The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [64]
But where was here? Confused, Worf spun around, unable to tell whether he was still in his own body, or whether he was now fighting some enemy within the recesses of his mind. He could not be sure what was real and what was illusion, but that did not matter, either! Trying to decide which was which and what was what brought agony, but that did not matter. A warrior used pain only as a lash, a goad that could spur the valiant on to greater glory!
Worf blinked, suddenly realizing something disturbing. His phaser! It was no longer in his hand! When had that happened? He must find it! With the phaser, he could wreak real destruction, more than he could with his hands or his feet, strong and ably trained as they were.
Spinning on his heel (but had he really moved at all? it was impossible to tell … ), he strode in search of his weapon. It must be here someplace, and with it in hand he would be able to achieve the ultimate in glory. They would feel his fury, and so would this place (but was it a place? or was it the inside of his own mind?).
Shaking his head, Worf bared his teeth and narrowed his eyes, trying to focus them, but as hard as he strained, he could only see the alienness, not his phaser! He began to howl curses, because the QI’yaH-bedamned colors and images and shapes were in his ghuy-cha’ way! And, worst of all, he could not even hear his own obscenities because of the Qu’vatlh alien sounds!
“naDev vo’ylghoS!” he roared, ordering the images, the colors, the sounds, to go away!
But they did not. Worf stumbled around a corner, seeing behind the screen of colors a darker, quasi-familiar moving shape. At last, something concrete for him to kill!
He lunged at it with a bellow of berserker rage, and it dodged his outflung hand (but was it really there?). Something caught his leg, sending him sprawling, but with a warrior’s trained reactions, he was on his feet again in an eyeblink, poised to spring.
Only the colors and the images and the shadows that had invaded his mind mocked him—there was nothing there, nothing …
Worf’s rage to battle dimmed suddenly, cooling like coals drizzled with water. Where was his phaser? He should be shooting, assaulting the enemy, making the kill! What was wrong with him now? The Klingon officer struggled to see, to focus—
—and, still struggling to act, to think, to fight, he fell like a severed limb, to hit the unyielding surface beneath his feet with a boneless thud, where he lay facedown, unmoving.
Gavar knew she was in trouble from the first moment she materialized. Colors bludgeoned her small, weak eyes, and she saw disturbing, impossible shapes, even as sounds ripped into her small, folded-over ears. Sickeningly sweet odors assaulted her sensitive nose. My senses, she thought frantically, squeezing her eyes shut. I can’t trust them …
Something fell next to her feet, something heavy. A body. Kneeling, Gavar ran her stubby two-fingered and single-thumbed hand over the form below her and touched a face, feeling “flesh” that was smoother than any human or Klingon skin could ever be. Commander Data. The android’s circuits must have shorted out from the sensory overload.
Fumbling blindly at her medical kit, the Tellarite got it open and managed to locate by touch the roll of bandage material within, as well as her surgical scissors. Fighting the urge to open her eyes, and trying desperately to ignore the alien sounds that seemed determined to bore into her ears like angry insects, she clipped off wads of the bandage and stuffed each deep into her ears, twisting them until they blocked out the worst of the sounds. She drew a long, relieved breath, then wrapped a length around her head so they would be held in place.
Now for her eyes. Carefully, Gavar measured off a length of the stuff and wound it around her head, covering her eyes. She squinted through the translucent cover and gave a grunt of satisfaction. The bandage softened the stomach-churning colors and muted