Nightshade - Laurell K. Hamilton [69]
Dr. Crusher stood a few meters to his left. She was running medical tests on the control panel, as if it were indeed an injured patient. She had had more luck than Geordi. Because her regular patients frowned on having their skin cut open just for a casual look around, she had tools to peer inside without damaging the outer shell. She turned off the medical tricorder and stared at Geordi. There were tired lines around her green eyes. “I think I may have found the injury.”
‘What?” Geordi walked towards her eagerly. Maybe this was the break they needed.
‘If it were a patient, I would say there is some sort of problem with the immune system. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it would be like something entering our bodies and eating all the white blood cells. As the immune system is destroyed, internal organs would shut down. The body would begin closing ranks, trying to stay alive. The one thing I don’t understand is why the shutdown of the immune system would destroy the engines. A patient I could keep alive, in stasis if I had to.”
‘I think I know,” Geordi said. “You can’t shut this engine off, or even take much of it off-line. The major systems are interconnected-damage one beyond repair and it would be like a house of cards. It’s the main reason Veleck won’t let me cut into any one system. Damage one part and the entire engine is hurt.”
‘So if a vital system is destroyed, then it all goes,” Crusher asked.
‘Yeah.”
‘I think I can slow down this immune damage, but the real problem is repairing the systems already injured.”
Geordi ran a hand along the blinking panel. It ignored him as it had for hours. “Before the engines are stressed to the point of no return.”
‘And they explode,” Crusher finished for him.
‘Can you get started on the immune problem?” he asked.
‘I’ve diagnosed the problem, Geordi, but I don’t know how to get at it.”
‘What do you mean?”
‘If this was a patient, I would have to operate, invasive surgery. Some of the engine’s vital organs are shutting down. Repair or replacement is needed. Can you open the engines to me? Peel back the proverbial skin and let me get at it?”
He shook his head. “The engines ignore me. It’s like I’m not here. Veleck touches the panels, and they pulse to life, but they don’t know I’m here.”
‘What can we do, Geordi?”
Veleck must have heard his name for he lumbered out from behind the silver lattice work. “I told you that you could not help us,” he said. Even his slow-motion voice sounded tired.
‘Couldn’t you open the engines up and let the doctor work on them?”
‘Our engines would not understand your instruments, or your instructions. You would only confuse them.”
Veleck always spoke of the engines as if they were alive, separate beings. Geordi didn’t question it anymore. “Then you could talk to the engines for us, explain what the doctor was doing.”
‘It will not work,” Veleck said.
Geordi wondered if there was a Milgian word for pessimist, but he doubted Veleck would get the insult. And besides, Geordi was a Federation officer. He wasn’t supposed to insult officers from alien races. Every crew member was in some way a diplomat. He took a deep breath.
‘Veleck, we don’t have much time left. Can’t you just humor us and tell the engines to do what we ask?”
‘Humor you? I see nothing funny about this situation.”
Frustration burst into anger. Geordi opened his mouth to yell at the stubborn being, then stopped himself. He turned away, swallowing all the words he wanted to say. What he did instead was laugh. A low pleasant laugh.
‘I do not understand your humor,” Veleck said.
‘I think we’re all tired,” Crusher said.
Geordi nodded. “Yeah, we’re all tired.” He looked at the large brightly colored alien, the odd unreadable eyes. “Sometimes when humans are upset, they laugh. It relieves tension.”
Veleck seemed to think about that for a moment. “Ah, I believe I understand. We do bortak for tension release.”
‘Bortak?” Geordi asked. Crusher and he exchanged glances.
Veleck’s body suddenly glowed to Geordi’s eyes. The heat flowed and pulsed from