by Diane Duane
“But I think that trend, too, is on the point of breaking now. Certainly you’ve unsettled it. She doesn’t know how to read your sparing her son. She thinks maybe some spark of that old friendship with Jack Crusher is alive in you still—so all her thoughts are shaken and changed, and everything becomes unstable again, dangerously so.”
She looked at him for a moment.
“Well, Counselor. Go on.”
“I would think you would welcome an end to all this instability. It would be simple enough. Simply declare your liaison with her at an end and start another one that’s more to your advantage.”
She was quite close now. Though she had made no move to touch him and had her arms behind her back in a position matching his, the air of almost stifling intimacy between them was quite palpable. Picard kept the poetry going and said, “And you would be that liaison, of course.”
“I don’t think you would find it unpleasant. Ask Commander Riker—if you need to.” She rolled her eyes and gave a little scornful laugh. “It’s not in his nature to keep quiet about something he’s enjoying.”
“I wonder how you bear that, considering that you are generally of more… delicate sensibilities.” This was straightforward flattery, but he let it come out, needing time to consider the ramifications of all this.
She raised her eyebrows. “It is flattery,” she said, startling him a little, “but accepted for the moment.”
A lucky guess? Picard thought. Or is she genuinely hearing something? “It’s an interesting prospect,” Picard said, meanwhile thinking loudly, His-counsellors are rogues, Perdie! / While men of honest mind are banned / to creak upon the Gallows Tree, / or squeal in prisons overmanned. “I should warn you,” he said, “that the doctor probably will not take kindly to such a turn of events. If you should find yourself suddenly needing medical care…”
The counselor smiled at him. “Should we agree on this, the only one needing medical care will be the doctor… and by the time it arrives, it will be a little too late. I have friends in sickbay as well.”
She took a turn away from him for a moment. “It would work out very well; we could command the ship together. You, the brains; I, the eyes.”
“And what would Commander Riker be?”
The counselor simply laughed. “We’ll have to look lower for a part for him…. All he thinks about are power and his lusts, but men of that kind have things they’re useful for.”
“Of course. And there are other kinds of men… useful for other things, I take it?” He bent closer to her face.
“So I’ve heard.” For a moment they breathed practically into each other’s lips—then Picard straightened a little bit, daring to push the moment no further. There was always the chance that something of his jerry-rigged shielding would slip, should the body become more interested than it already was.
“Counselor, you’ve given me a great deal to think about.”
“So what will you do?”
“I will consider your proposal”—he was tempted to say proposition, but restrained himself—“and get back to you with an answer in good time.”
The first spark of anger showed in those eyes. “Surely, it would be more to your advantage”—she leaned on the word—“to come to a choice now, so that I can begin acting in a way that won’t be prejudicial. Your time is very short. If you have an ally, it will be possible to make more of it.”
He drew himself up quite straight. “Counselor, I will not be pushed or rushed. I will give you my answer in good time, in due course—and not before.”
She frowned at him. “One more chance, Captain. Just one. Don’t let your stubbornness push you into a mistake.”
He stood silent and merely looked at her.
“I see. That pride of yours.” She shook her head. “No matter. If you recover this situation by yourself, then we’ll talk further. I’ll have no need to contact Starfleet.” Somehow he knew that this was a lie: if she hadn’t already done it, she was going to do it quite soon. “If I must do it, I think you know very well the aftereffects will be unfortunate. Commander Riker has refused several offers of command of other craft, as you know, because he’s been waiting for this one. He won’t have thought to be authorized to take command of it so soon.”
Picard considered how many meanings rode behind the word authorized. She would call Starfleet and get permission to have him assassinated. Would she let Riker do it, he found himself wondering with an almost clinical detachment, or would she insist on doing it herself? Hell hath no fury…
“I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” she said, turning, and added with some scorn, “such as they are. Third-rate poets.”
“There is nothing third-rate about Villon,” Picard said mildly.
She snorted. “I have some other matters to attend to.”
She turned and went quickly out. The feeling of rage that trailed behind her in the air was like smoke. He was meant to feel it, he thought, meant to take alarm.
He was alarmed, but not in the way she thought.
In the shaft servicing the computer core, Geordi pulled out another chip, scanned it, found it compromised, and slipped one of his own storage chips into place. He touched the “run” command on his padd again and started loading in the last eighty terabytes of material. It always seemed to take longer when you were so close to the end of a job. He whistled softly, looked around him, then started pulling some of the other chips to genuinely replace them.
The padd flashed at him: that chip was full. Only four terabytes. He shook his head, took another from the belt pouch and slipped it into the spot the first one had occupied.
“Mr. La Forge?” Eileen’s voice said from above. “Can you come have a look at this one?”
“What—got a problem?”
“Yes, I’m not sure what to make of this.”
“Right,” he said, perching his padd just inside the open panel he was working on. “God,” he said, floating upward—he had changed to a floater half an hour ago—“I’m so stiff from sitting on this… thing,” he finished as his head rose above the level of the top of the shaft, and he looked up at those boots, those legs, that skirt—and, looking down on him, her eyebrows raised slightly, the counselor, with two security people behind her, phasers drawn and pointed at him.
He swallowed. “Counselor Troi.” The first thought to pass through his mind was that he should simply push himself back off the floater and take the fall, a hundred fifty feet down to the bottom of the core, before she could—
—and it was too late. He was frozen like a statue where he sat, unable to move, and she was inside his head. The pressure of it was like bricks laid on his brain, squeezing it down, squeezing his will down and out of the way, while from inside a knife sliced delicately through layer after layer of thought, looking for something in particular—and then it found it.
With terrible clarity, clarity greater than even he had experienced in the moment itself, he saw his hands pull out the little transporter tag, put it on the pile of chips, and beam them away. Then his sight was his own again, and he was looking at Troi, and Hessan standing beside her, with a quirk of nasty smile on her face. And he still couldn’t move a muscle.
“Why, it’s quite true,” said the counselor with great interest. “You were quite correct to send for me, Hessan. You did see what you thought you saw. Not the same chips at all. Where did those go, I wonder?”
She looked at Geordi. “Two of you,” she said to her security people. “Haul him up out of there. Take him down to the Agony Booth by my quarters: that one’s still working. We’ll have a nice long talk. Good. One thing first.”
She pulled the knife out of her boot and took Geordi’s bare arm, studying it for a moment. “Let’s see. Yes, there it is. I don’t want us being interrupted.”
She cut. Geordi couldn’t even cry out, and a moment later the counselor held up the bloodied intradermal implant, dropped it on the floor, and crushed it under her heel. “That’s better. Now
, Hessan, as for you—you’ve been waiting for a promotion, haven’t you? Some little while now.”
“Yes, Counselor,” she said, still smiling. “I didn’t think it was likely to come soon, though.”
“Oh, no problem with that. You take over this operation. Granted, there are three assistant chiefs ahead of you, but they can’t really do the job, can they?—we both know that.” The two smiled at each other conspiratorially. “Get moving now,” the counselor said, “and get this ship running again quickly. We have problems to deal with.”
Hessan turned to the other engineering staff gathered around. “Never mind this swapping back and forth between cores; it’s too time-consuming. Let’s simply break out the emergency ‘hard’ six-hour backups out of stores and use those instead. Get me more crew: I want all the diseased chips pulled and destroyed within half an hour. Take as many people as it needs.”
Geordi swallowed. They were going to do it the old-fashioned way, the simple way—the way he had hoped no one else would think of in the face of direct orders and a sufficiently elegant solution.
The counselor nodded, satisfied, as people went into action around her. “Fine,” she said to Hessan. “Meanwhile, I’ll take care of him.” She turned, and her eyes rested on Geordi, and that smile broadened.
In great horror he found himself understanding how the fly feels when the spider looks at it. Do spiders smile? he wondered. If they did, they would look like this.
They dragged him away.
On the bridge of the other Enterprise, Riker leaned over Data’s console. There was nothing else to do at the moment, nothing to see on the viewscreen since the other Enterprise had taken itself out of range. “How’s the data analysis going?”
“I am still completing it,” Data said. “The amount of information Mr. La Forge has sent us so far is considerable. I have, however, been able to extract and abstract for Commander Hwiii those parts of it which are most practically oriented. There is some information in the package we have received about the actual building of the apparatus that causes the inclusion of another object into this universe.”
“Does it say anything about getting an object out of this universe, back where it belongs?”
“Indeed it does, a great deal. Under average circumstances there does not seem too much difficulty in pushing an originating object back where it came from. There appears to be some question whether in the theory, hyperstring structure from one universe may not actually extend into another. It would seem that some traces of string structure remain about a dislocated object and may be used as a shortcut to ‘snap’ that object back into its original location- and duration-space.”
“Like a rubber band,” Riker said.
“The simile would be fairly exact. The only difficulty would appear to be if an object remained too long in this universe. Not only would the universes themselves move out of phase, complicating matters”—Riker rolled his eyes: Data was understating again—“but the strength of the hyperstring attachment attenuates over time. The relationship is expressed by the equation IV/pL equals kO. Once the final string connections are broken or weakened past the point where the apparatus can successfully use them, other means must be found to locate the ‘home’ universe.” Data stopped a moment, considering. “This is an entirely different theoretical area, on which it would appear the Empire has as yet done no work, since there is only one specific universe they are interested in: ours.”
Riker shook his head. The thought of the Enterprise having to bounce from universe to universe in search of its home… But it had to be considered. “Mr. Data, what would your estimate be of the number of alternative universes we would have to explore to find our way home from here under such circumstances?”
Data blinked. “An accurate estimate would require at least moderately reliable projections of the number of universal or semi-universal faces on the surface of the hypothetical solid, the rotation of which through hyperspace creates or can have been said to ‘create’ the alternative universes, but—”
“You don’t know,” Riker said gently.
Data opened his mouth, then shut it again. “No,” he said a bit mournfully.
“Then let’s not even bother with it just now. How’s Commander Hwiii doing?”
“He has already started building the basics of the inclusion/exclusion device from some of the matrix information in the last upload.”
“How far along is he?”
“I would estimate he and the engineering team working with him have already completed about fifteen percent of the construction work that will be required.”
“You did tell him to take as much crew as he needed…”
“Certainly, Commander. But at this stage of the construction, sheer numbers will not be of much help. Among other things, not all the theoretical or construction data on the inclusion device is yet in place here. Mr. La Forge’s upload is still incomplete: he has advised us that another hundred and forty terabytes of material are still to come.”
Riker whistled.
“Until the information is complete and we have the necessary data on the fine detail of the device, we will not be able to progress too much further.” Data thought for a moment. “It is as if the commander were building a subspace radio set. He has the information needed to build the chassis, as it were—the matrix into which the specialty frequency and modulations boards would be plugged—but as to the boards themselves, he has as yet neither an idea of what they are or where they should be placed and how they should be powered.”
“He’s done the groundwork.”
“That is correct. And until the download is complete, there is little more that can be done.”
“If there was only some way to find out what’s keeping that upload,” Riker said softly.
“Scrambled communications with the away team are possible at this point.”
Riker thought about that. He thought about it for a long moment and opened his mouth to say, “Riker to La Forge”—then changed his mind. “No, no reason to stand over his shoulder and hurry him. No one works best in a situation like that.”
Riker made for the turbolift doors. “I’ll go down to engineering and see how Hwiii is doing, see if he needs any help.”
The doors shut. Worf watched Riker go with some amusement, then said to Data, “Apparently, since he cannot stand over Mr. La Forge’s shoulder, he will now go and stand over Commander Hwiii’s.”
“An example of irony,” Data said after a moment.
Worf grinned. “It is an example of Commander Riker,” he said, and went back to monitoring the other ship.
He screamed again. Screaming was becoming like breathing now. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t done it. His throat was so raw with the pain that the sound of the torment in the Agony Booth was a new torment in itself, every time he did it—and he couldn’t stop.
The pain came in waves, like the ocean, and felt as relentless. There was no way to stop it or block it. It rolled through his body, trailing an anguish after it that was like a prolonged version of the time the coolant gas got loose in engineering: a cold that burned like fire, all over him. But this was not cold. He might as well have been half-immersed in lava, or live steam, for the way his body felt. Then the pain would reduce, just slightly, he suspected; but to his agonized nerves, the change seemed so great that the difference was more like that between a mild headache and a migraine. He found himself absurdly, pitifully grateful when it decreased even so slightly. He felt as if he would do anything to keep it from increasing again. And that fear was much with him in those moments of decreased pain: that after a little while, he would do anything, say anything.
“Who came with you?” the soft voice inquired. His vision had long since stopped working correctly. Whether the Agony Booth’s field was interfering with the visor somehow, or the optic nerves themselves were rebelling, he had no idea. He had to blink and stare through the shimmer of the field before he could see her standing
there, smiling at him, waiting. She had something else to use on him, he knew, besides the Booth, but she was in no hurry. He had barely enough strength even to shake his head and thought he had better conserve it. So he merely hung there, said nothing, did nothing. Though his body twitched—the poor overfired nerves firing one another in sympathy and frightened anticipation. Every time he tried to move, his body wouldn’t move the way he wanted it to—and it hurt.
“You may as well tell me,” the counselor said. “I am not going to stop until you have told me what I want to know. And that’s just the Booth I’m talking about. Once you’ve finally told me, I’m going to go in the other way… and make sure.” Geordi shuddered all over and cried out again with the pain of it; every nerve cringed and twitched at the motion.
“The sooner you tell me,” she said reasonably, “the more useful you are to me. And the more useful you are to me, the more likely it is that I’ll keep you alive after we finish this. Your counterpart—oh, yes, we found him, that didn’t take long, after you told us where to look—your counterpart is a very talented man. Having two of him in the Empire would be better still. I daresay we could make your working for us very pleasant. But there’s no hope of it happening unless you’re alive at the end of all this…. And whether or not you’re alive depends on whether you annoy me or not.”
He shuddered again. Told them? he thought, through the confusion of the pain and fear. I don’t remember telling her anything about… But that was the horror of this situation. He might have told them. He might have. And if he had—what else might he tell them? Stop this now, part of him shouted. Stop it now and control what you tell her! Give her a little piece of information at a time.
The shock of the pain caught him again. “Don’t you want to live?” she said softly while it rolled over him and left him writhing.
He knew it was a lie. He knew there was no way that they could leave him alive—that she would kill him, and enjoy it, after she had extracted the information she wanted. But the pain began to build again, washing away reason, and he drew a long breath and screamed again and again, the body trying desperately to get someone to stop this. Everything hazed out, nothing was left but that pain, a world gone white and dead with it. It would not stop.
