Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [66]
Baldwin laughed. The laugh was terrible and had no intelligence behind it; it went on and on.
Chapter Fourteen
THE LAUGHTER CONTINUED. It made Picard itch in places he could not reach, inside his brain, up and down his spinal column. From their actions he could tell that the others felt the same way. Even Worf looked anxious. Only Pilgrim, the d’Ort’d persona, sat calmly.
Picard knew that Baldwin, in his present state, was far beyond his reach. None of the other sleepers had suffered what Baldwin was going through. Perhaps it had something to do with being chosen by the d’Ort’d. Or something to do with Baldwin himself. Eventually they would know. It was possible that Starfleet would someday have its own pushers, giving the Federation interstellar travel without warp engines. An age-old dream. The exploration of space would truly become a human adventure at last.
Picard walked to a corner of the big room. The walls absorbed sound and made the laughter seem much farther away than it was. In the relative quiet, Picard heard the Enterprise creaking like a ship at sea. Holodeck illusion or more Boogeyman mischief? Could the sound be real, caused by the stress put on the ship by the Boogeymen? Maybe things were even more desperate than he had thought. Ever hopeful, Picard touched his insignia and said, “Sickbay.”
“Nobody here by that name,” said a Boogeyman.
Picard came back to the overstuffed chairs and ordered Worf to go down to sickbay and bring back Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi. “Ask Dr. Crusher to bring a complete medikit.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“What about me, Captain?” Ensign Perry said.
Picard glanced at Worf, but he was stone-faced, as usual. “Very well,” said Picard. “Stay sharp.”
Worf and Perry left the holodeck together. Did Perry think they were friends? It was possible; human women had been attracted to Worf before. The coolness, the blatant animal magnetism, the sense of humor that he tried mightily to hide—all had admirers. Interesting, but not Picard’s business. Maybe she just wanted to get away from Baldwin.
Wesley could not remember being more brainweary. Yes, he could. He’d once stayed up all night to review his plasma physics notes before the final exam. He’d forced himself to take two hours off for sleep, and it had been enough, but just barely.
He and Geordi and Data were sitting at Engineering’s master situation monitor, but not using any of the terminals. If they wanted information or lightning-fast computation, they had to use tricorders. Testing theories and figuring mathematical answers had become a frustratingly slow process.
“What about this?” La Forge said. “We can create a feedback loop so that whatever the Boogeymen do to the Enterprise will come back to bite them.”
Data shook his head. “I believe we tried a tricorder simulation of that solution four hours and thirty-seven minutes ago.”
“Did it work?” La Forge asked.
Wesley laughed at that, but Data merely said no, which only made Wesley laugh harder. The comical look of confusion on Data’s face made La Forge laugh, too. Then he took a deep breath and said, “We’re all a little slaphappy, I guess.”
All of them except Data. Being an android, he was still alert and fresh. Long after Wesley and La Forge sat staring into space, trying not to lose the trail of some possible but obscure solution, Data was still eagerly punching information into his tricorder.
The three of them sat without talking. The normal sounds of Engineering twittered and bonked around them. Computer screens were blank or were rolling up line after line of gibberish or showing distorted images of Boogeymen. Occasionally a Boogeyman would laugh or make a threat or tell the world that they had won.
At least one good thing had come out of this situation. The Boogeymen, while still disturbing, had ceased to frighten Wesley. Familiarity had diluted their power. He guessed that even if he saw them in his sleep, he would no longer consider the experience a nightmare, but only a mildly unpleasant dream.