The Garden - Melissa Scott [8]
He adjusted the tricorder controls, calling up the next battery of tests, and waited while the machine cycled though them. This time, the telltales showed bright red all across the board there was nothing in
the fruit's makeup that should interfere with absorption of vitamin C. And since something very obviously is interfering, Kim thought, hearing Tuvok's voice in his mind, then one must assume that these fruits are not the culprit. He reopened the gap in the field, wrestled the cylinder back into place, and turned his attention to the next item on the list. The beans, massive, mottled spheres a little larger than his fist, were stored in open boxes, protected by their hard rinds, but they, too, showed both an abundance of ascorbic acid and a complete absence of anything that might block its uptake. He got the same results from the sour-cane, and stood for a moment, staring at the tricorder's screen. He had been sure it would be one of those three foods-they were the ones that Neelix used most, the ones that nearly everyone agreed tasted good, the ones that had become the staples of nearly everyone's diet-but then shook his disappointment away. The tricorders didn't make mistakes; if they said there was enough ascorbic acid in these foods, then there had to be some other factor involved. Maybe, he thought, one of the other foods interacts with these, which might explain why some people are more affected than others. The idea cheered him slightly, and he lifted the package of sour-cane back to its shelf. He would begin at the nearer end of the aisle, and test everything.
It took him almost five hours to test everything else in the aisle, but at the end of it he still hadn't found a likely cause for the deficiency. He stood at the end of the aisle for a long moment, sharply aware of his own hunger and fatigue, then made himself turn back toward the door, touching his communicator as he went. "Kim to Paris."
"Paris here."
It was only a minor consolation, Kim thought, that
Paris sounded as tired as he did. "I'm done with my aisle. How are you doing?"
"I've just finished," Paris answered. "I haven't found anything, Harry."
Kim swallowed hard, telling himself that the sudden emptiness in his gut was just hunger. "Neither have I. Maybe Kes-?"
"Kes here," the Ocampa said. "I'm sorry, Harry, all my tests haven't turned up anything either."
"Damn." Kim bit off the rest of what he wanted to say. That can't be right, we've made some mistake, we should do the tests again- There was no point in that, and he straightened his shoulders, trying to think what he-what a Starfleet officer-should do next. "All right," he said, "meet me back by the door, and let's compare notes. Maybe something will show up in the test protocols."
"I sure hope so," Paris answered. "I like my teeth where they are, thank you."
Kim grimaced, annoyed at the other man's flippancy, and as he reached the door was meanly pleased to see that Paris was no longer smiling. "So," he said, "let's link tricorders and see what we can come up with."
Paris offered his tricorder, and Kes copied him, but she was frowning slightly. "Something's just occurred to me, Harry," she said, and Kim looked up from trying to mate the three machines.
"Oh?"
"Yes. We're not testing the right things. I mean, these-" Kes gestured to the shelves behind them. "This isn't what we eat, not in this form. What we eat is cooked. Could that make a difference?"
Kim stared at her for a moment, the tricorders forgotten in his hands. "It could," he said. "My God, it really could."
Paris gave a little yip of impatience. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's check out the galley."
Kes nodded, but her mobile face was sad. Kim hesitated. "Is anything wrong?"
Kes shook her head, forced a rather wan smile. "No, not exactly. It's just-if it is the cooking, Neelix will feel terrible."
"Better to find out what's wrong," Paris said, brutally cheerful, but Kim touched the Ocampa lightly on the shoulder.