Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [75]
Full panic struck. It was as though his heart snapped. Picard’s mind suddenly flashed back to childhood, to those awful horror stories children can’t get enough of, to what wasn’t there and what pretended to be there-and what was there. He waited to be grabbed.
But he wouldn’t even feel it if it happened. He might’ve been grabbed already. Was Beverly monitoring his heartbeat? His brainwaves? He hadn’t discussed that with her. She would think of it, wouldn’t she?
All right, get a grip on yourself. You’ve just seen a ghost, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Be practical. Get concentrating on the task at hand. You’re fine. You’re in the isolation chamber, it’s dark, and you can’t move. It’s exactly the correct conditions and you asked for it. You’ve needed a rest anyway. How bad can it be for a few hours?
Geordi paced the small area Data had trapped him in for about as long as he could stand it before he started tearing the facing off the wall to look for a circuit he could splice into to get that contamination shield to open up. Or maybe he could cut into the communication network and buzz for help. Just about anything would be better than stalking around here like a big chicken waiting for its feed while Data flew off into nowhere to get deep-fried. What a pair.
Data. He took everything so personally. If that didn’t qualify him as a person, what did? Only persons can take things personally. Machines don’t. How come Data listened to everyone else lately?
“Why don’t you pay attention to me for a change?” Geordi howled. He glanced up from the close work of digging through all the exposed circuitry in the wall. “What’m I? I’m part machine too, y’know! Damn … where’s the main link?”
Shuttlecraft. Great, just great. Data was probably gone by now and there was no way to change what was going on out there.
His hands started to sweat. The going got slower as his fingers began to tremble and slip. Only the microfilters in his visor kept him from making twice as many errors as he was already making. And only his dogged reliance on the occasional snide remark kept him from admitting that he was plain scared.
That thing, that light show out there … horrible. Geordi shuddered as he carefully weeded out the circuit chips he’d need to bypass the shorted-out lock. He’d had nightmares that looked like that thing. The times when his visor was malfunctioning, he’d see things wrong. Light would be distorted, heat would stretch things-like having a fever and no way to cool off.
The others didn’t know what Data had been put through when it attacked him; they didn’t see like Geordi did. They’d never understand, and they’d never quite believe him if they couldn’t see it for themselves. I don’t blame them … exactly. It’s not the kind of thing you believe until you see it for yourself. If I have to plug myself right into the computer core by the eyeballs, I’ll make them see it. I’ll make them get him back. That means you, Mr. Riker. Yes, sir. You.
This is certainly strange. Enjoyable. I haven’t thought of Laura for years. How many? An entire age, perhaps. And such beautiful memories to have set aside. There was a poem she liked. Which was it? She liked long poems and epics. She had such patience … who reads epics? She read them aloud sometimes, all in one sitting. And so well for an untrained voice. Or have the years made it sound better?
Absence, like dainty Clouds,
On glorious-bright,
Nature’s weake senses shrowds,
From harming light.
Absence maintained the treasure
Of pleasure unto pleasure,
Sparing with praise;
Absence doth nurse the fire,
Which starves and feeds desire
With sweet delays.
He’d heard it read once before. Once. And hadn’t thought of it since. Listened to and forgotten; his brain caught up with the girl and her voice and not the poem, yet now he remembered and reexperienced every word, every syllable, every nuance. The meanings of the words together, their meanings separately, even the music of the letters. The whole poem. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke-Caelica, wasn’t it? When had he picked