STAR TREK - TOS - Music of the Spheres Original the Probe

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

A Star Trek Novel

by

Margaret Wander Bonanno

Historian's Note

The events of this novel begin immediately following the final frame ofStar Trek IV: The Voyage

Home . One might imagine James T. Kirk, having instructed Sulu to "see what she's got," settling back in

his chair and musing upon the almost-fate of Earth. Between the end of the Prelude and the beginning of

the first Fugue, there is a hiatus of several weeks, perhaps only to allow sufficient time for news of the

Praetor's death to reach Starfleet and the Federal Council.

"Do you still play chess, Kirk?" Sarek asked as if casually before removing himself from the scenario

entirely.

"Whenever I have the time, Ambassador," Kirk replied, knowing Sarek would not waste words on

trivia.

"I suggest you will have much time on this mission," Sarek said cryptically. "Be mindful always of the

importance of the king..."

PRELUDE

"And the waters prevailed without measure upon the earth..."

In the center seat on the bridge of a spanking new starship designated NCC-1701-A, Captain James T.

Kirk watched the blue-and-white confection that was his home planet recede in the rear viewscreen. The

waters, in fact, no longer prevailed. Cloud cover and planetwide temperatures had returned to within

normal parameters. Floodwaters had receded from all but the most low lying regions. There were the

isolated food and medical-supply shortages to keep off-planet transports working overtime, and people

were still being advised to boil or irradiate their drinking water until groundwater could be certified pure

but, on the whole, Earth had been lucky this time.

And so were we, Jim Kirk thought, so were we!

His thoughts turned to the shakedown cruise ahead, and to the promise of extended shore leave

thereafter. There was one place on Earth he knew of that the floodwaters would barely have touched.

As soon as we get her shipshape and home, Jim Kirk thought, I'm going to go climb a rock!

Aboard the soon to be departing science vesselClarke , Dr. Gillian Taylor was talking for the last time

with her staff at the newly-established New Cetacean Institute off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Once

theClarke left Earth, George and Gracie would be entirely in their care. Gillian hoped to be back before

Gracie had her calf, but even if she wasn't, she was confident her two beloved humpbacks couldn't be in

better hands.

"You're sure about that?" she asked the wetsuited figure on her commscreen.

"Affirmative," the solemn figure replied with typical Vulcan certitude, disregarding the seawater dripping

from the lank hair plastered against her fluted ears. In her brief time in this century, Gillian had come to

love Vulcans, and not only for their certitude. "At least, Dr. Taylor, I am as sure as Gracie is, for it was

she who communicated it to me."

"Okay, then. Can't get any surer than that!" Gillian said cheerfully. "In that case, double her vitamin

supplement, and see what you can do about those barnacles on her chin, will you? They must itch like

hell. Oh, and I meant to ask: how're you coming along with the language?"

"Slowly, Dr. Taylor. George assures me my syntax is flawless, but indicates I speak with a distinctly

dolphin accent."

The one thing she didn't like about Vulcans, Gillian decided, was the she could never tell if they were

kidding.

"Well, there you are!" she said, playing along. "You know what they say about being judged by the

company you keep."

"Indeed."

"Okay, listen, kiddo, I have to go, if I can figure out how to shut this thing off. We're leaving orbit in

about an hour. I'll send you a postcard from Mer. Taylor out."

In Communications Central of TerraMain Spacedock, Commander Kevin Thomas Riley, Starfleet

Diplomatic Corps, watchedEnterprise slip elegantly through the spacedoors before returning to what

he'd been doing before she powered up, which was harassing the comm officer who had been trying for

three hours to raise a particular private transmitter in Cairo. It had been exactly three hours and one

minute since Riley had beamed off the Reliant-class vesselSadat , back from a fruitless peacekeeping

effort between Zeon and Ekos. He'd been trying without success to raise the Cairo transmitter ever since

he'd heard about Earth and the Probe.

"Keep trying!" he urged the frazzled young comm officer, who frankly had better things to do.

"You have to understand, sir," she explained patiently, "communications are still in a tangle planetside.

Even where the multi-phasics are back up and running, there's a logjam with everyone trying to get

through at once."

"Never mind!" Riley barked, forgetting that he was supposed to be a diplomat even when he wasn't

getting paid for it. "Maybe I can hitch a ride on a cargo transporter and beam straight down."

That's a good way to get fried, the comm officer wanted to tell him, be decided not to. Anything to get

him off her neck.

Knee-deep in the rubble of a millennia-old city on one of the barrenest of the Empire's newly-acquired

colony worlds, Dajan glanced up from his scrutiny of a weatherworn petroglyph to discover a pair of

jackbooted feet planted on the rim of the retaining wall above him. The archeologist had to squint against

the dull red sun to discern the true shape of the shadow-figure standing in the boots.

It was the sublieutenant from the guardian vessel which had dogged his research ship the entire way

here. Why am I not surprised? Dajan wondered.

"What is it?" he demanded imperiously, in the precise tone his elder brother Delar had taught him to use

with sublieutenants and their ilk.

"A summons, kerDajan, from the Capital. All scientific missions are herewith recalled."

"For what purpose?" Dajan's glass-green eyes snapped with fury. He had barely begun! He stood,

abandoning his perusal of the petroglyph, thought he did not yet put his magnifier away. Oh, how he

longed to flash it upward into the sublieutenant's eyes, claiming later that it was an accident! But he was

not yet that far rehabilitated. And his sister was still in the Capital, her position far more vulnerable than

his own.

"I was not told," the sublieutenant answered with a touch of smugness, "therefore I cannot tell you. But

your ship departs within the hour. Be on it, or be marooned here."

In his departure, the sublieutenant managed to loosen enough scree from the top of the retaining wall to

all but bury the petroglyph.

HAPPY 500TH, LUDWIG VAN!proclaimed the banner all but covering the porticoed facade of

Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, flapping indolently in the New York City breeze. Inside, beyond the

chandeliered elegance of the ornate lobby, through the muffled doors which silenced street noises, down

the raked and plushly carpeted aisles to the airy blondwood stage, the barely controlled chaos of a

musician's rehearsal was in progress. Salzburg and Vienna, Tokyo, Sydney and ShiKahr might boast

their own celebrations of the Beethoven quinticentennial, but the New York Philharmonic had garnered

the most offworld soloists, and consequently the most extensive Federation-wide publicity. Tickets had

gone on sale as much as a year before the repertory was announced.

The rep was simple and straightforward: the Nine Symphonies, performed by a full orchestra playing

twentieth century acoustic instruments; the combination was unusual enough to attract a great deal of

attention. And while the festival itself was months away, and most of the soloists would not arrive until the

week before, preparations were feverish.

Admiral Robert Harvey Caflisch, head of Starfleet Operations, strode purposefully across the broad,

sunny plaza of Starfleet Command HQ San Francisco, on his way to a top secret meeting with Admiral

Cartwright and the UFP President.

In the wake of what was being called, with a touch of gallows' humor, the Second Deluge, Caflisch had

barely overcome his fear of stepping into the shower; he had hoped for a brief respite to get his fleet

back online before the next crisis. No such luck. And as if life weren't complicated enough, an added

complication wearing dark Vulcan robes stepped out of the shadow of the Sciences building where,

incredibly, a maintenance robot was still sucking up stagnant flood water, and fell into step beside him.

"Ambassador Sarek!" Caflisch did not succeed in keeping his constant state of surprise out of his voice.

"I thought you'd returned to Vulcan days ago."

"So I had intended," Sarek replied, his eyes straight ahead, his face unreadable. "But in view of the

information about to be imparted to you by Commander Starfleet, I deemed it more logical to remain

here for the present."

Caflisch felt the hair prickle at the back of his neck. No one but Starfleet top echelon and the President

of the UFP was supposed to be privy to the level of information Cartwright possessed. He wasn't about

to ask Sarek what he knew or how he knew it; Sarek would not have told him if he had.

The two crossed the sunny plaza in tandem and in silence beneath a cloud-free sky. Bob Caflisch

suppressed a sudden chill.

Neither Cartwright nor the Federation President seemed surprised at Sarek's arrival, though the

President looked as if he were about to object to his presence, then changed his mind. Without speaking,

Cartwright activated the tape preset in his deskscreen, and the four viewed it in silence. It was Bob

Caflisch who broke the silence.

"How recent is this report, Admiral?" he asked Cartwright.

"As recent as a subspace squirt from the heart of the Empire received at 0300 this morning," Cartwright

answered, his sculpted dark face looking ashen, suggesting that it had gotten him out of bed and he'd

been hounding the decoders from that time to the present.

Caflisch shook his head skeptically.

"There've been rumors of the Praetor's impending death since Hector was a pup, or at least as long as

I've been in Starfleet. I suppose even a Romulan can't live forever, but even so - he's only third in power

after the Emperor and the Consul."

"Third in rank, but first in power," Sarek interjected; he had barely glanced at the report, seemed to

know its contents beforehand. "There is no question among those who know but the Praetor rules the

Empire. Or ruled it, while he lived."

"Well, there we have it," Cartwright said, as if he at least were convinced. "It comes down to two

questions, then. Is he truly dead, and what manner of transition can we expect if he is?"

He was.

The fact could no longer be suppressed. The Praetor at last was dead.

The press of the crowd in the streets of the Capital trying to get through to view the body in the Hall of

Columns was terrifying. No one in the Citadel dared admit their official mourning was anything less than

genuine, hence everyone came. It was impossible, Jandra thought, with the part of her mind which was

not engaged in working its way through the maze of what this might mean to her, that for some very few it

was a genuine mourning. For the rest, it was a show of Orthodoxy, most essential. As for her own

feelings...

"An official flitter will come for you," Tiam interrupted her thoughts, trying not to posture too much in the

glass as he arranged the mourning ribands over his uniform insignia. "I've had a place cleared on the roof

to avoid the mob."

"What music will They require?" Jandra asked, careful to keep her voice neutral, her hands unclenched

in her lap; tension was bad for them, and would affect her playing.

"The flitter pilot will bring it." Tiam turned in her direction. Jandra's heart quickened. She remembered

when the marriage had been arranged, and how she'd raged and wept for days when told it was the only

possible route to rehabilitation for herself and her family. Yet when she first saw Tiam, her rage had

dissipated somewhat. At least, she remembered thinking at the time, he is handsome. That was before

she knew the rest. "Though one supposes you can hardly go wrong with the Lerma Requiem. Lerma has

been longer on the Orthodox list than any of his contemporaries."

"Of course," Jandra replied without inflection, thinking: Lerma is so bland that no one, not even the

Praetor, could have objected to him.

So she had been summoned to play at the Praetor's funeral. Romulans were masters of irony but this,

Jandra thought, was beyond irony. This Praetor, who was a swine and a murderer, who by the most

conservative estimates was responsible for a million deaths or "disappearances" among his own kind, not

to mention untold incursions against alien citizenries, this Praetor whose own order had sent her elder

brother on an impossible mission whose failure required his execution, her parents' ritual suicide, the

unorthodox stigma placed upon her and her surviving sibling, this Praetor presumed to reach her even

beyond his own death, and require that she offer him her music.

"It is quite an honor," Tiam emphasized, not for the first time. "I do not need to tell you there will be -

uncertainties - in the next several days. I am made a middle-level administrator by this Praetor's favor.

Who knows what I may achieve with his successor, provided he is pleased with me and mine? And I'm

told several elder musicians were passed over in your favor."

Tiam's own desires and ambitions always came first, Jandra knew. How dare he presume to say these

words to her - knowing her family's past, knowing she had only married him in order to win rehabilitation

for herself and her brother; that fact above all must gall him still. There was no cruelty like that which

could flourish at the heart of a marriage.

She looked up from the hands in her lap to see that Tiam was watching her narrowly.

"You're indolent," he accused her. "Have you some - qualm - about the honor assigned you?"

"I will play, husband." Jandra fought to keep the indolence out of her voice. "More than that you need

not know."

The entity traversed the silence between the stars. It had learned something incredible from the minds of

the air-swimmers on the last blue world it had visited, something five hundred millennia of wandering had

not taught it before: There were some who presumed to own the distance between the stars.

By such a definition, the entity now moved between "Federation space" and "Romulan space" though,

curiously, it experienced no material difference between the two.

The entity had many names. Some called it Probe, some Traveler. The name its creators had given it

translated either as Messenger, Gatherer or Wanderer. Its name for itself, and for the creatures it

communed with, was Singer. Such designations had long ago lost their distinctness, blurring into

insignificance, so that the Wanderer no longer cared what name was given it by those it visited. But it

remembered that some had cursed it on the last blue world, and it still did not understand why.

The Wanderer had meant no harm. It simply had not understood. The Singers' Song had ended three

centuries before, and the Wanderer had hurried to learn the reason why. Finding the Singers gone, it had

sought to return the blue world to its pristine state, the better to encourage new Singers to evolve. It had

not been prepared for the Singers' sudden reappearance, nor for what the male had told it when he

reappeared.

They are intelligent, the Singer the humans called George had explained. They build, they speak, they

think great thoughts. They brought me and the female here from where we were. Is that not sufficient

proof?

They do not Sing! the Wanderer had objected. Heretofore, on all the worlds it had visited, that had been

the sole arbiter of intelligence. When I sang the flying-song, their life-pods blinked and sputtered and

went dark, adrift in space. They do not Sing! How can they be intelligent?

They will Sing, the Singer said, when they have learned the skill.

Thereafter the Wanderer vowed to be more careful about the species it encountered. It did not Sing to

the life-pods it passed in space, and they no longer went dark. It no longer stirred up the seas of the blue

worlds, merely studied them. Sometimes it even permitted itself to be studied as well.

"Just how long is this shakedown cruise supposed to last, anyway?" McCoy groused at Kirk's elbow.

"What's the matter, Bones? Bored already?"

"No. Just I heard mention of unlimited shore leave once we got back. Seems to me that's not the sort of

offer Command makes lightly or too often. Best we take them up on it while it's still outstanding."

"We'll get there," Kirk said vaguely, preoccupied. Two things were on his mind. One was the Eyes-Only

message Uhura had relayed to Sulu this morning. Sulu had asked to be excused from the helm to take it

in his quarters and hadn't returned. There was only one reason Jim Kirk knew of that his helmsman

should start getting secret messages, and that was because Special Section wanted him for another spy

mission.

Espionage was a kind of second career for Sulu, something to siphon off al the excess energy steering a

starship left over. The civilian intelligence arm didn't borrow Starfleet operatives that often - sometimes

years went by without Sulu getting the nod - but when he did, he'd get that funny gleam in his eye and go.

There was no telling when, or if, he'd be back, and he could never talk about it afterwards. Jim Kirk,

accustomed to playing the daredevil, felt uneasy when any of the rest of his crew got similar notions.

All right, Sulu would tell him what he could when he could. In the meantime, where the hell was Spock?

Oh, the Vulcan was physically present on the bridge - at his science station, bent in study over some

intensive research project involving elaborate maps and starcharts. But his mind seemed to have slipped

into the space between the stars on those starmaps, and Kirk was concerned.

Still not working on all thrusters? Or back up to full efficiency and simply being Spock? Kirk itched to

find out. Nor was he a man to leave an itch unscratched.

"What's all this?" he asked casually, stepping up from the command well and peering over Spock's

shoulder. He thought he recognized the trajectory away from Earth, at least. "Not the Probe?"

"Yes, Captain." Spock showed him how it had approached Earth out of the Romulan Neutral Zone, and

where it had been heading since. "While I am aware that Starfleet Command is satisfied the Probe is no

longer a danger, I shall continue to track it on my own."

"Why, Spock!" McCoy had to chime in. "Don't you trust our fearless leaders when they tell you, without

even bothering to communicate with the thing, that it's promised to behave itself from hereon?"

"I am - uneasy - at the prospect of an entity of such power being left to wander the galaxy unmonitored,"

Spock answered simply. "I am also curious as to its point of origin."

"Which you may never learn," Kirk was constrained to point out. "There's no way of knowing how long

ago it left its homeworld, or whether it was instructed to return. We never did get a chance to have a

look at it. Most people were just glad to watch it take off."

"Precisely," Spock said, unperturbed at the thought that his study might prove fruitless. The study alone

was sufficient.

"Well, I for one am glad to see the back of it," Kirk said, returning to the center seat, bumping McCoy's

elbow off it. "I can't tell you how it felt to have gone to all that trouble finding the whales, saving them

from that whaling ship -"

" - almost drowning yourself getting 'em loose of the ship," McCoy interjected quietly.

" - then when George didn't sing at first I thought: We've risked our necks for nothing."

"Now we're just another footnote to history." McCoy managed to lean on his elbow on the back of

Kirk's chair regardless. "'Where were you when the Probe came?' will be something Terrans will be

talking about for years."

"So where were you when the Probe came?"

Commander Kevin Thomas Riley, Starfleet DiploCorps, was engaged in a most undiplomatic pursuit.

First he kissed the top of Cleante alFaisal's head. Then he kissed each of her eyebrows. Then her

eyelids, then the tip of her nose. In between kisses, he asked her:

"So where were you when the Probe came?"

Cleante laughed nervously and pushed him away.

"As well ask where I was when I heard that Spock was dead!" she answered, suppressing a shudder.

"Or when V'ger came. I was lucky that time. Mother had just been reelected and was offworld on one of

her junkets; she stuck me in some snooty girls' school on Erigena. I managed to miss the end of the world

that time. Wish I'd been as lucky this time, but I was stuck here."

"Here" was Cairo, the High Commissioner's residence, where Cleante still had a key, though her mother

had not held the post for some years. Here was where Cleante had taken shelter as the waters rose and

everyone else abandoned the city, following the Nile upriver to higher ground. Here was where Kevin

Riley, desperate to find the woman he loved, had used a diplomatic override to beam directly in when his

transmission from Terra-Main couldn't get through.

"What was it like?" he asked Cleante now, sitting on a chaise in the reception parlor that squished slightly

and smelled of mildew; the entire city was still soggy. "Unless you don't want to talk about it."

Cleante sat beside him, marveling at him. How could she be so fortunate? Years of aimless relationships,

some unpleasant memories involving a Klingon, then Riley had happened into her life.

She'd been too young to know him when he was a callow young lieutenant aboard Kirk's firstEnterprise

, could not know how the years had mellowed him. In his forties now, sporting a ruffian's

salt-and-pepper beard, he was still rakish, still full of Irish wit and charm. The ginger-brown eyes could

still sparkle with mischief, but he had matured, grown out of his ambivalence about the things Starfleet

sometimes required of him in the line of duty.

Following a stint as Jim Kirk's secretary and some hit-and-miss adventures in deep space, Riley had

found a meaningful life in the DiploCorps under Ambassador Sarek's aegis and, with his promotion to full

commander, had been assigned to several missions on his own - to Ekos and Zeon, to Eminiar VII and

Vendikar - the middle-era Federation worlds with their feuds which predated Federation admission,

places where it was deemed he could do no harm, and might perchance manage to do some good. Riley

was content. And it was that contentment which had given him the courage to consider a serious

commitment to someone like Cleante.

She was an archeologist, a traveler of worlds as he was, as much interested in ancient civilizations as he

was in modern ones. She would no more expect him to settle in one place for her sake than she would

abandon her work for him. For nearly a year they had met when they could, parted when they needed to,

and so far it had worked.

Riley liked to joke that their meeting was all Spock's fault.

He had always been attracted to dark women, so it was no surprise to him that he had sidled up to her

in the officer's lounge of TerraMain on the very dayEnterprise had come limping home from the Genesis

planet, if only to get a closer look. On the way in he'd been buttonholed by Janice Rand, who'd had too

much to drink under the circumstances and wanted to talk about old times, the good old days before

Vulcans started dying to save their ships; Riley had excused himself as diplomatically as he could and

gone to the bar - to be alone, he'd thought at first. Then he'd spotted her.

Civilian, younger than he by a decade, lithe of figure and possessed of the most glorious tumble of dark

hair, and eyes he might have expected to find staring back at him from a Byzantine mosaic. Riley hadn't

spoken, merely sighed. It got her attention.

There had been tears in the Byzantine eyes.

"For Spock?" was all Riley had said. It was all everyone else could talk about this day.

"For Spock," she had answered in her lyric voice. "He and Jim Kirk saved my life once."

They had sat side by side for nearly an hour without saying anything else.

"What was it like?" Riley wanted to know about the Probe. "We got the news on Zeon and we were

stunned. There was no way to get a message through."

Cleante shook her head. "The President sent a planetary distress call, warning ships away. If you'd

gotten too close you would have been neutralized. What was it like down here on the surface? Horrible!"

She had volunteered at first to help with the relief efforts. An endless stream of refugees from the

Mediterranean coastal areas had passed from the Delta through Cairo, retracing the ancient routes into

the Upper Kingdom and the Nubian Hills, slogging through the perpetual teeming twilight on foot -

without the sun, skimmer batteries had died, and land vehicles couldn't negotiate the meters-deep mud -

leading each other hand-in-hand when battery-torches died. Cleante had doled out coffee and hot soup

until supplies ran out and the residence's kitchens flooded.

The wails of children had faded into the distance the endless torrents of rain. There had been no panic,

no hysteria, no violence, only endless shivering, sodden misery, endless cold, endless rain. The great

Sahara drank in the moisture until it was saturated, then overflowed, transformed once more into the vast

pre-Cambrian sea it had been six million years before.

"We're not used to rain here. We normally get so little of it," Cleante said. "It was ominous.

"When everyone else had gone, I stayed here. At least I had a roof over my head. First the basement

filled up, then the first floor. After the transmitter went dead I went upstairs to the top floor. I must have

fallen asleep listening to the rain. When I woke, the sun was shining. It was like a miracle. But we had no

power - still don't in some places. We got the news by word-of-mouth that Kirk and Company had

saved the day yet again. I never expected you to find me so soon."

"Well, I did," Kevin said, wrapping his arms around her and continuing where they'd left off. "I'm on

temporary leave until Sarek decides what to do with me next. He's left for home, but told me to stay put.

Muttered something about 'the winds of change.' Vulcans!" He kissed Cleante long and passionately,

then sighed. "Is there a room anywhere in this place that isn't waterlogged?"

The Praetor's funeral lasted two nights and a day. In that time, thousands upon thousands appeared to

sign the Book of Death and pass before the wasted waxen figure in its upright sarcophagus in the Central

Septum of the Hall of Columns. In that time, lacking food or sleep, the musician Jandra performed.

She alternated among the three stringed instruments best suited to elegiac music - the three-string the'el*.

She worked her way through the repertoires of Lerma, Talet and Mektius without missing a note or

repeating a single work.

Her person captivated her audience as much as her music, as the passers spread her history from one to

the next. Wife of subCenturion Tiam, some whispered and, Twin of kerDajan the archeologist. A twin!

those new to the information marveled. And was she the elder? Told she was, they were pleased: Well,

that explains it!

But wasn't there an elder sibling as well? someone asked.

It was a reasonable question, in that clearly neither Jandra nor her twin was in the military. But the

silence spread up and down the line of mourners.

No, of course not!

Never!

STAR TREK - TOS - Music of the Spheres Original the Probe

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