Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [49]
“Not used to closing those from the inside,” Geordi said softly, “but I managed it finally. Remind me to drop a note about an inward-closing utility to the people at Fleet Engineering.”
“Absolutely,” Deanna said. “But won’t this be the first place they look?”
Geordi chuckled as he settled himself in position on the ladder across from hers. “Counselor, do you know there are nineteen computer subprocessors in the bridge?”
“Well, yes, that’s common knowledge; they link to the cores in the primary and secondary hulls.”
“Right. Where are they?”
Troi opened her mouth and shut it again.
“Within plain sight,” Geordi said. “Take a guess.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Geordi chuckled very softly. “And neither would anybody else but engineering personnel. They’re in the wall behind the science stations, aft of Worf’s console, between the two turbolifts; but because of its positioning, everybody thinks of that area as just another wall. It’s the commonest thing about life on a starship: everybody but engineering assumes, on a day-to-day basis, that everything that looks like a wall really is a wall. I promise you that the access panels are the last place most people, and even our own security people, would look … and truly they have the odds in their favor looking in other places, simply because it’s so simple to go other places. But the Enterprise is a honeycomb, full of interesting opportunities for people who want to get places without using the corridors … and extremely full of places to hide. There is, of course, one problem: scan for life-signs.”
Deanna let out a long breath. “I was going to mention that.” And she twitched and blinked a little, for that itching, buzzing feeling was getting stronger. It ran up her body to just above her shoulders. She was neck-height to that red line, and the feeling stopped there; but still the faint sound of buzzing was in her ears as well, as if the sensation were trying to ascend higher.
Geordi shook his head and grinned, but the grin had a slight edge to it. “Not down here. We’ve got a whole lot of duranium framing around us, and a ton of superconducted current and optical signal … and a lot of it’s traveling faster than light. We’re down in the subspace field.”
She stared at him. “Is that safe?”
Geordi looked at her with a slight shrug. “I think it’s safer than getting shot with one of those phasers. What do you think?”
She could find no quick answer to that. The surge of Geordi’s own fear was subsiding for the moment: he was in his element, in his own hidey-hole, feeling much better, though still unnerved by how wrong things were going. “And besides,” he said, “I really don’t think they’ll give the room more than a second glance. Our friend is inside the panel, still sleeping the sleep of the just. As long as he doesn’t start snoring, we’ll be fine.”
“But couldn’t they pick him up on a scan?”
Geordi shook his head. “I doubt it. I was being extra careful in our case. But the subspace field puts up such a bloom of bremmstrahlung and other radiation that I doubt whether they’ll get more than the faintest buzz from him, and they’ll probably discount it as artifact from being so close to the core. That’s one of the reasons we keep sensor equipment so far away: you can’t be sure of getting a decent reading if you’re even within thirty or forty meters of an FTL’-AIDED core.”
They stood there, poised above the polished abyss for a long while, it seemed to Troi. Geordi was much calmer now, and the interference made by the sudden upsurge of his emotion had gone off. Troi cast her sensitivities back up the little access passage and into the core room they had vacated.
“What did you do with the console?” she said.
Geordi raised his eyebrows. “I fused a very minor component in one of the packet shunt boards. When it’s checked, it’ll look like a routine time-of-life failure … that component looked like it was about five years old anyway.” He shook his head. “Sloppy maintenance. I’d never leave a part in place that long, at least not one that didn’t have four