At first, his legs were wobbly from spending too much time in bed; but since Geordi was normally on his feet all day his legs were strong. He willed himself to walk forward. His reward was a big smile from Leah Brahms, who waved encouragingly from the root of the tree. He could see her face vividly, too, for the first time, and he gasped at her angelic beauty.
There were unexpected obstacles in the way—trees and bushes that sprang up almost at the touch, blocking his passage. As much by feel as eyes, he guided himself around these obstacles, until he was again on a straight path to the proud tree. Geordi had heard the term “old oak” but still didn’t know exactly what an old oak looked like, but he knew it represented something large, solid, and lasting. That described this big tree, beckoning like a lighthouse in the darkness. Its boughs were laden with fruit, leaves, and dew-covered moss, which glittered like emeralds.
As Geordi struggled up the hill, his legs weak from his sickness, gnarled vines erupted from the ground to block his way. As he struggled against these new obstacles, the vines wrapped around his arms and legs, catching him in place.
“But I’m so close!” Geordi shouted as he struggled. One vine rapped him on the jaw, knocking him to the ground. From there, the vines converged upon him—and that was the last thing he remembered before he blacked out.
When La Forge regained consciousness, the bed he was lying upon was much harder than his other bed, and the voices and hubbub were much louder. He reasoned that he was lying upon one of the examination tables in the outer triage, not the nice private area he’d had before. Geordi had to deduce where he was, because he was once again enshrouded in darkness.
“Hi, Geordi,” said a familiar voice. “Do you know where you are?”
“Yes, Doctor,” he answered, “I’m in sickbay ... trying to get well.”
“Is that all you remember?” asked an authoritative voice that he recognized as Captain Picard’s.
La Forge shook his head, wondering why he felt as if he had holes in his brain. “Do you mean the dreams? I was having dreams.”
“And walking in your sleep,” added Dr. Crusher.
“I was?” asked Geordi with confusion. “I got up out of bed?”
“You certainly did,” answered Crusher. “You got up from your bed, walked freely through sickbay—even though you’re not wearing your implants—and then attacked three security officers who were stationed outside my research laboratory.”
“I did?” asked La Forge in amazement. “I don’t remember that—it wasn’t in my dream.”
“Security reports that you wanted to get into the laboratory very badly,” said Picard, “and that you acted like you were awake. What did you think was in there?”
“A tree,” answered La Forge, suddenly remembering—even if the image wasn’t as vivid as before. “I know that sounds silly, but I could see a tree ... at the top of this gentle hill with long grass and little puddles.” He left out the part about Leah Brahms, because he knew she wasn’t on board the Enterprise, which meant that his memories were more dream than reality.
Crusher’s soothing voice broke into his thoughts. “You could see it? Don’t you usually dream in your regular vision, from your implants or VISOR?”
“Yes, but I saw this. It was like seeing with eyes, which is an experience I’m familiar with.” He didn’t mean to sound defensive, but he was a bit weary from the questioning. Can’t a sick, blind man have his dreams?
“Commander,” said the captain sternly, “there is something behind the door that you were trying so hard to enter. One of the moss creatures is growing in there, and you seem to have made telepathic contact with it. It’s grown to maturity now, and it’s probably trying to find a new host.”
Geordi recoiled in the darkness and pulled his bedding around him. He had never felt so helpless. “Why me?”
“It may be a residual effect of the fungus,” answered Dr. Crusher. “The fungus enhances the telepathic connection, making the victim even more susceptible to suggestion. We thought we had everyone placed at a safe distance from it, but we were wrong. I myself can’t go in the lab, because it has immediate control of my mind, offering more images of Wesley.”
Crusher sighed, sounding like she was pulling herself together. “Your visions have probably been conjured up from your own mind, plus what it wants you to see. The fungus-telepathy combination has proven very effective on the rest of us, but you have an advantage over us. When you see something, you should know automatically that it’s false. You can’t physically see at the moment.”
La Forge gulped, wondering what they wanted him to do. On one level, he would miss the beautiful visions if they stopped, but every fiber of his being urged him to battle these chimeras. Lovesick, blinded, recovering from an illness—he already felt helpless and vulnerable. Now one of those horrible plants was trying to control his mind.
“It’s a disturbing organism,” said Captain Picard, “but it’s obviously intelligent. We’d like to find a way to talk to it. Perhaps more than that. Over what distances can they communicate with each other? Where is their base, where they launched the Genesis Wave? So far, these creatures have managed to manipulate us, and I’d like to return the favor. Will you help us, Commander?”
Geordi nodded forcefully. “Yes, sir, I will.”
twenty-three
The more Carol Marcus saw of the fake Jim and David on the equally bogus Regula I space station, the more she hated them. Perhaps it was their condescending glances when she turned in her work, like a person looks at a cute puppy who has done a clumsy trick. They obviously didn’t want to make her sick again, so they conferred with her infrequently, always encased in their cleanroom suits. Lately they had resumed making the occasional joke in character, and she could sense that their dark mood had lifted. This could only mean that they were close to unleashing the Genesis Wave again ... and time was running out.
In her solitude, the old woman had figured out the basics of what she needed to do. She had to incapacitate Jim and David and get out of this holodeck long enough to sabotage their plans. Her only weapons were that she had been left with the power to read their thoughts, and she knew the real Regula I like she knew the rummage of her own brain. This simulation was impeccably accurate.
Ninety-two years ago, she had accidentally turned off the artificial gravity on Regula I by overloading the main superconducting stator with gravitons—an improvement that didn’t work out. Although the holodeck program undoubtedly had safeguards built in, the lack of gravity wasn’t life-threatening. The program should allow it to happen, she reasoned.
Ninety-two years ago, a chrylon gas leak had followed the gravity disruption a couple minutes later, but she was going to speed that up. She also intended to mix reality with illusion, as her captors had. Marcus had collected enough solvents, acids, propellants, and other chemicals to make a fairly noxious smoke bomb combined with an aerosol herbicide, the same kind she had used sparingly on her garden on Pacifica.
She had collected huge chunks of raw meat from the food replicator, which her jailers didn’t seem to monitor, and she had stuffed one of the cleanroom suits with the slimy material. That suit full of dead meat was going to play her in the little scene she was directing; while she wore a lightweight environmental suit and stayed behind the curtain.
The preparations in her mind had taken days, but the old woman knew that the execution had to take seconds. There could be no hesitation. She had to perform each step precisely, never giving her captors a chance to realize that they had been fooled. For once.
If she were going to be stopped, fortunately, it would be at the very beginning—if the artificial gravity failed to go off inside this combination holodeck-laboratory. It was a good bet that these beings were more rooted to gravity than a spry old lady, and the weightlessness would affect them more.
As soon as she fastened her environmental suit shut, Carol Marcus leaned over the computer board and upped the graviton feed from the EPS co
nduits to the laboratory gravity system. With satisfaction, she watched the readouts—just like ninety two years ago, then she stepped briskly away from the console toward the test chamber.
Carol reached the chamber just as the gravity actually cut out, forcing her to activate the magnets in her boots. That was cutting the timing a bit closely, and she sounded realistically out-of-breath when she hit her combadge.
“David! Jim! Help!” she implored them. “We’ve lost gravity in the lab! There’s an overload in the superconducting stator!”
She pulled a melon-sized, papier-mache ball from the chamber and lit the fuse with a lab burner. Within seconds, greenish yellow smoke billowed from the sputtering ball and flowed around the circular lab, obscuring the starscape in the surrounding viewport.
“And ... and ... now there’s a chrylon gas leak!” she cried with alarm. “I’m ... I’m losing consciousness ... help me, David!”
Under cover of her crude smoke bomb full of homemade herbicide, Marcus reached into the test chamber and pulled out the cleanroom suit stuffed full of meat. She gently pushed the dummy, which was now weightless, into the center of the smoke. It was exactly like the kind of suit they had been wearing for weeks, and she had a feeling the meat would attract them.
With the curtain up and the action underway, it was time for the director to get off stage. So Carol grabbed the retractable pulley she had rigged to the door of the lab, hunched down, and waited.
The door whooshed open, and the two suited figures stood there, transfixed by all they saw. She cleared her mind as she had been practicing for many days, making them depend on their other senses, which were weaker than telepathy. Jim and David were loathe to enter a weightless room full of smoke, but they also knew this was a holodeck, where things were not as they appeared. They had to assume they could make this room go back to normal with a simple command.
However, the body floating in front of them was very real, and Carol could sense their worry and distress over the likelihood that she was dead. In unison, they made up their minds. They didn’t rush into the room—they slithered in, keeping close to the floor, under some of the smoke, and using their hands like crawling vines.
It was slow, awkward going in their suits, and Carol held her breath, knowing that the cleanroom suits pulled air out of the atmosphere and filtered it. Even if they didn’t remove their suits, they would still get a dose of poison.
When the fake Jim Kirk finally did remove his helmet, and she saw what was underneath, Carol tried not to gasp. But her mind reacted with horror, alerting both Jim and David. She turned off the magnetism on her boots, tugged on the retractable line, and flew across the room and out the door.
Her feet landed in a corridor with gravity, and she promptly turned around and grabbed the door of the hatch. Before she shut it, she saw Kirk shrivel up like a dried bush in a forest fire. Still wearing his suit and coping unsuccessfully with a lack of gravity, David crawled toward her, using his hands and legs like clawing vines.
Daggers of outrage and misery assaulted her mind. “Mom! Why are you hurting me?” screamed a voice, sounding exactly like David when he was little, getting a scraped knee bandaged. “You’re going to leave me to die, just like you did before!”
That accusation cut deeply, and a pang of guilt tore at Carol’s insides. Then she gritted her teeth and slammed the door shut on the creature who slithered toward her. Pulling down the latch, she closed the airtight seal, trapping her tormentors inside—one already dead, the other dying.
“Mom, don’t leave me!” screeched a voice.
Covering her ears, Carol Marcus shouted to the stars, “You’re dead, David! You’re really, really dead! Killed by a Klingon blade ... and nothing will ever change that. I can’t see you again ... not in this life.”
Sniffing back tears, the old woman shuffled down the corridor, taking heart from the fact that she had been right—this was a starship. Now she was certain of it. Although it lacked specific signage, it seemed very much like a Federation vessel, or at least a vessel designed for humanoids to operate. It was very efficient, right down to the ...
Blinking red lights and loud Klaxons that suddenly blasted and blared all around her. “Intruder alert!” warned a deep voice. “Go to red alert! Intruder alert!”
The creatures must have lived long enough to sound an alarm, thought Carol with frustration. If they were looking for an intruder, her only hope was to look like she fit in. She quickly shed her environmental suit and stuffed it behind a bulkhead joint, then she straightened her uniform, which she had pulled out of the replicator. Carol Marcus hurried down the corridor and rounded a slight bend just as a doorway to her left opened. When half-a-dozen people stepped into the blinking red lights, she realized she had stumbled upon a turbolift.
“Thank goodness, you’re here,” said Marcus, trying valiantly to hide her disgust at their appearance. They were all young humans in battered Starfleet uniforms, but they looked sick and malnourished. Still it wasn’t their vacant-eyed expressions that chilled her—it was the greenery growing on their backs and necks like a lion’s mane. In addition to this rich pelt of vibrant moss, tentacles reached into their noses, mouths, and ears. She caught an insignia on a shoulder that read, “Fifth Task Force Starfleet.”
“There’s been an explosion in the holodeck. There are casualties. Down there!” Marcus pointed down the corridor, where indeed there was smoke.
The afflicted officers just stared at her, dumbfounded, and she quickly reasoned they were waiting for telepathic confirmation from their masters. She had learned to receive telepathically—could she send, too?
Believe this woman, she broadcast over and over again with her mind. She is one of us. One of us. Trust her.
They stared at the sincere elder, and the pathetic soul who was in charge snapped out of his stupor. “Thank you, ma’am. It might be dangerous here. Will you go up to the control room?” He motioned to the turbolift.
“Indeed I will,” she answered, backing into the turbolift. “Thank you.” She shivered as the doors closed tightly.
Going to the bridge was tempting, but it seemed to her that there might be more plant monsters on the bridge, keeping their deluded crew in line. She was free, and the main objective was to stay that way until she learned more. “Up one deck,” she ordered cautiously.
The door opened abruptly, making her jump. When Marcus stepped out of the turbolift, she still found strobing red lights and sirens, but there was no one in view. In fact, she seemed to be in an unfinished part of the vessel that was now used for storage. The vast room was divided into aisles by rows of raw materials, disassembled modules, and starship components. She noticed a row of particle emitters exactly like those that would be used for the Genesis Wave. Marcus walked past thickets of cables and conduits until she reached the bare bulkhead, and she turned to look around. They had enough stuff here to double the strength of the Genesis Wave.
Without warning, the strobing red lights and Klaxons stopped, and the large storage room reverted to normal ambient light Maybe they had stopped looking for her, thought Carol with relief; maybe they had even accepted her fake body as real. With any luck, it would take them a while to recover and inspect the meat in the suit, plus they had to cope with the untimely deaths of the creatures who called themselves Jim and David. She hoped that would be a crippling blow to their plans.
It was tempting to stop here and rest a while, but Marcus knew she couldn’t stand still and wait for them to find her. She had to keep exploring the ship. Judging by the size of this empty deck, the vessel had to be rather large and an odd shape. As the scientist walked down an aisle lined on both sides with shiny new equipment and components, she looked for anything she could use as a weapon, or a bomb.
Her eyes lit upon a portable force-field generator, such as the kind erected outside an encampment for protection, or inside a cave to fortify the walls. If they had this kind of equipment, she thought with excitement, maybe they had
gel packs to power it. Her heart thumping, Marcus rummaged through row after row of components until she found a case that was the right size. After prying the latches open, she lifted the lid and looked with delight at two deep stacks of gel packs and the fittings and tools needed to hook them up to just about anything.
Now she could turn this place into a fortress—or maybe turn herself into a walking fortress. But she had to work quickly.
“All right,” said Geordi La Forge uncertainly, “can we go over exactly what you want me to do?”
“Yes,” answered Captain Picard, sounding very patient and very serious. “So far, the mental exchange with these creatures has been very one-sided, with them probing our minds, stealing what they want, and regurgitating it back in a pleasing form.”
“I know all about that,” said Geordi. He grimaced as he recalled how one of them had kissed him while it was impersonating Dolores Linton. If Data hadn’t saved him on Myrmidon ... he tried not to think about it while he waited in the dark prison of his sightless eyes. Geordi wasn’t even certain what room they were in, although his chair was comfortable enough.
“Dr. Crusher assures me that you’ve been cured of the fungus,” the captain went on, “although you’re still receptive to their telepathic overtures. Of all people, Mr. La Forge, you ought not to be fooled by their visions and falsehoods. You can contact them with a clear head, knowing nothing you see is real.”
Picard took a breath as he seemed to collect his thoughts. “Since this plant is a young individual without much experience, we think you could even control the exchange. They have imparted a lot of false information to us, and we feel we can do the same to them. Counselor Troi has a few thoughts on the matter.”
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Two Page 25
