Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [112]
She cut. Geordi couldn’t even cry out, and a moment later the counselor held up the bloodied intradermal implant, dropped it on the floor, and crushed it under her heel. “That’s better. Now, Hessan, as for you—you’ve been waiting for a promotion, haven’t you? Some little while now.”
“Yes, Counselor,” she said, still smiling. “I didn’t think it was likely to come soon, though.”
“Oh, no problem with that. You take over this operation. Granted, there are three assistant chiefs ahead of you, but they can’t really do the job, can they?—we both know that.” The two smiled at each other conspiratorially. “Get moving now,” the counselor said, “and get this ship running again quickly. We have problems to deal with.”
Hessan turned to the other engineering staff gathered around. “Never mind this swapping back and forth between cores; it’s too time-consuming. Let’s simply break out the emergency “hard” six-hour backups out of stores and use those instead. Get me more crew: I want all the diseased chips pulled and destroyed within half an hour. Take as many people as it needs.”
Geordi swallowed. They were going to do it the old-fashioned way, the simple way—the way he had hoped no one else would think of in the face of direct orders and a sufficiently elegant solution.
The counselor nodded, satisfied, as people went into action around her. “Fine,” she said to Hessan. “Meanwhile, I’ll take care of him.” She turned, and her eyes rested on Geordi, and that smile broadened.
In great horror he found himself understanding how the fly feels when the spider looks at it. Do spiders smile? he wondered. If they did, they would look like this.
They dragged him away.
On the bridge of the other Enterprise, Riker leaned over Data’s console. There was nothing else to do at the moment, nothing to see on the viewscreen since the other Enterprise had taken itself out of range. “How’s the data analysis going?”
“I am still completing it,” Data said. “The amount of information Mr. La Forge has sent us so far is considerable. I have, however, been able to extract and abstract for Commander Hwiii those parts of it which are most practically oriented. There is some information in the package we have received about the actual building of the apparatus that causes the inclusion of another object into this universe.”
“Does it say anything about getting an object out of this universe, back where it belongs?”
“Indeed it does, a great deal. Under average circumstances there does not seem too much difficulty in pushing an originating object back where it came from. There appears to be some question whether in the theory, hyperstring structure from one universe may not actually extend into another. It would seem that some traces of string structure remain about a dislocated object and may be used as a shortcut to “snap” that object back into its original location-and duration-space.”
“Like a rubber band,” Riker said.
“The simile would be fairly exact. The only difficulty would appear to be if an object remained too long in this universe. Not only would the universes themselves move out of phase, complicating matters”—Riker rolled his eyes: Data was understating again—”but the strength of the hyperstring attachment attenuates over time. The relationship is expressed by the equation 1VstpLike equals kO. Once the final string connections are broken or weakened past the point where the apparatus can successfully use them, other means must be found to locate the “home” universe.” Data stopped a moment, considering. “This is an entirely different theoretical area, on which it would appear the Empire has as yet done no work, since there is only one specific universe they are interested in: ours.”
Riker shook his head. The thought of the Enterprise having to bounce from universe to universe in search of its home … But it had to be considered. “Mr. Data, what would your estimate be of the number of alternative universes we