TNG - Do Comets Dream (c) by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek [Star Trek]
Language: deu
Format: epub
Tags: \Star Trek
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-01-02T07:59:42.698000+00:00

Taruna es-Sarion was on the verge of tears; she had often felt like crying in the past few days. She was proud of her son, of course, but she also knew that before he was sent into the sky in glory to wreak the ultimate vengeance on the Thanetians, he would first have to—

Enter the deviving chamber.

That was how the priests referred to it. The deviving chamber. Artas would have his life functions, one by one, turned off. Finally, only the brain would be functioning, and its neurons would be fused into the artificial nervous system of the thanopstru.

And her son would become more than just a person—he would become the savior of the world.

Artas walked into the dining area of the small living quarters they shared on the four hundredth floor of the prostitutes’ quarter of the city. How frail he seemed. In an hour would come the final test. She knew he would win, he had to win—but at the same time she hoped against hope that he would fail.

“Do you want to eat, son?” she asked him.

Her other son, Indhuon, was still resting; but he too would have important work to do, if Artas won the position of thanopstru. Indhuon would be one of the last people with whom Artas would interact, as he descended into the cylinder of devivement in order to become one with the Deathbringer.

He nodded. She poured him a helping of the thin gruel and crushed bread that was the prescribed morning meal for a son of a woman of the pleasure caste, a woman who had no prospects in life unless her offspring could attain admission to the guild of weaponry—and great prospects if her son had the gifts that could elevate him to the status of thanopstru, the star of death.

So much terror, so much hope tied up in this one frail child—she resisted the impulse to hug him hard to her, to crush him against her body; she knew that he would not want that today. He needed to think of otherworldly things, to ready his mind for the great test.

They looked at each other, mother and son.

And then she couldn’t resist any more. She took him in her arms. He did not resist, but part of him seemed aloof. She did not weep, and nor did he, but she knew they were both clenching back tears.

Then it happened.

Looking out of the high window, over the sparkling bay whose water glittered in the twin sunlight, she saw a mist form—swirl—condense into the shape of a woman. A woman in a strange, mannish uniform, without a single caste-mark at all, unless it was that peculiar emblem on her breast.

How was she floating there? There was no balcony.

Taruna was about to speak, but the alien put a finger on her lips.

“I’m not really here,” she said. “The boy cannot see me. I’m just a voice inside your mind, a voice from the future.”

“Are you a—” Taruna hesitated to use the word angel. Angels belonged to an ancient past.

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