Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [68]
With an impatient huff, Picard gripped the edge of his desk. “Yes. We do have the right to consider our own consciences. Is there a definitive answer, doctor? Even one of general policy from the Federation Medical Standards Council? Or do you have a ruling that we could consider ship’s policy?”
“Me?” She shook her head and blinked. “This is one subject I nearly failed at medical school. I never found a single case that fit into the grooves of any other case. There’s just no grounds for comparison.”
“And Federation policy? Doctor, I need a precedent and I need it now.”
She paused, thought about it, her mouth twisting with contemplation, then shrugged. “A line was finally drawn, clinically speaking, between animals with memories and animals with memories who were also able to imagine a personal future and have desires for that future. Even that had its faults. Babies, for instance. They simply don’t care about the future.”
Now it was Picard’s turn to sigh. He pressed his mouth into a line and groaned, “Beverly, you’re making me tired.”
She appeared sympathetic, but admitted, “There’s just no streamlining this issue. Which is why there hasn’t been any law passed regarding it. Some things should simply never be legislated.”
Riker straightened his back and folded his arms tighter. “Leaving us on our own.”
“Consider it a privilege,” she shot back at him.
“But these people, these ‘souls,’ if we have to use that term,” Riker continued, “are not dying. They could go on forever like this!”
“Yes”- the doctor nodded, not very patiently-“the real question is not one of someone who is dying choosing when the end should be and we as society forcing him to live until the last moment, but rather … what is it that makes life worth living?” For this, a thick and weighted question, she turned directly to Picard, and held out an empty hand to him as though expecting him to fill it.
The captain stared back at her, entranced neither by this woman’s beauty nor by his own feelings toward her, but by this question she asked of him, this question that was poised on the threshold between life and death.
What makes life worth living?
Beside Crusher, Troi stirred. “A person who is dying does ask if his disease has taken away everything that makes life worth living, as you say. There will be no more moments that resemble life as he has known it. When pain takes away any enjoyment of sight, scent, sounds, touch-“
“But we’re not discussing pain, Counselor,” the captain snapped, his voice growing rough. “These entities have communicated no pain whatsoever of a physical nature, is that not correct? If not, you’d better tell me now, because this is a damned precipice we’re walking over here.”
“I wish they had,” Crusher said dryly. “The question would’ve been simpler. My realm of the physical is much simpler to manage than Deanna’s realm of mental anguish and confusion.” She turned to the counselor and said, “I don’t envy you.”
The captain got up and paced around the desk. “Doctor, I had hoped you’d be more help than this.”
Beverly Crusher shifted her gaze for a moment, settled back, crossed her long straight legs, and looked up at him again. “I can be more help,” she told him. “But you have to ask for my personal opinion.”
“Oh, damn it. Of course. I’m sorry.” He reached a requesting palm toward her. “Please.”
She sighed and thought about it. “They’ve expressed a well thought-out, reasonable desire to die.”
“And?”
“And I think that should be respected.”
“Does that mean acted upon? Come on, doctor, don’t make me grill you.”
“You mean, would I do it? Captain, let me put it this way. I’ve found that suffering can be mental and that it does no one any good.”
“Would you,” he repeated, “do it?”
She straightened her shoulders. “Yes.”
Data found his way through the barely lit starship with an android’s faultless sense of direction. Ordinarily he’d have thought nothing of that ability, but today it had a stubborn presence in his mind. He was aware of himself today, where usually he was not, at least not when he was