Dark Mirror (42 page)

Picard smiled to himself, all alone there in the dimness, and went quietly to the desk to start his debriefing.

In his ready room, Picard sat going over his notes to see if he had missed anything. Surprising how little time it had seemed to take to tell everything that had happened to him—at least, everything that was anyone’s business. All the same, he wanted to make sure he had forgotten nothing that might later prove of importance.

The door chime went; he looked up. “Come.”

The door opened, and Mr. Barclay came in, looking faintly nervous. “Captain, you sent for me?”

“Yes, Mr. Barclay. Sit down.”

Barclay sat, his face showing a little less nervousness now.

“I’ve been looking over your record,” Picard said, sitting back in his chair. “Your work in the sciences and with the computer departments has been commended by your supervisors, including Commander Riker on several occasions. I note much extra, nonscheduled time put in.”

Barclay twitched a little. “I can’t just sit around doing nothing, Captain. It makes me crazy.”

“Yes. I know it does.” Picard studied the screen for a moment longer, then said, “Your next career review isn’t
scheduled for another year or so, but I see no reason not to add a special commendation to your file.” He smiled slightly. “It’s my pleasure to do that effective immediately.”

Barclay blinked, then grinned widely. “Thank you, Captain!”

“You’re more than welcome… and as I say, it’s my pleasure. You’re dismissed.”

Barclay stood, still grinning, nodded to Picard in acknowledgment, and went out.

Picard sat there for a moment, smiling, too, though the smile had an edge of sadness on it.
The promise might have been kept at a remove,
he thought,
but that’s better than not keeping it at all Symmetry.

He went back to looking over his notes.

The department heads’ meeting got under way as usual. The department heads had already read Picard’s and Troi’s initial debriefing memos. Geordi’s was still forthcoming since Dr. Crusher had been infuriated at “the state of his nervous system” when she had finally gotten him into sickbay and had forbidden him any further work or duty of any kind for at least three days. She had permitted him to attend the department heads’ meeting, “but more out of his need for closure than anything else,” she had said angrily to all of them once they were around the table, “so don’t push him!”

As it turned out, Geordi was amused but unconcerned by the concern. He wanted to talk about what he and Hwiii had done: “There are a lot of other possibilities inherent in the inclusion apparatus, and the changes we rang on its basic equations. But the most important one—at least, the one Starfleet is going to consider most important—is the ‘subversive’ use of the device to toss back ships originating in another space.”

“The technique of sourcing the hyperstring structure in a
large mass, with another smaller mass as the control, is the key,” Hwiii said from beside Geordi. “
Any
large mass can be used for this technique—stars, planets, any large astronomical body. If we were concerned about an invasion fleet from this universe—we need not be. Any planet can now mount its own defenses against vessels originating from another universe: you simply supply the power necessary for their own, attenuated connection with their own universe to ‘snap them back.’”

“The Imperials made a tactical mistake,” Geordi said, “by not carrying their theoretical research through to its logical conclusion. If they had, this development would have become obvious to them—and maybe they would never have bothered with this at all or would have gone down some other theoretical avenue, one less likely to be turned against them. In any case, now we know about them; we know their state-of-the-art equipment, too. And any starship or planet can be equipped to throw them back where they come from as quickly as they emerge, should they try it again.”

“Subspace radio distances being what they are,” Picard said, “it will be a little while before we hear back from Starfleet about this episode. I am minded to keep us in this general area of space for a little while, until we hear from them and know that defenses are being prepared—just in case. It would be a shame to have come so successfully out of this encounter only to fail in our trust now, through carelessness.”

Around the table, people nodded. “I have a feeling, though,” Dr. Crusher said, “that Starfleet will not be releasing information about this incident for general consumption. Psychologically… it’s a bit of a time bomb.”

“You’re right,” Picard said. “And I think for the moment that we had better instruct our own crewpeople to restrain themselves as regards this incident when it comes to communications home and so forth, since this information
is more than likely to be classified under need-to-know strictures. Among other things, I suspect Starfleet would not be wild about the Romulans getting their hands on the technique.”

“Indeed,” Data said, “since it can logically be adapted, though with fairly extensive modifications, to go looking for other alternative universes, as posited in other hyperstring work which Commander Hwiii has done. Imagine, for example, a universe in which neither the Federation nor the Klingon empires exist, and the Romulans have become dominant. Think what the Romulans in our own universe might bring home from a visit to such a place.”

They thought about that, and concerned glances were exchanged around the table. “Not our problem at the moment,” Picard said, “fortunately. We’ll leave that to Starfleet. Full reports from all your departments will need to go in to them tomorrow. I’ll expect them by eighteen hundred hours. Is there anything else?”

“One thing,” Dr. Crusher said. “The stress levels around here the past couple of days have been unusually high. Intervention is required.”

Hwiii turned an interested eye on her. “In what form?” Picard said.

She pushed a padd over to him. “This should be posted on all the private terminals.” He looked at the screen. It said:

CMDR. W. RIKER AND LT. WORF
INVITE
YOU TO A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
COME AS YOU
ARE
TWENTY HUNDRED HOURS
BLACK TIE OPTIONAL
MAIN HOLODECK TWO

Picard pushed it back toward her. “Medicine takes strange forms sometimes,” he said. “Make it so.”

When one stepped in the door of the holodeck, the noise of shouting, laughter, and the orchestra tuning up was considerable. A great gilded hallway hung with glittering chandeliers stretched off in either direction, with red velvet-backed doors set in the far wall, the entrances to the boxes. Picard walked down to box twelve; a liveried footman in a powdered wig, standing outside it, bowed to him and opened the door.

The dimness inside the box made it hard to tell clearly what was going on, but the bigger chandeliers of the house beyond the boxes were dimming. Picard made his way carefully among the occupied seats. The audience, borrowed from some other time and place, were having scattered fistfights already, and the performance hadn’t even begun.

Picard sat down on a velvet-cushioned Louis Quinze chair and looked around. Off to his left, Worf and Riker were sitting.

“I could not get the tie done,” Worf said, frowning, to Riker. “This business of ceremonial ligature is very strange.”

“Here, let me help,” Riker said, and sat there for a few moments reworking it. “What have you got here, the Gordian knot? It’s going to take phasers to get this thing loose.”

“I could not stop tying it. It just seemed to want to keep on going.”

The noise from down in the orchestra was increasing, both the musicians’ and the crowd’s. “Is this a private riot,” Picard said over his shoulder, “or can anyone join in?”

“Paris Opera,” Worf said to him as the overture began, “June 1896. Apparently there was another resurgence of anti-Masonic feeling.”

“Oh, dear,” Picard said. “Poor Mozart.”

The overture finished. The opera began, with Geordi running across the stage in his uniform from the other ship, synching with the voice of the tenor singing Tamino, the hero of the opera, something along the lines of “It’s after me, it’s after me!” He was promptly pursued across the stage by the required Monster, a creature that looked suspiciously like numerous of the staff from engineering operating a hastily cobbled together Chinese “street dragon” made of used blankets from sickbay and a painted waste container for the head. “Tamino” swooned convincingly at the sight of this apparition and fell over. The Three Ladies appeared in the form of Lieutenants Hessan, Renner, and Egli, stunned the Monster with phasers, and began “singing” charmingly about the beautiful daughter of the Queen of the Night, and how Tamino really ought to get together with her.

The boxes continued to fill up. Picard glanced around him and saw mostly bridge crew, but Lieutenant Barclay was here, too, being feted by his coworkers in the computer department, and Dr. Crusher was sitting off to one side, laughing herself weak at both the audience and the crew. Shortly Commander Hwiii came floating in, carrying a tray in his manipulators, and paused by Picard, smiling. Picard smelled caviar and chuckled.

“Commander,” Hwiii said, looking down, “is that the lady you were mentioning to me? ‘Asti Spumante, the Queen of the Night’?”

“Close,” Riker said. “Astrafiammante. My, doesn’t she look good?”

In fact, it was Troi, her hair built up into an astonishing structure diademed with replicated diamonds the size of robin’s eggs, and the Queen’s flowing ebony robes glittered like night itself. In the spotlights, Troi dazzled. She began
to sing, or rather to appear to, and the annoyed Queen’s furious and melodious complaint about her “kidnapped” daughter stretched itself out on the air like harpstrings of fire. The audience fought on.

“Ah, sweet Concord,” Picard said softly.

“It’s not,” Hwiii said, handing Picard a champagne flute. “The grape is a gewürztraminer. A very nice
sehr trocsken,
actually.”

Picard took the glass and smiled. “I didn’t know you drank wine.”

“I do,” Hwiii said genially, “when Mr. Worf hasn’t stolen my straw.”

“I would not have thought that the counselor would have opted for the part of the Queen,” Data said. “She is, after all, more or less the villainess of the piece.”

“Better watch out, Commander,” Geordi, up briefly from the “stage” for a snort of champagne, said to Riker. “She may be getting a taste for that kind of thing.” He grinned. “You should have seen her over there.
Grr!”
The sound was approving. Riker gave him an amused sidelong look and went on watching Troi.

The madness continued for a long while, people dodging in and out of the performance, by plan and improvisationally, but staying true to the score if not to the costuming or characterization. And the voices rang out sweetly over everything, reinforcing the triumph of structure and love over chaos and hate. A noble theme, Picard thought, and one he was glad to hear more of, after the past day or so. There had been times, in that dark place, when he had had his doubts.

The farrago went on very late. Picard actually didn’t realize how tired he was until he abruptly found himself looking at Riker and Worf down on that stage, both still in black tie and in the middle of a glittering, chorusing nineteenth-century company, “singing” frantically—
something about “their hats.”
I nodded off,
he thought.
And in the middle
of Die Fledermaus.
Not a good sign.

Looking around the almost-empty box, he saw the glitter of eyes resting on him from a distance through the dimness. Slightly unnerved, he got up and went out of the back of the box, out into the bright hallway, and toward the holodeck door. It opened for him, and Picard went through and just stood there a moment in plain corridor light, dimmed, but exactly as it should be.

“I was wondering when you were going to call it a night,” Beverly’s voice said from behind him.

He nodded, crooked his arm to her. It seemed only right, she standing there as she was in astonishing nineteenth-century splendor, jewels at her throat, all in a rustle of blue silk. They walked down the hall toward the turbolift.

“I was thinking of that other Worf,” he said; he had been for a good while before he dropped off. “All alone on that ship… probably the only decent one there. Or what we would call decent. Though—I don’t know—others seemed to have their moments, too.”

“‘The gods,’” Beverly said, “‘have two jars: from one they take good, from the other evil, and so make men: some have more of one than of the other: of such are human kind.’”

“I didn’t know you’d read that translation,” Picard said.

Beverly nodded. They went on in silence for a little way, down to the ’lift doors. It stopped for them.

“But I think of him,” Picard said as the doors shut. “Deck twelve. I think of him there and wonder. Will what happened really make a difference to him? Can it? We were there such a short time. Hard enough to make a difference even in this universe, even over many years.” He shook his head. “Can a word or two spoken
really
change the world?”

The ’lift stopped. “I don’t know,” Beverly said, looking
affectionately at him. “
Engage
seems to do a pretty good job.”

She kissed him on the cheek, raised her eyebrows at him, and went out.

Jean-Luc Picard looked after her, and the turbolift doors shut on his smile.