All Good Things__ - Michael Jan Friedman [11]
“It’s okay, Captain.” He took hold of the vintner’s arm. “Everything’s going to be all right.” Flushed with anger, Picard pulled his arm away. “I am not senile. It happened, I tell you. I was here, with you… and then I was in another place…” But where was it?
Again, he had a flash of insight. “It was… it was back on the Enterprise!” he croaked.
But how was that possible? He hadn’t been on his old ship in a quarter of a century. And the more he thought about it, the more a host of doubts began to set in.
“At least,” he went on, “I think it was the Enterprise. It seemed like sickbay… yes… but maybe it was a hospital… or…” He shrugged. How could he know? How could he be sure?
La Forge looked at him. “Captain, I think we should go back to the house. We could call a doctor …. “
Picard felt his anger crawl up into his throat, where it threatened to choke him. “No, “he grated. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s the Irumodic syndrome. It’s beginning to… to affect the captain’s mind. Well, it’s not that. And… and I wasn’t daydreaming either, dammit.”
La Forge held up a hand for peace. “All right, sir… all right. Just calm down.”
The older man felt the heat in his face start to ebb away. He straightened to his full height. “Apology accepted,” he said, even though—technically—his visitor hadn’t tendered one.
“So,” La Forge probed, “something’s happened. You’ve gone… er, somewhere else. And back again.” Picard nodded emphatically. “Damned right I have.” “Then…” The younger man appealed to him with his artificial eyes. “What do you want to do about it?”
The vintner considered the request, doing his best to seize on a course of action. Finally, one came to mind.
“I want to see Data,” he announced.
La Forge mulled it over. “I don’t get it. Why Data?”
This was annoying. “Because I think he can help.”
The younger man looked at him. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir… help how?”
The anger exploded in him, almost as hot and bright as before. “I don’t know!” roared Picard. “I don’t know—but I want to see him, do you understand me?”
In the aftermath of the captain’s outburst, La Forge hesitated. Obviously, he still wasn’t putting much credence in anything the older man said. But in the end, he seemed to come to terms with the idea. “Okay, sir. We’ll go see Data, if that’s what you want.” “It is,” Picard confirmed. The younger man’s eyes narrowed. “He’s still at Cambridge, isn’t he?”
It was a good question. “Yes,” said the vintner. “I think he…”
He never finished the sentence, distracted by a sudden movement in the corner of his eye. Turning toward it, he saw the intruders again—the scraggly, undernourished, hollow-eyed souls he’d noticed before.
But this time, there weren’t three of them. There were six.
As before, they were jeering and pointing at Picard— though he hadn’t the slightest idea why. Nor, for that matter, could he guess what they were doing here a second time. He grabbed La Forge by the arm and, with an effort, managed to turn him in the intruders’ direction. “Do you see them?” he asked. “Do you?”
The other man looked out over the rolling vineyards. Then he looked back at Picard. “See who?”
The captain pointed to them. “They’re out there,” he said. “Laughing at me. Why are they laughing, dammitT’
Why indeed? What was so funny7 And who were they, anyway?
La Forge put his arm around Picard. It was a patently protective gesture. “Come on, Captain. Let’s go see Data.”
Picard started to protest—and then realized that the intruders were gone. There wasn’t a sign ofthem—not a rag, not an echo. He scanned the vineyards in all directions, to no avail.
But how could they have disappeared so quickly? It was as if they’d dropped into a hole in the earth.
Or was it possible that he had imagined them after all? That they had never existed in the first place?
The older man swallowed. “Yes,” he muttered. “Data