by Diane Duane
“Thirty seconds ago, Captain.”
“Very good. I’m ready. Energize.”
The ready room dissolved around him.
The interior of the captain’s quarters shimmered into being around them. Phasers in hand, they looked around hurriedly. No one was in sight.
Deanna looked around curiously. The room, as far as she could tell, was exactly the same as the captain’s rooms aboard their own Enterprise: even the bookshelves seemed the same to her.
Geordi glanced around, apparently having the same thought, then nodded briefly to her and went softly over toward the door, stopping just out of the range of its opening sensor and touching the control that would lock it from the inside. He gestured at the door with his head and raised his eyebrows at her.
She cast her sensitivities that way and got nothing but a sense of nearby boredom—the guard outside. That was something else she was still having trouble with. She had had just time enough to read the transcript left by Spock of the alternates’ presence aboard her own universe’s Enterprise and of the angry shout of the other Captain Kirk: “Where’s my personal guard?” The implications of those words alone had so shocked her that she was almost unable to take in the rest of the report: his offers to that Spock, of power, money, and command. This was a place where a captain not only did not expect his crew to trust him, but expected them to try to kill him on a fairly regular basis.
Deanna let her perceptions range a little more widely. They were still overwhelmingly negative… but it seemed to be troubling her a little less. Possibly, like a bad smell, if you stayed in the midst of it for long enough, it stopped bothering you as much. Deanna shuddered. She wasn’t sure she wanted such emotions to stop bothering her.
Geordi nodded and moved off to one side of the room, toward the captain’s closet—pulling out his tricorder, now muted, and checking the closet for booby traps. Satisfied, he touched a control. The door slid aside, revealing neatly hung uniforms.
“Uh-oh,” he said softly.
Troi looked at him. “Problems?”
“Not really. It’s just that all these uniforms”—he went through several on the rack—“are like mine, but more so. The captain’s going to love that.”
Deanna let out a small breath of amusement, then turned her attention once again toward what she could sense outside the room. She moved about slowly, past the bed, toward the far side of the room and the windows on the stars, letting the motion calm her and help her think. There was a doorway at the far end of the room where as far as she could remember there had been none before, but for the moment she let that pass, stopping short of it while she stood there and cast about her with her mind. That same low, almost snarling background noise, of anger, frustration, low-level hatred. That was the worst of it: the hatred was so ingrained that much of it was more or less taken for granted, habitual—like mental nail-biting. Here and there a bright spot sparked, a place where the emotion flared—anger, here and there pleasure—but too rarely.
She let her mind quest outward—forward, yes, and to port a little ways—
Shock stopped her then, and an odd feeling, so strange, so like—For a fraction of a second she struggled for simile. Like having your leg fall asleep, then touching it and being unable to feel it, but knowing it’s yours. That wasn’t quite it either. This was a cast of mind so familiar—and no surprise, for it was hers. But it wasn’t her. It was the other Troi, at rest for the moment, calm enough. But the taste of that mind—Deanna wanted to jerk her whole inner self back as if she had touched something burning hot. But she knew that the vehemence of the movement might attract the other’s attention. Slowly she edged away, like a bird avoiding a sunning snake. The comparison was apt. The emotional level in that other mind was consonant with that to be experienced in someone who was in meditation or a centering exercise. But underlying the calm was slow, pleased rage; this, too, had a habitual feel to it, as of someone who was more or less permanently furious with the world, and more or less permanently punishing it for whatever transgression it had committed. It was perfectly strong and steady, a mind unused to being denied anything it wanted. Deanna moved slowly and steadily away from the fringes of that mind, withdrawing her presence, resisting her own near-loathing. It was like looking into a mirror and finding the image warped, or rather, quite clear—but frowning back when you were looking into it without expression. And perniciously the question arose, which is more real? Which side is the mirror?
“Anything?” Geordi said.
Troi shook her head.
“You all right?” Geordi said, seeing what she quite understood must be a most shocked look on her face.
“You were right about my quarters being occupied. Don’t fall foul of her, Geordi. Don’t.”
He nodded. “That’s odd—what about that other door?” He lifted the tricorder, scanned the doorway. Then he shook his head, shrugged, turned away. “More living quarters.”
“Connecting to the captain’s? Maybe—”
Then Troi stopped, interrupted by the soft singing hum of the transporter. Geordi threw Troi a look of shock when he saw the phaser in her hand, leveled on the spot where the materialization was starting. “You sure you’re all right?” he said as the captain’s shape began to become apparent.
She shook her head, unable to get rid of the memory of that aura of leisurely calculation, amusement: a thinking mind, an anticipating mind, more frightening in its way than the unleashed emotion there was to feel elsewhere aboard this ship.
The captain finished materializing, looked around him somewhat hurriedly. He, too, Deanna was glad to see, was holding a phaser, and the expression on his face on seeing them was relieved. “How long have you been here?” he said.
“About a minute now,” Geordi said. “Captain, you’d better get changed.”
“First things first,” he said, and went directly to the little terminal on the desk. “Computer, this is Capt. Jean-Luc Picard.”
“Acknowledged,” the computer said. He motioned Geordi over. Geordi produced the isolinear chip with the search program in it, tucked it into the reader. “Computer,” Picard said, “read program in hard data reader.”
It chirruped softly.
“Execute.”
“Program requires coded authorization from security officer,” the computer said.
“Authorize run of program,” said the captain sternly.
“Program requires coded authorization from security officer.”
The captain sighed. “Abort.”
“Aborted.”
“Merde,” Picard said softly. “Well, it had to be tried. But normally I can authorize any function on this ship to be performed by anyone I please. What kind of ship—” He shook his head. “No matter: we’ll soon enough get a better idea. I’ll get changed.”
He went back to the closet, reached into it dubiously. “The problem is working out which one to change into. There doesn’t seem much to choose between them.” He looked over the uniforms and reached out for one in particular.
“What do you think the odds are that he’s wearing that one today, Captain?” said Geordi softly.
Picard made a wry face. “At this point, odds aren’t something we can accurately judge. I’ve simply picked the one I’d be least likely to wear if I had any choice in the matter. Excuse me.” He took himself off into the bathroom to change.
“Now this is strange,” Geordi was saying. He was still poking around in the closet. “What?”
He pulled out a uniform top, like the one they had seen the alternate Riker wearing. It was a sort of wraparound vest that left the arms bare, though the shoulders on this one were capped, and from each of them to the neckline ran a band of the glittering gold, as braid. The top itself was a rich dark maroon like congealed blood that glittered the same way the blue material in Troi’s skirt did.
She raised her eyebrows at the sight of it. “It will look good on him, but his natural modesty being what it is, I can’t say
he’ll enjoy it.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Geordi prodded the communicator badge fastened to the breast of the uniform. It did nothing. “Even ours at least chirp if another living hand touches them. Maybe it’s personalized to the captain?”
“Have him try it when he comes out—” That was when she caught it, the quick upsurge of emotion from just outside the door, from the guard standing there. Alertness at the sound of footsteps, and then recognition.
“Quick!” she whispered, and pushed Geordi back out of sight of the door—just as it opened.
Picard strode in. He glanced around and stopped as his eyes fixed on her. The door shut behind him.
She hardly knew what expression she had expected to see on this man. What he turned on her now was a look of mild surprise, almost of pleasure; but there was a curl to the lips that would have betrayed, had she not already been able to feel it, the suspicion and annoyance he felt, tinged with both apprehension and a peculiar kind of anticipatory pleasure. “Counselor,” he said.
She smiled at him: a slight smile such as she had seen on the face of her counterpart on the bridge. It was very much a willed act, and it took everything she had to hold it there. “Captain,” she said politely, trying to sound offhand, as if she felt she had every right to be here.
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” the captain said, coming slowly toward her. “Normally you don’t choose to visit my quarters—and certainly not without your people with you.”
“I have my reasons for caution,” she said, still smiling.
The apprehension was acquiring an amused edge now, but there was also anger growing around the boundaries of it.
“You seem to have thrown the caution away for the moment,” said this Picard, coming closer to her. She forced herself not to back away. “I have ways of knowing when the computer in my quarters is being used without my authorization. Or is this another of your little tests?” He smiled, and she recognized the expression as a parody of her own. “Just checking to see that the captain’s security isn’t likely to be compromised?”
“That is a duty I undertake occasionally.”
“Well, I assure you, Counselor”—and the way he said the word was more a curse than anything else: a slur, and a nasty one—“that if anything goes wrong with this mission, it won’t be because of anything I have done or failed to do. And you can tell your master at Starfleet, whichever of them is holding the leash this week, as much. The only failure there’s been has been one of your staff.” He smiled. “A little personnel difficulty with Kowalski? Got his last promotion too soon for someone else’s tastes, perhaps?”
Troi smiled, too, harder, and, greatly daring, turned her back on him and strolled slowly toward the windows, gazing out on the starry night—trying hard to hang on to her composure. She could feel preparation, eagerness, not too far away; but much closer, riding up behind her, came that feeling of combined suspicion, amusement, and pleasure—the kind of pleasure she had no desire to feel any more of.
“You know how it is in my department,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder and flash that smile at him again. “The occasional disagreement. Not all of my people agree with me all the time.”
The counterpart Picard chuckled softly. “‘Occasional,’” he said, mocking. “Indeed, it seems more than occasional lately. No, I don’t think it was a promotion problem. An evening’s entertainment that went wrong, perhaps? A crewman less than discreet about your… preferences?” That smile got wider, “No, indeed, you couldn’t leave someone to run about discussing that. Others might get ideas. So… someone from your own department, promised a little something extra—of one kind or another—slips in to visit a comrade on a lonely post. Something like that?” He was drawing closer to her now, and there was nowhere to go. “Or maybe not,” said this Picard, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Perhaps—”
There was no telling what else he might have thought of, for in that second Geordi, stepping up softly behind the other Picard, hit him in the back with the hypospray. His eyes went wide; he grabbed for Troi. She backed out of his way and he fell, but common sense overcame her revulsion and she caught him halfway down, to prevent what she feared would be the all-too-audible sound of a body hitting the floor.
“How long?” the captain said, slipping out of concealment to join them.
“It should be between three and four hours,” Geordi said, “but it’s variable. Dr. Crusher said that body weight and differences in body chemistry can make a difference. Probably it’s not safe to count on more than three hours.”
“I desperately hope we will be out of here by then,” Picard said, “and on our way home—or at least working on it.” Troi watched him look down at the crumpled form. The unconscious man was wearing the same uniform that their own Picard had changed into.
“Well,” Picard said softly. “Ill met by starlight. And worse still, his taste in uniforms is as bad as I thought it was. Never mind. Mr. La Forge, have you got your hiding place picked out?”
“Yes, sir. Deck thirty-six, the aft skinfield generator on the starboard side. There are two small service cubbies convenient to it; we use them for storage mostly. Compartment…” He rattled off numbers that marked the place’s location in the ship’s coordinate system.
“Noted,” Picard said. “We’ll risk one last intraship beaming—there’s no other way to get him out of here and keep this situation alive. Counselor, your counterpart?”
“She’s in her quarters, Captain. She’s centering. I would imagine it’s something she might have to do fairly frequently.”
Picard nodded. “Assuming that she has your abilities—how do I ‘pass’?”
“If the experience of the last few minutes is anything to judge by,” Troi said, looking down at the unconscious alternate Picard as Geordi sat him up against a table leg and began to fold him into a more transportable position, “then suspicion and anger, constantly generated, should be enough to keep her from reading you much more closely than that. But I’m troubled. I got a sense from him that he was expecting something more from me, more—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Expectation of something bad—mild surprise when it didn’t materialize. Followed by a desire to follow up on that failure. It was news, somehow.”
“So your counterpart may have some ability that we don’t expect.”
“I just can’t say,” said Deanna, upset that she could throw no more light on the problem at so crucial a time. “But still—Captain, even the most powerful telepaths have trouble reading through intense emotion, or through ‘obsessive thought.’ Either can be exhausting to maintain, but shifting from one to the other can work. Try to inwardly act great emotion—call up the memory of something that frightened you, enraged you—probably around here, rage would be better. It won’t necessarily show as a block, either. But be flamboyant about it. The harder you project, the more effective it’ll be. Even full Betazoids, fully trained, often can’t sort out the thought they want between the racket of emotion and the usual quarreling of several of the audient’s ego states at a given moment. Or else, forcefully occupy your brain with something that you’ve had trouble getting out of it in the past. If you know some piece of music that persists in your mind once you think of it, a poem, a song—start running it in your mind and keep it there any way you can. It may drive you half-mad, but rest assured it’ll be doing the same thing to the telepath who’s trying to read you.”
“Singing,” Picard said ruefully. “Not out loud, I hope.”
“If it works, yes, but it may work inwardly just as well.”
“I greatly hope it doesn’t come to that,” Picard said.
Troi smiled at the captain’s discomfiture, and it felt good to have something genuine to smile about. “Now then,” he said. “You two take yourselves out of here quickly. Mr. La Forge, I am going to find an excuse to get those authorization codes released and get you at that core… but it may take a while. While I am working on that, I
want you to devise a way to take your counterpart out of circulation without being able to transport him anywhere. That cubby of yours—can you get out of that by means other than walking down some corridor?”
Geordi smiled grimly. “There’s a Jeffries tube that feeds right into it, Captain. That’s one of the reasons I picked it. It can take a lot of time to get around this ship without being seen, by way of access tubes—but it can be done, and I know how to do it.”
“Very well,” Picard said. “Think about how you might get at either engineering or this La Forge’s quarters without being detected. At least we’re all still going to be in the primary hull: that’s a mercy. And I will find out whatever I can about exactly what these people want from us.”
“Our own communicators are working scrambled at the moment,” Geordi said. “I’ve changed the frequency to a very high one that even we don’t normally use. It shouldn’t trigger any alarms… as far as I know. But one thing you should notice, Captain—these people’s badges don’t seem to work as communicators. The ones on your counterpart’s uniforms appear to be just jewelry.” Geordi looked puzzled. “If you can, see if you can find out what those things are for, if they’re not for talking to each other, or being found.”
“Very well. Here, wait a moment.” Picard reached down to his counterpart and worked at his vest for a moment to remove several objects that stuck to the material in the same way the communicators did. They came away with a tug. “Decorations,” Picard said, putting the first few in place on his own tunic. “For what, I don’t like to think. But—” He finished, straightened up. “There. Get him out of here—and keep yourselves as safe as you can. Counselor, if you feel any major eruption of emotion on this ship that I should know about…” He touched his badge. “I’ve set this on vibrate rather than sound. Understand that there may be a pause between your call and my reply: I may have to get away from people and back to somewhere that I’m not likely to be scanned—probably here.”
“Yes, sir,” Troi said. “And, Captain—don’t forget your personal guard. For whatever reasons, they seem to be loyal to ‘you’ here. They’re help you shouldn’t be afraid to use.”