Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [17]
“And?” the captain asked.
“By all physical standards,” said the chief medical officer, “Ulelo is the picture of health. No chemical imbalances, no blockages, no evidence of injury. In short, nothing that would result in aberrational behavior.”
Picard shifted in his seat. “Then—”
Greyhorse held up a peremptory hand, disregarding the difference in their ranks. “I also conducted a test that wasn’t strictly medical. I asked Ulelo some yes-or-no questions—and monitored his nervous system when he answered.”
“A lie-detector test,” Wu noted.
“Precisely,” said Greyhorse. “I began by asking Ulelo about the Klingons, since they came up in the course of your conversation with him. Without hesitation, he identified the Klingons as our enemies. And yet, when I asked him about the Klingons a few minutes later, he said just as unhesitatingly that they were our allies.”
The doctor turned to Picard. “Like Commander Wu, I found myself wondering if Ulelo was up to something. But his readouts showed that he wasn’t lying. At the time he made those statements, he actually believed them.”
“So his problem is a psychological one,” Picard concluded.
“Evidently,” said Greyhorse. “The funny thing is that Ulelo is absolutely lucid in most respects, especially those that pertain to his work as a communications officer. But when it comes to other parts of his life, he seems lost.”
He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. “I wasn’t trained to be a counselor. However, I would say Ulelo is schizophrenic—out of touch with certain aspects of our reality.”
The captain looked at him, taking a moment to absorb the implications, which were considerable. “If that is so, then his periodic data transmissions…?”
“Were harmless,” said the medical officer. “Exercises in fantasy, sent to no one. Or rather, no one who exists outside the precincts of Ulelo’s mind.”
“Harmless,” Picard repeated.
“If you ask me,” said Greyhorse, “yes.”
Picard nodded. “Thank you, Doctor.” He turned to Wu. “I will make arrangements to get the lieutenant to an appropriate facility for more complete diagnosis and treatment. But while he is on the Stargazer, I would like him kept in the brig—just in case.”
Wu agreed that that would be the wisest course of action, Greyhorse’s observations notwithstanding. Then the captain adjourned the meeting.
After Picard watched his officers depart, Greyhorse more eagerly than Wu, he sat in his desk chair for a moment. After all that, he told himself.
For Ulelo’s treachery to be identified as a symptom of a damaged psyche…it was shocking. Almost as shocking, in fact, as finding out about the lieutenant’s transgression in the first place.
And yet, it was rather a relief, wasn’t it? They would all breathe easier knowing that Ulelo’s confederates were waking dreams, and nothing more.
Ensign Jiterica surveyed her new appearance in the mirror that hung from her closet door.
Until now, she hadn’t made much use of either the closet or the reflective surface. But then, her only garment had been her containment suit, one specially retrofitted with her unusual set of needs in mind.
Jiterica’s species, the Nizhrak’a, had evolved in the atmosphere of a gas giant in the Sonada Sin system. Had she still been there, she could have expanded to her full volume and flowed naturally from wind to fierce, ragged wind. But on a starship, made for beings much more dense and compact than herself, she had to operate in a severely condensed form.
Hence, the stiff, bulky suit that Jiterica had endured almost every moment of every day. It had been perhaps the most difficult part of her adjustment to life on the Stargazer, and that was saying something.
But she hadn’t imagined that she had any alternative. She could either wear the suit or surrender any hope of functioning as an officer in Starfleet.
Until now.
The suit Jiterica had just put on was considerably more streamlined and lightweight than the other one, and considerably easier to manipulate. It made her look more like the other crewmen on board