Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [84]
Now he stood and spoke.
“For the high crimes specified in the Code of the Council of Truth, pursuant to and as a result of documentation gathered and on record, the detainee before me, Deanna Troi, is hereby sentenced to death, such sentence to be imposed without delay. The penalty will be bodily destruction by injection.”
His voice had sped up at the end, as if the words themselves had panicked on their way out of his mouth.
He sat down and hurriedly pressed a button on his intercom.
“Send in the execution corps. I’m coming with them. We’ll execute all of the Enterprise people together, and the Dissenters afterward.”
“Director Crichton, before you do anything else, listen to me,” said Troi. “I know you’re hiding something in your mind. Maybe your computers don’t know, but I do. I’ve experienced the syndrome myself. I’ve had those mythical creatures invading my mind.”
“A fabulist to the end,” said Crichton. “Spin your fictions until the moment you die.” He hit the button on his desk insistently.
“No, wait!” she cried. “I’m a counselor, a scientist of consciousness. It doesn’t matter to me if mythical characters are considered criminal here. Nothing in the mind is criminal to me. Nothing need be judged or condemned. I don’t have anyone to report you to. Please just try to tell me about it. What can you lose by trying? How do you know I can’t help?”
Troi realized there had to be validity to her perceptions. The protective headgear Crichton wore was not filtering out her words—or at least not all of them. Crichton really was experiencing a recurrent mental problem, and the CS computers knew it.
Crichton seemed to pause and consider her offer. Troi sensed that for the briefest of instants he admitted to himself how wonderful it would be to just talk, to seek help without fear of judgment or stigma.
But the dominant part of him, the tyrannical, paranoid side, reasserted itself. Troi knew she’d lost her gamble.
The CS execution detail came in. The four officers surrounded Troi, and one of them hooked her handcuffs to his own wrist.
“Let’s go,” said Crichton.
As they left his office, they paused before a large monitor in the hallway. Ferris’ stern carven-oak face stared out over the dates of his birth and death.
The image was replaced by shots of Ferris’ fight with Odysseus on the bridge. The sequence ended with both men lying dead. There were no shots of the finale. The Rampartians would not see Ferris’ death at the hands of his own one-eyes.
The narrator said something about the treachery of the Dissenters, and how they murdered Ferris, the defender of truth. A photomontage of scenes from Ferris’ life and career followed.
Crichton ordered the group to move on. They walked Troi to an elevator and took her up several stories to the level of the bridge.
In a glassed vestibule opening onto the bridge, a dozen CS guards stood in formation around Picard, Riker, and Data. All were handcuffed. They looked up and saw Troi coming. Riker and Picard seemed beaten and exhausted. Data had no expression at all.
“Why is the android with them?” asked one of the CS officers walking with Crichton. “Isn’t he going to be dismantled in the lab rather than injected?”
“Yes,” said Crichton, “but I want a video image of all of the criminals together, being executed. The public should be allowed to see this.”
Troi was led past the other group. The guards around her blocked her view and she was not able to make any further eye contact with her shipmates; but as she was pushed through the doors and onto the bridge, she could sense her friends being led along behind her.
It was a clear night outside, with a light wind. The great blue rho Ophiuchi nebula filled most of the sky, but a large number of background stars shone through it.
Ahead of Troi, groups of one-eyes hovered, surrounding the bridge, gathering images of the doomed group and their escorts. Banks of lights