Intellivore - Diane Duane [21]
Picard smiled a little bit himself. “Weren’t you telling us, Ileen, that some of the settled worlds in this area had been troubled by sporular angue fever?”
Captain Maisel nodded innocently. “Virulent stuff, that. And opportunistic. Four systems down with it, at least.”
The three captains nodded gravely at one another. Riker, who had come in partway through the discussion, smiled a very sideways smile, touched his commbadge, and started having a quiet discussion with someone in engineering about a marker buoy.
“Protective measures aside,” Maisel said, “if I came across a ship like this, in this part of space, when all kinds of people have heard the kinds of stories about this area that I have, I wouldn’t want anything to do with the thing. I’d leave it right where it was.”
“We might as well do the same, for the moment,” Clif said. “We have other concerns.”
“Agreed,” Picard said. “More than ever, now, I’m eager to touch base with the people on that colony ship; I want to make sure they get where they’re going safely.”
“Yes,” Clif and Maisel said almost in unison.
“Let’s make it so, then. Mr. Data—”
“Laying in a course, Captain, and data-streaming it to Marignano and Oraidhe.”
“Very good. Let’s go. If anyone wants me, I’ll be down in sickbay.”
The Alpheccan lay on one of the diagnostic beds, the screen above it showing a most unusual internal arrangement of which Picard could make out absolutely nothing. Crusher was standing with her arms folded, a whole range of diagnostic tools lying to one side on a table while she gazed thoughtfully at the screen. Standing next to her was a tall balding man with an open, friendly face.
“Captain,” said Crusher. “Oh, Captain, this is Dr. Spencer, Jim Spencer, from Marignano.”
Picard nodded to him. “Pleased,” he said,
“He’s worked with Alpheccans before; I haven’t really,” Crusher said.
“Clinic work mostly, on Alphecca Four,” said Spencer. “But they’re not that common a people outside their own system. Normally they don’t care for star travel much—religious and cultural reasons. However, as you see, there are always exceptions to the rule.”
Picard nodded, looking at the screen again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but he—he?—appears to have two of everything.”
“Nearly,” Spencer said. “With the possible exception of the brain, which would seem to be bad luck for this gentleman.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Well—” Crusher gestured them all away from the bed, and they walked into her office, waited for the doors to shut. “He’s dying, Captain; I’m afraid there’s no question about that. I could prolong the process, but ethically I’d be on shaky ground.”
“The problem,” said Spencer, “is not so much that he’s dying, but that, as he is at the moment, he shouldn’t be alive at all.”
“He seems to have incurred some kind of brain damage,” said Crusher. “And it’s a very peculiar kind, because in terms of actual trauma to his analogue of the cerebrum and cerebellum, there is none. His autonomic nervous system is perfectly intact … except that it seems not to be working properly. It’s slowly losing function, giving up the business of running his breathing and heartbeat, and the process would seem to be irreversible. When I have to sign his death certificate—something I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to handle in the next few hours—the proximate cause of death will be heart failure secondary to cerebellar dysfunction. But that will not be what killed him. I don’t know what did.”
Picard sat down, concerned. “Some kind of weapon, perhaps?” he said. “Or exposure to radiation?”
Crusher and Spencer shook their heads in unison. “No chance, Captain,” said Spencer, “or very little. The only weapon this man had any contact with would have been someone’s blaster or disruptor. That damage we repaired. But no known radiation, or infectious agent, can cause these effects.”
“The problem is that this Alpheccan’s brain is intact, Captain,” Crusher said, sitting down on her desk and staring at her screen as if simply staring could make it give up