Dark Mirror (33 page)

Picard shook his head, thinking of the vast amount of mind and money and time and talent that must have been spent on answering the questions, sorting out the theoretical problems, and finally the technical detail that resulted in those great hulking boxes downstairs in engineering. They had solved the problem. They had, by (he had to admit) splendid use of the information that had fallen into their hands, created a whole new world, a world of worlds to conquer…

… starting with
Enterprise.
The pity and the anguish that rose up in him now were a match for his anger at the attack on his own world, his own ship.
This place cannot be left this way,
he thought.
The innocents here deserve a life freed of this tyranny. But how? How?

He was back up against the problem of inertia. “One man cannot change the future,” Spock had apparently said to Kirk. “But one man can move the present,” Kirk had replied. There, as so often in his career, he had been right.
Give me a place to stand,
that ancient scientist had said. But you needed a lever long enough, and the
right
place to stand. Spock, able as he was, had not been able to do it.

There was this, though—the time of Spock’s prediction
was eighty years closer than it had been. The whole system was now inherently less stable, more prone to being disordered.
With less effort? Picard
wondered.
But not until I get α few more answers. Who is the lever? Where do I stand?

He stared at the screen for a long time; then the door chimed. He blanked the screen and stood. “Come,” Picard said.

The door opened. Outside in the corridor, the lights were dimmed, whether because of one of the transient power failures, or the presence of ship’s night, he wasn’t sure. Either way, from the dimness, a darker shape moved in, graceful. He caught the swing of the glittering fabric, the metal of the harness and the gleam of the knife, and, very soft, the faint gleam of the light above his bed catching in the dark eyes. It was Counselor Troi.

“Captain,” the counselor said. Picard sketched her a small half-bow and began rummaging in his mind for poetry—though right now he suspected that she would see in his mind not much more than a great sense of melancholy and distress.

“You’re having trouble sleeping,” she said. “I could feel it right up on the bridge.”

Her tone was gentle enough, but there was a broad streak of innuendo—if kindly sounding—right down the middle of it. He chose to ignore it for the moment and gestured her to a seat.

She ignored the gesture and sat comfortably on the end of the bed, leaning back on her straightened arms and looking at him. Those dark eyes dwelling on him were full of a speculative expression.

“A great feeling,” she said, “of dislocation, of stress. They did warn us that this would happen. An occupational hazard of the situation when we know that there are other… selves, like ourselves, out there. Curiosity is hard to stifle.”

“I would suppose so,” Picard said, “otherwise you would hardly be here.”

“Yes, well… It’s my business, after all, to keep an eye on the officers. To make sure they’re functioning at maximum efficiency. But there are a couple who have been having problems.”

He glanced at her.

“Yes. You and Beverly have had a little… disagreement, shall I call it?” She smiled a little at his sudden uncomfortable look. “It would have been difficult to miss. Her dreams were full of it.”

“Oh,” Picard said, abruptly glad that he had not been able to get any sleep. Heaven only knew what might have come out then when the mind was unguarded.

“The distress, the fear—it would be difficult not to feel them, especially in a sleeping mind. You should be careful how you frighten her, Captain. A frightened doctor can lose you crew out of carelessness… or spite.”

He walked away, feeling uneasy, knowing that the subject of Wesley Crusher was still between them. “Captain, perhaps it’s time for the two of us to come to some kind of agreement.”

“What kind of agreement, Counselor?”

“I’ll be frank with you. You are in deep trouble. Your mission is in crisis. Our timetable is already thrown considerably out of shape. Starfleet Command is not going to take kindly to this situation if it’s informed.”

“And you would have to inform them, of course.”

“Of course.” Her smile was the smile of someone who had been waiting for a specific position of strength for a long time and now finally finds herself in it. “We’ve been working at cross-purposes for a long time, you and I. I know that pride of yours—very few know it better. The mere fact of having to
have
a security officer whose authority runs near to yours annoys you. It always has.”

“There’s no point in being annoyed about something which is, after all, Fleet policy,” Picard said softly.

“Why, that’s quite true. And I’ve never had any doubt that you’ve been quite aware of that.”

“Never mind that, Counselor. Put aside the ‘soft words’ for the moment. I believe that regulations in this situation require you to notify Starfleet… do they not?”

“Well, normally, indeed they do. But communications can always be”—she shrugged slightly—“delayed.”

“I would have thought that the present state of the ship’s computers would have guaranteed that,” Picard said a little sourly.

To his growing concern, she smiled at him. “Oh, there are ways around that. Many of my functions, for good and proper reasons, don’t have anything to do with the main computer or go through it—lest in an accident situation like this”—did she put a little more twist on the word
accident
than should have been there?—“the contents should be compromised. Now, on the other hand… a certain amount of delay to prevent misunderstanding can be quite helpful—and the situation may well resolve itself at that point.”

She looked at him almost coquettishly. Picard, finding himself actively hating the role he needed to play at this point, started to move slowly toward her, his hands behind his back, looking at her with an expression that suggested he might have some interest… an interest that was at the moment the furthest from his mind. “And what circumstances,” he said, “would be required to engender this ‘helpful delay’?”

He got quite close to her, looking down into those great dark eyes; they really were extraordinarily beautiful—
With the skin he made him mittens,
Picard thought carefully,
made them with the fur side inside, /made them with the skin side outside, /he, to get the warm side inside, /put the inside skin side outside.

“Well,” she said, “your little disagreement with the doctor… it’s been coming for a while now, Wesley aside. Certainly it seemed as if the situation would become increasingly stable over the last few years, as events receded in time. But there was a factor that neither of you thought of. As Wesley’s grown up, increasingly she’s seen his father in him. During his childhood the likeness was minimal, but now it’s getting stronger every day. She has that image, recalling the man she lost, in front of her eyes for a good part of every day. And she’s been given a fair amount of leisure, maybe too much, to reflect just what she did lose.” The counselor’s eyes flicked up to his. “What you took from her.

“But I think that trend, too, is on the point of breaking now. Certainly you’ve unsettled it. She doesn’t know how to read your sparing her son. She thinks maybe some spark of that old friendship with Jack Crusher is alive in you still—so all her thoughts are shaken and changed, and everything becomes unstable again, dangerously so.”

She looked at him for a moment.

“Well, Counselor. Go on.”

“I would think you would welcome an end to all this instability. It would be simple enough. Simply declare your liaison with her at an end and start another one that’s more to your advantage.”

She was quite close now. Though she had made no move to touch him and had her arms behind her back in a position matching his, the air of almost stifling intimacy between them was quite palpable. Picard kept the poetry going and said, “And you would be that liaison, of course.”

“I don’t think you would find it unpleasant. Ask Commander Riker—if you need to.” She rolled her eyes and gave a little scornful laugh. “It’s not in his nature to keep quiet about something he’s enjoying.”

“I wonder how you bear that, considering that you are generally of more… delicate sensibilities.” This was
straightforward flattery, but he let it come out, needing time to consider the ramifications of all this.

She raised her eyebrows. “It
is
flattery,” she said, startling him a little, “but accepted for the moment.”

A lucky guess?
Picard thought.
Or is she genuinely hearing something?
“It’s an interesting prospect,” Picard said, meanwhile thinking loudly,
His-counsellors are rogues, Perdie! / While men of honest mind are banned / to creak upon the Gallows Tree, / or squeal in prisons overmanned.
“I should warn you,” he said, “that the doctor probably will not take kindly to such a turn of events. If you should find yourself suddenly needing medical care…”

The counselor smiled at him. “Should we agree on this, the only one needing medical care will be the doctor… and by the time it arrives, it will be a little too late. I have friends in sickbay as well.”

She took a turn away from him for a moment. “It would work out very well; we could command the ship together. You, the brains; I, the eyes.”

“And what would Commander Riker be?”

The counselor simply laughed. “We’ll have to look lower for a part for him…. All he thinks about are power and his lusts, but men of that kind have things they’re useful for.”

“Of course. And there are other kinds of men… useful for other things, I take it?” He bent closer to her face.

“So I’ve heard.” For a moment they breathed practically into each other’s lips—then Picard straightened a little bit, daring to push the moment no further. There was always the chance that something of his jerry-rigged shielding would slip, should the body become more interested than it already was.

“Counselor, you’ve given me a great deal to think about.”

“So what will you do?”

“I will consider your proposal”—he was tempted to say
proposition,
but restrained himself—“and get back to you with an answer in good time.”

The first spark of anger showed in those eyes. “Surely, it would be more to your advantage”—she leaned on the word—“to come to a choice now, so that I can begin acting in a way that won’t be prejudicial. Your time is very short. If you have an ally, it will be possible to make more of it.”

He drew himself up quite straight. “Counselor, I will not be pushed or rushed. I will give you my answer in good time, in due course—and not before.”

She frowned at him. “One more chance, Captain. Just one. Don’t let your stubbornness push you into a mistake.”

He stood silent and merely looked at her.

“I see. That pride of yours.” She shook her head. “No matter. If you recover this situation by yourself, then we’ll talk further. I’ll have no need to contact Starfleet.” Somehow he knew that this was a lie: if she hadn’t already done it, she was going to do it quite soon. “If I must do it, I think you know very well the aftereffects will be unfortunate. Commander Riker has refused several offers of command of other craft, as you know, because he’s been waiting for this one. He won’t have thought to be authorized to take command of it so soon.”

Picard considered how many meanings rode behind the word
authorized.
She would call Starfleet and get permission to have him assassinated. Would she let Riker do it, he found himself wondering with an almost clinical detachment, or would she insist on doing it herself?
Hell hath no fury…

“I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” she said, turning, and added with some scorn, “such as they are. Third-rate poets.”

“There is nothing third-rate about Villon,” Picard said mildly.

She snorted. “I have some other matters to attend to.”

She turned and went quickly out. The feeling of rage that trailed behind her in the air was like smoke. He was meant to feel it, he thought, meant to take alarm.

He was alarmed, but not in the way she thought.

In the shaft servicing the computer core, Geordi pulled out another chip, scanned it, found it compromised, and slipped one of his own storage chips into place. He touched the “run” command on his padd again and started loading in the last eighty terabytes of material. It always seemed to take longer when you were so close to the end of a job. He whistled softly, looked around him, then started pulling some of the other chips to genuinely replace them.

The padd flashed at him: that chip was full. Only four terabytes. He shook his head, took another from the belt pouch and slipped it into the spot the first one had occupied.

“Mr. La Forge?” Eileen’s voice said from above. “Can you come have a look at this one?”

“What—got a problem?”

“Yes, I’m not sure what to make of this.”

“Right,” he said, perching his padd just inside the open panel he was working on. “God,” he said, floating upward—he had changed to a floater half an hour ago—“I’m so stiff from sitting on this… thing,” he finished as his head rose above the level of the top of the shaft, and he looked up at those boots, those legs, that skirt—and, looking down on him, her eyebrows raised slightly, the counselor, with two security people behind her, phasers drawn and pointed at him.

He swallowed. “Counselor Troi.” The first thought to pass through his mind was that he should simply push himself back off the floater and take the fall, a hundred fifty feet down to the bottom of the core, before she could—

—and it was too late. He was frozen like a statue where he sat, unable to move, and she was inside his head. The
pressure of it was like bricks laid on his brain, squeezing it down, squeezing his will down and out of the way, while from inside a knife sliced delicately through layer after layer of thought, looking for something in particular—and then it found it.