Dark Mirror (11 page)

Hessan nodded. “Meaning you. Or the other ship’s version of you.”

Geordi nodded, kicking the pinecone again as they came to it. “I keep thinking about that,” he said softly. “Who am I over there?”

“Don’t let it distract you. Let’s assume that your counterpart is called for, and you or the team with you take him out of commission and get to work. What then?”

Geordi looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded as they walked. “When the core is off-line and put into repair mode, almost all the lower-level security routines are automatically disabled to let the diagnostics work. I can then access a large amount of data and store it down to iso chips.”

“‘A large amount,’” Eileen said, smiling grimly. “How many chips can you carry, Geordi? You’ve got 256 banks of 144 chips each in that core. And how are you going to know which data to download?”

“That’s the main problem. I’ve got the computer working on an ‘expert’ scan-for program: looking for loaded contexts and phraseology, certain kinds of mathematical and physics statements. Hwiii has made some suggestions and so has Data. Stuff in the program, squirt it into the core, get a fast reading of how many files have multiple matches of text—then do a hands-on assessment.”

“That’s where you’re going to lose most of your time. How long are you planning to spend at this? How long are you going to be able to keep your counterpart on ice?”

“How long do we dare?” Geordi said, pausing to watch a black admiral butterfly soar by, leisurely and unconcerned. “But I have to get as much as I can—winnow it out, then squirt it out, probably. And as soon as I do that, the game’s up. I’ll have to get away however I can, meet the rest of the team.”

“You don’t think you’re going to make it,” Hessan said softly.

Geordi stopped, kicking gently at the pinecone again, scuffing it away and not going after it. “It’s bizarre. I’d be less scared to go aboard a Borg ship than I feel about going aboard this one. Because it’s familiar. Because it should be us—and it’s
not
Whatever we are over there—we’re not what we ought to be, or so it seems.”

Hessan sighed and strolled over to the pinecone. “How many chips, do you think?”

“Two hundred fifty-six terabytes per chip.” He raised his eyebrows. “Ten or fifteen.”

“You could piggyback them. A little surgery: they can take parallel architecture. Tell the replicator to sandwich on another layer of storage solid, with an intervening layer of nutef, or some other insulator. That would bring the chips up to five hundred twelve ters each, and you could still take fifteen if you felt the need. But you’re going to want to transmit everything, you said.”

Geordi nodded. “I’m bringing a small sealed-squirt transponder. I can hook it into the subspace generators in the core and lock onto a securable frequency—then narrow the squirt down so it’ll pierce even erected shields, encrypt it, and blast the whole business back home in a matter of a few seconds.”

Hessan nodded. “Better let someone else do the encryption key.”

Geordi looked at her in surprise. “Why?”

She shrugged. “If the you over there is
really
like you, he might be able to figure it out, if
you
devised it. Whereas if I do it…”

Geordi smiled at her. “Now I understand why Commander Riker’s been following you around.”

She blushed, and he saw the bloom of infrared quite clearly and refused to comment.

“Oh, yeah?” she said quite coolly.

“Yeah. Because you like to
manage
… but you make it look nurturing.” He grinned, and slowly, she did, too.

“What do you mean ‘look’ nurturing? I nurture just fine.”

“Yeah,” Geordi said innocently. “I heard you with the warp engines last week. ‘Is Mummy’s naughty little antimatter generator having a tummyache in its matter inlet conditioner? Now, now, have a nice stream of deuterium and everything will be—’”

Eileen clouted Geordi upside the head, not hard enough to unseat his visor, but hard enough to make him see stars that weren’t the usual ones. “When I was finished,” Eileen inquired sweetly, “did it work?”

“Absolutely it worked, would it have dared not to?” Geordi said, enthusiastic, and half-choked with laughter.

“Well, then,” Eileen said, and leaned against the nearest pine tree with her arms folded and a satisfied expression on her face. “I’ll do you a crypt key and store it in the computer for you. Don’t peek at it.”

Geordi nodded. “Can you do that tonight?”

“Only after you come down to Ten-Forward with me and have a cup of coffee or something before you go back to work. I refuse to leave you out here getting lost in the woods and worrying yourself.”

From off in the depths of the forest came a long, low howl, almost an amused sound. Geordi grinned at Eileen’s sudden reflexive look of alarm. “Arch,” he said. The gateway into the corridor appeared, and he headed over that way. “Come on, Lieutenant… you can come back later with a picnic basket if you like. Grandma’s house is just down that path.”

Eileen hit him again, from behind, though not very hard. Chuckling, Geordi headed out into the hall and out of range.

* * *

Will Riker had long since learned that, most especially when he was nervous, micromanaging his people was no good. In any case, the captain knew they were doing their best and had gone off to get what sleep he could—so that was one worry off Riker’s mind, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, the ball was in Mr. La Forge’s court now, and hanging over his shoulder wouldn’t help… no matter how much Riker wished it would. He had therefore taken himself out of the way for at least the next few hours and had made himself busy micromanaging someone else: Worf.

Since bringing the extra Stewart to sickbay, Worf had clearly been looking for something to shoot, damage, or otherwise work out his concern on. Riker knew this mood in him of old and had some practice in dealing with it before it got out of hand. Now, therefore, when the door to Worf’s quarters opened at his signal, he put his head in and said, “Come on, I want you to see this.”

“What is ‘this’?” Worf was sitting behind his desk, looking distressed. Riker strolled around and looked: Worf was rerunning a display of the seizure of Stewart.

“Problems?”

Worf frowned. “I am not sure we acted with maximum efficiency.”

Riker laughed out loud. “Worf, are you kidding? You acted exactly correctly. You’re just upset about this new threat to the ship. A big threat, and you can’t do anything about it.”

“It is a considerable danger. I desire to anticipate—”

“You don’t have enough data. Leave it be. I want you to come see a riot.”

Worf looked up at Riker quizzically. “On board
this
ship?” he said, getting up. “And there have been no reports—”

“Come on,” Riker said, and headed for the door. “Deck eleven,” he said as they got into the turbolift.

A few moments later they stepped out and made their way down the hallway toward one of the main holodecks.

“What is this about?” Worf said, sounding suspicious.

“Another installment of our opera studies,” Riker said mildly. Riker had been so fascinated that Klingons
had
opera at all that Worf had some time ago begun broadening his experience of it, tutoring Riker through the contextual barbed-wire tangles of the Old School classics such as
The Warrior’s Revenge
and
Tl-Hahkh’s Way
, as well as the more modern, outré, and accessible works such as
X and Y
. In return, Riker had started introducing Worf to some of the older Terran works (though he had been slightly startled to find that Worf considered such works as
Pique Dame
and
Der fliegende Holländer
“easy listening” and had lately been finding profound meaning in the Viennese operettas, which Riker had always found more provocative of high blood sugar than anything else.

Worf frowned. “I am not in the mood for
The Merry Widow
at the moment. I have enough problems.”

Riker shook his head. “Nothing like that. Remember I told you there were some aspects of opera that you hadn’t yet investigated fully?”

“That is so,” Worf said, looking doubtful.

“Program
Traviata
One running,” the computer said mildly to them as they approached the door.

“Good,” Riker said. “Open.”

The door slid open, and a roar came out. It was not applause. It was the sound of many voices crying for someone’s blood. Worf looked at Riker with a bemused expression; Riker grinned at him. They stepped in, the doors shut behind them.

It took Riker’s eyes a few moments to get used to the dark. He suspected Worf’s were adjusting faster, to judge by his glance around him, amused, and his slight grin. Slowly the gilded obscurities of the great old opera house of La Scala came into being around them. They were up in
one of the second-tier boxes on the right side of the house, and down below them, faintly illuminated by the light of the stage, people in evening clothes were standing in their seats, even on them, throwing things at the stage and howling imprecations.

“I told you we ought to discuss violence in opera,” Riker said. “This seemed like a good time.”

“I thought you meant
in
opera,” Worf said, looking down in mild astonishment as two men in white tie began a fistfight. Several ladies around them fainted decorously; other ladies, and various gentlemen, began betting on the outcome—at least it looked like it, as money was changing hands.

“We are in,’” Riker said with a grin, and sat down, leaning on the railing in front of the box. “Or as ‘in’ as we need to be. I confess, though, I’m curious: does it ever get like this at the Great House at tl’Gekh?”

Worf shook his head, looking down at the stage with delight. The set and flats, depicting a fashionable nineteenth-century salon, were rapidly becoming splattered with broken eggs, and tomatoes better suited to pasta sauce than to salad. Shattered cabbages lay about, and the occasional, doubtless symbolic, lemon. “There are occasional duels,” Worf said, “but they take place outside. These days no one would dream of disturbing the performance so.”

“Even when it was terrible? The tenor was, this night. Pietro Dominghi, it was. He won’t come out now—listen to them yelling for him!”

They listened. The cries were not so much for Dominghi as a whole performer, but for the man in pieces. “Wait till the carabinieri show up,” Riker said. “Then you’ll see something.”

They watched the police show up and plunge into the crowd. The crowd’s reaction seemed to indicate that they considered this a private riot, not one that just anyone
could join. Without hesitation they turned on the carabinieri, and soon policemen were flying in all directions, crashing among the seats, several of them even being tossed out of the lower boxes and into the aisles.

Riker watched Worf with satisfaction. The Klingon was twitching slightly in sympathy as blows went home, looking down at the huge fracas with cheerful approval. “These people are true warriors, and this is great art.”

“You think
this
is art,” Riker said, “wait till the performance gets started again.”

It took some minutes, of course, but the diva in question chose her moment perfectly, a period a few breaths long in which the rioting had paused for its own breath. In crimson lace and an awesome jet-black mantilla, holding in one hand an oversize fan depicting the Judgment of Paris and in the other a Baccarat bell-goblet full of champagne, the great Irish-Czech soprano Mawrdew Czcgowcz strode out into the brief lacuna of sound and the vegetable-laden stage. With the fan she imperiously gestured at the conductor for him and his people to stop crouching in the pit as if they were about to be shelled. They obeyed, as much to their own surprise as anyone else’s. She whispered a word or two to them; the conductor hissed the same word to the orchestra as they put themselves back in order. Toscanini tapped for the downbeat, and the orchestra plunged into the heady rhythm of the prelude to the
Sempre libera
.

“
Follie”
Czcgowcz sang, “
FOLLIE!”
—each cry loud enough to stun anything with ears. The police and the rioters together stopped fighting and fell silent, staring at the consumptive apparition now moving in a graceful whirling dance among the splattered eggs and the cabbages, beginning to sing in ecstatic upscaling cadenzas of the delights of living free, no matter how short the life was.

“Now
there
is crowd control,” Riker murmured, but Worf was whispering the words of the aria along with Czcgowcz, lost in the moment. Riker smiled. Czcgowcz
plunged along with abandon to the “
giaoure!”
passage, and only then did Worf turn to him, on the high B flat, and say, “She is in great pain!”

“No, no, that’s just the way she takes her highs.” He remembered his grandfather saying to him, “She sounds like a vacuum cleaner, but that’s just the way she is.” Riker smiled as Czcgowcz headed for the end of the aria, the optional E natural above high C hanging fire, and she hit it and held it in full chest, possibly in violation of several natural laws. There were involuntary shrieks of pain or disbelief from around the opera house, and here and there tiny chiming noises as a few prisms of the Waterford crystal hanging about the houselights shattered in the onslaught of sound. Wild applause went up, a roar as full of praise as the earlier one had been of bloodthirstiness; and Czcgowcz flung the Baccarat goblet at the nearest flat, where it shattered, and bowed herself down to her skirts, among the wild shrieks of approbation and delight. Even the fistfights that shortly started again had an abstracted air about them. Worf applauded wildly, grinning over at Riker.

“More?” Riker said. They reviewed all the best ones—first that evening at the Paris Opera in 1960 when the fighting started in the middle of a performance of
Parsifal
, something to do with an accusation about the tenor and what was going on out of sight in the bottom of one of the swan boats; then the great Metropolitan Opera Riot of 2002, when the holographic special effects malfunctioned in the middle of the new production of the
Ring
, and the critic from the
Times
was tracked down and spray-painted by enthusiasts unknown shortly after the appearance of the morning edition containing his review; then the cloned-Bernstein revival of
West Side Story
on Alphacent in 2238, at which the composer’s clone, gone insane from unnoticed single-bit DNA errors, started firing a phaser into the audience in his outrage at having been revived.