Possession - J.M. Dillard [39]
What harm could there be in seeing him? she asked herself, but never waited for the answer.
“Come in,” she bid, and the doors opened, showing her the scientist she’d already sensed.
“I was not sure whether you would still be awake,” he said softly from the hallway. His demeanor was calm, reassuring, gentle. His serene emerald eyes were politely downcast, yet she could not quite shake her irrational sense of alarm. “Am I disturbing you? Surely, you need to rest.”
“Well, I will need to rest soon, but we can talk until then. Won’t you come in?” She waved him graciously over to a couch.
“Thank you,” he said, without sitting. “I just wanted to be sure you were well. I feel responsible for the shocking mental image you received.”
Deanna sat down by herself when the Vulcan didn’t. “Please don’t concern yourself. I’m fine. I thank you for your interest.”
He bowed slightly. “Counselor, after you left to see the artifacts, I never spoke to you again. Did you get to see them?”
“Yes,” she said, looking away, not wanting to think about the disturbing things. “Yes, I did.”
“You are a telepath, Counselor,” he said in that same calm, quiet tone. “Did you … sense anything from them?”
The very question evoked a panic that stole her breath; she forced herself to inhale and exhale calmly, slowly, to collect her thoughts.
“Forgive me for pursuing you on this topic,” Skel apologized, apparently sensing her dismay. “But in eighty years of study, no Vulcan has ever melded with or received any telepathic impression from the artifacts. If you have, it would help our understanding of these things enormously.”
Deanna warred with irrationally wanting to order the Vulcan out of her quarters, or being the professional counselor and discussing his problem with him. As usual, the professional counselor won out, and Deanna found herself bitterly resenting that woman.
“It was, for me, a … difficult moment,” she admitted to him. Recalling the instant of connection, she found herself starting to tremble. She focused on her tightly clasped hands, not wanting to embarrass the Vulcan with a display of emotion.
“Then you felt them?” he asked softly.
Them. She blinked, hearing his tone, feeling as though his words opened up an understanding for her. “You believe there is something alive in them? Something, possibly intelligent?”
Skel looked about her quarters—at the artwork covering the bulkheads, at the soft pastel grouping of furniture, at a holo of Lwaxana—at every item in the room except Troi. “To answer your question—no. I am a scientist, and nothing that we have learned about the entities residing within the shells indicates intelligence, any more than a virus is intelligent when it invades a host’s DNA. However, I am also a survivor of the madness the entities induced. And sometimes, when I think of whatever it is that resides in those artifacts, I see the grotesque mask of my father’s face after he was infected. And so, for me, the entities have an appearance, an expression. They wear the soul of my father’s madness. So we may say that the survivor of that disease sometimes sees the entities as them.”
It was a difficult confession for him, she realized, one that might only be given to a counselor who had glimpsed into the soul of that survivor. For a brief second, she thought of her lost opportunity with Ensign Ito; she could not pass up this chance that was being offered to her, no matter how personally difficult it might be.
“I did not sense them, Skel,” Deanna told him. “But I sensed something. Something frightening, and hard to comprehend.” She tried to describe for him the exact sensation she’d received when she had stood beside the container that held the artifacts, but even as she mouthed the words she felt their inadequacy. “I’m sorry,” she concluded. “Language can be so limiting.”
“Something any telepath can understand,” Skel agreed. “I hesitate to suggest this, Counselor, but you are an empath, so I will trust that you will understand my request, and the nature in which I offer it. If—I could meld with you—”
RUN! RUN, MY CHILD,