Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [69]
“No kidding,” La Forge said, smiling a quirky one sided smile. Yenan looked at him in utter incomprehension, but La Forge didn’t make any effort to explain, and the Fandrean moved off to present the surge figures to his engineers. Up until now, things had been altogether too intense in the Legacy’s underground warren of communications panels. “That’s what I’m suggesting, all right.”
“I shall have to consider it,” Data allowed. “Not that I have much time to devote to this project, at the moment. Things are about to come to a head here.”
“Why? What’s going on?” La Forge asked. Once again sitting on the floor rather than trying to adjust to Fandrean chair ergonomics, he leaned forward and prodded idly at the open communications panel before him, waiting for an idea to strike—as they so often did when he let one part of his mind talk with Data while the other considered the matter at hand. Then he stopped short and
said, “Wait. You did it again, didn’t you? That was a good one—I’ll bet most people wouldn’t even notice it.”
“You are the first to do so, and I suspect your awareness is heightened by this very conversation. The phrase dates all the way back to the 1340s, and references boils, and the way they—”
“That’s all I need to know about that one,” La Forge said hastily. “What is going on?”
“I am not sure.” Data hesitated. “I would have to say … I think Captain Picard is up to something.”
La Forge thought that if he asked, he could probably get the history behind up to something, but decided against it. “Up to what?”
“Unknown,” Data said. “The ReynKa is apparently coming back on board; it is a sudden development. And Captain Picard looks … I would have to define his expression as determined.”
“That’s good news, then,” La Forge said, by way of a prompt. “Is the probe web still functioning?”
There was enough hesitation that La Forge knew the answer before Data finally offered it. “There have been some data positioning synchronization problems,” he said. In the background, Spot’s short, querying mrrrp? came through. “Lieutenant Barclay appears to have pinpointed the problem and solved it, but the delay was unfortunate. By the time we have a rudimentary chart from the results, many Ntignanos will have died. Still, I believe it is our current fallback.”
“Well, then, determined is good. With any luck, Captain Picard is up to something.” He looked again at the open panel before him. “I wish were up to something. You know, when I went to sleep late last night, I really expected to wake up with the solution to this mess waiting for me. Like a side dish at breakfast.”p>
“It is possible that you have a hole in your head.” Data sounded pleased with that one, though Geordi heard him only in distraction, thinking about the probes and his own problems here on planet.
“I’ve considered meshing frequencies,” he said, “and fine-point broad banding transmissions—similar to what Commander Riker did—and I’ve explored pulling the interwoven shields apart separately—putting a little air between the layers, so to speak—to allow a transmission to weave its way through. But none of those have any real pro mi—Data, what did you say?”
“It was an attempt at humor, Geordi. I was implying that you had actually thought of the solutions, but that you had lost them again.”
“Yeah, yeah,” La Forge said impatiently, his inner eye searching frantically for the elusive image that had flashed by at Data’s words. “But what did you say?”
After a short hesitation, Data told him, “It is possible that you have a hole in your head. The origin of the phrase is somewhat murky—”
“No, no, don’t you see? That’s it!” The image settled before his mind’s eye, the opaque force field the opening portal… the huge whine of the shield generators, choking down power, limiting the portal