Ghost Ship Part 17

"Far too many for me to recommend trying to hook up these whatever-they-ares to android bodies." She lowered her voice and let empathy slip into her professional a.s.sessment. "It'd be a worse h.e.l.l than they're already going through. And, Captain, I think the only rational, moral decision," she added, "is the one they've selected for themselves."

"We're not that sure of what they want," Riker insisted.

Troi twisted in her chair, her face a sculpture of pure melancholy and disappointment. Her face ached with the misery she felt inside and the insult she heard from without.

"Well, you're not," Riker said to her. "You're not, are you?"

"Bill ... " she choked.

He circled the desk and confronted her. "You yourself have admitted that these people could be insane and incapable-"

"Some of them, but-"

Dr. Crusher put her slim hand on his arm and actually pushed him back from where she and Troi were sitting side by side. "This life-sucking machine is violating the rights and needs of its captives."

Riker whirled and glared down at her. "Which rights?"

"The right to normal life as they see it and the dignity of self-decision. It's robbing them of a quality of life to such a degree that all they see left for themselves is death."

"So we provide it, all on Deanna's say-so?"

Troi lowered her eyelids now, and tears broke from them. "Oh, Bill," she whispered.

But he pressed on. "How do we know their decision is rational? It may be one of plain despair or temporary depression."

Crusher didn't back away from his challenge, but was ready with her own. "You call three hundred years temporary?"

"On that thing's time scale? It might be. And you don't know and I don't know otherwise. That thing could be a galactic utopia, for all we know. It could provide endless time to think about things and intermingle and share memories-who knows what else? Maybe Deanna's only picking up the wishes of a handful of new arrivals who don't know what they've got."

"I don't believe that," Troi said, her lips tight.

"All right-all right, say I don't either. Say you've convinced me. What happens once we do this? Once we've tasted this? If we open this door a crack, it may not close. Candles can start holocausts, Captain."

Crusher suddenly got to her feet and stepped toward him, using her height and her own grace to prove that he wasn't the only imposing one in the room. "We can keep control of ourselves, Mr. Riker. Medical science has had to live with self-control on a personal basis for centuries. Captain, I know you don't like to use the weapons, but that thing is a tyrant!"

Riker bent over the desk, his palms flat on its black top. "If we bend our rules," he insisted, "or even amend them, even at the request of the terminally ill, then we risk all of us. When we turn down the death requests of individuals, we protect us all." He looked at the captain and said, "We're playing ethical roulette, sir, and I'm not comfortable with it."

Troi didn't look at him, but there was a poignant lack of charity in her tone. "It's not your comfort we're talking about."

His eyes flashed. "No," he stabbed back, "but we're risking the ethical security of every sentient life we contact from now on. How long before this gets out of hand? We're at risk as a society if it does."

The captain frowned at him. "I'm not willing to take on the moral burden of all humanity, Number One," he said, "but I intend to take a stand here and now. I appreciate your playing devil's advocate, but-"

"I'm not," Riker told him. "I don't think it's our place to do this. And I don't think it's fair of those beings to ask this of us. We have the right not to become murderers."

"Captain," Crusher interjected, "we're past the point of no return. Our killing them may be hard on us, but their living is harder on them."

"That's your opinion, doctor," Riker clarified.

"Yes," she said. "The captain asked for my opinion. If you're captain someday, you don't have to ask me."

Bitterness swirled between them, and for several seconds, she let it have its way. Once the silence became oppressive, she inhaled deeply and addressed the captain with her final word. "Sir, in my judgment as chief surgeon of the Enterprise," she said, "we have what will go down in my report as acceptable prior consent."

The captain heard the ball drop cleanly into his court. Was his responsibility to the beings inside the ent.i.ty, or to the ent.i.ty, or to the s.h.i.+p, or to those lifeforms whose essences would be absorbed by that thing in the future if he failed to act now?

"It's Federation mandate to avoid policing the galaxy, Captain." Riker's face reflected clearly in the viewport.

Picard nodded tightly. "Yes, we can't forget that. Federation policy will have to be my guide on this. The dirty reality is that we may not even be able to save ourselves. The better part of valor may be to get away and let the Federation decide how to deal with this thing."

Troi rocketed from her chair. "You don't understand! These people can't even communicate with each other! There are millions of them, all alone. Alone! It's not like a crippled body. Even then there can be sight, sound, interaction-these people have nothing!"

The captain started toward her. "Counselor-"

She backed away. "You don't know what it's like! You can't know. You can talk and discuss and argue, but you don't know. Captain, if that ent.i.ty comes after us and there is no way to stop it from absorbing us, I promise you I will not go on like that! I will not! I'll kill myself first."

"Deanna," Crusher began, reaching for her.

But every one of them was affected by the utter conviction in her voice, her face, by the irrational promise from a person they knew to be supremely rational.

Riker felt especially responsible, and he stood a few paces away, unable to make himself go to her.

Dr. Crusher put an arm around Troi and steered her toward the door. "Come with me. I'll give you something to calm you down."

Troi started to go, but now she pushed away violently. "No! I don't dare let you sedate me! I can barely keep control now. Doesn't anyone understand?"

"Yes, yes," Crusher told her. "You know I do. Let's just go out to the bridge." She steered the other woman toward the door, and cast a scolding look back at Riker and Picard. "We'll just be a few minutes." Her words said one thing; her look said another.

Picard watched them leave without uttering a sound. When he and Riker were finally alone, he turned to the viewport and stared out into open s.p.a.ce.

Before him was the panorama of distant stars and solar systems, the gas giant that had recently been their biggest problem and suddenly looked puny and insignificant as it whirled in bright green innocence at the very edge of his view. Two deep lines bracketed his mouth. He was a man with too many choices.

"That infernal thing is hiding out there, waiting for us to make a mistake," he said. His voice dropped to a near whisper. "How many more of this kind of thing are out there, Riker? How many more decisions like this? What do we do when we have no doubt about a person's-a community'srational, reasonable desire to die?"

Standing beside him, Riker could offer no real solution-but he had his own personal answer. One as first officer-not captain-he could afford.

Without moving, he quietly asked, "Do we have that, sir?"

Picard continued to stare out the viewport, but a furrow appeared in his brow and his eyes drew tight. "I have to know, as closely as I can know, if this thing is a floating utopia," he mused, "or an interstellar h.e.l.l."

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 grat.i.tude 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 m.u.f.fle 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 s.h.i.+vered. "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 s.h.i.+ft 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 rea.s.suring 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.

d.a.m.n 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, d.a.m.n it!

Blackness. Blacker than a dead computer screen, blacker than s.p.a.ce. 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 s.h.i.+eld 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.

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! d.a.m.n ... 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 bypa.s.s 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s, 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.