The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [45]
If other people are experiencing dreams that real, no wonder they’re going mad, he thought, picking up his tea and walking back to sit on the edge of his bed, feeling the softness of the carpet pleasantly tickle his bare soles. He sipped the tea, closing his eyes and savoring the taste, glad to be back in the here-and-now, rather than then, no matter how dangerous their current situation aboard the Enterprise.
I relived an actual event, he thought, and I came out of it feeling every bit as terrible as I did the day it happened, when I think I must have been the closest to committing suicide that I have ever come in my life. Reliving a real event that traumatic with such a degree of verisimilitude was terrible enough … but what if that damned artifact over there could invest a nightmare with that same sense of reality? Mon Dieu, no wonder their hearts are stopping!
Briefly, he wondered whether Beverly Crusher had experienced one of the dreams, too. If so, I hope it was a pleasanter experience than mine, he thought. Shedding the robe, he walked into the head, then turned on the sonic shower to “massage.”
Feeling it pummel his body, slowly manipulating the tension out of his muscles, he was able, finally, to relax. The captain smiled grimly as he adjusted the shower to “hot water” and began lathering himself. Not what Beverly had in mind for a restful experience. I feel as dragged through a knothole as I did on that very day …
After he was clean, and clad again in a fresh uniform, Picard looked over at his bed and smiled grimly. So much for “sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,” he thought. It will be a long time before I lie down to sleep again with any kind of anticipation.
He stood thinking, remembering, all the while absently rubbing the path of the ancient, almost invisible scar that traced the skin of his arm. A long, long time …
Chapter Seven
“HEY, GEORDI!”
Lieutenant Commander La Forge glanced up when Wesley Crusher called his name. “Yeah?” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the muted throb of the matter-antimatter engines and the dilithium crystal generators that regulated the power to the life-support systems and the Enterprise’s shields.
“Will you and Data come up here for a moment?”
“Okay,” Geordi called, and he beckoned to the android, who was assisting him in his systems checks.
The two officers climbed to the upper deck in engineering, where the teenager stood before the sensing devices, duplicates of those located on the bridge.
“What’ve you got, Wes?” La Forge asked.
“I’ve been analyzing that energy field the artifact is generating,” Crusher said, a puzzled look in his eyes. “And something is very weird about it.”
Data glanced at the readouts, then back up at the youth, with an inquiring expression. “Could you be more specific, Wesley? Since all of our information about the artifact indicates that it is a construct completely outside our frame of reference, I would say that there are many ‘weird’ things about it, not ‘something,’ which usage implies a single thing.”
Geordi grimaced. “Data, sometimes you sound like you swallowed a dictionary.”
“I never swallowed one,” the android said seriously. “However, my memory core does contain—”
“Never mind,” Geordi interrupted resignedly. “Wes, what did you mean, there’s something weird about the artifact? Data’s right, there are a helluva lot of things that are weird about that critter.”
“I know,” Crusher agreed, “but my readings on this energy field that’s surrounding us indicate that the tractor field effect is only one small part of the total output of that field. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the artifact is emitting many different kinds of wavelengths that blend together to form this field that’s encasing us.”
Geordi examined the readouts for himself. Wesley pointed to one green line in the visual representation of the spectral analysis of the artifact’s field.
“See this one portion of the wavelength? That’s what’s keeping us here. All the rest of this”—his fingers swept over the remainder