Gulliver's Fugitives Part 18

"As much as we were able. Didn't bother them a bit."

"Try cycling power through the life support grid around them, set up a magnetic field."

Geordi went back to work on a damaged console while he simultaneously controlled the engines. The myriad pains and tensions in his sleep-deprived body had achieved an ever-changing complexity that rivaled the engines themselves. His command was turning into a battle with his own biology.

"Wentz to Lieutenant La Forge."

She sounded excited.

"La Forge here."

"We're being hailed from the planet's surface-it's Captain Picard, sir!"

"Send it down to my screen here-but I want you and the bridge crew to see it, too."

Geordi went over to his monitor. Picard's face was already there.

"Lieutenant La Forge!"

"Captain, sir! Are you all right?"

"Yes, I've been treated well since I've been on the planet's surface. I've been talking with Crichton and he now sees this was all a misunderstanding. We're close to an agreement on finishing our search for the Huxley."

"Well, why, then, are his one-eyes still trying to sabotage our ship?"

"Apparently he can't communicate with them from the surface. They have their own on-board command and control systems. You know, it's like the missiles used on Earth during the Post-Atomic Horror-fire and forget. But don't worry. I'm going to tell you how you can neutralize the one-eyes. How much damage have they done so far?"

"Just a moment sir, I'll check the current status."

Geordi switched to a private channel.

"Computer, tell me if that's really Captain Picard."

"Working ... positive on all parameters."

Geordi still didn't like it. He decided to be safely nonspecific. The real Picard would understand.

He switched back to the outside channel.

"Captain, we're still afloat, but we're going to need a lot of time in drydock when this is finished. We'd love any tips for stopping those little vandals."

"What you have to do right away, Lieutenant, is change the beam-collimation on your phasers. Use the Rollins Collimation Standard. Otherwise, in present configuration, the phasers' energy would cause the one-eyes to explode. Rollins Collimation will allow the phasers to destroy the one-eyes without the explosions."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"We'll jump on it."

Geordi was really sweating over whether it would be prudent to ask the next question. But Picard antic.i.p.ated it.

"The away team you sent, Geordi, they're all fine. I think I can even say they're enjoying their stay. And I've asked Crichton to pull his ships back from your position as a gesture of good faith."

Sure enough, Wentz called from the bridge.

"Sir, the Rampartian ships are backing off."

That didn't do much to a.s.sure Geordi. The Enterprise was still vulnerable. And the communicator-jamming had continued on the surface.

"Keep the shields up, Lieutenant."

Before he switched the channel back to Picard's, he took one more moment to think it all out. There had to be one test, just the right one ...

"Captain, I need to ask you a question to verify you are who you appear to be."

"You can ask one of the standard code questions."

"No, I had something else in mind, something to suit the occasion. What is the book you sometimes keep in your ready room, from which you most often quote? The book that was in your ready room before we got to Rampart?"

"Lieutenant, this is no time for improvisation. Use standard procedure please."

"What is the book, and who wrote it?"

"I can't remember. Lieutenant, this isn't a recognized procedure."

"Who wrote it?-your favorite, Captain."

"I say, and this is an order, Lieutenant-"

"Can't you give me a phrase from it? It doesn't have to be a fictional phrase. Just one of the t.i.tles. A type of storm, for instance. Or, you know, that certain small wild animal that has to be tamed."

"No. There is no such book! You're babbling nonsense."

Geordi could see that Picard really meant it.

"I can't accept that you're Captain Picard," he said, "unless you can give me something from that book."

"Lieutenant, I'm going to have to relieve you from duty," Picard said darkly.

Geordi cut the channel.

For a moment he stood there, appalled. Something abominable had been done to the captain's mind.

He called Wentz on the bridge.

No answer.

"Wentz, are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here. We ... oh, G.o.d."

"Talk to me!"

"We just lost someone. Someone from Security. They were trying to stop the one-eyes."

Geordi had to lean on the console to stop his shaking. Nightmare without end.

"The one-eyes have broken into impulse," said Wentz.

"Lies, disgusting myths, obscene stories. They're all over the place in there. Don't give me some garbage about not finding them."

Crichton sat in a treatment chair, while a rotund, middle-aged mind-cleanse doctor stood over him with a probe. It was a hand-held device with a shiny gold pod on the end. It could electronically search and destroy fiction in the brain, clean it out and replace it with inert filling, as one would treat a dental carie. This was known as "cleansing," and Rampartians had to do it all the time. The filling might consist of the number "six" repeated a million times, or a report on the history and technique of sandblasting.

The doctor moved the pod around the top of Crichton's head, searching.

"But I really can't find them, Director Crichton. It is possible that they're present but just not active at the moment."

"You'd better look harder. I've suffered spells of near-insanity because of these hallucinations. I've just been lucky that a one-eye didn't pick them up. We can't just wait for them to happen again. They're getting out of control."

"I could call in another doctor-"

"No, out of the question. You're the only one I trust to keep this in confidence, Henry. Of course, I have voluntarily sought help, and that would be a matter of record, so my guilt would be small. But think of the consequences to the CS. The Director of Cephalic Security, himself a carrier of the Allpox!"

"I do understand the problem, sir."

The doctor moved the probe around the top of Crichton's skull, while his eyes peered over their fat-pouches at an oscilloscope on the table.

Crichton looked at his watch. Then he grabbed his handset phone from his jacket pocket, dialed a number, cleared through CS voice-check, and got his office.

"Are the Dissenters ... just outside the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt? ... No, don't let them in. I want them forced to the designated zone in front of CephCom. Where's Ferris? ... Not like him, but let him finish. Just divert all the men and one-eyes you need to keep the criminals occupied, get them good and tired. No arrests. We'll have Ferris do that, but outside, where the wide angles will look good. CephCom towering in the background. Make sure you have plenty of fill-light for the shadows."

Crichton hung up and let the doctor continue his search.

"Sir, you're under an awful lot of stress. Did you ever consider quitting the CS? Seems like you would be good at directing TV news shows or commercials."

Crichton sighed. "Probably what I should have done, all along. Now it's too late. The Council will keep me where I am."

The orderlies had come in an hour ago and strapped Riker onto the bed. He had spent the intervening time in unendurable anguish, not because he seemed to have reached the end of his days, but because he seemed to have failed his friends. The away team mission had been a disaster, had accomplished nothing.

From this position he could still see the video screen on the opposite wall.

He saw images of Ferris and a squad of CS men, jumping from hovercraft onto the roof of a Rampartian building. They threw concussion grenades into the building, then cleared away from the windows as the explosions showered gla.s.s and thick smoke into the air.

Then the camera moved smoothly in, taking up a position behind Ferris' shoulder, following him as he leapt through a shattered window and sprinted down a hallway. In an office at the end, behind a door marked "Mental Hygiene," three rag-clad rebels had some lab technicians tied and blindfolded. Ferris burst in at the head of his team. The insurgents were quickly subdued and handcuffed. Ferris went over to one of the technicians and removed her blindfold: expression of undying grat.i.tude on innocent face.

Oh yes, thought Riker, Ferris the liberator, Ferris the patriot, Ferris with all the emblems and decorations ... If Riker hadn't been tied down he would have kicked the screen to pieces.

The door to Riker's room opened. Two CS men entered, followed by a woman in white uniform with red CS logo, wheeling a cart full of electronic gear. A cap with electrodes sat on top of the cart.

Ferris and another man, both wearing helmets, followed them in.

"Take your helmet off," said Ferris to the man with him. "Let him see you."

The man took his helmet off. It was Picard.

"Captain!"

"h.e.l.lo, Will."

"I didn't even think you were still alive!"

Picard stood over his first officer with an expression of pity.

"Will, it would be hard to explain it to you in your present state of mind."

The woman started shaving areas on the top of Riker's head.

"But Ferris wanted you to see me," Picard went on.

"That's right, Riker," said Ferris. "I wanted you to see how your captain turned out. How we burned the evil right out of him. Like what we're going to do to you."

Riker had a terrible desolate feeling as he looked at Picard. The Captain's whole demeanor had changed. He was a patronizing schoolmaster.

This, he supposed, was what awaited him too. He kept himself calm, and focused the totality of his concentration on finding a way out, for both of them. His senses felt heightened, as he saw everything with an almost painful clarity. It was as though a layer had been peeled from his eyes.

The other CS men were regarding Ferris with curiosity. It got Riker's attention.

Riker could see that Ferris was agitated. Not operational, not by-the-book. Ferris had come to win a fight while the enemy was still an enemy, and the only way he could signal victory was by showing off a brainwashed Picard. What Ferris really wanted was a true fight to the death, a struggle-complete with ritual blood at the end; not this kind of unwinnable battle against ideas.

Ferris was like a certain type of soldier that had committed brutalities in the twentieth century. The two "oldest" parts of his brain-the R-complex and limbic system, the parts humans have in common with pterodactyls and wolves, the parts that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago-were overstimulated, exploited, driven to distorted aims by his society. His conditioning gave him only aggression, territoriality, blind loyalty, and the hierarchy of the CS as a means for expression.

Riker searched for an idea, some way to trick Ferris into becoming his own victim.

Picard seemed to want to cut the silence.

"What is going to happen to you, Will, is a kind of rebirth. You are insane right now; you have a serious and progressive mental illness that compels you to do criminal acts. I am not able to remember much from the time when I was mentally ill, but I'm sure it was terribly unpleasant, as it must be for you.

"What I want you to understand is, the transition is not painful, or difficult. These people will do it humanely. And the relief when it's over!-when you see the world rationally, with no guessing, nothing unknown, or strange, or frightening. No mysteries, no stories to lie to you and distract you from the facts. The only enemies we really have, Will, are external-those people who want to perpetuate all the false -oods, all the heresies against truth and the true G.o.d."

The woman had finished shaving Riker's head. She smeared conductor on the electrodes, pushed the cap down onto his head, plugged the jacks into their wall-sockets, then powered up all the components on the cart.

She ripped a thick strip of white cloth tape from her roll, and leaned over to apply it over Riker's mouth. Riker moved away from it. In a futile gesture of defiance, he pulled with all his strength against his restraining straps.

Picard seemed to want to say something else to Riker. He frowned, searching for words.

"Will, I promise your fears are groundless."

The technician tried to put the tape on Riker's mouth but he spat it off violently.