Boogeymen Part 8

Data said, "If by your responses you mean Rhonda Howe is an exceptionally beautiful woman, I agree with you."

Picard looked at Data, eyebrows up in question.

Data said, "I meant only that she bears an astonis.h.i.+ng resemblance to certain High Renaissance Madonnas."

"Of course," said Picard. "The question is, should we take her case?"

Wesley said, "Sounds as if she has Boogeyman trouble."

"Wesley's right, sir. I believe your instincts were correct when you chose to get involved in this scenario. We must take her case and defeat the Boogeymen once and for all if we can."

"If we can?" Wesley said.

"Just a figure of speech," Data said.

"Very well," Picard said. He tipped a key on a brown wooden box and said, "Send in Miss Howe."

Effie's voice came through the box, a tinny shadow of itself. "Yes, sir."

Miss Howe came back into the office and settled herself in the customer's chair. She was so completely s.e.xual a creature that sensuality shone through her most innocent movement like the sun behind a stained-gla.s.s window.

Picard said, "We've decided to take your case."

"How wonderful. Can you come to the mansion today?"

"I believe we have nothing else on the schedule."

Miss Howe smiled, and Picard said, "Freeze program." It was a nice smile, Picard thought, worth looking at a little longer.

"If the computer will freeze the program, maybe we don't have to fight the Boogeymen," Wesley said.

"We have been fooled before."

"Exit," said Picard.

A holodeck exit opened in a side wall. Beyond was an empty Enterprise corridor. Picard touched his insignia and called for Number One. No answer came. Data and Wesley called Riker with the same negative result. Picard said, "Is it possible that all three of our communicators are inoperative?"

"Possible," said Data, "but unlikely in the extreme."

"Then the question becomes: Do we want to escape from this particular scenario?"

"I think not, sir. I believe we should wait and see what the Boogeymen have planned."

"I concur entirely. Computer."

"Waiting," the computer said.

"Continue scenario at the Howe mansion."

Picard heard the computer's audio twinkle, and suddenly the four of them were standing in the two-story foyer of a magnificent twentieth-century home. The room was bigger than the bridge, smaller than Engineering, and rather old-fas.h.i.+oned, even for the time of Dixon Hill. The walls were highly polished wood panels between which hung tapestries depicting royal deer hunts. On the s.h.i.+ny floor were throw rugs the size of other people's rooms. At the far end wide stairways came down from a second-floor gallery on either side of a fireplace that was constructed from boulders.

Rhonda Howe said, "It was so good of you to come all the way out here. My room is upstairs."

"Your room?" Picard said.

"Where I was menaced by those awful men. I thought you might want to look for clues."

With her large green eyes she watched him hopefully. Picard tried not to fall into them. He said, "You thought right. Lead the way."

Picard, Data, and Wesley followed her across the foyer, their shoes ticking against the tessellated floor, silent against the thick rugs. When Miss Howe had one foot on the bottom step, a very tall man entered the foyer through a side door. White hair was swept back above his ears like wings, and a wispy white beard grew from his chin. He was dressed in a cutaway coat and striped pants. He bowed no more than he had to and in a deep resonant voice said, "Excuse me, Miss Rhonda, but your father would like to see Mr. Hill."

As if really concerned, she said, "Can it wait? Mr. Hill is busy right now."

"Your father is most insistent."

Picard said, "You three go ahead. I trust my operatives implicitly, Miss Howe." While she, Data, and Wesley continued up the stairs, Picard followed the butler back through the side door and along a pa.s.sage lined with heavily laden bookshelves. They went through an entrance that could only have been a primitive airlock, and into an enormous greenhouse. Picard immediately began to sweat.

The butler said, "Watch your step, sir. Creepers."

Aside from a sweat bath, this was the warmest room Picard had ever been in. He fanned himself with his hat as the butler led him along a winding brick path among the trees, bushes, and winding vines of a tropical forest. Fat drops of moisture fell from everything, including the butler and Picard. A sickly sweetness of too much perfume weighed down the air. Pale green light filtered through tentatively from the gla.s.s roof above.

In an open area a very old man sat in a wheelchair staring out through a gla.s.s wall at rolling gra.s.sy hills. Near him was a white iron table with a white telephone on it and a white iron chair next to it. A shawl was draped across the man's shoulders, and a rug was thrown across his knees. The man looked like the bitter end of a life that had not been easy. Hands like unbaked dough plucked at the rug. His face was no more than many pouches of sagging skin crossed with tiny red and blue veins. His lips were thin and nearly the same color as the skin. Only his eyes were alive. They were the same sea green as his daughter's, and they watched Picard, appraising him as if he were a head of beef.

"Mr. Howe, Mr. Hill," the butler said, and went away. Somewhere beyond the jungle a door closed.

Mr. Howe invited Picard to sit down, and then he said, "I suppose my daughter hired you to see about her boogeymen."

The word shocked Picard. Was it possible the computer would speak with him through this holoman rather than using its own computer voice? Carefully, Picard said, "Boogeymen?"

"Something wrong with the word? Ghost, then. Hobgoblin. Nightmare. Whatever."

The computer was playing with him. It knew the creatures Wesley had created were called Boogeymen. Using the strange double-think that computers used so well, it had fabricated a man who not only did not know a computer problem existed but was unaware of his own computer origin. Picard wondered briefly if flesh-and-blood people were any more aware of their origins or the problems of their Maker.

"You don't seem concerned," Picard said.

Mr. Howe made a noise of dismissal and said, "Like her father, she has an active imagination. Sometimes it's overactive. That's all."

"What do you expect me to do, then? Slug her upside the head and tiptoe out while she's unconscious?"

"I don't think the slugging will be necessary. Just tell her that we spoke and that you're leaving. You may keep any money she paid you." He shook his head. "It's not your fault she's a twit."

Picard remembered something Dixon Hill had said in a book called Sweet Oblivion. He quoted it to Mr. Howe: "'All I have is my good name. Imagine what my reputation would be like if I let people who weren't my clients run me off cases.' "

"I'm her father."

"She doesn't look like a child." Picard stood up and said, "If nothing else, she needs to be comforted. Even if that's all she buys, she's doing all right."

Mr. Howe studied his lap. Far away Picard heard the airlock door open, then the sound of people beating their way through the undergrowth. In a moment the butler came into the clearing followed by Rhonda Howe, Data, and Wesley.

Mr. Howe snickered and said, "Find anything?"

"How are you feeling, Dad?"

"Fine, fine. Did you find anything?"

Looking a little confused, Miss Howe said, "Nothing at all. Mr. Hill's operative, Mr. Data, thinks that's important."

Picard nodded at Data, who said, "Wesley and I searched Miss Howe's room and found no clues whatsoever. We also found nothing beneath Miss Howe's second-story window. No footprints, no torn shrubs, nothing dropped from a pocket."

"You see?" Mr. Howe said.

Data said, "The fact we found nothing is in itself conclusive. In this scenario, only Boogeymen would have the capability to hang outside Miss Howe's window and, as she describes it, moan at her, without leaving any clues behind."

"I don't get you," Mr. Howe said.

Data was about to explain when three Boogeymen leapt in through the wall of the greenhouse; the effect was like an explosion, pelting them with shards of gla.s.s. The two end ones were dressed in brown pin-striped suits and were waving twentieth-century projectile-spitting pistols. The one in the middle wore a gray suit and a fedora. In his whispering nightmare voice the Boogeyman in the middle said, "Captain Crusher. Captain Crusher."

Wesley backed toward the jungle, horror on his face. Picard and Data closed in front of him, their hands up, ready to do battle.

One of the hench-Boogeymen fired twice into the air, bringing a shower of broken gla.s.s down onto himself. At the same time, the chief mobster-Boogeyman burst between Picard and Data, grabbed Wesley, and threw him over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Seconds later, all three Boogeymen had ducked out through the jagged hole they'd made in the wall.

Data was already after Wesley and the three Boogeymen, and Picard was right behind him. He had only enough time to hear Mr. Howe comment calmly, "It's all her imagination."

The outside air seemed cold after the close heat of the greenhouse, and it refreshed Picard immediately. He threw off his trench coat and fedora as he followed Data to the first gentle rise and, not far away, saw the three Boogeymen moving along in a gorillalike crouch. One of the Boogeymen still carried Wesley over his shoulder.

"We can surely catch them," the captain said as they started down the hill.

Suddenly Picard was blinded by a flash of light.

Chapter Six.

RIKER SAT in the captain's chair and did not look happy to be there. He glared at the main viewscreen, just to have something to glare at besides the s.h.i.+ne on the toe of his left boot. On the screen stars sprinkled toward him as the Enterprise poked toward Memory Alpha at warp five. He turned and glared at Counselor Troi, who sat with her eyes closed. Dr. Crusher sat in the chair that Riker normally occupied. She did not glare at Troi, but waited with a look of expectation on her face. She was just as tense as Riker.

"They are confused," said Troi without opening her eyes, "and a little upset." She smiled. "No reading off Data, of course. The captain is trying hard not to be angry."

"What about?" Riker said.

"Impossible to say."

"What about Wesley?" Dr. Crusher said.

"He is bearing up well."

"That's something, I guess," Dr. Crusher said and leaned back in Riker's chair. She drummed her fingers on her thigh.

Riker called into the air, "La Forge?"

"Here, Commander," came La Forge's voice.

"Any luck getting onto the holodeck?"

"Not so far, sir. Every time we set up a bypa.s.s, the computer takes control by another route."

"Can't you override?"

"Override is inoperative."

"How about cutting through the doors?"

"Working on it now, sir. It'll take a few hours. We have to be careful where we cut. And tritanium alloy is not exactly tissue paper."

"Keep me posted."

"Aye, sir."

Riker stood up and began to pace. Dr. Crusher took another look at Troi, who shrugged apologetically. Dr. Crusher left the bridge.

The Boogeyman who'd been carrying Wesley threw him onto his bed and stood at its foot, grinning at him unpleasantly. A second sat in the chair behind his desk, and the third paced in front of the door.

This was weird, Wesley thought. Here he was in his bed seeing Boogeymen, just as if he were a kid again and in the middle of a nightmare. The difference this time was that he was awake and the Boogeymen were real now, or as real as the computer could make them. He was still afraid of them, but not the way he'd been terrorized by them in his nightmares. As far as he was concerned, these Boogeymen were just wild and unpredictable enemies. Being afraid of them seemed pretty rational.

The Boogeyman at the foot of the bed clasped his hands over his head and cried, "We win, Captain Crusher!" Something gooey and greenish yellow dripped from his teeth and into his beard.

"Right," Wesley said. "Congratulations. So the game is over. Return control of the holodeck to the computer."

"Return control?" the Boogeyman said. "We win!" He raised his hands in victory again.

The Boogeymen sounded confused, and suddenly Wesley realized why. No matter how evil they acted, the Boogeymen were still only manifestations of a computer program, and they couldn't do anything they hadn't been programmed to do. They had been designed to win and that was all. Wesley had frankly never thought the game would develop into a kidnapping. As far as he'd been concerned either he or the Boogeymen would blow the other out of the sky and then the game would be over. He'd given no thought to what might come after that, and so the Boogeymen had no idea either. They just grinned at him, dripping awful stuff.

The Boogeymen took no notice when Wesley rolled to his feet. But when he started for the door they ganged up in front of him. "We win," the one in the fedora said. Wesley had fought his share of Boogeymen by now, but he'd fought them only one at a time. He was not confident he could take on three at once. He'd probably give it a try after a while. He sat down on his bed and hoped that Picard and Data arrived before he was bored out of his mind.

Instinctively, Picard threw his hands over his eyes. When the glare was gone he blinked back tears and tried to look around through the gradually fading afterimage of sheet lightning.

"Captain," Data said, "are you all right?"

"Fine, Mr. Data." Except for the tearing and the blinking, it was true. "And you?"

"Undamaged, sir."

"Wesley?" Picard said hopefully.

No answer.