Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [59]
“How long?” the captain said, slipping out of concealment to join them.
“It should be between three and four hours,” Geordi said, “but it’s variable. Dr. Crusher said that body weight and differences in body chemistry can make a difference. Probably it’s not safe to count on more than three hours.”
“I desperately hope we will be out of here by then,” Picard said, “and on our way home—or at least working on it.” Troi watched him look down at the crumpled form. The unconscious man was wearing the same uniform that their own Picard had changed into.
“Well,” Picard said softly. “Ill met by starlight. And worse still, his taste in uniforms is as bad as I thought it was. Never mind. Mr. La Forge, have you got your hiding place picked out?”
“Yes, sir. Deck thirty-six, the aft skinfield generator on the starboard side. There are two small service cubbies convenient to it; we use them for storage mostly. Compartment …” He rattled off numbers that marked the place’s location in the ship’s coordinate system.
“Noted,” Picard said. “We’ll risk one last intraship beaming—there’s no other way to get him out of here and keep this situation alive. Counselor, your counterpart?”
“She’s in her quarters, Captain. She’s centering. I would imagine it’s something she might have to do fairly frequently.”
Picard nodded. “Assuming that she has your abilities—how do I “pass”?”
“If the experience of the last few minutes is anything to judge by,” Troi said, looking down at the unconscious alternate Picard as Geordi sat him up against a table leg and began to fold him into a more transportable position, “then suspicion and anger, constantly generated, should be enough to keep her from reading you much more closely than that. But I’m troubled. I got a sense from him that he was expecting something more from me, more—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Expectation of something bad—mild surprise when it didn’t materialize. Followed by a desire to follow up on that failure. It was news, somehow.”
“So your counterpart may have some ability that we don’t expect.”
“I just can’t say,” said Deanna, upset that she could throw no more light on the problem at so crucial a time. “But still—Captain, even the most powerful telepaths have trouble reading through intense emotion, or through “obsessive thought.” Either can be exhausting to maintain, but shifting from one to the other can work. Try to inwardly act great emotion—call up the memory of something that frightened you, enraged you—probably around here, rage would be better. It won’t necessarily show as a block, either. But be flamboyant about it. The harder you project, the more effective it’ll be. Even full Betazoids, fully trained, often can’t sort out the thought they want between the racket of emotion and the usual quarreling of several of the audient’s ego states at a given moment. Or else, forcefully occupy your brain with something that you’ve had trouble getting out of it in the past. If you know some piece of music that persists in your mind once you think of it, a poem, a song—start running it in your mind and keep it there any way you can. It may drive you half-mad, but rest assured it’ll be doing the same thing to the telepath who’s trying to read you.”
“Singing,” Picard said ruefully. “Not out loud, I hope.”
“If it works, yes, but it may work inwardly just as well.”
“I greatly hope it doesn’t come to that,” Picard said.
Troi smiled at the captain’s discomfiture, and it felt good to have something genuine to smile about. “Now then,” he said. “You two take yourselves out of here quickly. Mr. La Forge, I am going to find an excuse to get those authorization codes released and get you at that core … but it may take a while. While I