by Diane Duane
“No one’s going to punish you,” Troi said, shaken. The look of pure, hating disbelief that Stewart turned on her was a poor echo of the blast of rage and betrayal that hit her now.
“Oh, come on, Counselor,” he said sarcastically, turning the title into an epithet. “Why would you be here otherwise? Everybody knows you can’t bear to be left out of a little ‘conditioning.’ Especially at the moment. One of those Betazed ‘weird times,’ it’s more than usually good for you, I hear—” And then he caught himself. Some fear even worse than the fear of her briefly impinged. He looked around the room, saw the captain, Geordi, and Crusher looking at him, and his face sagged into hopelessness again. “Are they real?” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter, does it? You’ll kill me now, won’t you? For him.” Among the incoherencies, this one stab of cold dread went through Deanna like a spear as the man’s eyes fell on Picard. If the feeling could have been put into words, “Abandon hope, all ye—” might have been a good rendering. No hope. Failed, seen to have failed, seen by the captain to have failed—a death sentence. “Get it over with,” Stewart said, sick with fear, and turned away toward the wall, slumped: a man waiting to be shot.
Troi’s head was already aching with the onslaught of such bitterness. At the same time, she was rather annoyed. The problem here, she thought, is that I don’t know what questions to ask. Or how to ask them. All I can do is be nondirective and hope for the best. “The security team,”
Deanna said. “You said you could make it worth their while. How exactly did you mean that?”
Stewart looked at her sidewise, the question distracting him from his terror momentarily, so that more normal reactions asserted themselves for the moment. “You of everybody aboard this ship know that,” he said. “A little action on the side, someone taken off the promotion ladder here, a bribe or two there, a word whispered somewhere else to help your career along—if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for us little crewmen, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t I try the same pitch?” And there was a sudden dawning inside him of a wild hope—but caution, caution. His expression was going almost sly. “I wonder what you mean by asking. No disrespect, Counselor,” Stewart said hurriedly. But the sly look got stronger. “Getting tired of Number One then, are you?”
The emotional subtext of his words was so amused, and there was such a background of distaste to it—slightly lascivious distaste—that Deanna almost blushed. Not quite: she had that much control over herself left. “If I am?” she said.
“Then maybe I can make it worth your while as well. I know about Betazeds—it’s one of the problems, isn’t it? There just sort of isn’t—enough—at certain times. There are some of us, though, who might surprise you. A little less easy to wear out than”—the man’s eyes darted around nervously—“Number One. He’s been so busy lately, anyway, what with—” And now Stewart glanced, ever so briefly, at Picard, who had sat back down again in Crusher’s office and was trying very hard indeed not to watch them.
“Commander Riker’s duty load can be considerable,” Deanna said neutrally.
Stewart burst out in a great laugh of anger and amusement. “If we’re going to make a deal, let’s make it. Let me go back to my duties—let me out of this test or drill or whatever it is—I’m a good crewman. I’m a loyal crewman. I back my principals. I’ve never turned my coat on any of them. I’d be good as one of your men, too. You could buy me off my principal easily enough—or take me.” His tone was wheedling, now, but under the wheedling the fear remained, and the confusion. There was also a feeling of growing boldness, though: he seemed to think he had achieved something, possibly just by still being alive. “A word, a favor—you have the power on this ship. Everybody knows that. Even he.” And his glance slid to Picard again, and away. “You know,” he said more softly, “even the captain can’t act without the security officer’s approval.”
Troi had to swallow at that. “Just one more thing. Tell me again what you were told. They said you were to beam over to a ship like the Enterprise—but it’s not the Enterprise.”
“That’s what they said. Did they get the phrasing wrong? Is someone else going to be punished?” And under the question rose a terrible glee and relief. There was still great uncertainty in him, but now he thought that someone else was in trouble, not him, and this trap was a trap for another crewman.
“That was all?” Troi desperately wanted to add, Nothing about another space, a parallel universe? But she would not lead him; that wouldn’t help.
Stewart nodded and breathed out, then looked at her sidewise. “I had to wonder. It’s rare enough an officer is more interested in one of us than in our agonizers.” His hand crept involuntarily to the spot where his badge would have been. “And as for you…” The man’s fury and fear were so balanced in him that Stewart might have said anything, and Troi would have welcomed such an outburst, probably more revealing than all this terrified fencing.
Come on, she willed him, tell me what you think of me, let it go.
Stewart sealed over again, turned away in a roil of frustration, cupidity, confusion, and fright. Troi sighed. “Keep him here for the moment,” she said to Ryder and Detaith. “I may want him again later.” Then she simply looked at Stewart—and that wave of fear ran through him so vehemently now that he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Hopelessness, the fear again of imminent death, the feeling that he would welcome death rather than what she would now do.
The emotions were so intense that they almost sorted themselves into thought. As it was, she heard/felt something that she felt sure would have turned into a cry of monster, murderer, horrible—and the image of her face, set into a cold, cold smile.
Deanna stepped away, back into Dr. Crusher’s office, where the others watched her, uncomprehending. When the door had closed, she sat down quite suddenly in the nearest chair, as if someone had removed the pins from her knee joints. Certainly they felt about as useless, and she sat and shook with Stewart’s emotions, and her own.
“A moment or two,” she said to the three who waited, “if you don’t mind.” It took her longer than that—calming her breathing, getting her heart to slow down, doing the exercises common to her people for the management of one’s emotions when another’s became too much.
“Counselor,” Picard said after a moment, “are you all right?”
She shook her head. “Emphatically not, Captain, though functional enough. Let me tell you what I sensed…
“He doesn’t know what to make of all this,” Deanna said after she had finished a description of Stewart’s reactions. “He thinks it’s some kind of test of his loyalty—apparently such are common, where he comes from. In fact, I believe he thinks we’re really all part of some elaborate illusion, and that he’s actually on his ship’s holodeck. But his reactions to his officers are not—anything like what we’re used to.” She shuddered, glancing at Crusher and La Forge. “You two hardly matter to him. In Commander Riker’s case, the imagery that comes up is of brutality, a kind of gluttony—” She broke off, uncomfortable. “The captain—he’s afraid of, and hates; but at the same time, you’re a symbol of something Stewart wants, I think. I didn’t understand it…. And he’s more afraid of me than of anything else that could happen to him.”
Picard shook his head. “And that was all you could find out?”
“I don’t know, Captain. He says things that would probably be most illuminating—if I knew how to take them, if I understood the context. But this is definitely one of those times I wish my mother hadn’t been half of a mixed marriage. Right now I would exchange a lot of diversity for being able to hear what that man was actually thinking.”
“‘Security officer,’ he called you,” Geordi said. “Except in the abstract—what’s that supposed to mean?”
Deanna shook her head. “I got the sense it was a command-level title. Other than that—there’s no telling.”
“Conclusions?” Picard said.
Deanna took a long, shuddering
breath—she was still having some trouble with control. “Captain, unlikely as it seems, I at least am left with the conclusion that this man is from another Enterprise; and one very like ours, for clearly, he knows us, or some of us—and he knew this ship’s structure well enough to move around in it fairly easily before he broached a security area and we were alerted to his presence. He was sent here to spy on us, to report, and possibly to return—though I’m not too sure about that last, for much more care seems to have been taken preparing to get him over here than for preparing him to come back. At least he was forthcoming about what information he was after.” She looked at Geordi.
He nodded. “I got them. I should be able to find any others he got at the same time, too, since anytime a file is accessed, there’s a tag added to it, a bookkeeping trace. I’ll check all the tags changed within that time frame.”
Picard sat thoughtful. The pool of organization and sober thought that spread from him was reassuring, and Deanna felt, at that moment, that she could use all the reassurance she could get. That wave of fear was still beating at her back. “Doctor, Mr. La Forge, I’m going to want a department heads’ meeting in about two hours. I’ll be on the bridge if I’m needed.”
Geordi went out, heading back to engineering; Crusher stepped out into the main sickbay area to see about her other patients. Troi sat there, looking at the captain; his unease at the way she looked touched her. She shook her head.
“What kind of people are we there?” she said.
Picard looked briefly off into the distance. “Another Enterprise…, he said softly. “Another Troi…”
“Another Picard,” Deanna said. “Cold, he saw you. A grim, quiet terror, hard, like iron. And another Riker—cruel, and liking the cruelty.” She breathed out, feeling Stewart’s fear still clawing at her back.
“And you?” Picard said.
“Death,” Deanna said, “in an odd uniform. And worse than either of you.”
Picard stood up and looked at her with compunction. “Two hours, Counselor,” he said, and went out.
She sat there, wondering, What would it take to turn me into a murderess?… and worse? For Stewart’s emotions had hinted that there were things worse than merely being killed. You spend your life, Deanna thought, being grateful that you’re no worse, as a person, than you might be—and then you find out what you might be.
She got up and went after Picard, heading for the bridge. As she passed the bed, the man on it didn’t open his eyes, didn’t move, but she felt the regard of his terror follow her out into the hall. She was well up to the bridge before it faded into the background and she felt even remotely human again.
CHAPTER 4
The bridge was running on yellow alert now. Picard had paused by the helm, where the helm officer in rotation, Ensign Redpath, was running a navigations diagnostic in a spare moment. “Anything on sensors?” Picard said to Data.
“Negative at the moment, Captain.”
“We may have some while yet of this,” Picard said. “If what our… guest… has just told us is true, his ship is expecting to pick him up shortly. I desire him to miss that pickup—preferably without the other ship knowing why.”
Picard fingered his lower lip for a moment. “Mr. Data,” he said, and glanced over at the young officer manning the helm, “Ensign Redpath—for the time being, if any vessel whatsoever approaches us, no matter how familiar or unfamiliar, I want you to make us scarce. We need time to consider our options, and at the moment I trust no one, and I don’t care to be seen. I want all sensors on extreme sweep, and confine yourselves as much as possible to passive sensing—nothing that would alert another ship which might be looking for our scan. And I want to know where everything is around us for as many light-years around as you can manage—everything, be it the size of a starship or a bread box. If anything comes near us, I want you to note its location and get us out of what you judge might be its sensor range as quickly as possible—while, at the same time, not losing sight of it entirely ourselves.”
Data and Ensign Redpath blinked at each other. Then Ensign Redpath nodded his dark head, smiled slightly, and said, “Bumpercars.”
It was Picard’s turn to blink now. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Redpath?”
“It’s a negative-feedback program, sir. You program the sensors to have the helm take the ship out of range anytime they sense anything: it’s an analogue of the system your body uses to protect you from pain—burn your hand, it jerks back. Each succeeding contact pushes the ship out of range again. When contact is on the point of being completely lost, the helm is instructed to recoil a little in a direction roughly parallel to the projected course of the object that caused the recoil, so you find it again… just. And then start recoiling again. Even if the target vessel gets anything from us, our close mirroring of its own course changes will make us seem like some kind of sensor ghost.”
“The ship’s course may become quite irregular,” Data said.
Picard nodded. “All the same, that sounds like what I want—and I don’t mind if the Enterprise jumps around like a flea on a hot griddle, as long as she’s not seen. See to it, Ensign.”
“Aye, sir,” Redpath said, and started working at his console.
“I want to be notified the minute anything happens,” Picard said to the bridge at large. “I’ll be in the ready room.”
Heads nodded all around. As Picard was heading up that way, Worf approached him. “Captain, if you have a moment…”
“Of course.”
“Before it became necessary to restrict our scans to passive ones, I found something that you should see. Look.”
Worf showed him the readout at one of the science stations. Far away, at nearly three or four light-years’ distance, the display showed them a tiny, fuzzy shape that Picard would normally have suspected of being sensor artifact. The computer’s sensing of it showed clearly that it was radiating energy.
Worf pointed at one of several waveforms coming from it. “Look, Captain. This pattern closely matches the parameters for the waveform of our transporter carrier.”
Picard stared at it. “Mr. Worf, that is—” He shook his head.
“Barely a meter in length. Yes, sir. As far as I can make out—and Mr. La Forge agrees with my assessment at this point—it is a kind of transporter relay station, with a simple ‘recording’ function built in. Someone begins transport ‘to’ this object: the pattern is caught halfway, then stored in this portable form, if you like, and held to be sent off in another direction. Light-years, parsecs—then, when close enough, and within range of its object, the transport process is completed.”
“It must take a considerable amount of energy.”
“Yes, but such would only be apparent when the ‘platform’ was actually transporting.”
“And recklessness,” Picard said softly. “If the power should fail…”
“Precisely. It is not what you would call a ‘low-risk’ form of transportation. Interesting enough in its own way: a sort of stasis, or so it could be used. But in this case, I think not. I think our intruder’s transport started somewhere else—a long way somewhere else—was caught halfway by this device, and then the device was sent toward us, as we might send a probe. When it came within optimum distance, it transported.”
“Then turned away again,” Picard said. By the redshift it was showing, the object was now running away from them at about point five cee, not using warp, which would attract their sensors’ attention.
Picard shook his head. What kind of people would transport a man’s essence into this kind of limbo, then fire him away on the off chance that he would find the object they intended him to spy upon? And if he never found it…
“These are not nice people, Mr. Worf.”
Worf shook his head. “No, sir. They seem entirely too fond of stealth for my tastes. Honor is apparently quite foreign to them. One other thing, though.” He pointed. “Notice the probe’s course. Though much slower than ours, it is roughl
y following us; while I have been watching it, very slight alterations have been made to keep it more or less pacing us, along our course line. It will not get too far away from us, I think. And at some later date, it is doubtless intended to slip back into range and attempt to make a pickup.”
Picard nodded. “Tell Dr. Crusher that I want that man checked again, this time for subcutaneous transponders—we may have missed something. Tell her to leave no bone unturned.”
Worf nodded. “At any rate, the import of this device is that someone can transport aboard this ship while their home vessel, if vessel there is, is very far away. And without alerting us—for that waveform is how it was managed without immediately triggering the intruder alert.” Worf pointed again at the display. “Our systems recognized the pattern as their own and therefore did not raise the alarm.”
Picard frowned. “Definitely another Federation ship, then.”
“Not just a Federation vessel, but one of our class, and in our present state of repair. Otherwise there would be identifiable variations.”
“Definitely another Enterprise, then.”
“The odds would seem to be in its favor.”
Picard breathed out uneasily. It all still needed more consideration. “Have you shared your information with Mr. Data?”
“I am doing so now.”
“Good. See to it that Chief O’Brien gets it as well. I want him to have a word with the transporters and see to it that their own waveform is slightly altered—just enough to serve as a ‘tag,’ if he likes, but in such a way that another of these incoming transports will register properly as an intrusion.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Picard took himself off into the ready room and spent the next hour or so working on reports about other business. One of the problems with starship command was that no matter how much you managed to delegate or get the computer to do for you, there always seemed to be more of what Dr. Crusher called “administrivia.” After a while, he found his tension level rising. And why not? he thought, pushing his padd away. I don’t understand what’s happening and I don’t know what to do about it. A good enough reason.