PRECHANCE TO DREAM Page 8

  Only Ken chose to be physically by himself, slouched in the cockpit pilot’s seat, absorbed in sporadic scribbling in a notepad. He didn’t notice when Gina poked her head in from behind.

  “What’re you doing?”

  Ken straightened abruptly, then realized she was peering at what he’d written on the pad. He flipped it face down, tried to look nonchalant, but succeeded only in looking uncomfortable. “Nothing.”

  “Come on, that wasn’t some techie list.” Gina squinted in disbelief. “What was it?”

  “Just some notes.”

  “Looked like a poem to me.”

  He glared at her. “It was not a poem,” he said, spacing his words deliberately.

  “Suit yourself. I was just curious,” Gina said with a shrug. She looked out the broad front windows at the cavern bathed in eerie illumination from the shuttle’s running lights. “It sure does look pretty out there.”

  “Pretty?” His tone made it clear he regarded her description to be dubious at best.

  “Yeah. But then I guess you’d rather be anywhere else but in a cave, right?” she teased.

  “You really think you know me, don’t you?” he said, annoyed at her insinuation. “Well, you don’t.”

  With another shrug, she left him alone.

  Dammit! Why do I always do that? he thought as he watched her go. I could’ve shown her what I was writing . . . why didn’t I? What the hell am I so afraid of? If she doesn’t know what I’m really like, who’s fault is that? It’s mine! He slouched down in the pilot’s seat, wishing he could replay those last couple of minutes with Gina. She wasn’t the first girl he’d liked this much, though there hadn’t been many before. But they’d all turned out the same way . . . nothing . . . just a big nothing. Worse than that, most of the girls he’d liked had never even known it.

  He just couldn’t seem to figure out how to tell them. With some girls, he’d just freeze up and act like some kind of robot around them. Those were the ones who not only didn’t know how he felt about them—they probably never even knew he existed.

  A few times, though, it had been different. There’d at least been some conversation, something in common. Maybe she’d be nice to me . . . And Ken knew with a shudder what always seemed to happen next. He’d go overboard trying to be attentive and kind and thoughtful, the perfect formula for smothering any relationship before it could ever get off the launch pad. He couldn’t help it, and he couldn’t seem to do anything right. And he was afraid to even try.

  Especially with someone like Gina. Not that there hadn’t been a few nice moments here and there. Just enough to give me some hope, he thought bitterly. He glanced out the pilot’s window, trying to see the beauty Gina saw out there in this confining cavern. Could there be beauty in a prison? In a tomb?

  He knew that was the wrong attitude, but he couldn’t help the way he saw the universe. Could he?

  And besides, why do I always have to be the one to make the first move? It was the same dance every time, always doomed to failure. Why couldn’t a girl like him first, just for a change? That would be so much easier, letting her lead the way. Then he would only have to respond . . . and maybe they’d just live happily ever after.

  No, Gina didn’t know him at all.

  Of course, he knew why no girl ever seemed to like him first. What is there to like? What could I possibly offer someone like Gina? He wondered if Wesley ever had these same dark thoughts. Not likely.

  He opened his notepad again and read the few lines he’d managed to scrawl in handwriting that was shockingly sloppy for a compulsively neat person. He didn’t like what he’d done. And who ever said you could write poetry anyway?

  In the aft compartment, Data turned away from the computer screen. “Counselor,” he said softly, “I have been attempting to solve a puzzle and I wondered if I might have your input.”

  “If it’s about those sensor readings you’ve been studying, I doubt I can provide much help.”

  “Actually, it is about a facet of human behavior.”

  “Oh?” Her eyebrows rose with interest. “What facet?”

  Data cocked his head. “Fear . . . specifically, fear of death. Intellectually and quantitatively, I can understand it. But I cannot fathom the qualitative emotional aspects.”

  “Is this sudden interest related to our current situation?”

  “Oh, it is not a sudden interest. It is a topic I have been curious about ever since I began serving with humans, especially humans facing potentially lethal dangers. I have done considerable reading on the subjects of fear and death.”

  “And that didn’t help?”

  “Yes and no. Biological death is the cessation of existence, and I can grasp why rational beings would fear that. It is not surprising that virtually all humanoid cultures have, to some degree, believed in various forms of altered or continued existence after death—”

  “You mean, as in reincarnation or an afterlife of the soul—”

  “Exactly,” Data said, then paused as a pensive expression shadowed his face. “But for all the effort to duplicate the human life form in an artificially constructed mechanism such as myself, I am not human. There are distinctions that the most advanced programming and technology apparently cannot yet erase.”

  “Like the idea of having an indefinable soul?”

  Data nodded sadly. “I am unable to accommodate that concept. And although I can cease to exist, much as a biological life-form can, I was not born with the knowledge that I had a finite life-span.”

  “Well, compared to us, you don’t. Depending on what damage you sustain, and the level of repair technology, your life-span could very well be indefinite. But you’re still programmed for self-preservation. How does that differ from the same biological instinct?”

  “My imperative for self-preservation is consistent. I do not pass through the life phases which seem to alter human perceptions of themselves. For instance, I have observed that young humans are much more likely than adults to recklessly risk life and limb.”

  Deanna chuckled. “An observation probably made on a daily basis by every human parent in history.”

  “Yet, at a certain age, humans reject behaviors and activities they once undertook with little or no concern.”

  “I stopped climbing onto the roof of our shed,” Deanna offered with a faraway look.

  “Pardon?”

  “We had a storage shed in our yard, and when I was six, I had this uncontrollable urge to see what the world looked like from a greater height. So I dragged a ladder out and climbed onto the roof of the shed.”

  “Did your parents object?”

  “My father wanted to climb right up, haul me down and punish me.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Mother had quite another reaction,” Troi recalled with a knowing smile. “She knew the shed looked a lot higher to a six-year-old than it really was. Even if I fell off, I probably wouldn’t do any great harm to myself. So she told me I could climb anywhere I wanted, if I could figure out how to get up there. She said it was good practice for life.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes. Though I’ve often wished I could be as bold now as I was then. Unless they’re forced to do it, the young by nature do not worry about their own mortality.”

  “Nor do I, Counselor. And I am concerned that this deficiency prevents me from truly understanding what it is to be human—and detracts from my ability to be an effective leader in circumstances such as ours.”

  “Hmm.” Troi frowned as she wrestled with Data’s dilemma, seeking a response that would make sense within an android’s frame of reference. “Data, even with emphatic abilities like mine, it simply isn’t possible to always know how someone else feels.”

  “Yet Captain Picard seems to know.”

  “Any good leader tries to be aware of the feelings of those around him, and the most effective way to do that is by keen observation. I’ve never met a better observer than you, Data. And as long as
you’ve got that skill, you’ll always be sensitive to others’ fears and emotions, even those you don’t quite understand. Trust me.”

  “Thank you, Counselor.” Data stood. “Wesley, are you ready to begin our search for an exit from this cavern?”

  “More than ready, Data.”

  The sensor scans they’d run earlier had shown the cave to be free of obvious dangers, with a breathable atmospheric mixture. Gina’s structural analysis indicated the rock itself to be stable, with no detectable risk of collapse or cave-in. Now, equipped with phasers, tricorders and lanterns, Wes and Data opened the hatch and climbed out. In preparation for their exploration, they’d fashioned improvised safety tethers out of cord coiled inside dispensers mounted on their hips, and now they clipped the “home” end to utility nodes on the shuttle’s side.

  “Be careful,” Troi said, standing in the open hatch. “If you feel disoriented in the tunnels, come back.”

  “We shall, Counselor. In any event, we will return in one hour,” Data said. “Keep trying to contact the Enterprise.”

  Troi nodded and shut the hatch behind them.

  Wesley swung his lamp around in a wide arc, getting his first really good look at the cavern. From outside the Onizuka, it looked and felt even more confining than it had through the shuttle windows. The dimensions of their rocky prison obviously hadn’t changed—it was still configured like an uneven cone, varying from ten to fifteen meters in diameter, with an angled ceiling of dark, jagged stone and dripping stalactites ranging from a low point of just over four meters along one end all the way up to thirty meters at its asymmetrical peak.

  To the human mind, however, the cave’s actual size was only one factor in the equation. No matter how hard he tried, Wesley couldn’t divorce those measurements from the knowledge that he and his companions were deep inside a planet, presumably surrounded by an unknown amount of more or less solid rock. Even in the unlikely event that they were able to get the engines and navigation systems up and working again, there was absolutely no way to fly the stranded shuttlecraft out of there. It seemed depressingly apparent that if the away team was going to escape, it would have to be on foot.

  As Wes looked around, his lantern flashed past several tunnel openings. “Where should we start, Commander?”

  Data scanned each tunnel with his tricorder, then paused. “This one appears to spiral upward.” They started out, their tethers unreeling behind them.

  “Uhh, Data, I—umm—I heard what you and Counselor Troi were talking about just before,” Wesley said as they left the main cavern and entered the confines of the tunnel, shining their beams ahead to light the path.

  “Oh? Do you have some thoughts you wish to share?”

  “Yes, I do. Even though kids my age aren’t supposed to be worried about their own mortality yet, I do think about death sometimes. Maybe it’s because of my father dying when I was so young . . . when he was so young, too.”

  “Based on my research into human behavior, I believe that to be a natural reaction on your part, Wesley. Having to deal with death in such a direct manner is an experience that most of your peers do not share.”

  They ducked beneath a rock outcropping. “I sometimes wonder if my father had already reached that age where awareness of your own mortality starts to affect the way you see the world, whether it made him stop doing some of the risky things he did as a kid.”

  “From my reading in human psychology, that is likely.”

  Wes nodded. “That’s what I figured. But then sometimes I wonder—if he knew he could die, why didn’t he leave Starfleet and do something safer?”

  “It is not possible to eliminate all risks, Wesley. His desire to serve in Starfleet and explore space must have outweighed his fears and concerns.”

  The tunnel narrowed, funneling them into single file with Data in the lead. As they moved forward, their lanterns cutting into the chilly, damp darkness, Wesley listened to the scuffing of their boots echoing off the rocks. He had to make a conscious effort to suppress his own fears.

  He heard something behind them, like the groan of weakening rock . . . pebbles skittering down from above. He half-turned, expecting to see the start of a rockslide that would seal them in. He swept his lantern up, down, sideways. Nothing . . . great imagination, Crusher . . .

  He jumped when an icy drop of water fell on his forehead. Then he realized he’d fallen several strides behind Data and he hurried to catch up. This is no place to get left behind.

  Somehow, his childhood dreams of exploring the final frontier had never seemed quite this claustrophobic. He felt the walls pressing in on him. He needed to hear his own voice.

  “Data?”

  “Yes?”

  “What if . . . what if there’s no way out of here?”

  “If there was a way in, Wesley, there must also be a way out. It may not be this way . . . but there is a way, and there is no reason why we should not be able to find it.”

  Never in his life had Wesley Crusher wanted to believe anything as much as what Data had just said. “Do you really think so?”

  “Indubitably.”

  Chapter Seven

  “GINA! Look out!”

  Inside the shuttle, Troi’s heart raced as she heard Ken Kolker’s bleat of alarm bloom into an explosion of echoes. Though strange caverns on alien worlds could scarcely be guaranteed as risk-free, she and Data had deemed the immediate area around the stranded shuttlecraft to be safe enough for limited exploration. And she knew it would be good for morale to keep the young away team members as busy as possible.

  At the sound of Ken’s warning shout, however, Deanna popped through the open hatch, fully expecting to see the aftermath of some horrible accident.

  Instead, she saw Gina glaring at her companion, hands on her hips. “What is with you, Kenny?”

  “I thought you were about to get crushed by a cave-in,” Ken said, head hung in embarrassment.

  “Cave-in?” Gina noticed Troi poised on the hatch sill and cast an annoyed glance toward her. “I’m chipping out some rock samples, a little dust and two pebbles rattle down from above me, and he thinks it’s a cave-in.”

  “I was just being cautious,” Ken protested.

  “Cautious?”

  “Yes, cautious—and I don’t think there’s any such thing as being too cautious, considering where we are right now.”

  Gina turned away, rolling her eyes. “Oh, pleeease.”

  Satisfied that no disasters loomed, Counselor Troi went back inside the shuttle. She wondered if Data and Wesley had found anything. Their hour of scouting was almost up, and Data was never late. They’d be returning soon.

  With a bewildered shake of his head, Ken retreated to his own sample collection, concentrating on drippings from an impressive array of stalactites hanging down like fangs from the roof of some monstrous mouth.

  “I’m sorry if I overreacted,” Kenny muttered after a wordless stretch of five minutes or so.

  “Forget it.”

  “You’re probably thinking, ‘Wesley wouldn’t have gotten hysterical.’ ”

  Gina glanced at him, genuinely caught off-guard by what seemed like a complete non sequitur. “Why would I think that?”

  “I don’t know. Because all the kids on the ship look up to him.”

  “Why shouldn’t they look up to him? He’s smart, he’s responsible, he works harder than almost anybody in our classes. But he’s not perfect, and he never claimed to be. Who knows how he would’ve reacted? But the truth is, I wasn’t thinking about Wesley at all . . . until you mentioned him. All I was thinking about was these samples . . . and getting out of here.” She tossed a handful of mineral chips into a collection bag.

  Ken blinked in surprise. “You were really thinking about getting out of here? I figured you wouldn’t mind being marooned in here.”

  “Kenny,” she said patiently, “I don’t mind visiting caves. But I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life stuck inside this one.”
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  “Do you think we might . . . y’know . . . die here?”

  “You might, ’cause I may kill you,” she quipped, then shrugged in clear discomfort as she realized that Kenny seemed intent on pursuing a subject she’d rather skip. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Not at all?” He obviously didn’t believe her.

  She hesitated. “Well . . . maybe a little. But not seriously. Look, I’m sure we’ll get out of here.”

  “But you really did think about it . . . about dying in here?”

  Gina sighed, wishing she could somehow take back her tacit admission. Now that she’d been edged into talking about it at all, this was not a topic over which she really cared to linger. “I said I did . . . a little. Why are you making such a big deal about it?”

  “Because you’ve said you don’t like thinking about death.”

  Gina stared at him. “Most people don’t, you know. Why should I? I’m not as morbid as you.”

  “I’m not morbid,” he insisted. “Death is part of life.”

  “So is snoring, but I don’t spend large portions of my day contemplating that either.”

  The sound of advancing footfalls interrupted their debate, and Data and Wesley emerged from the same tunnel they’d entered on their search. Data’s neutral expression revealed nothing, but the grim tightness of Ensign Crusher’s jaw made it clear they’d failed to find a way out. Gina approached them.

  “No luck?”

  Without a word, Wes just shook his head.

  Gina planted herself in front of Data. “Commander, there are lots of other tunnels. I want to be part of the next search team. Nobody knows caves like I do. If anybody can find a way out, I can.”

  “I can vouch for that, sir,” Wes Crusher said with a nod. “She takes to caves like a Kavarian horn mole.”

  “Indeed.” Data seemed impressed by the testimonial.

  “Wesley,” said Gina, basking in the unexpected praise, “that’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said about me.”