Day of Honor - Michael Jan Friedman [53]
He held his hands out. "Without life, the universe has no meaning."
"And what does the universe need with meaning, Doctor? Indeed," she pressed, "what difference does it make to the universe if any or all of your patients live or die?"
The Doctor looked about the room as if he thought he could find the answer floating in midair. After a while, he turned to her again, a bewildered expression on his face.
"Now that you mention it," he said, "it probably makes no difference at all."
Janeway smiled. "No difference. So life isn't so sacred after all?"
The Doctor did his best to understand the problem. "But it is. It is sacred."
"Despite all logic to the contrary? Despite the empirical evidence?"
"Despite that," he agreed.
The captain stood. "Then I suggest, Doctor, that you have made a leap of faith. What's more, you do it every day, without fail-just like every healer in the history of the universe, from the time of Hippocrates and even earlier."
He considered the possibility. "You're suggesting I'm part of some larger community after all. A community of physicians."
"That's right. And you don't wait for a holiday to
celebrate your faith. You do it all the time, morning, noon, and night."
The Doctor didn't speak for a long time. Then he said, "Perhaps you're right."
"You know I am," Janeway told him.
B'Elanna looked up from her console and saw Tom enter engineering with Seven of Nine. Deep inside, she felt a twinge. She was surprised to find that seeing the two of them together annoyed her.
Vorik, Carey, and the other engineers acknowledged Tom's presence with a nod. B'Elanna just turned back to her monitor.
Still, she couldn't help asking the question. "What brings you here, Tom?"
Paris glanced at her coolly. Obviously, he hadn't forgotten what they had said to each other in her quarters.
"I'm going to look at the field displacement parameters of the transwarp conduits. Seven's offered to establish them for me."
"How thoughtful," B'Elanna said.
He smiled a chilly smile. "I'm glad you approve."
"Actually," B'Elanna said, "I think we're ready to try opening one of the transwarp conduits-just as a test, of course."
"Great," Tom replied. "Let's give it a try."
By then, Seven of Nine had taken her place at her assigned workstation. "All systems are ready," she said flatly-even though no one had asked her for her assessment.
B'Elanna looked around. "All right. For now, we're
only going to take a peek. We'll open a conduit, get as much sensor data as we can, and then close it up again. I want to take this one step at a timeunderstood?"
Everyone nodded. Everyone except the Borg, of course, but she didn't seem to have any objection either.
Vorik spoke up. "I've set up a temporary tachyon matrix within the main deflector. It's on-line."
B'Elanna hit her commbadge. "Engineering to the bridge."
"Janeway here," came the response.
"We're ready to start, Captain."
"Go ahead, Lieutenant. We'll monitor your progress from here."
"Captain," said B'Elanna, "we'll have to be traveling at warp speed to create a large enough subspace field. I'd like permission to reroute conn control to engineering."
"Agreed," Janeway responded.
Turning to Tom, B'Elanna nodded. The flight controller went to a console and made the necessary adjustments. Seven of Nine watched him like a hawk the whole time. Eventually, Tom seemed to notice.
"Just for the purposes of this test," he assured the Borg.
Seven of Nine didn't answer. She just turned back to her own console.
B'Elanna didn't know what Tom was referring to, and right now she didn't care. She just wanted to get this over with.
"Mr. Paris?" she said.
Tom looked at her. "Yes, Lieutenant?" That chilly tone again.
"Take us-"
"Past warp 2," he said. "I know."
He worked at his controls. B'Elanna could feel the subtle surge in power as the ship accelerated.
"We're at warp 2.3," Tom reported.
B'Elanna turned to Vorik. "Start emitting the tachyong."
"Energizing the matrix," the Vulcan responded.
"Power is building," Carey announced.
B'Elanna checked her monitor. It didn't