Part 17 (1/2)
”Far too many for me to recommend trying to hook up these whatever-they-ares to android bodies.” She lowered her voice and let empathy slip into her professional a.s.sessment. ”It'd be a worse h.e.l.l than they're already going through. And, Captain, I think the only rational, moral decision,” she added, ”is the one they've selected for themselves.”
”We're not that sure of what they want,” Riker insisted.
Troi twisted in her chair, her face a sculpture of pure melancholy and disappointment. Her face ached with the misery she felt inside and the insult she heard from without.
”Well, you're not,” Riker said to her. ”You're not, are you?”
”Bill ... ” she choked.
He circled the desk and confronted her. ”You yourself have admitted that these people could be insane and incapable-”
”Some of them, but-”
Dr. Crusher put her slim hand on his arm and actually pushed him back from where she and Troi were sitting side by side. ”This life-sucking machine is violating the rights and needs of its captives.”
Riker whirled and glared down at her. ”Which rights?”
”The right to normal life as they see it and the dignity of self-decision. It's robbing them of a quality of life to such a degree that all they see left for themselves is death.”
”So we provide it, all on Deanna's say-so?”
Troi lowered her eyelids now, and tears broke from them. ”Oh, Bill,” she whispered.
But he pressed on. ”How do we know their decision is rational? It may be one of plain despair or temporary depression.”
Crusher didn't back away from his challenge, but was ready with her own. ”You call three hundred years temporary?”
”On that thing's time scale? It might be. And you don't know and I don't know otherwise. That thing could be a galactic utopia, for all we know. It could provide endless time to think about things and intermingle and share memories-who knows what else? Maybe Deanna's only picking up the wishes of a handful of new arrivals who don't know what they've got.”
”I don't believe that,” Troi said, her lips tight.
”All right-all right, say I don't either. Say you've convinced me. What happens once we do this? Once we've tasted this? If we open this door a crack, it may not close. Candles can start holocausts, Captain.”
Crusher suddenly got to her feet and stepped toward him, using her height and her own grace to prove that he wasn't the only imposing one in the room. ”We can keep control of ourselves, Mr. Riker. Medical science has had to live with self-control on a personal basis for centuries. Captain, I know you don't like to use the weapons, but that thing is a tyrant!”
Riker bent over the desk, his palms flat on its black top. ”If we bend our rules,” he insisted, ”or even amend them, even at the request of the terminally ill, then we risk all of us. When we turn down the death requests of individuals, we protect us all.” He looked at the captain and said, ”We're playing ethical roulette, sir, and I'm not comfortable with it.”
Troi didn't look at him, but there was a poignant lack of charity in her tone. ”It's not your comfort we're talking about.”
His eyes flashed. ”No,” he stabbed back, ”but we're risking the ethical security of every sentient life we contact from now on. How long before this gets out of hand? We're at risk as a society if it does.”
The captain frowned at him. ”I'm not willing to take on the moral burden of all humanity, Number One,” he said, ”but I intend to take a stand here and now. I appreciate your playing devil's advocate, but-”
”I'm not,” Riker told him. ”I don't think it's our place to do this. And I don't think it's fair of those beings to ask this of us. We have the right not to become murderers.”
”Captain,” Crusher interjected, ”we're past the point of no return. Our killing them may be hard on us, but their living is harder on them.”
”That's your opinion, doctor,” Riker clarified.
”Yes,” she said. ”The captain asked for my opinion. If you're captain someday, you don't have to ask me.”
Bitterness swirled between them, and for several seconds, she let it have its way. Once the silence became oppressive, she inhaled deeply and addressed the captain with her final word. ”Sir, in my judgment as chief surgeon of the Enterprise,” she said, ”we have what will go down in my report as acceptable prior consent.”
The captain heard the ball drop cleanly into his court. Was his responsibility to the beings inside the ent.i.ty, or to the ent.i.ty, or to the s.h.i.+p, or to those lifeforms whose essences would be absorbed by that thing in the future if he failed to act now?
”It's Federation mandate to avoid policing the galaxy, Captain.” Riker's face reflected clearly in the viewport.
Picard nodded tightly. ”Yes, we can't forget that. Federation policy will have to be my guide on this. The dirty reality is that we may not even be able to save ourselves. The better part of valor may be to get away and let the Federation decide how to deal with this thing.”
Troi rocketed from her chair. ”You don't understand! These people can't even communicate with each other! There are millions of them, all alone. Alone! It's not like a crippled body. Even then there can be sight, sound, interaction-these people have nothing!”
The captain started toward her. ”Counselor-”
She backed away. ”You don't know what it's like! You can't know. You can talk and discuss and argue, but you don't know. Captain, if that ent.i.ty comes after us and there is no way to stop it from absorbing us, I promise you I will not go on like that! I will not! I'll kill myself first.”
”Deanna,” Crusher began, reaching for her.
But every one of them was affected by the utter conviction in her voice, her face, by the irrational promise from a person they knew to be supremely rational.
Riker felt especially responsible, and he stood a few paces away, unable to make himself go to her.
Dr. Crusher put an arm around Troi and steered her toward the door. ”Come with me. I'll give you something to calm you down.”
Troi started to go, but now she pushed away violently. ”No! I don't dare let you sedate me! I can barely keep control now. Doesn't anyone understand?”
”Yes, yes,” Crusher told her. ”You know I do. Let's just go out to the bridge.” She steered the other woman toward the door, and cast a scolding look back at Riker and Picard. ”We'll just be a few minutes.” Her words said one thing; her look said another.
Picard watched them leave without uttering a sound. When he and Riker were finally alone, he turned to the viewport and stared out into open s.p.a.ce.
Before him was the panorama of distant stars and solar systems, the gas giant that had recently been their biggest problem and suddenly looked puny and insignificant as it whirled in bright green innocence at the very edge of his view. Two deep lines bracketed his mouth. He was a man with too many choices.
”That infernal thing is hiding out there, waiting for us to make a mistake,” he said. His voice dropped to a near whisper. ”How many more of this kind of thing are out there, Riker? How many more decisions like this? What do we do when we have no doubt about a person's-a community'srational, reasonable desire to die?”
Standing beside him, Riker could offer no real solution-but he had his own personal answer. One as first officer-not captain-he could afford.
Without moving, he quietly asked, ”Do we have that, sir?”
Picard continued to stare out the viewport, but a furrow appeared in his brow and his eyes drew tight. ”I have to know, as closely as I can know, if this thing is a floating utopia,” he mused, ”or an interstellar h.e.l.l.”
Chapter Ten.
”I DON'T LIKE THIS at all, Jean-Luc. I'm putting it on record that this is happening under my protest.”
”That should make a lively record, doctor, if it ever reaches Starfleet.”
Sickbay's isolation unit was buzzing, preparing itself for total zero-grav and the captain's exact body temperature. Picard watched with a guarded expression as Dr. Crusher prepared a hypo that would do for him what no sane person should allow. Perhaps it took a touch of insanity to drive a man to such measures, or perhaps it only took desperation. All dangers, all risks, all rationality must yield to the single-minded quest of him upon whom the decision fell. And that was Picard.