Intellivore - Diane Duane [1]
Picard’s chest began to hurt. Behind him, Rollo was blowing hard. “Aha,” Picard said, between his own gulps for air. “Now we see what you—really think of a good climb—” The trail was almost at a forty-degree angle now and, above them, seemed simply to go straight up into the sky and stop.
Until they came to the top of it. Abruptly, almost unbelievably—so great was the contrast with the surrounding terrain—they found themselves standing on a stony crest which spilled straight down into a broad grassy terrace, almost perfectly flat. Picard led Rollo down into it, and the gelding made a satisfied muttering noise down in his throat and immediately dropped his head to graze. “Glutton,” Picard said softly, throwing the reins over Rollo’s head and letting them hang. He leaned against the horse’s side and regarded the view from Belvedere la Cirque with a completely illogical satisfaction, as if he had created it.
Picard left Rollo where he was for the moment and walked slowly to the eastern side of the belvedere, where it began to trend gently downhill before ending abruptly in its own set of cliffs. There, poised on the very edge, he stood awhile, getting his breath back, and looked down into the great soft abyss of blue air to the place below where four or five wrinkled little valleys met. Picard stood there in the sunny silence, awed as always, and thought of how many others had come this way in their own times, on their way to some pressing engagement: Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Napoleon …
Except that none of them had actually come here at all.
It was all an illusion, of course. The air, so cold and dry and sweet it cut the lungs; the faint elusive scent of vanilla orchid, even at such a height; the clink and creak of the tack of reins and saddle, the faint grinding noise of Rollo’s teeth as he grazed, even Rollo himself as he paused in his grazing to look up and snort softly at Picard, impatient with the sightseeing—all an illusion. All the triumph of science over an empty room.
Unreal, Picard thought a little sadly, folding his arms, now that his breathing was comfortable again. Yet—and the thought was almost rebellious, even cheerful—it’s easy enough to get caught in the old question. Any reality must be filtered through our own experience. I may say to myself, “This is unreal: I’m in the holodeck, and a word from me will break the illusion.” But it feels no less real than the last time I rode this way.
Picard sighed, amused; but the amusement had an edge of sorrow to it. The irony was inescapable: holodeck technology, rather than helping solve questions about the nature of reality, had created many more. Meanwhile, was there really any danger in experiencing this morning sun, this air, as if it were physically real? Joy was rare enough, precious enough in life, as it was; why deny it to yourself because it wasn’t “real”? Reality would intrude soon enough, and then—
—the soft queep from the commbadge buried inside the saddle pack. Picard’s slight, glad smile turned wry. “Picard,” he said softly.
“Captain,” Riker’s voice said, “Marignano has just come out of warp and is on her way to the rendezvous point.”
“Thank you, Number One,” Picard said. “My compliments to Captain Maisel. I’ll be along shortly. Any news of Oraidhe yet?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“All right. Out.”
He stood there a few minutes more, looking across the blue lake of air toward Monte Viso’s splendor. A black dot slid across the mountain face at about the twenty-five-hundred-meter level, below the peak, its shadow sliding along in a matching course down on the snows. Picard peered at it, for there was something odd about the shape, lumpy.
It had to come a little closer, veering past the face of Pointe de Marte, before he recognized