Intellivore - Diane Duane [35]
Silence.
” ‘Don’t take it,’ ” Clif said, looking over at Ileen. ” ‘Don’t take my life.’ Not the body’s life, then, but something more.”
“Not erasure, then,” Picard said, in a wondering voice, and a horrified one. “The removal of the life of the mind. Maybe of the mind itself? Stolen?”
The silence fell again. Finally, Picard said to Data, “I want you to continue with your analyses of anything from Boreal’s logs that would seem to cast light on this situation. What else is being done that we need to consider?”
Riker said, “The forensic team is continuing its work, Captain. We’re going over that ship with a fine-tooth comb. Anything that our sensors can find … we’ll have a report for you shortly.”
“Very well. We cannot take Boreal with us,” Picard said. “I think it would be best to quarantine this ship just as we did with the pirate vessel. What about the trail of the larger vessel?”
“It leads away quite clearly toward the galactic northeast,” said Worf, “toward the pole. It does not appear to be making any attempt to hide its trail, or to be using cloaking devices.”
“That,” Ileen said, “gives me pause. It’s plainly big and powerful enough not to care. And we’ve got to find it, catch it …”
“And possibly bring it to battle?” Picard said, looking grim. “Yes. But not until we fully understand exactly what it is we’re dealing with here. Acting too soon can be as dangerous as not soon enough. And now we’re left with another problem. What guarantee have we that what it’s done to them it can’t do to us?”
Silence again around the table. “Boreal was a little short on shielding of any kind, Captain,” said Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge. I must be distracted, thought Picard. I didn’t even see him come in the room. “Except what’s normally associated with a ship that needs warp drive to move. If what we’re seeing here is some kind of energy effect, we’ve had enough experience over time with tuning our own shields to keep such an effect out. But we have to know exactly what it is to block it, first. And I have to say, I don’t know of any field that would produce the effect on people that we’ve seen on Boreal. Unless Dr. Crusher has some better idea.”
“I have none,” she said. “Believe me, I wish I did.”
“So do we all, Doctor.” Picard looked around the table. “Does anyone else have anything to add?”
No one did. “All right, then,” he said. “Dismissed.”
The room began to clear. The three captains, by tacit agreement, remained behind.
“Captain,” said Maisel, “I hear you’ve got some nice holodeck programs over here. I could definitely use a run through one or two of them this evening. Everyone knows I’m a creature of the utmost composure, but after what we’ve just seen …” She shuddered.
“We’re in agreement there,” Picard said softly. “Clif?”
Clif looked up. “Oh, sorry, Captain, I missed that last—”
“You look a little distracted.”
Clif shook his head. ” ‘Don’t take my life,’ ” he whispered. “What could do a thing like that? Just steal a life, a mind, or an intelligence, suck it away—”
“There are creatures that live on, devour, the life force of others,” Picard said. “Or there have been, anyway. Often enough, it hasn’t been the devouring creature’s own fault; is it your fault how your species has evolved? Not, I suppose, that that seems to matter much to the creatures the predator preys upon.”
Ileen looked slightly grim at that. “To the sheep,” she said, “the only good wolf is a dead wolf, I guess … despite everything the wolf knows about how social and intelligent its own culture is. And I doubt the situation