Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [42]
Soong laughed. Graves had never called him by his first name before, but the gesture had done its job. He threw his arms up in surrender. “Fine. Yes. No doubt.”
“Good,” Vaslovik said. “Now that we’ve settled that, someone give me a hand here.” Vaslovik slipped his hands under the android’s arms and finished, “We don’t have forever.” And though Soong never understood the significance of it, he could not help but notice Vaslovik’s small, secret smile at this private joke.
Chapter Twelve
BEVERLY CRUSHER STARED at the ceiling tiles above the nurse’s station and tried to remember the last time she had spent more than twenty-four hours off the Enterprise. Six weeks? Two months? More? Adjusting to planetside wasn’t the sort of thing that usually bothered her, but her sleep-wake cycle was out of sync with local time and she was beginning to feel the effects. She knew she could find something in her medkit, a mild stimulant, that would get her around the horn, but, then, if Maddox suddenly recovered—or worse, died—she would be stuck with the same predicament when she returned to the ship. She decided to tough it out. Her shift would be over in … how long? She had completely lost track of time.
She searched the desktop and found the chrono: 1530. Felt like midnight. It was as quiet as midnight, especially compared to what she was used to in the Enterprise’s sickbay. There were only two staff on duty, an Andorian technician everyone called Po and the day shift’s head nurse, Maury Sullivan.
“Maury,” Crusher asked. “Is the replicator still down?”
Maury looked up from the chart she was checking and nodded grimly. “I’ve been trying to get Maintenance to look at it all day, but it’s hard to get anyone’s attention for long around here if it doesn’t involve splitting elementary particles.” Crusher smiled at the comment and Maury grinned, pleased. “Is it like that onboard a starship?”
Crusher shook her head. “No,” she said, then added as an afterthought, “not usually, anyway. Besides, everyone knows to keep the doctor happy.”
Maury laughed, delighted. “That must be nice. The best we can do around here is threaten to withhold antacids.”
“Not quite the leverage one would hope for,” Crusher commented. “Tell you what: you tell me where to get a decent cup of coffee and I’ll ask someone from the Enterprise to take a look at your replicator.”
“Ooo,” Maury said, hopping out of the chair, “you have got yourself a deal. How do you take it?”
“No, no,” Crusher said. “Just tell me where to go.”
Maury waved her hand dismissively. “Forget it. You’ll never find it. I think they designed this place to be some sort of perverse intelligence test. It would take you forever to find your way there.” She paused. “And besides, my husband works in the lab next to the canteen. I can stop and say hi.”
“Oh.” Crusher said, slightly disappointed. She had been thinking a walk would be nice, too. “Okay. What do I do if someone calls?”
“They won’t,” Maury said, heading for the door, “but if they do, well, you’re the one they want to talk to. You’re the doctor.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Crusher said, more to herself than to anyone else since Maury was already out the door. Then, she leapt up and yelled, “Cream and sugar.”
And then it was very quiet, except for the ping of some distant monitoring equipment and the occasional puff of air from vents. Crusher thought about calling the Enterprise and checking on the state of sickbay, but she had done that only a couple of hours ago and if she did it again, the staff would think she was being a pest. Deciding that she needed something—anything—to focus on, she turned to the library computer and pulled up Maddox’s medical records.
Crusher had checked all the scans the ICU staff had run before she had arrived and then run tests of her own, but both sets had shown precisely the same thing: nothing. No neurological injury. No infectious agent. No historeaction. No implanted biomechanical device. Maddox was unconscious, in a state that more closely