” Scotty hadn’t and still didn’t recognize her name, but that was to be expected, as he had worked with far more people than he could recall on the Enterprise computer systems, most of them via subspace.

  “Indeed it is,” said a new voice. Scotty turned to see an older-looking human male had approached from his right without his noticing. “Sorry,” the man said, “but I couldn’t help but hear your conversation.” Scotty recognized him as yet another member of the group from the Gorkon that had assembled in the transporter room that morning, though he hadn’t been introduced to him. The man stuck out his hand. “Professor Andrews of the Timsonian Institute.”

  Scotty sighed inwardly and quickly transferred his kebab to the left hand, which was also holding his ale, and shook Andrews’s hand. “I imagine you lot will have your hands full cat
alogin’ all this new stuff, won’t you, lad?” Located in Cluster Telpha-Z, the Timsonian Institute was a counterpart to the more famous Daystrom Institute, focusing less on development of new technologies and more on classifying and labeling ones acquired through trade, alliance, and the like.

  “Indeed we will,” said Andrews, moving over to the food bar, where he grabbed a spider tramezzino from Alpha Arietis. “I would appreciate it, Captain Scott, if you did not refer to me as ‘lad.’”

  “Ach, you may be older than me physically,” Scotty admitted, “but I was realignin’ dilithium crystals when you were in diapers.”

  “Oh, I remember hearing about this,” Vantimor said excitedly. “You fell through a temporal rift in the Typhon Expanse, didn’t you? Came from the twenty-third century to the present?”

  “No, lassie, that was my good friend Morgan Bateson. My story is a wee bit different. I was on my way to a retirement colony on Norpin V, when the ship I was on, the Jenolen, encountered a Dyson sphere.”

  “A Dyson sphere?” asked Vantimor. “Is that a spatial anomaly of some sort?”

  “No,” said Andrews, “it is a massive artificial habitat constructed around a star to absorb all of its energy.” He munched on his half-sandwich with a forlorn expression. “Unfortunately, before the Institute could mount an expedition to take a look at the one the Jenolen discovered, it up and vanished. Most perplexing and distressing.”

  Scotty had taken advantage of the interruption to take another swig of the Andorian ale. “Exactly,” he said. “The Jenolen crash-landed on the sphere, killin’ everyone aboard but me and an ensign. Knowin’ rescue might be a long while in comin’, I managed to put the two of us into transporter stasis, by loopin’ our patterns through the buffer over and over.”

  “Really?” came a voice from his left. Scotty realized they had been joined by another Kropaslin. “That is extraordinary.”

  “Well, don’t praise me all too quickly,” Scotty said to the newcomer. “We were in transporter stasis for seventy-five years, until we were rescued by the Enterprise-D. But poor Franklin’s pattern degraded too far for him to be rematerialized.”

  “That’s sad. However, it’s still an amazing piece of work,” affirmed the Kropaslin. “A miracle of engineering.”

  Scotty shrugged. “Aye, you might say that.”

  Vantimor had what Scotty thought might be a puzzled expression, though quite honestly he wasn’t qualified to judge Kropaslin faces. No wonder—they have no sodding eyes! “I thought you were on your way to a retirement colony. Why are you in Starfleet now?”

  “Well, lassie,” said Scotty, taking another sip of his ale, “that is another story.”

  “Tell it then,” she said.

  Scotty smiled. One of the advantages of being an old relic was almost always having a willing audience for a story—and having more than enough stories to tell. “After I helped save the Enterprise-D from a wee bit of a scrape they landed in, Captain Picard rewarded me with my own shuttlecraft. Instead of headin’ to the retirement colony, I decided to roam the galaxy for some time.” He fell silent.

  “What happened?” asked someone Scotty didn’t recognize, a Deirr. It seemed he was attracting a crowd.

  “Well, warpin’ around in your own shuttle sounds thrillin’, but it soon gets lonely. Oh, I had my fair share of…excitement, but before long I’d entered into a sort of funk. Bein’ seventy-five years out of time can do that to you. Fortunately, thanks to an odd dream about Captain Kirk and some advice from a Hermat lass on Argelius—”

  “Hermat lass?” asked Andrews quizzically.

  “Well, she was a lad, too, I suppose,” Scotty acknowledged. “I try not to dwell on that. Anyway, she told me I needed to get back to doin’ what I was good at, and her words hit home. So I signed up at Starfleet Academy for some courses to get me up to speed with all the new technology, and soon enough, Morgan took me on as chief construction engineer of the Honorius, one of two Sovereign-class starships being built at Starbase 12.”

  “That was the original designation of the new Enterprise, wasn’t it?” asked Vantimor.

  “Aye, lassie,” said Scotty. “The Enterprise-D crashed on Veridian a few months after I joined the project, and so Starfleet redesignated the Honorius in her honor. I served as her chief engineer on her maiden voyage, and after helpin’ Morgan with her sister ship, the new Bozeman, I signed on to the Sovereign as chief engineer for a couple of years, where I worked on testin’ new technologies for implementation on other Sovereign s. Once that was up, Bill Ross asked me to take over the Engineerin’ Corps, and so here I am.”

  Aye, and it’s not really where you want to be at all, is it?

  He drowned that thought with another swig of Andorian ale.

  Tried to, more like. He didn’t succeed. Involuntarily, he thought back to the conversation Nechayev and he had had in the admiral’s ready room. At the start of it, she’d been pleasant and friendly, but her demeanor had changed quickly, giving Scotty the impression that it might have been just an act.

  “Captain Scott,” Nechayev had begun, “you know as well as I do that you have not stepped foot in your office at Headquarters for the last three months.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Scotty had said defensively. He had been wracking his brains for what he knew of Nechayev. Not much. She was way up there in Starfleet Command—almost as high as you could be, really—but he had only met her once before, during the Amargosa crisis, and that had only been for a brief time. He was woefully uninformed beyond the fact that she was the one who had been at the forefront of the Cardassian negotiations and the mess in the Demilitarized Zone that had followed. “When your man Dramar caught up with me, I was just on my way to my office. I’d been helping the repair teams in San Francisco.”

  “Which is very admirable and fully understandable,” Nechayev had acknowledged. “But before that you and Admiral McCoy were on the Hudson conducting a monthlong inspection tour, I believe?”

  “It needed to be done,” Scotty had said, still defensive. He had not expected to have his job performance evaluated on the Gorkon.

  “Certainly,” Nechayev had said. “But almost anyone in the S.C.E. would have been qualified to carry out the task. It didn’t exactly require superb engineering prowess to look at a couple of facilities.”

  Actually, it had ended up requiring quite a bit of skill on Scotty’s part when the Hudson had been forced to make an emergency landing on Bakrii, but he didn’t think the admiral would appreciate him pointing that out. “Well, it doesn’t require ‘superb engineerin’ prowess’ to manage the S.C.E. either. Commander Leland T. Lynch is perfectly capable of doin’ the job.”

  “It’s not his job, though, is it?” Nechayev had said. “When Admiral Ross asked you to take over for Harriman, I think he expected you to do the work. Not your assistant.”

  Truth be told, Scotty hadn’t really wanted to assume the position of liaison between Command and the Corps of Engineers. But when his tour on the U.S.S. Sovereign had come to an end, Scotty hadn’t had anything lined up. He’d been thinking of retiring again. While he had enjoyed the time he’d spent constructing the Enterprise-E with people who understood his plight, his subsequent time on the Sovereign had made him feel like a relic once more. The crew of the ship, from Captain Sanders down to Chaplain Blackwell, had treated him like a curiosity. A revered and respected curiosity, granted, but still a curiosity.

  But before Scott could bring himself to actually do the deed, Admiral William Ross had come to him with the offer of heading the S.C.E. Scotty had leapt at the chance to do something useful but, not keen on becoming an administrator, insisted it only be on a temporary basis, until someone who actually wanted the job could be found. His first month had not endeared him to his new duties: it had been signing off on orders, approving requests, dictating reports, and more of the same. When a chance had come to get out of the office and do some work on a communications array at Tsugh Kaidnn, he had taken the opport
unity without a thought. And the next opportunity to get out of the office, and the one after that.

  The only thing that kept him in the job were the words Harriman had spoken to him a few years back, when Harriman had been contemplating retirement himself and offered his job to Scotty: They only gave it to me to keep an old admiral busy. But an engineer like yourself, you could really do something with it. But every time Scotty called Commander Lynch back at the office and learned how much more paperwork had built up, he doubted Harriman’s words more and more.

  Returning to Earth after the inspection tour on the Hudson, he had thrown himself into helping with the reconstruction efforts repairing the damage caused by the Breen attack on San Francisco. But having wrapped up what he could at the moment, he had been dreading returning to his office. Fortunately, Ensign Dramar had happened along. At the time, he had thought that even a meeting with the notorious Admiral Nechayev would be better than confronting his paperwork.

  He’d been wrong there.

  “What was it like on the Sovereign?” asked Professor Andrews, diverting Scotty from his momentary bit of introspection.

  Scotty, not letting his doubts about his choices show, said, “It was pretty tricky workin’ new technology like that, but I adapted quickly. When you’ve been an engineer as long as I have, you start to learn that some things never change.”

  “How long have you been an engineer?” asked Vantimor, her interest obvious despite her alienness.

  “Over one hundred fifty years if I cheat and count my time in the transporter,” said Scotty with a grin. “All my life, really. I think I’ve served on over a dozen starships. Three Enterprise s, of course, plus Sovereign, Excelsior, Starstalker, Kumari, Gagarin…” He continued to recite his impressive pedigree, enjoying himself for the first time in a long while.

  That evening, Scotty returned to his quarters, quite pleased with himself. He had spent the rest of the day swapping stories with Vantimor, Andrews, and the other engineers, and he could think of few things more pleasing than that, except maybe reading technical journals.