Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [73]
Then her gaze was drawn to the window beyond it, and she saw the reflection there. His reflection.
“Professor?” she ventured.
There was no answer—at least, not at first. But a moment later, the chair pulled back from the desk into the center of the room, where there was more room for it to maneuver. Then it turned around a hundred and eighty degrees, gradually revealing the man inside it.
The mutants were right, she thought. There was something of a resemblance after all, Crusher found herself smiling.
Xavier didn’t smile back. In fact, he didn’t seem to exhibit any expression at all. He merely made a pyramid of his fingers, as if that were a statement in itself.
“I find myself at a disadvantage,” he told her.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, remembering her manners. She came forward and offered the man her hand. “My name is Beverly Crusher. I’m the chief medical officer here.”
The professor grasped her hand politely. “Here?” he echoed skeptically. “You mean in Salem Center? Pardon me for saying so, but I don’t know any medical doctors who dress as you do.”
She nodded. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but we’re not in Salem Center. We’re on a starship. And …” She took a breath and let it out. “… you’re not Charles Xavier.”
He almost smiled, his eyes sparkling with firelight. “I’m not?”
“Not really,” the doctor told him. “You’re a holographic representation of Charles Xavier. I created you with data uploaded from your computer files when this ship was in your reality.”
The professor regarded her intently. After a moment, he began to look concerned. “I can’t enter your mind to verify your statements. I wonder why that would be.”
“Because,” she said, “there’s no way to simulate your mental powers here in the holodeck.”
Xavier’s brow creased. “Holodeck? I thought you said we were on a ship of some kind.”
“We are,” Crusher replied patiently.
After all, she needed the man’s help. They all did.
“The holodeck is a facility on our ship,” the doctor explained. “In fact, there are several such facilities. They employ electromagnetic fields and omnidirectional image projectors to simulate objects, environments, … and even living beings.”
The professor’s eyes narrowed beneath his upswept eyebrows. “How interesting,” he said.
“You believe me, then?”
“For the moment,” he responded, “I’ll accept your explanation as the truth—if only as an excercise in logic. Now, if I may ask … for what purpose did you create this simulation?”
Crusher found herself grateful for the man’s intellect. Not every twentieth-century Earthman would have been able to accept what she had told him, even on a provisional basis.
“It seems,” she said, “we have a problem on our hands.”
She told him about the situation on Xhaldia. Then she told him about the X-Men’s involvement in it.
“I understand you’re a geneticist,” the doctor went on. “One of the foremost geneticists on Earth, in fact.”
“That’s correct,” Xavier said.
He didn’t take any obvious pride in the description. He might as well have been discussing someone else’s achievements as his own.
“And you’ve had extensive experience with mutations,” she pointed out. “A great deal more than I have, certainly.”
The professor nodded. “I see what you’re getting at. You’d like me to assist you in understanding the Xhaldians’ transformations … perhaps even contribute to an attempt to reverse them.”
“Exactly right,” Crusher confirmed. “I’ve asked our away teams to obtain information on the genetic makeup of the transformed. With any luck, they’ll be bringing it back to me in the next several hours.”
Xavier placed his forefinger against his temple. “And you expect a mere simulacrum—a collection of projected images and electromagnetic fields—to be helpful in this regard?”
“That depends,” she said.
He tilted his head slightly. “On what?”
“On whether you’re as good as they say you are.”
For a second or two, the professor seemed to ponder