Chapter Nine

THE CAPTAIN STRODE back into his ready room after being gone for nearly forty-five minutes. Deanna Troi still sat where he’d last seen her, her hands still folded in her lap, and she blinked as though coming out of a trance.

Picard came around his desk into her line of sight, though she already knew he was here, and waited until she looked at him.

“They’re waiting outside. They’ve been fully briefed. Are you sure you’re up to this?”

Troi sighed and nodded. “Believe me, sir,” she said, “I’m just as worried about my own sanity as I am about those beings out there. I’d like an end to this. And I need help finding it.”

“Dr. Crusher has been reviewing up-to-date medical policy and debate on the rights of the terminally ill and all current hospice psychology and the thoughts of terminal patients in every sentient species—”

“That’s my profession, Captain,” Troi said, a twinge of defensiveness creeping into her voice.

“I didn’t think it wise for you to be doing research right now. However, I’ll need your expertise to collate the information the doctor is bringing in with her. Fair enough?”

She managed a thin smile, but one that conveyed genuine gratitude, and she said, “You’re very gracious, sir. I didn’t think of that myself. I might indeed be inaccurate at the moment.”

Picard slid into his chair and said, “I’m not worried that you will be. You seem perfectly in charge of yourself, at least for the moment. I haven’t noticed any aberrations in your personality, Counselor.”

“But it may come, sir,” she admitted softly. “I’m fighting even now to maintain my individuality. I don’t know how long I can deal with the pressure from them. It’s beginning to affect me physically. I feel weak and nervous, as you might feel after exerting too much energy.”

At her solemn tone, even Picard had to stifle a wave of concern. His doubt began to stir. This made him uncomfortable, this inconcrete business, and he steeled himself to accept what she had said and what she would be saying over the next few minutes. He’d had to do that before—depend on those whose talents were other than his own. He would tug the cord of instinct and insight if he had to, but as he looked at her and saw her effort to remain in control, he knew guesswork would be only a last resort. Starfleet had surrounded him with people of various abilities, and it was his duty to make use of them.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I’m depending upon you to hold your ground against them. It’ll be up to you to tell me, as nearly as you can estimate, what those entities want.”

“I have told you.”

“And we’re going to examine that.” He pressed the intercom and said, “Come in, plea—”

The door opened.

Picard leaned back in his chair. “Well, that was subtle, you two,” he said as Beverly Crusher and Will Riker strode in. “Sit down. I’ve explained the situation to both of you. According to Counselor Troi, the life essences inside that phenomenon have asked unconditionally that we destroy them. They want their existence to end. Death is their choice rather than formless life, apparently. When I leave this room, I want as clear a picture as the four of us can provide of what exact action this ship is going to take. I tell you now that I would much rather face an enemy with eyes I can look into and whose intents I can read. If I’d wanted to be faced with these pale ethical problems, I’d have become a priest. I don’t like this. You know what these entities have asked of us, according to Counselor Troi’s translation of their wishes. It’s up to you to help me decide if this is euthanasia,” he said, “or butchery.”

An unwanted silence blanketed the ready room, broken only by Will Riker, who had finally had enough of it. He slid one thigh up onto the captain’s desk and settled there, the toe of the other boot still planted on the floor, and folded his arms. “We’ll do our best, sir.”

“I know. Dr. Crusher, you’ve reviewed all the material on current medical ethics.”

“Well, all is an inappropriate term for a half hour’s study, sir,” the doctor said, “but I’ve done my best. As a matter of fact, I had to refamiliarize myself with the subject upon accepting the post as chief surgeon.”

“Luckily,” the captain commented. “On with it.”

“Just remember you asked for this,” she warned, and adjusted her narrow hips against the back of her chair. She looked like she was settling in for a long time, which made both Riker and Picard wonder what they were getting into. “The word euthanasia doesn’t mean what most people think it means. It’s an intransitive concept, for one thing. It’s something you get, not something someone does to you. Its true meaning is simply a gentle, quiet, good death, usually just a matter of luck. Society has come to take it as ending life painlessly so as to end suffering. What we’re really dealing with, however, is the point at which the only chance left for a person to have euthanasia is for someone else to kill him. That’s the closest to what we’re facing.”

Troi gripped her hands tightly together and said, “This is not a case of our deciding to terminate their lives. They’ve decided it for themselves. I don’t think that can be minimized.”

“I’m getting to that,” Crusher patiently said, and she started ticking things off on her long fingers. “There are complications, believe me. We get into the questions of suffering or not suffering, rationality or not, direct or indirect killing, killing by providing pain relief, the difference between personhood and potential personhood, capability of expressing a rational desire to die, death of biological organisms as opposed to persons, the distinction between ordinary versus extraordinary means of keeping a person alive, that ever-elusive phrase quality of life, failure to supply help versus active harm with kind intent, sanctity of life, obligation to live, freedom of choice versus deific property, being and not being the cause of a death other than one’s own, avoidance of giving euthanasia for selfish reasons—keeping one’s conscience clear, for instance—”

Picard rubbed a hand over his eyes and wearily groaned, “Cut my losses, will you, doctor? If you’ve already run the process of elimination, might you just give me the upshot of it?”

She dropped her busy hands and said, “It’s not a simple subject, Jean-Luc.”

He leaned forward. “No one’s asking for simplicity, doctor. Just brevity.”

“Well, there’s the medical definition of death. Will that help?”

Before the captain could say anything, though he started to, Riker said, quietly, “It’d help me.”

“Okay,” Crusher said with a toss of her hair. “Unless you’re into horror stories, we all basically know what death is. We start with dying—as a recognizable physiological process, one that medical science can pretty easily recognize. We know the difference between a living body and one that’s being kept alive. Any intern worth his salt can spend ten minutes with the readouts and tell which is which. But the clincher has always been brain activity—the flat electroencephalogram. As far as current medical consensus goes, the only absolute criterion for death is its irreversibility. That’s not the only criterion, mind you, I didn’t say that. Death is a cluster concept and requires several criteria in a lump, but irreversibility is the only absolute one.”

“Dying is irreversible in my estimation,” Picard said. “At least I thought so until now.”

“They’re not dead,” Troi said. Her steadiness was wearing thin. She felt it pull and strain against the crushing pressure of a million identities. She heard it in the sudden flatness in her voice, and knew it showed in the immobility of her body. She tried to force her legs into a more social position, but they remained tightly knee to knee, and soon she gave up trying. This discussion was time wasted, chewing at her, frustrating her. She knew what the decision had to be. Over and over in her mind echoed her own words: They’re not dead. They’re not dead.

“I accept that,” the captain said. “They have yet to experience their deaths. I may be old-fashioned, but to me death is final. Death doesn’t have degrees. Suffering does, but not death. This isn’t a matter of betting one way or the other. It’s a matter of deciding to intervene.”

“Or deciding not to,” Riker plowed in.

They all looked at him, and discomfort entered the room.

“Yes . . . ” Dr. Crusher murmured, eyeing him. It took her a moment to return her full attention to the captain. “Well, there’s also an additional problem; over about the past century and a half, medical doctrine has had to include some very strange lifeforms and all their habits, customs, physiologies, and abilities.”

“I can’t decide for the whole galaxy, doctor,” the captain said. “Let’s stay with humans, shall we?”

“I thought you’d say that, so I did. And I agree with you on that point.”

“That’s heartening, but could you give me a bit more?”

“Oh . . . a bit.”

“Oh, God . . . ”

“You did ask, sir.”

“Yes, I did. Go on.”

“Where was I? Oh, yes. There are the mythological and religious concepts of death, which involve the soul leaving the body—”

Picard’s finger shot forward. “Now, we’re not going to get into defining the soul, are we? I unconditionally refuse.”

Crusher looked surprised. “Well, I’m certainly not. What you’ll have to do before this is over, I can’t predict. Anyway, there’s that concept, and there’s the medical concept, which is a process. It’s the difference between a door being closed and the whole building disintegrating. Medical science believes there’s nothing to come back to. And there’s also a veritable blur of platitudes from the religious sector, which I’ll bet you don’t even want to hear.”

“I’d be so grateful,” Picard said with a fatigued nod. “I’ve been trying to demythologize this from the start. I intend to stay with policy regarding the terminally ill and use that for a fulcrum.”

“But these people aren’t terminally ill,” Riker interrupted, somehow feeling he’d have to be holding the rudder on this conversation. “For all we know, they could go on like this indefinitely.”

Silently Troi nodded, not looking up. When she spoke it was with absolute conviction in those voices she heard in her mind. “That,” she said, “is their biggest fear.”

“Counselor,” the captain addressed her, since she had drawn attention back to herself, “you say you feel a unanimous opinion. Can you guarantee you’re picking up on all the feelings, all the life essences?”

Cool sweat broke out on her palms. She felt her control begin to slip. “No, I can’t. The opinion is unanimous among all those who still retain a solid consciousness.”

“Hold it right there,” Riker said. “That qualification bothers me.”

Troi shot him a glare. “Yes, it’s true that I’m perceiving massive insanity among the minds who’ve lost control of their personhood. That is also what the others are afraid of. Do you blame them? They’ve made a decision for themselves and the others who aren’t able.”

“What do you mean by ‘aren’t able’?”

Troi took a deep, cold breath between clenched teeth and forced herself to be clinical, no matter her tattered emotions. “I would classify it as dementia praecox.”

“What’s that?”

She gave him an intolerant look and said, “Dementia is irreversible deterioration of mental faculties with correspondent degenerative emotional instability. Praecox is simply prematurity.”

“Which brings up the question of next of kin.”

Troi gripped the arm of her chair and continued glaring at Riker. “Don’t you think they’re better able to judge their companions’ wishes than we are?”

Riker had to nod a reluctant agreement. “I suppose if you and I had been sharing eternity, we would qualify as each others’ next of kin.”

He suddenly found himself held tight in Picard’s gaze. He hadn’t meant to say anything profound, yet they were sharing eternity. The two of them, perhaps more than any other pair on this ship, were most likely to make that decision for each other, that life or death choice. As first officer, Riker’s first responsibility was Jean-Luc Picard’s well-being. As captain, Picard’s most valuable and needed commodity was his right-hand man. Together they had to be guardian angel for each other and the whole ship. They were—or should ideally be—each other’s family . . . next of kin. Ironic that on a ship full of families, the bridge had somehow gotten itself stocked with people who had nothing, no one, but each other.

“And the others are like accident victims,” Picard said to him as they shared the moment. “Completely dependent upon a machine for sustenance.”

“Yes,” Dr. Crusher agreed. “They’re mentally competent and nonterminal, but they want to die. Modern medical history since the twentieth century has had to deal with that, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Medicine took a tremendous leap forward during that period and has improved exponentially since then. The only constant is the idea that each euthanasia case has its own variables and should be considered individually. Then there’s the problem of active versus passive euthanasia. Do you cut off intravenous feeding, or do you just let it run out, and what’s the difference, and what are the moral implications of each—”

“You’re piling up questions,” the captain observed. “I asked you for answers.”

“There aren’t any,” she said broadly. “That’s the problem. We regard it as inhumane to let animals suffer, but we’ve always had difficulty applying that to our own species.”

“But historically,” Riker said, “isn’t it true that this whole problem has been one of deciding whether an organic body without a mind is still alive? What we have here is the other way around. Minds . . . no bodies.”

Crusher cast him a glance. “No, you’re wrong. There’s nothing new about minds without bodies.”

When Deanna Troi spoke up, though her voice was weak, all turned to listen to her. But this time she didn’t speak of the entities who pressed upon her, but of the question they were actually wrestling with. “That’s how physically crippled people see themselves. Minds without bodies. At least for a while. It’s often not true at all and they often change their opinions about themselves with time and therapy.”

For a few seconds, nobody said anything because they expected her to keep going. When she didn’t, Dr. Crusher shifted uneasily, turned back to Riker, and added, “But there’ve also been plenty of cases of conscious, rational people wanting to decide for themselves, and not changing their minds, Mr. Riker. Some people don’t want to live if they can’t function independently. Some can commit suicide, which is its own problem, but for those who can’t, the problem takes on the special complication of bringing in another person.”

“Who also have rights,” Riker argued. “The right not to commit murder, for one.”

With an impatient huff, Picard gripped the edge of his desk. “Yes. We do have the right to consider our own consciences. Is there a definitive answer, doctor? Even one of general policy from the Federation Medical Standards Council? Or do you have a ruling that we could consider ship’s policy?”

“Me?” She shook her head and blinked. “This is one subject I nearly failed at medical school. I never found a single case that fit into the grooves of any other case. There’s just no grounds for comparison.”

“And Federation policy? Doctor, I need a precedent and I need it now.”

She paused, thought about it, her mouth twisting with contemplation, then shrugged. “A line was finally drawn, clinically speaking, between animals with memories and animals with memories who were also able to imagine a personal future and have desires for that future. Even that had its faults. Babies, for instance. They simply don’t care about the future.”

Now it was Picard’s turn to sigh. He pressed his mouth into a line and groaned, “Beverly, you’re making me tired.”

She appeared sympathetic, but admitted, “There’s just no streamlining this issue. Which is why there hasn’t been any law passed regarding it. Some things should simply never be legislated.”

Riker straightened his back and folded his arms tighter. “Leaving us on our own.”

“Consider it a privilege,” she shot back at him.

“But these people, these ‘souls,’ if we have to use that term,” Riker continued, “are not dying. They could go on forever like this!”

“Yes”—the doctor nodded, not very patiently—”the real question is not one of someone who is dying choosing when the end should be and we as society forcing him to live until the last moment, but rather . . . what is it that makes life worth living?” For this, a thick and weighted question, she turned directly to Picard, and held out an empty hand to him as though expecting him to fill it.

The captain stared back at her, entranced neither by this woman’s beauty nor by his own feelings toward her, but by this question she asked of him, this question that was poised on the threshold between life and death.

What makes life worth living?

Beside Crusher, Troi stirred. “A person who is dying does ask if his disease has taken away everything that makes life worth living, as you say. There will be no more moments that resemble life as he has known it. When pain takes away any enjoyment of sight, scent, sounds, touch—”

“But we’re not discussing pain, Counselor,” the captain snapped, his voice growing rough. “These entities have communicated no pain whatsoever of a physical nature, is that not correct? If not, you’d better tell me now, because this is a damned precipice we’re walking over here.”

“I wish they had,” Crusher said dryly. “The question would’ve been simpler. My realm of the physical is much simpler to manage than Deanna’s realm of mental anguish and confusion.” She turned to the counselor and said, “I don’t envy you.”

The captain got up and paced around the desk. “Doctor, I had hoped you’d be more help than this.”

Beverly Crusher shifted her gaze for a moment, settled back, crossed her long straight legs, and looked up at him again. “I can be more help,” she told him. “But you have to ask for my personal opinion.”

“Oh, damn it. Of course. I’m sorry.” He reached a requesting palm toward her. “Please.”

She sighed and thought about it. “They’ve expressed a well thought-out, reasonable desire to die.”

“And?”

“And I think that should be respected.”

“Does that mean acted upon? Come on, doctor, don’t make me grill you.”

“You mean, would I do it? Captain, let me put it this way. I’ve found that suffering can be mental and that it does no one any good.”

“Would you,” he repeated, “do it?”

She straightened her shoulders. “Yes.”


Data found his way through the barely lit starship with an android’s faultless sense of direction. Ordinarily he’d have thought nothing of that ability, but today it had a stubborn presence in his mind. He was aware of himself today, where usually he was not, at least not when he was alone. But today each pink wedge of utility light along the floor as he passed it was a tiny reminder of his doubts. Each doubt needled his thoughts and made the process inaccurate, irritating. He wondered what thinking was like for humans. To think one thought at a time, some without figures, without context . . . it seemed almost dysfunctional. But humans often perceived things that he missed entirely until they were pointed out to him.

I seem to be on a cross pattern away from humanity rather than toward it. What they see as simple seems difficult and incongruous to me. What I can compute and perceive without effort, they consider arduous. As time goes by I catalog more and more information, yet I move further and further from humanness because of it. The more time I spend among them, the more complicated they appear to me. Perhaps now these conditions will change. Perhaps this is what they mean by destiny.

He felt his body come to a halt and readjusted his pilot mode, letting himself slide instantly out of autolocate, and indeed found himself right where he wanted to be. The hangar deck. He stood before the door, staring through the dimness at the lettering.


SHUTTLECRAFT HANGAR DECK


AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY


A.C.E. CLEARANCE REQUIRED

INQUIRE DECK 14

OR CONTACT SECOND OFFICER


He lost track of those few seconds during which he studied those letters and their significance. All his internal alarms were ringing, telling him to track down the assistant chief engineer, but there was no time. And that would give him away. Of course, being the second officer got him off the hook fairly well too, even if his internal alarms couldn’t be programmed to know that. Information like that was rational, a matter of thought. The formalized ranking of human beings, of life-forms of any kind, was difficult for machine thinking to absorb, and had to be handled by what Geordi liked to call Data’s subdominant hemisphere—the part of his brain that was organic, the part of his personality that let him be subjective. The part of him that Geordi insisted was no machine.

Data looked down at his left hand. He opened the fist and saw the glint of gold and brush-buffed platinum in the stylized A-shape that he himself had earned the privilege of wearing. Yet this was not his. His own was still riding safely on his chest, proclaiming the honor of his past and the degree to which humanity had opened its arms to him. He could never look at his Starfleet insignia and think of humanity as inferior to any other species; few species would accept such as him. He had known the shunning glances of prejudice before. Geordi would chide him for not realizing that significance until now, that prejudice was in itself a kind of privilege life-forms kept among themselves.

The gold turned rosy-pink under the utility lights above the door. He felt a strange, unexpected pang in his chest as his synthetic heart pounded in reaction to the high-gear racing of his nervous system.

This insignia, this one in his palm—this was Geordi’s.

Forgive me. I know I have never done anything resembling this to you before. I would have warned you, had I expected to behave this way. . . .

Illogical. Geordi wasn’t here. Geordi was locked in the antimatter reserve center.

Data clutched his left hand tightly around the insignia. Also illogical. He should put it down, leave it behind. There was no purpose to carrying it. But rather than leaving the insignia behind, he dismissed the thought and kept his fist tight. With the other hand he quickly tapped in his authorized-entry code and the thick tunnel-shaped doors parted for him.

The hangar deck stored a few regulation shuttlecraft and several smaller, faster ships of various styles, all hidden neatly away in their stalls, ready to be elevated to the hangar bay, one deck up, when they were called for.

Very human impatience gnawed at him. He knew very well what impatience was. But there was no alternative to the time he must spend here before he could embark on his mission.

His hand twitched. Fail-safe programming sent quavers through his biomechanical nervous system, telling him that what he was doing he must not do.

As easily as ignoring a nagging ache, he rerouted his awareness away from the internal warnings and looked around for the mechanical stock he would need—yes, there it was. He had been concerned that in the midst of a crisis, supply engineering hadn’t managed to deliver these small stock crates in time, but here they sat, stacked neatly before him. He gazed at them in the same manner as he had gazed at the letters on the door. On top of the stack was an authorization chip that simply said: Request of Lt. Commander Data. Esn. F. Palmer—okay.

Time was limited. Yet he was hesitating. Never before had he found himself literally at odds with himself, literally battling his own body to make it do what his programming—his . . . conscience—had always considered wrong. Deception. Disobedience. It was not in his progr—in his nature.

His left hand twitched and opened. Geordi’s insignia clattered to the deck with a metallic ting. Data looked down at it.

Impassively he stooped and picked it up. If he took it with him, the starship’s mainframe would pick up on it and use it as a locator beacon, and would tell the bridge that Geordi was with him. Such a consequence  . . . he would leave the insignia behind.

He would leave it.

He paced toward the exit and went to the nearest computer panel, still looking at the insignia in his hand.

“I will leave it,” he insisted. His voice in the empty hangar deck was a loud sound. Why did this insignia whisper to him?

He put it down quickly. So quickly that it spun on its pin and ended up sideways. He paused.

Almost as quickly, he pulled off his own insignia. It too was gold, platinum—identical to the other. Except that this was his, what he had earned, and that was Geordi’s. Each was encoded with the biopulse of the owner, including identity, and microsensors, and miniature communicator—Starfleet jargon called these insignia the “minimiracles” of recent science.

But today it was the shape and not the science that intrigued Data. Today his attention was held by the modern-day heraldry of the Starfleet emblem and what it meant to such as him.

His powerful heart pumped harder, a heavy muscular action, like the great machine that it was. He heard it thud clearly through his body, and felt the strain upon his systems as each struggled to push its own interests through his biomechanical nervous system, unsure which of the impulses to follow.

With a gesture of finality, he placed his own insignia on the panel beside Geordi’s and turned away, leaving them there together.

When he knelt beside the crates the engineers had left here on his order, his body began to settle down as it recognized a task at hand. As the pumping of his heart subsided to its usual cadence, Data began opening the crates of specialized parts and mnemonic encoders and set about constructing a makeshift cloaking device small enough for a shuttlecraft.


“Now wait a minute!” Riker slid off the desk and fanned his hands before Troi. “We can’t just interfere!”

“We must,” Troi said, loudly this time. She felt the color rise in her cheeks and anger take over her heart. How dare he stand in her way!

“Now look,” Picard angrily reminded, “I called this meeting for a clear reason and it’s getting muddled. If I’m going to be forced into making a decision, I intend to have all the precedents behind me. Let’s streamline this, and that’s an order.”

Before Riker had the chance to respond, Troi leaned toward Picard, the first time she had changed position since all this started. “Captain, humans are interventionists by nature. Since ancient times, and even before that, we’ve intervened in the course of evolution by selective marriage, all the way back to tribal beginnings when the chief got his choice of the fairest, youngest, strongest maidens, and they had children who grew up to be the decision makers for the whole tribe. It is our heritage!”

“That’s nonsense,” Riker accused.

“Not necessarily.” Crusher pressed on. Her tone had a defensive sting and she turned a cold shoulder to him and spoke to the captain instead. “When we cured pneumonia and TB, we altered evolution forever. Countless millions who were weak and meant to die simply didn’t anymore. When glasses were invented, all the millions of nearsighted people who would’ve been functionally blind in an earlier century suddenly were completely normal. They not only lived, but prospered, mated, had more nearsighted children. Mankind’s been circumventing natural selection for so long that it’s become immoral not to. There’s your precedent, Captain. I don’t believe the question is whether or not to interfere.”

“What about science?” Riker interrupted, circling the desk to the captain’s side. “Could technology eventually put these captive entities into bodies? Like Data’s?”

Picard glared at him for a moment, then pivoted to Crusher. “Doctor, what about that?”

She shifted from one elbow to the other and dubiously said, “I’ll just wave my magic wand. . . . In my opinion, it might be too late for them. If they’ve been in a virtual fugue state since 1995 and most even before that, they may have lost their ability to be embodied in humanoid form.”

“You mean like a blind man suddenly getting complete sight?” Picard suggested. “Something like that?”

“I mean exactly that. There are plenty of circumstances that allow current medicine to replace or restore sight, but unless the patient is very young, there are usually grave complications. If I suddenly restored Geordi’s sight with some kind of transplant or something, he’d have to completely retrain his senses. His whole body, his whole brain. His sense of visual depth would be all askew, for one. He’d be grabbing for things that were ten feet away, because he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. He probably couldn’t walk with his eyes open either. Not without extensive therapy. His equilibrium would be completely thrown off. His balance would suddenly be affected by something that had never affected it before. There’ve been too many disastrous cases of restored sight. Some patients ultimately opted to have blindness reinflicted rather than continue with sight.”

“My God . . . seriously?”

“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 assessment. “It’d be a worse hell 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 entity, or to the entity, or to the ship, or to those life-forms 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 entity 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 space.

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’s—rational, 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 hell.”