The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [62]
“Yes, sir,” they all replied.
“Good luck, Commander.” O’Brien’s broad, usually good-natured features bore a strained expression, and Will thought he saw new lines around his eyes and mouth. Riker wondered for a moment whether the sandy-haired transporter chief had experienced one of the dreams.
If so, he would only be one of many by now. More and more crew members were wearing haunted expressions, their eyes bleak and empty or, worse, filled with fear. Doctor Crusher had reported that nearly forty percent of the crew and fifty percent of their family members had experienced one of the “real” dreams the artifact induced. Not all of the dreams were unhappy ones, but the nightmares tended to outnumber the pleasant experiences.
There were other statistics even grimmer. Seventeen suicide attempts, one successful, and one more not expected to live. Five attempted murders. Forty-three cases of catatonia. Eighty-four nervous breakdowns. One hundred sixty-two under treatment for severe depression and withdrawal. And, of course, one Betazoid who could not be allowed to awaken for fear that the emotional and mental trauma pervading the ship would destroy her life or her reason.
On his way to the transporter room to join his away team, Will had stopped off in sickbay. For a moment he’d stood gazing down at the counselor’s lovely, unconscious features, framed by those masses of glossy black curls. Sleeping Beauty, he thought, and he had to swallow against a sudden tightness in his throat. The sight of Troi asleep awakened a surge of memories and feelings that he’d thought long buried.
Taking her limp hand in his, Riker directed a thought at her, hoping somehow that it would reach beyond the drug-induced sleep. Hang on, Deanna. We’re going to get out of this, I promise you, darling. Just hang on …
As he’d walked out of sickbay, he’d been disturbed to note that every bed was full and that nearby lounges and sleeping quarters had been appropriated by the medical staff for care of those incapacitated by the artifact’s mental assault.
The shortage of duty-ready personnel was beginning to impinge on the ship’s efficiency, and there were additional cases admitted to sickbay every hour. We’ve got to succeed in shutting down that field, Riker thought, or we’ll have to take the risk of blowing up the damned artifact.
The team mounted the transporter, standing poised and ready. Worf had his hand on his sidearm. Riker thumbed on his flashlight, in case they emerged in darkness, and nodded at the transporter chief.
“Energize,” he ordered.
The walls of the chamber shimmered around them, growing indistinct. Riker felt his own body phase out of one space, then emerge into another—a feeling of profound displacement, but now familiar to him after all these years.
Cold air struck his face and throat, light and color surrounded him, sound filled his ears—Riker had barely a second to realize that the beam-over was complete, before he was hit with a sense of vertigo so profound that it made the dizziness he’d experienced when he first gazed at the artifact seem as nothing.
The commander gasped for breath. He was blind, deaf, surrounded as he was by alien colors, alien sounds, none of which was meant to be assimilated or even tolerated by human eyes, human ears. An alien odor assaulted his nostrils—sweeter than claret, more bitter than bile.
Doubling over, retching, Riker staggered a few steps, trying to close his eyes, to clap his hands over his ears, but the hideous shrieking colors and impossible shapes smote him, assaulted his vision, even as the sounds of insanity ripped into his mind via his eardrums, making him wish he were deaf, that he were dead. The very air tortured the skin of his face and hands, making his flesh creep and shrink until it seemed as though his bones would burst through.
Stop! he wanted to scream. God, please, stop it! Stop!
But his mouth and tongue did not obey. His body was slipping sideways, out of control, unable to stay upright, because it was not his anymore—
Neither