Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [182]
“That’s fine,” came the medical officer’s reply. “I’ll prepare her for transport immediately. But I want to come along, Commander. The woman is my patient, remember.”
Picard regarded Williamson. “Do you have a problem with Dr. Greyhorse beaming down as well?”
The colonist looked at him as if he had grown another head. “Beaming down?” he echoed.
The second officer had forgotten…Santana’s people were descended from a crew that left Earth nearly three hundred years earlier. At that time, there were no such things as molecular imaging scanners, phase transition coils, and pattern buffers.
As Earth pushed out into the galaxy in the twenty-second century, there had been a need for a quick way to board and disembark from spacegoing vessels—and transporter systems had filled that need. However, the colonists might never have been impelled in that direction.
“It’s a sophisticated procedure,” he explained, “in which a subject is disassembled at the subatomic level, transmitted to another location and reassembled at the other end.”
Williamson looked at him. “Impressive. And are there any…casualties when you employ this technology?”
“None when the equipment is working correctly,” Picard assured him. “And without question, it would be the fastest way to convey Ms. Santana to your planet’s surface.”
The colonist hesitated—but only for a moment. “Very well. Where should we expect your medical officer and Santana to arrive?”
“Where would you like them to arrive?”
Williamson thought about it. “What about the plaza outside our central medical facility? It’s shaped like a hexagon and it sits between two of our tallest towers.”
Picard glanced at his communications officer. “Mr. Paxton?”
Paxton responded without looking up. “I’m relaying the information to Lieutenant Vandermeer now, sir.”
“Actually,” Williamson interjected, “you may want to consider accompanying your medical officer. At some point, Commander, you and I will need to speak in person. It might as well be now.”
“Sir,” said Paxton, before Picard could give the colonist an answer, “Lieutenant Vandermeer says she’s located the hexagonal plaza.”
“Acknowledged,” the second officer responded.
Ben Zoma, who had returned to the engineering console, whispered, “You’re not going down there without a security escort, are you?”
Picard glanced at him. It was the type of sentiment he might have expressed to Captain Ruhalter just a few days earlier. But somehow, it sounded less urgent when one was on the other side of the rail.
He turned back to the colonist. “I would like to take you up on that,” he said diplomatically. “However, I am not the only one who would like to speak with you.”
“Bring whomever you wish,” Williamson responded. “Even a security team, if you feel you need one. But as you’ll see, Commander, we no longer have any reason to deceive you.”
After their experience with Santana, Picard had no business believing Williamson. But for some reason, he did.
Eleven
Evening had already fallen on the colonists’ continent when Jean-Luc Picard and his entourage beamed down from the Stargazer.
The second officer could have accompanied Greyhorse and Santana to the medical facility as he originally intended. However, he had instead accepted Shield Williamson’s invitation to meet him in his offices.
Picard was instantly pleased that he had made that choice. Looking out from a semicircular balcony, he found himself gazing at the most impressive city he had ever seen.
It was sleek, elegant, magnificent in scale…a titanic landscape of hundred-story-high buildings with proud, rounded shoulders and breathtaking, skyspanning footbridges, cast in soft pinks and yellows by an abundance of tethered, softly glowing globes.
Hovercars of different sizes and shapes sailed effortlessly through the spired landscape, looking like graceful, exotic fish in the depths of an alien ocean. As for foliage…dark blue trees and shrubs were everywhere, defining spacious, ground-level