Margeret Bonanno - Probe

PROLOGUE

In its five hundred millennia of existence, the entity had been given many names. Some had called it Probe; some, Messenger or Wanderer. Some, such as the silicon-based creatures of the Orphan star cluster, whose metabolic rate was so slow as to prohibit meaningful communication with most star-faring intelligences, had called it Traveler.

But its creators had not named it. They did not name machines, even one of this magnitude and complexity, one whose centuries-long building had consumed all their energies and half their world. Instead, they had described it: Seeker, they had called it, for that was its function, to seek another race like their own. Communicator, they had called it, for that also was its function, to communicate not only with others like themselves but with any who might someday become like themselves.

Protector; they had called it, for that, too, was to be its function, and Nurturer and Recorder.

But Seeker they had called it most often, for that was its ultimate purpose: to find, somewhere in the galaxy, a race the equal of their own, with which it could Speak in the True Language. When that day came, it would return, bringing with it the message that they were no longer alone in a universe that seemed to favor only the scurrying mites that had, before the Winnowing, dominated the waterless areas of their own planet.

But in its half million years, it had found none. In the waters of hundreds of worlds it had found primitives who held the promise that, in another million years, they might be able to Speak, might become capable of learning the True Language.

The blue world the entity had recently departed had held such primitives for millennia. Time and again it had returned, listening to their evolving story, etching their rudimentary recitations into its crystalline memory, observing, prompting them in the direction of Speech. But then they had fallen silent. No amount of calling, no intensity of prodding, had brought forth a response until, finally, the creators' instructions had said: Prepare the world for new life. Whatever the cause of the primitives' extinction, remove it; insure that it will neither recur on this world nor spread to infect other worlds.

But the instructions had barely begun to be implemented when the primitives had reappeared, had raised their planet-bound voices in joy.

The entity had stopped, considering the puzzle.

Its creators had included neither instructions nor explanation for such a circumstance. Had the primitives made a sudden evolutionary leap? Had they developed

abilities even the creators had not possessed, enabling them to leave their world and return, unseen, at will? Or had another race even more advanced than the creators found them, transported them to some other world, and then returned them?

There were no answers. The primitives were still primitives, little different from their ancestors a thousand years before. When questioned, they would speak only of enclosed spaces and chaos and then freedom. The machines that darted through space like the mites that rode them had not the power of Speech, nor did they respond in any fashion to the True Language except to become silent and motionless.

In the end, the creators' instructions, incomplete as they were proving to be, had left no choice for the entity but to move on, to continue its search, continue its monitoring of other primitives on other worlds. But it would return, not in another millennium but in a decade, for that blue world now occupied a special place in the entity's crystalline memory, a place occupied by no other world. There were unanswered questions there, the kind of unanswered questions that implied not the small uncertainties of the position or spectrum of a star but the possibility of danger, certainly to the primitives, perhaps to the entity itself. Perhaps, even, to the creators.

Only once before in its five hundred millennia of existence had such danger arisen. For a few milliseconds the entity attempted to reconstruct the events of that brief period of danger and destruction, but failed. The crystalline memory was damaged-and unlike its physical structure, those lost memories could not be regenerated.

And in their absence, despite the questions-the

possibilities-that circled soundlessly, endlessly in its ever-evolving crystalline pathways, the entity could only continue on its mission.

Unknowing, it moved forward, skirting the edge of the Neutral Zone that separated Federation territory and that space claimed by the Romulan Empire.

ONE

Jim Kirk was glad he'd come home alone. It gave him the chance to fall in love all over again.

He'd been halfway across the galaxy and back, seen more different. kinds of cities in a year than most Starfleet officers saw in a lifetime, from metropolises vast enough to swallow the North American continent whole to villages rustic enough to have come out of an old Swiss woodcut-and still, there was no place like San Francisco.

He'd decided to adopt it as his hometown his first day at the Academy, when he and Gary Mitchell went running up and down the rolling hills of the old city. The years he'd spent here, on and off, since returning from the Enterprise's first five-year mission had only strengthened his feelings for the place and its people. The Presidio, Haight-Ashbury, the new city that housed

Starfleet headquarters-there was half a millennium of history here that Kirk liked being a part of. Earlier in the day, he'd walked by his old apartment that overlooked the Bay. . and been reminded of his days here as Starfleet's chief of operations. It occurred to him that now there were few places in the city he could walk that didn't bring to mind some memory, weren't connected to some person or past event. If Spock and McCoy had taken him up on his offer to spend a couple days here, the last few days would have been very different.

Which was why the sight of Golden Gate Park on this, his last morning on Earth, came as such a surprise.

Everything was so lush, so overgrown, it was like walking into the middle of a tropical rain forest. Rhododendrons leapt out of carefully planted terraces to spring across his path, grass covered the slate path beneath his feet, and (though he knew this must be his imagination) even the trees along.Kennedy Drive seemed several meters taller. All residual effects of the monsoonlike rains brought on by the Probe, just a few short weeks ago.

Scientists were saying that growth patterns across the planet would be affected for another few years. The Probe, after all, had almost sent the Earth back into another ice age. Worldwide, many of the immediate effects of its visit had receded-cloud cover and planetwide temperatures had returned to within normal parameters, and floodwaters had receded from all but the most low-lying regions-but the repercussions of the Probe's visit would be felt here, and elsewhere, for a long time to come.

Well, if the repercussions were all like this, Kirk didn't think that would be such a bad thing.

On a patch of concrete before him, a sudden gust of

wind scattered a cluster of sea gulls fighting over a crust of bread. Even the air smelled fresher, he decided, almost as if the rains had somehow washed clean the entire planet. He'd noticed it out in Yosemite, too-a sense of renewal that pervaded the entire park, from the old sequoia forests Spock had been so intent on studying to the top of El Capitan. Kirk was glad for the chance to spend time on his homeworld these last few days-but he could feel the restlessness building up inside him.

All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.

And still, that was all he wanted. He'd gotten the word from Starfleet Command yesterday afternoon-a whole new sector of the galaxy was being opened up, and he and the Enterprise were being considered to spearhead its exploration. Right away he'd made an appointment to see Admiral Cartwright-and you'd better start hightailing it if you plan to make that meeting, he thought, noticing the sun overhead-to persuade him that his ship was the correct choice.