STAR TREK - TNG - 27 - Guises of the Mind

VIP免费
2024-12-20 0 0 477.24KB 156 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
This book is lovingly dedicated to the regular Saturday Night Irregulars—or the irregular
Saturday Night Regulars—to Donna, Jim, David, Lori, Dan, Del Scott, Elayn, Liza, Bob and
Clarita. It’s always great fun.
——————————
To David, Dan, Mike and Lenora, who have also read and reread, unselfishly giving me the benefit of
their time, intelligence and expertise.
To my family, who always believed I could write, even when I doubted it, and who taught me to believe
in myself.
Above all, to Stephen, husband and friend without peer.
Therefore the wise man . . .
. . . does not collect precious things.
He learns not to hold on to ideas.
He brings men back to what they have lost. . . .
. . . Having and not having rise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
High and low rest upon each other. . . .
Lao Tze, Tao Te Ching
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light. . . .
Saint Francis of Assisi
It is logical that one should desire peace. Before a peace can be obtained, one must learn to rule one’s
passions. To gain mastery over the emotions, one must first embrace the many Guises of the Mind. . . .
Surak of Vulcan
Chapter One
THE YOUNG LIEUTENANTon the transporter platform looked at Troi with haunted, frightened eyes.
“You’ll be all right, Geoff,” the counselor said, giving her voice more confidence than she felt. Standing
behind her at the controls, the new transporter chief, Samantha Tuttle, cleared her throat.
“The starbase is signaling, Counselor,” she told Troi.
“Thank you, Chief,” she acknowledged without taking her eyes off her departing patient. “Doctor
Fletcher will be waiting for you, Geoff,” she continued. “Everything is arranged. TheSkylark will be here
in thirty-six hours to take you back home to Beta Arcturus. Doctor Fletcher will be traveling with you.
He has a copy of all your records and the doctors at the clinic are waiting. It’s almost over.”
The terror in the young man’s eyes did not abate. He ran a dry tongue over his lips and tried to make his
voice work.
“Thank you,” he finally managed to say. “I’m sorry I . . . I wasn’t a good patient.”
Troi smiled her best professional smile. “You were a fine patient. Just remember, there are no magic
cures. Everything takes time.”
The lieutenant nodded. Troi stepped back next to Chief Tuttle, who was still waiting to work the
transporter controls.
“Just a few more days, Geoff, and you’ll be home. Are you ready?”
Again the lieutenant nodded. Troi touched Tuttle’s arm and the transporter chief’s hands moved across
the board before him. There was a hum, a shower of light, and the lieutenant’s body began to fade.
“Good-bye, Geoff,” Troi said softly as he disappeared. “Good luck.”
“The starbase is signaling that Lieutenant Salah has arrived,” Tuttle told her.
Troi looked up at her and gave a weary smile, then she turned away. It was over; there was nothing
more Troi could do now except go back to her quarters and make the final entry on Lieutenant Salah in
her log.
Troi left the transporter room. Crew members greeted her as she walked down the corridor toward the
turbolift and she nodded to them, but she did not truly see them. Her actions were automatic and
professional, and unrelated to her thoughts, which were still of Geoff Salah. In her mind she still saw the
look of scarcely controlled panic that had become etched upon his face in these last weeks.
Troi had always known, and accepted, that Starfleet psych-profiles were not infallible. But even in its
latent stage, this phobia should have been diagnosed, she thought for the hundredth time as she stepped
into the turbolift and gave her destination to the computer. Geoff Salah should never have been on a
starship. Yet he had been here. And she should have been able to help him. She had failed, and it hurt.
Troi reached her quarters and stepped inside. Behind her, the door slid silently closed. Only then did she
let her facade of professional calm slip away. Her shoulders drooped as she leaned back against the wall
and closed her eyes. For a few, brief moments, the slender frame of Deanna Troi bore a resemblance to
Atlas, bowed beneath the weight of the world.
Then she took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. She had work to do.
She walked over to her desk and sat down. As she did, she touched a button on the computer terminal,
switching it to silent recording mode; at this moment, even the pleasant artificial voice of the computer
was more than she wanted to hear.
“Personal log: Counselor Deanna Troi,” she began. “Stardate 45741.9. We have just concluded a
six-hour layover at Starbase 212, where we picked up the passengers who will be traveling with us to
Capulon IV and . . .” Troi stopped and drew another breath, searching for a way to express the finality
she felt. “Where I lost a patient. On my recommendation, Lieutenant Geoff Salah has been granted
extended medical leave to his home planet. It is unlikely he will ever be able to return to duty aboard a
starship.”
Troi sat back and closed her eyes again. A deep weariness washed through her. She was exhausted
from all these weeks of trying to help Lieutenant Salah combat the sudden explosion of fear that had
ripped apart his life and left his sanity tottering on the brink of extinction. His increasing paranoia had
pounded in her brain each time they were together. As the manifestations of his phobia grew, Troi had
found herself having to battle through the attacks of anxiety and sleeplessness, the lack of concentration
and the burgeoning sensation of impending doom that were Salah’s symptoms—not her own.
Nor had she been able to tell Salah that his fears were groundless. It was a reality that theEnterprise ,
that any starship, traveled through a vacuum. The dangers of such travel—systems failures, hull breaches
by asteroid bombardment or enemy fire, unknown and sometimes hostile life-forms, ion storms, novas
and supernovas, and a thousand other things, were too varied to name. They were the conditions one
accepted when one chose a life in Starfleet. They were part of the adventure.
And they were the very things Lieutenant Geoff Salah could no longer endure.
Once more the specter of his pained and troubled expression rose up to haunt Troi, bringing with it
another wave of weariness. Depression sent its first wispy tendrils through her brain, whispering to her of
futility and failure.
Troi ended the entry. Later, after she had brought her own feelings into focus, she would record more.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and called up the schedule for her afternoon appointments.
The first one, only a few minutes from now, was with Bio-tech Theodore Aske and Chief Roberta
Plummer of geo-sciences. Standard voluntary prenuptial counseling. Troi gave a small, wan smile, glad
that these were the next people she had to face. There had been nothing in her past three sessions with
Aske and Plummer to indicate anything ahead for them but a long, happy marriage.
Reading the next name on her schedule, Troi’s dark eyes grew troubled. Ensign Johann Marshall. More
pain to deal with—grief and guilt and anger. In the month since Marshall had received word of his
father’s death and began coming to Troi for counseling, these emotions had been the essence of their time
together. Denying that he felt anything but loss and sorrow, Marshall would often sit in her office saying
little. Then his dark, brooding emotions would fill the room and reverberate through Troi’s mind.
She would endure them, though she knew she could raise her mental shields and place a firm, protective
wall around her empathic talent. Yet, then she might miss some vital clue as to why the ensign’s
self-accusations were greater than his grief. Until that was brought into the open, Ensign Marshall would
not heal. Troi did not want to fail with Marshall as she had with Salah. She knew she would keep her
shields lowered.
“And who counsels the counselor?” she wondered aloud as she stood and composed her body into the
posture of a confident professional—shoulders back, chin lifted—and mentally prepared herself to go to
her office and face the rest of the day’s appointments.
The comm button on her uniform chirped. She tapped it lightly. “Troi here,” she said.
“Counselor.” The rich timbre of Captain Picard’s voice came over the comm channel. “Tomorrow
evening at nineteen hundred hours, I will be hosting a dinner party to welcome our guests on board. If
you have no other plans, I would be pleased if you would attend.”
Always on call, the words flashed through Troi’s mind. Even at a social event like a dinner party, she
knew that the captain would expect her to be sensing the emotions of the people in the room. He did not
understand; no one on board theEnterprise fully understood how exhausting such constant sensitivity
could be.
Troi tried not to let these thoughts sound in her voice when she answered the captain. “Thank you, sir,”
she said. “I’ll be there.”
Picard signed off. Troi stepped toward her door, and as it slid silently open she knew that tonight she
was going to treat herself to her favorite form of personal therapy. As soon as she was off duty, she was
going straight to Ten-Forward and have Guinan make her this galaxy’s biggest, gooiest, chocolatiest . . .
Up on the bridge, Captain Jean-Luc Picard was feeling very pleased with life as he settled himself
comfortably into his command chair. Their passengers, the Little Mothers, were remarkable
individuals—members of an organization that had lasted through the centuries. Picard knew that many of
his contemporaries, while admiring the work of the Little Mothers, felt that religious organizations such as
theirs were anachronistic. Picard did not agree. As a student of history, he was keenly aware of the part
religion had played in the spread of civilization.
Picard was too honest a researcher to ignore or deny the many atrocities that had been committed in the
name of religion. Earth’s past was as studded with them as many other worlds’ histories, and much more
than some. Yet it was the organizations of religion that had kept the light of law and learning, the essence
of civilization, alive during eras of darkness that might otherwise have seen those lights extinguished.
The Little Mothers—now theirs was a history that exemplified what Religious Orders could be. Picard
had first learned of them as a schoolboy and had admired them since. Over the years he had watched for
any mention of them, both in history books and current Federation news communiqués. The Little
Mothers’ work with the unwanted children of the galaxy, regardless of physical or mental condition, of
species or planet, was legendary and inspirational. Picard was pleased to be able to introduce them to his
crew—and to introduce his crew, of whom he was justly proud, to them.
Picard turned and found his First Officer watching him. “Your expression reminds me of an old saying
about a cat and a canary,” Riker said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes, Number One, I am pleased. By our passengers, and by our mission.”
“That’s something I don’t quite understand, Captain,” Riker continued. “We’re going to Capulon IV for
the signing of the final treaty between that planet and the Federation—”
“Yes.”
“Why are we taking two nuns with us?”
Picard studied Riker for a moment, then gave a small, enigmatic smile.
“ ‘One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.’ ”
“Captain?”
“A poem, by a nineteenth-century Irish poet named O’Shaughnessy. It means that a small number of
individuals with vision and dedication can make or change history. From what I have read of the young
King on Capulon IV, I think he is such an individual. It is my guess, Number One, that the King intends,
with the help of these nuns, not to ‘trample an empire,’ but to build one.”
Chapter Two
JOAKALI’LIUM, the King of Capulon IV, walked down the corridor toward his apartments on the
third floor of the palace. He walked with an easy, long-legged gait, the walk of someone accustomed to
few obstacles. He was clothed in the colors of the House I’lium. A long crimson tunic with full sleeves,
gold buttons and sash gave breadth to his slender shoulders, and the loose pants, also of crimson, that
gathered at the ankles inside his boots added height to his medium frame. His dark hair was worn long in
back, in the fashion of young men. Wisps of it curled around the high neck of his tunic and touched the
cropped beard and mustache that hid the fine lines around his mouth and made him look younger than his
twenty-nine years.
By his side walked Aklier, member of the Council of Elders. He was dressed in a similar style to Joakal,
but in the orange and brown of his own House, and wore the knee-length sleeveless vest of adulthood.
Aklier was shorter than Joakal and more stout. At the age of sixty-seven, the proud carriage of early
manhood that was so much a part of his companion’s walk, had long departed from Aklier. His
shoulders were stooped and his feet no longer left the floor as sprightly as once they had. His hair and
beard were the dark silver gray of black hair aged. Although his beard hid many of the lines that had
embedded themselves on Aktier’s face, he knew those lines existed and were growing deeper with each
passing year.
As the two men walked side by side down the palace corridors, their boots clicked dully on the stone
floor, punctuating the silence of the late hour. Joakal hardly noticed the sound, nor did he give much
thought to his companion. His mind was filled with details of his upcoming coronation and with the
dreams and plans he had nurtured for so long.
For nine years, ever since his father had died and Joakal came to the throne, he had ruled through the
Council of Elders, as was the custom of his people. Now his Coming to Age was only a short time away.
In twenty-seven days he would be thirty years old, and three days after that he would be crowned
Absolute .
For the last nine years Joakal had dreamed of the changes he would make for his people. He had spent
those years, and many years before them, studying the laws and the histories, and making plans. They
were secret plans, for the changes he would make involved the reinterpretation and reordering of many of
the old ways. This he could only do after he wasAbsolute . Soon his dreams would come true. He would
be known as Joakal the Just, Joakal the Lawgiver.
And there was Elana, his beautiful, beloved Elana. She had been gone this past month, spending time in
her childhood home while she decided whether to marry him or enter Service at the temple, but she
promised to return on the day of his coronation with her answer.
Shewill marry me, Joakal thought. Shemust . Joakal loved her too deeply to consider any other answer.
It was with her alone that Joakal had shared all of his many plans and dreams. She was the only one on
this world who knew what action he had already taken to make the first of those dreams come true. She
would stand by his side when he made the proclamation. She would rule by his side, and together they
would guide this world into a new and golden age.
The young King turned to his companion. “Have you heard anything from the Federation ship?” he
asked. “Are you certain they’ll arrive on time?”
“We have received no word from the ship,” Aklier answered. “You would have been told, but I am
certain they will arrive on schedule.”
“Think of it, Aklier,” Joakal said, his eyes shining with his unspoken dreams. “Think of what it will mean
for our people. The stars will be open to us and all the people on all the worlds of the Federation will be
our brothers. We will learn of their ways, and we will teach them ours.”
The Federation ship and the treaty; all of Capulon knew of these. It was who the ship carried and what
they represented that was the secret Joakal hugged to himself. To cast off the superstitions of the past,
and embrace the scientific wonders of a hundred worlds—that was the tomorrow he planned to build for
Capulon IV.
He was so entranced by his vision of the future, he did not notice the furtive glances his companion was
casting at the doorways they were walking past, nor notice the sudden sweat that beaded on Aklier’s
forehead.
Joakal kept walking. Behind him, a door swung open on silent, well-oiled hinges. A figure slipped
through.
Suddenly hands gripped Joakal’s shoulders and spun him around. Joakal gave a startled cry. He saw the
fist coming toward him. Just before it connected, just before the world exploded into pain and darkness,
Joakal saw his attacker’s face.
And it was his own.
Chapter Three
TROI BENT CLOSERto the mirror as she secured the last pin into her hair. Then she clipped her
earrings into place and stood back to survey the total effect.
Not bad, she assured herself, turning slightly from side to side. For the dinner party this evening, Troi
had chosen a new dress from the ship’s catalogue and she decided she liked both the style and the color.
The high back and gently heart-shaped neckline gave her throat a long, graceful look, and the deep
garnet color of the dress complemented her skin. Not bad at all, she told herself again as she ran a hand
down the fitted bodice to the folds of the full skirt, smoothing away a small fold in the fabric.
Troi glanced at the chronometer display: 18:45—ten minutes before Will Riker would arrive to escort
her to the dinner. Troi walked over to the food replicator dispenser.
“Hot chocolate,” she ordered. But when her drink arrived and she took a sip, she grimaced. It was not
what she wanted. The rich, sweet liquid did no more to lift her mood than had the chocolate sundae last
night, or the double workout she had done in the gym this morning. She was still worried about
Lieutenant Salah, still depressed over her inability to help him—and still very, very tired.
“So, what do I want?” Troi asked herself as she started to pace about the room. She, of all people,
should be aware of her feelings, able to define and examine them.
Okay, she thought, applying a technique she had used often with her patients, I’ll make a list. Number
one: Work, her profession—Did she still believe in what she was doing? Yes. Troi knew that her choice
to become a psychologist and to join Starfleet had been the correct one. She harbored no doubts or
regrets.
So, number two: Her assignment—Would she rather be stationed somewhere else, on a starbase or
planet, maybe even at Starfleet Command or the Academy? No. She loved theEnterprise and the
people on board.
Number three: Her personal life? No—emphaticallyno. She was not ready for marriage and children.
She would be less than honest if she said she never thought of them, but it was not anactive
consideration. They were for some later time in her life. For now she had friends, dear and cherished
friends like Will Riker and Beverly Crusher, like Captain Picard, like Geordi and Worf and Data—like
so many others. They kept her from being lonely.
Lonely.The word made Troi stop pacing. She was never lonely—that was the problem. She was never
alone . Even here in her quarters, she could feel the presence of the fifteen hundred people around her.
The loves and hates, griefs and sorrows, joys and triumphs not only of the crew members, but of their
spouses and children, were like a constant white noise inside her brain.
As ship’s counselor it was Troi’s duty to beaware , not only of the mental and emotional condition of
the crew, but to guard against the unseen threats that could attack the minds of the people on board. For
this Captain Picard relied upon her—and through him, so did everyone else.
What I need, Troi thought, is a vacation. I need a time when no one is relying on me. I need to put things
back in perspective.
The door chime sounded. “Come in,” she called and the door obediently slid open. Commander Will
Riker stood framed in the doorway, looking handsome and virile in his dress uniform. His eyes caressed
her, sliding slowly up and down her form, and he let out a slow, appreciative whistle.
“Deanna,” he said. “You look magnificent.”
“Thank you, Will.”
Riker held out his arm and Troi walked over and took it. As they headed down the corridor toward the
turbolift, Troi let herself bask in the familiar touch of Riker’s mind. His approval and affection were a
balm to her weary soul.
This is a dinner party, she thought to herself as they walked. It’s a social event. No threats, no
dangers—no warring dignitaries or tricky negotiations that hang in the balance. We’re traveling through
well-known space on our way to a peaceful mission. Other ships get by without a Betazoid counselor,
maybe for a while I can block everyone out of my mind and just enjoy myself. A mini-vacation.
Troi turned her head and smiled up at Will Riker. She was pleased by the warmth in his eyes as he
smiled back.
The other guests had arrived when Troi and Riker walked into the dining room on Deck 8. Troi saw that
the male officers had opted to wear their dress uniforms while, like herself, Beverly Crusher had chosen
civilian dress. Standing next to the captain, the doctor looked exotic in an oriental pants-dress of pale
green Chinese silk.
Troi did not need her Betazoid senses to read the emotions in the room. Captain Picard, as he stood
next to Doctor Crusher, was smiling one of his rare broad smiles. He radiated pride and pleasure as
obviously as Beverly did serenity. To the captain’s left, Geordi was busy being sociable and, as usual, he
was on the verge of laughter. Troi wondered what story he was telling as he waved his arms through the
air. Worf stood near him, but a little apart. The Klingon’s eyes shifted around the room continually, his
body tense and ready to spring into action. Data, meanwhile, watched everyone with an expression of
fascinated curiosity.
At the center of this group stood two nuns. Both wore identical ankle-length dresses of a heavy brown
material, girded about the waist by a braided rope. On their heads each wore short white veils, and their
feet were encased in sandals. One nun also had a wooden pectoral cross on a leather thong around her
neck. She stood with her head bent and her eyes downcast as if she was deep in private meditation.
Troi breathed a silent sigh of relief—all here was as it should be. For a while she could, and would, rest.
She raised the mental shields around her mind, smiled, and stepped further into the room. The captain
glanced up and saw her.
“Good—Counselor, Number One,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve arrived. Come and meet the Little
Mothers.”
Still arm in arm, Troi and Riker advanced to the captain’s side and waited while he made the
introductions. The nun with the cross was Mother Veronica, the Head of the Order. The other nun was
Sister Julian. They were going to Capulon IV to make the initial contact with the government; others of
their Order would be following in a few weeks.
The dinner proceeded with polished smoothness. Troi could not help but admire the way the captain
played host. With well-timed questions and comments, he kept the conversation moving and interesting,
all the while keeping his eye on the plates and goblets of his guests, unobtrusively making certain their
wineglasses were refilled, food dishes were passed around, and delicacies placed within easy reach.
Troi was seated across the table from Mother Veronica. The nun had stayed quiet throughout the meal.
Troi noticed she had not eaten much more than a mouthful. To the counselor’s practiced eye, the nun
looked troubled and exhausted.
Seated to Troi’s left, Sister Julian was as animated as Mother Veronica was reticent. “It was 1873, not
4, when our Order was founded, Captain,” she was saying. “In October. The fourth of October—the
feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, whose Rule we follow.”
Then Sister Julian stopped and laughed. “You’ll have to forgive me, Captain,” she said. “I find history a
fascinating subject, and I tend to become rather passionate when I’m discussing it.”
Picard smiled. “I am a bit of a history enthusiast myself,” he said. “In fact, aside from the wonderful
work you do—which I hold in the highest esteem—part of what interests me about your Order is the fact
that you have survived the centuries. Even now, when religions no longer play such a pervasive part in
society, your Order seems to be thriving.”
“It was not always easy for us,” Sister Julian said solemnly. “Many times our Order nearly died out.
Each time a span of religious apathy would occur, the numbers in our Order would dwindle. Yet a few of
us always remained to carry on the work.”
She cocked her head slightly to one side and studied the captain. “As for religion no longer playing a
part in society,” she said. “Which society? The Vulcans, whose discipline of pure logic, the Kolinar,
exists side by side with their mystical teachings of the Katra? The Bajorans who unanimously claim that it
is their spiritual beliefs that have held them together as a society throughout the long years of Cardassian
domination? I could name dozens more.”
“Perhaps I should have said that religion is no longer as important on Earth as it once was,” Picard
replied.
“Oh, come now, Captain,” Sister Julian said. “You don’t mean that. Just because we no longer fight
wars over our beliefs, you don’t think that they are gone, do you? Religious beliefs, their myths and
practices have been with humankind since its beginnings. By the time the first god figure was painted on a
cave wall, the myths of that god had already been told around the campfire, told and believed. I think it
is, rather, that we have learned to let religion be a matter of the heart, personal and not political. We have
at last learned tolerance.”
Picard smiled at her. “You are a fine debater, Sister Julian.”
Troi watched Sister Julian nod a pleased acknowledgment of the captain’s compliment, then cast a quick
glance across the table to Mother Veronica, as if trying to pull the other nun into the conversation.
Mother Veronica did not notice or look up from her attitude of contemplative withdrawal.
“Back to our original subject,” Sister Julian said after an infinitesimal pause. “Our Order was founded
—in 1873,” she shot Picard a small smile, “in Spain, on Earth. The country was torn by one of the many
civil wars of that era. The need for us and for our work was very great. There were so many children
whose families had been killed and whose villages had been destroyed. The first of our Sisters took these
children into their convents, then built dormitories and infirmaries to house and care for them. They
endeavored to raise the children in an atmosphere of love despite the wars that raged all around them.
Our Order was given the name Mothers of the Hopeless.
“If you are a student of history, Captain,” she continued, “you know that the next two centuries were
filled with outbreaks of war, and not only in Spain. Some of these wars were termed small wars or
internal power struggles, others were global confrontations. They all left homeless, helpless children in
their wake.”
“Then your work is mostly with homeless and war-traumatized children?” Riker asked.
“Oh no, Commander,” Sister Julian answered. “That was only how our Order was established. Our
work, ourmission to use the Church term, is to provide a loving home for all children.Any child,
regardless of need or condition, is taken in and cherished. And throughout the centuries there is little we
have not seen—the homeless, the abused, the sick—sometimes terminally—the openly rebellious who
are really looking for security, the autistic who are locked behind the curtain of their own minds, the
mentally deficient, the physically challenged—all of them find a home within our walls.”
“But Earth, in fact most of the Federation worlds, have solved these problems,” Doctor Crusher said.
“Our planet is no longer torn apart by wars. Medical science can detect, and cure, most physical
defects—often before birth—and our psychological sciences have learned how to overcome the mental
conditions, like autism, that were so debilitating and such a frightening part of our past.”
Sister Julian smiled a little sadly. “You are an idealist, Doctor,” she said. “That is a good trait in a healer.
No wars—not on Earth, but what about the war with the Cardassians? Cardassian children can be
homeless and frightened and in need, too. And many of the other worlds within our galaxy do not feel the
same way about their children as we humans do. That is why when we began encountering other worlds,
other peoples and cultures, our Order took our mission from Earth to the stars. You would be surprised
how many worlds ask for us to come and set up one of our homes on their planets.”
“So you no longer have any houses on Earth?” the captain asked. “I thought I read—”
“Oh yes we do, Captain.” Sister Julian interrupted. “Our main Mother House is on Earth—that will
never change. But we have many Mother Houses now. Our home was on Perrias VII.”
Captain Picard’s brow wrinkled slightly. “Perrias VII,” he said slowly. “That’s not a member of the
Federation.”
“No, Captain,” Sister Julian replied. “It is not. But then, we are not ambassadors or members of
Starfleet —nor do we have any political affiliations. If we hear of a need, we go.”
“How do such reports get to you?” Commander Riker asked.
Again Sister Julian smiled. “Oh, they get to us. Sometimes, such as the case with Capulon IV, the
government of a planet asks us to come. But that is more rare than I like to think. Usually it is word of
mouth—rumors, news reports, even anonymous communiqués. Word gets to us.”
While Sister Julian continued to talk, Troi became aware of a vague feeling of disquiet. It was like an itch
slowly growing between her shoulder blades, or a steady, monotonous beat too quiet to be truly heard,
but too loud to be ignored. The relaxed glow of the evening fled and Troi was on duty once more.
Slowly, she lowered her mental shields. Immediately her mind was under siege, bombarded by desperate
confusion. It was like stepping into the middle of an exploding star.
Too many. . .too many . . . The words crashed through Troi’s mind.Go away . . . they echoed.Too
many . . . .
摘要：

ThisbookislovinglydedicatedtotheregularSaturdayNightIrregulars—ortheirregularSaturdayNightRegulars—toDonna,Jim,David,Lori,Dan,DelScott,Elayn,Liza,BobandClarita.It’salwaysgreatfun.——————————ToDavid,Dan,MikeandLenora,whohavealsoreadandreread,unselfishlygivingmethebenefitoftheirtime,intelligenceandexpe...

展开>> 收起<<
STAR TREK - TNG - 27 - Guises of the Mind.pdf

共156页,预览32页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：156 页 大小：477.24KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 156
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注