Nightshade

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  She stepped back from him as if he had struck her. “You use my own words against me.”

  “You have broken your own laws, betrayed your own people. You are without honor,” Worf said.

  “And now you have helped kill one of the people you met with secretly,” Troi said. “You have betrayed everyone, Talanne. Your own people and now the Greens.”

  She ripped off the mask and threw it against the wall. It hit with a smack and slid to the floor. Tears were trickling from her lovely eyes.

  “What was worth all that betrayal, Talanne, what?” Troi asked.

  “Jeric, Jeric!” She screamed the name of her son and burst into tears.

  Troi and Worf looked at each other. Worf’s puzzled expression matched Troi’s feelings. “What do you mean, Talanne? What about your son?” Troi asked.

  “I thought you knew everything.” Her voice was bitter. “I had lost three children, so deformed at birth that they could not survive. Three dead babies.” She stared at Troi. Her large, nearly golden eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “Do you understand what that felt like, mind-healer? Three babies that I carried in my body. Three times I felt life moving inside of me. And three times I gave birth to monsters that could not survive outside of my body.”

  A visible shudder ran through Talanne’s body. Troi was glad she couldn’t feel it.

  “It was as if I were their lifeline.” She stared at Troi, tears sliding slowly down her face. “I was their mother as long as they were inside me.” Her arms folded across her abdomen. “But once they were born I couldn’t be their mother anymore. I couldn’t save them. I had to watch them die.” She bent forward, cradling her stomach.

  Her voice when it came was low, almost a whisper. Troi was forced to step close to hear it at all. “I could not go through it again. I could not.”

  “You went to the Greens for help,” Troi said.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Tell us,” Worf said. His deep, growling voice held none of the threat it had before. In fact Worf’s hand was halfway out toward the woman, as if to comfort her. He stared at that offered hand and clenched it to his side. The pain that blazed behind his eyes for a moment was enough to show Troi he felt the woman’s pain. Worf understood loss. Even if death was something to celebrate, some losses still hurt.

  “Tell us,” Worf repeated gently.

  Talanne blinked up at Worf, as if realizing that he was feeling some of her pain. Troi wondered for the first time, if that were literally true. Was Talanne projecting her emotions onto Worf?

  Troi stared up at Worf. She would have to drop her barriers, and she did not dare. Talanne was in the middle of an emotional storm.

  “Most of us cannot even become pregnant,” Talanne said, her voice shaky with tears. “You know what happens with the babies that survive.” She would not look at either of them as she said, “The dead children. Most can be saved eventually, but they are never the same. Nothing could save my children.”

  She turned in one smooth motion, drawing the cloak tight around her body. “The Greens become with child much more easily. And their children are healthy, strong.” She shook her head. “Much of the hatred of the Greens comes from seeing their smiling children. It is too painful a reminder.”

  “Why not share technology with them?” Troi asked. “Surely it’s clear that they are using some form of biotechnology to help their children.”

  “To admit that would be to admit that, perhaps, the Greens had been right all along. That we have been killing our own children. No one wanted to believe that. They wanted to go on hating each other and then they began to hate the Greens as well. We were accustomed to hating. It was easier than changing.”

  “You went to them to help you have a healthy baby,” Troi said.

  “I did,” she said. “And now I have Jeric. I don’t regret it, not in the least.”

  “Marit helped you?”

  Talanne nodded. “And now I have let her die.”

  What could Troi say to that? It was true, in a way. “Does Basha know?”

  “No, he is a true Green-hater.”

  “Audun was our only contact with the Greens. Can you take us to them?” Troi asked.

  Suspicion was plain on her face. “Why?”

  “We have only one more day before Captain Picard is killed,” Worf said.

  Talanne nodded. “Of course, you hope the Greens can tell you something of the biologically altered plant.”

  “Yes,” Worf said.

  She stared from Worf to Troi as if trying to memorize their faces. “I have betrayed the woman who gave me my son. I would not betray the Greens again. If you play me false or play them false, I will kill you both, Federation ambassadors or not.” Her voice and face were very steady, utterly serious.

  Worf gave a small nod. “Understood.”

  “Good,” she said. “It is good that you understand me. I wish I did.” She gave a soft smile. She got her mask from the floor and slid it into place, then lifted the cloak hood. She was hidden again, bland and safe. “I will take you to a Green encampment. Perhaps there you will find your answers, as I found mine.”

  “Thank you, Colonel Talanne,” Troi said.

  “Do not thank me yet, mind-healer. Your captain is still going to be executed unless you can prove his innocence. You saw how much power I had to save Marit. I will be no help to you unless you find proof.”

  “We will find proof,” Worf said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Captain Picard is innocent,” he said.

  “I knew that Klingons were violent and obsessed with a strange honor code, but I did not know that they were politically naive.” There was the faintest trace of a smile in her voice.

  Chapter Eighteen

  GEORDI STARED AT the smooth blinking panels. They were pretty. The soaring silver wall flowed upward to curve into the ceiling. It looked more like a graceful sculpture than a control panel. Geordi admired the beauty of it, but the more he studied it, the less he understood it. He felt like he was growing stupider the longer he stared at the thing.

  He wanted to open a panel and look inside. Veleck had been horrified. You would have thought that Geordi had suggested cutting the chief engineer’s own body open. Barbaric had been the most polite term Veleck had used.

  Geordi had never realized how much of his engineering skill relied on either a good diagnostic computer program, or a hands-on approach—take it apart and put it back together again. The computers here were tied into the engines, they wouldn’t talk to him either. He felt useless.

  Dr. Crusher stood a few meters to his left. She was running medical tests on the control panel, as if it were indeed an injured patient. She had had more luck than Geordi. Because her regular patients frowned on having their skin cut open just for a casual look around, she had tools to peer inside without damaging the outer shell. She turned off the medical tricorder and stared at Geordi. There were tired lines around her green eyes. “I think I may have found the injury.”

  “What?” Geordi walked towards her eagerly. Maybe this was the break they needed.

  “If it were a patient, I would say there is some sort of problem with the immune system. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it would be like something entering our bodies and eating all the white blood cells. As the immune system is destroyed, internal organs would shut down. The body would begin closing ranks, trying to stay alive. The one thing I don’t understand is why the shutdown of the immune system would destroy the engines. A patient I could keep alive, in stasis if I had to.”

  “I think I know,” Geordi said. “You can’t shut this engine off, or even take much of it off-line. The major systems are interconnected—damage one beyond repair and it would be like a house of cards. It’s the main reason Veleck won’t let me cut into any one system. Damage one part and the entire engine is hurt.”

  “So if a vital system is destroyed, then it all goes,” Crusher asked.

  �
�Yeah.”

  “I think I can slow down this immune damage, but the real problem is repairing the systems already injured.”

  Geordi ran a hand along the blinking panel. It ignored him as it had for hours. “Before the engines are stressed to the point of no return.”

  “And they explode,” Crusher finished for him.

  “Can you get started on the immune problem?” he asked.

  “I’ve diagnosed the problem, Geordi, but I don’t know how to get at it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If this was a patient, I would have to operate, invasive surgery. Some of the engine’s vital organs are shutting down. Repair or replacement is needed. Can you open the engines to me? Peel back the proverbial skin and let me get at it?”

  He shook his head. “The engines ignore me. It’s like I’m not here. Veleck touches the panels, and they pulse to life, but they don’t know I’m here.”

  “What can we do, Geordi?”

  Veleck must have heard his name for he lumbered out from behind the silver lattice work. “I told you that you could not help us,” he said. Even his slow-motion voice sounded tired.

  “Couldn’t you open the engines up and let the doctor work on them?”

  “Our engines would not understand your instruments, or your instructions. You would only confuse them.”

  Veleck always spoke of the engines as if they were alive, separate beings. Geordi didn’t question it anymore. “Then you could talk to the engines for us, explain what the doctor was doing.”

  “It will not work,” Veleck said.

  Geordi wondered if there was a Milgian word for pessimist, but he doubted Veleck would get the insult. And besides, Geordi was a Federation officer. He wasn’t supposed to insult officers from alien races. Every crew member was in some way a diplomat. He took a deep breath.

  “Veleck, we don’t have much time left. Can’t you just humor us and tell the engines to do what we ask?”

  “Humor you? I see nothing funny about this situation.’’

  Frustration burst into anger. Geordi opened his mouth to yell at the stubborn being, then stopped himself. He turned away, swallowing all the words he wanted to say. What he did instead was laugh. A low pleasant laugh.

  “I do not understand your humor,” Veleck said.

  “I think we’re all tired,” Crusher said.

  Geordi nodded. “Yeah, we’re all tired.” He looked at the large brightly colored alien, the odd unreadable eyes. “Sometimes when humans are upset, they laugh. It relieves tension.”

  Veleck seemed to think about that for a moment. “Ah, I believe I understand. We do bortak for tension release.”

  “Bortak?” Geordi asked. Crusher and he exchanged glances.

  Veleck’s body suddenly glowed to Geordi’s eyes. The heat flowed and pulsed from one part of his body to another. His body seemed to ripple like semisolid . . . sand. The heat source faded, and Veleck’s body trembled, then if what Geordi was seeing was accurate, solidified again.

  “Doc, did you see that?”

  She nodded, slowly. “I think so.”

  “I feel better,” Veleck said. “More relaxed.”

  “I’m glad, Veleck,” Geordi said slowly.

  A smaller, paler blue version of Veleck lumbered into the engine room. “Chief Engineer, the captain wishes to speak with you.”

  “Thank you, Engineer Bebit. Stay with our guests until my return.”

  “Yes, Chief Engineer.” The younger Milgian’s voice had almost a lilt to it compared to any Geordi had heard before. It sounded almost eager.

  Bebit turned to them once Veleck was gone and said, “How may I serve you?”

  What did they have to lose? Geordi explained what the doctor had discovered and what they wanted to do with the engine.

  “Veleck is correct. The engines would not understand you. Neither he nor I could speak with the engines for you.”

  Geordi sighed. The tension at base of his neck knotted tighter. Were they going to lose this one? Was the first contact with the Milgians going to be the destruction of one of their ships and the loss of dozens of lives?

  “But you might attempt to speak with the engines directly,” Bebit said.

  Geordi stared at him. “You mean I can talk to the engines, personally?”

  “I do not see why not,” Bebit said. “It is true that no non-Milgian has ever tried but the principle should cross such boundaries.”

  “How do I do it?”

  “Wait a minute, Geordi,” Dr. Crusher said. She stepped closer to Bebit. “is there any danger to Lieutenant La Forge?”

  “Danger?” Bebit questioned. “I do not think so.”

  “Geordi, these engines are alive. I don’t think it will be like pushing a button.”

  “Whatever it is, Doctor, I’m willing to do it.” Geordi turned back to the smaller alien. Smaller was relative though. He still towered over the two humans. “Show me how to talk to the engines, Bebit.”

  Bebit walked toward a corner of the smooth wall, if this flowing place had corners. He passed his hand over the wall and a small panel pulsed red and hot. “You must let the engine taste you. Then it will recognize you, and you may talk to it.”

  “Taste me?” Geordi said. “I don’t understand, Bebit.”

  “Place your . . . hand on this place and the engine will . . . sample you. It will recognize your,” he seemed to be trying to think of a better phrase, “your cell structure.”

  “Doctor?”

  “The engines are made up of bits and pieces of the cell structure of the Milgians. I’ve even found what amounts to DNA that would match Veleck.”

  “Is your cell structure in the engines, too, Bebit?” Geordi asked.

  Bebit’s face grew very hot and shifted. It took Geordi a moment to realize he might be smiling. “Yes, all engineers are pieces of the engines. Exactly.” He was like a proud parent whose slow child had finally grasped some elementary topic.

  Geordi didn’t care if the Milgians thought he was slow. He just wanted this to work. “Show me how to let the engines taste me.”

  “Geordi . . .”

  “No, Doc, we’re out of time.”

  She nodded, reluctantly. “All right, but I’ll monitor you.”

  “Glad of it.” Geordi smiled to show he was okay, but frankly the thought of something as alien as these engines “tasting” him was frightening and exciting at the same time.

  “Just place your hand on this panel, like so,” Bebit said. He pressed his own blue hand flat on the panel. It pulsed once almost too bright for Geordi to look at.

  “Geordi, my instruments say that Bebit’s hand became a part of that panel for an instant. They merged.” Crusher looked at him. “Your cell structure won’t merge painlessly with that panel.”

  Geordi flexed his shoulders trying to loosen the tension between them. “I’m going to try, Doctor.”

  Crusher put her head to one side, her mouth making that lopsided motion that always meant she was not happy. “All right, you have to try, but I’ll scan you while you do it. If it starts to damage you, I’m breaking the connection.”

  “You’re the doctor.”

  “It’d be nice if you remembered that more often,” she said.

  Geordi smiled, then turned to the panel. “I just put my hand against it?”

  “Yes,” Bebit said.

  Geordi took a deep breath and pressed his hand flat against the glowing panel. It was as smooth as all the others, and at first just as cool. The panel began to grow hotter where his skin touched it, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at first. It didn’t grow bright like it had with Bebit. The heat seemed almost hesitant, as if it didn’t know quite what to do with this new taste.

  Geordi waited patiently, hand pressed against the warm panel. The surface grew softly warmer, pulsing brighter and brighter. The heat grew slowly until Geordi felt like his hand was being slow roasted. Now, it was starting to hurt. Gritting his teeth, he kept his skin presse
d to the panel. If this was the only way to speak to the engines, he could do it. He had to do it.

  “Geordi, your hand is starting to burn.”

  “I know,” he said. His voice went just a little higher from the pain. It felt like the machine was peeling back his skin, pouring molten metal into his veins. A scream was pushing at the back of his throat.

  The panel was growing brighter, brighter until the angry red glow was almost blinding. Nausea burned up his throat. He had to scream or pass out. Geordi screamed. Something tingled at his hand almost like a tiny mouth. Something pushed against the burning flesh.

  Geordi collapsed to his knees, cradling the hand to his chest. He was covered in a sick sweat, his breath coming in quick pants.

  “Geordi.” Dr. Crusher was kneeling beside him. She took his hand in hers, gently but firmly. “Let me see.”

  Huge watery blisters were rising on the palm of his hand and along his fingers. The pain hadn’t gone away. It was less, but it was like someone had taken all the blood in his hand and replaced it with molten metal. Now the boiling metal was working up his arm, crawling under his skin toward his shoulder.

  “You’ve got second degree burns, and you’re lucky it’s not worse.” Her voice scolded him.

  When Geordi trusted himself to talk without gasping, he asked, “Bebit, did it work? Can I talk to the engines?”

  “I will ask them,” Bebit said. He moved to one of the control panels and waved his hand over it. Colors flowed and chased after his hand, as if the lights could feel his fingers without needing to touch them.

  Sharp, cutting pain forced a gasp from Geordi’s lips, and his attention was jerked back to his hand. Dr. Crusher was doing something painful to the burned flesh.

  “I know this hurts, Geordi, but if I give you painkillers now you’ll be drowsy.” Her serious green eyes stared at him. “Let me know if the pain is too much.”

  He bit down on the inside of his mouth to keep from yelling. He swallowed hard, nausea burning at the back of his throat. Geordi had never had a burn this bad before. The pain was incredible for an injury that wasn’t close to life threatening.