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By Michael Marek From a story concept by Mike and Charlotte Marek
It was a good two weeks of vacation—the longest leave Charlotte and I had had since our wedding almost a year earlier. We thoroughly enjoyed the fairly carefree days. It was particularly enjoyable to be "back home" since we had spent Christmas on Cardassia. We hiked to several favorite spots including a beautiful waterfall hidden so far back into the mountains that few knew about it. We chatted at length with many of the neighbors, most of whom were polite enough to not ask us many details about our experiences in the war. We generally slipped easily in to the life of the tiny community, at least for a few days. Slowly the stress and grief and burnout of the war began to recede. During the second week of our stay I was pleased to get checked out on the new volunteer fire department apparatus, which was essentially a modified cargo shuttle, festooned with over-sized chemical tanks. As a pilot, I could hardly stand to NOT be eligible to fly the thing. With all of the advances of the 24th century, lightning still starts forest fires and the locals were serious about their long tradition of protecting the forest, as well as their own property. In fact, I passed a few flying tips back to the other "drivers." Too soon, however, the two weeks were over and we were closing up the house for another extended absence. Some of the children from nearby cabins gathered to watch us beam out, not an unheard of event but still a rarity in their lives. The gathering of the crew after this kind of shore leave "back home" is always an enjoyable time. People tend to be filled with stories, and not a few boasts, proving how good a time they had. Moira had sent her simulacrum to l’Ile du Levant, off the French Riviera, after a brief visit to her "Mom," a computer in permanent residence at the Smithsonian Institution. Samantha and Marina had visited Virginia; Dolores went to a dueling workshop in Texas; Billmer participated in a Society for Creative Anachronism recreation of the mid-20th century. Like Charlotte and me, Ray Brown visited the mountains, but in his case it was the Ozarks. Everyone had stories, but word also got around that we had a special assignment coming up; expectations were high as the senior staff gathered in the briefing room the next morning. I outlined the general goals and intent of our mission, handing out PADDs containing copies of the database the Admiral had provided. "Starfleet directs us to transit to the Tagis star system in this era," I briefed. "Then we’ll travel in time and when we get there use the same Stealth Mode techniques we employed behind Dominion lines. The goal is to get in, do the scan, and get back out, without being noticed by any of the residents of that era. Our experts will be coming on-board this afternoon. We’ll meet with them again at 0900 tomorrow. Each of you review the database for your specialty areas so we’re all up to speed. I’ll want to develop a full mission plan and timetable tomorrow. You all know about the risks of temporal paradoxes and all that. We want to make sure we do this right." "Michael," spoke up Charlotte, ship’s Science Officer and chief of Stellar Cartography. "This doesn’t make sense." "In what way?" I asked. "Warping around a star at speeds above warp nine to travel in time is risky, at best. I know it has been done several times, but there are a lot of factors that have to be just right. Without studying the Tagis star, we don’t even know if it is suitable for time travel. There might be other, better stars nearby. We shouldn’t be limited to using that one star." "On the other hand," spoke up Commander Dolores Scott, our Texan Security Officer. "We have no idea of what intelligent spacefaring species may exist back then. Chances are we could whup them, but the goal is to avoid all contact. We want to spend as little time in the past as possible, and travel the least distance possible, to protect the timeline." "We certainly have to evaluate the risks and make the best choice we can. There’s enough discretion in our orders that we could probably justify using a different star, if there’re facts behind it, although I’ll want to brief Admiral Ross before we leave. Commanders Marek and Scott, do the research and present a recommendation, ideally during our meeting with the experts tomorrow." After discussing a couple of other routine items, the meeting broke up and the staff members headed off to do their homework, Charlotte grumbling about last minute projects. I went back to the dossier of the three experts who would be coming on board to participate in the mission. The first was an old friend of the Crazy Horse, universally known as "The Commissioner." We had rescued him from a political kidnapping a few years earlier, and entertained him for other missions in the years in between. An expert in many fields, the Commissioner most often worked in interstellar diplomacy. During the recent war he had kept up a steady pace of visits to key member worlds of the Federation, ensuring that the war efforts of the various planets meshed smoothly. In addition to his years of diplomatic service, he had academic degrees in history, archeology, and cybernetics as well as exo-sociology. His lengthy curriculum vitae of accomplishments, discoveries and academic postings seemed to make him well suited to what we soon came to call The Tagis Mission. After all, we had to both do a highly sophisticated scan of Tagis III and be prepared to deal with any other spacecraft we might meet. Accompanying the Commissioner was Starfleet Academy’s star graduate student, Lieutenant Sharon Harris, a dark, attractive woman of age 27, who had accompanied the commissioner in several of his recent non-diplomatic exploits. It appeared that her doctoral dissertation, still uncompleted, dealt with time travel. Her math was esoteric, to say the least. The final VIP was Lt. Commander Edward Morgan, of the Starfleet Temporal Bureau. He was charged with monitoring our efforts to avoid contact with the "locals." At age 33, he appeared to be a sharp young officer who had been diverted early in his career to the Temporal Bureau. Because of this, he had never held a command. The Temporal Bureau usually doesn’t get involved until after a temporal incident, much to their chagrin. Although I outranked him, Morgan was one of those advisors that one had BETTER heed. The three of them came on board at 1500 hours. As protocol dictated, three senior officers met them in the transporter room – Charlotte, Moira and myself. The Commissioner was in his usual good humor, his "just folks" attitude belying his background. On the other hand, Lieutenant Harris seemed very nervous while Commander Morgan was placid, almost to the point of a deadpan expression. I suspected that the latter two both had a lot riding on this mission -- Harris in terms of the opportunity to collect primary data relevant to her studies and Morgan because it was a rare before-the-fact temporal assignment. We showed them each to staterooms and invited them all to a formal dinner in the officer’s mess at 1900 hours. Following the dinner we had a more casual reception in Roddenberry’s. Afterwards, in our quarters, Charlotte and I talked about our guests. "That Lieutenant got me in a corner," complained Charlotte, "and kept badgering me about tests she wanted to do. I already had every one of them on the planning list, but she wouldn’t let up." "Morgan wasn’t much better, " I replied. "It took him two beers to decide that I have a competent knowledge of the Temporal Prime Directive. We’re both lucky the Commissioner called them away to tell them the story of the first time he came aboard the ship." "I hate dealing with strangers," Charlotte muttered, as she knelt and examined the controls on the side of a large planter. We have many growing plants in our quarters. Most are mine, but Charlotte’s pride and joy is what she calls her "chocolate tree." The plant was a "heritage" variety, as close as genetically possible to the original South American plants from which today’s cacao hybrids have been developed. It occupied a substantial part of the room, illuminated by lights on timed cycles and watered automatically. Charlotte had even built special inertial stabilizers and force fields into the planter box to protect the tree when Crazy Horse was in combat. "Isn’t it about time to trim that thing?" I asked. The flowers it produces are nice, but the tree was brushing the ceiling. "NO!" she responded, vigorously. "Not yet. I’m still running simulations on my homemade chocolate recipe. Besides, the seed pods will be opening any day. I want to germinate some of the beans and give them as presents." "Yes, Ma’am," was all I could say, envisioning cacao beans all over the floor. What CAN one say when one’s wife is addicted to chocolate? "Tagis—the star—isn’t very suitable
for time travel." It was the next morning and Charlotte was addressing
a combined meeting of the ship’s senior staff and the research VIPs. "It
is a very old star, with few heavy elements and basically it’s dying. Sometime
in the next million years or so it will just go out. It’s not big enough
to nova, or anything like that."
III. The trip to NGC 77-3965AD took two weeks at moderate warp speed. A Federation science vessel, the USS Faraday, met us there, to observe our warp around the sun. They had already flown our course at impulse, and transmitted detailed gravimetric readings to us to allow pinpoint precision in our course. Charlotte and Moira handled the theoretical and computational chores, consulting with Harris, when they couldn’t avoid it. We set 1000 hours as the engage time for the time flight. The senior staff and guests gathered for the Crazy Horse tradition of "breakfast before something big happens." The Commissioner entertained us with a story of "much weirdness," as he called it, during a recent diplomatic effort. I confess I didn’t pay much attention. I was feeling a bit pensive about the upcoming mission. At 0800 I politely broke up the gathering and sent people off to their duty stations. I took up residence in my office, off the corridor between the bridge and the briefing room. The last thing I wanted to do for two hours was twiddle my thumbs in the command seat. In situations like this I find that leaving the crew to do their jobs without me looking over their shoulders reduces stress. I caught up on some paperwork, dispatched a log update to Admiral Ross, drank another cup of Orion Blend and did my own private review of ship’s readiness. Moira popped in for a visit, appearing holographically at the door to my office. As an artificial intelligence residing in the ship’s master computer, she has the ability to be several places at once. In many ways she IS the ship, because the dividing line between the ship’s computer and other ship’s systems is nebulous, at best. "I’ve never done anything like this before, you know," she said. Was our unflappable Second Officer nervous? I wondered, but of course she would only be nervous if she programmed herself to be nervous. More likely it was just the raw volume of data she was coordinating to chart the perfect course around Tagis causing her to be a bit distracted. "Are you looking forward to it?" I asked. "Hell, yes," she said, a broad smile breaking out on her face. "This is why I joined Starfleet—to go where no intelligence has gone before. There is no record of anybody in any civilization ever traveling as far in time as we’re going to, except maybe the Q, and they don’t really count. There’s no telling what could happen, what we might run into, what discoveries we might make. The theory says 30,000 years should work fine, but nobody’s ever tried it." "Lucky us," I said, also smiling. At 0955 I left my office and took command of the bridge from Lieutenant Samantha Neal, to whom I had assigned the morning watch while we were station-keeping with the Faraday. Moira followed and assumed her station. I noticed that the commissioner and Morgan were just seating themselves in other chairs next to the command seat. Harris was at one of the science stations at the back of the bridge. "Sir," Samantha reported. "All decks stand ready for time travel, all personnel positioned at red alert stations. Our course is laid in for automatic execution on your command. Damage control and medical teams are standing by. All systems received a full recalibration overnight, with no discrepancies." I had determined the same information from the console in my office, and I accepted her report with a nod. "Assume the navigation station, Lieutenant," I said, then turned to the tactical station. "Open a channel to the Faraday." In a moment the Faraday’s bridge appeared on the view screen, along with her Bolean Captain, Rooos. "I believe we’re ready to get underway, Captain," I advised. "We’re looking forward to a spectacular show, Crazy Horse," she said. "We’ll see you in around five days, on the way back." "Crazy Horse affirms," I said, giving tactical the signal to close the channel. Then I called for an intra-ship channel. "This is Commander Marek. All hands, stand by for time travel. This one’s going to be rough. Take all precautions for turbulance. Marek out." The chronometer just clicked past 1000.00 when I gave the order to the helm to engage, and felt the ship jump to warp. We were around two light hours from the star. Ordinarily we could travel that distance in mere seconds, but this time was different. Rather than speed, most of our warp energy was carefully diverted to a rarely used level of subspace that built up a wave front of temporal potential. The pitch of the engines rose from the usual dull rumble to a high squeal and other groans announced that the ship was adjusting to the strain. "We’re at flank speed," called out Brandon from the helm station, shouting to be heard above the noise. "Right on target," announced Samantha, also shouting. "The Faraday says we’re glowing like a giant photon torpedo," Moira told me smugly, her hologram leaning close from her chair. "This is so much fun..." My vision seemed to blur slightly and I heard Charlotte call out from science station one, "We are now regressing in time." The vibrations and noise continued to build as we dove toward the star. It was disconcerting to hear our sturdy ship groan as the pressures caused the structure of the ship to adjust itself. Soon, the innermost planet was long past and we were disturbingly close to the nuclear fires of the star, moving in our carefully planned tight parabolic curve. I felt like I was in an earthquake that wouldn’t stop and I wedged myself tightly in the command chair. I swung around and saw Charlotte grimly hanging on at the science station, staring raptly at the displays. Five minutes past. Moira was displaying a graphical version of our course and systems status on the main viewscreen, the Starfleet logo inching along to show our position near the corona of the star, but I found it hard to concentrate. My blurred vision became more of a feeling of detachment. I remember thinking that I was glad our course was preprogrammed. To my right, Morgan’s head drooping to one side. I saw a couple of other crew members collapse, then I slid into unconsciousness myself. I believe I was one of the first on the bridge to wake up. Moira, of course, had the ship well under control. "Welcome back," she said, speaking in a slightly sing-song voice. "We are on course, four light minutes from the star. Warp and impulse engines are all...off line. Sensors are only operating at 25% efficiency, but preliminary scans show no lifesigns and no technology whatsoever in this star systemmmm." "How are you feeling," I asked, observing that computer systems as well as humanoids appeared impaired in the wake of our time travel maneuver. "Drunk," she said, blinking, "but I getting over it." I stood, a bit unsteadily, and moved forward to the helm console. We were indeed where we should be. The question of when we were was harder to pin down but some preliminary astrometric readings I took seemed to place us in the ballpark. Officers around the bridge were groaning and rousing themselves. I walked around to the upper bridge to check on Charlotte, but my wife was already moving, groggily beginning to enter commands at the science station, so I stepped to the tactical station on the arch where Dolores was scanning. "No ships within range, sir," she reported. "Nothing at all on subspace. I’m checking EM frequencies now, but there’s nothing obvious. I’d say we got in with nobody noticing." "Brown to bridge," the bridge intercom system chirped. I knew the chief engineer would contact us in his good time, so I hadn’t bothered him. "Go ahead," I answered. "We blew out several plasma conduits and the warp engines shut down as a safety precaution. Some other collateral damage, but not bad. We should have warp drive back in an hour or so. Impulse will be on-line in a few minutes." "Understood," I answered. "Keep me posted." "I have an approximate date, Michael," said Charlotte. "Based on the positions of various key stars and the timing of several pulsars, we appear to have traveled twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and 37 years into the past, plus or minus two percent." A quick mental calculation told me that we had arrived within about a half percent of our target date and I congratulated Charlotte and Moira on their collaboration. I saw that a yeoman was serving the Commissioner and Morgan coffee. I got myself a cup and walked forward to join the VIPs. "Congratulations, Commander," said the Commissioner, taking a sip. "A very nicely executed maneuver." "You are continually scanning for local inhabitants?" Morgan asked. "Yes, Mr. Morgan," I said evenly, taking a taste of my own Orion blend. "Exactly as planned." "And maintaining subspace silence?" "Of course." "How about..." "Lieutenant Morgan," interrupted the Commissioner, deliberately misstating his rank. "These people know what they’re doing. Let’s watch and learn ... and not bother them." "Um...Yes, sir," Morgan responded. I felt a bit sorry for him. He was a fish out of water. IV. Engineering soon had impulse engines on line and I ordered a course that swung up out of the ecliptic and then directly for the Tagis star system. The crew of the Crazy Horse was fairly busy for the two days it took us to reach our destination. Those people not needed to put our engineering house in order plunged into gathering all sorts of data about how this era was different from our own—physical location of stars, spectra, particle emissions, artificial signals and many other categories of information. Communications did report some weak subspace signals indicating that they originated a significant distance from us. We recorded them for later processing through the universal translator. We also passed within about a light year of an unmanned spacecraft inching along at less than a tenth of the speed of light. Our metalurgical scans indicated that it was thousands of years old. It was tempting, but we avoided it. When we reached Tagis, the scans went routinely. Crazy Horse entered a polar orbit, allowing us to direct high-resolution scans at the entire planet’s surface. It was largely a dead planet, having long ago been depleted of its resources by a civilization that existed on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. Over that amount of time, even a culture that is very sensitive to environmental issues has the potential to do great harm. When the Tagans left, for wherever it was they went, they left behind a planet with only a few pockets of hardy plants surviving, and no animals other than some insectoids and a few tiny reptiles. It was a depressing planet to view from space, its great ocean basins mostly empty and its continents bared and brown. In our own era, a more complete ecology had been reestablished on Tagis, but it could still support no more than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Actually, our scans penetrated at least a couple of kilometers into the crust of the planet to pick up any underground structures that might exist. We stayed in orbit for a full revolution of the planet, about 27 hours, meaning we passed over every point on the surface twice. Because of the overlap of the passes, we ultimately had four or more scans of every individual location on the planet. It turned out to be the ultimate of a routine mission. The Commissioner remained awake for the entire 27 hours, working closely with Moira to perform an initial evaluation of the data. He made more and more positive noises, indicating that the data collection had exceeded expectations. On the bridge, we remained alert for any other starships that might approach, but none did. Soon we had left the Tagis system behind and were again preparing to travel in time. Just because we’d been through it once did not make it passé. It was late afternoon as we approached NGC 77-3965AD, all back at the stations where we had been five days ago. Charlotte and Lieutenant Harris were at the two science stations, Moira and I were in our command chairs, flanked by the Commissioner beside her and Morgan beside me. The Commissioner was actually drowsing as the result of his exertions, awakening only when the vibrations got bad enough. And get bad they did. If there had been anybody out there in subspace to watch, Crazy Horse would have been leaving a wake of streaming colors, blurred and flowing like flames behind us. As we thundered down towards the surface of the star, we regressed in time even further, almost as if we had to tack before turning full to the wind. Then the slingshot effect kicked in and we charged forward again, past where we had stopped, on and on toward our own time. I tried hard to stay awake this time, without luck. I awoke a little more quickly this time, I think, and shook my head to clear it. Moira was muttering beside me, "I don’t like this. I don’t like this. I really don’t like this..." "Report," I croaked. "We’re where we’re supposed to be," she said, with an attitude, her eyes blazing. "But friggin’ Starfleet isn’t there. Look," she said, standing and dancing forward a couple of steps to point at the main view screen. A series of navigational displays flashed faster than I could take in. I know they showed angles between various stars and readings from several pulsars, but they flickered away faster than I could absorb the information. "We arrived 147 seconds after we departed," she fumed. "Where’s the Faraday? Where’s the Starfleet subspace network? No hailing frequencies around here, Bucko..." "Moira," I said, standing myself. "Be seated, if you please, and relax, Commander." "Fine," she said, after a pause, and flounced back to her seat, tugging on her tunic to straighten it after she sat. Our experience of a few days earlier told me she would be back to normal in a few moments. Uneasy, I looked around the bridge. Moira was right that even if Faraday had received emergency orders to depart, we should be able to detect her after the short amount of time we had been gone. If the Starfleet subspace communications net was really off the air, it signaled serious problems. It was almost impossible for the decentralized network of subspace relay stations to all go out of service at once—unless an enemy had found a way to hit hundreds of relay stations at the same time. Everyone around the bridge was moving. At Science Station Two, Lieutenant Harris was staring at me intently, almost expectantly. I was developing a serious bad feeling about our situation. "Listen up," I called out. "We may have a problem. Remain at General Quarters. Communications silence – no transmissions but I want to know what you are hearing, full frequency sweep. I want a full passive sensor scan, too." The crew was weary from what they’d been through, but they responded well. "I’ll handle the sensor scan," volunteered Charlotte. Soon Dolores had a communications report. "Sir, all Federation subspace communications circuits are dead. There’s no interference, just nothing on them. I am getting some signals on an older subspace band we don’t use anymore, but they’re not Federation. They sound – Romulan." "I told you so," said Moira quietly. She appeared recovered now and had stepped up to stand near me. "On audio," I said, and a string of unintelligible words streamed forth. "Sam," I said. "Can you make anything of it?" Samantha speaks passable Romulan – she once claimed to me that she was fluent but I had no way to judge, then. "Hum," she said after several seconds of concentration. "It seems to be routine Romulan military traffic. Ship placements, logistics. It’s all very – above board, not encrypted at all. It’s as if they didn’t have an enemy in the world." "Moira, tie in the universal translator and keep monitoring," I directed, "and let me know if you hear anything interesting." "Passive sensor scan results are negative," said Charlotte. "The Crazy Horse seems to be the only refined metal in the star system. All radiation is natural. All the astronomical objects are where they should be." "Position reports are part of the header of each of these Romulan messages," reported Moira. "Over time I should be able to build up a database of the locations of the Romulan ships. The ships we’ve heard so far, however, are definitely in Federation space." "Diplomatic ships?" asked Dolores. "Hardly," said Samantha. "I just heard a reference to fleet training exercises in the Orion Sector. There’s no way the Orions would allow that." "No way in our timeline," I responded, turning to fully face the back of the bridge. "Lieutenant Harris. Do you have any thoughts about that?" Morgan’s eyes had gone wide and he whispered, "No." "Actually, Sir," replied Harris, seemingly emboldened for the first time since I met her.. "I believe I do. It is known as the Paradox of Accumulation." "Oh, no, no, no," interjected Morgan shaking his head vigorously. "This cannot be a P.A. event. The Crazy Horse has never traveled in time before this mission. That’s why we picked this ship. You’re wrong, Lieutenant." "I tried to tell you, it was suggested," Harris answered defensively, stepping forward from the science station, "by the first root of Allen’s third equation in his 2273 paper on….." "Commander Marek," said the Commissioner, standing speaking for the first time. "May I suggest that we repair to your briefing room?" I nodded. "Lieutenant Neal, you have the bridge. Scale back to Yellow Alert. Continue passive scans and communications monitoring. Stay sublight." "Yes, Sir," said Samantha, standing and stepping aft to assume the center seat. I extended my hand toward the rear corridor from the bridge to the briefing room. "Commissioner, if you please." The Commissioner replied courteously, "Of course, Commander. Mr. Morgan, Ms. Harris, come along." They left the bridge, Morgan and Harris arguing subvocally. "Moira, Charlotte," I said. "You’re with me." I was deliberately leaving the senior staff out of the meeting except for Moira, next in command, and Charlotte, the Science Officer. The situation with the VIPs seemed delicate and I wanted a handle on it before I broadened the group. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, opening the meeting. "My immediate priority is the safety of this ship. The long-term priority must certainly be the safety of our timeline. If I determine that anyone has endangered either, particularly through withholding information…" "Your concern is most justified," said the Commissioner. "Let me assure you that your mission to Tagis III was completely legitimate. The best theoretical physicists in the Federation said that Lieutenant Harris’s concern was….." "Hogwash is the term they used, Sir," injected Harris, smugly. "Hum, yes. The Lieutenant persuaded me that there was a chance that she, well, knew what she was talking about. You must have wondered why I came along on this little junket. Certainly I have an interest in old things, but the real reason was to assist, in case the timeline became distorted and you ran into trouble. The temporal folks insisted on sending Mr. Morgan, as well." "So what happened?" I asked, directing my eyes at Harris. "In non-mathematical terms, if possible." "Simply, this is not the only time the Crazy Horse travels 30,000 years into the past. It seems that on another occasion the ship is responsible for something that changes our timeline into the form we recognize. Going back this time appears to have, in effect, reset the clock." "A few of us were involved in a...temporal incident...a few years ago, but only 400 years into the past. We preserved the timeline, and the ship itself has never traveled in time," I said. "Ah, but that’s linear thinking," she answered, with a smile. "Time itself is multi-dimensional, although it takes very sophisticated equipment to detect it. You might travel in time again next week, next year or in a decade, and it’s all as if it is happening right now. We just have to know where to look, in a temporal sort of way, and that place is 30,000 years in our past." "But, Lieutenant," chimed in Morgan. "The axiom is 'anything that has happened will happen.'" "Exactly my point," said Harris. "Nothing happened on our recent journey that could conceivably have resulted in the changes we see. Ergo, the changes resulted from a different sortie in time. We notice the changes because we have been discontinuous with time." "What says Crazy Horse had to be the ship that caused the changes?" I asked. "Some other ship might have had a temporal incident while we were in the past." I saw Morgan shudder at the thought. "Just any old transit of time could not have this effect," explained Harris, speaking now more like an Academy lecturer. "The Paradox of Accumulation occurs when multiple discontinuous versions of the same micro-nuclear strings converge out of phase into..." "But what happened to causality?" Morgan interrupted, holding his hand up to halt the technobabble and plowing ahead doggedly. "Why would this trip in time undo a change made on some other trip? It was an innocuous visitation." "I was just coming to that," said Harris. "Remember that first root of Allen’s third equation in his 2273 paper that I mentioned? It indicates that we would not have reset the events of the other time travel unless both happened simultaneously, and Occam’s Razor says that means us." Several of us must have frowned at that. Harris sighed and stated what she apparently thought was the obvious. "The Crazy Horse was in the year 27,462 B.C. twice. According to the math, the only way this could have happened is that while we were at Tagis, we also should have been somewhere else in the same year, doing something else that resulted in the timeline change, and at a locus not many light years away from each other. We’re going to have to go back and do that other thing to fix our problem." Pretty much everyone at the table was nonplused by Harris’ statement. Finally Charlotte asked, "So how do we determine what the change was? It’s a big universe." Harris smiled. "I’m a theoretician. That’s not my job." The staff meeting turned out to be long and frustrating. I summoned the rest of the senior staff and we reviewed our status, in detail. Moira reported that the subspace transmissions she was monitoring consistently used the terminology "Romulan Federation of Planets." She still had come across no encryption and only the simplest authentication codes. "Another few hours of monitoring," she said, "and I am certain that I will be able to hack into their network and access their data retrieval systems." "If you’re not successful," Dolores observed, "it could put us at extreme risk. We can’t take on the whole Romulan fleet." The conversation paused for a few seconds, and I realized that they were looking to me for a decision. "Moira," I started, "I have the highest confidence in your abilities, when you guarantee to me that you can do something. I don’t want you attempting this hack until you are positive you will succeed. At any rate, Ray says it will be tomorrow morning before all systems are back to specs. Take no action until then." She nodded and I looked around the briefing room. "We have a nice little empty star system here. Let’s hold tight and not call attention to ourselves until we’re ready for action." V. The meeting broke up and, since it was already after supper, Charlotte and I headed to our quarters. As we walked, she told me she was eager to get there because she had to check her "chocolate seeds." She made me pause at the door while she gave the computer (an automated subsystem of Moira) the command, "inertial stabilizers to normal." This was my first time back in our quarters since 0600, and I was not quite prepared to find it so brightly lit, and crowded with hundreds of small soil-filled pots. Every square inch of table, chair and desk space was covered, and most of the floor as well. "Isn’t it great?" she asked, rhetorically. "I got almost a thousand viable seeds. I spent the morning planting them." She pulled out her tricorder and swung it back and forth, muttering to herself about "soil temperature" and "moisture levels." After breakfast the next morning, I authorized Moira to proceed with her hack. It took her over an hour, but the information she produced was fascinating. "Of course, it’s history as seen from the Romulan perspective," she reported later. "The Romulan war still took place in 2161 but, this time, Earth was not involved. Without Earth to bear the brunt of the combat, the Romulans won. But then a funny thing happened. The Romulans found out that while they controlled all of the key worlds of the Alpha Quadrant, they didn’t really have the people or resources to directly administer all those star systems they had conquered. They began allowing semi-autonomous local control. Today, over 200 years later, their empire is structured remarkably like the United Federation of Planets, except that Earth is not a player." "What is Earth’s status?" I asked. "Earth has just invented warp drive, and a successful first contact has been made. The government of Earth has petitioned for membership in the Romulan Federation of Planets. Approval is considered likely. The primary language on Earth, by the way, is French." "It sounds like whatever happened in this timeline happened on Earth," observed Charlotte. "We’ll have to go there and figure out what it was." "Agreed," I said. "I think it is unlikely, though, that we could get there by stealth." "Luckily," said Moira, with a toss of her head, "I know their first contact protocols. All possible efforts are made to establish peaceful relations with new species." "But we’re not new," said Dolores. "They don’t have to know that," said Moira. "They certainly won’t recognize the design of this ship, so they’ll be expecting strangers." I scratched my chin. "Just waltz in like we had a perfect right to be there?" "I believe, Commander," said the Commissioner, "that this is exactly what we should do. They’ll intercept us at some point, and it will be clear that we have nothing to hide." "But we do have something to hide," observed Charlotte. "Their Federation shouldn’t exist." "Ah," smiled the Commissioner, with a wide grin spreading across his face. "That’s why we call it 'diplomacy.'" So, we set course for Earth. It was a sticky question how fast we should travel. Moira’s exploration of the Romulan data retrieval systems produced a figure translating to warp 8.33 as a typical maximum speed for Romulan Federation ships, so I selected warp 7 as a speed indicating we were traveling with a purpose, but not so fast as to be threatening. That speed gave us a transit time of 16 days to Earth and for the first few we were on pins and needles, waiting to be discovered by the Romulans. We had planned for the first contact carefully, but the wait was stressful, nevertheless. It came soon enough, on our fourth day enroute. I was in my office. "Sir, we have a ship on an intercept course," reported the tactical officer via the comm system. "Acknowledged," I responded. "Red Alert. I’m on my way." I walked onto the bridge moments later. It was Moira’s shift and she reported smoothly. "The ship is at 270 Mark 15, arcing in to parallel our course. We are transmitting friendship messages on all channels identified as Romulan hailing frequencies. As you can see," she added, directing my attention to the viewscreen, "the ship design is vaguely reminiscent of the Warbirds we are familiar with, but smaller." We were seeing the ship head-on, of course, as it moved to rendezvous. The Romulan ships we had fought with in the Dominion war were dark green, with double hulls shaped and surfaces textured to suggest a bird of prey. This ship had the same beak-shaped forward structure, but more of an arrowhead-shaped hull. With full-color feathers painted on the ship, it suggested a bird that was soaring, rather than hunting. "We are being hailed," reported Dolores, who had assumed the tactical station from the second shift duty officer. "Reduce speed to warp 5 and put the Commissioner on." The Commissioner was standing by in the briefing room. The main bridge viewscreen divided so that we could see both him and the Romulan officer on the approaching ship. "This is the United Federation of Planets starship Crazy Horse, on a peaceful mission of exploration. Greetings and good wishes." "Starship Crazy Horse, this is the Romulan Federation of Planets starship Falconer. We also seek peaceful contact, however you have entered space controlled by our Federation. Please state your intentions." The Commissioner almost seemed to exude friendship as he spoke. "We come from very far away..." They talked for almost 20 minutes. Although I heard every word, I still don’t quite understand how the Commissioner obtained us permission to travel through Romulan space without even having their crew board our ship for inspection. It was certainly a work of diplomatic art, and the poor Romulan Captain was far outclassed. Not only did we receive travel permission, but the Falconer sent word ahead to the government of Earth that we would be requesting shore leave on their world. After only an hour of parallel flight with the Romulan ship, it moved off and we returned to Warp 7. A dozen days later, we were in Earth orbit, arrangements in progress to send crew members down in relays for shore leave. Our hidden purpose behind it all, of course, was determining what had resulted in the difference in timelines. The Earth-Moon system was familiar, but also hauntingly different, particularly when the nightside of the planet was viewed from space. While Europe and most of Asia and Africa were well-illuminated, there were almost no lights to be seen in the Americas, except along the coasts. Similarly, the lights and clouds we should have seen across the face of the Moon were totally absent. The world government was based in London. The Commissioner, Dolores and I beamed down for the customary meeting before authorizing shore leave. A scholarly-looking little man named Taft, with the title of Secretary for Extrasolar Affairs, ushered us into the ornate office of the Prime Minister. She and the Commissioner got along very well. No doubt she was as experienced in diplomacy in her way as was the Commissioner. The chamber was large and ornate, lined with bookshelves and filled with seemingly antique furniture. We were invited to sit in chairs surrounding a coffee table, across the room from the formal desk. "This is an historic meeting, you know," smiled the Prime Minister, as a servant offered us tea. "We have had many visits from people of the different member worlds of the Federation, but yours is the first ship from outside the Federation completely." Taft, however, kept pestering me with questions. "I’m surprised that we look so similar. Every other species we have met has pointed ears or fangs or," he shook his head, "some kind of head-bumps. Would your physicians be interested in meeting with ours to compare notes?" "I can ask if our doctors would have such an interest," I offered, noncommittally. "I am also interested to know where you do come from." "A very long way," I said. "We come from the direction of the constellation you call Cygnus." (That’s the direction we came from Tagis, at least.) "And what exactly is your mission?" Taft continued. "Exploration," I said, with a smile. "Seeking out new life and new civilizations and going boldly where none of our kind have gone before." "So none of your kind has visited Earth before?" "I am certain that none of my species would find this world familiar." Taft kept at me like that for almost a half-hour, until the Commissioner and the Prime Minister completed their tea. Then we beamed back to the ship to organize our away teams. The assignment of the away teams was fairly simple. Make like tourists and look for things that might have caused the timelines to diverge. The Terrans of this timeline had suggested that we send 200 people per day, spread out across several locations on the planet. While their people were familiar with what to them was a fairly recent fact of confirmed alien life, the Prime Minister felt it was best to not call undue attention to our numbers. A modest credit account had been established for the Crazy Horse, to enable the crew to acquire souvenirs. Each crew member was briefed on how much he or she was allowed to spend. As much as I wanted to be among the first to investigate the question, a good commanding officer allows his people to have shore leave first. Moira was on the first landing party. I scheduled myself to take shore leave the second day. Charlotte stayed on the ship the first day in order to be able to spend the following day with me on the planet. The rest of the bridge crew was divided equally, as well as the rest of the crew. Of course, because of her nature, Moira stayed on the ship, as well, frequently exchanging memories with her simulacrum on the planet. She coordinated intelligence reports from landing party members, slowly assembling a picture of the culture of Earth in this timeline. She joined Charlotte and me for lunch with a preliminary report. "It wasn’t hard to determine when the timelines diverged," she said. "It was about the 16th century. Up until then, all of the key historical events and people were there -- Sargon, Alexander, Cleopatra, Robin, Chaucer, Xi Quan, the Bard. My other self is visiting a library; Canterbury Tales and The Tempest are word for word identical to the versions we know. But I can’t figure out what the vector is that resulted in the divergence." "The information has to be there," assured Charlotte. "We just have to find it." By evening, we had more information. "Exploration of the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries received significantly less attention here than on our Earth," said Moira. "The great South and Central American civilizations – the Toltecs, Aztecs and Mayans -- never developed here. As a result, the conquistadors found no great treasure troves of gold. All in all, the European explorers just seemed to be more mellow here. They remained mostly on the seacoasts, and given the general lack of interest from the crowned heads of Europe, the colonies eventually collapsed. Even today, North America is settled only along the seacoasts and major waterways. The interior is treated similar to the Australian outback. All of North America is still a British possession." "If the United States of America was never created," mused Charlotte, "that would explain why they are so far behind on space flight." "Not just that," agrees Moira. "In the 20th century, the United States tipped the balance in three major wars. Without them, the political landscape was very different." "So it looks," I said, "like we can narrow our search. If we can figure out why the Mayans and the Aztecs never developed, we might be able to find the trigger." Moira shrugged. "It’s our best lead so far." VI. In the morning, Charlotte and I had our chance to look around. We picked Paris, in part because it is a beautiful city, apparently in any timeline, and in part because it boasted extensive archives. In this version of Paris, the French National Library, the Bibliothèque de France, is on the rue de Richelieu, in the heart of Paris. Luckily its archives were available via computer retrieval. We spent the morning at side-by-side consoles, buried in records of exploration of the New World. We transmitted as much information as we could to Moira for processing, including some of the earliest reports from explorers, all the way through recent scientific studies. We broke for lunch at 1130 hours local time, thoroughly discouraged. Lunch at a sidewalk cafe helped some. After lunch we decided to really be tourists and stroll toward the Seine. We didn’t talk much. I was reflecting on what we would do if we could not identify a vector for the timeline changes. Crazy Horse was a long way from home, with no friends close. The Romulans of this timeline seemed relatively benign, but I wasn’t ready to trust them, yet. "Chocolate," said Charlotte. "Hum?" I said. "I need chocolate." She pointed at one of the shops ahead. According to the sign above its door it was a confectionery. Charlotte began walking faster, quickly outdistancing me. I remained at strolling speed, but kept her in sight. She disappeared inside the shop. I had almost reached the door when Charlotte burst out and almost ran to the shop next door, a souvenir store. I altered course, and again, Charlotte met me at the door. "We have a problem," she said. "Let’s get back to the ship." "No chocolate?" I asked, with a smile. "No chocolate." I suppose that I shook my head -- the thought of rushing back to the ship for a chocolate fix was a bit comical. "Michael," she said, loudly. "They’ve never heard of it." "How could they have never heard of chocolate? It..." I paused. "Wait a minute." "Exactly," she said. "Chocolate comes from cacao. It originated in the South American rainforest." "We’d better get back to the ship." We hurried to the bridge, Charlotte stopping at the first replicator to obtain a large chunk of Special Dark. "Moira," I said, as soon as we exited the turbolift. "Contact all landing parties. Direct them to confirm the existence or nonexistence of chocolate." "Chocolate?" Moira responded. Suddenly the word was on the lips of everybody on the bridge. "Chocolate, chocolate, the commander thinks it’s chocolate." It wasn’t long before reports from the surface began coming in. Across the planet the word was the same, nobody had even heard the term "chocolate" before. Meanwhile Charlotte was directing sensors at South and Central America. In a few minutes she reported. "Sensors pick up no cacao whatsoever," she said, in a stunned voice. "I’ve reexamined the historical data you sent me this morning," added Moira. "There is not even a single reference to cacao or chocolate." "Schedule a staff meeting for 1900 hours," I said. "I think we’ve found our ‘smoking gun.’" "What would make a phaser smoke?" asked Marina. "Cacao originated in the upper Orinoco River basin." Charlotte was giving us a background report on chocolate. "Theobroma is how the plant is classified, with the oldest varieties called Theobroma pentagona. The earliest natives enjoyed the pulps encasing the seeds in the seed pods, eaten directly or blended into a beverage. About 2,000 years ago, pods were transported from South America to Central America and germinated. The Aztecs, who settled in Mexico around 1300, prepared a drink known as chocolatl, a beverage prepared from the dried, ground up seeds. It was consumed only by the wealthy. The seeds contain alkaloids including caffeine, theobromines, and over 300 chemically active substances that give chocolate its wondrous qualities. "Following the European colonization," she continued, "the cultivation of the chocolate tree spread rapidly around the world. Spaniards took chocolate to Spain where it became very popular in such a way that it was considered a beverage worthy of kings. They began combining it with eggs, sugar, vanilla and sometimes cinnamon and produced something more similar to what we know as chocolate today. From Spain, it went to France and later on it spread out to the whole world. "The upper Orinico river region in the Amazon rainforest of South America is considered to be the evolutionary birthplace of the Theobroma genus. Wild varieties of the tree flourish there in greater profusion than anywhere else . The genus is believed to be very old, up to millions of years, but the species we call cacao is thought to be relatively new." "Much as I like chocolate, why would lack of it so greatly reduce the colonization of the New World?" asked the Commissioner. "That’s hard to say," responded Moira. "Reduced trade opportunities, maybe. Less caffeine? How it happened isn’t necessarily our problem. The simple fact is that it is the only discrepancy we can find." "So cacao died out on this world?" I was still trying to understand. "Or did it never develop at all?" "Wait a minute. This has got to be a red herring," Harris spoke up for the first time. "Given the identical parallel development of the planet in the two timelines, there is no reason to believe that a given variety of plant would thrive in one and not in the other." She shook her head. "The Crazy Horse does something 30,000 years ago that results in a change to this planet – a change that apparently does not become evident in Western history until the sixteenth century. But unless you have a way of seeding South America with legacy cacao plants, this can’t be it." Charlotte’s eyes went wide and I heard her moan. Moira, a frequent visitor to our quarters, coughed. I think I may have briefly covered my eyes with my hand. "Well," I said, after what might be called a pregnant pause. "I think that’s the information I need for now. Let’s reconvene at 0800." I stood and promptly left, Charlotte at my heels. Most of the others in the meeting were perplexed. In the morning we were back. On the briefing table in front of me I had an object under a white handkerchief. It drew some glances, but nobody asked what it was. "Moira," I began the meeting. "Do you have a follow-up report on our research?" "Yes, sir," she said, crisply. She already knew what I had up my sleeve. "We have conducted additional intensive research overnight, with Away Teams searching databases in Rome, Hong Kong, Osaka, and Perth. There is not a single reference anywhere to chocolate, cacao, or anything even close. I can’t explain why, but I can virtually guarantee that chocolate does not exist in this timeline." "Very well," I said and lifted the handkerchief before me, revealing an inch-high cacao seedling in a small pot, with a stake set in the pot to support the cloth. "The Crazy Horse has almost 1,000 of these on board," I said. "They are cacao plants, genetically almost identical to the original pre-hybridization cacao plants. Within a couple of weeks they will be ready to plant. My wife has graciously agreed to contribute all but her original plant to the cause. It seems that we have a way to return to the past and to populate selected areas of South America with a species of plant that will some day be domesticated to produce chocolate. Unless I am mistaken, our problem is largely solved." "Commander, I am impressed," exclaimed the Commissioner. "I’d say this calls for a drink." "Yes, Sir," said Harris. "This is going to be a such a great doctoral dissertation… If we ever get home, that is." "Before we celebrate, let’s talk nuts and bolts," I said. "Charlotte?" "We will need to fabricate planting kits," she began. "Biodegradable pots, fertilizer, insect netting, and so forth." "Get me the specifications and I’ll have them made up," said Ray Brown. "Our own records say that a region in the upper Orinoco River basin is the home range of the cacao, but we’ll need a detailed site plan for planting. I’ll assign the Biology staff to determine the best locations," continued Charlotte. "We can’t just plant these darlings and leave. We may have to stay on station for a month or more to make sure they become properly established. Daily care may be necessary for a while. We will probably have to create an installation on the surface to support our efforts." "Now wait a minute," sputtered Morgan. I’d been watching him and knew he was getting ready to interrupt. "I’ve done some research myself. 30,000 years ago there were people in South America. We can’t have contact with them. It could lead to other changes in history." "A very important point, Mr. Morgan," I chimed in. "That is why I am assigning you as chief of site security for what we have decided to call Cacao Base. You will insure that the natives do not interact with our personnel." I think Morgan was wishing he had stayed home but at least he managed a "yes, Sir." We stayed at the alternate Earth for another week, both because of the warm welcome we had received and because the cacao needed more time to mature and it was better for the time to be spent in a timeline that we hoped would be canceled, rather than in a past we expected would remain in place. We also needed to select a moment at which there were no other Romulan Federation ships in the solar system to observe our time travel maneuver. Although we hoped to cancel this timeline, it seemed prudent to not advertise what we were doing. The day before we left I took a little personal time of my own. I entered the transporter room carrying a small duffle bag and gave the operator a set of coordinates. "Sir," she said. "There is nothing at these coordinates. There aren’t any people for a dozen kilometers in any direction." "That’s where I want to go, Ensign," I said. "Energize." I materialized in a little valley set among mountains. It was a spring day and wildflowers were blooming in reds, yellows and blues. The cliffs on the other side of the stream presented one of the most familiar sights of my life – I was standing on the exact site of my family’s home in our own timeline, but here no buildings had ever stood. No American Indian people lived in the Black Hills. The Cheyenne visited them for spiritual reasons, and I had reason to believe that they stopped in this valley on occasion. I fancifully wondered if the timeless mountains might recognize me. But I didn’t stand there long; I had work to do. I walked 100 yards down to the stream – creek, we called it – and found a place to cross. My civilian boots and trousers were waterproof. On the other side I hiked close to a mile, around a curve of the stream, and up a hill on the back side of a steep cliff. The spot I was looking for was easy to find, a rocky overlook that spread the valley out below me. I removed a holoscanner from my bag and recorded the panorama. On the way back I would stop several times again and document the pristine valley from multiple angles. Then I sighted carefully on a couple of landmarks and began digging in the loose dirt of the hillside with a collapsible shovel from my bag. Just below the grass and pine needles, I found what I was looking for. It was a perfectly formed flint spearhead, made some hundreds or even thousands of years earlier by a skilled Amerind craftsman. I wrapped the flint carefully and put it in my bag, spread the soil back in place and made my way back to the beam-down point. I’d found that spearhead before, you see, but one day in my youth I took it to school for a report and a careless schoolmate dropped it and broke it. I vowed to myself that it wouldn’t get broken this time. Presently we were ready to bid goodbye to the Earth of this timeline. The cacao plants had been moved to a cargo bay where optimal light and nutrients were producing rapid growth. Special inertial dampers would protect them during our forthcoming warp around our own sun. The Commissioner said his good-byes to the Prime Minister and we took our last look at this alternative planet Earth that had welcomed us so graciously. VIII. Our third warp around a star was different. Sol is more massive than NGC 77-3965AD. The differences altered our required speed and course, making this a significantly smoother ride. Most of us did stay awake this time. I was better able to appreciate the screen display Moira provided to track our progress. In addition to a conventional tactical course display showing our progress around the sun, she also displayed speed, vector and stress factors, and the running date, based on real time astronomical reading of the positions of the planets. Moira actually sat at the helm station for this trip, although she could have controlled the helm from anywhere. Pinpoint speed and course accuracy was needed in the final moments to land us exactly in the same year we had left a few days earlier. In addition, she had to terminate the maneuver to within a couple of days, to insure that we would overlap with our previous visit. She had explained to me that the positions of astronomical objects make a highly accurate clock that she would use to match us up with our previous visit. By reading the time pulses from several pulsars she could put us within a century or so. The angular positions of several stars could get us to within a few years of the other visit to the past and by observing the status of several pairs of rapidly-orbiting double and triple stars she could achieve accuracy down to an hour or less. It was lucky for us that some of these stars could be detected both from our solar system as well as the Tagis area or our mission would have been more complicated. Watching the Earth travel around the sun would also give us an exact number of years we had traveled, compared to the less accurate estimate we had obtained before. Crazy Horse approached Earth at impulse and took up a geosyncronous orbit over Panama. The Biology staff did intensive scanning and two days later presented their recommendations for the precise location of Cacao Base. I left Samantha in command and joined a large landing party that beamed down to begin preparations. We materialized at dawn in a large clearing, set on a hillside. It was already warm and we expected that the heat would be oppressive later, especially compared to the climate-controlled environment of the Crazy Horse, but a medical team was included in our party to guard against heat stress. We had agreed to work in 30-minute shifts, then rotate back to the ship for cooling off. Charlotte and Ray quickly agreed on a location for our prefab building that would serve as a glorified garden shed. Engineering crews went to work assembling the structure. Several other crew members fanned out to begin marking out the planting grid and taking soil samples for analysis. The Commissioner settled in near the center of the clearing, collecting the soil sample canisters as they were filled. Morgan was with us too, frantically scanning the perimeters of the clearing. "Damn, there are natives out there," he exclaimed. "They’re staying out of sight, but they’re watching us." "There’s not much we can do about that unless they show themselves," I commented, overhearing him. "If we try to scare them away, it would make a bigger impression on them. We’ll have the shields working pretty quick, so they won’t be able to come closer." "Oh, we can’t scare them," he said. "We have to make the minimum impact possible. If we keep to ourselves, do our work and then disappear, they’ll forget about us soon. I hope." He hurried off to scan the far side of the clearing. Lest you think that I stood around watching the rest of the landing party work, rest assured that when the first shift beamed back to the ship to cool off, I joined the second shift and helped finish off the building. In addition to storage, the structure had shields we could adjust to the size and shape of the clearing to keep wild animals, as well as Morgan’s natives, away. The shields would remain on until we departed. The Cacao Base building, which began life as an emergency shelter, had pattern enhancers to allow us to beam through the shields. The structure had been beamed down as a complete package, but we had to activate the various pieces of equipment and check them out. By late afternoon we had the site secured and the labs on the ship were building a detailed database on soil nutrients, acidity, insect life and a number of other factors. Over the next couple of weeks, we "tuned" the soil in the Cacao Base clearing with various long-acting fertilizers and insecticides, adjusting it to be ideally suited to Theobroma pentagona. It wasn’t far off to begin with, but we had time before the seedlings could be planted, so we worked until it was just right. Meanwhile, the Crazy Horse sensors were scanning full time. Charlotte was ecstatic that the astronomical scans we did in the Tagis district would now be reinforced by a second set of readings. "With two sets of virtually simultaneous readings," she said, "Starfleet will be able to process them to get much higher resolution than a single set of readings. Think of it as a little like stereo vision. What we collected before was already invaluable for calibration of the motions of stars and things. The addition of these readings from Earth will make them at least four times as accurate." It was the kind of thing that is just ideal for a Science Officer. I was fascinated by the idea of collecting the data, too. The difference was that I didn’t want to have to be the one to systematically analyze it. We also did as thorough a scan of Earth as we had done of Tagis. The resulting data would be as valuable in its own way for many scientific disciplines. As planting day approached we ran a couple of simulated planting days in the holodeck, to ensure things would go smoothly when the real thing happened. The Commissioner spent at least part of every day at Cacao Base. He actually developed the habit of "sitting on the veranda," the little yard in front of the base building, and having a drink while watching the sun set. Moira joined him often, as well as a smattering of others. On one of the occasions I also joined in, he commented to me, "I find this so restful." "I know what you mean," I said, taking a sip. "I grew up on a little bit of private land surrounded by a slightly different kind of forest. I’ve seen a lot of sunsets over the mountains." "It’s more than just that," he said. "Our readings have confirmed that this is a period of time in the Galaxy where there really are no great spacefaring civilizations. If we were farther back in time a few thousand years there would be, or if we were forward a few thousand years, but this era is kind of a blip in the galactic record of civilizations. Commander, I am an interstellar negotiator, and there’s nobody to negotiate with. It’s the first vacation I’ve had in years during which I didn’t have to feel guilty about ignoring some crisis situation somewhere." I smiled. "Well, that’s right. Assuming we get back to where we want to be, virtually no time will have passed." "I’m thinking of getting a mission like this scheduled once a year or so." He paused for a moment. "Well, not exactly like this..." Planting day arrived almost before we knew it. We began just after dawn, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures. It was as precisely planned a military operation as I have ever been involved in. I planted about thirty of the little cacao plants myself, developing a nice rhythm of scooping out the soil to a precisely measured depth, removing the seedling from it’s germination pot, setting the root cluster in the hole and adjusting to vertical, replacing the soil around the roots and tamping it securely, trickling an exactly measured amount of water onto the roots, then checking the planting with a tricorder to make sure everything was within the standards we had established. We were done in about two hours. "I love it when a plan comes together," said Charlotte, removing her work gloves as she walked up to me. "Yes," said the Commissioner, who also approached, walking side by side with Moira. "An exhilarating experience. My congratulations to your crew for their outstanding work this morning. Miss Moira, I believe we are ready for The Package." "Yes, Commissioner," Moira responded, and tapped her communicator to contact the transporter room. In a moment, a large insulated container materialized. "And what would this be?" I asked. Moira opened a panel on the container and several ice cubes fell out. "Beer," she said, brightly, and began handing out the chilled glass bottles. "Real, not synthehol," added the Commissioner, draining half his bottle with two swallows. He put away several more brews during the impromptu party, eventually settling into his veranda chair. When Charlotte and I beamed back to the Crazy Horse, the Commissioner was asleep in his chair and I later learned that Moira left him there to recover. Morgan attempted to complain that the natives were still at the edge of the clearing, watching, but Moira dismissed his concern. "The force fields are still on. He can’t get hurt sleeping there," she told me. "He’ll enjoy waking up in that setting." I agreed that having the natives watch for another couple of hours probably wouldn’t cause any harm. The Commissioner finally did wake up. After he took a final look around, we beamed him up, followed by the Cacao Base building itself. The cacao plants were now on their own. We monitored their progress for another two weeks, but never returned to the planet. Sensors told us that most of the little plants never knew that they were transplanted, quickly putting out new roots and taking hold in their new home. So, it became time for the Crazy Horse to again seek her own time. After almost six weeks in the past, cumulatively, we had not detected a single warp signature, so I felt justified in the risk of traveling again to NGC 77-3965AD before our time travel maneuver. Sol seemed a poor place to arrive in the future when we were not positive what that future would be. Ray Brown this time had the inertial dampers so well tuned that turbulence was hardly noticeable during our warp around the star. Moira timed our arrival so that we appeared just seconds after we had left our original timeline, so many days before. "I have the Faraday on sensors," reported Dolores, jubilantly. In a moment the Faraday’s bridge appeared on the view screen, along with Captain Rooos. "Welcome back, Crazy Horse," she smiled. "I trust you had an uneventful trip?" "We had a few -- minor items to deal with," I replied. "Nothing we couldn’t handle." Of course, we researched the Federation databases carefully to make sure the timeline had returned to normal. Moira reported no discrepancies. As a result, the week-long trip back to Earth was somewhat of an anti-climax. We rarely saw Harris and Morgan. They seemed to be spending most of their time together -- whether getting their stories straight or something else, I never determined. The Commissioner spent his time writing an Orinoco program for the holodeck. On the night before our arrival at Earth, Charlotte and I entertained Moira in our quarters. When the conversation came around to our recent experiences, a smug smile spread across Charlotte’s face. "I’ve been doing more research into the history of chocolate, just out of curiosity," she said. "There is an interesting legend." She picked up a PADD and read to us. "The Aztecs attributed cacao’s origin to a divine source. One of their legends explains that Quetzalcoatl, a good and wise god, brought with him cacao seeds, so men could have a delicacy that even the sons of god appreciated. Quetzalcoatl was a giant, more imposing than any man, but for all his size, kindly and gentle. The magnificent garden in which the cacao plants flourished served Quetzalcoatl to teach his pupils agriculture, and many other arts. This gave him fame and esteem among the towns, but there existed a god of evil who, envying Quetzalcoatl, gave him an intoxicating beverage assuring him it would soothe his heart and would make him younger. The good god accepted to drink it and because of its effect he lost consciousness. When he recovered, he felt deeply ashamed by the way he had acted. Since he had sinned, Quetzalcoatl destroyed his house and departed, never to return. His memory was strengthened by the great gift he gave to his people: The Cacao." There was a pause. "Well," said Moira. "That’s a file I didn’t get around to opening." "Legends are often based in historical fact," observed Charlotte. "You think that’s a garbled account of our visit to the past?" I asked. "The Commissioner would certainly be the most imposing of our people who were seen by natives," said Charlotte. "And he did have to sleep off his last beers..." added Moira. I put my hand to my face. "The natives watching would have seen that, and after he woke up would have seen him and the emergency shelter beamed up in a blaze of light." "That’s true," said Moira. "Quite a ... coincidence, right?" "I’m sure that’s what it is," agreed Charlotte, readily. "A coincidence." "Hum," I mused. "If we log that information, it will trigger reams of paperwork, probably for all three of us." There was another pause. "I don’t think," said Charlotte slowly, "that I have any justification to enter this in the Science Log. It's just speculation." "Legends aren’t really a matter for my log, either," said Moira. "My log requires so much detail on our light speed breakaway maneuvers," I added, "that I doubt I’ll have time for speculation about legends." "OK," said Charlotte. "Care for another drink?" |