Homecoming - Christie Golden [54]
“I think so,” he said.
“The worst that can happen is that it won’t work and people will have to find alternative arrangements. There are all kinds of built-in safety precautions, so you won’t lose anyone’s molecules.”
He went a little paler and forced a smile. To show her confidence, she told him the coordinates and strode to the transport area.
“Energize,” she said.
She materialized in Tom Paris’s apartment to find it crawling with Starfleet officers, several of whom were pointing phasers at her. One of them was carting off the computer, while two of them were grilling Tom. Still others were taking tricorder readings. When they saw who it was, they relaxed. Slightly.
“Where’s the Doctor?” she demanded without preamble.
“They took him, Admiral,” said Tom. The man who seemed to be leading the investigation, if you could call it that, gave Paris a dark look, then rose and went to Janeway.
“Admiral Janeway, I’m Commander Martin Cagiao,” he said, extending his hand. Janeway didn’t shake it. Cagiao had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Commander, what’s going on here? Why have you taken the Doctor?”
“No doubt you’ve heard about the holographic strike,” Cagiao said.
“I was dining at a restaurant when it happened,” [160] Janeway replied. “No tables, no plates, no servers serving, no walls or ceiling, and no way to get home. I had to stick a civilian friend of mine with the unpleasant duty of transporting about eighty people.”
“It’s much worse than that,” Cagiao said grimly. “This isn’t a localized event. Think about what we entrust to holograms every day. Maintenance checks and cleaning for equipment of every sort, from buildings to starships. Transporters of every variety. All manner of dangerous but mundane assignments.”
“Like mining on Lyndarik Prime,” Janeway said.
“Exactly,” he said, not hearing the warning in her words. “Somehow this Baines fellow has found a way to crack almost all of our computer systems with a virus that makes the holograms refuse to perform the very duties for which they were programmed.”
“Is it a programming that they can choose to override?”
“Some can, some can’t. You’ll forgive us if we haven’t taken the time to find out the finer points of this computer virus,” Cagiao said.
“I would think that would be precisely what you’d be taking the time to do,” Janeway snapped. As Cagiao was about to retort, she held up a hand. “I want to hear what’s going on in a moment, and I’ll offer what aid I can. But first I want to know what has happened to my crewman.”
“He’s not your crewman any longer, Admiral,” Cagiao said. “You don’t have a crew.”
The comment was not intended to hurt, but Janeway was surprised at how it stung. He was right. She had no crew anymore. They were all scattered, all individuals, [161] each pursuing his own destiny apart from her, apart from Voyager, apart from the great adventure they had all shared.
“What did you do?” she said, through clenched teeth.
“He was taken away for questioning,” Cagiao said.
“Surely you don’t believe he was involved in this,” Janeway said.
Cagiao smiled darkly. “It sounds like you came here immediately from your interrupted dinner,” he replied. “It would appear that you yourself thought he might be involved.”
She did not reply, for he was right. “The Doctor is the author of a holonovel called—”
“Photons Be Free, we are quite familiar with it. Which is why a team came by earlier. The Doctor confessed freely to having met with Oliver Baines, and we found on his computer the beginnings of another novel in which the protagonist becomes involved in a holographic revolution.”
His voice was still crisp, but his eyes betrayed his sympathy at her surprise. “We also found a padd that Baines left for the Doctor to read. It’s chock full of rhetoric about the changing times that lie ahead when photons are finally free, and some of those changes put organics, as they call them, at the bottom and holograms as their masters. Surely you agree there was sufficient cause to take him in for further