Picard dropped the pipe and put his hands over his ears.

Riker reached down and threw the pipe across the room. As he came back up Picard struck him across the jaw.

Riker put his arms up to block another blow, then struck back. He caught Picard above the eye, but it wasn't enough to knock the man out. The captain had always been in prime shape. Riker knew he'd have to hit him seriously, and knew he'd have to be willing to hurt him.

"This body is not my captain-my friend Jean-Luc," he told himself. "This body was just a vehicle for someone that is no longer here."

He swung hard, connecting with Picard's chin, and the captain went out like a light.

"I didn't enjoy that at all," said Riker, looking down at the sprawled man.

Amoret finished removing the bolts from the restraints holding Data. She swung the steel restraints outward, and Data sprang onto his feet.

He pulled up his shirt. The skin on his chest was partially opened, like a ripped plastic curtain. He reached in and made some adjustments by hand to the gleaming mechanisms inside his chest, then pulled his shirt back down.

The doors boomed again.

"Do you know of an escape route?" Data asked Amoret.

"I didn't a.s.sume I'd make it even this far," said Amoret. "I thought I would come up with something as I went along. The one thing I wanted to do most was ... here, let me show you."

She brought Data and Riker around to the van, and showed them the disk and a full rack of blanking equipment.

She then told them how she had saved Picard's original mind on the disk, and how the blanking equipment in the van could be used in reverse, to refill Picard's mind with what it had lost.

"Usually when the CS does something like that, they only put back selected parts. That's what they did to your captain last time. For that you need a lot of supplementary gear. But to just put back the whole mind, I can do that with the equipment in the van."

"Data," said Riker, "check out this equipment."

"Yes, sir. However, I have been examining it, and I believe I understand the theory behind the device. If it appears operational on closer inspection, I recommend we proceed with her plan as soon as possible, as we do not know if we will escape with Captain Picard, the disk, and the equipment. And the magnetic emulsion used on the disk is probably no more stable than a-"

"Okay, Data."

Data checked the equipment and found it satisfactory. Within a few minutes Amoret was hooking up Picard.

As they worked, the booming sounds from the concrete doors ceased.

To Riker, it suggested only that the CS were changing their mode of intended entry.

Chapter Fourteen.

TROI HAD EXPECTED the Dissenters to enter CephCom through some preexisting opening, such as a sewer.

She now saw that she was wrong. They were going to roll a boulder off a high cavern cliff to smash the concrete bas.e.m.e.nt wall from outside. Lomov and several others were already working the boulder loose.

It seemed an unlikely way to enter the belly of the whale, but Troi was even more worried about Odysseus himself.

She perceived that his Odysseus-persona had shrunk and weakened. He paced by himself along the bank of the rushing cave-river, casting dark looks at the concrete wall on the river's far bank. He was succ.u.mbing to regret and anxiety. He looked exhausted.

She approached him with the intent of a counselor: to bolster a flagging spirit. She would need his help getting into CephCom. She would have the best chance of completing her mission if he was able to complete his. He needed to be Odysseus again, with all his wiliness and resourcefulness. The mood of that character was the source of his effectiveness; without it he could do nothing.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

He inclined his head toward the concrete wall.

"I don't think many of us are going to leave that place alive. And it'll be my fault. This was my plan."

"I don't understand," said Troi. "I thought you were Odysseus, and this was your moment to return home. To string the bow no one else could string, show your true self, restore order in your house."

"Sounds great doesn't it," he said. "But I used to work in there. I know what's behind that wall. I have no bow, and what you're looking at is my true self."

"Are you telling me you aren't Odysseus anymore? You've gone back to being the man who arrested his own family?"

"I arrested them and sent them to their deaths," he said. "Nothing I do, no mind-game or heroic story, no pretense that I'm someone else, is going to change that. It'll be with me until the moment I die."

Troi could feel his Odysseus persona slipping away like sand through an hourgla.s.s; it was almost completely gone. She cast about for something to say. She thought of how she'd spied on him back at Alastor and seen him using props and pictures, like a method actor, and she realized he'd had to leave those props behind when the CS attacked. He had never gone back to his room before the skirmish and the flight. Now, without them, he couldn't sustain the character.

She had to help him or lose this chance to get into CephCom.

"No, it doesn't have to at all! That's not you. That was never a person at all, that was a programmed automaton. That man didn't have-free will, he didn't have his own brain or his own thoughts. He was just a ma.s.s of pre-approved reactions and feelings created by the stupid thought police! You didn't even exist as a man until you became Odysseus."

"But I can't actually do what Odysseus did," he said. "I can't do all those impossibly great things he did at Troy, or in the Cyclops' cave. So in what way can I be Odysseus?"

"Who are you to say what's possible? Who gave you the authority?" asked Troi. "The arrogant people on the other side of that wall think they have that authority-and that's what makes them so foolish. That's the gap in their armor!"p> the other side of that wall think they have that authority-and that's what makes them so foolish. That's the gap in their armor!"p> Troi let him think about it for a moment. They watched the Nummo twins throw a rope across the whitewater.

"You say it's impossible," Troi went on. "Didn't you also say, last night, that I'm a seer? That I'm not like other women, that I'm not a human? That shouldn't be possible either, should it? But I'm going to prove it's true. Concentrate on a feeling, and I'm going to tell you what it is, right now."

Odysseus stared at the river.

Troi strained her perception to its limits. She picked up a feeling so complete it was nearly a visual image. He was walking under a great open sky and someone small was sitting on his shoulders, shouting or laughing with joy.

"You're going back to a pleasant memory. Being with someone you loved. Your little boy. Your son, riding on your shoulders. Am I right?"

He turned to look at her in wonder.

"Now you know I'm a seer," she said. "I really am from another world, as you said I was. I'm no more an ordinary human than Calypso or Circe. I've been to countless worlds and most everything I've seen would be called impossible by the people on the other side of that wall. And as a seer I know that you really are Odysseus, no matter what you tell yourself otherwise. You're that very same hero of Homer's stories-how and why, I can't say, but you are. You will come through this alive, and we'll meet again when it's all over, just like you said last night. I already know how this story has to go."

Odysseus ran his hand through his gray-flecked beard.

"I was right," he said. "You really are from some other world. Like Circe or Calypso."

Troi felt a change taking place within him. She had supplied the support he needed to get back into character, and he was doing it with a vengeance. He was dropping doubts that had always been with him, doubts that he could ever overcome his personal agony and become who he wanted to be.

She left him so he could prepare himself. She sat on a rock from which she could watch him.

He stood near the river and gathered all the personal strength and will he possibly could. He was Odysseus now more than ever, just in time for his peregrination to end, just in time to come home and restore order where evil now reigned.

At the river's edge he bent over, scooped up dirt with his hands, and rubbed it into his clothes. Troi was baffled for a moment, then remembered that in The Odyssey, when this man returned home to Ithaca, he disguised himself as a beggar.

He looked up at the cliff. Lomov gave him the "ready" signal. The other Dissenters moved away from the cliff.

There was a moment of stillness, a sort of inner deep breath taken collectively by the Dissenters, an invocation and gathering of the emotional power of their mythoi. Troi could feel them tuning like an orchestra, two dozen people of all different races and cultures ready to merge into one sustained chord.

Then Odysseus returned Lomov's signal. Lomov got directly behind the boulder and gave a great shove, pushing with his head as well as his body, and the boulder rolled off the cliff, bounding and crashing downward, gathering momentum.

It hit the concrete wall with tremendous force, shaking the ground under Troi's feet.

A great cloud of dust rose in the air. Odysseus pulled Troi toward it, and all the Dissenters followed. They swam across the river, holding on to the rope that the Nummo had strung. Then, coughing concrete dust from their lungs, they clambered up over the remnants of the boulder and the broken slabs of the wall itself, which had indeed shattered.

They were now in a square room with large water pipes on one side.

Two men, shocked into immobility, wearing blue CS service coveralls, stood at their water-control station. A television set on a stand intoned a rerun of the news report about the new CS truth drug. Cups of coffee sat steaming on top of the television.

"h.e.l.lo gents," said Odysseus. "I gather you handle a lot of water here. Do you know how to swim?"

As the CS men tried to reach for a phone, Odysseus and Lomov each grabbed one, pulled them to the hole in the wall, and pitched them out. Their splashes were followed by shouts that faded as they were carried downstream.

The Nummo twins were already taking readings and pulling switches on the water-mains console.

"They were hydraulic engineers when they lived above ground," Odysseus whispered to Troi. "They designed this system. They're going to overload the water pressure and burst the pipes right above us."

Meanwhile Lomov wedged a huge piece of concrete against the one door into the room, and other Dissenters jimmied the elevator controls and forced open the elevator's hoistway.

"Rhiannon," said Odysseus, "you know what to do."

The adolescent girl almost started directly on her way; but instead, walked over to Troi and gave her a hug. Troi realized this was her good-bye. She found herself hugging back.

Then Rhiannon let go, and without looking back, climbed into the hoistway and disappeared up a ladder.

Odysseus climbed in after her and motioned Troi to follow. They began to climb the ladder. The steel rungs were slippery with black grease, and Troi had trouble maintaining footing.

Far up the shaft Troi could see Rhiannon climbing fast, fearlessly. She was already several floors above them.

Troi waited while Odysseus peered through the crack between the hoistway doors. "Wait here," he said, then parted the doors and stepped out.

The doors shut again and Troi watched through the crack. Beyond was a huge parking garage housing fleets of CS vans and armored personnel carriers. There was chaos as CS soldiers and service personnel ran in all directions. Water spouted from burst pipes along the walls. The floor was a lake.

A helmeted CS man fumbled with the door of a huge personnel carrier-truck, scrambling to get it out of the garage before the flooding got worse. Odysseus approached him with the body language of a vagrant asking for a handout.

The CS man shook his head, annoyed but obviously not surprised-there were a lot of poor on this planet.

Other CS officers watched for a moment, then, seeing no danger from the pitiful homeless person, went back to moving vehicles.

The CS officer Odysseus was pet.i.tioning grew impatient and pushed at him. Odysseus let himself be pushed until both men were hidden from the view of the rest of the garage. Then Odysseus yanked the man's helmet off and knocked him unconscious.

Odysseus hid him under a mobile radiation cannon, took his keys, and jumped into the armored truck. He started the monstrous diesel-turbine engine, drove over to the elevator doors, and slammed a switch that opened the back of the truck.

The Dissenters climbed in. Troi sat next to Odysseus in the cab.

Odysseus drove his Trojan Horse ahead through the lapping waters. He'd gone only a few yards when a one-eye pulled up beside his window and peered in.

Odysseus floored the gas and spun the truck's wheel. The truck bounded over a barrier and crashed onto a spiral ramp. The truck's tires screeched as he careened up the ramp. In the rearview mirror Troi could see the one-eye losing the race behind them.

"Keep your heads low," he said. "Deanna, you'll be with me for a ways. I'll physically show you where the cell blocks are and where your communicators might be, if they're here at all. Then you're on your own."

Odysseus spun the wheel again and the truck veered into another parking garage. He drove among the rows of CS military vehicles for a while, and then stopped.

"First team," he said. Coyote, Gunabibi, and several other Dissenters disembarked. Each embraced Troi as they left.

"All done. This will wake him up," said Amoret.

She flicked a switch on her blanking equipment.

Picard's eyes opened. He looked into the faces of Riker, Data, and the red-haired woman who had blanked his mind in the first place.

He put his hand up and touched the electrode-cap on his head.

"Commander Riker ... Data ... Strange," he said. "Just a moment ago, I was about to undergo this same operation, in my cell, alone with this woman ... and I blinked, and the scene shifted entirely. And now my jaw feels as if it's been kicked by a horse."

"Looks good," said Amoret. "An indication that we've restored his brain to its state at the moment the original disk was made."

"Would someone please explain ..."

"Yes, we will, Captain, but I want to try something first," said Riker. "Bear with me. Complete this, please. 'To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image ...'"

Picard completed the line.

"'... and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'"

"Thank you, sir. Glad to have you back."

"I would like to express my approbation as well, sir," said Data. "But please excuse me for a moment." He got out of the van and could be heard pacing around the room.

"Well, I feared the worst had happened to you both," said Picard. "I saw your capture on Rampart television. But is either of you going to tell me what happened?"

"Sir ..." said Riker with a sigh, "you were brainwashed for several hours. It would have been permanent if Amoret hadn't saved your mind on a disk. We just got finished feeding it back in."

Amoret smiled in spite of herself. "I looked at some of the things on the disk. I got to know you. That's what did it."