His heart pounding, Picard tapped his combadge. "Dr. Crusher, transport Guinan directly to sickbay. Whatever's happening- "

He broke off and hastily stood up as her body was enveloped in the glimmer of a transporter field.

"You have the bridge, Number One," he said as he emerged onto the bridge and headed directly for the turbolift with Kirk close behind.

By the time they arrived in sickbay, Guinan was stretched out on a biobed, Beverly Crusher standing over her with a medical scanner.

"What is it?" Picard asked without preamble as he hurried to stand on the opposite side of the biobed while Kirk remained near the door. "What's wrong with her?"

Dr. Crusher shook her head with an impatient "don't-rush-me" look as she continued to move the scanner over Guinan's head and torso.

After what seemed like hours to Picard, Crusher looked up. "Well?" he prompted when she didn't immediately speak.

"All readings for which I have El-Aurian referents are normal, but- "

"Like the dead Narisian," Picard snapped. "That's not what I want to hear."

"It isn't what you're hearing, Captain. Or at least it's not what I'm saying. The Narisian's organs were all completely functional but they weren't functioning, like an engine that had been turned off. And she was dead. Guinan's organs all appear to be not only functional but functioning perfectly. And she is entirely alive."

"But unconscious. Why- "

Crusher cut him off with a shake of her head. "Not unconscious, Captain, at least not according to a neural scan. All indications are that she is fully conscious. If anything, her level of neural activity indicates she's considerably more conscious than normal, even for an El-Aurian. Although that could just be her normal level of activity. I've never run a neural scan on her before."

"So what do we do? Can you wake her up?"

She sighed impatiently. "I told you, Captain, she is awake. She just isn't here."

Picard was silent a moment as he looked down at the face of his friend. "If you could get comparison readings," he said, "from her alter ego in this universe-would that help?"

"I honestly don't know, but it couldn't hurt. And talking to that other Guinan might be a good idea, anyway. a.s.suming the same thing hasn't happened to her."

"I'll see what I can do." Tapping his combadge, he turned to the nearest turbolift. "Number One, I'm on my way to the bridge. Try again to contact the D'Zidran-if it still exists."

"The D'Zidran is on screen, Captain," Riker half shouted as Kirk and Picard erupted from the turbolift onto the bridge.

A chill gripped Kirk's spine like an icy hand, overwhelming all his other conflicting emotions, as he looked at the viewscreen and realized what he was seeing there: the D'Zidran was close to, perhaps even in orbit around the Guardian's world.

He had no idea how or why it had gotten there, but there was no question in his mind but that it was there. Nothing else could account for the way the image of the D'Zidran's bridge undulated in and out of focus as if seen through the rippling surface of a windblown sea.

Which, in a sense, it was: a sea not of matter but of time, its very fabric warped and re-warped by the unfathomable power of the object on the surface of the planet; the Guardian of Forever.

Kirk had seen those undulations, had felt them as the old Enterprise-his Enterprise-sped through them. There could be nothing else in the universe-in any universe-quite like them.

The fact that the face of the D'Zidran's commander was one that he recognized, not fondly, from his own past barely registered as Picard, a couple paces ahead of him, said: "Commander Tal, let me speak with Guinan."

Tal's undulating image stared out of the screen silently, expressionlessly, while Picard's words ricocheted through the subs.p.a.ce network to the distant ship. Finally, abruptly, Tal shook his head. "She is not here. She has transported down to the surface of a planet she called the 'Guardian's world'."

Kirk's stomach lurched at the words as he remembered what Scotty had said about this odd and ageless woman, about how she had been present at-had been instrumental in-each and every key incident that had led inexorably to the present situation.

And now she was on the Guardian's world, where all time was, if the Guardian felt cooperative, instantly accessible.

What, he wondered with a new chill, was she up to now?

The view from s.p.a.ce of the Guardian's world had not prepared Guinan for the somber reality that enveloped her when the shimmer of the transporter energy faded. From the relative safety of high orbit, she had looked down on the sensor-produced images of the endless ruins, observing them objectively, noting with interest the countless different styles of buildings, the lack of any city-like pattern to their distribution. Even the so-called time ripples of which she had been warned had seemed less a danger than a distraction as they swept across the face of the planet, warping her vision as they now and then reached out and sent waves of distortion through the orbiting D'Zidran.

But here on the surface, low-hanging slabs of rainless, lightning-streaked clouds, threatening a storm that never came, seemed to isolate her not only from the D'Zidran but from the stars themselves. She was not just surrounded by the planet-spanning ruins but felt in danger of becoming a prisoner of this strange world, of being somehow absorbed by it.

And yet, despite the fear, despite the utterly alien surroundings, despite the bleak wail of an unseen, unfelt wind-a wind that blew through time itself?- she felt as if she was somehow familiar with this world, as if she was already connected to it in some way that was as inexplicable as the feelings that had brought her here.

At the same time, again without knowing how or why, she realized that more of her "ghost memories" had emerged from whatever shadowy corners of her mind they had been lurking in.

Particularly real and vivid were those a.s.sociated with the one called Picard and with his world. It was as if she had lived two lives simultaneously, both leading inevitably to this time and place. She was barely able to tell where one life began and the other ended, which was real and which was imagined.

And there was more, she knew, far more than the memories of those two lives. She could sense the existence of other memories, other lives in other times, but they were still beyond her reach, like shadowy creatures that moved, not quite silently, through a dense fog that swirled all around her.

You are not a stranger to this place, a voice said in her mind, and she looked around, startled.

And saw the Portal.

There was nothing else the misshapen torus could be.

In the midst of a chaos of ruins from a thousand different eras, a thousand different civilizations, it alone was... functional?

Alive?

It pulsed with energy, seen and unseen.

"How is it that you know me?" she asked, clothing the thought in words only out of recent habit. "I have never visited your world before."

Not in your current form, perhaps, but the sh.e.l.l you wear is irrelevant. It is you I recognize.

"Are you the source of the...'guidance' I occasionally find myself subjected to?"

You receive guidance from no one but yourself.

"A future self?" she asked.

For you, as for me, there is no future and no past. There is only the eternal now.

She grimaced. This so-called Guardian of Forever was even less helpful than her feelings, what ever their source. The feelings at least told her what to do, even if they didn't tell her why.

"Can you help us to restore this universe to what it was before the stranger from the future interfered?" she asked.

The play of energy around the irregular torus that was the Portal intensified, as did the lightning displays in the rainless clouds, now roiling and darkening even more, as if the coming storm could no longer be held at bay. Even the keening of the unfelt wind grew louder.

Finally, the voice returned to her mind. Through me it is possible to make all as it was. It is not possible to make all as it must be.

"I do not understand."

You do not, and yet you do. You must look into yourself. The answer you seek is there, and there alone.

"You speak in riddles," she said, uncomfortably conscious of the irony of the accusation. "I still do not understand."

You must look more deeply. You must open the self you are now to all the selves you have been and will be.

And the Portal shimmered, seeming to become a mirror with a dozen facets, each reflecting a different image, but even as she tried to focus on them, they shattered into a hundred, then a thousand facets, until each facet was only an intense spot of sparkling light, and the entire Portal became a chaos of pulsing, crackling energy that part of her longed to plunge into while another part recoiled in terror.

The Vortex, one part of her mind screamed at her.

It is the Nexus, another part of her mind-another Guinan-whispered. You/I/we have never left.

Suddenly, she/they knew it was true.

And knew what the Guardian meant.

Tal's Guinan, Picard's Guinan and a thousand others on a thousand worlds in a thousand eras.

All were linked through that one brief instant when they had been trapped in that seductive domain beyond s.p.a.ce, beyond time, in the heart of pure joy and contentment.

All were linked in that one brief instant before her/their physical body was torn free and plunged back into a reality she/they had by then come to despise.

All were linked in that one brief instant that was also forever.

You must look into yourself for the answer, the Guardian of Forever had said.

At last, she knew what it had meant.

She must look into that part of herself that still existed there, in that eternal instant that stretched from the beginning of time to the end and perhaps beyond-that part of herself that was, she realized, the source of her feelings.

In this life and all others.

Allowing herself to remember that which she had struggled for decades to forget, she let fall the barriers she herself had erected in those agonizing moments of her "rescue."

And was overwhelmed once again by the memory of what she had lost when the Enterprise-B's transporters had torn her physical sh.e.l.l free of the Nexus: an eternity of unimaginable bliss.

But with the memory of that lost bliss came also the answer she sought.

An answer that spanned more than three centuries.

Kirk must return to the Vortex.

The Nexus.

Not to be killed but to be called forth to help Picard seventy-five years later.

For Picard was himself essential to restoring what was. He and he alone, with his rudimentary link to the Borg, could pursue the Borg back in time and prevent them from a.s.similating Earth and creating this abortive yet essential timeline.

Do that, and her world would die. El-Auria would die and Earth would live, and all would be as it was.

But not yet as it must be.

The words came not from the Guardian but from the deepest core of her selves, that self that always had and always would exist within the Nexus. The words flared through her entire being, tearing aside the final veil and exposing the horror of what yet could be, a horror beside which the destruction of the world she had for a few brief centuries thought of as her home was of no more consequence than the death of a single drone would be to the entire Borg Collective.

She/they knew what must be done.

And, for the first time, received a fragmentary and soul-chilling glimpse of why.

Twenty-Five.

GUINAN'S EYES snapped open to find Picard and Crusher standing over her worriedly. Kirk stood to one side, his face unreadable.

As she realized she was once more alone in her mind, a bleak feeling of loss and isolation swept over her, just as it had when she had been torn from the Nexus. But this was far less intense. She had been separated now only from another part of herself, not from a universe of endless bliss. And her sense of urgency was so strong that, this time, she was able to force the feeling aside in an instant.

Sitting up, she swung her legs off the biobed. "We have to return to the Vortex," she said, standing up before either of them could press her back onto the bed.

"What the devil- " Picard began while Crusher brought the medical scanner back into play.

"I'll explain later," Guinan said, "if I can still remember it later."

"But what happened?" Picard persisted.

"Her readings are unchanged," Crusher said, shaking her head.

"I-we spoke with the Guardian. The only way to restore the original timeline is to- " She paused, turning her head to look directly at Kirk. "The only way to restore the original timeline is for you to be sent into the Vortex you were rescued from."

Kirk nodded, his expression unchanged. "I can't say I'm surprised. Can I a.s.sume that just killing me still isn't acceptable?"

She shook her head, repressing the urge to tell Kirk that it wasn't death that awaited him in the Nexus but something far more wondrous, something she envied him more than she had ever envied any living being. Feelings aside, however, she knew that for the true nature of the Nexus-the Vortex-to be known could be nearly as dangerous as for the existence of the Guardian to be public knowledge. And Kirk, knowing that the only alternative was to be destroyed or captured by the Borg, had already indicated his unequivocal willingness to surrender himself to the Vortex.

"No matter how willing he is, Guinan," Picard said, "it can't be done. The Borg are everywhere. It would take a miracle to get within a pa.r.s.ec of the Vortex now."

"I know that's what you think, Captain, but it is essential that we do."

"But you have no suggestions as to how?"

"I'm sorry. All I know is that the Guardian claims there is no other choice. And that there is even more at stake than you know, more than you can imagine."

Picard continued to look at her, directly into her eyes, for a second, then another and yet another. Finally he nodded, not so much in agreement as in capitulation, but before he could more than tap his combadge to speak with the bridge and order the necessary course change, she lowered her eyes and swept past them all to the turbolift.

So, Kirk thought as Picard headed for the turbolift himself, issuing orders as he walked, the Guardian really doesn't want me dead. It wants me sent into the Vortex.

Which at this late date just happens to be impossible.