Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [115]
“See?” she was saying. “How simple. See how long the time between one breath and the next can be?” She laughed. “What was it they used to say about relativity? A second with a pretty girl—a second on a hot stove.” She smiled at him charmingly. “See, now you’ve got both. And you’ll have both for a good long while. Now, tell me”—the pain increased once again, though time kept running—”who came with you?”
The field wrung another scream out of him, and the mind touched him, just there, and he cried, helpless, “Counselor!”
“No use begging me for mercy,” she said softly. “I have very little of that to spare today.”
He gulped, desperate, realizing how close he had come to doing real damage. Tell her! his mind screamed. Start telling her, control it!
Don’t! shrieked another part. Do anything, but don’t tell her you’ve got to slow her down, do anything to slow her that you can, don’t, don’t!
The pain whited him out again. Desperate, he clawed at the edges of his mind, trying to keep from falling back into that burning whirlpool.
“Who came with you?” said the voice. And the fingers came down and gently pried loose the hand that held him on the edge of the pain.
He fell, screaming, burnt alive—and the image of Picard came and went before he could do anything about it.
The pain from that was worst of all.
Not very far away, someone else heard the screams, and the tears rolled down her face, and there was nothing she could do. Anguish of that sort was eminently traceable. Deanna, waiting in Geordi’s quarters, knew that they had caught him, knew where he had been when they caught him, knew that the other Troi was involved somehow. They were coming here and would be here very shortly to rescue the other La Forge.
In fact they were quite close: she could feel them approaching. Horrible indecision and fear descended on her. She could feel what Geordi was going through, though, even if only at a remove; the pain of it frayed at her nerves like an old acid burn on the skin. She had to get him out of there.
This is how to start, said part of her mind, and got her up and wiped her face hastily dry.
The door opened, and the security detail came in. She looked at them and pointed at the wall. “In there. I can feel his mind. He’s asleep, but otherwise he’s all right. Get him out.”
“Counselor,” one of them said in surprise. “We weren’t expecting to see you down here so fast.”
Her heart rose. It was plain enough that these people, at least, didn’t know there was a double of their mistress aboard. Logical enough, the thought went through Deanna’s mind. She wouldn’t tell them any more than they absolutely needed to know.
“At a time like this,” she snapped at them, “what do you expect?” They cringed, and she found herself enjoying it and didn’t even bother to feel guilty about it. “Get him out of there. I have other business to attend to.” They ducked their heads to her and went about opening the compartment.
She headed straight out the door and into those halls, moving fast. People got out of her way as they saw her coming, and she was grateful for that. At least communications aren’t functioning here, she thought. Odds aren’t very good that anyone would figure out there are two of us, until … At least she hoped the odds weren’t very good. But how is one to tell at this point?
She strode down the corridor into the turbolift and headed for Geordi’s last location —that shaft where he had been working. She got there to find a crowd of engineering people just now descending into the shaft, Eileen Hessan among them. They looked at her in some surprise. “Did you forget something, Counselor?” one of them said.
“Yes,” Troi said, and brushed through them as if they were so many chickens. “Here—give me that.” She gestured one of them off the floater he was standing on, got on it herself, and keyed in the commands that would take it down