Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [47]
Now, though, she found herself wishing she were completely mindbl, even though it would have rendered her useless for this mission. Her description of this ship’s gestalt to Picard as “a midden,” Deanna now found, had been an understatement. The only consolation was that there seemed to be fewer minds —a fact that left her uneasy, for reasons she didn’t have time to evaluate just now. No matter: those minds, fewer though they might be, were for the most part horribly vital, and much of that vitality was being spent on a constant flow of malice, wariness, and stifled fury. This, too, was as dreadfully varied as negative emotion was on her own Enterprise—hundreds of combinations, each reflecting its home mind’s preferences and the stimulus of the moment: sullen dislike and discontent and vengeful passion, animosity and envy, broad-based ill will and focused resentment, jealousy and smothered rage—”Name an emotion,” Will would say to her sometimes, teasing. Now Deanna found herself heartily wishing she had just one to name. And this perception was at a distance. Confronted with any one of the people feeling these things, her own perceptions, as always, would narrow down, locking on to the personality at the forefront of her attention, and those presently unfocused feelings would hit her full on, at pressure, like a firehose.
One of them did so now—but it was Geordi’s. “Damn!” he whispered.
“What’s the matter?” Deanna said, glad of the distraction, and ashamed of herself for it.
“I can’t get into the core. Security.” She looked over his shoulder. “See,” Geordi said, pointing at the console. “I can’t even get in far enough to fail out the core. It keeps asking me for an access code.”
“Voice override?”
“That leaves traces, I’d rather not. But …”
He frowned for a moment. “Let’s do this first.” He pulled out the isolinear chip that was in the slot, substituted another. “Computer, copy of present crew roster and nonprotected personnel files to hard medium reader.”
“Chief engineer voiceprint match confirmed,” the computer said. Deanna started, as did Geordi: the voice was male. “Security officer’s clearance required.”
Deanna swallowed. “This is Deanna Troi. Confirm voiceprint and acknowledge clearance.”
“Clearance acknowledged,” the computer said after a second. “Copy in progress.”
It only took a few seconds. “Copy ship’s history and condensed nonclassified Starfleet history to hard medium reader,” Geordi said.
“Security officer’s clearance required,” said the computer.
“Cleared,” Deanna said. “Comply.”
“Voiceprint clearance acknowledged,” the computer said. “Working …”
“I don’t want to do too much more of this,” Geordi muttered. “This kind of request leaves trails, too, if anyone thinks to look for them. Take this.” He pulled the chip out of the readstwrite device. “And here.” Out of his belt pouch he removed a tiny device that he clipped onto the chip. “Activate that; the transporter in the shuttle’ll pick it up and pass it back to the Enterprise. I don’t like beaming back anything before we’re ready to go ourselves, but this operation already isn’t going according to plan, and they’ve got to get this stuff if nothing else.”
Deanna touched the tiny stud on the clipped-on device, a small flat disc, then she put the chip down on the floor. It vanished in a small patch of glitter.