Gulliver's Fugitives Part 10

Chops Taylor was a phenomenally good musician, easily good enough to go professional. In fact, she had been on some tours with a band that included a boar-faced Tellarite drummer, a tall blue Andorian ba.s.sist, and an elegant Vulcan on keyboard.

She didn't perceive her guitar in the normal visual manner. She formed a spatial image of it through the information near her fingertips. The guitar filled her entire field of consciousness. She saw each nuance of string and fret with microscopic clarity. She saw things other musicians didn't see, like heat and harmonic vibration. Above all, her manual dexterity was unmatched, both as a musician and as a maintenance engineer. She lived through her hands.

Now, Chops came over to Geordi and put a sensor-augmented hand on his face; her way of seeing him.

"You're looking tired, sir. Lot of fatigue in the forehead, the jaw, hmmm, down on the neck ..."

"You're tellin' me. How's it going on those communicators?"

She held up a partially-a.s.sembled communicator with her other hand.

"Incredible," said Geordi. "State-of-the-Chops."

"And guaranteed un-jammable. All I have to do is the final a.s.sembly."

Geordi didn't let himself indulge in relief. The special communicators might allow him to send another team down to the planet, but there would be no guarantee they would be able to find the first team. His guts would be grinding until the moment he got the captain, Riker, Data, and Troi back, safe and sound, on the ship. And until the moment he got rid of the d.a.m.ned one-eyes. Right now his stomach felt like it had been tied in a reef knot.

He was also tired as h.e.l.l, having been up for a good twenty-four hours. Even if he had no time to sleep himself, he could at least exert command authority and make her sleep.

"Chops, you've been up as long as I have. Don't you think you should take some quick winks before you go on?"

"Why? I'm toolin' along fine."

"Our communicator task is only one of several. When you're finished with it I'm going to put you on the team that's devising weapons to use against the one-eyes. Somewhere in there you're going to have to get some sleep."

There was enough sternness in his voice to convey what amounted to an order.

"Okay, but I'll do it here. I slept in worse places when I played in clubs on the road."

She went and sat on the floor, in a corner, and fell asleep instantly.

"Lieutenant La Forge."

Worf's voice. Geordi put his hand over his communicator and tiptoed into the next console bay.

"La Forge here."

"How many other crewpersons are in Engineering at the moment?" asked Worf.

"Five besides myself."

"Two of the one-eyes have split off from the others and appear to be working their way over to you. They may attempt to enter Engineering itself."

"Worf, how are they getting past us like this? At least some of our security measures should be stopping them-at least once in a while."

"We've been observing them whenever possible," said Worf. "It seems that of the two heading in your direction, one is specialized; a kind of locksmith. It uses electromagnetic energy to enter codes and open doors. It already knows many secret procedures-because of information gathered from the minds on the Enterprise, or from the Huxley, or both. Its companion is a guard, a one-eye armed like the others. It's been fending off attacks from our security people."

Geordi saw that poor Chops had woken up in the next room, and was standing, leaning unsteadily against the wall. The alarming conversation he'd been having with Worf had roused her. She'd gotten no more than a minute of sleep, but her eternally active hands were flexing, ready to be used.

"Sir," said Worf, meanwhile, "I have an idea how we can take out that locksmith one-eye."

There was little navigation for Wesley to do at the moment. The Enterprise, surrounded by Rampartian ships, automatically held the synchronous position Wesley had set above Rampart. As he looked at the curving blue horizon on his viewscreen, and simultaneously kept an eye on the console under his hands and an ear open to the soft crew-talk around him, an unsettling memory danced around in his mind.

It had been about a week ago.

The visit to the Holodeck had been Shikibu's idea. She had programmed it for the rock garden at Ryoanji, Kyoto, in a softly falling morning rain.

They sat on the floor under an ancient wooden eave. After Wesley unsuccessfully tried several times to start a conversation, they lapsed into quiet. Wesley realized she wanted it this way, as usual. He became aware of the complexity of sounds created by the rain falling gently on the bamboo and the conifers, on the ancient tile roofs and on the rocks and sand of the garden itself.

Wesley couldn't tell if the islands of rugged rocks in the large rectangle of raked sand had been there before the garden was built. The whole garden, in fact, was a careful blending of the works of man with the spontaneous works of nature, crafted so that the visitor could not tell where one left off and the other began.

Beside him, Shikibu was gazing at the garden. Her hair was the blackest he'd ever seen. It fell about her shoulders in an arrangement that told both of deliberate design and the chance of wind and movement.

He felt a sudden impulse to touch the fine black hair. For quite a while he sat there next to her, several times almost doing it, but always chickening out. She could embarra.s.s him; she could be offended, scold him like a child and walk out. She could laugh, and tell him that he was clumsy, that he was doing it all wrong. Or maybe she would respond with some wild scary Kama pleasuring technique he'd never even dreamed of.

Dumb thoughts, he told himself. Those things were all out of character for her. And all he would do was touch her hair. That was no crime. They were friends. Stop stalling and just do it.

He reached out and let his fingers run through the soft jet-black hair, just once. Her head moved slightly, in what felt to Wesley like a reflex. But still she stared at the garden and said nothing.

Puzzled, Wesley withdrew his hand.

Shikibu got up and asked the Holodeck to show her the door. Wesley followed her out and she bade him a short, polite good-bye. She did not seem to be offended.

He was just as mystified as he had been by her wordless demonstration of Zen archery postures. He had the definite feeling she was trying to tell him something, but he had no idea what it was.

It had been the last time he'd seen Shikibu.

Just a few moments ago, as he sat at his station on the bridge, he'd heard his mother relay her report on the status of her patients in sickbay, among them Shikibu. It seemed Shikibu was sleeping under sedation, and had no permanent injury.

Now he stared at the bridge viewscreen; at the curve of Rampart, and the thick nebula beyond it, veiling Rampart from the rest of the cosmos.

Wesley wasn't sure if he were in love with Shikibu. But he began to think-what if he were, and what if both of them lived on Rampart? It was a love-against-adversity scenario. He imagined the two of them on the run, hiding in abandoned buildings or alpine wilderness.

What exactly did the s.e.xes do with each other on Rampart, he wondered. How could they fit s.e.x and love into their lives of rigorous precision and fact? It would be like a watchmaker trying to build an apple.

Maybe a Rampartian would tell his intended, "My attraction to you is expressed in this bar graph, using fractional courting algorithms for a male and female at sea level, noon standard time."

And she would say, "Thank you. You have just increased by two percent the secretions of my endocrine glands."

Wesley saw they would have to reject all those things which were impossible to put into words or even thoughts but which, for him, made women-like Shikibu-into magic.

The Rampartians would have to block it all out. Make it into two animals mating, or two machines docking.

In his mind he pictured the one-eye that shot Shikibu, and the other ones running rampant on the ship. He hated them; he hated the people that made them, because they thought they knew everything.

In Wesley's field, physics, such people r.e.t.a.r.ded the growth of knowledge, and were invariably wrong anyway. The great discoveries had always been made by those with the most imagination.

Behind him he could hear Worf talking, relaying to Geordi a plan for neutralizing some of the one-eyes. Tactical stuff, none of his business really. But he itched to partic.i.p.ate somehow.

Some time ago, Dr. Crusher had a.n.a.lyzed Security Chief Worf's musculature and found the muscle tissues so strong, efficient, and fast to respond, that she had wanted to write an article about him.

"You'll appear in only the best medical journals, I promise," she had said with a wry smile.

"A Klingon does not submit to the fussing and coddling of doctors," he had replied gruffly, getting off the table, impatient to get back to work. "One is bad enough, but all the doctors in the Federation-the dishonor would be unthinkable."

"Some football scout might get it off the data nets and decide to try you out," replied the pleasant, auburn-haired doctor. "You'd probably make an ideal tight end."

"I agree, except the opposing players would not survive the intensity of my play."

"I was just joking, Worf."

"I was not."

Now, Worf ran, the footfalls of his six-and-a-half-foot body booming along the corridor. His eyes shone with the adamantine flame of a Klingon entering combat. There was no greater glory for Worf than defending his ship, his crewmates, and the Starfleet organization, which had rescued him when he was a child.

He also knew in the back of his mind that everything that happened to him now could later figure in his own secret attempt at personal glory, his clandestine quest made possible by Oleph and Una.

But that would come later.

Now, entering a service crawl s.p.a.ce, he reviewed what he would have to do inside. He would station himself at the intersection with a certain Jefferies tube the one-eyes would probably use to get to Engineering. There he would wait in ambush.

The plan depended on the armed one-eye preceding the locksmith one-eye as they made their way along the tube. He and Geordi were of the same opinion-the soldier would go first to protect its unarmed specialist.

When the soldier one-eye pa.s.sed his hiding place Worf would move a metal cover-plate into the Jefferies tube, separating the soldier one-eye from its companion. Worf was then to touch the unarmed locksmith with an electric probe, giving it a healthy megawatt to think about.

The Klingon felt inclined to take on both of the intruding robots right now, no matter what his odds against the armed one, but Geordi had flat-out refused such a suggestion. Stopping the locksmith would be enough for him.

As Worf crawled along the conduit-lined crawl s.p.a.ce, his communicator came to life. No voice, just an audible signal-three clicks-from Lieutenant Regina Wentz, who had the bridge. It meant the one-eyes had been observed, and were on their way.

Worf moved quickly on hands and knees, and stopped at the plate that separated him from the Jefferies tube.

He heard two clicks from his communicator. It meant the one-eyes were proceeding toward the ambush point.

He looked at the short-range sensor he'd brought with him, which now had an exact fix on both intruders. Twenty meters for the leader; the other was at twenty-four. He put his hand on the control for the cover.

Ten meters. Worf felt the wine-dark Klingon combat hormones pumping into his blood. His muscles itched for immediate use.

Five. Two. Zero, said the rangefinder. The first one had pa.s.sed.

Worf touched the control under his hand. The cover moved.

Suddenly he saw white, and heard a sustained roar. It was as though a bomb had gone off in his head. His limbs refused to work. His hand fell from the control; stopping the cover in a halfway position. His other hand dropped his electric prod, which fell, irrevocably lost, into a cl.u.s.ter of conduits, but he was only dimly aware of the loss, or of anything else.

It was Worf's bad luck that, commencing a short time ago, the one-eyes had started emitting blasts of radiation as they had moved down the Jefferies tube, to prevent the ambushes they had decided were likely.

The metal plate that would have protected Worf was stuck halfway down, leaving him vulnerable.

Detecting a hidden living consciousness, whose brain waves were too distant to be decoded, the soldier one-eye emitted another blast of radiation before going behind the cover for a close-up inspection. The radiation dose was measured to incapacitate a human for several hours but render him available for brain scan. The soldier one-eye wanted to know what other plans might be afoot.

The second blast knocked Worf out completely. But his Klingon nervous system had responded a bit differently than a human's. Its water molecules hadn't been vibrated as violently. It was already recovering.

The soldier one-eye backed up and joined its companion. Like two curious boys peeking over a backyard fence, they hovered half hidden by the metal cover. Their antennae bent toward Worf. Their lenses zoomed and focused with little servo-motor whirs.

They knew no context for identifying Worf. His brain waves could be received but not accurately decoded. Aliens, the programming of the one-eyes told them, did not exist, but this being in front of them was close enough to h.o.m.o sapiens' form to be cla.s.sified as a strange kind of mutant deformed human. They would follow the procedure for humans-the only procedure they knew.

The locksmith one-eye stayed back, while the soldier one-eye moved right up to Worf's head for a scan of his brain waves.

The slow, non-rhythmic "delta" activity in Worf's brain resembled human coma or deep sleep. But the soldier was misreading the signals. It could not tell that Worf was coming around; did not know that Worf was enraged, and that the proper response to an enraged Klingon was to leave the area immediately.

Worf's arms moved with explosive speed. He grabbed the one-eye at its base, getting a good grip on its antigrav housing, turning the one-eye so it couldn't fire its radiation directly at him. Although not all of his strength had returned, he could feel his arms overcome the pull of the antigravs.

The one-eye fired a blast from its gun, bouncing the radiation helter-skelter around the crawl s.p.a.ce. Worf absorbed some of it, but managed to hurl the one-eye against the wall with a sparking clang. It slipped away from his hands like a darting fish. He aimed a prodigious kick at it, sending it tumbling back over the side of the metal cover and into the Jefferies tube, where its unarmed partner had already retreated to safety.

Worf felt himself losing consciousness. In a confused state, he dimly understood a duty: Geordi would insist that he preserve his life. Another part of him, a Klingon part, wanted to keep fighting and die with glory, but at this moment duty took the fore. He managed to tab the control and close the metal cover, separating him from the one-eyes. Then he blacked out completely.

In the Jefferies tube, the one-eyes resumed their progress toward Engineering. The crew on the bridge were able to tell, through the life-monitor in Worf's communicator pin, that Worf was injured and unconscious. They advised Geordi that the one-eyes had not been stopped, and that he should prepare his department for their arrival.

The little storage cubicle was not made for storing living beings.

That was much in evidence to the six who were presently in self-imposed cellarage. The insufficient oxygen (all six were oxygen-breathers), the excessive body heat, and the awkward positions they had to maintain made for much misery.

The construction of this door might save our lives by hiding our brain waves from the one-eyes, thought Geordi, but it might also kill us by starving us for air.

He winced as he listened to the destruction from outside. Wildly arcing electrical energy, frying circuits, warping and shuddering panels.

He tried to discern some pattern to what the one-eyes were doing, but found he was baffled. He wondered if Chops might understand more. Through his VISOR sight he looked at the patterns of warmth and cold on the surface of her head, as if that could tell him something. Seen in infrared, Chops was very psychedelic. Suddenly he felt the whole situation so absurd that he had to chortle. He was deliriously punchy. He wanted to hug Chops or slap her bottom.

A word floated before his eyes. Hypoxia.

What the h.e.l.l was that? He started to laugh again.

Oh yes, lack of oxygen to the brain. Delirium. Every Starfleet crewperson knew how to recognize it. His training now made him act automatically.

He picked up the hand of Skoel, the Vulcan ensign next to him, and in a silent gesture, put it at the juncture of his own shoulder and neck, then at the same spot on the other crewpersons in the closet.

Skoel, the Vulcan, had been antic.i.p.ating such a decision. The most logical one. The only possible way to save oxygen.

One by one he nerve-pinched all of the humans in the closet, rendering them unconscious, a state in which they would use the minimum amount of oxygen.

Skoel then put himself into a trance and his green Vulcan blood slowed until it was barely moving.

Skoel roused them many minutes later. Wentz had called from the bridge; the one-eyes had left Engineering and were pursuing new opportunities for ship sabotage.

The six of them spilled gasping out of the closet. The air was thick with acrid vapors, but to the six it tasted delicious.

Chops quickly went from panel to panel, her sensitized fingertips "seeing" the scorched circuitry in microscopic detail.

Geordi went right to the main status board. It had enough function left to tell him that the warp engines were in bad shape. They could still produce power, but not much, and not safely. He'd have to take over manual control of the mix itself, the temperature and pressure controls, and the frequency range of the emissions.