There was dead silence.
“And she will have them, Mr. La Forge,” said Picard finally, with surprising softness. “I tend to trust Counselor Troi’s assessment of the situation. However…I have been in the same—shall we say, predicament—as Miss Bonaventure. I owe my presence here to the fact,” and he surveyed the room slowly, “that my crew risked their lives to save me, that they did not give up. We would be hypocritical to say that Miss Bonaventure did not deserve the same consideration and effort.”
“I’ll start her on a re-education program immediately,” said Crusher.
“You’ll need more than that,” said Troi briskly. “That’s only effective when rudimentary learning abilities are present. I’m not convinced she even has that.”
“She needs sensory exposure,” said Geordi. “Someone talking to her. Someone working with her.”
“Are you volunteering your off-duty hours, Mr. La Forge?” asked Picard.
“I’m willing to put my time where my mouth is,” said Geordi.
“Very well. Make it so. You’ll work in tandem with Dr. Crusher to set up a schedule amenable to both of you. That’s all.”
As the others left, Picard stood and said softly, “Counselor, a moment, please.” They waited until the conference room doors hissed shut, and then the captain turned and faced her, arms folded. “If I might observe, Counselor, you seem rather tense.”
She shrugged. “It’s probably that picture, Captain.”
“She does bear a passing resemblance to you,” admitted Picard.
“It just makes me imagine being in her situation,” she said, “wondering what would happen if the Borg captured me, the way they—”
“The way they did me?” he said gently. “You know what I went through. The scars it left.”
“Hideous. Just hideous.” Her fingers brushed across the screen. “They’re anti-life, Captain. They have no heart. They have no soul. They just exist to take and take and take. I’m someone whose entire existence is hinged on experiencing the emotions of others. An entire race that lives to eradicate the souls of others…it’s just horrifying.”
“Yes, it’s…”
And his voice trailed off.
His eyes narrowed in thought, and Deanna turned and stared at him in curiosity. “Captain…?”
“Soulless ones,” he whispered.
“Captain, what are you—?”
“Soulless ones. Oh, my God,” he said, and then louder, “Oh my dear God. How could I not have realized? How could I have been so stupid? How?!”
“Captain, I sense you’re very upset…”
“I’m not upset!” said Picard, turning toward her, his every movement suddenly galvanized with emotion. “I’m furious at my own stupidity! I’m as blind as Geordi! Someone tried to hand me a VISOR to see, and I brushed it away. But it was so long ago, so many years ago…”
“Captain, you’re not making any sense.”
He leaned against a table, shaking his head. “It had taken on the quality of a dream. I’d always wondered whether overwork had made me delusional for a brief time. But there it was, plain as the nose on my face, and I didn’t see it. And they’re coming, and now she’s coming. She’s connected somehow. I know it. I feel it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said fiercely, and with unexpected fury he slammed his fist against the viewing port. “I don’t know her name. I don’t know who she is, or what she is. Guinan!” On the last word, on that name, his mood shifted again, bordering on shock.
“Guinan?” Troi was beginning to feel completely hopeless.
“Not ‘vendor.’ That’s not what she said. That’s not what she was muttering. That’s not it! It’s the proof! It has to be her!”
“Captain, you’re not making any sense at all!”
“Vendetta!”
Troi’s breath caught in her throat. “What?” she managed to whisper.
He sank into a chair, as if uttering the word had taken his strength from him. For a long moment he was silent, lost in another time, another world, another person…the person that he had been so many years ago.
“I was in the Academy,” he said slowly. “And there was a woman who came to me one night…except maybe she was not a woman. I don’t know what she was. An apparition, perhaps, or that’s what I thought. It was the day that we discussed a device that the original Enterprise fought. A robot, called the planet-killer. The doomsday machine. It was disabled by Matthew Decker. And I had put forward a hypothesis that, for various reasons, the doomsday machine could not have come from very far outside our own galaxy. And she came to me that night, and she said things…things I don’t even remember, because I was in such a fog. Everything was confused. But she said one thing, over and over. I never knew whether it was her name or her purpose, or both. And what she said was, Vendetta.”
“Vendetta.” Troi took a breath. “Captain…last night…I had a dream. And I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember anything that happened in it, which is infuriating, because usually I remember my dreams as clearly as I remember my waking hours. But there was one thing I do remember, a word…”
“Vendetta.”
She nodded her head.
Picard stood.
“I think we’d better talk to Guinan.”
Geordi entered the small room off to the side of the main sickbay area, the room where Reannon Bonaventure was being sequestered. Bev Crusher was already there. And seated on the edge of a chair, as if she were an errant schoolgirl, was Reannon.
She seemed much smaller without the Borg implements affixed to her. She was still bald, nor did she have so much as eyebrows. She was wearing a simple gray jumpsuit, similar to the one Wesley had frequently sported before his field promotion.
She was staring forward at nothing in particular. Geordi crouched in front of her and waited for some sign of acknowledgment, some flicker of…anything. “Reannon?” he said. “Reannon Bonaventure?”
There was nothing. He might as well have been speaking in a vacuum.
“Hi,” he continued gamely, “I’m Geordi La Forge.” He stuck a hand out, hoping that some sort of automatic response would take over.
Again, nothing.
He looked up at Crusher. “Has she said anything at all since you removed the implants?”
“Not a syllable,” said Crusher. “Not even a grunt. I even started preliminary teaching structures, but nothing’s taking. It’s as if she simply refuses to acknowledge our existence.”
Geordi got down on one knee and took her hand. The coldness of it was jolting to him, even though his VISOR told him her body temperature was low. It was like talking to a statue. “Reannon,” he said slowly, “listen to me. You are Reannon Bonaventure. You are aboard the starship Enterprise. My name is Geordi La Forge. I’m the chief engineer. We have rescued you from the Borg influence. You’re free to live a normal life. You just have to let us know you’re in there. Give us some sign, some indication. Something.”
Nothing.
He stood and said to her, “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” said Crusher quickly.
He looked at her with curiosity. “Is there a medical reason why she can’t?”
“No,” admitted Beverly. “No, not really. I just want to be cautious. Doctor’s prerogative.”
“I’d like a little leeway, Doc, if that’s okay,” Geordi said after a moment. “She has to experience the world. She’s not going to be able to do it here.”
“All right,” Crusher said, once she’d given it some thought. “But I want you to stay in constant contact with me. If there’s any problem whatsoever, you let me know immediately. Get it?”
“Got it,” he said.
“Good.”
“All right, Reannon,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She continued to sit there, as if he had not even spoken.
He took her by the arm, wrapping his forearm around hers, and ge
ntly pulled her to her feet. She did nothing to resist and nothing to help, but Geordi had her standing. He wrapped his fingers around her. They were cold and limp as the rest of her.
“Come on,” he said. “Left foot, right foot, that’s it.”
She walked next to him with steady steps, stiff as the rest of her. Clearly her motor functions were in perfectly good shape. The only thing was, she couldn’t tell them to do anything. She needed a guide if she was going to move at all. It was that inability to think for herself that Geordi was going to have to overcome somehow.
For some reason the phrase the blind leading the blind came into Geordi’s mind. The door of the exam room hissed open and they stepped out into the main area.
The Penzatti that they were treating did not glance up at first, as Geordi and the woman who was once Reannon Bonaventure stepped out of the side examining room. And then one woman, who was covered from head to toe in a healing bio-wrap, saw what the Enterprise officer was walking alongside. She saw the telltale skin that was the color of chalk, and the fixed, inhuman stare. She saw, and even though the armor was gone, she understood.
And she began to scream.
The others saw as well, their antennae twitching furiously, and then they came to cry out or scream or howl in mourning once more. The medtechs looked around in confusion. Mere seconds ago there had been quiet, punctuated only by low moaning and the occasional sob. Now, though, the entire ward had gone berserk.
Geordi froze, looking around in confusion, not realizing at first what was happening and what had triggered them. Then suddenly there was someone standing in front of him, and he recognized him instantly as Dantar, the Penzatti they’d rescued from the rubble.
Beverly Crusher bolted out from the adjoining room and started shouting for quiet, but her voice was drowned out by the howling.
The Penzatti man was shoving his face directly into Reannon’s, and there was a low snarl ripped from his throat as he said, “This is the one! I know that face! I know it! It’s the one who killed my family!”
Reannon gave no indication that she heard, and Geordi tried to push Dantar away. “She wasn’t in control then. She’s better now. We’ve healed her.”
“You healed her?!” shrieked Dantar. “It murdered my family! My children! Its kind destroyed my people!”
“She’s a woman, not an it, and she’s not responsible.”
“It’s a monster from the pits, and I’ll not suffer it to live!” And with that, Dantar lunged forward and grabbed Reannon by the neck.
“No!” yelled Geordi, and he grabbed at the Penzatti’s arms. All around the Penzatti were yelling and shouting and encouraging Dantar. Some were trying to rise from their beds and help him, but they were too severely injured.
With remarkable strength, Dantar shoved Geordi aside, sending him smashing against a bed. Then the hand returned to Reannon’s neck and he continued to squeeze, shaking her furiously.
Her face remained impassive. She made no defense whatsoever. Her breath was being forced from her, but she did nothing to stop the attack.
“Leave her alone!” yelled Geordi, and he came up on one side and Crusher approached from the other, a hypo in her hand, ready to sedate him. Dantar suddenly hurled Reannon to the ground, turned and grabbed the charging engineer by the forearm, spun and hurled Geordi directly into Doctor Crusher.
Geordi felt something press against him and heard a faint hiss of air. “Oh hell,” he said, and was asleep before he hit the ground.
Fortunately for him, Doctor Crusher broke his fall. But she lay pinned under the engineer’s body and tried to shove him off. He was small, but solidly muscled.
Dantar dropped down and started to throttle Reannon once again. And now others of the Penzatti were forcing their way out of their beds, obstructing the medtechs. Within seconds Beverly Crusher’s orderly sickbay was being turned into a madhouse.
Crusher shoved Geordi’s insensate body off herself and hit her communicator. “Security!” she shouted. “Security to sickbay!”
Dantar’s fingers worked deep into the folds of Reannon’s neck. His antennae were fully extended, and she was putting up absolutely no fight at all....
And a steely hand clamped onto Dantar’s shoulder.
His head snapped around, but it was purely a reflex action, because he was unconscious even as it did so. His body sagged, and he slumped to the floor, hitting it heavily.
Another Penzatti now charged, still limping furiously, and Doctor Selar stood from where she had just dropped Dantar. It was a Penzatti woman, and she was even more physically imposing than Dantar as she aimed a punch at the Vulcan physician. It didn’t slow Selar down at all. With her left hand she brushed aside the blow, and her right hand snagged the Penzatti’s shoulder. The Vulcan nerve pinch immediately claimed another victim.
Upon seeing what had just happened, the other patients who had managed to get to their feet froze. Selar turned and fixed them with a steady stare.
“Further violence,” she said in measured tones, “would be illogical.”
At that moment Worf, with the ever-present Meyer and Boyajian, burst into sickbay. He entered just in time to hear the last of what Selar had said, and immediately discerned what had occurred. He exchanged glances with the Vulcan doctor and gave a quick nod of approval. In general, he was not especially wild about Vulcans. A race as hot-blooded as Klingons generally had little understanding of, or patience for, a people whose raison d’être was practicing non-emotionalism. But there was something about Selar—something he could not quite put his finger on—that made her far more tolerable to him than the typical Vulcan.
His voice all business, he rumbled in no uncertain terms, “All of you, back to your beds. Now.”
The Penzatti did as they were told, none of them having any desire to cross swords either with the Klingon or the formidable Vulcan once more.
Selar had gone straight over to Crusher and helped her to her feet. “You appear uninjured, Doctor.”
“I think my authority is a bit damaged, but that’s about all. Lieutenant,” she addressed Worf, with a voice a bit more loud than she needed, “I appreciate your quick response. Our patients seem to be under the impression this is a gymnasium, or perhaps the Roman Coliseum, rather than a sickbay.”
“Shall I have them all secured to their beds…with heavy chains?” Worf said gravely.
Crusher tossed a quick glance at her patients and saw their petrified expressions. “I don’t think that will be necessary, for the moment. But if I should change my mind…”
“I will have them prepared,” said Worf, and with each word dripping menace, he added, “just…in…case.”
The medtechs were hauling the unconscious Dantar back up onto a bed and securing him. Beverly Crusher stood over the unmoving form of Reannon. She was still blank-faced, staring up at the ceiling now. She gave no indication that she was remotely aware of what had happened to her, or where she was, or who she was. Then Beverly looked back at the unconscious form of Geordi La Forge.
“Not one of the more auspicious starts to a project,” she said to no one in particular.
“Vendetta.” Guinan nodded slowly, stroking her chin.
Picard, Troi, and Guinan had gone into Guinan’s small, functional office just off to the side of Ten-Forward. Guinan was standing, looking thoughtful and circling the room. “Vendetta. Yes. Yes, that could have been what I was saying.”
“And the significance of it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Picard looked at her with raised eyebrow. “No idea?”
She spread her hands wide. “Guesses. About a dozen, any of which might be accurate, or might be even more confusing. I wish I knew.”
“And what I told you just now, about the experience I had when I was in the Academy?”
“I’m as mystified as you, Captain,” said Guinan. She looked from Troi to Picard and then back again. “It may very well be that whoever, or whatever, was
in your vision back in the Academy is somehow connected to my collapse, but I can’t say for certain.”
“Can you say anything for certain?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “Whatever is behind all this, sooner or later, is going to show itself. And then we can all stop guessing.”
Picard nodded slowly and then stood. “All right. Thank you for your time, Guinan. If…”
“Captain.” Guinan’s voice, her whole demeanor, had suddenly changed. “Captain, wait, there’s something I’m not telling you.”
He was stunned, as if slapped in the face. “Guinan,” and the shock in his voice was evident. “In all the time I’ve known you, our relationship has been based on honesty. I can’t believe there’s anything you wouldn’t share with me. Especially if it’s important. And most especially if lives are at stake.”
“It’s not something I discuss lightly, Captain,” she said. For the first time that he could recall, she turned her back to him as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Her arms were folded, and she was staring down at her feet, as if trying to determine the best way to proceed. “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “That’s the absolute truth. And I didn’t want to bring it up unless I did know. It’s a rather…painful topic, and personal—one that I didn’t really want to share if it could be avoided.” She turned to face Picard. “But I owe it to you, out of respect for our relationship and our friendship, to tell you anything that could be of help.”