One of the CS men ran toward Daley. Coyote's foot shot out and tripped him. He fell right into the mess.

An ammonia-like smell reached Troi's nose. She realized the substance that fell was excrement. It looked like bird guano-or perhaps haguya guano.

She stood poised, ready to take advantage of the confusion and make a break for the door. But three CS men still had their guns pointed at her and the Dissenters, and another still blocked the door. Troi saw no safe way to get out of the chamber.

One of the CS men, apparently seeing her intent, suddenly pointed his gun directly at her.

Odysseus stepped in front of her, protecting her with his body. He shouted one word, "Nummo!"

The CS man fired, and Odysseus pitched forward onto the rock floor.

Troi felt the ground begin to vibrate under her feet.

The CS men felt it too. They began to back away from the Dissenters. Daley, by now on his feet though smeared with guano, looked about for the source of the vibration. The one-eyes pivoted and hummed about erratically, their sensing devices and weapons guano-clogged. One of them shook itself violently, like a dog trying to shake off water, but the guano stuck to it like mucilage.

"What's going on!?" Daley called urgently to his men. "Did the one-eyes pick up anything else-from anybody?"

"Just s.n.a.t.c.hes of myth they censored out," said the nearest white-suit, listening into his headphones. "Their interception capabilities are ... not so good right now."

"Hooooeeee!" shouted Coyote from deep in the forest of statues. He laughed as though he were riding a wild horse.

The CS did not try to get to him. They were looking at the vibrating ground and walls, and at the darkness above, from which they heard a growing rumor of hiss and spray.

The waters burst downward into the chamber, cascading off the floor and leaping wildly, knocking Dissenters and CS alike off their feet. Troi braced herself against the wall next to Rhiannon. They locked forearms and held onto one another as the water slammed into them.

The CS man guarding the door braced himself against its sides with his feet and one hand while holding his weapon with the other. Water gushed out around him, through the doorway.

Several Dissenters, with the packs of books still on their backs, swam forward to fight with the other CS men. A melee developed in the forest of statues.

Troi saw two dark shapes carried like a pair of fish into the chamber with the cascading waters. They swam near her, then ducked under the swelling tide. She recognized them as the Nummo, the West African water-being twins. She realized that they must have released the dam she had seen outside Alastor.

The CS man at the door started to kick at something in the water. The Nummo's heads came up around him, their arms already entangling, eel-like, with his. They loosed his hold and all three were swept out of Alastor.

Something jostled Troi from behind. She turned and saw the huge Russian, Nikitushka Lomov the Barge Hauler, with Odysseus slung unconscious on his shoulder, and an immense pack of books on his back.

Without warning Daley the CS man leapt up and grabbed hold of Lomov's head from behind, savagely twisting it sideways.

Lomov looked no more than mildly annoyed. In fact he seemed strangely pleased. He set Odysseus face up on the surface of the water, then reached up with one hand, lifted Daley by the collar of his uniform, and held him at arm's length. The CS man swung at Lomov but hadn't the reach. Lomov stepped over to a half-submerged statue of Orpheus and wedged Daley's head and shoulders into the Orphic lyre-just parked him there to flail helplessly-then picked up Odysseus.

"Time to go!" Lomov boomed cheerfully at Troi, through his heavy accent. He inclined his dripping dark-haired head toward the now empty doorway.

Troi and Rhiannon were already letting themselves drift in that direction. As they were carried through the doorway, Troi caught a glimpse back into the chamber of statues. She saw a one-eye looping crazily in the air with Caliban riding it. The little man was laughing and spouting Shakespeare, his grimy hand in front of the one-eye's Cyclopean lens.

Troi held onto Rhiannon as the newly diverted river plunged them along the great pa.s.sage outside Alastor, where no light-stones cut the darkness.

The water slowed quickly as it leveled out, allowing Rhiannon and Troi to drift at a leisurely pace. Rhiannon kept to the side of the channel and felt along the banks with her hands. At a certain point she pulled Troi, leading them both through a small natural tunnel deep into the bank, where the water level gave them just enough s.p.a.ce overhead to breathe.

They emerged on the other side into the company of several Dissenters, some with light-stones, who were standing around the terminus of the tunnel. The Nummo twins helped Rhiannon and Troi climb out of the cleft and onto dry rock. As Troi caught her breath, she looked around.

The caverns were smaller than the others Troi had followed to Alastor. She knew she was now out of the main pa.s.sage that would have conducted her to CephCom. She had no idea where these smaller caverns led.

Nikitushka Lomov, still carrying Odysseus, climbed out of the water and set the unconscious Dissenter down softly. He checked to see that the man was still breathing, and seemed satisfied that he was.

Coyote came out of the water next and exchanged looks with the other Dissenters. n.o.body spoke. Troi perceived a mood of foreboding.

Finally Coyote said, "Maui and Isis have been captured. Caliban is dead."

There was a prolonged silence. The Dissenters stared down into the water.

Finally Coyote said, "We can't stay here. We have to move deeper into the caverns."

Then he spoke directly to Troi.

"Now it doesn't matter who you are, because we've lost Alastor and will have to wander until we find a new home. You can go your own way or stay with us. But the main pa.s.sage we left is not safe anymore."

"Can you show me how to reach CephCom through these caves?"

"Only Odysseus knows that, and he won't awaken for many hours yet. But he no longer has a reason to keep it from you. There is no Alastor left to protect."

Troi thought for a moment.

"I'll go with you."

Chapter Eleven.

AT SCIENCE STATION TWO on the bridge, Wesley had searched through physics files for hours. Nothing he'd seen so far suggested a solution for stopping the one-eyes. In fact, he felt he was intuitively closer to the solution when he had started his search.

"Computer, what was the first file I saw?"

The screen displayed the image of the Dance of Shiva, the Dance of the Burning Ground, a symbol of the universe-dance of creation and destruction. Shiva's four arms and four legs moved in a hypnotic pattern. Wesley could even hear the computer-generated rhythmic tap-tap of Shiva's drum of Time and the roar of the hoop of flames surrounding him.

Below the image, the screen displayed a list of references to Shiva, as a metaphor, made by physicists over the past several centuries.

Wesley almost told the computer to move on to something else, as he hadn't meant to call this image up. But he restrained himself. He felt the germ of an idea starting.

The dance of the physical universe, the endless round of light/dark, creation/destruction, life/death; the on-off vibration without which there is no sound or light or life or universe at all ...

Wesley knew that even at the subatomic level, the smallest particles, the stuff of which everything is made, oscillate through many states. Matter itself is a dance. He pictured to himself various phases of the dance, the phases of light matter and dark matter- Dark matter.

A huge proportion of the universe's total ma.s.s is dark matter, the neutrino matter that permeates the void, emitting no light or electric charge but with enough ma.s.s to keep the universe from expanding forever. Enough ma.s.s to eventually reverse the expansion and collapse the universe into itself, into a singularity. And perhaps out of that singularity would come another explosion, and another universe. Like the endless creation/destruction Dance of Shiva.

Wesley kept thinking about the dark matter, the neutrinos.

He thought maybe in neutrinos there was a weapon to use against the one-eyes, but he wasn't sure what it would be.

Chops handed Geordi a sterile tech-wipe. He swabbed the sweat from around his VISOR, and then they fell back to work on a burnt console. Chops' sensor-padded hands moved over the console with pixilated speed while her blind eyes, behind their dark visor, looked off in some random direction.

The warp engines, running at low power, had almost gotten away from them just now. This couldn't go on much longer. They'd eventually have to force a shutdown to avoid a matter-antimatter catastrophe. But a shutdown would mean no shields and they'd have to use the impulse engines to attempt an escape from the surrounding hostile ships.

If they still had impulse engines. The one-eyes were about to knock those out as well.

Geordi figured the Rampartian ships around the Enterprise were waiting so quietly because they wanted a sure thing, an easy target. Battling an enemy that still had options would make the Rampartians nervous; there would be intangibles, and the Rampartians certainly couldn't like intangibles-couldn't even think about intangibles.

Wesley's voice issued from Geordi's communicator.

"Crusher to La Forge."

"La Forge here."

"I've been working in the particle physics library. I think I might have something, but I'm not sure what it is."

Geordi turned toward his monitor.

"Computer, put me at Ensign Crusher's location in the library."

An image of the Dance of Shiva appeared on the screen.

"Uh, Shiva was my inspiration," said Wesley.

"Time's a little short, Wes. What's your idea?"

Wesley asked if it would be possible to make a weapon that would convert the one-eyes into neutrinos. He admitted he couldn't think of a way himself.

Geordi was silent for a moment.

"Well, it was just an idea," said Wesley. "Sorry to-"

"No, wait."

Geordi stared at the Dance of Shiva.

"Let me think about it, Wes. La Forge out."

Geordi worked quietly beside Chops for a few minutes, then suddenly it came to him. A special recipe of high-energy particles could be used to smash the atoms in the one-eyes in such a way that only neutrinos, and no other particles, would be produced. Vast numbers of neutrinos would fly out from the site of the event-but neutrinos, which had no positive or negative charge, would pa.s.s harmlessly through anything; through living bodies, through metal, through a whole planet, without any interaction.

Conversion of atoms into neutrinos, into dark matter, was a natural part of the dance of matter/ energy, but from what Geordi had seen, Rampartian technology hadn't achieved that level of understanding of the dance ... the level of understanding that encompa.s.sed both the light and the dark.

Geordi called Wesley back. He told the ensign that a weapon could and would be built. He was putting Chops in charge of building it, but Wesley would be given the pleasure of operating it.

Since his sentencing an hour earlier, Picard had watched the video screen in his room, trying to pick up useful information.

The images had the smooth consistency of baby food. Mind pablum.

He thought about what he'd seen in the flesh with his own eyes: Crichton's physical problem. Some kind of seizure. Maybe it had to do with his scarred, mask-like face; maybe it was one of the injuries the Dissenters had given him. Whatever it was, the staff in his office had been taken by surprise. It was a new infirmity.

Picard looked at the camera lens and the antennae in the upper corner. He spoke directly at them.

"How can a man in Crichton's condition be allowed to pa.s.s judgment?" Picard asked, though he supposed they could just as well read his thoughts. "I know somebody is listening. Let someone else try my case. Crichton could have been wrong. An error, a falsehood, may have been committed."

The door opened, and several CS men and one-eyes came in. Without preamble they came over to Picard, forced him down on the bed, and with the gentle firmness reserved for the condemned, began to fasten the restraining straps around him.

"I have proof on my ship," said Picard, hearing a new note of fear in his voice, "that Crichton is wrong. I have evidence that the Huxley did disappear here, and that Crichton must have known about it. I have a recorder marker from the Huxley. Crichton is perpetrating a fiction."

The CS ignored him.

They finished, leaving Picard immobilized on the bed, and made their exit.

A short time later, a woman entered with a mobile cart full of electronic gear, on top of which sat a round cap with wires and electrodes. It was the same setup Picard had seen in the hall earlier. He had guessed what it was for.

The woman wore the protective CS helmet. Twin flickering rasters on her visor partly obscured her eyes and headphones screened her ears. No prisoners would be allowed to tell her any fictions in their last moments.

Her uniform had a red CS logo, and a nametag, "Smith." Her hair was trussed up under her helmet. Her movements were practiced and impersonal, like a nurse's.

She positioned the cart in a corner, then took an electric razor from a drawer in the cart and came over to Picard. Although he was for the most part bald, she shaved areas of his skull to remove all hair and fuzz.

The shaving seemed to go on forever. He could feel the warmth of Smith's body as she leaned over him. She was a living being, and she was going to annihilate another living being. If he was right in his a.s.sumptions, his body would still be alive, and would eventually be given a new personality, but he, Jean-Luc Picard, would be dead.

He looked at the woman's green eyes which were only partly visible behind the flickering rasters. Strangely, her eyes seemed sad, full of regret. At first she avoided his stare, but then she paused for a moment and looked right at him.

Picard thought he saw pity there, the first he'd seen since he'd been in CephCom.

"Yes, you are different," Picard said. "You don't believe in what you're doing."

She didn't react at all, and Picard wondered if her protective headphones were filtering out what he said.

She continued with her work.

Her shaver buzzed like a steel fly.

He caught her eye again, for just a moment, but she looked away quickly. She clicked her shaver off and put it away.

Picard focused all of his perception on her, the last living being he would ever see.

She didn't belong here. She had a visible insecurity, a vulnerability. She knew that she didn't know everything.

Picard thought she might be his means of escape, at least from imminent death, if only she would take her d.a.m.ned helmet off. But what good would that do if the sensing gear in the room picked up everything they said?

Smith slowly rose from Picard's side, went over to the cart, and put the shaver back in the drawer. Picard couldn't tell if her motions were indeed slow or if his sense of time was playing tricks on him.

She pulled the cart by its handle. It rolled on hard black rubber wheels. Now it was right next to him, filling his sight. He saw the dials, oscilloscopes, and switches. He even saw the numbers on their graduated scales.

She took the jack-ends of two cords and plugged them into sockets in the wall near the bed.