"What can you see?" asked the earthmover.

Inarh regarded the buildings for a moment. "They're not entirely unoccupied," he said. "There are drifters in every one of them. Not too many-two or three in each."

Erid knew then what the man's power was. He could see things ... at a distance, in the dark and maybe right through solid objects. It was a handy talent to have under the circ.u.mstances.

"Unfortunately," Inarh continued, "the power's gone. No light, no heat." He chuckled. "Strangely enough, the water's still on. Nothing like the efficiency of city government, is there?"

"I don't mind it a bit," Rahatan told him, "as long as it works to our advantage." He rubbed his chin for a moment. "Take Leyden, Denara, and Erid and clear out the first building. When you're done, let me know and you can start on the next one."

"Understood," said Inarh.

As it happened, it didn't take long to evict the building's tenants. When they saw Leyden and Erid, their eyes opened wide and they ran away.

In the long run, Erid thought, the drifters would prove their undoing. They would say something about a man with skin like an insect's sh.e.l.l, and another man with huge, purple veins, and someone would use that information to trace the transformed to the Old Quarter.

But in the meantime, they would all have a place to sleep. That wasn't a bad thing at all.

As Erid and the others had promised, they signaled Rahatan when the building was empty. Then they moved on to the next one, and the one after that, with much the same results.

They kept going until they had cleared out all six of the condemned buildings on the block. And each time they emptied one out, a bunch of transformed moved in. Finally, in accordance with Rahatan's orders-which he sent through Paldul-Erid's group settled in the last building themselves, with the understanding that a couple of their comrades were to join them.

Erid picked out a set of rooms near the north wall of the structure, where he was less likely to have to contend with light streaming in through the windows. He was pleased to find some furniture in the rooms, even if it was only a bed, a table, and a chair, none of which was in particularly good condition. And as Inarh had said, the water was still in service, though he had to let the faucet run for a while until the water lost its dirty, brown color.

He was just about to taste it when he heard a tapping at the door. Cautiously, he moved away from the wash basin and peered out into the anteroom. Someone was there, all right.

It was Corba.

She smiled. "Iwaswonderingifyoumightwantsome company."

Erid didn't know exactly what to say to that. After all, she had taken him by surprise.

"ItwasjustthatIfeltsolonelyinasetofroomsallbymyself, and ... well,Ithoughtyoumightbefeelingthesameway."

He nodded. "I was," he said, though he really hadn't had time to think about it. "Come on in."

Corba did as he suggested. Then she shut the door behind her and looked around, her arms folded across her chest.

"There are two bedrooms," Erid told her, trying to be helpful. "You can have whichever one you want."

That's when he noticed Corba was shivering.

He didn't understand. It was warm down here in the city, even at night. Then it occurred to him it might have something to do with her power and the demands it made on her body.

"Idon'twanttobeabother," she said apologetically, "butifyoucouldjustholdmeforawhile ..."

Erid held her. In fact, he held her for a long time.

"Hmm," said Dr. Crusher, studying the results of her latest scan on the overhead readout.

She didn't like the look of them. Not at all.

Her patient, the X-Man known as Archangel, looked up at her from the biobed he was lying on. "Sounds ominous," he told her.

To tell you the truth, she thought, it looks ominous. But, of course, she didn't say that.

"It's just something in your blood," she replied.

"In my blood?" he echoed. "You mean, besides my bad, old mutant genes?"

The doctor smiled-or tried to. Picking up her tricorder from a nearby counter, she established a link with the biobed and downloaded the information that was bothering her. Then she showed it to her patient.

"See those green dots?" she asked.

Archangel examined the tricorder. "Uh huh."

"Those represent traces of techno-organic material." Crusher frowned. "They remind me of something I've seen before-in a cybernetically enhanced species called the Borg."

The mutant shrugged. "Never heard of them."

"They're immensely powerful," she explained. "They conquer other races and a.s.similate them into a shared-consciousness collective. If I were p.r.o.ne to nightmares, the Borg would be in all of them."

"And now you're wondering if the techno-organics in my bloodstream make me some kind of threat."

She was impressed with his leap of logic. "It's my job," the doctor said, "to wonder about things like that."

He dismissed the idea with a movement of his hand. "Don't give it another thought. Some time ago, I was captured by a creep named Apocalypse. He severed my natural wings-if you can call having wings 'natural'-and replaced them with razor-edged, techno-organic equivalents."

As Archangel described the experience, his tone remained matter-of-fact-but Crusher noticed a flicker of pain in the mutant's eyes. She imagined she knew why, too.

After all, his wings appeared to be an integral part of his anatomy-in the same way arms and legs were a part of anyone else's. He must have suffered terrible trauma when he realized his wings had been removed in favor of something cold, dark, and metallic.

"Recently," the mutant continued, "it turned out the techno-organics were some kind of sh.e.l.l-a way to protect my real wings until they could grow back. But if you ask me what Apocalypse gained by amputating my wings and then helping them grow again ... I'd have a tough time giving you an answer."

"But as far as you know," the doctor said, "the techno-organics in your system are dormant ... harmless."

"As far as I know," he confirmed.

Crusher would have felt better if she had more to go on-more about this Apocalypse character, especially. However, her patient seemed to be telling the truth, ifhis biosigns were any indication. As far as he could tell, the techno-organics in his blood posed no threat to anyone.

"All right," she said. "I think we've learned all we're going to learn about you."

Archangel looked at her. "Then I'm free to go?"

He made being there sound like a stint in a penal colony. "Not yet," the doctor told him. "All you're free to do right now is join Commander La Forge on the other side of the room."

He frowned. "Whatever you say."

Crusher could feel the tension inside him-the hatred of being pinned down. But the mutant seemed able to cope with it.

Sitting up, he swung his legs over the side of the biobed. Then, with a flurry of his wings, be propelled himself across sickbay and alighted in front of a very surprised Geordi La Forge.

The doctor grunted. Show-off she thought.

Then she saw Wolverine enter the room, and she prepared the biobed for her next patient.

Geordi closed the door to his office in engineering. Then he sat down in his chair, leaned back, and pondered what he had learned from his studies of the X-Men.

To his regret, very little of it seemed useful.

Not that every one of the examinations hadn't been interesting in its own way. Colossus, for instance, actually seemed to increase his ma.s.s when he converted his body tissues into an amazingly tough, metallic substance. Unfortunately, the engineer hadn't been able to determine where that extra ma.s.s came from.

Shadowcat, on the other hand, appeared to have control over the very atoms in her body-to the extent that she could move them through the atoms in an object or even another person, faciliating a phasing effect. Years earlier, Geordi and one of his colleagues had experienced a similar effect related to chroniton build-ups-but, as his instruments showed, the X-Man's abilities had nothing to do with chronitons.

And then there were the techno-organics both he and Doctor Crusher had discovered in Archangel. Again, an intriguing discovery, but it shed no light on the X-Men's appearance in the Enterprise's twenty-fourth century.

Only one of the exams had turned up anything potentially valuable in that regard-and that was the one to which he had subjected Nightcrawler. The verterons he had found on the mutant still stuck in his engineer's mind, suggesting a solution he couldn't quite latch on to.

Without question, the proximity of verteron particles could have caused a malfunction in the X-Men's timehooks. Heck, it might have kept them from working at all, though that obviously hadn't happened.

But why had the mutants been whipped into Geordi's milieu, of all places? If their appearance there was just a coincidence, it was a staggeringly unlikely one.

After all, there were an infinite number of points in times.p.a.ce-an infinite number of destinations. The X-Men could have wound up at the dawn of time or in the fifty-fourth century ... on Risa or Rura Penthe ... in a reality with bipedal humanoids or without them.

However, they hadn't done any of those things. They had materialized in a frame of reference not far removed from their own-in which, as luck would have it, they actually had some friends they could call on.

The engineer grunted. Staggering, all right.

But if they were drawn to the Enterprise's twenty-fourth century, why not to the Enterprise itself? What was it about Starbase 88 that had pulled the mutants to it like a magnet?

And why several months from the time they had seen the X-Men last? What was it about this time that made it more attractive than any other?

Tons of questions, Geordi mused. And as usual, not nearly enough answers to suit him.

That meant more digging. And the place to do it was on Starbase 88-either personally, or with the help of someone on the station.

Of course, he already had information on the manner of the mutants' appearance there. What he lacked was data on the station itself, background on its day-to-day operations.

If he sifted through enough of it, he might turn up a clue-and sometimes a clue was all the engineer needed.

Chapter Twelve.

WHEN ERID AWOKE, he found that he wasn't alone in his bed. Corba was there as well, snuggled comfortably alongside him under the blanket he had found lying around.

He smiled and tried to go back to sleep. After all, it wasn't quite light yet. However, there was a voice in his head.

Paldul's, of course.

"Rahatan's seen to it that we've got some food," the telepath thought to him. "You can pick it up at the third building. From now on, though, you'll have to help with night foraging if you want to eat."

"I will," Erid thought back.

"Be careful about going outside, especially during the day," Paldul went on. "I picked up some thoughts from the normals in the vicinity. They've been warned about our escape from the fortress and the city guards are watching for us-although they have no idea how many of us are in Verdeen."

"I'll be careful," Erid promised.

Then he put his head down and enjoyed Corba's nearness again. But he didn't have a chance to enjoy it for long. A few minutes later, she too woke up with Paldul in her head.

When the telepath was finished with her, the two of them lay there in the darkness for a while. After all, the morning light was coming in on the opposite side of the building.

"Ilikedstayinghere," Corba told him. "Doyouthinkwe mightmakeitapermanentarrangement?"

Erid smiled. "I'd like that," he said.

But deep inside, he couldn't forget that they were transformed. For them, permanence was relative.

As Data entered the Enterprise's lounge, he heard singing. The place being only spa.r.s.ely populated, it took him only a moment to trace the sound to its source-and to realize it was the mutant known as Banshee.

The X-Man wasn't alone, either. He was surrounded by four crewmen, two men and two women, who appeared to be admiring his voice.

"I wish I were a b.u.t.terfly," he sang, "I'd fly to my love's nest. I wish I were a linnet, I'd sing my love to rest. I wish I were a nightingale, I'd sing to the morning clear. I'd hold you in my arms, my love, the girl I hold so dear."

As the last of his lyrics faded, Banshee shrugged. "An' that's it," he told his companions, almost meekly.

"Bravo," said Lt. Robinson, clapping with delight.

"That was excellent," Lt. Sovar agreed enthusiastically. "I have never heard anything like it."

"Ah," said Banshee, "ye're much too kind. Back home, they tell me t' have mercy and keep me mouth shut."

"Not here," Ensign Saffron a.s.sured him.

"That's for sure," Guinan added from behind her bar. "At least, not while I'm in charge."

"Sing another one," Lt. Rager requested.

"Yes, please do," called Troi. The counselor had been listening from her table in a distant corner of the room.

The mutant looked at her wistfully. "Unfortunately, La.s.s, I've exhausted me repertoire. If there's another song of old Eire in me head, I'm afraid it's decided t' stay there."

As Data came closer, Banshee caught sight of him and acknowledged him with a grin. The others turned to look at him as well.

"Welcome, Mr. Data," said the mutant. "I do nae suppose ye've got a ballad or two in that computerized brain o' yers."