“Then no deal,” Ippi echoed. “What—you want me to get strung up for bothering Hummer with no credit in hand? Uh-huh, for ninety quants, you got to hand over some real info.”
“I will provide you with a list of the DNA catalog,” Tuvok said quietly.
Ippi shook his head. “Not enough. I want few sample of the info to show Hummer.”
“You may have one sample DNA.” Tuvok held out a hand to silence Paris’s protest. “I was assured this is the way business is conducted in the Hub.”
Ippi reluctantly considered the offer. “Huh… I guess that a deal.
Tuvok manipulated his tricorder, recording the necessary information and removing an isolinear chip. “Is optical data compatible with your system?”
Ippi gingerly took the chip. “Why not?” He waved the chip in Paris’s direction. “You wait here. I come back.”
Ippi darted into the shadows, his toothless grin the last thing Paris saw. It was criminal, really, but there was nothing he could do with a Vulcan leading the negotiation team. He turned away, kicking at the debris in the corridor. “We might as well go.”
Tuvok blinked over at him. “Mr. Ippi requested that we remain here until he returns.”
“Yeah.” Paris wasn’t going to try to explain. “Believe me, we’ve just seen the last of Mr. Ippi.”
Kim couldn’t believe it: Paris and Tuvok were able to gallivant around the Hub, consorting with all kinds of interesting people, and B’Elanna got to go to an exotic world with the captain to rescue their computer processor—while he was stuck crawling around the bowels of the ship. It almost made him wish he’d pitched a fit at the holodoc, too; maybe then he’d be on an exciting adventure himself.
“This is amazing,” Kes whispered reverently. “I had no idea these tunnels penetrated the entire ship.”
“Ow!” Kim exclaimed, bumping his forehead on a low-hanging conduit.
He sat down, rubbing his sore skull. “I don’t see what’s so amazing about it, every starship has Jeffries tubes.
If you ask me, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
“I think it’s fascinating.” Kes craned her head to see up the vertical tube that led to the deuterium-matter tanks. “You can get anywhere in the ship and never have to go into the corridors.”
“Sure, if you never want to stand up straight again.” Kim started forward again. “There’s the module housing the lower bioneural masses for the main core. The upper modules are in the monitor room.”
“How do we access the tissue?”
Kim opened the magnetic constrictors of the bulkhead to reveal the primary bioshunt, a collared conduit with its own monitoring system in the main joint. “We can pull a sample of the nutrient from here.”
“Get some that’s being siphoned off, as well,” Kes suggested.
“If the neural cells are being stimulated, there should be an abundance of potassium ions in the nutrient.”
“This’ll only take a minute.” Kim connected a siphon tube to the shunt, making sure the other end was tightly inserted into the collection jar. The last thing they needed was more blue goo leaking everywhere. His gray shirt was already caked with the stuff, and he kept scraping his fingers through his hair, trying to separate the strands that were clumped together. Very unpleasant…
“Is it possible to make direct contact with the tissue?” Kes asked.
“Only if the subspace field is off—and last time that happened, the ship was reduced to emergency power.” He watched the blue gel slowly push through the tube. “Theoretically, we could create a stasis field isolating a sample section, and then go in.”
“Would that inhibit the impulse transmissions from the rest of the bioneural mass?”
He almost laughed. “Definitely.”
Kes frowned briefly, then shook her head. “That won’t do. I want to measure the currents flowing across the nerve-fiber membrane. Usually, I’d need skin contact with an electrode stimulator.”
“Can’t you do it through the chamber seals?”
“I’m not sure. It might present a broader reading, more like an EEG, but that could be informative as well.” She prepared her equipment, placing small nodes on the clear wall of the chamber.
The lights of the stimulator blinked on.
“You’re getting a readout.” Kim checked the containment tube.
Only a few more decigrams.
“Maybe I’ll leave one of these units down here so we can get a continuous reading.” She reached for the tricorder on her belt.
“I may be able to scan for the level of sugar glucose and oxygen supply. B’Elanna had the right idea when she suggested we use a medical tricorder.”
Kim contented himself with a noncommittal shrug. He didn’t want to be the one to disillusion her—Torres had been ridiculing the doctor when she made that suggestion. But Kes could get very protective of the holoprogram, and there was no need to upset her over something that no longer mattered.
Hours later, in Engineering, Kim was leaning against one of the mainframe supports for the warp core while Kes finished her tests on the neural gel packs linked to the subprocessor. It had been a long day, even before they started the testing, but Kes had insisted on visiting every bioneural mass in the ship, including the auxiliary computer core, which had truly horrendous access tubes.
Kim was ready to slide into a hot bath and stay there until morning.
Maybe that would keep him from being stuck in a hunched position for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, the way things were going, he’d have the rest of his life before he got back to the designers who had created those Jeffries tubes, so he could give them a piece of his mind.
Kes straightened up from the module. “That’s should do it.”
“Good,” Kim sighed in relief. “Let’s get these readings back to the doctor so he can analyze them—” He was interrupted by red-alert klaxons, and a computer recording, “Warning—antimatter containment field breach imminent. Section sealing.”
“Move, Kes!” Kim shouted, grabbing her arm.
“There’s nothing wrong with the containment field,” she protested.
“The warp engine is off-line.”
The double-hulled isolation door started to lower in front of them.
Kim broke into a run. “Do you want to stay and argue?”
She puffed along behind him, saving her breath rather than answering.
Kim slid under the door, feet first. His head barely missed the lower edge of the descending bulkhead.
He reached back to pull Kes through, but the isolation door closed at his fingertips. “Kes!”
“Here,” she said, behind him.
Lying on the deck, Kim looked around. “You made it!”
“I went through headfirst—I figured that was the most important part.”
She smiled wanly, holding up the tricorder with the hours’ worth of information. “That, and the tricorder.”
Kim’s ears started to ring as the pressure abruptly dropped. His hands instinctively pressed to his head, trying to protect the delicate membrane of his eardrums.
The red-alert klaxons cut off in mid-wail, and the regular lights flashed back on.
The computer intoned, “Antimatter containment field intact. Warp core ejection terminated.”
With a perky chime, the isolation door signaled that it was ready to be manually reopened. Engineering personnel were starting to move around again, cautiously, as if ready to run at the first sign of trouble.
Kim rolled onto his back, his chest rapidly rising and falling.
“I need a hot bath.”
Kim dropped the collection jar on the table next to Zimmerman, and collapsed into a chair. This was their last stop.
As the doctor correlated the data from the tricorder with the computer schematics, Kim wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. In spite of umbilical support, sickbay was freezing, and he’d left his jacket back in the computer monitor room.
“Interesting,” the doctor murmured. “The EEG readings show pronounced fluctuations in the low-level spontaneous electrical activity of the bioneural tissue.”
Kim wasn’t even sure what that meant. “Is that normal?”
“How should I know?” the doctor retorted. “Where is that experimental information I requested?”
“I gave you everything I’ve got so far,” Kim said defensively.
“I’m still coaxing information out of the memory banks. It isn’t easy using a remote processor to search through the isolinear chips.”
Zimmerman made a disapproving sound. “Well, from what I’ve been able to gather, the electrical readings could be compared to the sleep/waking cycle of animal brainwaves. There are synchronized, slow waves that mimic sleep patterns, while the low-voltage, fast activity reflects waking patterns.”
“Are these fluctuations connected in some way to the erratic impulses—” Zimmerman winked out, and Kim found himself talking to nothing.
He jumped up, his hands clenched. “Where’d he go?”
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Kes reminded him. “Computer, begin program.”
Zimmerman appeared, his hands clasped in front of him. “May I be of service?”
Kim sighed, slumping back down in his chair. “If this keeps up, we’ll never get anything done.”
Zimmerman pressed one hand to his forehead. Kim realized the doctor was trembling, and beads of sweat were running down the sides of his face.
“Is something the matter?” Kes asked.
The doctor seemed to be at a loss. “I’m not sure. Rapid breathing, cold, clammy skin… perhaps I am suffering from identification with my patients. I appear to have all the symptoms of shock.”
“You don’t have any patients,” Kim pointed out.
The doctor gazed around, growing more puzzled. “You’re correct.
I don’t understand this….”
Kes patted his arm. “Why don’t you lie down?”
He tried to pull away. “I am merely exhibiting the signs of shock, I don’t feel the symptoms.”
“I don’t see any difference,” Kes gently countered. Kim sat down at the computer terminal. At least the data were still on the screen.
“There’s a raised level of potassium ions in the bionutrient fluid, as well as evidence of unprocessed waste buildup. Maybe that’s what’s affecting the computer.”
Zimmerman sat down next to Kim, holding two fingers to his neck as if testing his pulse. “I thought the computer was gone.”
Kim groaned, wondering if they were going to have to go over everything all over again.
Kes didn’t seem daunted. “You were analyzing the nutrient fluid of the bioneural circuitry.”
“Ah, yes.” The doctor looked up. “I created a special memory file on our work, in case of accidental interruption. Accessing…” He seemed to grow stronger even as they watched him. “Yes… now I remember. I was performing a pneumoencephalography to determine if there are any intracerebral hemorrhages.”
Kim rubbed a hand through his sticky hair. He almost couldn’t blame Torres for blowing up at the doctor. “Well, Doc, do you have any bright ideas?”
“Once the pressure is stabilized, our primary goal is to reduce the conduction of nerve impulses.” The doctor got up from his terminal, pacing with his hand on his chin. “Let’s see, if we can find some way to block the ionic currents from passing through the cell membranes, that should prevent transmission.
That would require neutralizing the salt solution in the nutrient fluid, or we could try adding calcium ions—” “Simple ionic influx,” Kim agreed. “I could do that with a opthiographic device.”
“Not through a chamber seal,” Kes denied. “It’s made to block ion leakage.”
“Then that leaves the nutrient fluid as the least invasive method.”
The doctor sat back down, his fingers moving faster as they canceled the errors that popped onto the screen. “In other words—we’ll try a local anesthetic.”
“What about denervation sensitivity?” Kes asked.
The doctor explained for Kim’s benefit, “Damaged nerve cells are particularly sensitive to circulating or directly applied drugs.”
Kim thought enviously of Tuvok and Paris down in the Hub.
“They’re trying to establish a chemical-supply contact right now.”
The doctor ignored him. “Now, which anesthetic would be the most appropriate? It must be a local affect, or it will shut down the entire ODN. Lidocaine hydrochloride might be compatible.”
“What about tetrodotoxin?” Kes asked.
“Could be,” the doctor conceded. “That’s a powerful poison; but in minute concentrations it blocks the nerve conduction of sodium ion currents.” His eyes narrowed. “Tetrodotoxin also has a unique history. It’s found naturally on Earth in an organism called a puffer fish. I have legends in my memory banks of people consuming these poisonous fish, despite a yearly death rate in the hundreds.” His expression showed his astonishment.
“Now, I ask you, is eating such a sensory pleasure that corporeal beings would be prepared to die for it?”
“Not me,” Kes said seriously.
“Don’t encourage him,” Kim whispered in her ear. “He’s rambling again, and we can’t waste time—” “I can hear you,” Zimmerman told him in a singsong tone. “Don’t ever try that with a computer-animated being.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m tired and hungry and sticky…” Kim started to explain.
“Can you select one, Doctor?” Kes asked.
The doctor was starting to sag, but he managed to make a few notations on the tricorder. Kes took it from his limp hand.
“That’s the chemical we need, and the quantity that should suffice for the bioneural masses on the ship….”
Kes reached out to grab the doctor, but his arm was blurring in and out of reality. “You need to lie down,” she insisted, pulling on the parts of him that were in focus.
“I’m a hologram,” Zimmerman protested. “I don’t need to lie down.”
“You’re a sick hologram,” she said, firmly pushing him onto a bed.
“And you need to lie down.”
Kim was ready to call it quits and join the doctor on the next bed, but he couldn’t ignore the fascinating question of why the holographic simulation was exhibiting signs of distress. “I wonder if the erratic impulses are causing him to react this way.”
The doctor had one hand on his forehead, mumbling, “A normal biological reaction.”
“That would be great, if you were biological,” Kim told him.
“The computer has biological tissue.” Kes pulled a silver blanket over the doctor. “And we have a sick computer. No wonder he’s not feeling well.”