Nightshade - Laurell K. Hamilton [79]
Talanne removed her mask, and Troi heard her take a deep breath of air.
The counselor didn’t need a second invitation to remove the sweating mask. She slipped it over her face, her hair sticking to her face in damp strands. The cool air caressed her skin with cool, moist fingers. It was different from the dry heat of the surface and even the other tunnels.
The smell that Breck had noticed wasn’t water but the rich, loamy smell of healthy earth. Green growing things. Life. It was like being caught in a thick cloud of perfume.
‘What is that?” Breck asked. He was standing a few steps below the rest of them. His breathing mask had slipped from his hands, and he didn’t react. He began to walk down the stone steps, slowly, eyes on something that they could not see.
‘It is what our world use to be,” Talanne said.
Plants, green growing plants as far as the eye could see. The cavern was thick with vegetation and rich, black soil. Water beaded and dripped from huge leaves. The roof of the cavern was so high as to give the illusion of being a stone sky. Light filtered from banks of shining, white panels set in that distant roof to spread warmth and life on the floor.
Talanne picked up Breck’s dropped mask. She spoke softly to no one in particular. “I was the same way the first time I saw it.”
The tall trees with the crimson fruit that had played such a prominent part in all the wall hangings grew straight and tall near the edge of the greenery. The trunk was a silvery gray, paler than the paintings had made it.
Troi stood on the stairs, drowning not in Breck’s wonderment but in her own. It wasn’t the trees, the life, but that this land, this piece of surface was alive. Its being pulsed in her head and played along her skin, as if she had brushed against a person. It was alive. Alive in a way that no tree or flower or piece of ground should ever have been alive.
‘The air smells very sweet here,” Worf said.
His voice brought her attention back to them. “It’s alive.” Her voice was a whisper.
‘Of course it is,” Worf said, “They are trees.”
‘No, Worf, it’s alive, like you’re alive, like I’m alive.”
‘The trees are intelligent?”
‘Not intelligent exactly, but aware.” She struggled to find the words to help him feel what was pouring through her body. “A sense of wellbeing, of happiness that plants do not have. It doesn’t think like we do, but it is alive. Aware.”
Breck had fallen to his knees in the rich green world. He fell forward on all fours, hands buried in a carpet of small, round leaves.
Troi moved down the steps toward him. “Breck?” He was crying. When her feet touched the springy ground, it was like an electric shock. She gasped.
‘You feel it, too, don’t you?” Breck asked. He stared up at her, tears running silently down his face.
Troi could only nod. She didn’t trust her voice. The warm heat of life poured through her body until she felt as if she would burst with it. It was so strong that she stared down at her hands, expecting some visible sign to pour from her fingertips.
There was nothing but the sensation prickling over her skin. Nothing visible, nothing to show to Worf. She stared into Breck’s face and knew he understood. One flash between them that went beyond words. It was the sharing that she had with other Betazoids. An understanding that none of her human or Klingon friends could share, no matter how hard they tried.
In one moment Troi understood one other thing that she hadn’t before. Breck was an empath, but his talent was tied to this rich, living land. Not this particular piece of land, but the surface of this planet. Breck was an earth-healer, a legend. His talent hadn’t been apparent because the planet was dead, but Troi felt his mind peeling away. All the protective shields that Breck had been forced to construct, all the things that had allowed an empath to kill others without feeling anything, were fading. His emotions, his mind, were being stripped bare by this pulsing, overwhelming life-force.
‘Once it was all like this,” the