String Theory_ Cohesion (Book 1) - Jeffrey Lang [77]
“Not long,” Seven replied. “But it would be best if you were unconscious for the first part of the procedure. Some of the nanoprobes will need to construct an ocular implant to enable you to see.”
“Only one?”
“Two would not be wise,” Seven said. “There would be complications.”
“Great. No depth perception.”
“ ‘In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ ”
“But he still would have no depth perception.”
Seven sighed, a response that only Torres could tear out of her so frequently. “You are a very difficult person, Lieutenant. Lie down now.”
“I know,” Torres said, lying back on the floor. “It’s just that I really don’t like you at all. No offense.”
Seven leaned down over Torres and unconsciously flexed a muscle in her forearm. A minuscule gap opened between Seven’s wrist bones just above the cuff and an assimilation tubule snaked out from it like a tiny black tongue. Seven touched the tube to Torres’s neck and the engineer grew quiet. “None taken,” Seven said.
Chapter 13
When Kim had asked to meet her in astrometrics, Captain Janeway had thought he had found an answer to her question about going into a controlled warp in the fold. This was not the case. Instead, Kim had seen something in the map of the fold Tuvok had been creating that he wished to discuss. At first, she had been impatient with the ensign, almost angry, but as he had talked, Janeway had begun to see the idea toward which he had been driving. Now, having fleshed out Kim’s idea, she wanted to get Chakotay’s opinion before proceeding. “Explain it to him, Harry,” she ordered.
Kim brought Tuvok’s incomplete map up onto the lab’s big monitor. “This all started when Tom and I were looking at Tuvok’s map and we noticed this curved line,” Kim began.
Janeway read the consternation on Chakotay’s face and even heard a note of annoyance in his voice when he said, “I don’t follow you, Harry. So it’s curved? So what?”
“Which is precisely what I said,” Janeway admitted. “Why wouldn’t a fold have a curve?”
“And I conceded that,” Kim said. “But there was something about the shape that nagged at me, so I asked Tuvok to send out more probes and complete the line. He did, and then we got this.” The line became appreciably longer, but the curl of the curve was more extreme. “Up at this end, the curve spiraled in on itself. I had to ask myself why it would do that.”
Chakotay stared at the diagram for several seconds, then rubbed his eyes. “I’m not following you, Harry.”
“Show him what we think the rest of the curve looks like,” Janeway said.
“Right,” Kim said and worked the controls. “I think I saw the beginnings of it because of a topography class I took in high school.” He dropped his eyes. “Unfortunately, I didn’t do very well in the course. The captain saw the answer right away.”
When Harry was finished, the rest of the shape emerged and Janeway saw the light of understanding dawn in Chakotay’s eyes. “We’re not in a fold,” he said.
“Right,” Harry said. “It finally made sense when the captain reminded me about the radiation in the space around us. Where is it coming from? It couldn’t have all come in when we did.” The diagram on the screen showed Voyager in a space that looked remarkably like a paper bag whose mouth had been twisted into a corkscrew shape. “It’s leaking in through the top of the bag.”
Chakotay slowly nodded, then looked at Janeway. “All right. I get it and I agree. It’s the only explanation that fits the facts. What do we do now?”
“We have to uncurl the top of the bag.”
“Any ideas how we’re going to do that?”
“Yes,” Janeway said. “One.”
She briefly outlined her plan, after which Chakotay sagged back against one of the stools along the wall. “Suddenly I’m glad B’Elanna’s not on board. She isn’t going to like what we’re about