Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [138]
“La Forge here,” Geordi’s voice almost sang. “Ow! Cut it out, Hwiii, I’m still sore there!”
“Report, Mr. La Forge,” Picard said, unable to suppress the smile now.
“They’re gone, Captain,” Geordi said. “Right back where they came from! And it was their own hyperstring residue that let us do it, the same way that we used our own to bring us back home again. But we’re not done yet.” He still sounded surprisingly urgent through the triumph. “Hwiii is busy doing another permutation on the string structure hereabouts—meaning ours. As soon as he’s ready, we—”
“Now!” Hwiii whistled from the background. “We need to head out of here at about warp nine, Captain, so that our inherent hyperstring association changes enough that they can’t follow us back again.”
“Warp nine, now, if you please, Mr. Redpath,” Picard said.
The ship leapt forward; Picard looked with great satisfaction at the viewscreen in front of him, flowing with stars again. “For how long, Mr. La Forge?”
“An hour or so will make it impossible for them to latch on to us again without a major retool of their own readings, Captain … which they won’t be able to get because we will be a long way thataway, on a course they can’t predict.”
“Very good, Mr. La Forge. Mr. Redpath,” Picard said to the helm officer, “amuse yourself. Make sure “they” couldn’t possibly predict our course.”
“Yes, sir!”
Picard stood up and pulled his tunic down and smiled. “I am going down to my quarters. You and I, of course,” Picard said to Troi, “will need to do debriefs for Starfleet, and for the … edification, if that’s the word … of our fellow officers. I want Mr. La Forge to stop in sickbay, however, before he bothers with his—he’s had a bad enough day.”
“I’ll take care of it, Captain,” Troi said.
“Very good. Meanwhile, I would appreciate a department heads’ meeting this evening, though when things have quieted down a little and we’ve all had some rest. Anything else?”
He looked around the bridge. People looked back at him with expressions of satisfaction, and Riker said, “Welcome home, Captain.”
Picard nodded and went out.
Down in his quarters, when the door shut behind him, he simply stood there for a moment and looked around him. Off to one side, covered, the easel stood. He went to it, tossed back the cover. The wood in the Luberon looked back at him, the shafts of downstriking sunlight, the tiny scrap of fluttering light. Odd, though, how much more prominent the shadows in that landscape seemed, the dark places under the trees.
He turned away and walked over to the bookshelf. Everything in place, everything looking as it should—though that had been deceptive, not so long ago. He reached out for the Shakespeare again, weighed it in his hand, flipped it open.
It fell open where it always did. He looked down the column. There he found Portia where she should be, mercy all in place, and the gentle rain from heaven, and further down, Nerissa’s joke about the ring, the teasing wives, and the love at the end.
He closed the book and looked over at the painting again. The little scrap of light fluttered there among the trees, against the shadow. It needed the darkness to make that tiny bit of life look so bright: it would not have shown, otherwise.
Picard smiled to himself, all alone there in the dimness, and went quietly to the desk to start his debriefing.
CHAPTER 16
In his ready room, Picard sat going over his notes to see if he had missed anything. Surprising how little time it had seemed to take to tell everything that had happened to him—at least, everything that was anyone’s business. All the same, he wanted to make sure he had forgotten nothing that might later prove of importance.
The door chime went; he looked up. “Come.”
The door opened, and Mr. Barclay came in, looking faintly nervous. “Captain, you sent for me?”
“Yes, Mr. Barclay. Sit down.”
Barclay sat, his face showing a little less nervousness now.
“I’ve been looking over your record,” Picard said, sitting back in his chair. “Your work in the sciences and with the computer departments has