Scene 23

            “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Captain,” Deanna said, sitting in Picard’s ready room with him and Riker. “Suddenly I can’t trust anything I’m feeling. It’s like being able to see but knowing that what you’re seeing isn’t right.”

            “And Doctor Crusher has not been able to find out any reason for it? No connection to this star system?”

            “Not that she can find, which doesn’t mean there is no connection. I think it would take a Betazoid telepath to really get to the bottom of it. It did only start after we arrived here.”

            “After Commander Westmore came,” Riker said.

            “No, will, it was specifically when we arrived here. He had been aboard for nearly a week at that point.”

            “Convenient, though. Sensors unreliable, your personal sensors unreliable—”

            “Are you meaning to say that Jarod has something to do with it? Will, if you think that he’s in any way connected with the organization he’s trying to expose, you’re wrong. I can say that much at least.”

            Picard held up his hand. “Counselor, explain to me what you are feeling.”

            She took a deep breath, concentrated. “The whole crew, all at once. That’s normal. But it’s as though echoes of them are bouncing around the ship. Suddenly an emotion one person is feeling will come raging out at me, overpowering in its abruptness and intensity. Not necessarily unpleasant emotions—it’s been joy as well as sorrow. But when I ask, the person tells me that while he did experience such an emotion, it was not with any particular intensity. And then I seem to feel more people than are actually here—”

            “More people?” Riker interrupted.

            “More echoes. Ghosts. I can hardly concentrate because of everything else. I’ve also been feeling myself.”

            They gave her odd looks. “Isn’t that normal?” Will queried.

            “No! Not like this! I feel myself as though I were outside of myself, as if I were another person. An echo.”

            “We seem to be getting a great many echoes,” mused Picard. “Or, as you say, ghosts.”

            “And you’re sure Westmore isn’t one of your ghosts?” Riker asked sardonically.

            “Will, Jarod is the most real thing in all of this. Sometimes his inner turmoil is the only steady thing happening to me.”

            “And you don’t consider that significant?”

            Deanna looked at her hands. “Perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s significant in ways other than you think it’s significant. Perhaps it’s not. I can’t tell you.”

            Picard said gently, “Counselor, I want you to get some rest. Deal with yourself as you would deal with a patient under similar emotional strain.”

            She gave him a tired smile. “Yes, Captain.”

            When she had gone, the captain turned to his first officer. “You don’t think she’s interpreting this correctly, Number One.”

            Will frowned. “It’s presumptuous of me to question Deanna on her area of expertise. But I can’t help wondering if she has allowed herself to get emotionally involved with Westmore and is allowing that to influence her conclusions about him. I’m not an empath, but I feel something peculiar about the man. A sort of gut feeling.”

            “So you have said.” Picard didn’t tell him he had thought it might be some slight stirrings of jealousy. He was a captain, not a counselor. “Well, Will, I trust Deanna’s instincts, but I trust yours as well. Do some investigating. Carefully, Will. We’re in the middle of an explosive situation, and it wouldn’t do to alert the wrong people about Commander Westmore’s presence or purpose. For all we know, Westmore is merely dealing with personal issues that have nothing to do with his mission. That is what Deanna thought.”

            “Yes, Captain. I’ll keep that in mind. I trust her instincts, too.”

            “Good. Dismissed.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scene 24

            Under the watchful gaze of the pale-haired Vulcan teacher, Jarod taught the six-year olds their simple lesson in astrophysics. It mainly involved how stars produced light and how the stars he was studying were different, in very simplistic language. One of the children, though, a small Ktarian named Krantregk, posed sharp questions of much greater depth than any of the others. It required ingenuity to come up with answers that would satisfy him without boring the other children. When they had been set to work making their own models of the stars, he took Krantregk aside for the sort of lesson they had both been wanting. Why wasn’t this child in a much more advanced class? Was he easier to study this way? Jarod was well aware of the presence of the tall Vulcan named Sirok always nearby.

            He thought perhaps if he could comprehend this Vulcan, he could comprehend Sydney better. How could such a logical being violate the logic of ethics so completely as to contemplate the kidnapping of children as part of the greater good? The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one, or the few? That was how they would see it. But how could they not see that violating the rights and needs of the one was ultimately a violation of what it meant for all to be self-determinant, sentient beings? If one child could be expendable, all children could be. I defy your belief that you have the right to call me expendable, Jarod thought fiercely, briefly meeting the eyes of the tall Vulcan.

            Vulcans. They dichotomized their lives and atrophied their connection to the rest of the universe. Sydney was like a Vulcan, calm, studious, intelligent, intense. He was like a Vulcan in that he kept his own nature in two separate boxes. There was his work, his study, the business of his life, the examination of the human mind that enthralled his own mind. The Centre provided that for him as no other organization could. It provided him with an arena for pure research where other considerations such as ethics did not enter in. He could see a child not as a creature that required love and warmth to thrive but as an abstraction, a theoretical construct to investigate. Even all his great psychological knowledge was no more than a list of ideas to apply to a situation. There was no right or wrong in this box.

            But in the other box there was a man. That man was warm and cared about people. Jarod had always been able to see it. That was the man he had always reached out to, only to encounter the calm, cold wall of the scientist Sydney. Jarod had never been able to put up that wall between mind and heart, and he had spent years trying to wear down Sydney’s. Had he ever succeeded? Didn’t you ever love me, Sydney?

            He walked slowly down an empty corridor on his way to the bridge after the lesson, lost in his never ending questions. His whole identity was questions. Sometimes, as much as he sought the answers with his whole being, he wondered if he would cease to exist once he found them. Would there be life when the searching was over? Would the searching ever be over?

            “Jarod!”

            For a moment the shout was a product of his own brain, a snippet of memory that stopped him in his tracks. Then with a familiar horrified chill, he knew he had heard it with his ears. He turned around slowly.

            Miss Parker stood in the middle of the corridor, beautiful and dangerous in dark grey and pale blue, that far-too-familiar gun pointing straight at him. Her short skirt and blouse were wrinkled, her hair not so perfect as usual, but the expression of grim determination on her sharp face had not changed. She looked entirely out of place in the Enterprise corridor.

            Behind her one of the Jeffries tube doors was open, and Broots was hauling Sydney out of it. In the middle of the suffocating weight of capture, Jarod grinned. It was like a parade. Where one Stooge went, the other two followed.

            “Miss Parker, I said it wasn’t time—” Sydney began.

            As Miss Parker began to glare down at him, Jarod did what came naturally. He ran.

            “Jarod!”