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Tachyon

The Swing of the Pendulum

“The Swing of the Pendulum”

Cdr. Tandaris Admiran

-------------------------------------

 

The chamber was vast and mostly filled with air. Combined with its central dome and a sturdy set of columns, this created an effect of openness. And it reinforced that people are, in the grand scheme of things, quite small. Tandaris considered it a fitting example of human pique that the room, which was also a mausoleum, had scattered about it statues that were slightly larger-than-life, as if to say, “Here we house the bones of giants.”

 

Tandaris had not come for bones, though. He had come for the central attraction. He loved humans and their neoclassicism, for there was nothing quite like it on Trill. They had their own Renaissances and Enlightenments—several, in fact—but neoclassicism was a conceit that they had not yet considered, and their architecture suffered for it. So when Tandaris deigned to visit some of Earth's great monuments, it was no surprise that he gravitated to the neoclassicists first.

 

Those visits were not often, however. He had fond memories of his years at the Academy, but Earth had never quite become the “second homeworld” it became for so many cadets. He had always preferred Mars and its orbiting shipyards; there was something comfortably alien about Mars and the evidence of its use as a terraforming prototype. Earth was just so overbearingly cosmopolitan; it tried all at once to be the homeworld of humanity and the centre of the entire United Federation of Planets. So when Tandaris did visit, he went out of his way to go to places where the former was much more in evidence than the latter. He made himself busy and tried to be a tourist.

 

So that was one reason Tandaris found himself in the Panthéon on an overcast afternoon, staring down at the most non-neoclassical part of the entire building. It was for him, however, perhaps the best part of the entire room. A pendulum, lead with a brass coating, hung suspended from the ceiling. Its plane of swing appeared to rotate as the day progressed, but this was an illusion caused by the rotating Earth; its plane was in fact fixed relative to an inertial frame of reference. This pendulum display, named after its creator, Leon Foucault, was a famous and now commonplace demonstration across the planet. The Panthéon pendulum had been in place continuously, in one form or another, for over five hundred years now.

 

At first glance, Tandaris found it underwhelming—it was smaller than he had expected, and the scale of the room made it look smaller still. Nevertheless, it was a breathtaking tribute, both to the unquestionable empirical truths of physics—which were, when counted up at the end of the day, much fewer than most physicists would like to pretend—and the ingenuity of human spirit. Tandaris had a yearning for both right now—more so the unquestionable truths, but he rather hoped the ingenuity would rub off as well.

 

There were plenty of other people in the Pantheon, some human and some not, though the space around the pendulum was not particularly crowded. Tandaris had been the only Trill when he entered, but now a second Trill sidled up next to him. She stared at the pendulum in silence, then she said, “Why did you want to meet me here?”

 

“Have you ever been here before?” Tandaris asked.

 

“Several times. Rousseau is around here somewhere, as is Voltaire.”

 

“Rousseau . . . he was some kind of writer, right?”

 

She looked at Tandaris askance. “Yes, some kind of writer. Do you have a point?”

 

Now it was Tandaris' turn for looks askance, and he gestured at Foucault's pendulum. “Our own physicists discovered the truth of the pendulum long ago. We've got them in our schools and universities, sure, but we don't have something like this. We don't have a display, a tribute, if you will, that has been around for a half-century. We certainly don't have one housed in a mausoleum that was actually built as a church!” He laughed. “This is not just a marvel of physics, Vernas. It's a testament to the creativity and capriciousness of humanity.”

 

“If you say so. I'll stick with the dead writers, thank you,” Vernas replied. “Have you spent all your time on Earth thinking about physics, or have you considered my offer?”

 

“I couldn't possibly come work for you. I've only avoided returning to Trill this long because of Captain Corizon's . . . patronage, and our operation in the Gamma Quadrant. Otherwise Starfleet would have had to hand me over to the Symbiosis Commission. Now they probably will.”

 

Vernas gave a small snort. “I don't fear the Commission.”

 

“Easy enough for you to say when you don't have a symbiont for them to rip from your body.”

 

That imagery was enough to give even Vernas pause. “They wouldn't really do that, though—would they?”

 

“Probably not. They would lock me up in a brand new lab somewhere and prod me with test equipment for the rest of my life. I am a curiosity, and a unique one, and that makes me a commodity instead of a person in their eyes.”

 

“What did you do to attract their attention like that?”

 

“I don't really want to talk about it, and it's probably better if you didn't know.” In truth, Tandaris was just tired of telling the tale.

 

“Fine. My offer is not contingent on full disclosure. And I'm serious about not caring if you're a fugitive from the Symbiosis Commission. Excuse me while I purchase a very tiny French violin from the gift shop. You have bigger and better things to be doing with your time than running away from some bureaucrats in lab coats, and I want to help you do them.”

 

Tandaris sighed. He started to walk clockwise around the base of the pendulum, which continued to swing languidly, indifferent to the conversation taking place around it. “I have to admit it's tempting. I gave up a lot of that work when I came out of retirement—not that I was prevented from doing it, but I haven't exactly had much spare time. It's a side effect of working for Captain Corizon.”

 

Vernas, almost of a height with him, had no trouble keeping pace. “Well it sounds like you won't be working for him any longer. Even if, by some miracle, you manage to escape unscathed from this, I doubt your captain will be very lucky. I don't know exactly what Excalibur did, but from what I hear, it has made you more enemies than friends.”

 

“Story of my life, Vernas.”

 

“It's the story of most lives. But I think you've become trapped by your story,” she said. She reached out and touched his arm, just above the wrist. It was a gentle touch, not overly familiar. “You told me you didn't think you were ready to move on—I'm telling you that probably isn't your choice to make. But if you can't choose whether you go, you can at least choose where you go. Not back to Trill. So stay here. Come work for my company. You looked at the schematics I sent?”

 

“After deciphering the encryption protocol, yes.”

 

Vernas smiled. It was the smile mothers give to children when they perform a particularly choice trick in front of an audience of adults. “That was a bit of a test, I confess. I was curious. But you looked inside?”

 

“Yes—as I said, I'm tempted. I've long been an admirer of Dr. Kahn's work.”

 

“So what's holding you back?”

 

Ah, that question again. What was stopping Tandaris from leaving? He and Kersia could find a shuttle, flee into unexplored space, and spend the rest of their lives somewhere far, far from the Federation. There was nothing keeping him here, not on Excalibur—was there? He had spent years on board that ship as its chief engineer. He had retired once—it didn't stick—and of late he had been there because he had nowhere else to go.

 

Now someone was doing more than asking him why he should stay: someone was offering him a way out.

 

He did not doubt Vernas when she said she could protect him and Kersia from Starfleet or the Symbiosis Commission or any other authorities who wanted a piece of the information in his head. Joined Trill often underestimated their unjoined brethren. It was easy to assume, rather arrogantly, that those who did not have the experience of several lifetimes had narrower, shallower skill sets. Tandaris knew better. Vernas had done more than most joined Trill do in three lifetimes. She had not always been the head of an interstellar R&D firm, and if she wanted to, she could hide anything or anyone in plain sight.

 

All he had to do was walk away.

 

Beside him, Foucault's pendulum swung. The Earth moved. And Tandaris made his choice.

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