Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [87]
After that, he sorted down through a list of priorities and instructed the nanites where to go to deal with each of them. As the captain of a starship, he had a fairly clear sense of in what particular associational network each grouping of information might be found. He didn’t have the precise, brain-surgeon’s knowledge that Geordi would have, the equivalent of the kind of knowledge that could pinpoint the spot in the brain that when triggered caused uncontrolled punning, or the memory of the scent of a garden decades gone. Picard’s knowledge was more on the phrenological level, a sense of bumps and zones and likely spots, effective enough to go on with. Most specifically, he instructed his little assistants not in any way to damage the storage areas where the information about the “switchback” technique, the “inclusion” data, might be found, but to cut power to it as quickly as they might, once found—and its finding was an overriding priority for all of them. Some of them he instructed to do some work and then take themselves out of the immediate core area, holding themselves in reserve. Unless otherwise instructed, they would come out later and start the whole business again.
Picard checked his programming, twice, and three times, as he’d been taught. When he was sure that it would work, that no loops or loopholes had been left in, he activated the microsurgeons and swiftly resealed the container. Using the magnified view available from the reader, he could see them already climbing over and onto one another, trying to get out and do what the program told them, eager to be at it.
“Good luck,” he said to them softly. “And if you people have time—feel free to be fruitful and multiply.”
Picard slipped the container back into his tunic, then thought a moment and slipped it down a bit farther, into the waistband of his pants, where it would lie flat. If he had to suck in his gut a bit more than usual, that was fine; at least he could get at it quickly and unseen.
He got up, tried to pull his tunic down again, failed, said “Merde!” and checked himself briefly in the mirror and made for the door.
“Mr. Barclay,” he said, looking out. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They went, and Picard tried to make it all look as innocent as possible. A captain, he reasoned, even here, should be seen about his ship. He found himself wondering whether the other Picard ever did this, and whether he was about to do something else that the people around him would find strange. It couldn’t be helped if the other Picard never did this. At the very least, this action would serve to confuse people—and a little confusion, it seemed, could go a long way around here. But whatever result it had, it couldn’t be helped: he had to get out there and sow his own little whirlwind.
Over and over, as they walked, looking into labs and research departments and armories and security post after security post, the question of what could possibly be done for this place came back to haunt him. He was not a man to believe that people were sent anywhere by any power to do anything whatever; but at the same time, the opportunity to make a difference for the good in whatever situation you found yourself was not one he had ever felt inclined to ignore. Though that urge had to be tamed and carefully watched, of course; it was one of the things the Prime Directive was for, a subset of the old medical-ethical rule First do no harm.
Now there’s a thought, he wondered.