Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [13]
“I have already done that, Captain,” Data said. “There are no such incidents on record as such. I have scanned using homologues for phrases being used by our own crewmen to describe the experience. There are none.”
Picard frowned. “Keep working on it.”
“Ensign Wooldridge to Commander Riker,” said a voice suddenly.
Riker touched his badge. “Riker here, Ensign.”
“Sir,” said a young male voice, “I’m down by the mission specialist’s quarters: the dolphin gentleman. I think you’d better have someone come down here. He’s awful loud in there, and he’s not answering his door. I’m not sure he’s well.”
Faintly, in the background, they could all hear a high, eerie wailing.
“How long has this been going on?” said Riker.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Wooldridge said, raising his voice slightly over the racket. “I just got off shift. I had been in my quarters to change, and I was heading to Ten-Forward, when I came by here and heard him. He’s been at it at least since I came by —ten minutes or so.”
“On my way,” Riker said, glancing at Picard. The captain nodded. “Mr. Data, with me. Dr. Crusher to the mission specialist’s quarters immediately, please.”
From right down the hall from his quarters, it was very plain that something was the matter. A great flood of untranslated Delphine was ringing out down the corridor; not entirely an unpleasant sound, for there was melody in the fluting whistles, squeaks, and shrills of it, and a kind of rhythm as well. But at the same time, independent of the sound, there was such an edge of distress on the song that it made you twitch to listen to it.
Riker and Data came up outside the doors; Dr. Crusher came along toward them from the other direction. Data tapped the entry chime. There was no response—the piercing song merely went on, uninterrupted, from inside.
“What’s the matter with him?” Riker said. “What’s happened to his translator?”
“I do not know,” Data said, listening.
“What is that racket?” Crusher said, getting out her tricorder.
Data put his head to one side. “It is part of the Song of the Twelve,” he said, “a cetacean epic sung-poetic work in which an ensemble of—”
“Dolphins singing lieder,” Riker said, cutting him off. “Spare me.” He gestured at the door. “Override it.”
Data touched in a combination on the nearest access panel. The door slid open, and Riker saw, to his relief, that the force field inside was still holding the water in place. They gazed in through it.
Hwiii was there, swimming around and around in circles. Riker was suddenly, horribly reminded of old vids he’d seen from when zoo animals on Earth were still kept in tiny enclosures that literally bored them out of their minds: the dreadfully repeated behaviors, heads swinging back and forth again and again in never-changing patterns, beasts pacing back and forth until they dropped from exhaustion, what minds they had now long gone. But at the same time, the song still pouring forth from Hwiii didn’t seem to be the kind of sound a dolphin would make when it had gone mad. Then again—
Riker turned to Crusher. “Vital signs?”
She shook her head as she examined her tricorder’s readings. “His blood enzyme levels are indicative of great stress, but other than that, no neurological damage that I can see.”
“Then why is he like this?” Riker said softly. “What’s going on? What caused this?”
His mind went back to that momentary flicker of darkness. He had been talking to Lieutenant Hessan, laughing back at those laughing eyes of hers, and suddenly—
“Wooldridge noticed this, what—twenty minutes ago?”
“That would be approximately correct,” Data said. The song scaled up in urgency, and all at once it became a bit too much for Riker. He turned, touched his badge, said, “Riker to Commander Hwiii!” then put two fingers in his mouth, leaned close to the wall of water for maximum effect, and whistled at the top of his lungs.
The dolphin almost matched his whistle a second later, with a shriek of equal volume, one that made them all wince. But then he slowly stopped circling, coasting to a stop, and just hung in the water for a