Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [39]
“This morning,” Chakotay replied and cocked an eyebrow. “Unless I misunderstood him. You’re not helping him? He sounded like he could really use it.”
“No. No, that’s fine. I just wasn’t sure what you were talking about there for a second. Of course I’m helping him. Some interesting, uh, lighting effects he needs.”
“All right,” Chakotay said suspiciously. “Good.”
“Too bad, though,” B’Elanna continued, her mouth running ahead of her common sense. “It’ll probably mean I’ll be too busy to do… you know, anything else.”
“Oh,” Chakotay replied, maybe a touch too dryly. “That is too bad. You were going to do… what was it?”
“Oh, uh, baton twirling, I thought. Something I used to do when I was a kid.”
“I’m having trouble picturing that, B’Elanna.”
“My mother hated it.”
“Less trouble now.”
“You told Chakotay I was helping you with lighting effects,” B’Elanna said, raising her voice to be heard over the echoing din. Despite the fact that most of the effects would be virtual, the holodeck hummed with beehive-quality levels of activity. B’Elanna had dashed out of the bridge as soon as Chakotay’s back was turned to confirm the first officer’s news.
“That’s right,” Tom said. “I did.”
“You lied to Chakotay? That’s pretty risky behavior even for you.”
“Did I?” Tom asked, sounding like he was about to launch into a legal argument. B’Elanna, sadly, didn’t get the chance to hear what else he was going to say because he was interrupted by two ensigns carrying a large storage container between them. “What is it, guys?”
“Where do you want this?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said irritably. “What is it?”
“Something Neelix said you wanted,” the younger of the two-a biologist named Girroux-said. “They’re lights. You know, the kind we’d set up at a work site.”
Tom wearily lifted his padd and scanned through a list until he found the item he sought. “Right,” he said. “I remember now.” He pointed towards a corner of the large, blank room that looked as if it had been set aside for equipment storage. “Over there.”
As the two ensigns wrestled their load away, B’Elanna said, “Lights? Why not just use the holomatrix?”
“Draws too many computing cycles,” Tom said. “I’ve only got so many processors to work with over the length of the show and if we pull too much, the whole grid shuts down. It’s the same kind of problem we’d get with elaborate scenarios.”
B’Elanna was familiar with the problem and knew Tom usually worked around it by cleverly limiting the size and complexity of his holographic constructs. For example, Sandrine’s, his reproduction of a Marseilles waterfront bar, was essentially limited to two or three rooms, most of which were usually shrouded in shadow. The net drain on the holodeck’s power allotment was relatively small.
“Ah,” she said. “I begin to see the light… you’ll excuse the expression. You need someone to hook the lights into the grid.”
“And make sure they’re safe,” Tom explained. “The technical term is ‘gaffer.’ “
B’Elanna snorted derisively. “Okay. That still doesn’t explain why you told Chakotay I’d do this before you checked with me.”
“Didn’t I say?” Tom asked distractedly as he watched a pair of jugglers inexpertly throwing bowling pins back and forth in an uneven arc. “Neelix and I were talking when Chakotay called in to see who had signed up to perform. I noticed you weren’t on the list and…” Here he laughed. “I remembered the look of dread on your face back in the meeting when the captain first announced this whole ridiculous affair. I figured you were stalling, hoping the whole thing was going to fall apart.”
“And it’s not?” B’Elanna asked.
“I don’t think so,” Tom replied. “I mean, I hope not. I’ve already got a lot of time in. There’s even a couple good acts coming together.” For the first time, Paris looked her right in the eye and grinned. “And, you know, this