Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [22]
“Your metaphor is cogently conceived,” Data said, as he ran his collected measurements through the tricorder’s programs, in search of the elusive passage down into the ground.
“Data, speed is of the essence here.”
“Perhaps you can help me, sir.”
As the two consulted, Troi stood a few steps away. She glanced at the chrome surface of a tank and saw her reflection, but perceived something else there as well. Another sentience. She opened her empathic perception a bit, then suddenly tried to seal it off, as she felt the presence of an Other-worlder. Too late.
The Other-worlder responded instantly. She felt it approaching. She’d initiated unintentional contact.
The reflections on the surface of the tank shifted and melted. She found she couldn’t look away. Her face disappeared from the chrome. A new image expanded and became the reality surrounding her.
She was in a world of scorched ground, of billowing dark smoke and wild squalls of fire. She began to hear and then feel a deep gut-resonating throb, as though of an approaching aircraft or juggernaut.
An Other-worlder, the giant Mirror Man, emerged from the smoke, reflecting on his own burnished surfaces the conflagration around him. He was looking for something. The twin mirror-discs of his eyes shifted in unison. On his body surfaces Troi saw scenes of mechanized warfare, mammoth guns vomiting fire, aircraft diving and strewing bomb-clusters over a jungle, children running with mouths open in silent screams …
Suddenly the Mirror Man became aware of Troi. He came closer, dragging the leg that had no foot. His eyes became intolerably bright, like flickering arclights.
“You called me,” he said with a deep reverberant metallic voice.
“I didn’t mean to.”
He reached down and picked her up by the shoulders, held her high off the ground in front of him.
She felt as though she were enclosed by steel jaws. Her head was at the level of his chest.
“You want knowledge?” he asked.
She sensed a threat in the question.
“You want to know about Crichton?”
She stared into the fiery images on his chest. “Yes,” she said. “You have contacted him?”
“He is now aware of life alien to himself,” the Mirror Man said cryptically.
He drew her closer. He was pushing her face toward his chest.
“You want to learn more,” he boomed as a sort of half-question.
Through the images of smoke and fire on his mirror-skin, behind them or under them, Troi could see something moving rhythmically. She thought it was his heart, and tried to shake her way out of his grip. She felt her limbs becoming numb and heavy. The paralyzing transformation again!
Then she sensed someone else’s mind nearby. She recognized it as Riker’s. She focused on it, and as soon as she did, she found herself back with him in the ore factory. He was holding her by the shoulders. The transition was instantaneous.
“Deanna, what’s wrong!”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m back.”
“You were in a trance.”
She let out a long shuddering breath.
“I just had contact with one of the Other-worlders.”
“Is it still here?” asked Riker.
“Yes. I can still feel it. It’s here but not in our state of being.”
“Data, cheek your tricorder.”
Data switched it to the BIO setting. “Yes sir, but there is low probability we will detect the alien with this tricorder; even the Enterprise’s main sensors could not.”
“Good point,” said Riker.
“However, I have found something else … definitely not one of your Other-worlders … a humanoid outside the building … stationary.”
Riker waved for silence and drew his phaser. Data put his tricorder away and drew his phaser as well. They looked about them at the corrugated-metal walls.
Riker moved in the direction of a door, but Data put an arm out to stop him. He looked back at his tricorder, moving it slowly. Then he motioned his crewmates backward. Riker understood that someone was going to enter. He