“So how could any life, intelligent or not, appear so quickly in such a young universe?” Vale concluded.

Cethente spoke up. “Time flows at varying rates in different universes, Commander. The equivalent of many billions of years may have already passed within the confines of this protouniverse.”

“The Sleeper emerges from his slumbers only after billions-year-long intervals,” Frane said, delivering this pronouncement in the same matter-of-fact manner that Jaza or Cethente might make a scientific report.

“So what are you saying?” Vale asked, facing the science team. “That this…baby universe is giving off something that looks like brainwave patterns?”

“Not exactly,” Jaza said. “But there are other easily-recognizable signs of emergent life, and these generally converge with intelligence. Highly organized replication patterns that occur far more frequently than nonliving processes could possibly account for. Nonrandom energy generation and consumption curves. Vast pockets of accumulating negative entropy, as well as numerous other extreme and sustained environmental disequilibriums, similar to those we can detect at galactic distances, in such things as the spectra of M-Class planets. So far as we know, those sorts of environments cannot come into being except via biological processes.”

Troi offered a tentative nod, granting at least part of Jaza’s point. “But we’ve founds lots of blue planets where microbes and plants are the crown of creation. The biological processes that create M-Class environments don’t necessarily imply the existence of intelligence.”

“No, but we’ve turned up other patterns that do,”Cethente said. “For instance, we’ve detected complex, highly organized, orderly releases of power. Not to mention significant, otherwise unexplainable releases of neuromagnetic energy.”

Jaza nodded. “Taken together, these readings look a lot like the ones taken ten years ago aboard DS9. And just like that incident, it’s a safe bet that thisprotouniverse has already developed at least some sort of awareness.”

“He is awakening,” Frane said. “The Sleeper rises. Soon, His dreams will cease. Along with all the corrupt works and sins of my people.”

And maybe along with the entire Small Magellanic Cloud as well,Troi thought, shuddering as she picked up a momentary burst of fear-tinged exultation from Frane. Did some part of him really want such a catastrophe to come about? The notion caused her an intense sensation of revulsion, which struggled mightily against the compassion she automatically felt for all such troubled souls. She breathed a quiet prayer of thanks to the Old Gods of Betazed that the latter might remain stronger than the former.

“The Red King,” Vale said, her light brown eyes fixed on the chess piece that Frane had set back upon the tabletop.

“What?” Troi asked before she even realized she was speaking.

“From Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking-Glass.The Red King dreamed all the characters that appeared in the book, from the Tweedle boys to Alice herself. But if the Red King were ever to wake up…” She trailed off, just as Frane had done.

Frane raised the red chess piece toward Vale, as though in salute. Troi realized only then that the piece was indeed the king. And that the Neyel had comprehended Vale’s literary allusion.

“The Sleeper,” the Neyel said. “You understand.”

“I suggest you save your literary symposium for another time, Commander Vale,” Tchev said with a low snarl.

“Agreed,” Will said, glancing significantly at his first officer, who acknowledged his mild rebuke with a silent nod.

“Does it really matter whether this is an exotic physics phenomenon, or the Sleeper coming awake, or some creative dreamer out of ancient Terran literature?” Jaza asked. “No matter how we look at it, the potential result is the same: destruction on an almost unimaginable scale.”

“Also, we appear to be unable—and some of us are almost certainly unwilling—to simply killthis ‘Red King,’ ” Donatra said, her dark, intense gaze locking with Will’s. The Klingons cast expectant looks at Titan’s captain, and Troi sensed her husband’s increasing desperation over the prospect of finding a morally defensible course of action.

Will’s combadge chirped perhaps half a second later. “Bridge to Captain Riker,”it said, speaking in the precisely enunciated voice of Zurin Dakal.

“Please excuse me,” Will said, then stood and tapped his combadge. “Go ahead, Cadet.”

“I think I have good news, sir. The long-range sensor nets have picked up dozens of bogies, apparently flying in formation at high warp. They are on an outbound trajectory from a G-type star system located less than five light-years from our present position.”

“Configuration?”

“Exact configuration isn’t determinable at this range, Captain. But the warp signature readings are consistent with those of Romulan singularity drives.”

Donatra rose, her dour face suddenly flushed green with emotion. Her voice, however, scarcely rose above a whisper.

“My fleet.”

Troi saw that Jaza was quickly entering commands into his tabletop console controls. He then consulted the display of a padd he was carrying. “I’m tapping directly into the main science station,” he said.

Whatever he saw in the padd’s tiny screen was making him scowl in perplexity. His Bajoran nasal striations seemed to spread upward vertically across his brown forehead until they nearly reached his hairline.

“Are we sufficiently clear of the rift’s interference to hail them?” Will asked the cadet.

“I think so, sir.”

“Then do it, Cadet.”

“Aye, Cap—”

“Belay that, Cadet!” Jaza shouted, prompting every head in the room to swivel in his direction. Surprise filled the room as quickly as a wildfire fed by pure oxygen.

“Captain?”Dakal said, his own confusion evident even over the tiny combadge speaker.

Troi knew that the usually reserved senior science officer would never have countermanded one of the captain’s orders without an extremely good reason. But what was it?

“Stand by, Cadet,” Will said. To Jaza, he said, “Well, Commander?”

Still scowling at his padd, Jaza said, “I’m seeing a peculiar oscillation in the warp signatures of those ships.”

Without any prompting, Pazlar and Cethente began consulting padds of their own. Though the expression on the Syrath’s exoskeletal “face” remained as unreadable as ever, both he and his Elaysian colleague shone with the same feeling of shocked recognition Troi was sensing in Jaza.

“Peculiar in what way?” Donatra asked. “Are those my ships or not?”

Jaza nodded slowly. “They’re Romulan ships, all right. But their warp signatures seem to have been slightly modified, at least in comparison with that of the Valdore.”

“Modified how?” Will said.

Jaza paused to tap another set of commands into his padd, and then into his tabletop console. In the space above the table, a jagged network of red and blue lines superimposed themselves over the image of the spatial rift.

“These are the same entropic patterns that argued in favor of extant intelligence within the protouniverse,” Jaza said, and touched yet another tabletop control.

Then the image of the rift morphed into that of a sleek Mogai-class Romulan warbird. The colorful overlay of jagged lines remained in place.

“And these are the oscillations I noticed in the Romulan warp fields.”

“They’re the same,” Donatra said. “But what does that mean?”

A bizarre notion occurred to Troi then. Through the link she shared with Will, she knew with certainty that he had tumbled to it as well.

“The Sleeper must have taken control of those vessels,” Frane said, articulating Troi’s flash of insight, though he was obviously seeing reality through the prism of local mythology. “The ships are its arms and legs now. Perhaps they will be used to help cleanse M’jallanish space of our people’s sins. Maybe that was why those ships attacked my father’s military fleet the moment we saw them emerge from the Sleeper’s embrace.”