Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [12]
“We’ve got most of his equipment hooked up now. We’re getting good readings, he says. I’m still getting an idea of what he means by “good”—half the time it seems to mean blank files.” Geordi chuckled. “But we’re in a situation here where lack of data can be as diagnostic as solids full of it. In between times, he’s been helping Commander Riker with his subparticle hunting—seems that the technology that the Lalairu are using with hyperstrings is somewhat similar and can be altered to our purposes. He’s made some changes in the sensors for us.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s making himself useful.”
“It’s getting him to stop, Captain, that’s the problem. He’s having a sleep cycle now, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I must admit, he is a fount of information: it’s an education just listening to him while he talks. Or sings—you can’t help hearing the notes, they resonate through his waterjacket. The engineering crew like it.” Geordi smiled. “I can’t say I mind it myself. The funny thing is, some of the song turns out to be some kind of delphine opera. He says he doesn’t have a great voice, but the singing runs in the family.”
“An opera buff. You’d better keep him away from Worf. But I didn’t know there was any opera back on Triton.”
“Something like it, apparently. Or I may have misunderstood him: it was hard to tell whether Hwiii was describing theater or a ceremony of some kind—or just live performances of some sort of passion play.”
Picard nodded and sipped at his tea again. “I had been wondering—”
He stopped.
Something was happening.
Abruptly, everything seemed peculiarly dim. Was it his eyes? Picard blinked, found nothing changed—but at the same time became suddenly certain that his eyes were not at fault.
The effect persisted, got worse, a darkening and squeezing shut of everything around him, as if he were closing his eyes to sneeze. No, as if everything around him were closing its eyes to sneeze.
Then it cleared away. He put his tea down, blinked for a moment, and rubbed his head. “That was odd.”
Geordi looked at him. “You felt something?”
“Did you?”
Geordi nodded. “Something like—I don’t know: everything dimmed out for a moment.”
“Dimmed out for you?”
“Not light,” Geordi said. “Not a decrease in intensity as such. Not visible light, anyway— just—everything went attenuated, somehow.”
Picard looked around. Other people, at other tables, were looking slightly confused, too, blinking, glancing around them. “Did you feel that?” he said to the ensign at the next table.
“Something, sir,” she said. “Something—I thought I was going to sneeze.”
Picard touched his badge. “Picard to Crusher.”
“Crusher here,” the doctor said. “Captain, did you just feel something odd?”
“Yes. How many others?”
“Half the ship, it seems.”
“What was it?”
Crusher laughed ruefully. “I had just stood up, and I thought it was orthostatic hypotension—a fall in blood pressure from standing up too fast. That produces transient dimmings of vision like what I had. But it wasn’t that … not when so many people felt it at once.”
Picard thought about finishing his tea, then stood up frowning. “Very well, out. … Sorry to put you straight back into the traces, Mr. La Forge, but this is too odd. I want level-one diagnostics run on all ship’s systems. And I want a department chiefs’ meeting in an hour.”
“Yes, sir,” Geordi said, and headed away. Picard paused to look out the windows. The stars slipped by as usual, seemingly untroubled. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Am I overreacting? he thought. We all seem fine now.
But the memory of that dimming reasserted itself. Not so much a dimming, but—what was it Geordi had said? An attenuation. Things themselves going dark and strange, rather than his perception of them.
Picard made his way out hurriedly, heading for the bridge.
He had just seated himself and was having a look at reports from around the ship. Everyone seemed to have experienced the strange hiatus, but no one had experienced any ill effects.
This left Picard feeling uneasy. “Mr. Data, check Federation records for any incidents of this sort.