by Diane Carey
Chapter Ten
“I DON’T LIKE THIS at all, Jean-Luc. I’m putting it on record that this is happening under my protest.”
“That should make a lively record, doctor, if it ever reaches Starfleet.”
Sickbay’s isolation unit was buzzing, preparing itself for total zero-grav and the captain’s exact body temperature. Picard watched with a guarded expression as Dr. Crusher prepared a hypo that would do for him what no sane person should allow. Perhaps it took a touch of insanity to drive a man to such measures, or perhaps it only took desperation. All dangers, all risks, all rationality must yield to the single-minded quest of him upon whom the decision fell. And that was Picard.
Beside him, Troi was showing signs of wear. The fine dark hairs around her forehead were moist and curling, her eyes were tense, and her posture slack. Everything that had always seemed so easy for her suddenly appeared an effort. In spite of her desire for him to know what her empathic contacts were experiencing, she found the presence of mind to say, “I must agree with the doctor, sir. I’ve never considered sensory deprivation a valid technique.”
“It’s out of a horror chamber, if you ask me,” Crusher said, bobbing her head once with finality.
“All right,” the captain told them, “then you two can conjure up a better way for me to know what it’s like for those people and do so now, because I’m out to eliminate as many doubts as possible while we have the time.”
The two women shared a long look, each hoping the other would conjure up an alternative.
Picard gave them the courtesy of waiting, which of course was its own form of pressure. “What can I expect?”
Crusher held up her hypo. “Well, the first effect will be—”
“Sir,” Troi interrupted, “they didn’t know what to expect when this happened to them.”
Picard stared at her for a blank moment. For the first time, the prospect of what he was about to do frightened him. His gratitude that she would look after the accuracy of his experiment was tangled with annoyance that she had to do it quite so well. “Mmmm,” he uttered, frowning. “I suppose. All right, let’s get it going.”
He stood stiffly as the doctor pressed the hypo to his carotid artery and it hissed against his skin.
“I’m limiting the time,” Crusher called as the captain stepped into the isolation cubicle.
“Don’t tell me how long,” he said.
“Would I do that? You understand it’s not like sleeping, don’t you?”
“Actually, I know very little about this,” the captain admitted, and he sounded proud of himself.
“Ready when you are, Captain.”
“Go ahead.”
The isolation unit closed itself off with a thick and solid wall of layered soundproofing, the kind of stuff that would muffle almost anything short of a major earthquake.
Troi watched it close with growing apprehension, and moved to the doctor’s side as Crusher completed instructions for the isolation program. “What will it do to him?”
The doctor shrugged. “Physically, the narcotic will paralyze his body and deaden all external sensory impulses to his brain. It’ll do nothing to his consciousness at all. Once I get this punched in, the chamber will provide zero-G with light tethering to keep him from floating into a wall, and it’ll go completely dark in there.”
Troi shivered. “He’ll be just like them.”
With a cryptic nod, the doctor said, “And just as helpless.”
Captain Picard stood at the center of the small gray chamber, waiting for full isolation to kick in. His fingers had been tingling since the hypo came away from his neck, and he couldn’t feel his toes anymore, but otherwise there was no effect yet. He glanced around the room, an exercise in flat paint. Thirty seconds and already this seemed interminable. Troi’s descriptions sent a chill through him as he recalled the past few hours and how deeply she had been affected by what she was feeling. What she was being forced to feel.
“Well, get on with it,” he muttered. How long did it take to program so simple a pattern? This wasn’t the holodeck, after all.
He tried to tap his fingers against his thighs to vent his impatience, and in his mind he indeed did that, but his hands wouldn’t form into the shapes his mind thought of. He started to look down at them—but couldn’t make his neck bend. His head swirled as he tried to move, but only his eyes could still shift in their sockets. His legs were putty, his back arched and began to ache as sensation quickly seeped away. After a few seconds the ache started to go away too, and suddenly he missed its reassuring throb. A little trickle of panic erupted and he had to fight it off as he stared at the blank gray wall.
Maybe we should cancel this.
He couldn’t hear his voice. He’d heard it before; where was it now? His tongue moved slightly in the back of his throat, but that was all there was left to him.
When the zero-G kicked in and he saw the wall move very slightly before him, his involuntary systems yanked a breath into his lungs and he heard the gasp. At least something was still attached to his brain. Strange sensation, though—
The flat gray wall wavered. Or did it? Now the paint looked glossier—almost reflective. Yes . . . there was a face.
A face . . .
A man. Picard instantly dismissed the idea of reflection. It wasn’t his face at all.
The eyes came into focus first, and very clearly. Without blinking they stared directly at Picard as a squared jawline and wide shoulders formed beneath. There was dark hair with a streak of white over one temple, and an expression of pure decisiveness. Even anger.
Picard heard his heart pound in his ears, a long distorted sound, and not for an instant did he have any doubt about who shared his cubicle or the realness of what he saw. Riker had described exactly this and Picard entertained neither question nor guess. Paralyzed, he stared back.
Captain to captain, across the ages, the silent meeting became interminable. Picard’s mind raged to be able to open his mouth and speak to Arkady Reykov, to ask him the question that would make everything much simpler, but his body was numb, gone. And the cubicle was getting dark.
Damn it! Why now? Give me ten more seconds!
Reykov lifted his hand, and the hand became a fist. He showed it to Picard—not a threat, but some kind of example. Picard tried to shake his head, to communicate that he didn’t understand. That too failed him.
Reykov opened his fist and spread his fingers in a European exaggeration that Picard’s French background allowed him to understand perfectly: Well?
Darkness closed around them. And darker still . . . and darker. Not yet, damn it!
Blackness. Blacker than a dead computer screen, blacker than space. Was Reykov still here?
Full panic struck. It was as though his heart snapped. Picard’s mind suddenly flashed back to childhood, to those awful horror stories children can’t get enough of, to what wasn’t there and what pretended to be there—and what was there. He waited to be grabbed.
But he wouldn’t even feel it if it happened. He might’ve been grabbed already. Was Beverly monitoring his heartbeat? His brainwaves? He hadn’t discussed that with her. She would think of it, wouldn’t she?
All right, get a grip on yourself. You’ve just seen a ghost, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Be practical. Get concentrating on the task at hand. You’re fine. You’re in the isolation chamber, it’s dark, and you can’t move. It’s exactly the correct conditions and you asked for it. You’ve needed a rest anyway. How bad can it be for a few hours?
Geordi paced the small area Data had trapped him in for about as long as he could stand it before he started tearing the facing off the wall to look for a circuit he could splice into to get that contamination shield to open up. Or maybe he could cut into the communication network and buzz for help. Just about anything would be better than stalking around here like a big chicken waiting for its feed while Data flew off into nowhere to get deep-fried. What a pair.
&nb
sp; Data. He took everything so personally. If that didn’t qualify him as a person, what did? Only persons can take things personally. Machines don’t. How come Data listened to everyone else lately?
“Why don’t you pay attention to me for a change?” Geordi howled. He glanced up from the close work of digging through all the exposed circuitry in the wall. “What’m I? I’m part machine too, y’know! Damn . . . where’s the main link?”
Shuttlecraft. Great, just great. Data was probably gone by now and there was no way to change what was going on out there.
His hands started to sweat. The going got slower as his fingers began to tremble and slip. Only the microfilters in his visor kept him from making twice as many errors as he was already making. And only his dogged reliance on the occasional snide remark kept him from admitting that he was plain scared.
That thing, that light show out there . . . horrible. Geordi shuddered as he carefully weeded out the circuit chips he’d need to bypass the shorted-out lock. He’d had nightmares that looked like that thing. The times when his visor was malfunctioning, he’d see things wrong. Light would be distorted, heat would stretch things—like having a fever and no way to cool off.
The others didn’t know what Data had been put through when it attacked him; they didn’t see like Geordi did. They’d never understand, and they’d never quite believe him if they couldn’t see it for themselves. I don’t blame them . . . exactly. It’s not the kind of thing you believe until you see it for yourself. If I have to plug myself right into the computer core by the eyeballs, I’ll make them see it. I’ll make them get him back. That means you, Mr. Riker. Yes, sir. You.
This is certainly strange. Enjoyable. I haven’t thought of Laura for years. How many? An entire age, perhaps. And such beautiful memories to have set aside. There was a poem she liked. Which was it? She liked long poems and epics. She had such patience . . . who reads epics? She read them aloud sometimes, all in one sitting. And so well for an untrained voice. Or have the years made it sound better?
Absence, like dainty Clouds,
On glorious-bright,
Nature’s weake senses shrowds,
From harming light.
Absence maintained the treasure
Of pleasure unto pleasure,
Sparing with praise;
Absence doth nurse the fire,
Which starves and feeds desire
With sweet delays.
He’d heard it read once before. Once. And hadn’t thought of it since. Listened to and forgotten; his brain caught up with the girl and her voice and not the poem, yet now he remembered and reexperienced every word, every syllable, every nuance. The meanings of the words together, their meanings separately, even the music of the letters. The whole poem. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke—Caelica, wasn’t it? When had he picked up so much literary awareness? Certainly he had paid little attention in that class he signed up for, especially since he only signed up for it so he could walk Laura there every other day. Ah, young men. Young women.
This experience was enthralling too, this complete freedom of his mind to explore and remember and examine the things he’d seen in his life. Old experiences that he thought had faded came charging back in full light. Once again, and one at a time, he became intimate with his own memories, all the pasts a man his age could accrue. It wasn’t a bad-looking past at all, really, dismissing a few knocks, stumbles, and burned fingers along the way.
After the past was enjoyed, something in it reminded him of quantum physics and away he went on that fast ship through all the science and math he’d ever been taught or figured out or even watched being figured by someone else. It all seemed so simple now! Equation after theory after hypothesis after experiment—stunning and dazzling, all the compartments his mind had closed and kept treasured all these years. Dead relatives, missing comrades, absent friends, friends who also died, one after another they came to visit him in his silent place here and he reexperienced them, from pleasure to pain, and he felt himself cry. Or thought he did . . . Where were his eyes? Where were his tears? Why couldn’t he feel the tears on his cheeks?
How long have I been here? In fact, where am I?
Oh, yes. The ship. I should have Riker try this. It’s exhilarating, seductive . . . having no distractions, no clock to answer to, nothing to concern my mind other than its own thoughts, not even an itch to rupture my attention. Though it would be reassuring if I could just wiggle my toes . . .
How will I know if the ship needs me? We could be blasted out of space and I’d never know. No . . . Riker would have me brought out if I was needed. What is this strange irrationality?
Were those birds? He’d heard that kind of birdsong once before . . . Canis IV? Yes, of course. The fluffy birds with the silly faces. They made a pretty song. Perhaps he’d just hang here and listen for a while.
Something about Canis IV—a long time ago.
No. No, I don’t want to remember that. No . . .
Riker paced the bridge, eyeing the deceptive emptiness of space on the huge viewscreen. The bridge was reduced to nightclub dimness. The walls and carpet, usually the color of sand and camels, were dark now and Riker felt like he was walking around inside a cup of espresso. The shiny black computer panels and liquid crystal schematics of the ship’s operating systems were reduced from their usual foam greens and blues to muddy and muted patterns. With the lights down and the displays subdued, the broad viewscreen jumped to shocking prominence. Suddenly they were players on a proscenium and everything they did was crucial. The level of their voices, the sheen of sweat on their skin, the sequence of their movements. Everything was magnified. And before them, space was their audience.
As empty as space was, and as cold as it was, it never quite looked that way. There were always stars to twinkle their pastel lights and broad nebulas to shimmer in the distance, but it was hard for the human mind to accept the wholeness of that distance, so everything looked much fuller than it was. He often liked to watch space go by, but today it gave him no comfort. Today there was a rat behind the woodwork. Still out there. Hiding behind all that nothing. Riker knotted his fists and dared it to come out.
“Lieutenant Worf, anything further from life sciences or engineering on that thing?”
Worf’s huge frame straightened from Science Station 2. “We’re trying to lock down the individual components of its exostructure now, sir, using the postulation of interdimensionality as a guide. Don’t worry, sir. We’ll figure it out if I have to slice off a piece of it and beat it to death for an autopsy.”
Riker nodded, but he couldn’t manage the smile that would’ve shown his real gratitude. Nearly fourteen hours now, hanging here in silence and dimness. He’d never been much of a wait-around type, and this kind of tension was mutilating. How often had they told him at the Academy that battle was nine-tenths waiting? Waiting, planning, analyzing, waiting. Deadly. Sometimes deadlier than the battle itself. It made for recklessness.
He wished the captain was here. This business of isolation, sensory deprivation, sounded risky. Never mind time-consuming when time was one thing they might not have. Then again, I’m the one pacing around with nothing to do. The captain’s probably getting something accomplished while I wear a rut in the rug.
He found he’d worked his way up to Worf’s station. Riker leaned over the muted display, keeping his voice low. “No clues about some way to fight that thing off, Worf?”
“As a matter of fact, sir,” Worf’s deep voice returned clearly, “we’ve brought it down to a question of its tolerance level.”
“Tolerance?”
“Yes, sir. How much energy it can take in at a given time. We think that’s why it backed off us before.” Worf’s big brown fingers poked in a few commands, and the faint jade image of the Enterprise was enhanced. Specific areas on the display then quietly flashed. “These were the areas most affected by the drain. We’re trying to narrow down its power consumption at the moment it backed off. If we can calculate t
he amount of energy drained from the ship up to the point when the entity backed off, we may be able to calculate its breaking point.”
Riker straightened. “Boy, that sounds shaky. You’re proposing we overfeed it to overload it”
“That’s the conclusion so far, sir. We’re keeping our minds open for alternatives, but it likes the taste of energy and the phasers—”
“I know. All right, keep going. I’d like a couple of choices to present to the captain when he comes out of his experiment, and exhausting all the ship’s power trying to stuff that thing till it pops isn’t my favorite. That leaves us with no second chance.”
“Understood, sir.” Worf made no ceremony about turning his fierce countenance back to his console once again, his dogged perseverance taking over completely. Riker watched him for a moment, taking refuge in the fact that Worf was ignoring him. He wished all his crew could be so unaffected by the presence of an officer at his shoulder. Even Data wasn’t this imperturbable. Not with me, anyway. But I guess I make him nervous.
All at once he turned. “Where is Data? Still down in AR?”
Worf looked puzzled as he said, “Now that you mention it, sir, we haven’t heard from either him or LaForge since they cleared us to refill the mains. They were monitoring from the source.”
“Doesn’t take this long. Get them back up here.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Worf, how do you feel about all this? What are your instincts telling you?”
“My instincts, sir?” The big man came to his full height and frowned in thought. “The captain never asks me about tactics, sir.”
“Well, I’m asking.”
“Klingons are warriors, sir. Our goal is to die in battle. Some Klingons have even made wars and feuds begin so they and their clans could go out and die right. But this thing,” he said contemptuously, casting a glare at the wide viewscreen and its glitter, “this thing is a coward and a bully. There is no honor in fighting it.”
