As he spoke, Cutler left Phlox’s side and moved toward the group, hypos in one hand.
For an instant, Reed looked distinctly uneasy; then he steadied himself, and said easily to Hoshi, “Ladies first.”
“Ladies first?” Hoshi looked at him quizzically. “What is that, some sort of British expression?”
“I’m not sure,” Reed said. “My grandmother was always saying it so she could be first in the queue.” He gestured, and Hoshi shrugged and rolled up her sleeve for Cutler. Within a few seconds, both of them had been inoculated.
“By the way,” Archer told them, “I’m going to be waking up the rest of the crew and having them inoculated. It’ll go a lot faster if Cutler has volunteers—”
He said it not so much because Cutler needed help, but because he wanted Hoshi and Reed close to sickbay, in case anything happened.
And if anything does happen, what good will it do them? What good did it do Phlox?
“If you don’t mind, Captain,” Hoshi said, “I was very close to finishing up the Oani medical logs. I’d really like to go ahead with that now.” She did not say the obvious—that she was in no mood to return to her quarters, and that if she didn’t finish her work now, she might not have the time later. “I just ... I can’t explain it, sir. Even if they didn’t [100] know what killed them, I have a feeling that we’ll learn something by viewing everything they left. Call it a hunch.”
“Go ahead, Ensign. I happen to believe in hunches.” Archer gave her a nod; she responded in kind, then left.
“With your permission, sir,” Reed said, suddenly military-formal. “I should like to take care of a personal matter. It will only take a moment—”
“Take all the time you need,” Archer said gently.
“—at which point I shall return and render whatever assistance I can to Ensign Cutler.”
“Go,” Archer told him.
For a moment after Reed left, the captain watched the empty doorway; then he sighed as he went to the companel on the wall and pressed the control for shipwide address.
Trip Tucker was sitting on the edge of his bunk, still rubbing his eyes, when the door buzzer sounded. He had been dreaming of the Keys, of diving in the ocean only to suddenly realize he’d been under water for hours without his scuba gear, when the captain’s shipwide announcement had wakened him.
“Come,” he groaned, then coughed to try to clear the sleep from his voice.
Malcolm Reed entered and stood in the open doorway, in uniform, hair neatly groomed.
[101] “Malcolm,” Trip said. “You’re looking entirely too sheveled.”
Reed drew his head back, confused; he was deeply preoccupied, and responded with no humor whatsoever. “Entirely too ... what?”
“Sheveled. As opposed to dis—” Trip paused to squint at him more closely. “How the hell did you get out of bed and into uniform so fast?”
“Oh.” Reed stepped forward, permitting the door to close behind him. “I’ve ... I’ve been up for a while. That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about, Commander.”
“Well, can it wait? There’s this little matter of the captain ordering everyone to sickbay. ...” Trip forced himself onto his feet, pulled a uniform off the nearest rung, and began pulling it on.
“Yes, I know. I was just there.” Reed paused, then launched into speech with swift urgency. “Look, Trip, I know that when we were trapped on the shuttlepod and we thought the Enterprise was destroyed and that we were goners, you overheard me making a will. ...”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Trip said. “Is that what this is all about? There you go being premature again. ...” He hopped on one foot, trying to pull on a boot. “Sometimes, Lieutenant, you can be a bit—overly dramatic.”
Reed’s lean face composed itself into somber, dignified lines. “I’m not being dramatic,” he said evenly. “Those of us who went down onto the [102] planets surface were exposed more than those who remained on the ship. I need for you to know—”
One boot on, Tucker stopped hopping. ‘‘Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. And I want to speak to you about my will.”
“Well, why don’t you just make a tape? Why tell me?” Tucker pulled the other boot on, then straightened to face his friend.
“Because I may not have time.”
“Malcolm ...” Trip groaned, in his will you please quit being so dramatic tone.
“Doctor Phlox is in a coma,” Reed said. “I’ll make a tape, if there’s time, but I just wanted to make sure I talked to you first.”
“Ah, hell.” Trip sat, deflated. “I’m sorry to hear that. Are they sure its the—”
“It’s the radiation, yes.” Reed paused. “I want you to have everything.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Everything.”
“But ... but what happened to all those girlfriends?” Trip asked. Reed’s generosity left him feeling secretly embarrassed by the implication of affection. “All the women? Your parents? Your sister?” He rose. “Look, I’ve got to report to sickbay. Let’s talk about this later. ...”
“There might not be a later,” Reed intoned, as Tucker walked past him and out the door.
[103] “Look,” Trip said, as Reed caught up with him quickly in the corridor, which was already filled with bleary-eyed personnel headed for the turbo-lift. “Keep your will the way it was. After all, I’ve been exposed to the radiation, too.” He kept his tone light, matter-of-fact. “So if we’re both goners, there’s no point in your going to the trouble.”
Reed ignored him. “There’s some property in the Caymans. Quite a large agricultural spread in Argentina. And a flat in Knightsbridge ...”
Trip felt a muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. He was tired, and although the news about Phlox was upsetting, he could not take any talk of death seriously. They would find a solution, just as they’d found a solution for every other life-threatening dilemma they’d faced since Enterprise had first launched. An innate optimist, Trip simply could not conceive of the crew succumbing to the malady that had claimed the Oanis. “Knock it off, Lieutenant,” he said shortly. “We’ve got better things to do right now than worry about your real-estate holdings.”
As they stepped onto the turbolift, crowded with groggy officers, Reed stepped beside him. Sotto voce, in a voice barely loud enough for the others to hear—but loud enough to embarrass Trip—Reed said, “I’m quite serious, Commander Tucker. I’ve never been one for making friends, but I’ve come to consider you—”
“Knock it off,” Tucker repeated, this time with [104] more irritation in his tone than he actually felt. Now, in front of other crewmates, was not the time to discuss their growing friendship—and again, he felt sure that Reed was overreacting. Staring straight ahead at the turbolift doors, he said, “That’s an order, Lieutenant.”
Reed broke off in midsentence. He said not another word—reason enough for Trip to glance sidewise at him and see the stony expression that had spread across his features.
Damn, Trip thought. He had not meant to hurt Malcolm’s feelings—but he also was in no mood to indulge thoughts of death. If Enterprise really was facing a crisis, then it was better that they all be a little angry than resigned or full of fear.
They made their way in silence all the way to sickbay.
Back in her lab, Hoshi did her best to ignore the constant march of people in the corridor, headed to and from sickbay. It wasn’t easy trying to blot out the image of Dr. Phlox lying unconscious on the diagnostic bed—it kept mixing with the image of Kano’s corpse, temporarily animated from within by the blue-green energy creature—but Hoshi finally forced herself to concentrate on the one image in front of her: that of Uroqa, making yet another entry in his log.
This time, the Oani’s expression was animated, hopeful, his large eyes wide. Hoshi listened [105] carefully, able to understand the entry completely without having to listen to it twice.
A stranger has come to our world: a stranger who
brings hope. He has come alone, from the planet [here Hoshi made a note in phonetic transcription of the planet name, which sounded like Shikeda], and he says that his people know of this illness. The other doctors are currently interviewing him, and it is our hope that we will soon find the answer to our woes.
Hoshi listened without pause, eager for the next entry. Were there other aliens in this area of the space who were familiar with this type of radiation illness—and did they perhaps know of a solution that, while it had come too late for the Oanis, might help the Enterprise crew?
The next image tore at her heart. As eager and excited as Uroqa had been, now he was completely overwhelmed with despair; the strong shoulders beneath the gauzy white tunic sagged beneath the weight of an intolerable burden.
For whoever comes after us, he said sadly, his once vibrant voice reduced almost to a whisper, a warning. The traveler from Shikeda says that the cause of our illness is indeed a microbe, unlike any other with which we are familiar. His own people have suffered and died from it.
“A microbe!” Hoshi actually stood up, her gaze still fixed on Uroqa’s image on the viewer. “No, no, he’s wrong! No wonder ...”
[106] She trailed off as Uroqa bowed his head in sorrow, then looked up steadily at the screen and continued. It is a life-form, as we are; the traveler confirms that it is capable of evolution, even as he offers us a cure. But we cannot kill it—which we would have to do if we are to survive. He paused. We must accept our fate. As a people we lived in peace; so it is we shall die in peace. ...
“No!” Hoshi shouted, unaware that she had raised her voice, not caring that she was arguing with the recorded image of a man who had been dead some days. “No, it isn’t fair. How can you let yourself die like that? How can you simply give up?”
The image of Uroqa faded, only to be replaced by his final entry, but Hoshi could bear no more. She froze the image, then rose and hurried to the companel.
“Sato to Captain Archer ...”
No response from the captain’s quarters. Hoshi tried the bridge next.
“Archer here.”
“Captain, before the Oanis died someone from the planet Shikeda visited them and told them they died from a microbe too small for their instruments to detect. It was against the Oanis’ belief to kill any life-form—even one so tiny—so they let themselves die. But this traveler had a cure!”
She could hear the captain’s slow release of breath as he registered the information. After a [107] brief pause, he said, “I’ll meet you down in sickbay. I think we need to have a little chat with Wanderer about this.”
At that same moment in sickbay, Trip Tucker stood flanked by Ensign Cutler and Malcolm Reed. The three of them, along with a former civilian medic who’d joined Starfleet and switched to maintenance, stood with their backs to a counter covered with medical supplies.
Trip was good at giving injections; he had a strong stomach for that sort of thing, and his hand was steady, so once he received his own antiradiation treatment, it only made sense for him to volunteer to help Cutler. With sixty people to inject, it’d take her a few hours alone; and since time was of the essence, Trip figured he’d help out. It was easy work.
Of course, you’d never know it from watching Reed: although he was doing his best to maintain a stoic pose, he wound up gritting his teeth and flinching each time he pressed down on the hypo. Trip pitied his patients—and pitied himself, too, because he had to fight the urge to grin at Reed’s squeamishness.
But at least the guy was out here helping. And within a matter of fifteen minutes, they’d managed to treat more than half the crew. The captain would be pleased—assuming, of course, that the captain really felt that injections would do any [108] good. Trip doubted they would, but he also felt it was better to be on the safe side and try everything.
Beside him, Reed pressed down on the hypo and, at the same time, let go a little groan; this time, Trip couldn’t help himself. As another crew member stepped up to receive an injection from him, one corner of his mouth quirked upward in a minuscule grin as he murmured out of the other corner, on the side toward Reed, “Careful. Don’t want to scare the patients. Of course, one look at that ugly mug of yours and—”
“Help me,” Reed said.
He enunciated it quite clearly, in that formal British accent of his, without any sort of inflection at all; Trip heard no fear in his tone, no dismay, no teasing—which is what he at first thought it was.
But it was no joke. The male ensign who stood in front of Reed cried out.
“Hey! Watch that hypo!”
Trip Tucker became immediately aware, in his peripheral vision, of Reed lurching backward, against the counter. He turned.
“Malcolm?”
Reed’s eyes were wide and unfocused, as though he were staring at something just past the bulkhead across from him. Beneath the five-o’clock shadow of beard on his chin and cheeks, his skin had grown deathly pale.
[109] Without looking at Tucker, Reed began to slide down, back against the counter.
On pure instinct, Tucker dropped the readied hypo in his hand—it went clattering across the metal deck—turned, and caught his friend before Reed sagged all the way to the floor. Cutler turned, and gave a short cry as well; the crew members standing in line scattered in their efforts to move out of the way.
“You’re all right, buddy,” Trip said, which struck him as a perfectly ridiculous thing to say. Reed was clearly anything but: by this time, his eyes were rolling back in his head, and his mouth was working, but now only the very faintest sound came out.
Trip leaned his head down to listen.
“... what I said ... remember ...”
“Don’t worry, Malcolm,” Trip said. “I won’t forget.” As he spoke, Reed’s eyes closed, and he let go a long, sighing breath, then went perfectly limp in Trip’s arms.
Cutler rushed to him and did a quick scan.
“He’s fainted,” she said. “He’s fine.”
“What?” Trip asked, suddenly disgusted with himself for thinking his friend was dying.
Cutler shrugged. “He’s fainted. I’ve seen this happen. People who don’t seem the least bit funny around medical stuff, and all the sudden, when you give them an injection, they just keel over. ...”
[110] “Ooh.” Reed’s eyelids fluttered. “What’s happened?” He stirred in Trip’s arms. “Was it the radiation?”
Trip less-than-gently pushed his friend up and onto his feet; Reed swayed slightly while Cutler fetched a different hypo and administered it.
“There,” Cutler announced. “That’ll help.”
“What happened?” Reed asked again.
“You passed out,” Trip said flatly. “Why didn’t you say you got light-headed around medical stuff?”
Reed sniffed; clearly, Cutler’s hypo made him feel well enough to be insulted. “I don’t. I just suddenly felt weak.”
Cutler’s smile was small and diplomatic. “Well, just in case, I’m ordering you to your quarters to rest, Lieutenant.”
“Very well,” Reed said stiffly. He brushed himself off a bit, then moved toward the exit. Before he reached it, he turned and said, “Of course, should you be needing for help—”
“You’ll be the last one we call,” Trip said archly. He watched, shaking his head in amusement and disgust, as his friend made his way down the corridor.
Once in his quarters, Reed lay down with a sudden delicious sense of exhaustion, as if he wanted to sleep forever and never waken.
He fell onto his bunk, all sense of [111] embarrassment at having fainted in sickbay forgotten. He usually wasn’t all that squeamish about things medical, and the fact that he’d passed out alarmed him somewhat ... but at the moment, he no longer cared. He only craved rest.
And at the instant he lay down, he fell into a strange waking dream. The oceans of Oan, turquoise and beautiful, rolled over him, sweeping him away on their currents, and he opened his lungs to them and breathed in the cool, s
unlit water ...
And realized he was drowning. Bone-deep weakness came over him, saturated him, and he struggled against it, mentally clawing like a drowning man fights the water. He opened his eyes, and with his last fragment of strength, painfully dragged himself from his bed, and pressed his body to the bulkhead. His finger trembled as it pressed the companel control.
“Sickbay. Cutler here.”
“Help me,” Reed whispered, then slid down the length of the wall to the deck, and oblivion.
Six
IN THE LAB just outside sickbay, surrounded by decontaminated data retrieved from the Oani planets surface, Archer stood beside Hoshi and let her explain to T’Pol—accompanied, as always, by the nebulous Wanderer—what she had learned from the medical logs of one of the perished doctors.
Archer was angry—angry at the situation, angry at T’Pol for taking the alien on an extended tour of the vessel even though he had given permission for her to do so, angry with a vengeance at Wanderer. He remained unconvinced that his anger was entirely rational—at least some of it had to do with the fact that Phlox was stricken and apparently dying (he hadn’t yet checked in with Cutler on the doctor’s current status), and [113] with the specter of the entire Enterprise crew following suit. It has nothing to do with the fact that I haven’t gotten any sleep. ...
But for a very rational reason, he was downright furious that Wanderer hadn’t mentioned anyone from the planet Shikeda.
T’Pol listened impassively to Hoshi’s tale, glanced briefly at the shimmering creature beside her, then said, “It’s true that Wanderer passed by the planet Oan. But Wanderer says that this other traveler was quite mistaken in terms of what destroyed the Oanis. Wanderer says that it was radiation.”
“What if it’s wrong?” Hoshi countered hotly, a split second before Archer could demand the very same thing.
At least I’m not the only one who’s mad. “Exactly.” Archer crossed his arms over his chest and stared expectantly at the energy column, as if waiting for it to address him directly. “How can Wanderer be so certain?”
Star Trek: Enterprise - Surak's Soul Page 8