Chapter 13
Wondering what she'd gotten herself into, Mollie Caudell fixed her meanest stare – the kind that stopped grizzled soldier and tardy schoolboy alike in their tracks – on the woman with the strawberry blonde hair. She futilely wished that she were armed, and briefly considered scooping a large rock off the ground. She never found out whether she would have risked making a grab for one, because at that moment, her body was seized by an invisible force that felt like the hand of God. She sucked in a breath to scream, and the world around her vanished in a haze of brilliant points of light.
Then nothing.
Mollie wasn't sure how long she actually spent in that senseless, timeless, place between here and there… only that so many jumbled and terrifying thoughts raced through her mind all at once that she tried once more to breathe, to scream, even to move. But of course, there was nothing at all. No air to breathe, no lungs to inhale, no mouth to scream, and no arms or legs to move. She simply was. Was she blind? Was this death? If so, was this limbo, or had the preachers all been wrong? Did she still even exist? She had once heard Nate use the phrase "I think, therefore I am." She thought, but in the formless void that had swallowed her whole, "I think, therefore I'm dead" seemed equally as logical. The emptiness beckoned, Mollie tried to scream once more…
… and exhaled a great, shuddering breath into a world that suddenly existed once more. With her senses returning, she realized that she could not have been in that place, if it was a place at all, for longer than a smattering of seconds, and already the memory of her terror was fading as fast as the tingling sensation on her skin. Not trusting herself to move yet though, she took in what surroundings she could.
A noise assailed her ears, a mingling of voices and confusing mechanical birdsong, the likes of which she'd never heard before; beeps, whirrs, and chirping that all sounded somehow unnatural. Before her was a wall in paneled shades of grey and beige, running along wholly unfamiliar contours, and reflecting the bright overhead light in a way that told her the materials were likewise something new. There was something else, positioned between her and the wall at just above waist-height, which she tried to focus her gaze on.
That proved to be too much, and the shock of what was happening caught up with her suddenly. Mollie's vision went grey and narrow, and her knees buckled. She threw out her hands to catch herself, but it was a futile gesture in her stunned condition, and only a hand that caught her beneath one arm prevented her from cracking her head on the object in front of her.
"Easy, easy!" The owner of the soft female voice behind Mollie remained maddeningly out of sight, but a firm grip turned her around slowly, and eased her backwards on to the strange object she'd seen, which she now recognized as some kind of table, or elevated bed.
Mollie sat only reluctantly, and then only because she was unable to stand.
The voice intruded once more, saying, "Just relax. Put your head down and lean forward." Once more a slim hand demonstrated by action, pushing her body forward until her head was down by her knees. She resisted, but the person on the other end of that hand was strong enough to hold her there for the moment it took to recover her wits and her sight. Her stomach rebelled at the brief sensation of vertigo, but she forced it down with a dry-throated swallow, simply glad that the gauzy grey haze over her vision was all but gone.
Sitting up, Mollie found herself face to face with a woman of almost her same height, although her raven black hair, elegant features, and gently slanted eyes draw most of Mollie's attention. She had a clear memory of that Doctor Crusher standing in front of her when the transition happened, but there was no sign of her now. "Who are you?" she asked uneasily, trying to get her bearings.
Alyssa Ogawa regarded her new patient sympathetically, and decided that a less formal introduction was in order. The poor woman in front of her was shaking, and staring at her with eyes the size of saucers. "I'm the head nurse here," she said, smiling reassuringly. "My name's Alyssa. What's yours?"
"M-Mollie Caudell," Mollie replied, trying to force herself to stop trembling. It didn't work, and she felt a flash of embarrassment – what must she look like, a seasoned soldier acting like a frightened kitten in front of the exotic but unthreatening woman in the curiously silly black and grey one-piece jumpsuit? This nurse was however easier to deal with than the tall, brash woman in Rivington who'd called herself a doctor. Mollie had first-hand experience with nurses, male and female, but she could not recall ever hearing about a female surgeon. You're from the future! Her own words came back suddenly, and she belatedly realized that she was finally discovering just what those outwardly ludicrous words actually meant.
Dimly, Mollie realized that Alyssa was asking her a question, but she had eyes only for the rest of the room she found herself in. With the exception of a glass window into a smaller room, and a set of crimson doors that strangely had no knob or fastener, the rest of the room was walled in entirely by the same shades of grey and beige, placed at an angle that bulged the center of the wall outward, where a strip of flat black ran horizontally around the room. She only recognized the doors for what they were, in fact, because as she watched, they pulled apart to allow a tall, slender man in the same type of jumpsuit to enter. In a few places, black squares and rectangles were set into the panels, and on more than a few of those, she could make out what could only be letters and numbers moving of their own accord across the otherwise plain surfaces. Lined up against the wall were several raised beds, each encrusted with flashing lights and metallic equipment that Mollie couldn't make heads or tails out of. All but one of the beds was empty, and her view of that last was spoiled by several people's backs, one of which was clothed in a billowy sundress – Doctor Crusher, Mollie assumed.
The shaking had begun to subside, but with what she was seeing, it returned full force, along with a sickness in her stomach. She had thought the Rivington men nearly magical when she first experienced some of their technology – the cool air during the summer months, their immaculately printed books with the color pictures, and their wireless telegraphs. Now, a revelation washed over her like a hurricane wind. If the Rivington men had come from some point in the future, these people had come from a far more distant time, wielding technology (for that was what she now understood it to be) so advanced that it made the wonders of Rivington seem mundane and petty.
A nearby voice brought her suddenly out of her daze, and she realized that Alyssa had been asking her a question. She refocused her eyes on the woman, but found herself completely speechless.
The nurse waved a hand in front of her eyes, and repeated, "I said, how are you feeling?"
Mollie didn't think the tremors that still ran through her would ever subside now, but looking down at the concerned face in front of her, with its exotic features, she found her voice again. "W-well enough." An infinitesimal pause. "Thank you kindly." The last came out more meekly than she'd intended, and she recognized the lost, vulnerable tone she'd fallen into when Nate had taught her how to read by the dying glow of a campfire. Then she remembered why she was here in the first place. "Where's Ruffin?"
Alyssa Ogawa smiled reassuringly, guiding Mollie's gaze to the one occupied bed and the cluster of people that surrounded it, talking in low, hurried voices. "You're friend's going to be fine. The bullet only caught a fragment of the bone, and severed the femoral artery. It was touch and go there for a moment, because of the amount of blood he lost, but Doctor Crusher is the best in the Fleet." A touch of pride lit her face at that last comment, but Mollie hardly noticed.
She didn't understand everything the nurse had said, but the import sank home quickly enough. The fact that he would survive was the final proof in Mollie's mind that these people were really who they said they were: she'd seen wounds far less severe than Ruffin's kill men before, either through bleeding or infection. Those who survived similar wounds nearly always left one of their limbs behind, and Mollie shuddered, remembering the recovery from the much lighter wound she'd taken at Gettysburg. It had kept her out of the third day's murderous charge, but that had brought no comfort lying on the ground amid the heat and the stink and the insects, trying to make sure that no surgeon accidentally uncovered her true identity. She brought herself out of that bitter memory with a mental shake, and tried to imagine how they could have replaced a person's blood, or how they could operate so quickly that they were nearly finished less than ten minutes after arriving in this place: then gave up when her imagination proved unequal to the challenge.
"Is there anything ya'll cain't fix?" Mollie didn't mean to start making a bother of herself, but there were some things she just had to know. And besides, these people, whoever they were, seemed far more open and friendly than any of the Rivington me she'd gotten to know. Even so, she didn't intend to push her luck – or their patience.
Alyssa's smile widened, although it was tinged with a faint edge of sardonic humor. "There are plenty of things we still haven't quite gotten a handle on yet, I'm afraid." That was true enough, as far as it went, though she forbore mentioning that most of those were unheard of in this time and place.
Mollie still looked skeptical. After all of these miracles, she found it hard to believe that these surgeons would ever leave behind a pile of limbs after a battle, and said as much.
Now the nurse grimaced, her face growing more disturbed as Mollie explained what she had seen of the field hospital in Pennsylvania, and the agonizing return to Virginia, first aboard a lurching ambulance, and then marching with her arm pinned up by her own bedroll. Normally, she would never have considered talking about her time in the army with anyone but Nate and the other survivors of the 47th North Carolina, but between the incredible things she was witnessing, and the ease the nurse seemed to possess with that brash woman who called herself a doctor, she took the plunge with a mental shrug.
"We're well beyond that, I can assure you," Alyssa said, recovering her smile. "In fact, as far as I know, there is only one crewmember here that has ever required an amputation. If you would like, I could even remove that scar on your arm."
Mollie blinked, taking that in. Unconsciously, her left hand rose to her right arm, and began fingering the sleeve just above the still-livid crease in her bicep left by a Minie-ball. She considered the offer briefly, only slightly surprised to find just how much she actually believed in what was happening, before dismissing the idea. The scar no longer ached, and now, she found that she considered it almost a badge of honor. While so many other women had sat at home with their knitting needles and lace handkerchiefs, she had been right on the front lines. Mollie knew there had to be others like her… but they were a select group, and she preferred to keep that proof, even if she wouldn't be allowed the satisfaction of admitting it openly in her own time.
Though she was extremely curious as to how the woman had known about it, seeing as it was hidden beneath the sleeve of her uniform tunic.
Then something Alyssa said struck a chord in her conscious mind, and she frowned. She had to think a little more than usual to make sense of the way the nurse spoke and it took a moment to understand some of what she said. "Crewmember?" she asked, feeling that sick sensation returning. The trembling had slowed to almost nothing, but now it returned in force. "Where are we?"
"Ah, I take it that Beverly – sorry, Doctor Crusher – didn't explain much to you?" The nurse clucked her tongue disapprovingly, though Mollie got the distinct impression that she wasn't surprised. Then giving her full attention back to her patient, continued, "We're aboard a ship called the Enterprise. We didn't intend to –"
"A ship?" Mollie interrupted. She had only been aboard a ship once, crossing the James River after the 47th North Carolina mustered almost a decade ago, and found that this was almost more difficult to accept than those things that she could not understand. "Miss Alyssa, I've seen some mighty peculiar things, but I've never yet heard the likes of a ship that didn't feel like riding an angry mule. And I surely never did see the boat big enough to hold a room like this!"
Ogawa winced and stifled a sigh. This explanation promised to take some time. The sickbay comm chimed then, drawing a startled twitch from Mollie, whose nerves hadn't quite settled yet.
"Bridge to Sickbay," a hollow, even voice said from nowhere, "medical team to Transporter Room Three, possible casualties are enroute."
The nurse cringed, half expecting the frightened woman in front of her to leap head first into the ceiling, and was pleasantly surprised when Mollie only glanced about wide-eyed, and murmured, "Wireless telegraph," to herself.
"Alyssa," Crusher called from across the room with a harried shout, "Take a medical team to Transporter Room Three, we may have more wounded."
Ogawa nodded an acknowledgement, suddenly all business, and called out sharp commands to several of the people in the big room, while Mollie looked on wide-eyed as men and women alike rushed to obey the diminutive nurse. That simple fact, more than anything else, banished the last traces of doubt from her mind.
"Doctor, I'll need someone to watch Mrs. Caudell," Ogawa announced over the sudden ruckus she'd created.
Crusher scrubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand, and glanced around swiftly, clearly still focused on the immediate patient before her. "Doctor Bashir! Take over for Nurse Ogawa; she's needed in the transporter room right now."
The slim, dark-haired man Mollie had seen enter the room a few moments earlier now stepped into view once more, flashing her a friendly smile as he replied, "Not a problem, Doctor Crusher. I came up here in the first place because I guessed that anything interesting happening would happen on this ship first. It's developed quite the reputation, you know."
The amused snort that came from Crusher might have been a reply, but Bashir waved it off cheerfully, turning to his new patient. Alyssa Ogawa was already sprinting out through the sliding doors with three equipment-laden crewmen scurrying right behind.
"So, what do you think of the twenty-fourth century so far?" Bashir asked, still smiling.
Mollie shook her head slowly. "I don't rightly know, Doc, but then, I haven't seen all that much of it, have I? Alyssa said this was a ship, but I never heard about a ship big enough to hold a room like this… and that ain't talking about what's outside that door, neither. Or why it ain't swaying all fit to make a body sick."
Bashir cocked an eyebrow inquisitively. "Swaying?" Then what she was talking about clicked, and his mouth dropped open. "Oh." His jaw continued to move soundlessly for a few seconds. Now how do they expect you to explain this to her, Julian? When he saw that she was still waiting expectantly for an explanation, he began, "Ah… well, it's like this…"
"Bridge to Doctor Bashir," the comm unit chimed suddenly. He wasn't familiar with too many of the Enterprise's crew, so he couldn't identify the voice, but the thought was the same. Saved by the bell… err, buzzer.
"Bashir here," he replied, rolling his eyes for effect at the way that sounded, and drawing a muffled snort of laughter from Mollie.
"Doctor, report to Transporter Room Three for an away team assignment."
Turning away from the biobed, Bashir surveyed the room quickly, and sighed. He guessed that with Crusher still up here, they wanted another doctor on the away mission, and that meant him. But that still left the matter of his new patient. He couldn't simply leave her unattended, and yet every technician and nurse he could see appeared to be already occupied. For the time being, the only qualified doctors aboard any of the ships in their small fleet were he and Beverly Crusher; Doctor Selar, he'd heard, had taken a position with the Vulcan Academy of Medicine when the previous Enterprise was destroyed.
Of course, to be very technical, there was one more qualified medical doctor he could call on, though he didn't expect Crusher to be happy about it. On the other hand, that brief summons from the bridge was delivered in precisely that atonal voice that told him that they expected him down in the transporter room ten minutes ago. Oh well, I'll be out of here before Beverly notices. "Computer," he said with an air of resignation. "Activate Emergency Medical Hologram."
The air before him wavered for an instant, and was suddenly occupied by a bald, striking man in a medical uniform. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency," it said by rote. He thought he heard a faint thump from behind him.
"No emergency," Bashir said, "I just need you to look after a patient for me."
The vacant expression on the hologram's face vanished immediately, replaced by something that could only be called exasperated. "I'm a doctor, not a nursemaid," it protested.
Bashir pointedly ignored it, turning back to the biobed. "Mollie, this is…" he trailed off, staring at the body lying horizontally across the surface.
The EMH sniffed, observing, "She's fainted. Obviously a testament to your superior medical skills."
Bashir's customary smile soured. "Then she'll be that much easier to keep an eye on. I suppose even you can manage that." He ignored the EMH's indignant squawk, and took a moment to study the tattered, travel-stained butternut rags Mollie wore. Hoping that whatever disguise Commander Data devised for his use would be in at least a slightly better state, Julian Bashir swerved through the room at a jog, and slipped between the double doors before they'd fully opened.
*****
Beverly Crusher sank back against the maroon cushions of the small couch in Captain Picard's ready room, and heaved a tired sigh as she brushed sweat-dampened strands of hair out of her eyes. His request for her to 'drop by' after she'd finished in sickbay had been informal enough, but she'd known him long enough to detect more than a trace of urgency in his tone. As a result, she'd only stopped at her quarters long enough to grab a speedy sonic shower, and to change back into her uniform. She may have had to perform surgery in that ungainly contraption of cloth and wire, but Crusher was damned if she'd parade through the bridge in it.
From behind his desk, Picard glanced up as she entered unannounced, took in her disheveled condition, and swallowed the first thing he'd intended to say as being rather… undiplomatic, under the circumstances. Instead, he rallied with, "My word, Beverly, you look like you just ran the Janus VI marathon."
The glower she turned on him convinced him that his second choice of words was no better than the first. "Err… Can I get you something?" he asked with a placating gesture to his own steaming mug.
Crusher made him weather her basilisk gaze for another long moment before finally relenting. "Anything cold and wet," she said. "How about a nice…" she started to say "lemonade," and then her doctor's mind cruelly began listing some of the various things that may well have been living in the last glass of lemonade she'd had, and she swallowed hard, finishing, "iced tea."
Picard gave the command, and passed the frosted glass across his desk as soon as it finished materializing.
The first sip was a cool haven from the sweltering reality of moments before, and Crusher had to restrain herself somewhat forcefully from draining the entire glass at once. "Thank you, Jean-Luc," she said after a beat. "I'm sure you didn't call me up here just to offer me a drink, though. Let's hear it."
Turning to look at the stars outside of his ready room window, and the crescent of the moon that dominated it, Picard elected not to mince words. "I want to know what really happened down there, Beverly. I'm afraid my handling of the situation was less than stellar, and I can't be sure of that much until I know what happened down there."
Crusher nodded understandingly. Ah. "You gave Captain Sheridan a hard time, didn't you?"
Picard sighed, and his frown deepened. He should have been used to having Beverly Crusher see right through him, and on occasions, it was welcome to have a friend like that; but it was still damned inconvenient at times. "I may have overreacted slightly," he hedged.
"You read him the riot act," Crusher translated.
"Which is why I wanted to find out what really happened down there, from you."
"Fair enough." Crusher sipped from her glass and shrugged. "I didn't see everything, of course; I did have a patient to deal with, if you recall. I'll include all of the rest in my detailed report, but it happened a little while after we reached Rivington. It was dark by then, but right after leaving the train platform, we spotted the ruins just outside of the town itself."
"Ruins?" Picard's interest was piqued by that word more than any other. It was the archeologist in him, and he pushed it aside with some effort, to remain focused on the task at hand.
Crusher shook her head. "Your guess is as good as mine. Better probably, but you didn't see them, and I did. If I had to speculate, I'd say they had been storage depots of some kind. Warehouses maybe, or barns, even. But there was plenty of wreckage around." Her eyes narrowed in concentration as she remembered something. "Mr. Garibaldi did find one piece that he thought was especially important. Captain Sheridan was also rather excited if I recall. There was printing on one board, which said something about ready-to-eat food, or something like that."
Picard frowned at that, both in annoyance that she hadn't remembered a possibly important clue, but mostly because in this day and age, that simply sounded… wrong. Unfortunately, his knowledge of history, while formidable, was spread across dozens, perhaps hundreds of worlds, and what part of that resided on Earth was limited primarily to the events following the Third World War, and he was forced to set that aside.
"I checked my tricorder then, to see if I could pick out anything useful that might be a bit underground." Now Crusher merely looked sheepish. "Unfortunately, I'd brought a medical tricorder – not quite what I needed down there, as it turns out. But I did locate two life signs in the woods nearby, just outside of town. That struck me as unusual, so I pointed it out to Captain Sheridan. That's when Mr. Garibaldi tackled me. The both of us, I should say," she corrected hastily when Picard swung his seat back around to stare at her. "I don't know how, but he must have heard the shots coming before the rest of us.
"However he did it, I can't fault his speed," she went on. "Whoever was shooting at us with those slug throwers must have been dampening the sound somehow. One of the people following us wasn't so lucky, and I just finished patching up the hole in his leg. I pointed out their locations to Captain Sheridan, but no more than a few seconds later, I lost them."
"Lost them, Beverly? I thought you said you located them on your tricorder?"
Crusher loosed an explosive, exasperated breath. "I had! One moment they were there, right on the screen, and the next…" She shrugged, and raised her hands, left palm up, the right still grasping the glass she was still nursing. "I lost them. They were still there – the shooting went on for at least a few more minutes while I crawled over to our newest sickbay resident, but I couldn't spot them on the tricorder any longer.
"It was while I was making contact with our new friends down there, that Captain Sheridan must've begun firing in the direction I'd shown them."
Picard's frown had turned into a chiseled fissure on his face at this point in the narrative, and the cords in his neck were tightening. "Beverly, that is a clear violation of the Prime Directive."
Crusher's mouth opened, and she inhaled, suddenly realizing what must have happened. "He didn't tell you, because he didn't know yet. He wasn't answering his comm-badge, so I couldn't tell him before I beamed out…" She was talking to herself now, putting the pieces together. "… and even if I had told him…" Now she turned fully on the captain. "Of course. When you had him beamed up suddenly, he took it as a challenge to his authority on the away mission, and then you no doubt chewed him out like a junior lieutenant who'd just crashed your personal yacht." She shook her head again, but this time the motion was simply born of understanding.
"The Prime Directive doesn't apply any longer," she told a startled Jean-Luc Picard with absolute certainty in her every word. "Jean-Luc, these people have already been interfered with. There's a girl down in sickbay right now who knows where we're from!"