Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [120]
“So you say.” His counterpart gazed at him thoughtfully. “Are you so sure? Bears may dance badly, but they do dance. We will manage it again. There will be other parts of your Federation not so carefully watched. Back doors … weak spots. There are always such. You have had other conspiracies of late that nearly brought Starfleet itself down. Those were alien creatures involved, things not even human. Still they almost fooled you when installed near the heart of things. You’ll be easily enough fooled by us when we come back.”
“But there’s no hope of that “u”’ including you. Not if I understand your Starfleet. You’ll be lucky to get out of this with your life.”
“Oh, I’ll manage,” said his counterpart, grinning evilly. Picard wanted to shudder at the thought that such an expression could live on his face. “I am still the most experienced captain they have. They had to come to me for advice when they began to put this plan together … and I didn’t spend the past five years of my career maneuvering to make sure that the mission was assigned to my ship.”
“To you, you mean.”
“You do learn, eventually. Of course. Once we’ve succeeded at this, even if the success isn’t total, the power I’ll acquire—”
It was in the middle of that sentence that Picard realized what the other was doing and leapt at him, simply leapt like a mad thing, regardless of phasers—though he kept his clutched in his hand. He caught his counterpart in the chest, and again they went rolling over. They’ll be here shortly, he thought as he grabbed for the other’s flailing hand— managed to grab it by the wrist and began pounding it against the floor. The other rolled the other way, and the worst of it began, a thick, tangled, confused fight, all arms and legs, not the clean, efficient combat that had been taught Picard in school, but something more like the halves of a mind fighting. Two men who were one man, terrified of each other, trying to remember their expertise, losing it in the basic horror of the moment: that each of them was face-to-face with something that was his diametrical opposite, but each similarly equipped, each as sharp of mind, and the minutes ticking away. It could only be a matter of time before …
The other Picard caught him hard in the solar plexus, rolled away, lurched to his knees. Wheezing, gasping for breath, Jean-Luc came to his own knees and then threw himself sideways as the phaser beam sizzled past him, then once again threw himself straight at the other. The beam went awry, but only just. It singed his left eyebrow off, and the force of it passing through the air by his ear left him half-deaf on that side, the ear ringing. Not that it mattered in the wake of the red streak of pain that left him wondering whether he had actually been grazed. A graze it would have had to be, for anything closer would have left him without that side of his head. For a moment he struggled again with the other, then clubbed the phaser out of his hand with his own, and looked down into that snarling face, teeth bared, more an animal’s than a man’s.
He gripped his own phaser, checked the setting, the charge. The other glared sheer hate at him, made a grab at the phaser.
He stunned him point-blank, then reeled back, feeling sick to his stomach from the blows and the backwash of the stun. Picard staggered to his feet, tried to pull down his uniform, failed again, said, “Ah, j’m’en fous!”
The sound of phaser fire came from outside. He whirled. The door opened.
And the counselor and two of her guards rushed in, with Worf behind them. They looked from him, to the form on the floor, to him again.
Picard had no time for their confused looks. “Barclay,” he breathed. He brushed past them as if they were hardly there, out into the hall.
Nothing. No one there: only the faintest smell of scorched meat. Not a body, not even a hand to clasp as the poor faithful soul passed away.
He turned, walking slowly back into the room. Troi was staring at him.