Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [70]
He rather welcomed the angry feelings, actually: they helped him avoid thinking about other things that would cause him too much pain and distract him from his work. Riker turned his attention back to the files he was presently perusing, the historical records Picard had been reading. It was definitely not a universe to choose to live in. He could fully understand the captain’s orders to destroy the ship should they be left with no other choice. All the same, he would not leave them over there—that much Riker would assure, whether they were dead or alive. If this ship was to be destroyed, her captain would be aboard her, whatever happened—he promised himself that.
And Deanna. He turned away in pain from the thought. Her attempts in the old days to teach him the Betazed mind-disciplines had never worked out well. Now he wished with all his heart that he had a bit more ability, that he’d tried harder— anything, so that he could possibly reach out to her perceptions and let her know that he was with her in mind, if no other way. She knows that anyway, he told himself. But did she really? At such times, the certainty would have been worth more than gold. But it wasn’t available. And you have more than a thousand other lives to look after as well, he reminded himself, as severely as he could.
The door chime went off. Visitors were the last thing he wanted at the moment, but there was nothing to be done about it. “Come,” he said.
Hwiii glided in. “Am I interrupting something, Commander? If so, I’ll come back later.”
“No, come in, Hwiii. Sit—” And even in his present mood, he had to laugh a little. “I was going to tell you to sit down.”
The dolphin turned that sideways grin on him. “It’s a common reflex,” Hwiii said, lowering his pad to a height just about a foot above desk height.
“How’s your work going?”
“It’s going well,” Hwiii said. “Mr. Data and I have been able to very closely categorize the overt qualities of this space. This is going to be extremely useful information when we get back home. Up until now, obviously we’ve never had any direct instrumental measurement of another universe’s physical and nonphysical qualities.”
Riker raised his eyebrows and smiled slightly at the absolute certainty of the “when,” but he was in no mood to argue the point. “I take it there’s something you need from me, then.”
“There is, Commander. I need to get out.”
“Out?”
“Outside the Enterprise for a brief period.”
Riker was mildly surprised. “Well, there’s no problem with that. I’ll have a shuttlecraft authorized for your use immediately. As long as you don’t go into warp—”
“No, Commander, I’m sorry: I was unclear. I don’t need a shuttle. I just need to go out by myself for a little while.”
“You mean EVA?”
“Yes, just for a little while. We have a saying, my people”—and the dolphin’s jaw dropped in a broader smile—”“you might as well try to sing in air as judge direction out of water.”“
Riker could hardly begrudge a smile at that, either. “Mr. Worf and I possibly should have a talk with you in more detail about that. We have this thing called “opera.”“
“I should be delighted to find out a little more about it. And it’s true that in some matters the saying has become obsolete: even some of our own singing now has parts written for “airborne voice”— human specialists come to sing with us sometimes, these days. But the saying is still good in this respect: to judge a medium most accurately—the instruments can take one of my people only so far—for best evaluation of hyperstring structure and nature, I really need to get out there and feel it on me. The Enterprise, unfortunately, is of such a mass that it creates a certain amount of interference, distortion, in what I’m most desperately needing to sense. All the readings are inevitably colored by the mass in which they rest. I should like to get away—not very far: even a few hundred meters would be fine—and do some “fine-tuning,” as it were, of perceptions and instrumentation.”
“Will