Flashback - Diane Carey [15]
Janeway gazed down at Tuvok. He was unconscious, yes, but there was trouble on his face. Small muscles were tensed, and there was that glaze of sweat that showed a Vulcan was under severe stress. Vulcans could run a hundred miles and be tortured for hours without popping a drop of perspiration, yet Tuvok was drenched.
"Chakotay," she said. "Take the bridge. I'm going to go to engineering and look at Mr. Kim's analysis of that cloud until the Doctor comes to some kind of conclusion. I still don't buy that thing's apparent innocence. The only clue we have is that during both of these violent mental episodes, Tuvok was looking at the nebula."
"Over a screen," Chakotay said. "Technically, he was looking at a computer-generated representation of the nebula, not really the nebula itself."
"If I thought it would make a difference," she told him with a touch of irritation, "I'd send him out there in an environmental suit and have him look at it. But I don't think that would help. I'll contact you when I make a decision. I just hope there's one to make." She moved a little closer to Tuvok's unaware form and watched him twitch fitfully. "This is the worst kind of assault. The kind we don't know how to fight."
"You're a scientist at heart," Chakotay said, obviously trying to make her feel better against what he perceived as personal guilt that she couldn't reach out with a command order and solve this for her old friend. "You want data, anything concrete. These kinds of things are frightening to all of us, Captain. It's natural to want control."
"Still," she insisted, "he's a Vulcan. His brain patterns are very complex, but very orderly. If he passed out while looking at the nebula each time, that means there's a cause, a tie to the way that nebula appears to him."
"Well," Chakotay offered with a tiny smile, "I suppose we could just stop him from ever looking at it again."
She glanced at him, both aggravated and grateful. "If necessary. But that just means we're burying the problem. I'd rather get rid of it."
For her own comfort she touched Tuvok's forearm. Stiff, tight, even though he was unconscious.
"We're all alone out here, Chakotay," she told him. "And the few Vulcans in the crew are more alone than the rest of us. The others are content with their assignments, but in his high-ranking position Tuvok has to deal with everyone around him. He can't isolate himself as many Vulcans prefer to do. We've got to get to the bottom of this, or we'll have an unstable Vulcan on board to handle. I don't want that for us or for him."
Chakotay nodded. What else was there to do?
"Go to the bridge," Janeway said. "I'll be in touch."
"Aye, Captain," Chakotay sighed. Evidently he'd run out of reassurances.
He hesitated a moment, then sighed again, turned, and left the sickbay.
She understood his helplessness. He didn't like it any better than she did, even though he'd tried to talk her out of feeling this way. There was no Starfleet Medical Division to turn to, no neural specialists, either human or Vulcan, no advanced agency to consult, no infrastructure upon which to lean. They were all by themselves out here, with a holographic doctor who had all the galaxy's known data but no real experience with this kind of malady. And if there were decisions to be made, she had no one to turn to but herself to make them. There was no deferring to a wiser source, a higher authority. She was it.
Less than an hour later, she came back from engineering to the sickbay. She'd forced herself to
stay down there, scouring the data on the blue cloud, and so far Mr. Kim was completely right about the damned thing. There wasn't a single hostile property, other than the few bumps and bruises it gave the ship. There were no readable emanations, not that anything could arbitrarily suffuse the ship's shields.
She came away from engineering angry, but she didn't know where to put her anger. What kind of an enemy was this? She wanted to reach out and wring its