Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [76]
This experience was enthralling too, this complete freedom of his mind to explore and remember and examine the things he’d seen in his life. Old experiences that he thought had faded came charging back in full light. Once again, and one at a time, he became intimate with his own memories, all the pasts a man his age could accrue. It wasn’t a bad-looking past at all, really, dismissing a few knocks, stumbles, and burned fingers along the way.
After the past was enjoyed, something in it reminded him of quantum physics and away he went on that fast ship through all the science and math he’d ever been taught or figured out or even watched being figured by someone else. It all seemed so simple now! Equation after theory after hypothesis after experiment-stunning and dazzling, all the compartments his mind had closed and kept treasured all these years. Dead relatives, missing comrades, absent friends, friends who also died, one after another they came to visit him in his silent place here and he reexperienced them, from pleasure to pain, and he felt himself cry. Or thought he did … Where were his eyes? Where were his tears? Why couldn’t he feel the tears on his cheeks?
How long have I been here? In fact, where am I?
Oh, yes. The ship. I should have Riker try this. It’s exhilarating, seductive … having no distractions, no clock to answer to, nothing to concern my mind other than its own thoughts, not even an itch to rupture my attention. Though it would be reassuring if I could just wiggle my toes …
How will I know if the ship needs me? We could be blasted out of space and I’d never know. No … Riker would have me brought out if I was needed. What is this strange irrationality?
Were those birds? He’d heard that kind of birdsong once before … Canis IV? Yes, of course. The fluffy birds with the silly faces. They made a pretty song. Perhaps he’d just hang here and listen for a while.
Something about Canis IV-a long time ago.
No. No, I don’t want to remember that. No …
Riker paced the bridge, eyeing the deceptive emptiness of space on the huge viewscreen. The bridge was reduced to nightclub dimness. The walls and carpet, usually the color of sand and camels, were dark now and Riker felt like he was walking around inside a cup of espresso. The shiny black computer panels and liquid crystal schematics of the ship’s operating systems were reduced from their usual foam greens and blues to muddy and muted patterns. With the lights down and the displays subdued, the broad viewscreen jumped to shocking prominence. Suddenly they were players on a proscenium and everything they did was crucial. The level of their voices, the sheen of sweat on their skin, the sequence of their movements. Everything was magnified. And before them, space was their audience.
As empty as space was, and as cold as it was, it never quite looked that way. There were always stars to twinkle their pastel lights and broad nebulas to shimmer in the distance, but it was hard for the human mind to accept the wholeness of that distance, so everything looked much fuller than it was. He often liked to watch space go by, but today it gave him no comfort. Today there was a rat behind the woodwork. Still out there. Hiding behind all that nothing. Riker knotted his fists and dared it to come out.
“Lieutenant Worf, anything further from life sciences or engineering on that thing?”
Worf’s huge frame straightened from Science Station 2. “We’re trying to lock down the individual components of its exostructure now, sir, using the postulation of interdimensionality as a guide. Don’t worry, sir. We’ll figure it out if I have to slice off a piece of it and beat it to death for an autopsy.”
Riker nodded, but he couldn’t manage the smile that would’ve shown his real gratitude. Nearly fourteen hours now, hanging here in silence and dimness. He’d never been much of