Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [108]
So, desperate, grasping at straws, they must have started looking down other paths, other tunnels in the maze. And someone, Picard thought, someone reading history, came across some few references to some other universe, into which some of their own people had accidentally fallen long ago, and from which they were sent back. He suspected that the debrief that those officers performed on returning to this universe, though spotty as to detail, would have been indicative enough of a fertile place to start work. A parallel universe, structurally the same as theirs, as technically advanced—but a weak, soft place by comparison, crippled by ethic, populated, in essence, by sheep, to judge from the behavior of the people in the starship they saw. It was an unexploited place, unconquered—for from what little their misplaced landing party had been able to tell, the people over there weren’t the conquering type. All that was needed was to find a way to produce, on purpose, the effect that once happened as an accident, and without needing other identical personnel or equipment to be transferred in the other direction at the same time.
Picard shook his head, thinking of the vast amount of mind and money and time and talent that must have been spent on answering the questions, sorting out the theoretical problems, and finally the technical detail that resulted in those great hulking boxes downstairs in engineering. They had solved the problem. They had, by (he had to admit) splendid use of the information that had fallen into their hands, created a whole new world, a world of worlds to conquer …
… starting with Enterprise. The pity and the anguish that rose up in him now were a match for his anger at the attack on his own world, his own ship. This place cannot be left this way, he thought. The innocents here deserve a life freed of this tyranny. But how? How?
He was back up against the problem of inertia. “One man cannot change the future,” Spock had apparently said to Kirk. “But one man can move the present,” Kirk had replied. There, as so often in his career, he had been right. Give me a place to stand, that ancient scientist had said. But you needed a lever long enough, and the right place to stand. Spock, able as he was, had not been able to do it.
There was this, though—the time of Spock’s prediction was eighty years closer than it had been. The whole system was now inherently less stable, more prone to being disordered. With less effort? Picard wondered. But not until I get a few more answers. Who is the lever? Where do I stand?
He stared at the screen for a long time; then the door chimed. He blanked the screen and stood. “Come,” Picard said.
The door opened. Outside in the corridor, the lights were dimmed, whether because of one of the transient power failures, or the presence of ship’s night, he wasn’t sure. Either way, from the dimness, a darker shape moved in, graceful. He caught the swing of the glittering fabric, the metal of the harness and the gleam of the knife, and, very soft, the faint gleam of the light above his bed catching in the dark eyes. It was Counselor Troi.
CHAPTER 13
“Captain,” the counselor said. Picard sketched her a small half-bow and began rummaging in his mind for poetry—though right now he suspected that she would see in his mind not much more than a great sense of melancholy and distress.
“You’re having trouble sleeping,” she said. “I could feel it right up on the bridge.”
Her tone was gentle enough, but there was a broad streak of innuendo—if kindly sounding—right down the middle of it. He chose to ignore it for the moment and gestured her to a seat.
She ignored the gesture and sat comfortably on the end of