Requiem - Michael Jan Friedman [63]
He would have to keep his voice low. He didn’t want what he had to say to be overheard by his guard.
“Julia …” he began.
She shook her head. “No,” she corrected. “Dr. Santos. Julia was the one who trusted you, remember? Me, I’m just your doctor.” With forced intensity, she studied her tricorder readings.
The captain nodded. “All right. I deserved that. But despite what I’ve done and said, I need your help.”
The doctor chuckled dryly. “Of course you do.”
“I mean it,” Picard insisted. “I wasn’t lying about that matter-antimatter core. It’s going to experience a runaway reaction. And when it does, it will take the whole colony with it.”
Julia’s expression changed ever so slightly, as if she was at least thinking about believing in him again. Then she turned away.
“Look, Mr. Hill, or whatever you’re really called. I don’t have time for your shenanigans anymore, so let’s just drop it.”
“They’re not shenanigans,” he told her. “I can prevent the core from exploding. But to do that, I need your help. I need to get out of here.”
When the doctor allowed her eyes to meet his again, they were full of undisguised, red-rimmed hurt. The captain winced at the sight of them.
“I trusted you,” she said, her voice flat and accusing. “And I got burned. Now you want me to trust you again? To … to commit mutiny for you?” She grunted. “You must be out of your head.”
Picard cursed inwardly. This was his one chance. He couldn’t afford to let it get away—even if it meant risking everything on one roll of the dice.
He licked his lips. “What if I told you I could prove I know what I’m talking about?”
That got her attention. “Prove it?” she echoed warily.
“Yes. What then?”
Julia looked at him askance. “I’m listening. Just for the entertainment value, mind you.”
The captain knew what kind of chance he was taking. But he was guided by the eerie knowledge that she wouldn’t live to spread the story he was telling her; it was just a question of which disaster would claim her first.
“My name,” he told her, “is Jean-Luc Picard. I command a Federation starship called the Enterprise.” He paused, letting what he’d said so far begin to sink in. Then he hit her with the punchline. “However, if you were to look up the captain of that vessel, you would find that his name is James T. Kirk. That is because my Enterprise exists in the twenty-fourth century.”
Julia blinked—once, twice. Then an expression of disappointment came over her. “I thought you’d do better than that,” she responded. “I mean, really.”
Of course, Picard had known this wouldn’t be easy. “Think, Julia. I have a bionic heart, engineered to imitate my cell structure. Have you ever heard of any race, Federation member or otherwise, capable of manufacturing such a device?”
The doctor recognized the question as rhetorical. “Go on,” she instructed.
“As the commodore pointed out, I have no scar tissue to indicate that the procedure ever took place. In fact, I have no scar tissue at all. And I’m immune to the common cold. Why? Because in my era, medical science has made great strides in cell replication and immunology.”
Julia sighed. He had made it difficult for her to remain completely skeptical, but he still had a long way to go.
“Now you know why I didn’t want to divulge my identity,” the captain persisted. “Because I didn’t want to upset the flow of sequential time by my presence here—which, I assure you, is completely accidental. And now you also know how I can be so sure about the defect in your power source. In this time, matter-antimatter technology hasn’t come far enough to detect such problems. But in mine, even a cadet knows how to look for them.”
The doctor’s green eyes narrowed. ‘I’ll give you credit. It almost sounds convincing. But if you were truly concerned about messing up the flow of sequential time, you wouldn’t be telling me all this—would you? You’d be keeping your mouth shut, no matter what.”
Picard shrugged. “Not if I knew that this outpost isn’t supposed to be destroyed by a matter-antimatter accident. Not if I suspected