Shades of Grey
1.
<Locutus. Resistance is futile.>
Picard woke as terror levered him upright. Borg faces haunted him, victims of the Collective, some of them still wearing shreds of Starfleet uniforms. Shaking off this nightmare proved difficult, as it always did.
Could he have saved his crew? Beverly had snatched him back from the brink of complete absorption into the Collective -- could those assimilated when the Borg had invaded the Enterprise have been saved? Would they have thanked him?
Guilt made a cold, lonely bedfellow. Doubt and self-recrimination were just as bad. And Beverly just plain smelled better. Picard stripped off the loose nightshirt, hating the odor of his night sweat, born of bitter thoughts. Where was Beverly?
"Computer, location of Dr. Crusher."
"Dr. Crusher is in sickbay." Must have been an injury on gamma shift. Or maybe, unable to sleep with all his tossing and turning, she'd gone to check on Steichen.
He checked the time. Hours to go before Alpha shift. Musing over the options -- a book, tossing and turning, Ten-Forward -- he liked none. So he sat on the edge of his bed, trying to reconcile himself to waiting for Beverly.
Then he remembered the music Gwaheer had given him. Gleaned, the Ryxian said, from his father's collection of old Earth music. He'd thought Picard would appreciate them. Jean-Luc had only listened to two so far. Relatively trivial ones, about love and passion, heartbreak and loss -- nothing humanity didn't write about in the present day, so far. Might as well listen to a few more now. Maybe they would bore him back to sleep.
He went to the computer terminal at the table
and keyed in a command. A second later, the next unheard song began. It was loud, the
singer anguished. He listened all the way through, suspended in shocked, morbid
fascination, and then in pain.
*Some things were perfectly clear,
seen with the vision of youth.
No doubts and nothing to fear,
I claimed the corner on truth.
These days it's harder to say
I know what I'm fighting for.
My faith is falling away
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey, wherever I go,
the more I find out the less that I know.
Black and white is how it should be
but shades of grey are the colors I see.
Once there were trenches and walls
and one point of every view.
Fight 'til the other man falls -
Kill him before he kills you.
These days the edges are blurred,
I'm old and tired of war,
I hear the other man's words,
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey are all that I find,
when I come to the enemy line.
Black and white was so easy for me
but shades of grey are the colors I see.
Now with the wisdom of years
I try to reason things out
and the only people I fear
are those who never have doubts.
Save us all from arrogant men
and all the causes they're for.
I won't be righteous again,
I'm not that sure anymore.
Shades of grey, wherever I go,
the more I find out the less that I know.
Ain't no rainbow shining on me,
shades of grey are the colors I see.*
Picard sat down, hands shaking. This was too appropriate. All the assignments he'd questioned in the past -- this summed up the questioning.
And there were still questionable orders being given. The last news wire had told of the planned relocation of the Ba'ku, a primitive people who had the misfortune of being on a planet surrounded by metaphasic energy. Starfleet was to assist the Son'a in the effort, in exchange for the benefits of the harvested metaphasic energy they were preparing to collect.
The wire had made it sound like it would be nothing to move six hundred people from their homeworld. The story had been couched in Fleetspeak, touting the benefits of metaphasic radiation for humanoids, relegating the Ba'ku's presence to a footnote. Picard had once been called upon to move colonists; he hadn't felt right about that, but had reserved his doubts and followed orders. The Federation's approval of the treatment of the Ba'ku was wrong. They weren't colonists, or that would have been mentioned. But it was just more orders, for the crew of the ship dispatched to the Briar Patch. Orders the captain and crew would follow, because that was what Starfleet was becoming.
Shades of grey, indeed. Fading to black -- or so he feared.
The next song didn't help matters. Same voice,
only with a bouncy, breezy quality that belied the words, which were what impacted heavily
on Picard's uneasy soul.
*In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
from the mountains of faith
to a river so deep
I must be looking for something
something sacred I lost
but the river is wide
and it's too hard to cross
and even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore
and try to cross to the opposite side
so I can finally find what I've been looking
for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
through the valley of fear
to a river so deep
and I've been searching for something
taken out of my soul
something I would never lose
something somebody stole
I don't know why I go walking at night
but now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
until I find what it is that I've been looking
for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
through the jungle of doubt
to a river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
something so undefined
that it can only be seen
by the eyes of the blind
in the middle of the night
I'm not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
that runs to the promised land
in the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
through the desert of truth
to the river so deep
we all end in the ocean
we all start in the streams
we're all carried along
by the river of dreams
in the middle of the night.*
As the words 'river of dreams' were sung, Picard froze, gripped in a rush of unexpected emotion and realization. He didn't hear the rest of the song. It was as though, somewhere in the recesses of his memory, a wall had disintegrated, revealing what had been there all along, hidden from him.
Memories of Gwaheer, in his mind. Memories of actual conversations with him. It seemed as though they had always been available to him, but he knew they hadn't. He felt as though part of him had been dislocated and popped back into place, with only a little tingling and disorientation resulting. The conversations were disassociated, without images or sounds or any sensation of the physical. One of them in particular seemed at the forefront of the throng.
/Who are you?
A friend.
Deanna?
No. She would not be able to be here. You are unconscious.
Have you always been here? Are you a part of myself?
I have watched you, since your assignment to the *Enterprise.* No, I'm not Q. I'm much more interested in preserving your autonomy than he would be. I am merely an observer, a fellow traveler. . . .
From Tau Alpha C? The same one who took Wesley away?
Not a Traveler. Just a traveler, in the same sense as you are one. But to the point. I am here to help you, not because I was sent, but because I know the pain you feel. I know you, Jean-Luc Picard, now that I am here with you, in the depths of your mind. I awoke this part of you to tell you that I was once here, when you were unable to help yourself, when your life was nearly torn from you by the Borg. I leave these memories of me here waiting for you to hear a song. When you hear it, you will remember.
I don't understand.
You will. We are much alike. But there is a difference, a matter of motivation. Your career is everything to you. There may come a time that you find yourself alone, because you did not invest some of yourself in people in a more direct way. We often borrow from our tomorrows to pay our debts to our yesterdays. Be careful you do not borrow too much. Do not sell your soul for the sake of your career, only to find it has used you up completely. Remember that love can provide motivation where no other motivation can be found./
Picard opened his eyes. His chest heaved like a bellows. The room was still dark, the stars still gleaming coldly, and the song he'd been listening to just ending. It had taken seconds to replay the conversation. Slowly, he regained control of his breathing.
The recording went on to another song. Of
course, it too would have to be appropriate. He couldn't identify the style, but he
recognized a mandolin, a fiddle, an acoustic bass, and guitars. A sweet female alto lead,
harmony in male voices.
*I used to laugh at all those songs
'bout the rambling life, the nights so long and lonely,
well, I ain't laughing now
now that I'm caught up, it seems
in all the same ambitious dreams
that only lonely life allows
And the home I don't go home to
the friends I don't see
aren't the part of this life
that endears it to me
If that's the price I have to pay
for doing things my own way
then it's what I'll have to do somehow
til I find my way back to my heart
for there's no one but me's gonna take my part
it's too early to say that it's over
or to find we can make a new start
it's too early to say
til I find my way back to my heart
I thought at least we'd meet again
since we have been the best of friends
and lovers to each other
meet again and speak our minds
force no issues, turn no blind eye
toward the road that lies ahead
but it seems that I missed you
by a coast and a song
when time gets so short
"so what?" turns to "so
long"
I cannot keep your love inside
It's a flame I cannot hide forever
in the name of hanging on. . . .*
The music rambled back through the chorus, but Jean-Luc leaned forward, hand across his eyes. He tried to contain it, but a sob worked its way out, followed by too many of its siblings.
"Jean-Luc!"
He hadn't heard her return. Damn.
Her arms went around him, and it was all he could do to keep himself from shrugging her off -- she wouldn't understand that the last thing he wanted was her sympathy.
"I'm fine. Fine." Flinging an arm out, he caught the cartridge out of the slot and stopped the mandolin and fiddle cold. She wrestled with him and got it from him, then held it up in front of him.
"This music, is that what's made you so upset?"
"No. The memories -- I was thinking too much. I was trying to distract myself with music."
She dropped the cartridge on the table, fell to one knee, and looked up into his eyes. "Do you want to talk about it -- no, never mind, you never do. Was it the Borg?"
Jean-Luc stared down at her face, her blue eyes so full of concern, and more tears surged into his eyes. He took her face in both hands and kissed her forehead to hide them from her. Desperation and weariness were out in full force tonight, he thought, and they seemed determined to trample him under.
"Back to bed. I'll sleep now."
She rose with him, looking at him suspiciously, but she said nothing as she discarded her uniform and joined him under the covers. They lay on their backs staring out at the stars. Fumbling at the bedside controls, he touched a button, and the viewport shutter materialized, blocking the view.
"What did you do that for?" She wasn't irritated, just curious.
"Just don't feel like looking at them tonight."
"Jean-Luc, do you think we're doing the right thing?"
It wouldn't be the last time she asked. It certainly wasn't the first. "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
A long silence drew itself out in the darkness, measured by the even beating of his heart. At last, she sighed. "I don't know. Every seasoned crew member on the ship is feeling the changes afoot in Starfleet, and the cadets just don't know any better. Some of the things I've heard out of their mouths -- I'm beginning to think we've been pushed into an alternate universe. I don't know where to see myself."
"Neither do I. But I do know that if not for you, I would have a much bleaker outlook. I've spent my life in Starfleet. I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have invested my time a little differently."
Beverly seemed to be holding her breath; the blankets were so still. "I don't know what to think of that."
Jean-Luc rolled, put his arm across her, and
kissed the first thing he bumped up against in the darkness -- which turned out to be her
jaw, just beneath her ear. "Don't think any more, Beverly. Not when it comes to us.
Not tonight."
2.
Deanna woke to the sound of the door chime. Moving in a numb half-waking state, she put on a fluffy green robe that covered her from neck to ankle. Stumbling through the bedroom door, she touched the controls for the door to the corridor.
"I have that report," Jean-Luc announced brightly, holding up a pad. The captain was in uniform and looked happier than she could remember seeing him. Not that she could remember much, this soon after waking.
Deanna stared, bleary-eyed, for a moment, then came to the realization she was forcing him to stand in the corridor. Stepping out of the way, she leaned against the side of the door while he marched in, then closed it behind him. At once, his cheerful demeanor disappeared.
"I'm sorry to wake you, Deanna, and to force my presence on you before you're even dressed. But I wanted to discuss what happened last night further, in private. After some reflection and a little investigation, I'm concerned in more ways than I can count."
That woke her up a little more. Turning, she spoke to the replicator. "Coffee, with cream and sugar. Would you like anything, Captain?"
"No, thank you." He waited for her to get the cup of steaming coffee and take a seat. "This is Gammin's service record."
She took the offered padd and read the brief summary. "Very ordinary in most respects," she observed. "Though he's only been in the Fleet for six years. Mother told me there's been a drop in the number of telepaths signing up for Starfleet in the last ten years, especially since the war."
"You said last night that his attitude was not unusual. Explain."
"Some telepaths develop an impatience with non-telepaths, because it's rude for a telepath to impinge upon their thoughts and it's slow to communicate verbally. Such telepaths are less likely to take jobs off-planet, especially ones in which they would be surrounded by non-telepaths. Which is why I find it odd that Gammin is even in Starfleet."
"Do you notice, there's one thing about his record that's very unusual?"
Deanna looked it over again. Didn't take long. "He's a lieutenant-commander, and there's one mention of promotion from lieutenant. But there is no mention of promotion to lieutenant, or time spent as an ensign."
"Any theories?"
She took a mouthful of coffee. "About Starfleet's actions, no. But I wouldn't doubt that he'd find it irritating to be called 'cadet' or 'ensign.' He joined at a very late stage, after a decade of operating a small business on Betazed. I suppose it could have been a sudden thing -- sometimes people do uncharacteristic things. When great tragedy strikes, for example."
Picard sat down at the table with her. "Will didn't talk to you last night. I expected he would have."
Deanna bowed her head and dabbed her eye with the cuff of her robe. "No, he didn't. And I expected it as well."
"If it's any consolation, I think he's under orders not to reveal certain information to us. I don't think it's personal. He seemed most angry when avoiding private conversation."
Now that she was fully awake, her control over her reactions more firmly established, she hid her surprise and successive disappointment and dismay well enough. "Starfleet is making him act this way?"
"It wouldn't be the first time they've given orders we dislike, certainly."
"I agree. But why would he react so much, and avoid us so completely? Certainly he knows we would understand if he couldn't talk about official business." Deanna thought about Will's reactions in sickbay, about what she'd observed during dinner, and her unease multiplied rapidly. "Captain, have you noticed that Will hasn't been surprised once by anything anyone has said about the Ryxi? Was he surprised by anything while in your meeting with Gwaheer?"
He looked at her, startled. "You're right. He didn't bat an eye at anything Gwaheer said. When our staff heard Gwaheer tell about the history of the Borg, we were all at least a little surprised by the mere fact that he knew the details, even Stollen. And the details themselves are stunning. When Ramsey and Geordi re-told parts of the same story last night to the *Rampage* senior officers, Will didn't react, but Data did. So did the other officers -- except Gammin. It was as though he and Will heard it before."
"And when we were in sickbay -- a long time ago, I taught Will some of the techniques to block the efforts of a telepath or empath. He doesn't do it very well, but since I'm not a telepath all I receive when he does that is a general impression. He was frustrated, but beyond that, all I could sense was something. . . dark. Probably his anger. When Sakhara and I were talking to Steichen, he didn't change. Again, it was as though he refused to be impressed, or surprised, or concerned. He's opaque to me, for the first time since we met years ago."
"And it's hurting your feelings," Picard murmured, putting a hand on her arm where it lay on the table between them. "Frankly, I'm a bit disturbed that he hasn't opened up to me, either. I'd come to consider him a loyal friend. I'd believed that wouldn't end when he left the *Enterprise;* yesterday I began to doubt. But if this is Starfleet's doing. . . . It's very unsettling that Starfleet would give him information regarding the Ryxi that they haven't provided to me."
Deanna looked him in the eye solemnly. "Unless they believe the Ryxi are not being forthright with us, and that security may have been comprised somehow. Gammin doesn't trust me. He definitely doesn't trust Sakhara. From his reaction to Steichen's recovery, I'd say he thought we were putting on a show."
A long pause ensued. Picard's own feelings of frustration and a growing anger, which she guessed must be directed at Starfleet, rose between them. He sighed. "Counselor, I try not to intrude on the privacy of crew members' personal lives. But I have to ask you. What is the nature of your relationship with Gwaheer?"
"It's. . . unresolved. The Ryxi don't handle relationships the same way we do, Captain. There is an attraction between us, and a bond has developed that I didn't expect. He's always loved me, in one way or another. The Ryxi love children, all children, and it showed in his attitude toward me when I was a child. When he came to me to apologize for frightening me, he began to develop a different interest in me than before. But he decided to end our relationship before it began and resolved not to return."
"He *did?* Did he tell you this?"
Deanna nodded. "I guessed and forced him to admit it. I discussed it with Zakhad. She and I believe that he assumed that I wouldn't be able to accept a polygamous lifestyle. That, and his deep-seated fear of bonding with and losing another mate. It really did nearly destroy him, when Rehia died."
"So where is your relationship with him now?"
"Since I took advantage of the Steichen crisis forcing him back into contact with me and talked him into *not* disappearing out of my life, we're. . . considering."
Picard's brow furrowed. "If you'll excuse my saying so, Counselor, this seems a very different approach for you to take."
Blushing, Deanna rose and paced with crossed arms around the table. "If you'll bear with me -- I think you need a more detailed explanation to understand about the Ryxi in general, and Gwaheer in particular. The Ryxi are very rational about marriage. Their society hinges on choices in personal relationships. It's very easy to marry one of them -- because of their sense of smell, it's immediately obvious to them when a man and a woman are intimate, which is, as we noted before, how they knew about you and Beverly. By their standards, the two of you are in fact married. That's created no end of difficulties when they marry interracially, because it seems so simple. To humans, for example, it would seem nothing more than an ordinary romantic relationship, with no real commitment."
"Presumably, that isn't the way they see it."
She glanced at him. "No. Gwaheer loves his wife. She loves him, and wants him to remarry. Apparently the average number of wives is three. He had two, by his choice, and he's been one short for nearly a century. For whatever reason, he's never seemed interested in remarrying, but he's interested in me. However, in addition to his doubts about my acceptance of polygamy, he didn't want to compromise my career, or his, by carrying on a clandestine arrangement with me."
"But when Steichen's situation forced contact, which in turn forced the Ryxi to open negotiations, that aspect changed."
"Correct. He's waiting for me to decide what I want to do."
Picard chuckled. "He can make his decision that quickly."
"It's a little different between telepaths."
"Actually, it's easier for me to see you with him than. . . ."
"Than Worf," Deanna finished for him. He'd relaxed a little too much and spoken before he'd thought about the words. "I know."
The captain looked at the floor for a moment, as if marking a definite change of subject that way. "Last night, I listened to some music Gwaheer gave me."
"Really?" Deanna completed her circuit of the room and sat down again, picking up her lukewarm coffee. His emotions shifted; less frustration, more resignation, confusion, curiosity and sadness. "Did it help you?"
"Evidently, when he helped me through my post-assimilation trauma, he left me with the memory of his presence in my mind. Except it was blocked until I heard a specific song. I remember. . . conversations. With him." He shook his head and frowned. "Deanna, I can't help but trust him. The fact that he helped me, that he risked his career to do it, that he politely covered his tracks and gave me my sense of privacy until he was certain I could handle the memory of it. . . that he used music to make me. . . ."
"To make you feel what you deny feeling," she finished for him. "He did that to me, too. I wonder if all Ryxi counselors use music as therapy. Thank you for telling me about it. We'll discuss it in more detail at our next appointment."
"I should get to the bridge. If you get a chance to speak to Will -- "
"Likewise, Captain. I think we both want the same reassurance that he's merely following unknown orders."
"And then I want an explanation of why we
haven't heard of these orders ourselves, but for that, I believe I'll talk to Admiral
Nechayev."
3.
Gwaheer woke slow, attained coherent thought slower. Several things filtered through his hazy perception of the world.
The room smelled wrong. Not home.
His body felt like someone had pulled him, tail first, through a hole with a circumference smaller than one of his nostrils.
The body beneath him had the requisite number of limbs, and smelled familiar. Zakhad, all limbs sprawled and face in the pillow, slept on, his weight on her back notwithstanding.
A familiar, ambient hum; a ship. The *Enterprise,* in fact. Now he remembered all of it. Deanna. Her mistrustful friend Riker. Jean-Luc.
The rendezvous.
"Time."
At his command, the computer announced 0919, and simultaneously Zakhad's ears twitched. Gwaheer backed off, careful of her outstretched wings draped off either side of the bed, and left her to awaken while he showered. As he came out of the bathroom, she greeted him with a quick scan with her tricorder.
"I'm fine."
"Apparently so. But you still need to be careful. You shouldn't teleport anywhere today." She put the instrument back in her bag and pointed at the table. She'd replicated enough to feed a small army.
"Do you even know what these things are?"
"Does it matter? Eat."
He sat down and chose a piece of fruit -- apple, if he remembered correctly. "Aren't you sitting down?"
"I'm going to watch you eat and see you off to the bridge. I can eat later."
Gwaheer smiled. "You're going to go see Guinan and you need a good reason, you mean."
"It's possible I might not have another chance to be here, if what you said about Riker is true."
"I'm not worried about Riker. Gammin is the unknown. Sakhara said -- "
"Never mind what he said. Eat. I know you'll handle things, you always do. Sakhara shouldn't have bothered you last night, no matter what he thought was urgent."
"Sakhara told me last night because he's probably gone by now. He asked 'zor yesterday to check in this morning so he could leave, if Steichen was to a point that Deanna could take over."
Zakhad stepped up between his wings to braid his hair while he ate. "Deanna is just what I'd hoped we would find."
"You shouldn't forget the other half of the equation, 'khad."
"What other half?"
"Are we what she hoped to find?"
She raked her claws down his scalp. "Don't be such a pessimist."
"Pessimist, or realist? She needs time. I hope you didn't pressure her last night."
"She asked questions, I answered. She loves you. She'll decide soon."
Gwaheer laid back his ears and wrapped his tail around her waist. "Sometimes, *khadlon,* love isn't enough."
"It will be."
"But will it be enough for forever?"
She leaned forward, her temple against his, chin on his shoulder. "Stop this, 'hiri. You are too a pessimist. I can smell a sad song in you."
"She's too understanding, too beautiful, too eager. It can't be more than a temporary infatuation for her."
"It is."
"How can you be so positive about that?"
Zakhad grabbed his ear in her mouth briefly.
"Because I thought the same things of you, when Rehia brought me home. And they're
still true, and I still have you, don't I?"
4.
Will Riker strode down the corridors of the *Enterprise.* He entered Ten Forward, located Guinan, and nodded in her direction, then took a seat at the bar.
The hostess went around to her side, then came to look him in the eye. "Will Riker. Good to see you. Though I'm wondering what you're doing here at this time of morning, with no one to talk to and your ship in a mess." She gestured at the viewports, outside which the *Rampage* hung in space, tipped nose-up and sideways to the *Enterprise.* Visible burn marks scarred the hull, especially around the weapons and the aft nacelle.
"Breakfast with Guinan, that's what. Scrambled eggs and toast, and some of those corn cakes you once persuaded me to try."
She returned shortly with his order, and some orange juice, which he'd forgotten to order. "So how've you been?"
"Guinan, what do you know about the Ryxi?"
Her smile faded. "Not a lot. I know Gwaheer and his wife. I know Sakhara, and some of his other family members. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious. How long have you known Gwaheer?"
"Oh. . . about a century or so. It's been a while."
Riker stopped chewing. "A century?"
"Sure. They don't live as long as my people do, but the Ryxi last a while."
"How did you meet him?"
Guinan studied him a moment. It almost seemed she wouldn't answer, but evidently she was in a talkative mood. "He came to warn my people about the Borg. Violated his regulations to do it, but his superiors weren't budging. He's always gotten too attached to the people he observes, evidently." She waved and smiled at an incoming customer. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if he hadn't warned us."
"What's he like now?"
That got her full attention. "What do you mean, what's he like? You met him, didn't you?"
"Do you think he'd do that sort of thing now?"
"From what I understand, that's how he ended up helping us with Commander Steichen in the first place. Excuse me -- customer."
Riker glanced around while she was gone. Only a handful of crew around; it was a little late for breakfast. He looked up as the doors opened. A Ryxian walked in.
He watched it curiously, and noticing his interest, it approached. "Good morning," it said in perfect Standard. No mismatched lip movements out of sync with the universal translator.
"Good morning," he said with more cheer than he felt.
It sat on a stool two places away, stretched its wings a little, and grinned a welcome at Guinan, who returned to the bar just then. "Hello, Guinan."
"Zakhad," Guinan exclaimed. "What can I get for you?"
"Something interesting, and hopefully non-toxic. I'd rather not try the yellow fizzy liquid again."
"Have you met Captain Riker?"
The wide, cobalt-blue eyes shifted to him, and the thin-lipped smile waned slightly. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain."
"Likewise. You're here to help with Gregory?"
"I was. He appears to have improved significantly, so I will be departing soon."
"Zakhad's a doctor, and she's very patient about explaining things," Guinan said. "If you have any questions about Ryxi, she'd be happy to answer, I'm sure."
"Certainly," the Ryxian echoed.
Riker tried not to stare at her anatomy to figure out what distinguished males from females. But then, Guinan had said any question, right? He put on his best friendly-with-an-alien smile. Zakhad's smile brightened a little.
While Guinan was getting her something, she glanced at his plate. "Eggs?"
"Have you had them before?"
"Not yellow ones. They smell familiar, though."
"You have a good sense of smell."
"All of us do. That is your ship?" She pointed an ear at the *Rampage.*
"She's not looking too good, but yes."
"I'm sorry to hear of the attack. The Conglomerate does not tolerate aggression within the territory of our members, so the Chel'whit'iei will be reprimanded. Possibly even removed from the Conglomerate." She looked serious; their facial expressions weren't far removed from human. "As far out as their homeworld is, that will be serious punishment, indeed. We protect each other from the Borg. Without the Conglomerate, they will be vulnerable."
"Do you know Gwaheer?"
"Of course. He brought me here."
"What rank is he?"
"Rank?"
"His position, his station, his job. His role in Ryxi society." He wasn't sure she really misunderstood; her expression didn't change, but as he finished she nodded.
"He was a counselor, and signed up as a surveillance agent. He's been in surveillance since then, but he supervises now and rarely goes on assignment any more. He only goes out when there is an emergency, like Steichen."
"A counselor?"
"Like Deanna. He enjoys that sort of work. He'll probably return to it, after the treaty with the Federation is negotiated. He's mentioned wanting to travel the Federation, not as an observer but as a counselor, to help with the post-war restoration."
"He knows a lot about the Borg, I've noticed."
She smiled pleasantly. "Gwaheer knows a lot about everything. He's very intelligent. And he works with a lot of people who work to study the Borg."
Riker chewed slowly to avoid further conversation. This woman wasn't quite as bright as he'd imagine a doctor would be.
Guinan brought over a plate for Zakhad and explained what the items were. While Zakhad asked questions about the origins of the food, Riker watched her out of the corner of his eye. Guinan, on her way back out to the floor, stopped in front of him, dark eyes questioning.
"Anything I can get you, Captain?"
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Are you?"
He met her gaze coolly for a moment. "Quite."
"Good." She tapped the counter with a finger a few times. "Because I'd hate to see close friendships torn apart for no reason." The hostess walked away, taking a pot of coffee from a warmer as she left.
"The El-Aurians can be so cryptic," Zakhad said.
Riker turned from watching Guinan to look at her. "They can, can't they? I don't know much about them, myself."
"They prefer it that way."
He appraised her for a few seconds. "If you don't mind my asking, I'd like to know -- how do Ryxi tell male from female? With humans it's -- "
"Secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts and a higher-pitched voice. Also women have no significant facial hair. With Ryxi, it's a matter of pheromones."
"You mean. . . you discern gender by sense of smell."
"Yes. Also we can tell whether or not one is mated."
Riker almost choked on orange juice. "I see."
"I'm sorry. I forget that humans are so easily embarrassed by that sort of thing."
"Not a problem."
Zakhad straightened suddenly and stared at the viewports. Turning, he followed her gaze.
A huge ship hovered over the *Enterprise* and the *Rampage.* From this angle, he couldn't make out anything more than a few angles and grey hull plates, and the sheer immensity of the thing.
"I think our ship is here," Zakhad said.
"Excuse me." Riker abandoned his
plate and hurried for the bridge.
5.
At first glance, the Ryxi ship resembled a Romulan Bird of Prey; two curved wings, swept forward on either side of the main hull. But the main hull itself curved down, forming an open space in the center. The ship looked like one could nestle an egg in it -- an egg six times the size of the *Enterprise.*
The lift doors opened, and Riker sailed onto the bridge at full impulse. He stood just to one side of Deanna's station, staring at the view screen for a moment before turning to Picard. Jean-Luc caught a hint of emotional turbulence on Riker's face. Interesting.
"We are being hailed, sir," Stollen reported.
"It's about time. On screen." Picard braced himself. For what, he wasn't certain. It was a good thing -- the face that came up wasn't Ryxi.
"*Enterprise,* this is red-faced-second-banana Tain, of the *Tel'zell.* We are here to provide you safe passage to our nearest spacedock facility."
Since the translator had made complete nonsense of the man's title, Picard opted to avoid name-calling altogether. "I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of the Federation star ship *Enterprise.* We thank you for your help, sir."
"Is the *Kreh'talliath na reil* aboard? I need to speak with him."
"He will be here momentarily," Picard said, hoping that were true. The face on the screen seemed polite but not necessarily friendly. This new being was humanoid, wingless, and his skin was a consistent shade of sand brown from head to toe. He wore no clothes, which made it easy to determine his gender. A blue tattoo, like a spider web, traveled the length of his arm; at first, Picard had thought it an item of decoration, but it moved with Tain's skin as though part of it.
"Your ships are damaged?"
"The *Enterprise* sustained damage to weapons and defensive systems, but we did not lose propulsion. The *Rampage* has lost warp and impulse drives, and sustained damage to the hull." Picard noticed Riker glaring at him. Interesting.
"We will need to take both of you in tow for the duration of the journey to *Jheg'wa.*"
The turbolift opened again. Deanna and Gwaheer emerged, and as the counselor took her seat, Gwaheer went to stand near the helm. "Pleasant weather, H'desh. You took long enough to get here."
The being's sardonic smirk surprised Picard. "Demanding as always. We had to make room for our guests. Lou'dar was not pleased."
"I will be certain to send him a case of *khr* to soothe his pain. Are we ready for transport?"
"Whenever you wish to proceed. The *Chel'whit'iei* will be here soon if we do not."
"Proceed, then, H'desh." The view of the disabled *Rampage* and the much larger *Tel'zell* returned. "Stollen, send a message to the *Rampage* letting them know they'll be -- "
"She's my ship," Riker said stiffly. "I'd like to know what's happening here."
"The carrier will take both ships into it, and move them through a conduit to the designated space dock."
"A conduit?"
Gwaheer laid back an ear. "I believe you call it transwarp?"
Riker chewed his lip. "If you can bring a carrier to take us to spacedock, why can't we simply effect repairs here?"
"Because we are in open space, and as H'desh said, the *Chel'whit'iei* or one of several other races who would love to have your ship might come along. The carrier is not armed, and I doubt I could talk a battalion into coming out to stand watch. It was difficult enough to find a pilot willing to bring a carrier. There are only a few pilots who know the conduits; we do not leave their locations or entrance codes in the computers, because there is always the risk of assimilation."
"So why not give us the coordinates and let us travel there ourselves?"
At Riker's continued resistance, Gwaheer laid back his other ear. "Because only the pilots know them, and they do not tell anyone, by strict order of their superiors. Captain, we are willing to help you repair the damage one of our allies has done to your ship. We will make every effort to make reparations for the Chel'whit'iei's actions. It will be necessary to travel at transwarp speeds, and I see no reason to subject either of your ships to a mode of travel for which they are not suited. It might cause further damage."
Riker stared at Gwaheer for a moment. "I'll be on my own bridge." He marched off the bridge. Gwaheer glanced at Picard, then turned back to the screen.
The *Tel'zell* maneuvered beneath the Excelsior-class vessel, then applied tractor beams, pulling it down and parking it close to the starboard wing. Then it moved out of view beneath them. When the beams seized the *Enterprise,* there was a barely-discernable tremor in the deck plates.
"I will be going now," Gwaheer announced, turning to Picard. "You should be at the dock by this afternoon. I will either meet you there or send word. Take advantage of Lou'dar's hospitality in the interim."
"Why did our translator call Tain a red-faced second banana?"
Gwaheer grinned. "H'desh is his rank, which is in fact second in command of the ship. I'm not certain how it arrived at red-faced. If you'll excuse me -- " Gwaheer popped out of existence.
Ramsey jumped a little. "Still not used to that," she muttered.
"Will seems upset," Deanna said. "Again."
"He didn't want to do this. But the nearest Federation facility is too far away; it would take weeks to tow the *Rampage* back in, and the Romulan Empire is not so far away, not to mention the possibility of the Chel'whit'iei returning. Gwaheer said his people were willing to teleport any necessary parts straight from Utopia Planitia." Picard kept his voice low as he could and leaned close to the counselor. "I think that suggestion was what unnerved Will the most. He hasn't offered me any clues -- what about you?"
She shook her head and looked at the screen again. The carrier re-oriented itself slowly; stars drifted to the right as it pivoted. Then Remington's head jerked up. "We're going to warp, sir!"
A superfluous comment, considering the instant he said it, the stars shifted. "Where are they taking us?"
Remington shook his head. "We're on a heading of 186 mark 34. Sir! They just sent a short-range tachyon burst -- ho - leeee -- "
Wishing for the days of Data, Picard snapped, "Report!"
"A transwarp conduit, opening in front of us," Ramsey said, tapping rapidly on her console. "We're in." The visual effects were immediate and stunning; rainbow streaks filled the screen. "They must have some whopping shield generators and warp engines in that ship. We're running cloaked and shielded."
"Keep taking readings," Picard said. "Apparently, we're going to be in here for a while, but there's no reason we can't learn as much as we can."
Deanna sat up straight suddenly.
"Counselor?"
"I just realized, Gwaheer didn't take Zakhad with him."
"Perhaps you should be a gracious hostess, and find her."
Deanna smiled at him and left the bridge.
6.
Gwaheer glided across the city, deep in thought. A group of careless youngsters descended suddenly in front of him, leaving him little choice but to fold wings and drop below them. One of the boys jeered at him and paralleled his flight path, thumping him on the back with his tail.
Measuring distances, Gwaheer flipped on his back and struck out with a fisted foot, striking his assailant on the shoulder. He completed the roll and returned to his normal straight flight path, and the boy fluttered wildly, overcompensating in his attempts to recover from a spin. The rest of them circled above their struggling fellow.
Stupid kids couldn't be more than twenty-five years old, he mused, banking around the surveillance building and stalling out over his level's landing platform.
The common room was nearly full, since observation in the Federation had ceased and new assignments not yet made. A scuffle and scramble, and by the time he was halfway across the room, his agents were on their feet, standing at attention.
"I need someone familiar with Earth," he said, and immediately a handful of volunteers lifted their chins and ears. He pointed at the far door with an ear and met the four men in front of it. Leading them through the less-crowded cafeteria to the offices, he nodded to the clerk and entered his own office.
"How long has it been since you've been to Earth?" Gwaheer took his seat behind his desk and looked at his volunteers.
The four glanced at each other, and answered briefly -- two years, ten years, seven years, fifty years. An interesting spread. But there were too few of them as it was to rule out anyone.
"I want to make something clear to you. This is not an official mission. This is a personal favor. If you have any misgivings about doing something for which there might be repercussions, step out."
All four stood at attention, ears out, eyes focused on his face, pupils at half-size.
"Get your bearings from Twi'lax," he said, indicating the two-years-ago volunteer. "I want you to separate once on Earth, and each of you find one of the following four entities. My interest is specifically in Admiral Nechayev, Admiral Paris, Admiral Dorrance, and the Federation Council. If you see any of our people, you will continue to observe and remain undetected."
"*Solde win'hol, Kreh'talliath.*" They spoke almost in unison. Twi'lax crouched lower and raised the back of his right hand to his forehead.
"You have questions?"
"May we know the purpose of this? If we knew what you were hoping to learn. . . ."
"I wish to know who of our people are present at Starfleet Command. I wish to know the status of negotiations, as they are and not as filtered into two-paragraph reports." He picked up a data tablet from his almost-bare desk and brandished it. "The emotional state of the Federation representatives. What the admirals' concerns are. If Admiral Paris has begun asking about *Voyager* and whether we can help recover her. If our people have been honest, he should know our history and will likely assume we could have information of use to him. I want to know why the *Rampage* and Captain Riker are so far from their last known coordinates, and if they are on a secret mission. And, most of all, anything you can find out about a Betazoid named Raynor Gammin, currently counselor aboard the *Rampage.*"
Twi'lax laid back his ears, as did the others.
"Watch for the remainder of their working day, then return tomorrow morning, their time, and continue to watch, until you have some answers. Report to me at once if you see or hear anything that seems wrong to you. I will be at *Jheg'wa* most of today, possibly tomorrow, to return home the day following." He paused, studying each solemn face briefly in turn. "Do not allow yourselves to be discovered."
The four crouched slightly in respect and vanished.
Gwaheer checked the tablet's contents -- news bulletins from the past few days, easy reading -- and pressed his palm into the lock on the drawer. He fastened his *datch* around his forearm and checked for messages. One caught his attention over the others. Pressing the return button, he waited while connections were made.
"It's about time," Deyloda snapped. His voice filtered through the tiny speaker sounded almost mechanical. "Where have you been?"
"Too much travel, not enough recovery time. What may I do for you?"
"You may explain yourself. Pushing us into contacting the Federation this quickly wasn't warranted."
"Circumstances -- "
"You could have handled those circumstances differently. I would suspect a lesser man of manipulating the situation to suit personal goals, Gwahiri Fehenza. Are the rumors correct?"
"Rumors?"
"There are rumors you've managed to find a sweet young female to court on a Federation starship."
And who would spread such rumors? Gwaheer set aside a surge of anger. "But that wasn't until after the situation with Steichen developed." Not technically, anyway.
"I don't know about you Fehenza brothers. Between you and Ka'zor, some of my fellows are inclined to think this nonsense is genetic." Deyloda sighed heavily. "But I know better than most. I wouldn't have backed Bari's recommendation of you for your position if you hadn't been the best choice. Does the full explanation show that the choices you're making regarding the Starfleet ship are not related to this. . . flirtation?"
"Yes. Steichen was definitely manipulated by a Ryxian. The regulations are very clear -- "
"Can you produce the man and will he submit to examination by a panel of telepaths? Has he been prepared at all?"
"Sakhara dismantled the traps placed in his subconscious. The man was programmed to self-destruct upon detection; he would be dead, if not for immediate intervention on our part. He was most grateful for our help. He would submit."
"Then proceed, of course." Deyloda chuckled. "Not that you would do anything else, even if I disagreed."
"Will that be all, *Kreh'khan?*"
"For now. I'm going to read the rest of the reports. I'll expect you in my offices tomorrow, shortly after second meal. We'll schedule the examination at that time."
Gwaheer returned more calls, mostly answering questions about less critical responsibilities. The last conversation, with an irate counseling associate, went on for too long. As he severed the link, Alin, the clerk, poked her head in the open door.
"I've just made some *thef.* Would you like some?"
Gwaheer smiled wearily. "I would appreciate that. Thank you."
She brought him a bowl and hovered as he tasted it. "You look very tired."
"Too much to think about. This is good."
"Is everything all right?"
Alin laid a hand on his desk. He looked up, angled his ears questioningly. Her tail tip waved in the air near her ear.
"Fine, Alin. Why?"
Choosing to be oblivious to her body language usually worked. "Sir, you work too hard. Perhaps your wife needs help in distracting you."
"I suspect so. In fact, she's found some help, in that regard. But thank you for your concern."
Alin's ears flattened against her head, but she forced a smile. "You mean the Starfleet officer."
"Where did you hear about this?"
"Everyone's talking about it. The unit, and *Veshad* Bari made reference to it when she came in this morning looking for you -- "
"Bari was here? Are there any other visitors you've not told me of?"
"Only *Veshad* Nor'alis."
"*Veshad'lan* came to see me, and you didn't mention this when I arrived?"
Alin crouched and lowered her chin, as well she should. "I'm sorry, sir -- "
"We may not always be strictly formal here, *Chlek'hised,* but there's no excuse for neglecting our duties. I expect to be notified as soon as is feasible when visited by my superiors."
"*Solde win'hol, Kreh'talliath.* I will improve."
"Good." He resettled his wings and keyed his *datch* to contact Bari. Nor'alis could wait. Alin left as the connection was established and he was transferred to Bari.
"I'd like to speak to you in person, *Kreh'talliath,*" Bari said, without greeting.
"I'm in my office. When would you -- "
"I'll be there shortly."
Gwaheer ate quickly; Bari's office was a quick flight away, and from the shortness of her manner, she would fly fast. He put the empty bowl on the floor out of sight just as he heard Alin greeting the *Veshad* in the front office. Bari came in, earrings jingling. Why the chains and tiny bells were such a popular style, Gwaheer couldn't fathom; having all that noise going on every time he moved an ear would drive him insane.
Bari took one of the two seats and shrank her pupils to tiny dots. "Tell me about her."
Gwaheer stifled his temper for the third time. "Respectfully, *Veshad,* my personal life has little to do with my work."
"Does it? Befriending Starfleet personnel is one thing. Marriages with officers who remain officers -- "
"Where is this coming from? There is no marriage. There may yet be one, but nothing's been decided."
Bari's ears perked in surprise. "It hasn't?"
"Why would I do such a thing?"
"That was to be my next question, but -- " Her nostrils moved. "My apologies, Gwaheer. It seems I was misinformed."
"And now, please, who is spreading the rumor?"
"I heard it first from Nor'alis."
Which explained the other *Veshad*'s visit. The *Veshad'lan* rarely came in person to his office, preferring instead to summon him to theirs. Having a *Veshad* visit meant they wanted to discuss a possible breach of regulations, which they did not do in their own offices because it meant other *Veshad'lan* might learn rumors of trouble within one's department. Addressing issues in private usually kept rumors, and resulting disavowals, to a minimum. For a *Veshad* to discuss rumors with another *Veshad* meant the talk had crossed departmental boundaries, between subordinates, prior to *Veshad* knowledge. Someone in Nor'alis' department, someone in the Blue Fleet hierarchy, had heard the rumor first.
It didn't make sense. The only people who had known anything about Deanna were Sakhara, who wouldn't tell even his own wives, and Zakhad.
Zakhad.
Gwaheer smiled at Bari, ignoring the suspicion growing in the pit of his stomach, and made a detailed report of the events aboard the *Enterprise* to his superior on the spot. It took a long time. At the end, Bari nodded thoughtfully and her tail stopped lashing.
"*Kreh'khan* Deyloda is handling the examination of Steichen personally, I hope?"
"He is. When he is finished, I will bring the reports to you personally. I am to meet with him tomorrow, to schedule the examination and discuss the details."
"Are you bringing the Starfleet officer to Tannick?"
"Yes, and I intend to ask the captain and some of his staff to come with him. They trust me, they are open to our aid, but it would reassure them that we are not stealing one of their men. They are questioning possible motives behind the damage done to Steichen, just as we are."
"This Captain Riker, are you familiar with him?"
"He served under Picard on the *Enterprise* for years. I know enough about him to know that his behavior is unusual. Even if he didn't trust the Ryxi, he would have trusted his fellow officer's opinions, at least until he found evidence to refute it. Something else is happening, something that I have no information of."
Bari smiled knowingly. "But you will have information soon, yes?"
"I hope to. Do you know who was assigned to negotiate for us?"
"Tessel and Bayator."
"Bayator is unfamiliar to me."
"He's one of the younger We'lassi diplomatic staff. He'll be assisting Tessel on this negotiation."
And Lonan, the *Kreh'talliath na erzu,* would be assisting the diplomats with her greater knowledge of human behavior, as Earth fell under her jurisdiction and the Ryxi sent their diplomats straight to the Federation Council.
Bari's quiet laughter brought his attention back to her. "You have the same disapproving look each time Lonan's name is mentioned. You must be thinking of her. I hope you know I demanded an explanation of why you weren't given Earth, when Teza retired."
"Your support is appreciated, *Veshad.* But I am a patient person."
"But Lonan enjoys prestige, and she'll gloat. Especially if you are present." Bari swivelled her ears forward and pointed the tips at him sympathetically. "It should have been your assignment. Earth history and human behavior have always been your fascination. Lonan is too vindictive -- if not for Wya's influence -- "
"You repeat old facts to old ears, Bari zel'Aayar. I appreciate your attempt to appease my irritation and continued dissatisfaction with the sub-council's choice of Lonan zel'Wya. I appreciate your friendship. But winds blow where they will, and we either turn out of them or ride them forward until they change themselves."
"Or you will find a way to change them?" Bari's mirth finally prompted a smile in return. "You see, even you admit it. Just be careful not to let the wind break your wings as you fight it." She stood, hesitated, and paced to one side of his desk. "If not for your interest in a certain Starfleet officer, would you be so interested that you conduct clandestine information-gathering? Or would you simply hand over all this business about the *Enterprise* to Lonan and the diplomats?"
Gwaheer raised his chin and studied her with half-lidded eyes. Bari returned the appraising stare for a moment longer. She smiled again.
"Is she human?"
There was no point in denying anything to Bari. She knew of all Gwaheer's unofficial friendships with Federation citizens. "Half. Her mother is the Betazoid Federation delegate."
"Aaah, that would be Ian's daughter, then. I remember now. Does she take after her mother?"
"Only in the best ways." He sighed. "I must tell you, *Veshad,* that I suspect the Federation has dispatched a delegation to Tannick. I went to Lwaxana's home today, only to find that she had left. I intended to ask her to make inquiries about Raynor Gammin. She wasn't there, and the gardener said she had gone away on Federation business. A ship picked her up five days ago. I saw her only two weeks ago; she would have mentioned any of her pending ambassadorial assignments to me, while just making small talk. And she couldn't have known about the Ryxian negotiations."
Bari's expression grew solemn. "Lonan has not told us of this. Yet." Then an ear crept forward slowly. "Five days ago?"
"I'm still not certain she's actually coming here, but there's been no word of any other Federation negotiations that we don't already know of. Unless you know something I don't. Also, Nor'alis came to see me, but I was not here. Do you wish to see him yourself, or should I return the call?"
"I will speak to him. He will know before any of us when the Federation ship is within our boundaries. I want to know the details of the timing -- compare it to when Lonan informs us." Bari scowled. "If it were anyone but Wya, I would broach the subject with her superior immediately."
Gwaheer couldn't suppress a cynical ears-down. Wya never outwardly endorsed or favored his wife, but no one doubted his position on the sub-council benefitted Lonan's career. She wasn't a good manager. Her unit had the highest turnover rate in the Observations Department. Her agents made the most mistakes. If statistics for his own unit had been as bad, Gwaheer didn't doubt he'd be tossed out by the tail.
"You're not going to let go of this, are you?"
He twitched an ear quizzically at Bari's question.
"By now, you would have passed on the responsibilities of the *Enterprise* incident to other hands." She lowered her chin. "Does she know what you're taking on for her?"
"You are implying that I discuss my work in Observation with Deanna. I don't discuss it with Zakhad, *Veshad.* Not beyond the generalities."
Bari raised her head, slightly. "You have no commitment from Deanna yet. But here you are, hanging on to be certain the situation is handled as you wish it to be, probably to create the opportunity to be near her. You know the Federation will be accepted; you've toiled in your father's footsteps to see that it is. You know the Federation will accept, to learn what we know of the Borg. And it will happen in spite of Lonan."
"I do not know these things, *Veshad.* The situation with the *Rampage* smells badly. I don't trust Lonan, nor do I trust Gammin." He bowed his head. "But if you wish me to step out -- "
"No, Gwahiri, you follow your instincts. The *Veshad'lan* and the sub-council can indulge you yet again, and we'll probably be all the better for it." Bari's hand fell on his arm briefly. "And do bring the lovely one to meet me. Unless your taste has changed in your middle years, she's Zakhad's equal in every way, and we all need more friends like her."
Bari went her way, leaving him to muse over her words. It really would be simpler to turn over the entire *Enterprise* matter to diplomats and security, though it was his prerogative to judge the appropriate time to do that. Observations Department gave its ranking officers more leeway, simply because they knew the cultures being dealt with better than officers in other departments. He knew Deyloda would have no trouble handling the Steichen matter without him. The diplomats would have no difficulty with seasoned Starfleet officers familiar with first contact situations.
But Deanna was involved. His emotions were too caught up in her welfare, now that he'd scented her. His heart wouldn't allow him to give up control of it now.
By now, like all gossip about ranking officers, the rumor of his supposed marriage had swept the length and breadth of three departments. The surveillance department, the security forces, and the Blue Fleet would become massive betting pools. They would be gambling over whether his career would end; some of the skeptics would place side bets on whether or not he'd really married. Small fortunes would be made.
He'd seen the same thing happen when Kadesh had carried on with a native of Phebustus with no hope of negotiations in sight, and someone had found out. Wagers had been made on the length of his career in surveillance. Someone had won by guessing four weeks. Kadesh had paid the price with his job and his ability to teleport, and lost his Phebustan wife into the bargain. It took a lot of paperwork and a unanimous decision of the sub-council to take away someone's teleporting ability, as it meant a direct manipulation by a gaggle of telepaths on an unwilling subject, but there was precedence. Though Gwaheer was certain his own situation would never come to that, he had to shudder at the thought.
Where had the rumor jumped from Zakhad into the ranks? It was like her to be so excited she told someone else, though she knew better. She'd probably dropped a hint, nothing more, and the tiny slip of a hint had blossomed, gone to seed, and now the Fleet, Observation and security were harvesting trees.
Although, if Lonan had heard it along the way, she could well be the one who distorted it beyond recognition. He'd have to find out. Small things could become large, ungainly problems -- sometimes insurmountable ones. He might even uncover more of what Lonan was up to along the way.
"Sir?"
Gwaheer looked up to find Levda peering in. "Yes, what is it?"
"How is everything on the *Enterprise?*" The man stepped inside, but stayed near the door.
"Steichen is doing well, and the ship is at *Jheg'wa.* Or are you gathering information to help you operate your gambling operation?"
Levda sank to the floor, nearly banging his hocks on the tile. "Sir!"
"You should know better than to think such things escape me. Tell me, do you know who started this rumor?"
"Rumor. . . *Kreh'talliath,* I don't know what you're -- "
"Who started the rumor that I've married a Starfleet officer? Which, before you lose any bets on the duration of my career, I'll let you know isn't true, by anyone's traditions."
Levda nodded. "I realized that, sir. We all realized that, when you walked through. Our unit knows you would never break regulations -- not like that. That's not what. . . ."
"Not what you're placing bets on? So what is the wager about?"
Levda hid his face by bowing forward until his forehead nearly touched the floor. "Sir. . . ."
"Should I start questioning the others? I'm sure Dela would tell me." Dela was the newest, and youngest, of the unit. He behaved as though Gwaheer might eat him for dinner, jumping whenever Gwaheer addressed him by name.
"We've already placed our bets with Fleet and security personnel about the duration of your career. We'll win that one. Our wagers within the unit are about how long it will take you to marry her." Levda overcame his nervousness enough to venture a wavering smile and rise out of his subservient crouch.
"Where did you first hear about her?"
"Taasin's wife works in security, as a clerk. She heard it from one of their officers first, and told Taasin, who asked the rest of us if we knew anything about it."
"Thank you. That gives me somewhere to begin tracking this down."
Levda turned, then glanced at him. "Sir, which one is she? I know it isn't the doctor, but there are so many other women aboard. . . ."
Gwaheer sighed. At least that much hadn't
gotten around. "You'll just have to wait and see, won't you? It should give you
something else to wager on."
7.
Picard looked down at his ship from the observation area. He'd been doing it for some time, and couldn't quit doing it. Seeing the *Enterprise* from the outside wasn't often possible, and the sleek Sovereign-class vessel had never looked this. . . unimpressive.
The shipyard was a massive sphere, the entrance large enough for several *Enterprises* to fly through, in formation, with room to spare. The Federation vessels were the only two in for repair, Lou'dar had told them. The carrier vessel *Tel'zell* had settled to the bottom of the enclosure; smaller ships were docked in staggered ranks above it.
It surprised the Starfleet officers that such a large enclosure would maintain a breathable atmosphere. As they'd entered the yards, the carrier had passed through a force field, the function of which became apparent as the *Enterprise* had docked in their assigned spot; a Ryxian had landed on the view dome over the bridge and waved down at them. Picard had been treated to the experience of walking unsuited across the hull of his ship with Geordi and some of the lead technicians from the shipyard. The explanation was that Ryxi wouldn't fit into EVA suits, and would experience extreme claustrophobic panic attacks if they tried.
Now that repairs were under way, Lou'dar had granted his guests permission to take full advantage of the recreational facilities he had available, so shore leave was given to personnel not essential to the repair work. Deanna was organizing the schedule.
Riker, however, hadn't allowed his crew shore leave.
Picard glanced up at the *Rampage.* The smaller ship had more severe damage, and had been assigned a berth near the top of the sphere, closer to where the heavier equipment for mending hull breaches was kept, Lou'dar said.
"Sir?"
He turned, realizing when he saw how far back Deanna and Beverly were standing that he had been standing with his toes nearly over the edge. The observation area had no fences, no force field, to keep unwary people from walking off into open air, and right off the gravity shelf. Taking a big step backward, he went to them.
"Will's being difficult," Beverly said.
"You could say that. No clues as to why?" He looked at Deanna.
"I wish he'd just level with us. You haven't said what you learned from talking to Nechayev."
"Absolutely nothing. She acted like it was unusual to hear from me, and she didn't comment on my questions about the *Rampage.* She wanted a report on what's taken place with Steichen, and asked me endless questions about Gwaheer for some reason. Strange, she was on the *Yorktown* for some reason. I expected her to be at Starfleet Command." He noticed Deanna's startled look. "Counselor?"
"Zakhad said she was in Ten Forward this morning, and that she met Will there. He was pleasant enough to her, and even asked some questions, but she said he seemed most interested in Gwaheer's rank."
"Gwaheer explained his rank to us when we met with him yesterday," Picard exclaimed. "What the devil would he ask her that for?"
"To verify what he'd been told?" Beverly asked. "Check the consistency of their story?"
Picard pressed his lips together in displeasure. "He doesn't trust the Ryxi, so that's as good a guess as any. And why was he on *our* ship? That was never made clear to me."
Deanna opened her mouth to reply, but closed it and turned her head. Through the wide door came Riker, striding along briskly, head up and face set in a stern, no-nonsense expression.
"I see by the number of *Enterprise* crew in the halls that you've approved shore leave," he said. "Are you sure that's wise?"
"What else are we supposed to do while we wait?" Beverly asked. Crossing her arms, she smiled wanly at Riker.
Riker's cold eyes fastened on Picard's face, effectively excluding the doctor and counselor. "I find it highly disturbing that we're here at all. The more I think about it, the more I wish I'd asked to be left stranded in space and take my chances."
"Will, think about what we're facing here," Picard said. "The Ryxi have been observing us for centuries. They could have taken advantage of the dire straights that befell us during the Dominion War, could have sent fleets of ships -- can you imagine what they're capable of, if they can build carriers like the *Tel'zell?* For that matter, they could have planted bombs at Starfleet Command, conducted research and launched biological warfare -- if Steichen could be so damaged, what would happen if they applied their mind-manipulating talents to our leaders? They could have had the Federation before it began. They could have conquered it hundreds of times over. All they've ever done is observe -- "
"That you know of," Riker blurted. "You have no way of knowing Gwaheer didn't manufacture the entire situation we're in."
"Do you have proof that he did?" Picard asked, letting his words have sharp edges.
"How do you know he's even who he says he is?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Will. Of course he is who he says." Deanna exclaimed angrily. "You're behaving as if you had some real reason to believe he wasn't trustworthy, but you didn't even meet him until you came on board yesterday!"
"And when did *you* meet him?"
"Shortly after my birth," Deanna said.
Now, *that* surprised Will! Picard waited, let the moment draw itself out, then added, "Shortly after I was assimilated by the Borg."
That rocked Riker back a few steps. "What are you talking about?"
Picard continued in hopes of driving the point home. "He was there, when I was recovering. He *is* capable of manipulation, Will, but he used his telepathic talent to help me heal. I remember him. I remember feeling him in my mind, and the echoes of what he did are still there."
"He knew my father," Deanna said. "He still visits my mother. He used to babysit for them."
Shock glazed Riker's eyes. He backed another step, pivoted on his heel, and retreated from the room.
"Why do I get the feeling that just made it worse?" Beverly muttered.
"Because it did," Deanna replied. "Now he's afraid."
And so was she. She stared after Will, forlorn and miserable. Picard put a hand on Deanna's shoulder. "I'm going to find out what's going on." He started after Riker.
"You can't order him to tell you, *Captain,*" Beverly said, but he didn't look back.
Riker led him a chase through the station, to a transporter, then through the *Rampage.* Questioning looks from crew followed them all the way to the bridge. Riker didn't slow down, nor did he look at Picard.
<I feel like I've just run a marathon.> Picard tried not to fall into a chair. Inhaling sharply, he exclaimed, "If you're not going to discuss this with me, Will, at least explain to me why you're so angry with me for wanting to know why."
Riker studied his console pensively. "Because I can't tell you. You're not dense, Captain. You know why I can't tell you."
"I know you're behaving badly in the name of Starfleet. These people are helping us, Will. Especially Gwaheer."
"I can't help it."
"You can't be friendly. You can't trust my judgement? What about Deanna's judgement? Hell, I thought I used to be a martinet!"
Riker shot a cold glare at him, then softened. "I understand your point of view. But I can't discuss this any further. You've chased me all the way here for nothing. Jean-Luc, I'm sorry, I do trust you. I still consider you my friend. But my orders are very specific. I'm stuck, and I can't do anything about it."
"Are you the same Will Riker I've served with for over a decade?" Picard rose and leaned on the desk. "The same Riker who flaunted orders and rescued me from the Borg, at great risk to ship and crew? The same man who disagreed with me, yet always managed to remain respectful and tactful? Is this what you're like, with your own command under your belt -- a swaggering, angry man with no use for trust, or even the benefit of the doubt? Who can't even spare the courtesy of telling an old friend what's going on? My God, Will! I thought we were better friends than this!"
Riker didn't waver. Not even a blink. They stared at each other for a full minute.
"Fine," Will said at last, quietly, but with a deadly undercurrent. "I'll be polite to the man. If it will prove to you that I'm not possessed by alien entities or insane, I can do that. I'm sorry, Jean-Luc. But that's all I can do."
Picard stared at him a moment longer. Then he tugged his uniform straight and strode from the room.
Gammin sat at his post on the bridge. Picard hesitated, staring at him. Those black Betazoid eyes, so like Deanna's yet so foreign, lacking warmth or even respect, stared back.
<I don't care for your attitude, mister.>
Gammin stared a moment longer. Then his lips moved in a near-imperceptible smile.
Picard glanced at the other officers, some of
whom were staring at him curiously, and marched from the bridge.
8.
Deanna wandered through the quiet halls of the complex alone. It was night, by the station's schedule, though by ship's time it was still daytime. Lou'dar's crews would still be working, but elsewhere on the station, most activity had moved into the dining halls and living quarters.
She felt again for the bond, as she'd done many times that day, but Gwaheer was so far out of range that she couldn't sense anything from him. It left a hollow aching place in her. She wished he had been there that afternoon.
Jean-Luc had tried to reason with Will, even following him onto the *Rampage.* She'd sensed the captain's frustration when Jean-Luc had come back to find Beverly; the conversation with Will had gone nowhere. Her friends had gone to eat at one of the restaurants on the station, as they'd planned, though from the resigned look on Beverly's face she'd guessed the dinner conversation would be adversely affected by Picard's attempt at prying information from Will.
Zakhad had stayed on the *Enterprise.* She'd lingered in Ten Forward all day, helping Guinan; Deanna wished she'd spent the day with her, after scheduling shore leave rotations and a lengthy session with Gregory. But Zakhad had shown no interest in the station. Of course, the *Enterprise* was probably, to her, the more exotic place to be.
Deanna passed the open door of a restaurant and heard the murmur of many voices, in many languages. The assortment of aliens present on the station was fascinating. Some of the emotional states she sensed around her were completely foreign. Were she less distracted, she might have stopped to talk to some of the more interesting ones. Everyone she'd met so far had been friendly and open, with no suspicion or subterfuge. Lou'dar, the burly Zeg in charge of the station, was jolly and quite loud about his own interest in his new guests. His yellow mane had bristled with pleasure, and though his lipless, angular mouth couldn't smile, he'd given the impression that were he able, he'd be grinning ear to ear. He enjoyed welcoming new friends to the station, he'd said, leaving Deanna to wonder how many new friends he saw, and how often. The Beta Quadrant must be a busy place.
She continued down a long row of darkened store fronts. This was the retail level, where the majority of the independent stores were. At a junction, she stopped and looked both ways, trying to choose between two dim corridors of dark windows and closed doors. She was about to turn left when she heard, faintly, a voice. Singing in Standard, no less.
Hand over her communicator, she walked silently as she could down to investigate.
The corridor curved slightly. She had lost
sight of the junction when she came upon an open door, and light spilling out of it. The
voice sang on quietly, and now that she could make out the words, recognize the voice, she
held her breath.
*This time you've got nothing to lose
You can take it, you can leave it,
Whatever you choose
I won't hold back anything
And I'll walk away a fool or a king
Some love is just a lie of the mind
It's make believe until it's only a matter of time
And some might have learned to adjust
But then it never was a matter of trust
I'm sure you're aware, love,
We've both had our share of
Believing too long
When the whole situation was wrong.
Some love is just a lie of the soul
A constant battle for the ultimate state of control
After you've heard lie upon lie
There can hardly be a question of why
Some love is just a lie of the heart
The cold remains of what began with a passionate start
But that can't happen to us,
Because it's always been a matter of trust.*
She waited a heartbeat, then reached out and rediscovered the link between them. She stepped around the corner, through the door, and found him sitting at a desk, reading something on the Ryxian analog of a padd. He looked up and smiled.
"Welcome to the Ryxian corner of the station."
"You've been waiting here for me?"
He lost his smile as he sensed her mood. "I knew you were still here, somewhere. Zakhad said you were. I was about to come looking for you when I sensed you heading this direction. What's going on?"
She looked at the floor, at the scores and scratches left by Ryxi talons in the grey tile, and closed her eyes. "Will's still being obstinate. Repairs are under way. The *Enterprise* crew are taking turns on shore leave. What about you?"
"I had a lot of explaining to do today. Someone's been spreading rumors that I've married you already. That I've been married to you since before negotiations began -- it could have meant my dismissal, if my superiors weren't the sort who demand evidence."
"Maybe it really is too difficult." Deanna scuffed her heel on the tile as she came to sit on the end of the desk. "Maybe you were right in deciding to just let it go. If Will's so suspicious, and Jean-Luc is right that it has something to do with orders he's following, maybe the negotiations are doomed before they even end, and we're both deluding ourselves about -- "
She choked on the words and half-turned away from him in embarrassment at her weak tears.
"Is that really what you want?" he asked softly.
"No, damn it, that's not what I *want!* But your career, and my career -- "
"Do you trust me?"
The whispered question brought her eyes around to his. "How could I not trust you?"
He stood up and leaned, pressing his forehead against hers as she'd seen him do with Zakhad. "My career can be whatever I wish it to be. I have the feeling the Federation and the Conglomerate will come to an agreement soon enough, one way or the other. Don't worry about that. We can't do anything about it tonight."
Deanna touched his cheek with her fingertips. "I missed you."
"Did you?"
She sighed, resisting an urge to kiss him. "You're melancholy."
"It's been a long day. It will be longer yet. I need to ask you and Jean-Luc a favor. Our security wishes to verify my reports that Steichen was tampered with by one of our people. To do this, we need to take Steichen to Tannick."
"Where is Tannick?"
"It's the Ryxi homeworld. The second one."
"I think the captain will agree to that. He trusts you, even if Will doesn't."
"You don't know why Will is so suspicious?"
"He won't tell us. He might think you're controlling us. Jean-Luc told him how you helped him, after the Borg, and that made him afraid." Gwaheer radiated weariness. As close as they were, she couldn't see his body language, but she could feel how tired he was. "Have you recovered from the teleportation sickness?"
"It's not as bad as it was, but not completely, no. I would like nothing better than another massage." He smiled briefly at the memory, then saddened.
"What's wrong?"
"Zakhad. She was the one who started the rumors. She told one of her friends, who couldn't resist telling her husband, who told someone else -- I spent most of my time today tracing it from one source to another. She of course said nothing about marriage, only that I'd found someone I was interested in, but by the time it reached me, the story was that I'd not only married but broken regulations to do it. I wish I'd let it go. But I thought it might be related to what's happening with Will, somehow."
Deanna stepped back, taking his hand, watching his face. "What do you think is going on with Will?"
He sighed heavily and thought for a moment. "I suspect it has something to do with Lonan zel'Wya."
"Who is?"
Gwaheer sucked air through his teeth and laid back his ears. "Lonan is the *Kreh'talliath* whose duties include supervising the surveillance of Earth. At one time, long ago, she wanted to be my wife."
"So she's sabotaging negotiations with the Federation? I can think of better ways to prove my love than that."
He laughed, with the gusto and relief of someone who really needed the release. "I know you can, *kazahn'kahliu.* But there is always more to the story, isn't there?"
"Let's talk about this over dinner."
"We can do that. We'll go down to Bluthan's." His eyes traveled down her body. She wore a blue non-regulation pantsuit, form-fitting but not particularly revealing or dressy. "Did you want to dress for the occasion?"
"If I'm going to dress for it, it'll be a date. I don't want to talk about unpleasant things on a date."
"Oh, well. . . we could discuss it later. It will keep."
Deanna sniffed and crossed her arms. "You weren't very interested in my body when you had complete access to it. Why should I dress to show it off to you now? And you didn't look at me when I dressed for the dinner party, either."
"I didn't want to be accused of leering."
"Do you really find me attractive, in that way? No, don't dodge," she exclaimed as he opened his mouth. "I'm not Ryxian. I'd like to know, honestly. You said I could ask questions. Do you find my appearance attractive?"
Head tilted almost to his shoulder, he peered at her from lidded eyes and his nostrils flared. "It isn't necessarily how you look. Most Ryxi would not appreciate your appearance. Those who have observed humanoid races for a time are better able to do so, certainly."
She could feel the pull he felt, the urge to touch her. "What is it, then? The way I smell?"
He stepped close and she felt his nose pressing against her head behind her ear. "Yes," he whispered. "Oh, yes."
Deanna couldn't tell anymore which of them wanted to touch the other more. "So you weren't attracted to Lonan at all?"
With such immediacy that she couldn't be certain he hadn't just teleported a few feet away, he stood back and frowned. "How cruel of you."
"I wouldn't want you to make any hasty decisions," she said nonchalantly, heading for the door. He followed her, closing the door behind him and keying in a code.
"Crueler still." But he smiled and walked alongside her, a hand in the small of her back, the tip of his tail waving at ear level.
"I asked Zakhad to come exploring with me, but she finds the crew fascinating. Especially some of the non-human ones. I saw her talking to Stollen when I was in Ten Forward for lunch. Has she been here before?"
"Oh, yes. She's only met humans who were once assimilated and not quite themselves. She must be enjoying the chance to interact with rational Federation citizens." He pricked his ears as they rounded the corner and headed back toward the restaurant section. "I think we're about to meet with someone you know."
Deanna searched around them and detected a familiar presence, distantly. "Will. What's he doing on the station? I thought certainly he'd hide on his ship for the rest of our stay."
"Do you want to see him?"
He felt reluctance to confront Will, she sensed, and more weariness of the whole situation. She concurred. Detecting her answer, Gwaheer guided her into the first restaurant they came to, and they were seated at the rear of the dining room, behind one of several partitions around the facility. The slick, polished black floor and the silver trim on the black partitions and walls reminded her of a club she'd been in while at Starfleet Command. Between the black walls and the poor illumination, it was like walking into space.
"The lighting's so dim in here," she muttered as the waiter, a skeletal-looking creature with loose flaps of brown skin layered down his face, stilt-walked away from them.
"Is it?" His pupils were dilated almost completely; she could tell only by the absence of the yellow streaks. "The menu isn't translatable. Do you trust my judgement?"
"I suppose I'll have to. Just nothing with real meat in it, thank you."
"So what will we talk about? The possibilities of married life? Where we'll spend our first vacation together? The battle plan for when your mother comes to visit?"
She giggled at the thought. "A hotel on the next planet over, if you value your privacy. I've heard stories of her walking in on couples and thinking nothing of it. Oh -- I'm sorry, I forget. Most people who ask about my mother don't know her so well."
"Most people don't want to ask." He smiled, and eyed her with such a mischievous glint in his eye that she couldn't let it pass.
"What?"
His feelings, tinged with a healthy dose of lust, came to her, as if running like a river from his mind to hers, along with the image of her wearing the daring dress of the dinner party last week. <Just superimposing a little.>
"Aren't you shameless," she exclaimed.
He chuckled. "So much of what you say reminds me of a song."
"That isn't hard to do, apparently. You seem to know a lot of songs. Or are you making them up as you go along?"
"Most Ryxi make up songs all the time. It's a reflex reaction to life. I often remember specific songs I've heard before that are appropriate to the situation at hand, or the emotion."
"Okay, so what song did the word shameless remind you of?"
"One called 'Shameless,' of course. An appropriate one."
"I suppose you won't sing it to me here?"
"It's better with the music."
The waiter brought drinks, in spindly glasses. Gwaheer ordered something, speaking a different language, and the translator didn't even try. The waiter nodded and took the menus.
<So remember the song to me.>
His amusement came through loud and clear, and
a little surprise that he hadn't thought of that himself. And the music started, and a
voice not Gwaheer's sang belligerently in her mind's ear.
<Well, I'm shameless!
when it comes to loving you
I'd do anything you want me to
I'd do anything at all
And I'm standing
here for all the world to see
Aww, there ain't that much left of me
That has very far to fall
You know I'm not a man who's ever been
Insecure about the world I've been living in
I don't break easy, I have my pride
But if you need to be satisfied
I'm shameless,
baby I don't have a prayer
Anytime I see you standing there
I go down upon my knees
And I'm changing,
I swore I'd never compromise
Ah, but you convinced me otherwise
I'll do anything you please
You see in all my life
I've never found
What I couldn't resist, what I couldn't turn down
I could walk away from anyone I ever knew
But I can't walk away from you
I have never let anything have this much control over me
I worked too hard to call my life my own
Well, I made myself a world
and it worked so perfectly
But it's your world now, I can't refuse
I never had so much to lose
I'm shameless!
You know it should be easy for a man who's strong
To say he's sorry or admit when he's wrong
I've never lost anything I ever missed
But I've never been in love like this!
It's out of my hands!
I'm shameless!
I don't have the power now!
But I don't want it anyhow
so I've got to let it go
shameless as a man can be
You can make a total fool of me
I just wanted you to know
I am shameless!>
Deanna felt herself blushing at the song, and smiled at the same time. This was appropriate? As much as she knew how he felt, as seriously as he considered the idea of marriage and their relationship, he'd never once said he loved her. Not while he was lucid. But maybe that was something too serious to be said. Maybe it was one of those things the Ryxi only sang about.
"So who's your favorite Earth singer?"
"Billy Joel."
"Who?"
"Twentieth century. He wrote and performed his own songs the majority of the time, unlike most other singers, who usually sang pieces they hadn't written. He sang from his heart, as Ryxi do. The emotions he expresses often echo my own."
"Like the song you sang at the dinner party? Or were you singing for Jean-Luc? I saw you looking at him."
Gwaheer sighed and tapped his claws on the table in a short, rhythmic pattern. "Jean-Luc and I are what humans refer to as 'kindred spirits.' He feels older than he should. Beverly is good for him, though. I hope they don't pull away from each other."
"Am I good for you?" The question escaped her before she knew it.
"I cannot begin to tell you -- I would have to sing. But I don't believe the other patrons would appreciate my croaking."
He'd always been disparaging about his singing ability. Deanna smiled, her eyes widening when his tail wrapped itself around her calf.
"There's no mood music here," she murmured. "You could provide that. And we wouldn't have to bother a soul."
Gwaheer smiled conspiratorially, but waited
until the food arrived. While she sawed the greenish lump on her plate into bites, he
began their private mood music, letting it play for her while they ate. More Billy Joel,
she thought, recognizing the voice as he remembered it.
<She's got a way about her
I don't know what it is
But I know that I can't live without her. . .
>
9.
He almost forgot about Will Riker -- almost. Beverly had chosen a restaurant with a dance floor, of course. And a small gathering of crew members was also there, of course. And she wanted to dance. With him.
Of course.
Surviving the first few moments was the worst part. Then he let himself loosen up, and the rest, the jangling alien music, the stares and smiles of subordinates, the embarrassment of nearly tripping over a waiter, all faded into unimportance. This was Beverly. They were together.
He half-expected a chirp from his communicator, or the reappearance of Gwaheer. But they made it through dinner -- an interesting thing, dinner in a restaurant where the menus were unreadable and your date insisted on scanning for poisonous chemicals before tasting it -- and more dancing without mishap or interruption.
Then Will Riker walked in, looked around as if hunting for someone, spied them, and crossed the room.
"Have you seen Deanna?"
Picard exchanged glances with Beverly. "Not recently."
"I need to talk to her. If you see her, could you have her contact me? She isn't responding to her communicator."
"I don't think she has it with her," Beverly said.
Will reddened in anger, and in an untimely random thought, Picard was reminded of the translator's faux pas earlier when mangling Tain's title to 'red-faced second banana.' He only barely cut short an amused smile, and looked down at his plate of. . . red stuff, with something-or-other leaves. The translator worked fine, for most purposes. What it didn't do was give ingredient lists of the items it translated, and he refused to call this tasteless mass a steak.
"Don't you find that a dangerous thing for her to do, Captain?" Will said quietly, with an accusing tone.
Picard glared at the other captain. "If there were any danger here, we would have been warned. This is a spacedock, not a slum. I'll thank you not to take that tone with me, especially in public."
"You're not my C.O. any more, Jean-Luc. And frankly, I'm wondering what's happened to you all." He glanced at Beverly.
"Are you ready to discuss your suspicions in more detail? If you are, we can take this somewhere more private." Picard fought to keep his voice low.
"I'd rather just find Deanna, if you don't mind."
Riker stalked out again. Picard shook his head and picked up another bite of red stuff. "At least he wants to talk to one of us."
"Don't be so sure. He may just want to question her." Beverly glanced up as the waiter returned with more of their order.
His dessert was. . . white. With white sauce, and white sprinkles. It tasted like licorice and raspberry, with extra sugar. He shoved it away with a grimace and noticed Beverly did the same with her green thing.
"Let's go for a walk," she suggested.
They left the restaurant and strolled down the broad corridor. Most doors were closed and lights were lowered. Foot traffic was non-existent. Jean-Luc took Beverly's hand, and smiled at her surprise.
"Captain?"
"The hell with it all, Beverly. Damn Starfleet can't even let me know what's going on any more."
"Maybe the admiral has a reason -- "
"A good reason, or just a reason? Beverly, how many times have I risked my life for the sake of the common good, for Starfleet away missions, for Starfleet principles? Elena ignored my questions, then she questioned me. What do I owe them, any more?"
"My, aren't we bitter tonight?" She squeezed his fingers gently.
"I'm sorry. It's Will -- I hate seeing him like this. Suspicious of everyone, won't discuss it with us, and now he's prowling around looking for Deanna, and in the state he's in I can't help hoping he won't find her."
They reached a major intersection, with four branchings and a bank of lifts to other levels. In the center was a small garden, complete with grassy patches and a fountain in the middle of it all. They heard a familiar laugh, and a masculine curse. Picard looked at Beverly; she grinned.
"Let's go see."
She dragged him down some broad steps, across the grass, and as they reached the grove of young trees, they found Deanna and Gwaheer -- dancing. Or trying to. He stood as though a waltz were the most uncomfortable thing he'd ever done, arms stiff, eyes on his feet. She led him into another series of steps, ending when he trod on his own tail.
"This isn't going to work, DeeDee. You may as well teach a pig to sing."
She looked up from their feet, confused. "What's a pig?"
"Oh, come on, you're half human -- "
"I don't genetically know every single bit of human trivia. Stop trying to distract me. Pick up your tail."
"And put it where?"
"Wrap it around your neck."
"And you wouldn't take advantage of that?"
Their semi-hostile bantering sounded familiar. Beverly noticed, too. "Isn't that how he was flirting with Guinan?"
Gwaheer heard her nearly-sub-vocal comment and looked up. He grinned at them. "Saved by the captain and the doctor!"
"Why don't you try tying his tail in a knot?" Beverly said.
Deanna smiled. "That might just work." She let go of his hands and made a grab for his tail, but he turned and led her in a circle.
"Remember what your mother said -- be nice, don't play with his tail," Gwaheer said.
"So I'm rebellious. That's your fault. All those desserts you let me have before supper!"
Gwaheer blocked her with a wing. "I just remembered something -- when you were six, you asked me, begged me, to teach you to fly. I could show you how."
"What?" Deanna's chin actually dropped.
"For that matter, I could show all of you how. This way." He walked through the garden and out the other side, taking them in a lift to the next level, then down one of the mostly-dark corridors. He actually dropped and ambled along four-footed, humming to himself.
At the end of the curving corridor, he turned left through some broad doors, which slid open slowly. When the lights came up, they revealed a cavernous, cylindrical room, easily the largest Picard had seen. It explained why there were no doors down that side of the corridor; the room ran the length of it. A stippled pattern of black dots covered the walls, and the ceiling and floor were brown. Hash marks and notations in an unknown language marched up the sides at intervals.
Gwaheer ran, leaped, struck the far wall a good twenty feet up, and rebounded with spread wings, gliding back across the room. He skimmed the walls. As he came back around to the door, he struck the wall, landing on hands and feet and sliding down to the floor. There, he keyed instructions into a control pad labeled in foreign characters. A wall panel sighed open. Giving it a good shove, he sent it sliding wide open, revealing a row of artificial wings in various colors hanging inside.
"They really work?" Deanna asked.
"You should have some custom-built to more exact specifications, if you're going to fly around on a particular planet under specific gravitational and atmospheric conditions. But here, gravity can be changed to compensate. In fact, until you learn to manipulate the controls accurately enough, we're going to have very little gravity."
He helped them strap on the wings. The power pack was quite light; the straps were a nuisance. Two around the upper thigh, a wide one across the rib cage, another over each shoulder and under the arm. Picard adjusted his repeatedly until Gwaheer came to check them and tightened them back to uncomfortable.
"You'll get used to it. They always seem too tight, until you get in the air. Then they're not tight enough. You have to be able to use your weight, and the wings can't slide around on your back. Custom builds usually mount to a flight suit, making the straps unnecessary."
Once he was satisfied with their straps, Gwaheer put more commands into the control pad. "The center of the room, if you please. I'm assuming you've all experienced free fall?"
"I hate it," Beverly said nervously.
"This will be close, but not quite. You won't lift off until you push. And it's not going to happen all at once." He followed them, and by the time they reached the middle of the floor, they were bouncing instead of walking.
"Palms out."
They held their hands in front of them, showing the controls strapped around their palms. He pointed at each button in turn; they were arranged so that, when their fingers were curled, the wings could be controlled by light pressure of their fingertips.
"I can't remember all those combinations," Beverly exclaimed.
Gwaheer held out a hand. She took it, hesitantly. "You're going to remember them the same way you remember anything, Beverly. You're just nervous. Close your eyes. Come on, trust me."
As her eyes closed, Gwaheer pushed gently with a foot, and the two of them rose slowly. "Keep them closed. Touch the controls, and extend the wings." She did it, fumblingly, one wing not completely extended. "Think equal amounts of pressure on the control, for now. Try flapping, slowly."
Gwaheer flapped his own wings in a backstroke, sending himself floorward. Beverly had put herself into a drifting, sideways spin. Patiently calling out instructions, Gwaheer talked her into righting herself and a straight flight path. "Open your eyes, Beverly!"
"Aaaaaaah!"
"Lean into the direction you want to go and set the wings straight -- there!"
She nearly did it out of instinct upon seeing the approaching wall. She wasn't traveling very fast, and the slow turn looked unimpressive, but she was laughing in relief and accomplishment as she executed it.
Picard watched him put Deanna through a modified series of the same steps; the counselor didn't seem afraid, just excited, and didn't have to close her eyes. Beverly flew in circles and straight lines across the room overhead until Gwaheer had Deanna aloft, at which point he asked Beverly to try flying higher, which was another series of steps for her to learn.
By the time he turned to Picard, Gwaheer had lost most of his good humor. "I hope you've been paying attention."
"Let's see." Jean-Luc pushed against the floor, pressed the controls in the sequence he'd practiced in his head while the women performed them, and was in level flight in seconds. The low gravity did feel almost like weightlessness, but the gradual downward drift provided enough for their wings to work against.
"Tell me when you're bored," Gwaheer called.
"It's getting easier," Beverly replied from above. She glided in smoother circles, Picard noticed, glancing up at her.
"Look out!" Deanna collided with him, sending them both drifting against the wall. "Sorry."
Gwaheer was there in an instant, checking their wings as he disentangled them. "You don't have the instincts to sense other fliers," he said loud enough for Beverly to hear. "You'll have to keep looking around you. Keep learning to turn and slow yourself, and change altitude. You've got to make the wing movements automatic, before I'll let you try anything in real gravity."
He joined them in flight, his movements slow as theirs. Picard, once he'd mastered the basics enough to do them without much thought, watched the Ryxian's effortless movements enviously. Eventually, the four of them were circling and changing direction in parallel, at four different altitudes.
"Move closer together," Gwaheer called on their sixth repeat of the same pattern. "Get a sense of how close together you can be, without tipping the other person's wings. You have to be aware of how much room you need." And so saying, he folded his wings and let himself coast, pointing his nose at the floor. He dropped below his students and turned on his back, drifting slowly downward.
Beverly seemed to be doing much better now that she'd gained confidence, and Deanna actually ascended and leveled out over Beverly. The two stayed on the same pattern. Picard reversed the pattern, rising a few feet at a time until he mirrored their movements in the opposite direction just below them.
"All right -- turn and fly straight at the opposite wall. At the halfway point, brake yourself, slowly, and stop as you touch the wall. Don't hit the wall. Touch it."
It was harder than it sounded. With more instruction, Picard learned not to repeat the head-first result of his first attempt, how to increase wing angle and cup them to use the air as a brake. This redefined the old saying 'throw your weight around,' he thought wryly as he swooped in to touch the wall lightly with fingertips and toes.
"Angle down, and land," Gwaheer called at last.
As he did so, Picard realized the gravity had increased; his wings seemed to compensate automatically, performing the braking flap with more vigor. His feet touched the floor and he released the pressure on the controls, and the wings rustled into a folded position on their own.
"Out of the way!" Gwaheer pointed; Picard glanced up and hurried toward Gwaheer, out of Deanna's path. The Ryxian stood near the controls.
"You've been increasing it, haven't you?" Picard asked.
"Gradually. Tired?"
Shrugged to ease the tension of the straps, Jean-Luc smiled. "You know, I'm not the least bit tired."
"Exhilarating," Deanna puffed, jogging over to them. Her cheeks were flushed. "When do we get out of the tank?"
"Slow down, DeeDee. You're getting ahead of yourself. You still have to learn how to maneuver in full gravity."
"DeeDee?" Beverly exclaimed, walking up as her wings folded themselves.
"Sorry. Her father called her that. An old habit." Gwaheer's knuckle pads skipped across the settings, and the pull on their feet became noticeable. "We're up to half Earth normal. I'm putting up safeties, rather like your holodeck safety measures, to give you a soft landing if you should hit a wall."
"So what's 'hiri?" Beverly asked.
"My name is actually Gwahiri. In common dialect, it's Gwaheer. The clan dialect gives some words different pronunciations. Deanna, you're first. Take off, bank right, accelerate and rising spiral. Remember, the closer you get to the wall, the more the air malforms under your wings. Pay attention to the shape of the air."
"Shape?" Beverly echoed.
"There are four forces that act upon you in flight," Gwaheer said. "Can you name them?"
"Gravity and drag," Beverly said.
"Lift," Deanna added.
"And propulsion." Gwaheer extended a wing. "Gravity pulls you down, and lift obviously lifts. Drag pulls you backward. Propulsion is the key. From the body to this joint," he indicated the first joint, the 'elbow,' "provides the lift. That portion of the wing hardly moves. The hand, the part that rotates and pivots and catches the air on the downbeat, provides propulsion. The air is like liquid around you. It has texture and shape, and it drags."
"Like you're swimming," Beverly said. "Can you also sense magnetic fields, like some birds?"
"It's not that easy to quantify what I sense, in your language. You lack the vocabulary. For me, it's no trouble to feel the air, or the presence of others in the air around me. You can't feel it; you're not wired, so to speak, for that type of sensation. You have only your ears and eyes. You can only train yourself to compensate as much as possible for not being able to sense the air's movement, by watching fliers around you, or debris carried on the wind. You have to be aware of distances, as well. Sometimes depth perception is difficult visually. And while I'm lecturing -- when you do fly in the open air, never fly alone, and never fly into clouds. Another sense you lack is knowing which way is up. Losing control of your direction can be deadly."
Beverly paled slightly and nodded, biting her lip.
Picard watched Deanna attempt a takeoff and hit the wall opposite, unable to make the turn. The safeties caught her and bounced her away from the hard surface, and she fell backward, wings flapping out of control. Gwaheer teleported into the air near her and flew past, grabbing a wingtip in a foot as he went, which turned her right side up and let the wings catch the air.
"Good grief," Beverly muttered. "Talk about reflexes."
"He's being remarkably patient with us. This must come so naturally to him -- I envy the Ryxi. Even flying around this small room, at minimal gravity -- "
"I know what you mean. I didn't think I'd enjoy it, but now, I can't wait to try this over countryside. Just imagine what it would be like, flying through the Grand Canyon."
"Never been there."
"Never? Jean-Luc, we're going on vacation some day, and you're going to see it."
Picard grinned. "Maybe we can even fly
through it."
10.
That the *Enterprise* had completed repairs that morning came as no surprise to Riker; the ship hadn't taken the pounding the *Rampage* had endured. That she was leaving spacedock and bound for the Ryxi homeworld made him panic.
"Jean-Luc, you can't -- "
"I realize you don't entirely trust these people, Will. But the fact remains that your ship is here, Starfleet knows about it, and they haven't ordered us to leave, have they? In fact, Admiral Nechayev's only comment on our taking advantage of the Ryxi's offer to help us repair our ships was to remark on their generosity."
"When did you talk to her?"
"Yesterday." On Will's screen in his ready room, Picard's face betrayed no concern. "I gave her a detailed report on our actions thus far. She told me to continue on to their homeworld, and seemed certain we would be invited to do so. Which has happened, and frankly, I'd like to see it."
Riker didn't know what to say to that. After the confrontation with Picard the day before, in which the older man had demanded an explanation of Riker's behavior and been rebuffed, he'd turned cool, polite, and distant. This exchange was no different.
Damn Starfleet, and the Ryxi! Nechayev's orders sat across Riker's shoulders like mountains. No room for interpretation. No room to move.
"Did you tell Deanna I wanted to talk to her?"
"Of course."
Ten hundred hours, and nothing from her, not even a message. She probably guessed that he wouldn't tell her anything she wanted to hear.
"McClain tells me the *Rampage* should have the major repair work completed by this afternoon. Will that be soon enough to join you on your visit?"
"I believe so. And by the way, Captain -- I'm about to go on a tour of the rehabilitation facility here at *Jhegwa.* Apparently, this is the main location of their drone recovery operation."
Riker chewed his lip. "Are you sure that's wise, Jean-Luc?"
At Riker's concerned tone, Jean-Luc's face finally relaxed out of the professional mask he'd adopted. "I still have the nightmares, Will. I want to see the facility, ask about their rehabilitation procedures. I'd like to find out if there's anything they could do to help me."
"Are you inviting me along, sir?"
A pause. "If you wish to come."
Riker heard his tentativeness, knew that he wanted to ask again what Riker was doing and why. But he didn't ask. "I'd like to do that."
"Meet us at the main transporter area on
level ten of the station, in fifteen minutes."
11.
Deanna indulged in a little daydreaming. Until Gwaheer had left her at her door last night and gone on to his guest quarters, it'd been a wonderful evening. Beverly and Jean-Luc's presence hadn't detracted from it, either. It was the first time in a long time she'd relaxed and enjoyed the presence of good friends, without a thought about Starfleet or the neuroses of victims of war.
Then Will materialized on the pad, and she shook off the memories.
"We're waiting for Gwaheer," Picard said as Riker crossed the station's main transporter room to join them. Rather than fly into another tirade on the untrustworthiness of their tour guide, Will nodded and put his hands behind his back, adopting a patient, semi-relaxed stance.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Beverly asked Picard.
"If I change my mind, you'll be the first to know. Really, Beverly, you've asked every ten seconds since we left the *Enterprise.* I want to do this."
"Zakhad said it would be disturbing," Deanna said. Zakhad had left that morning, with Gwaheer, but not before coming to talk to her. "She said she worked in the wards for several years, until she couldn't bear it any longer. She couldn't handle the anguish of the children."
"Children?" Will was genuinely curious. Still keeping secrets, but obviously the tour had been too intriguing for him to pass up.
"The Borg assimilate them, too." Deanna felt Gwaheer approaching, and left the transporter room, the others following her. He greeted her with a smile and took note of the rest of the group with a nod.
"Are you comfortable with their presence, Jean-Luc?" he asked. "This could be difficult for you."
"I asked them to be here. I. . . may need them."
Gwaheer's ears pointed out and down, in sympathy. "If you wish to leave, at any time, I expect you to tell us."
As they followed him down corridors and into a lift, Deanna noticed they fell into a formation around Jean-Luc: herself on the right, Beverly on the left, Will following close behind. They rode down innumerable levels and stepped out into a foyer, with a desk and closed doors all around. Gwaheer stopped to talk to a clerk behind the desk in rapid Ryxian; the clerk, also Ryxian, glanced at Gwaheer's guests skeptically and nodded. She passed one of the Ryxi data tablets, twice the size of Starfleet's padd, across the counter to him.
"Patient progress reports," he commented, leading them toward a closed door.
"With everything else you do, you have patients?" Beverly exclaimed.
The door irised open. Odors, biological and chemical, met them as they passed inside. Gwaheer hesitated, studying his reports briefly. "I've had a few. Most often, I'm asked to come in as a consultant. I know more about Starfleet and humanity than most of the counselors available, simply because they haven't been in surveillance. This way."
The doors here had labels, marked in Ryxian, Deanna assumed. They turned a corner and Gwaheer halted before the first of a long bank of windows down the right wall.
"The first stage is to disconnect them from the Collective. We find that the transition is better made in groups. It eases the shock. This is last week's group. They're still linked together, but not with the Collective."
In a large room stood ten Borg, still covered with the armor and implants. Three of them were in regeneration alcoves. The others moved, spoke to each other, examined their own limbs. A We'lassi was with them, watching and occasionally speaking to them. None of them seemed to notice they were being watched. Deanna could hear the mutter of muted emotion, almost below the limits of her empathy. She watched Jean-Luc; his emotions were easier to read. He stared at the drones, distaste in the twist of his lips and the set of his jaw.
"Are any of these. . . Starfleet?"
"Two of them. We try to keep an eye out for them. The next phase is removal of the implants, which we do in surgery across the hall." Gwaheer indicated the doors opposite the windows. "After post-op, the survivors are turned over to counseling. Which is this way."
He led them around another corner to the right and stopped in front of more windows, this time on the left. "Again, they respond better if kept in groups. It seems to comfort them even when they can't hear each other's thoughts."
Deanna couldn't bring herself to go look. She hesitated in the junction of corridors, hand over her stomach, trying to keep her composure.
"Deanna?" Picard asked. Almost in a whisper, almost fearfully.
"They hate," she murmured. "Everything, everyone. They hate without reservation. The pain -- like a toothache, only worse. They're lonely, and they hate it."
"It's the first thing they know, but it doesn't last long," Gwaheer said. "This group is only a week out of surgery. In another week or so, it will ease. They'll learn other emotions again."
Picard went forward as if he had to force his feet to move, and Deanna went with him against her instincts. Beverly clutched his hand in both hers; fleetingly, Deanna sensed Will's brief surprise at it.
Half the group were human. All of them wore yellow jumpsuits and bore fading scars where implants had been. They stood around aimlessly, glaring at the floor, each other, the walls, but not moving.
Suddenly one of the ex-drones yelled and lashed out. He struck at the wall, but force field safeties prevented him from making contact. He tried the floor, with the same result. Deanna felt the frustration turn to rage, and as the door at the back of the room opened and a Ryxian rushed in, followed by two We'lassi, the man turned on one of his fellows. The Ryxian touched the back of his head; his hands slipped from the other ex-drone's neck as he fell, unconscious, to the floor.
Picard stood close to the window, his breath misting the pane. His breathing was erratic, Deanna noticed, and his emotions in check but running strong. "They have a right to hate."
"Do they?" It was the counselor Gwaheer asking; his tone took on a clinical tone Deanna alone had heard before.
"You took them out of the Collective. They want to die."
Gwaheer started down the hall. Tearing himself away from the window, Picard followed him, and his escort accompanied him in formation.
The next ward was open, with a wide, doorless entrance. Gwaheer walked in without a backward glance or explanation. Picard hesitated in the door.
It looked like a scene from Ten Forward, with people playing games at tables and eating. Deanna sensed the undercurrents of erratic emotion from some of them, however, and took Jean-Luc's elbow protectively. Most were in the yellow jumpsuits, unless anatomical differences prevented it. Among them were We'lassi, in blue jumpsuits, either playing with patients or simply talking to them.
A child raced across the room and threw himself at Gwaheer. Smiling, he caught the boy in his arms and pressed his forehead against the child's. "Brian, can you say hello to my friends?"
The boy stared at them. Beverly gasped. The left side of his face was stippled with scar tissue, and the right eye socket gaped empty. His left eye, blue and wide with curiosity, moved from one person to the next.
"He keeps tearing off his eye patch," Gwaheer said. "He's one of the quickest recoveries we've seen, probably because he's young. Would you be able to check his DNA against your records? We'd like to find his parents and return him."
Riker stepped around Deanna and dropped to one knee. Smiling at the boy, he held out a hand. "Hi, Brian. How old are you?"
"He looks about four years old," Beverly said. "We could replace that eye easily enough. Unless there's more damage than that?"
"The nerve seems intact. He's been scheduled for replacement already; we're waiting for the cloned eye to finish development. Go on, it's all right. Say hi to Captain Riker." Gwaheer gave him a little push.
With a final glance at Gwaheer, Brian smiled and trotted to Riker, stumbling and
catching himself en route. Will picked him up. "That's not so bad, is it?"
"Hi," Brian whispered.
"Good reaction," Gwaheer said. "We've had a lot of trouble getting him to talk. But you should put him down, I'm afraid. He's subject to unpredictable fits of rage."
"Because of the assimilation," Picard said harshly. Deanna gripped his elbow tighter, hoping to convey reassurance. His emotions were dark and jagged.
"Of course. There isn't an injury here that isn't related to post-assimilation trauma. Ones they inflict on each other despite our better efforts, ones related to removal of the implants, or corrective surgery. And the most prevalent, the unseen wounds of the mind."
Riker put the boy on the floor. Immediately, Brian raced away from them, stumbling twice before turning a corner. Deanna noticed then that a man was staring at her. She backed a step at the hostility in his eyes. Jean-Luc was walking forward, looking at faces; she stayed at his side and tried to ignore the glaring.
"Where are the attendants?" Beverly asked.
"The ones in blue. They intermingle with the patients. You can't schedule appointments with them, at this stage. They're either responsive or near-catatonic. Sometimes they can sit for days without saying a word."
"You don't use telepathic types of therapy with them?" Will asked.
Gwaheer and Jean-Luc looked back at him. Gwaheer raised an eyebrow. "Only in the post-operative phase of treatment. They come the rest of the way on their own. Resurrecting their personality is not something we claim the ability to do. Each individual has to come to terms with the experience in their own way, at their own pace."
"What if they can't reclaim themselves?" Picard asked. "What if they spend their lives drifting in a half-conscious state?" He looked at a vacant-eyed woman with weedy blond hair, leaning against a wall.
"Would you rather we give them no chance at all?" Gwaheer gestured at the woman. "Sarah, look at me."
Her eyes jerked to him obediently, but remained vacant. Deanna tried to focus on this one person but had difficulty isolating her emotions from the general sense of despair around them.
"Come here." The woman moved like an automaton. Gwaheer stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.
Suddenly, her face twisted in agony. "My ship! My ship! My crew," she wailed, falling to her knees.
Gwaheer stepped out of the way as a We'lassi in a blue coverall came and put her arms around the sobbing woman. "Sarah Bellman," he said. "Her ship -- "
" -- was at Wolf 359," Riker finished. "She was first officer of the *Tolstoy.* Do you have many personnel from that battle?"
"That was years ago, and she's still like this?" Beverly stared at patient and comforter.
"She's one of our few long-termers. Different people respond differently. Such as Twenty-six, here." Gwaheer led them further on, stopping near a man sitting in a chair by himself. Back stiff, head erect, he didn't seem to see anything around him, but didn't appear upset or vacant. He reminded Deanna of a younger Will Riker, almost. Clean-shaven, the man had piercing eyes and a determined set to his jaw.
"Twenty-six?"
The man's head oriented on him. "Good morning, Gwaheer."
"How are you today?"
"I am experiencing a minor dysfunction of the lower intestinal tract, but am functioning adequately."
"Breakfast disagreed with him," Gwaheer translated, unsmilingly. "What is your designation?"
"I no longer have a designation, as I am a fully functional individual. As you know. Why do you ask me what you already know?"
"No reason. What is your name?"
"I do not recall having a name. That is why I am called Twenty-six. It was part of my designation."
Deanna glanced at her fellow officers. "He's like an android. But there's nothing left of Borg in him."
Gwaheer moved on without comment, holding his tail unusually straight and low.
They passed through two more wards like the first. Deanna had seen many psychiatric facilities with erratic and disturbed patients, but her fellow officers seemed disturbed by the vacant faces and occasional, unpredictable behavior of the recovered drones. Jean-Luc mulled over it all, still angered, still frustrated, torn between sympathy and grief.
"Is it correct to assume that the displayed symptoms are all various stages of psychiatric difficulty, rather than physical problems?" Deanna asked.
"In these wards, yes. And in some cases, patients completely disassociate from reality. The worst cases are not in the wards. They can't be. They would kill people."
As they left the third ward, Picard turned to Gwaheer angrily. "You made it sound as though this facility was a great thing, a humane thing. These people are suffering."
"You haven't seen the final result. This is where we bring them when they are first taken from the Borg. The last phase is on Tannick, which you will see when we arrive. We don't take untreated drones to our homeworld, Jean-Luc. We'd like to keep the Borg from discovering it." Gwaheer studied Picard intently. "That final phase would help you."
"How many have passed through this place?" Beverly asked.
"Since the battle at Wolf 359, hundreds. And our success rate has improved steadily. But we have a lot of work to do."
"The Borg have to know what you're doing," Picard said. "How are you keeping them from finding you?"
Gwaheer smiled. "A longer explanation yet. But we can discuss it when you are not so upset."
Deanna touched his arm. "Perhaps we should go, Captain."
He was the center of attention for a few moments while he glared at Gwaheer. Then his expression shifted; he sighed, his shoulders drooped slightly, and he looked at the Ryxian with begrudging acceptance. "You knew this would anger me, but you brought me through anyway. In spite of the fact that I might draw incorrect conclusions. Those people, in such pain. . . ."
"The average stay at this facility is a month. And their mental anguish depends upon them. Some of them do suicide," Gwaheer admitted, ears dropping sadly. "Others descend into catatonia. But we give them a choice, which is more than they have with the Borg. No one deserves to be enslaved."
"Your people fund this project, out of the goodness of their hearts?" Riker asked. Gwaheer's head came up at his suspicious tone.
"My people, yes. My clan. The government only began to help when it became obvious that there were benefits to our research. You appreciate the hatred my people feel for the Borg, I'm certain, as you feel it yourself. The Ryxi wanted nothing to do with the Borg. Changing the general consensus that we should not even study them took much effort."
"Your family started all this?" Beverly exclaimed.
"I started all this," Gwaheer said. "With the help of family. Zakhad's friends in the medical community came here as volunteers, until we had funding to hire full time staff. My brother Sakhara volunteered his time as well. Our first patients were pulled from the cubes at Wolf 359 by my subordinates, who risked life and limb along with me to do it. Our work with those patients got the attention of those who previously believed reclaiming victims of the Borg wasn't possible." Gwaheer's tail twitched. He looked at Jean-Luc. "Your recovery started it, all of it."
"Then perhaps I should have died."
Gwaheer didn't react. "We're almost finished with the tour. This way."
He led them out an exit at the end of a longer corridor, which put them in one of the main station corridors. The door sealed behind them; Deanna noticed there was no control pad to get back in. Gwaheer crossed the corridor and gestured them through an open door there.
Picard stopped a few paces inside, and Deanna, Beverly and Riker crowded in behind him to see. Humans sat around long tables; all eyes were on the newcomers. Plates of food, untouched, indicated a meal about to begin, and three empty seats had been left at the middle of the main table.
"These people have been through complete rehabilitation," Gwaheer said. "They work here on *Jhegwa,* at the center, helping us reclaim others by spending time with them, re-socializing them, while they await a treaty with the Federation so they can return home. None of them are here against their will; they could have accepted a memory block and we would have taken them home already, as others have done. All of them were once drones. Some of them saw you around the station yesterday and requested that I arrange a meeting with you so they could express their appreciation." He turned to the group, smiling, and raised his voice. "This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The first survivor recovered from the Borg -- but not the last."
Because of the silence in the room, Deanna heard the ragged intake of air -- Jean-Luc. She put a hand to his shoulder; though she couldn't see his face, she knew what it must look like. Shock. Anguish. Then, as he looked around at the wide-eyed faces, some of them wet with tears, a thread of hope. She sensed the movement before he made it. A step forward, then another, and he reached the closest table. A tall, dark-haired woman stood up. She choked on tears, beamed with joy, eyes glittering.
"Thank you," she managed at last. Overcome, she threw her arms around him.
The captain reacted predictably; he stiffened, didn't respond at once. But the woman clung to him anyway, and around the room people rose from their chairs and began to clap.
"What's going on?" Riker muttered, leaning forward.
Beverly, smiling from ear to ear, glanced at him. "Will, these people are here because Jean-Luc survived the process of recovering him from the Borg. Gwaheer didn't begin trying until he saw that it was possible."
"And all these people know what he went through," Deanna added. "They know he suffered more, because he was first. He was alone -- we didn't share his experience with him. They had each other."
Gwaheer had pulled the woman off the captain, and spoke to the people thronging around him, making shooing motions with his hand. The applause died down, to be replaced by conversation and the barking of chair legs against the tile floor. A blond man came over, and after exchanging a few words with the Ryxian, shook hands with Jean-Luc. When Deanna closed the distance between them, she realized they were discussing seating. She glanced at the three empty seats.
"I won't be staying," Gwaheer said.
"Neither will I," Deanna put in. Jean-Luc and the blond man looked at her. The captain looked tired, a little dazed, but held up well, now that the initial shock was over.
"I really shouldn't either," he began, then paused to think of an excuse.
"You should take advantage of this opportunity." Deanna smiled at the other man. "And these people have waited for the chance to meet you. Beverly and Will will stay, too."
"Where are you going?" Jean-Luc's tone accused her of desertion.
"I'd like to learn more about the counseling techniques used with the drones. That part of the tour was much too brief for me."
Deanna ignored the suspicious looks from Beverly and Will and followed Gwaheer out of the room. They moved along the empty corridor, and were at the next junction before Gwaheer said a word.
"You're a poor liar, Deanna. Why didn't you want to stay?"
"Jean-Luc needed freedom to interact with them. I didn't want him to feel that I was sitting there analyzing everything he said and did." She glanced at him and smiled. "And I wanted to talk to you."
He smiled and tucked his chin, one of those Ryxi gestures she hadn't yet deciphered; she'd only seen it a few times. "Did you have a particular topic in mind?"
"A few topics. I wanted to thank you for arranging this." She glanced back the way they'd come. "You gave Jean-Luc a meaning for what he went through. It isn't just something that gave him strategic information any more. What happened to him allowed you to help other people, other Starfleet officers. When he's over the shock, I expect he'll feel better."
"It wasn't my doing. He asked about the rehabilitation process, and when I mentioned the facility was here, he asked to see it. I was actually nervous, allowing him to see some of what we do. That was only the briefest of tours, but working with the drones can be very unnerving. The luncheon we just left was at the request of the support group. Though I did force him into that -- I agree, it will help him, though he probably doesn't agree with us at this point."
"That was a support group?"
"One of several. Jean-Luc could be a celebrity, if he stayed much longer."
They walked into one of the landscaped areas that often inhabited the major junctions of corridors, and Deanna sat on a bench near some beds of yellow and orange flowers. Gwaheer stretched his wings one at a time before joining her.
"Riker didn't stay, either," he murmured. "He's watching us from what he thinks is a concealed position."
"He's been trying to get me to talk to him. And he's probably being overprotective. I don't know how much he believes what we told him about you."
"Why don't you talk to him?"
Deanna shrugged and looked at the flowers.
"Are you afraid of what he has to say?"
"Maybe." She put her hand over Gwaheer's on the bench. "Let's talk about something else."
"Something else. Something comfortable?"
Deanna sighed. His sly half-smile, his lidded eyes -- but most of all, through their bond, an undercurrent of seriousness. He wasn't going to let this one go.
"Will you wait here for me?"
He rewarded her with a soft look from his wide, sunshine eyes. "As long as you want me."
She rose and walked as far as the steps out of the garden area before realizing his wording seemed off. Looking back at him, she saw that he hadn't moved, but his eyes were closed and his lips moving. Lines of a song drifted to her. ". . . you can make decisions too, and you can have this heart to break. . . "
Deanna looked around. Will Riker was lurking in front of a shop, trying to be inconspicuous. As if a Starfleet captain in uniform would blend in on a station full of aliens with wings, tails, and varicolored skin. She crossed two corridors, walking with the flow of light foot traffic and taking care not to step on anyone's tail. She ignored the looks from some of the Ryxi; the other, unidentifiable aliens paid her no attention.
"You wanted to talk to me?"
He feigned surprise as he turned, but only for a moment. "Yes, actually."
Deanna squared her shoulders. "Well?"
He glanced at the other pedestrians. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind."
"I don't think anyone cares what we talk about -- I doubt they understand a word we're saying."
Riker sighed. "Deanna, is it really true? Does he know your parents?"
"Yes, it is. Why would I lie about something like that?"
"You wouldn't, of course. Not intentionally. Do you have any proof? Something tangible?"
"Why do I need proof? I remember him."
"But I don't."
Deanna narrowed her eyes. "I can't believe your orders would have anything to do with whether or not I have a personal relationship with one of the Ryxi."
"Show me something to prove it. Just do that, okay?"
"If you need proof that he's trustworthy, doesn't the facility we've just been through help at all? He's not doing that for his own welfare."
"If he's telling us the truth, it's an impressive accomplishment -- but I haven't heard anyone else tell us he really had anything to do with that facility."
Deanna pressed her lips together. "And I suppose anyone who did would be suspect? Will, they wouldn't let him get into the facility unless he belonged there. Do you think we've all been brainwashed, or hypnotized? You used to trust us. You're behaving like we were never friends at all."
She could tell he wanted to say something. It nearly escaped him, but at the last second he closed his teeth on it. "You don't seem to be under anyone else's control. Neither does the captain. That's what's bothering me the most about -- everything. And Gwaheer doesn't seem to be someone to mistrust, but I need something more than that. Something solid. I can't just take him at his word, though I want to. If only because you and Jean-Luc, and Beverly, and Geordi, trust him. And I can tell all of you do." He took her by the shoulders. "Deanna, you believe me when I say that?"
"I know you're telling the truth, Will. If you're under orders you can't discuss why haven't you just said so?"
"I can't do that. I'm sorry."
"They won't even let you -- do they believe we're under the control of the Ryxi?"
"No. Not. . . precisely." He stared into her eyes as if trying to encourage her to keep going.
"That we're under Gwaheer's control? That's ridiculous! He's only one person. No single telepath could do such a thing. He might be able to make us believe something, perceive something incorrectly, like someone did to Steichen -- they think *Gwaheer* did that to Gregory?"
He dropped his hands and took a step backward. Confirmation and relief glowed in his eyes.
"Will, that isn't true. Gwaheer didn't know anything about Gregory, other than he was the first officer of the *Enterprise.* What was done to Gregory took time. He remembers it all now -- of course, they aren't going to believe he's remembering it accurately because of Gwaheer's presence, are they?"
"You see why this is so impossible for me."
Deanna frowned and pondered the problem. "Come on."
He followed her back to the garden area. As they went down the steps and through a small grove of trees, she saw that Gwaheer was sitting on the grass, talking to some children of various races, none Ryxi. He grinned and waggled his ears at them; one, a grey-skinned child with a blue crest on his head, tried to grab one of them. Gwaheer dodged, then leaped up and ran in circles, the children in pursuit.
Deanna had to smile. Will sniffed. "He's got a way with kids."
"He always has. I used to play with him like that. He'll let them catch him in a second."
One of the smaller, grey-skinned humanoids managed to catch the tip of Gwaheer's tail, and he mimed struggling against it, then fell on his side. The kids with the blue crests on their heads swarmed over him, but the three hirsute, red-skinned children took abortive dashes at him, squealing, unsure of whether he was safe. Suddenly he rose from the melee and growled, talons out, and the entire group ran screaming, straight for a blue-crested adult. Gwaheer waved; the adult waved back, and herded the children away, hooting in a multi-voweled, symphonic language to calm them.
"Dee?"
She turned to Will. He smiled, a little. . . wistful? "You're in love with him, aren't you? And you don't even have to answer, your face just gave it away. I thought he was married."
"Zakhad's very nice," Deanna said.
He raised an eyebrow. "Zakhad? Oh, well, I'm sure she told him some interesting things about me."
"She thinks you're confused. She liked you, though."
Will measured that information briefly, studying Deanna's face further. "You're in love with her husband, and you're good friends with her. Either she's unaware, or she's aware and approves. Since you're not the type to carry on clandestine affairs with married men, I'd think the latter, which means you're thinking of venturing into a culture that's very different than your own. Is that a wise thing to do?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out." Denying it at this point seemed a silly thing to do. "What's crucial in any inter-species relationship is discovering common ground and differences, then deciding whether or not you can live with them. Zakhad was a big hurdle, but I think she and I would get along."
"Once you figure out whose turn it is, you mean?"
She almost blurted something defensively, but realized he hadn't said it to be cruel. "I know what you're saying, Will, but I'm not sidestepping any issues. I won't go through that again."
"Through what again?"
From his tone, he knew full well what she meant. Even though they'd never discussed Worf, he was observant, and knew her well enough to see through her usual facade. She weighed her words carefully and decided to cut across several subjects at once. Turning, she crossed her arms and leaned against a sapling.
"Through a bad cross-cultural relationship. I wanted Worf for the wrong reasons, I think."
"And you wanted me for all the right ones?"
She smiled with him. "Will, you wanted a career. You didn't need me or any other woman slowing you down. That was pretty plain. I liked that we could be friends afterward, and co-workers. But with Worf, I learned the hard way how difficult culture clashes can make a relationship."
When she paused, he took a step closer and touched her arm. "Deanna?"
"I'm fine, it's just -- a little difficult to talk about. It turns out that being with Worf hurt me, in ways I didn't expect, and because I didn't want to admit to myself that I'd made such a big mistake, I've been internalizing it, a little like Mother did with Kestra's death."
"How did you find this out?"
She shrugged uncomfortably. "Gwaheer helped me see it. This all started because my mother saw it, at the commissioning ceremony. She fretted and fussed all those months, and when Gwaheer visited her as he does every so often, she asked him to take me some flowers. While he was on the *Enterprise* he saw what she saw, and because my father went through some sort of ritual making him promise to look out for me and Mother if anything ever happened to him, Gwaheer felt obligated to talk to me about it. Which is how the relationship started."
"But you've known him all your life, you said. He never visited you before?"
"He's followed his regulations. No interference. If he'd been present on the *Enterprise* when we were in battle, he would have been too tempted to do something. Until recently, when Gregory commandeered the ship and he suspected Ryxian interference, he hasn't been present. His agents have been on the ship, and he's come when there's a conflict with the Borg, but he hasn't been in the field since I was assigned to the D."
Will crossed his arms, mimicking her posture. With a sniff, he said, "So he's actually gotten you to talk about Worf? I admire him for that most of all."
"William T. Riker, that's not funny!"
"I didn't intend it to be. How many times did I try to get you to talk about the breakup?"
She let her head fall back against the tree. "I'm sorry. I really didn't think there was anything to talk about, at the time."
"Just like a counselor to not see her own problems."
Deanna rolled her eyes and started walking.
Gwaheer sat on the grass, ears out, looking just like Data's cat when she was fascinated by a toy. And a toy had his attention -- he stared at a small red ball the children must have left behind, four meters from him.
"Are you about to pounce?" she asked, slightly irritated that he would be behaving like an animal at this particular moment.
"I'm practicing a different sort of teleportation." He looked at her, then rose to an upright, two-legged stance, the structure of his legs allowing him to do so as if pulled up by invisible string. "We're capable of two types, the sector-hopping kind and the line-of-sight. We need bearings for the first kind. The second, we need only a visual point of reference, and it's less of a dislocation and more of a pull. We're working on a third kind. Some of us have been able to move objects to us."
"Telekinesis," Will said.
"Yes. A very different kind of effort. Rather than move ourselves, we move an object in reference to ourselves."
"Is it working?"
Will's interest seemed genuine and friendly, and Deanna knew it was. Gwaheer studied him a moment, however. Then he refocused on the ball and furrowed his brow.
The ball actually rolled. A little.
"We'll need a very long tape measure for that," Deanna said blandly. "At least two centimeters, wouldn't you say?"
Gwaheer's ears swept back. He redoubled his efforts, which made the furrows deeper. The ball flew at him, and made a loud *thwack* against his forehead. Immediately, loud laughter rang out.
In a smooth, instantaneous recovery, Gwaheer caught the ball, which had gone straight up and down, spun, and threw it. It traveled like an arrow, swift and sure, and beaned the laughing onlooker in the forehead.
The Ryxian had been sitting on the edge of the planted area, on a part of the wall where there were no steps. He fell, probably out of shock more than anything else, into the shrubbery.
"That's one of my brothers," Gwaheer said.
"You only have three. Tormal?" Deanna watched the man pick his way out of the plants.
"Unfortunately. Don't take anything he tells you seriously."
"You *would* say that," Tormal shouted. He managed to seem in complete disarray, though he exhibited the same poise as any other Ryxi she'd met. Deanna noted the differences between the brothers for future reference -- smaller than either Gwaheer or Sakhara; shorter, perpetually-mussed-looking hair; darker blue color points; and more than anything else, an aura of inexperienced youth. Rough-edged, that was the term.
He stopped at Gwaheer's side and grinned like an imp. "Still can't do it, can you?"
"I didn't have to throw the ball to hit myself, did I? What do you want?"
Tormal sobered -- but only for a moment. "Mother asked me to find you." He smiled again, mischievously. "She's angry."
Gwaheer frowned. "What about?"
"You aren't going to introduce me?" His pale blue eyes fastened on Deanna, with obvious interest. She crossed her arms and stared back at him.
"You have a message, deliver it." Gwaheer's tail looped around his feet restlessly.
"She wanted to see you. She left a message with Zakhad -- didn't you get it?"
"When did she talk to Zakhad?"
"Yesterday."
Deanna watched Gwaheer now, as for the first time in her experience, he lost his temper. She knew he felt impatience and fury; the bond was good for that. But his expression showed only mild anger, not the rage he really felt. It was the sort of anger one felt when continually annoyed by someone over many years, the sort she sometimes felt toward her mother.
"She didn't talk to Zakhad yesterday. Zakhad was here, until I took her home this morning. And Mother would be very upset with you for using her as an excuse to show up here to meet Deanna. Go home."
Tormal blinked and turned an insulted, astounded expression on his brother, looking so comically wounded that Deanna put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Then she felt sorry for him, and composed herself.
"It's nice to meet you, Tormal," she said lightly.
He rebounded into a grin, taking a half-step, half-leap forward. Unlike his brothers, he seemed to have no concept of personal space, and she took two steps backward. "A pleasure to meet you, Deanna! I wanted to welcome you to the fa -- " He stopped, cocked his head to the right quizzically, and glanced suspiciously at his brother. "You're not -- AWK!"
Gwaheer snatched him up by the scruff of the neck. He grimaced but didn't appear to be in any real pain, though Gwaheer had collected an amazing amount of Tormal's skin in his fist. Giving him a shake, Gwaheer dropped him on the grass, thankfully farther away from Deanna.
"Go home. Learn some manners before you approach them. You know better than that."
Tormal shot a glare at Gwaheer and snarled, "*PetaQ,*" then disappeared.
Deanna's heart jumped a little at the unexpected curse. "Klingon?"
"I hope he didn't upset you," Gwaheer said, more concern than he displayed rushing through the bond. He was keeping a formal demeanor in front of Will. "In addition to being young, he's also uneducated in either of your cultures, in spite of learning Standard. He's been on a Klingon ship as his third assignment, and I'm afraid he's taking to it too well."
"He speaks Standard as fluently as you do," Will said.
Gwaheer smiled at Will. "Our father used to practice it with us. He believed we would need to know it."
"Guess he was right. Comes in handy for you now."
Gwaheer wrinkled his nose in amusement -- an interesting sight, since he already had more nose ridges than nose -- and turned to Deanna. /What did you talk about?/
/A little of everything, actually./
Sensing confusion, Deanna turned to find Will wearing a puzzled expression. "That wasn't Standard. Was it? The lip movements didn't match."
"Gwaheer speaks Betazoid quite well," Deanna said.
"It took a lot of practice, but Lwaxana loves to talk." Gwaheer turned and waved in the general direction of one of the corridors. "Why don't we go get something to drink? You can continue avoiding the revelation of your orders to me, and I can continue to ignore the fact that they exist."
"And you could talk about jazz," Deanna said.
Gwaheer's ears did a passable rabbit imitation. "Jazz?"
"Do you play?" Will asked.
"No, I'm. . . a collector, you could say. My father collected while on assignment, as well."
"Collected how? Do you mean he recorded performances?"
"Sometimes. Earth was much easier to observe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Buildings were easier to get into. One of father's favorite places was New Orleans, when jazz was emerging as its own genre."
Will walked with Gwaheer toward whatever bar
Gwaheer had in mind, asking more questions about specific recordings and whether he had
visual records as well. Resigning herself to a passive role in the conversation with a
smile, Deanna followed them. It would be an interesting afternoon.
12.
"There's Will," Beverly said.
Picard roused himself from his deep thoughts of the luncheon they'd just attended and followed her pointing finger. "And Deanna."
"Let's go join them."
"We shouldn't interrupt."
"There are three glasses on the table. Unless Will's a two-fisted drinker these days, I'll bet Gwaheer's with them."
Picard sniffed and regarded Beverly with an affectionate look. "You're terrible. Leave them alone to sort out whatever it is they're sorting out. If she's gotten Will to accept Gwaheer. . . that's what it is, isn't it? You want to see how Will interacts with him, and vice versa, with Deanna sitting there watching."
Beverly grabbed his arm. "Quit making something out of nothing. They're friends, we're waddling down the corridor full of whatever that yellow stuff was, and we saw them and decided to say hi. What could be more innocent than that?"
The bar was nearly empty. Deanna and Will sat with their backs to the entrance in a far corner, and as Beverly approached, Deanna turned with a welcoming smile. Picard wished for an easy way out and forced a smile.
"You're tired, Captain," Deanna commented as he sat next to her. Beverly sat across from him, on Will's right. The empty seat with the half-empty glass in front of it was the only one left.
"I'll be fine. Shore leave on the homeworld will be welcome, however -- Gwaheer mentioned he had a hot spring in his garden. I'd love to be there right now."
"How was the luncheon?" Will asked.
Picard's smile at that was genuine. "It was like having a class reunion. All those people remember me as Locutus, but none of them hate me. None of them suspect me of collusion, or look at me like I've betrayed Starfleet somehow. They spoke in such a matter-of-fact way about their experiences -- I can't imagine that."
"So you're going to ask them for help?" Beverly had a hopeful gleam in her eyes. He hadn't been certain about it, but coming from her. . . .
"If it will do away with the nightmares, yes."
"I'll bet Gwaheer will want to do it himself. He's already acquainted with your case," Deanna said. "Want something to drink?"
"What do you have?"
"I have no idea, but it's a little like a lemon margarita." She held up the neon-pink slush and pointed at it, then held up two fingers. The We'lassi bartender nodded and took two glasses from a shelf behind the bar.
"Where's the winged boyfriend?" Beverly asked.
"He had some business to take care of," Will answered evenly. "Two of his subordinates showed up looking alarmed, and wanted to talk to him."
Beverly raised an eyebrow at Riker. "Are we changing our mind about Gwaheer, now?"
"Officially, no. Personally, nothing's certain, though I'm doubting my official position more as he tells me stories about my own career. And he's a far cry from Worf, that's for sure."
Discomfort plain in her eyes, Deanna propped her elbow on the table and balanced her chin in her hand. "They keep talking about me like I'm not here."
"You've been sitting here so quietly, we keep forgetting you're there," Will shot back with a little-boy grin.
"*You* keep talking about jazz. It's putting me to sleep."
"Gwaheer's quite the music afficionado, isn't he?" Picard asked, giving Riker a slight smile.
"I thought my ears were ringing," came a familiar voice. As the bartender brought over clones of Deanna's drink, Gwaheer came around the table and reclaimed his seat. He spat a few consonant-heavy words at the bartender, who took Gwaheer's glass with him. "Luncheon went well, I see. How do you feel, Jean-Luc?"
"Tired, but I appreciate that you ended the tour with it. Although being idolized isn't my preference, and some of them never lost the awed expression."
"They probably can't conceive of going through the process without the company of other ex-Borg." The bartender returned with a taller, wider glass of brown liquid, and placed it in front of Gwaheer.
"What's that?" Deanna asked.
"Nothing alcoholic. It's a We'lassi beverage, a little like tea." He shoved it across the table, and Deanna tried it and made a face. "It takes a little getting used to."
"It smells good, but what a taste!"
Will leaned back in his chair and studied the Ryxian. He glanced lazily at Picard, met his eyes briefly, and Picard's hackles went up. He wanted to say something to stop whatever Riker was about to do, but what would he do? Will looked at Gwaheer again, deceptively casual -- didn't he realize Deanna was likely to sense his game? Even if Gwaheer didn't use his talents, Deanna did.
"If you know I'm under orders, and you know the general nature of them, why are you treating me as if we're on good terms?"
Gwaheer smiled serenely. The friendly-but-dangerous tone of Riker's question seemed to escape him completely. "James Kirk once said that you never know whether someone is trustworthy until you trust them. I have a slight advantage, though -- I know your character, if only second-hand through reports. And I trust Deanna, and she trusts you, still, in spite of your behavior. As do Jean-Luc and Beverly."
Jean-Luc watched Will's jaw move in a single, slow chewing motion, then set itself. "You're so convinced that I'll come around," Will said. "Why?"
"Because you are a principled man. Because you think for yourself."
"So you're trying to befriend me?"
"Not exactly. I'm being friendly, as you are." Gwaheer's cool, calculating expression mirrored Will's. "I believe we could be friends, when you are aware of the truth."
The tension over the table increased, as the two men stared. Deanna glanced nervously from one to the other, apparently not willing to say a word and looking a little surprised at the sudden hostility. Picard considered changing the subject, but curiosity won out. He met Beverly's gaze briefly, saw her own curiosity and concern, and went back to watching the silent stare-out.
"The truth," Will echoed. "Do you think you would make the same claim, if you knew what my orders were?"
"Orders are not the issue. The only reason you are here is your concern for Deanna. That, and curiosity about me."
"My concern, regardless of orders, is well-founded, and not necessarily because of you."
"I agree." Gwaheer drank, keeping his eyes on Will.
"You do? That's interesting."
"Stop it," Deanna blurted. "Stop talking about me like I'm not even here!"
"Sorry," Gwaheer said softly, putting down his glass. He lowered his head, angling it with chin toward Deanna as if expressing penitence.
"Worse than my mother," she mumbled into her drink.
Gwaheer rocked backward, ears drooping. "Your mother, unlike myself and Will, honestly does forget you're there. She would forget anyone, given the proper distraction. It's nothing to criticize her for, it's -- "
"The way she is, yes, I know." Deanna never sounded cross, Picard thought. At least not often enough that hearing it now wasn't disturbing.
Gwaheer sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if you do know."
"How could I not? She's my mother!"
"She wasn't like that, before Kestra died," Gwaheer said. "And she changed again when your father died."
"Can we not talk about her? Please?"
Gwaheer's eyes slid to Picard, and Jean-Luc shrugged. "You knew Captain Kirk?"
"As well as I could, for never meeting him in person."
And Spock? He's on Romulus, at the moment."
"Still?" Gwaheer shook his head. "He's a patient old soul. I lost track of him when he left Starfleet. Pursuing peace is sometimes the least peaceful thing we can do."
Picard opened his mouth to respond, but a gasp from Deanna interrupted his question. All eyes turned to her. She looked at Gwaheer first.
"He's here," she mouthed.
Gwaheer picked up Beverly's empty glass and headed for the bar. When he returned a few moments later and handed her a refill, he sat and leaned across the table. "There are a group of them. Which one?"
A moment of silence, as the two looked in each other's eyes and probably exchanged thoughts. Picard sipped and looked around them nonchalantly. A group of Ryxi were sitting on the opposite end of the bar.
Gwaheer stretched a wing and glanced at the group. Then he leaned again. "Are you certain that's him?"
"Absolutely. Sakhara was careful to show me how to identify him, just in case he ever came aboard the *Enterprise.* What could he be doing here?"
"Any number of things, including checking on his handiwork." Gwaheer tapped instructions into his wristband. "It's obvious he doesn't know who we are. I'd like to keep it that way. Security should be here any time. Let's meet them in the hall."
They left the bar casually and stopped around the corner, as four burly Neg, red-skinned and vaguely reptilian, approached at a jog. The Neg were probably from a high gravity world, Picard thought. The deck plates vibrated under their feet; they were built like battleships, blocky and solid.
Gwaheer spoke to them quietly at length, the translator only picking up a smattering of the words as he explained which Ryxi to apprehend. The leader nodded, and the four thundered into the bar. They emerged a moment later, bracketing an angry Ryxian making unintelligible, warp-speed demands. When the prisoner dragged his feet, the front two guards picked up his arms, the rear two picked up his legs, and the Neg jog-trotted down the corridor, jolting their captive, who screeched unappealingly.
"How do you know he won't just teleport out of the cell?" Deanna asked.
"He doesn't know why they're taking him in. It's best to cooperate until he does, because he might face worse charges if he runs. Not to mention other agents know the same locations he does, and the records of where he's been would be easy enough to procure -- we could find a fugitive. By the time he does know the charges, they'll have had a team of telepaths in to put a temporary block on that ability."
"Who was he?" Beverly asked.
Deanna and Gwaheer turned to her as one.
"The man who nearly killed Gregory Steichen," Gwaheer said.
13.
The day ran long. Will had lingered long after Jean-Luc and Beverly had left, and though he'd found it irritating, Gwaheer had accepted his presence with better manners than he'd displayed in the bar. He was determined not to cause the problems; if there were any confrontations made, they could be Will's fault, not his. At last, the captain had returned to the *Rampage* to review the completed repairs.
After Riker had gone, Deanna had apologized at once for Will's attitude, and Gwaheer experienced relief -- she wasn't angry with him. He dined with her in Ten Forward, and she explained Will's continued protectiveness of her as an expression of friendship; Beverly expressed the same concerns, after all. He listened and reserved judgement. She needed to talk it out more than he needed to know her opinions; his version of Riker's motivations differed slightly from hers. He knew jealousy when he smelled it.
And that Deanna hadn't dismissed the whole issue without the lengthy explanation told him how much she had once cared for the man. Riker still held a place in her heart. She'd admitted to loving Riker long-term; if there was anything Gwaheer understood about loving someone for a long time, it was how much a part of one's being that someone became. Rehia had been a part of him for nearly forty-five years, and it still hurt to think of her loss almost a century after her death.
Gwaheer walked her to her quarters, intending to go on to his own from there, but Deanna took his hand as she went in, drawing him along. Once the door closed, she took off her grey jacket and started to pull the blue undershirt out of her waistband. She glanced at him and hesitated.
"Something wrong?"
"Not at all. I'll see you in the morning." Gwaheer turned away.
"Wait."
He froze, facing the door, head lowered. He heard her movements clearly; Deanna stepped carefully over his tail and up between his wings, kissing one of the fleshy ridges that ran from his wing joints up the back of his neck. The sensation started such a heat in his groin that he knew he'd be awake for hours. Her nearness wasn't helping either, nor the faint change in her body odor. She was aroused -- if her scent hadn't told him, what he sensed through their bond would have.
"You shouldn't do that," he whispered, tipping his head back.
"It's what I want." Hands flat against his back, she slid them up the ripples and ridges of wing muscles. "We never did discuss what I wanted to talk about earlier. Will interrupted us."
"This isn't discussion, either."
"But you're getting the same message." Deanna slipped her palms over his shoulders and down his sloping chest, pressing herself against the length of his back. He shuddered. Encouraged, she kissed the other neck ridge, then ran her tongue along it.
One of his hands shot out and gripped the edge of the door. A ragged gasp escaped him. If she kept this up, she'd get what she wanted. Zakhad and her answers! He could guess exactly what Deanna had wanted to know, and Zakhad had gleefully answered and even volunteered information, no doubt. Ryxi were just as open about sex as Betazoids.
Deanna let go and backed away, ducking around his left wing. The reprieve allowed him to gather his wits. He turned to her, wide-eyed and anxious, catching her in his arms. "I hope you realize -- "
"It's stupid to keep avoiding a decision for the sake of not rushing into something, when you know you'll make the same decision whether you wait two days or two months."
Gwaheer pressed his forehead against hers lightly. At least it would keep her from kissing him, as he sensed she might do. "How do you know you would make the same decision in two months? What if negotiations don't go as well as you want them to? What if the Federation does not have a treaty with the Conglomerate, and I am unable to see you?"
"How likely is it that a treaty won't happen? And just what's going to keep you from seeing me? Your regulations?"
"My regulations, yes. Are you aware that you're contradicting what you told me before? When you said you thought I was right that it might be too difficult, and I reassured you?"
"You said you thought there would be an agreement. You told me not to worry, so I'm not."
"I said there would likely be one. That isn't a guarantee. I was trying to tell you to continue getting to know me, not -- You've said you wanted to avoid making another big mistake. I thought you were going to think this through and continue gathering information, and give it time."
"I've thought about it. I've thought about my career." Deanna raised her head and looked him in the eye. "You have to be aware of the recent changes in Starfleet."
He was aware of more than she guessed, but it wasn't his prerogative to tell her about it. The history of the Borg was one thing; interfering with the operations of Starfleet quite another, and as long as she was an officer, that would be an issue, treaty or no. "Somewhat aware."
"If the Federation doesn't make some sort of alliance with the Conglomerate, it will be to its detriment, and I'm not sure I'd want to stay in Starfleet or the Federation."
"Your home is on Betazed."
"I could make my home anywhere I want to, and visit my mother. And please don't start quoting my mother about those stupid rings and that musty old pot."
"All I want is for you to make a rational decision, just as you told me you would. Not a sudden, emotional leap."
She stood back from him and crossed her arms across her stomach, the way she usually did when she was about to admit something that made her feel exposed. "I'm not. You can tell how I feel about you."
"Feelings aren't the whole of love, Deanna. We've been through this before."
"I can't do it again," she exclaimed. Now the storm clouds gathered in her eyes, and tears glittered on the brink of her lower eyelids. "I can't just say 'give it time' and then watch the relationship fade into the distance!"
Gwaheer almost groaned, almost turned away to hide the frustration. First memories of Worf -- now the leftover Riker angst. The way some of these people handled their relationships baffled him. Riker had to be a few neurons short to leave her behind, when she was so in love with him that she'd follow him anywhere, even roll the dice and chance Starfleet in hopes of seeing him again.
Huh. And here Gwaheer was, trying to argue her out of a relationship with *him.* No wonder she wanted to just jump in. She didn't want to be left behind again.
But it was a matter of ethics, and of sparing himself heartache. He wanted her, but didn't want to be another spur-of-the-moment choice for her. She'd said she should take her time; it was her own preference to go through a lengthy decision-making progress, to avoid a strictly-emotion-based decision. And here she was, emotional and making the decision. He wasn't sure he could take it if he went through with it, only to have her turn on him in the morning because he'd allowed her to go through with it.
"It's only been a matter of weeks, Deanna."
"Why can you decide in a day, but I have to think about it for months?" she shouted.
At that, Gwaheer did turn away.
All he wanted was a moment, just a moment to think, to compose a few sentences in rational tones, to make a temporary retreat so she could calm herself. But she took it the wrong way. He felt the surge of panic rising in her like a tidal wave.
"Don't leave me," she cried.
Gwaheer caught her as he turned around again, almost falling backward under her weight, and held her by the shoulders. "I'm not leaving you. You're not being rational, Deanna. You have to be rational about this."
She mastered herself quickly, wiping a sleeve across each cheek. "All right. I'm rational. I'm sorry I shouted at you. It's just that I know how you feel about me, and yet you turn away from me. It hurts!"
"How are you rational? Right now, you're afraid, frustrated, and half a dozen other emotions I can name." He was reminded of a Ryxi cliche, 'impartial as an empath,' which meant that a person was prone to subjective decisions. This probably was not a good time to use it.
"Why are you being so reluctant to do this? It isn't that you don't want this. Why are you so convinced -- " Her eyes widened. "You thought I would go back to Will Riker. That's why you acted the way you did when I went to talk to him earlier. You still think there's a chance of that happening, don't you?"
The question shocked him. Why would that come up? What was she thinking? He'd gone out of his way to be friendly to Riker, mostly for her sake. He'd trusted that she would turn away any advances her former lover might make, and that had been a possibility. Riker's attitude suggested it. Riker had teased Deanna, in such a way that Gwaheer's hackles rose -- he'd been affectionate, the undercurrent of attraction evident in his expression.
The only reason Gwaheer could think of that explained Deanna's sudden notion was that she had considered it. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was thinking about Riker, and what might have been.
A knot of pain developed in Gwaheer's chest. Now he knew he couldn't go forward with this relationship. He should have let her have her way when they came in, he thought briefly -- this private wish of hers probably wouldn't have surfaced. Then he realized the hypocrisy of that thought.
That he'd been willing to compromise his ethics and do something that might cause her pain, just because he wanted her so badly, hurt too much for tears. The pain rose in his dry throat and burst in the back of his mouth, and he fell forward, weight on his knuckles, head bowed almost to the floor.
"It doesn't matter what I want," he
rasped. Inhaling raggedly, he swallowed once, twice, and began to sing.
*It doesn't matter what I want
It doesn't matter what I need
It doesn't matter if I cry
Doesn't matter if I bleed
You've been on a road
Don't know where it goes or where it leads
If you've made up your mind to go
I won't beg you to stay
You've been in a cage
Throw you to the wind
you fly away*
He couldn't bring himself to look at her, but her remorse trickled down through the pain, then love -- she loved him.
It surged forth from her, washing over her other emotions and brushing them aside like driftwood. She knelt beside him and pulled him into her lap, and he let his body fall limp as she held his head to her abdomen and looked down into his eyes, brushed his hair back from his face, her tears dripping on his cheek.
"It doesn't matter what I want," he whispered. "Doesn't matter if I bleed. Feel the sting of tears, falling on this face. . . ."
She winced, put her hand to his mouth. The surge of fear across his mind coincided perfectly with her sob. "It matters to me. Stop this, please, I didn't mean it."
"*Kahzan'kahliu,*" he said, touching her face, brushing a knuckle under one eye, then the other. "Want me to stay, I stay. No explanations." Singing had been a natural reaction, and because of it he'd lapsed into Ryxi speech patterns, he realized, although he still spoke in Standard. "I was only afraid Riker would convince you I was not trustworthy."
"I doubted you," she cried. "I didn't think -- I'm sorry. Forgive me."
Gwaheer sat up, pulling out of her grasp and stretching his wings, which he'd crushed in falling into her lap. "If you want him, you should go to him. He would like that."
She stared at him incredulously. "Why would you suggest that to me?"
"You could be happy with him. You still love him, on some level -- that could easily turn into something greater. You could have his children. There would be no external political influences on the relationship. It would be easier for you, more natural, if you will."
Her coughing, half-laugh, half-sob startled him. She pressed both hands over her mouth but couldn't contain it. The emotions from her were confusing; rather than try to decipher them, Gwaheer bowed his head and shut them out as much as he could. Women's emotions were not something he necessarily understood, even as long as he'd been married. He'd learned that it was best to allow them privacy as much as possible, especially when they were conflicted this way.
Her sobbing slowed, finally, and she rose and left the room. Long minutes passed. He nearly left. The suspense kept him there, however, and just as he decided that a nap might be in order, she returned.
"I've made my decision, for the thousandth time. Except I don't think it will change, now," she said. Her voice still wavered, but she was determined. "I don't want Will, for reasons that have nothing to do with you. I want you, and I know exactly what I'm doing. You've explained it all very clearly. If you refuse me, I think I shouldn't see you again."
The tenor of her emotions, now steady and unconfused, sounded a chord in his chest. Rising, he went to where she stood in the bedroom door.
"I can't allow that to happen. I love you."
She smiled and reached up to put her arms around his neck. It reminded him of when she was a small child, and she wanted to be picked up -- joy in her eyes, arms open wide, love flowing freely. She was that sort of person. It made her an excellent counselor, and it made her susceptible to situations like the one she'd gotten herself into with Worf --
No. Not going there. This was definitely not the time.
It felt like falling out of the sky, with no ground below. She'd opened herself to him, whether or not she'd meant to, and he met her with an open heart. He thought he'd never see eternity in another woman's eyes, but it gleamed in Deanna's. And as she realized what was happening between them, more tears, this time happy ones, fell. Her fingertips caressed his cheek, her eyes wide with wonder.
Their souls opened like blossoms, petals folding back as they reached for one another, just as they'd been unconsciously trying to do all along. The bond -- no small thread of emotion and vagueness of being, now. The psychic presence of her was as strong as the physical; she impinged upon his senses on every level. He'd forgotten what it could be like.
He reached for her without thinking, taking her hand in his, cupping her cheek in his palm. She pulled him into the bedroom and leaned to kiss him. As she did so, one of his claws scratched her.
She flinched, then noticed his guilt-stricken look. "It's nothing. I'll be right back."
She went to the dressing table, opened a drawer, and pulled out a regenerator. He watched her do away with the scratch quickly. Then it occurred to him to wonder why she had a regenerator in her quarters. He recognized that it was the wrong color, a dull gold instead of silver, as the ones Beverly had used in sickbay were. This was older.
As close as they were, as fresh and new as the stronger bond was, she was paying attention to it, testing the limits of it, and because of that realized his interest in the regenerator. A stray memory flitted by him, of her finding it in the wreckage of her quarters in the saucer section of the previous *Enterprise.* She'd tucked it quickly away before the other officers helping her recover some of her belongings could see it. Then a flash of a bloody bite mark on her shoulder, and shame.
Worf.
Before she could turn away, before she could cry, Gwaheer took the regenerator from her and tossed it away. His lips were on hers before the thing landed with a clatter, who cared where.
She forgot the memory easily enough. So did he. For the universe had contracted around them and now contained only the taste of her, the scent of their mutual arousal, the fumbling of her fingers at his single article of clothing, and the throbbing desire to possess one another.
She managed to get him to the bed. The bunk was too small, too hard, but at this point those things were inconsequential. She fell back, discarding her pants and shoes with two kicks, and spread her legs.
Her eager position gave him pause, but the smell of her increased to overwhelming levels, making his head pound. The urge to rut insensibly gripped him.
The fog cleared only when her scent changed -- fear. Acrid fear cut through the sweetness and the musk.
Gwaheer stopped himself in mid-thrust. She lay beneath him, shaking and panting, and as he pushed himself up to look at her she turned away to press her face into her pillow. Now she was ashamed, and angry, and darkness roiled in her.
No words would heal this wound. He could feel the wrong kind of tension in her muscles, the ebbing desire. Sorting back through the last few moments, he tried to recall what it was he'd done that caused this -- obviously it was a flashback to Worf. He heard the echo of a remembered disagreement with Worf, fading as she sent it back into the recesses of her mind.
It must have simply been the blind passion of it. It must have reminded her of the Klingon. Gwaheer didn't allow himself to dwell on the thought of what lovemaking with a Klingon would be like.
He waited, her body quivering beneath him still. Fear seeped from her pores. She feared -- what? That he would ravage her? Reject her? Damn the Klingon! Her pain sat between them, raw and real, and his instincts responded -- he wanted to hurt the one who'd caused this. He caught himself flexing his claws and mastered the anger, swallowing it, knowing she sensed it and might interpret it incorrectly.
Leaning down, he blew gently on her breast. She moved her head, just a little. He did it again, adding a flick of his tongue across her nipple. She gasped. Moving with deliberate, cautious slowness, he watched her face and traced the contours of her with his tongue, her breasts, her collar bone, the line of her shoulder up to her neck and down the other side.
Slowly, bitter fear became less prominent in her scent than arousal.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He raised his head and looked down into her dark, quivering eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you," he breathed. "I will never hurt you."
"I knew that, know that -- I don't know why -- "
"It doesn't matter." She was becoming upset again. He dropped a gentle, lingering kiss on her lips, holding her head in his hands. "Hush. Be still."
"But -- "
"No. Hush."
He lay astride her, inside her, holding her still. In the absence of action, she had nothing to distract her. He felt the pain rise in her like a bubble in a glass of water. Touching the tip of his nose to hers, he inhaled as he felt her exhale.
<What are you doing?> Her eyes were wide with question.
<Long ago, when we were still superstitious, Ryxi believed that a loved one's pain could be shared by taking in their breath.>
A tiny, strangled sob worked its way loose. She tightened her arms around his neck. <Just do it. I can work through this.>
<I cannot. I will not force this. Someone has misused you, taught your body to react in fear. I will not reinforce that.>
To prove his point, he withdrew and lay alongside her, leaving a leg and an arm draped over her body and wrapping his tail around her ankle twice. She cried, quietly at first, then in long, whooping sobs, the darkness she felt tearing at him. Finally, she slept.
Reaching up and behind his head, he found the controls and turned out the lights. The rainbow streaks of transwarp flickered overhead, the colors playing across her naked body.
He didn't think he could sleep with the near-painful pressure of his erection, but a fluttering touch woke him. He forced himself to lay still, eyes closed, relying on his sixth sense to ascertain her position. She was awake, sitting up, running two fingers down the length of his penis. It had been the edges of her fingernails along the ridges of it that had awakened him.
Without making an effort, he could sense her curiosity and the mild anxiety as she worried about waking him. Why would she worry about waking him? He cracked his eyelids open. The smell of her, plus the sight of her hair down the pale curves of her back and the contours of her buttocks sent a surge of desire through him. His penis hardened and straightened as she touched it, startling her. She let go.
A few tense moments passed. Reassured by his stillness, she cupped one of his testicles in her palm. A gentle squeeze sent one of his legs into a spasm. Again startled, she pulled away.
The pressure of his erection increased, until he couldn't stand it any longer. By now, she knew he was awake. He sat up next to her. In the flickering light, they looked at each other.
"I want to try again," she whispered.
Gwaheer considered it, then pulled his wings shut tightly and settled on his back, in a close approximation of the position she'd adopted in the first place. It was the least likely position for a Klingon to take, he reasoned, less likely to trigger a flashback and perhaps the best choice at the moment anyway.
She was slow to react, unsure of herself -- afraid of the possibility of another involuntary reaction on her part. He was certain she wasn't normally a hesitant lover; no daughter of Lwaxana's could possibly be bashful about her body and how to use it. She took her time, kneeling between his legs and putting a hand on his erection.
Waiting was excruciating. She had to know what this was doing to him.
At last she moved with some decisiveness, pulling his legs straighter and straddling him. She descended slowly, as if unsure if it would all fit -- silly, since he'd already managed to do that. He bit back a verbal tease, kept his tail from wrapping around her, determined not to do anything that might make her feel rejected or trapped.
She leaned forward, breasts hanging over him. Since he couldn't reach it with his tongue, he tickled a nipple with the tip of his ear.
She ground her hips against him. The movement, her wetness, the overwhelming smell of her sent his muscles into automatic reaction, but he flexed helplessly with little result. He couldn't push. His legs were trapped in ineffective positions, and with his wings under him, moving his shoulders or arms would hurt.
Just as she read the nature of his difficulty, her intent reached him before she could move. Taking her shoulders in his hands as she raised herself, he pulled his legs into a more natural position, folded beneath him, his weight balanced on the thick trunk of his tail.
She sighed and sat on her knees, pondering what to try next, feeling a little ridiculous. Not exactly conducive to their goal, that.
Pulling her by the shoulders, he settled her on her side, facing away from him. Brushing her hair out of her face, he curled around her, nestled his nose along her ear, and pressed against her thigh until she understood his goal and opened her legs.
This was what his body understood, the gripping of wife in arms and legs, and being on his side kept him from losing control and getting too rough. The gentle rocking motion wasn't completely satisfying, but it was a start, and it worked; Deanna's emotions built to more intense levels than they had before. He felt the warmth as she did, spreading through her in waves, and suddenly she contracted around him. The orgasm shaking her triggered his own prematurely.
He could tell it wasn't enough. Orgasm came easier than ejaculation, and the erection wouldn't diminish until he'd spent himself. That would take more activity than this. Given the difficulty they'd already had, he didn't want to force the issue. Briefly the idea of popping home to Zakhad went through his mind, but he dismissed it at once. She'd throw him out of the house if he left Deanna alone on their first night together.
Deanna settled into a peaceful, relaxed state, moving into him as if shrugging on a jacket. "Gwaheer?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you for believing me."
< ? >
"About my decision being rational. And. . . I'll be better, next time."
<You have no reason to feel inadequate. I knew there might be some difficulty with that. I have treated post-traumatic stress before, once with a rape victim. Let me show you something. Open your hand.>
She held out her hand, in the air alongside the bed. He placed his opposing hand palm to palm on hers.
<Move your hand, like a wave. You see that we are together, yet either one of us could move away with ease. This is how Ryxi live with their mates.> He pushed down at an angle, turning their hands to the vertical. <Change, and response. We move together, open to one another. No coercion. No deception. Like the wind flows above the earth.>
<I want to do that. I love you.>
Songs burst into being, welling up in his chest. Instead of singing he let the emotions flow from him to her directly. She reciprocated, and the echoes and reverberations between them continued for an indefinite period, ebbing as both of them succumbed to weariness.
<Why are you still so hard?> Her puzzlement brought him back from the brink of slumber. He allowed himself a taste of the back of her neck.
<Because you are here. Because you taste like desire.>
<Something tells me this has something to do with the tradition of multiple wives. Zakhad said men used to have five or more. When did they sleep?>
Sleepy amusement. <Since I have not had the privilege of knowing any of my distant ancestors, I have no idea. But we are all light sleepers. We were originally nocturnal, and as any tree-dweller knows, it's best to sleep in brief intervals. Less likely to fall or be someone else's meal.>
<How sexually active can you be, in one night?>
Oh, what a sweet-tasting question! <Would
you like to find out?>
14.
Deanna rose slowly out of a satisfied slumber to find him gone. She would have thought it but a dream, if not for the missing covers and a familiar post-coital throb between her legs.
She sat up and brought up the lights, feeling leaden and cold, searching for him. Though the connection was there, his presence still felt as strong, she couldn't "hear" more than a faint impression of his emotions. So much for fantasies of waking up with him.
A note sat tented on the table. She stood, and the first step loosed a wave of soreness -- she'd have to find that regenerator, or she'd be hobbling through the ship like an old woman. Or, like a woman who'd taken an alien to bed without a clear understanding of what that would entail. She'd felt worse, though. Part of it was simply that it'd been a long time since she'd taken a lover to bed.
What a horrendous start it'd been. To freeze like that, the first time Gwaheer began to fulfill her fantasies! She'd felt an obligation to make up for it; she'd left him aching and unfulfilled, and after that second, more successful round, she'd been determined to get him to come.
She had disregarded the first twinges of soreness, until he'd recognized the slight pain himself and stopped, and nothing she could say would induce him to continue, not even her insistence that it was more pleasure than pain and she could keep going a while longer.
Instead, he'd pressed his lips against the base of her throat and hummed. It wasn't a human hum; it reminded her of a kazoo, but pleasant, with a reedy quality and a resonance no doubt due to hollow bones and a larger chest cavity. When he stopped, he opened his mouth and ran his tongue slowly up her clavicle, until he realized it aroused her, at which point he rearranged the length of his lithe, amazingly-light body into her curves like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle fitting into its proper place. And he hummed again, lips against the base of her skull, face in her hair, so the melody buzzed in her bones.
They'd fallen asleep like that, and she'd loved it. She'd wanted to wake up that way, to lay there until the alarm and soak in his warmth and love. After his initial rush, the one that had caused the flashback, he'd been gentle, in complete control of himself, and so considerate that she'd almost gotten angry. Where was the passion, the heat, that she knew he had pent up in him somewhere? But he'd been afraid to indulge in that, after her freezing up then sobbing like an idiot.
She sighed. Well, there was always tonight. She could make up for lost time, thanks to the regenerator.
She picked up the note and leaned on the table.
Gwaheer must have replicated paper and a pen -- how archaically romantic. In sloping,
sharp print, just the sort of handwriting a four-fingered man would have, he'd written a
poem down the center of the crisp parchment.
*I have been remiss.
I leave stumbling words,
my poor substitute for song.
Long journeys over your body
I would caress,
but I have been called away.
Hours apart
cannot steal memories of
silken skin,
bland food cannot banish the
taste of silk you leave on my lips,
nor sustain me as you do.
I have been remiss,
because I did not tell you,
did not show you
that my parting is not
parting
but a temporary absence.
I must return soon.
I cannot live long
without my heart.*
Deanna put the paper on the table, then thought better of it and took it to her dressing table. Opening the drawer where she kept her brushes and hair ornaments, she refolded it and laid it with ceremonial solemnity where the regenerator had been. She looked up at her reflection in the mirrors.
"Married," she said, testing the word. "My husband, Gwaheer." She thought about last night, and when she looked up again at her reflection upon returning from her memories, she caught herself smiling, eyes glowing, looking happier and younger than she'd looked in months.
Sitting up and squaring her shoulders, she announced to the mirror, "This is my husband, Kree -- Kray? Kreh'tall -- oh, what have you done, Deanna? Blew your resolution to think things through, leaped straight in with both feet, before you even learned how to say his whole name!"
But it didn't change the warmth she felt, or the bond. Regardless of whether she could actually sense him, the bond still existed. Like a second person stood inside her skin with her, like halves of a locket, nestled together to make a whole.
<I understand now! I know why you almost died when you lost Rehia. I want this to last forever. . . .>
The computer chimed softly to wake her, as it always did in the morning. Time for a shower and a uniform. She turned from the dressing table and halted, staring out the viewports.
The planet. They'd arrived during the night. White clouds swirled over green and blue and a surprising amount of ochre and red. A quarter of it showed, and as she watched a smaller ship passed the *Enterprise* on a higher trajectory. Behind and above the planet, a moon glowed pale in the light of the sun.
She hurried to get ready. Maybe, once on the
surface, she would be able to sense him again.
15.
"Good morning," Will exclaimed. For a moment it was like old times -- Will Riker, striding into Picard's ready room with a smile. But only for a moment. "So what's our schedule today?"
"Nothing official. Steichen's appointment with the selected telepaths and various Ryxi security officers is tomorrow. We'll also have the first of the official meetings with Gwaheer's superiors. We have a day of reprieve, for further repairs if necessary and shore leave if we want. Gwaheer has invited the old command crew of the 1701-D to his home, for an afternoon of reminiscing and dinner. He asked that I pass along the invitation to you before he left this morning."
"How nice of him," Riker said archly.
Picard hesitated, wondering if he should tell Will about Deanna. The counselor had appeared on the bridge briefly to ask permission to beam down early. After nearly being blinded by her rapturous smile, Picard had ventured to ask about it. That she'd married Gwaheer wasn't terribly surprising, though a prickle of the same concern Beverly had felt afflicted him. Too much, too fast.
"I believe he's invited us as a kind of reception, for Deanna's sake," he said.
"Reception?" Will's hostility came to the fore. "You mean a wedding reception?"
Picard put down a padd and brought up the repair logs from the previous day on the desk console. "In a way. I don't believe they have a formal wedding ceremony."
"I just can't believe she's doing this to herself again," he exclaimed, then cut himself short. "The reception is this afternoon?"
"The Ryxian concept of time runs a little differently than ours. It was explained to me that arriving any time after the midday meal would be acceptable. Our time, that's about 1400 hours. In the meantime, he's given us coordinates to the main transporter bay in their customs center, so if we wish to do some sightseeing on our own, informally, we may do so at our leisure." Picard hesitated. "Will, if you'd rather not go -- Deanna might be disappointed, but she'd understand. I think we all know about your misgivings, including Gwaheer."
Riker swung a leg over the back of a chair and sat, just like he used to, and scowled. "Of course he understands, he has to claim that to get her trust. Jean-Luc, she's doing the *same thing* she did with Worf. Do you realize that?"
Jean-Luc wondered if Will would realize that Beverly had already sung the same opera, twice as loud. Probably not. "There isn't much any of us can say that might change her mind. Did you want me to order her to leave him alone? Aside from which, there is a component here that didn't exist with Worf -- he knows her family well."
"He must have forced her into this," Will continued. Hadn't even heard a word, Jean-Luc realized.
"Will."
The angry eyes snapped up and focused on Jean-Luc.
"I think this was her decision, solely," Jean-Luc said. "Gwaheer hasn't influenced any of us, yourself included, though he's had ample opportunity. And I'd think if he wanted to manipulate, you would be the first candidate, simply because you're so hostile to his intentions. I also think you're discounting the fact that Deanna isn't entirely bereft of the ability to analyze herself and avoid mistakes she's made before. I've seen her mope, just as you have. She's not moping any more. This morning, a supernova walked onto my bridge and requested permission to transport down to spend the morning with her new family. Despite my own doubts about the quickness of this, I have never seen her this happy. So I'm telling you what I tell Beverly, every time she expresses same doubts and fears -- it's Deanna's choice. She won't listen to us anyway. It's not really our business. I'm happy for her, and I'm happy she'll continue as counselor of this vessel."
"She will?"
Picard reached for his tea. "Absolutely. Gwaheer made it very clear to me that he wouldn't try to convince her otherwise. I think he knows we're all concerned about her."
Riker considered Picard's short speech, rubbing
his beard with his thumb. He stood and straightened his jacket. "And he's covering
his tracks like crazy. I'll see you at the reception, Captain."
16.
Gwaheer flew west toward home at low altitude, and turned his attention to the matters he'd turned from so reluctantly that morning. Today's business was dealt with, administrative tasks were delegated, and the only thing left to occupy his time was the group of guests from the *Enterprise,* plus Riker and Data. The command crew of the 1701-D, who had occupied a set portion of his time for more than a decade. He wished Riker were being his normal self.
Too bad the other *Enterprise* crews couldn't be here. Proposing a collective toast to the captains of the ship whose tours of duty he'd followed would have been a perfect way to end an era of observing the esteemed crew of the flagship of the Federation. Except for that poor fellow who'd tried to succeed James Kirk, on the B -- he was a short-termer, a fluke. And the more he thought about character and personality, having Kirk, Picard, Garrett and Pike in the same room might not be such a good idea, were it even possible. A toast in absentia would do fine, on second thought.
At least he would have the chance to spend time getting to know the other former 1701-D officers in person, before the *Yorktown* arrived tomorrow. Twi'lax and his fellows had brought little information, primarily because Nechayev was already gone. His theory had been correct; ambassadors had been dispatched and had been en route throughout the Steichen crisis.
That Lonan had initiated contact long before the Steichen incident, without informing the *Veshad'lan,* confirmed only that she was up to something. The disturbing questions of what her motives were and who else she employed in her plans remained unanswered. Best to let the wind carry him forward, and keep his ears open. And he'd asked his subordinates, who would fly into the heart of Unamatrix One for him without hesitation, to spend their off time in the company of Lonan's subordinates to glean rumors and information. *Veshad* Bari had assured him that she, too, had made a point of paying more attention to the behavior of his fellow *Kreh'talliath'lan.*
The ship arriving tomorrow -- that would be difficult for Lonan to explain to their superiors. It would be interesting to see what she'd come up with as an excuse.
The invisible boundary between city limits and his clan's territory passed beneath him. The winds were at peace this afternoon, and the morning's high clouds had dispersed, leaving the sky wide open and inviting. The air around him lifted him up, pressed him down, united them, made him a part of the sky. Opening the ancillary nostrils along the base of his wing membranes brought more air searing into his lungs, more oxygen to burn. He'd eaten an hour ago; energy flowed through him, and last night with Deanna returned unbidden to the forefront of his thoughts, as it had never been far from them anyway.
He was air, and Deanna was the earth. The metaphor suited. She lived on the ground, he was at home in the sky. Like earth and sky, they were always apart, yet always joined. He'd fallen into her arms helplessly, as if succumbing to gravity. The differences between them would always keep him in the sky, her on the ground. However well she learned to fly with artificial wings, her instincts would remain the same and keep her grounded. She would never be able to know real flight.
No. She could, just once.
The *hi'ghara.* He hadn't thought of it before, but this was the time. And if he took advantage of the newness of the bond, before the necessary and inevitable boundaries developed completely, she could participate, at least during the first part, the solo flight. During the second part he would be too busy with the logistics of group flight.
He turned, flexed his wings and body in preparation for the great effort to come, and sent a thought winging ahead of him.
<*Kahzan'kahliu,* join me. Fly with me.>
17.
Jean-Luc and Beverly were the first to arrive at Gwaheer's house. The transporter put them just outside the front door, on an open, flat area overlooking a green valley. Deanna welcomed them warmly and led them to a terrace in back, overlooking a canyon. Beverly eyed the edge nervously and sat on the end of the table farthest from it, as if afraid her chair might plunge into the grey and green depths.
"I didn't know what to expect of his house, after seeing the city, but now that we're here, this seems perfectly natural." Picard gestured at the uptilted panels jutting out of the roof. "Open, airy, and plenty of room. Just what you see someone like Gwaheer living in." He opened the collar of his shirt; they'd opted for civvies, and put the communicators in their pockets.
"Where is he?" Beverly asked. "I'd think a new husband would be at his bride's side as much as possible."
Deanna's expression shifted subtly. The tease had struck a nerve, but her reply was as lightly made as the comment that prompted it. "He's taking care of things he knows might present a distraction later, if he left them undone. He wants to spend the rest of the day here with us, uninterrupted."
"I thought you hadn't seen him yet today," Beverly asked.
Deanna's smile turned secretive and pleased. "I asked him just now."
Picard put down his glass. Deanna had called it tea, but it tasted more like tea-flavored punch, the base liquid obviously something other than plain water. "Do Ryxi telepaths form bonds like Vulcans?"
"I could try to describe it to you. What do you know about telepathy?" Deanna cupped her mug of hot chocolate in both hands and sipped. The chilly gusts of wind coming over the edge of the canyon made Picard wish he'd opted for a hot drink as well.
"I'm sure I don't know very much at all. In spite of my experience with Sarek and the memory of Gwaheer's presence in my mind, it's still incomprehensible to me what it must be like to have someone constantly aware of one's thoughts. The idea of constant contact with anyone, regardless of how much I care about them. . . ." He noticed Beverly's expression and put his hand over hers on the table. "Kes-Pritt taught me the dangers of that. I think I would handle it poorly, if I had a permanent connection with someone else's mind."
"It isn't like that," Deanna said, the ecstatic expression she'd had all morning making a return. "There have to be boundaries, or you would cease being individuals. It's. . . as though his presence is with me all the time. Like he's -- hello, Will," she exclaimed, looking up.
Picard turned to find Will Riker, in uniform, approaching through the garden. He came up the broad steps to the terrace and took the chair next to Beverly, glancing at Picard's hand gripping hers, then at Deanna's face.
"I hear congratulations are in order. I hope you're happy together," he said with slightly-forced sincerity.
Deanna squeezed his hand briefly. "Thank you, Will. I'm glad you came."
Beverly smiled at Riker, but didn't let him distract them. "So is the bond nothing more than the sensation of each other's presence?"
Deanna folded her hands in her lap and thought, eyes mostly closed. "No, it's more than that. My telepathic skills are so limited. I'm sure it would have a different quality if they weren't. I've always had to borrow on the abilities of others for any form of telepathic communication, and the only ones I could do that with without fear of being accused of invasion of privacy are my family members, and Gwaheer."
"Bond?"
She looked at Will. "I'm trying to help them understand what a telepathic bond is like."
"I've heard Selar try to explain that to someone."
"What Selar knows is different than what a Betazoid would experience, or a Ryxian. Though the Ryxi and the Betazoid methods are more like each other than either is like the Vulcan method, the results of all three are nearly the same. Vulcans quantify and ritualize it, as they do everything, with fierce emotional control. What I have with Gwaheer came about differently. The attraction was there, then the emotional bonding, then -- it's more than emotion, but it's difficult to explain. It isn't exactly telepathic or empathic."
"Give us a metaphor," Picard said.
She thought hard enough to wrinkle her brow. "The difference between having an arm, and not having an arm but having the feeling that it's still there. Gwaheer is here, though he has minimal awareness of my present state of being, and I am there, though I have no sense of being there. There is no sense of separation, though we are apart."
"But you can communicate with him," Beverly said.
"When I'm on the ship and he's on the surface, I can't. There are limits to what I can do. I have no idea what his limits are."
A scrape of claws on stone, and Zakhad walked into Picard's field of vision, bringing a tray of refreshments. She radiated joy with every movement, and wore an irrepressible smile.
"Are you a telepath as well?" Beverly asked, including her in the conversation. Zakhad didn't blink; she must have heard them talking as she approached. Picard had noticed other hints of how keen their hearing was.
"No. You rarely find families with more than two." Zakhad sat on Deanna's left and beamed at her. "And when one of the two is gone, the equilibrium is gone."
"You'll have to make do with an empath, I suppose," Deanna said.
Zakhad's ears flicked back in amazement. "You think empaths are inferior to telepaths?"
"Not exactly," Deanna replied slowly, and completely unconvincingly.
"If empaths are inferior to telepaths, then are numbskulls like me inferior to empaths?"
"Numbskull?"
At Deanna's chastising tone, Zakhad leaned away from her as if fearing a blow. "It was a literal translation. Numb head? Numb brain? The absence of empathy or telepathy."
Understanding brought Deanna back to center. "I suppose I've always felt less capable than telepaths. I grew up with so many of them around me, and they could always do so much more with their talent than I could."
Zakhad smiled cannily. "Then you should talk to Sakhara. He would teach you to compensate."
"How could he teach me to compensate for something like not having telepathy?"
Zakhad leaned and picked a large leaf from a nearby tree. Turning it around in her fingers, she held it up in front of Deanna. "When you have a set of rules that say a leaf must always fall a certain way, you find a way to influence them."
Picard watched her use a claw to make long cuts along the veins of the flat leaf, showing a dexterity he hadn't expected somehow as she created and folded flaps, one this way, one that. She tossed the leaf in the air and it fluttered two full turns of an awkward spiral, then was caught by a gust of wind and swept into the canyon, still spiraling weakly as it was carried along.
"But I'm *not* a telepath. And it's really not that important, any more, because I function well enough without it."
"Then why do you still think you're inferior?"
"I don't think that."
"So why say we'll have to make do with you?"
Deanna rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I was joking."
"It didn't smell like a joke to me."
Will chuckled. "She's got you there, Dee. It didn't smell like a joke to me, either. You've always made those little remarks about your perceived lack."
"So how am I supposed to compensate?" Deanna exclaimed, in a definitely-diversionary tone.
"Change your labels."
"Labels?" Deanna echoed skeptically.
"I've noticed that humans, and Betazoids, tend to approach life in a completely different manner than Ryxi. You like labels, ways of sorting information into neat categories."
"How else are we supposed to talk about things?" Picard asked. He began to wonder if Gwaheer hadn't been right about the translator being inadequate.
Zakhad frowned. "This may be something too difficult for me to explain. But Deanna, I think you may have labeled yourself incorrectly. You need a -- a new working definition. I believe that's the correct term?"
"I think I understand," Deanna said. "I'll consider it. What other differences do you see between humans and Ryxi, culturally speaking?" A leading question, to further remove herself from the conversation. Picard smiled. The counselor could be so open, yet so private.
"They use more words to say things; learning this language was one of the more difficult things I've done. They travel in steps -- there was even a measuring system based on the length of one stride. They measure progress, making up a scale to measure other cultures by. And live in boxes -- from houses to starships, rooms have finite boundaries and a set inventory of furniture. The Ryxi see things from a different perspective."
"From the air, seeing the entirety of things?" Riker guessed.
"That makes less of a difference than you think. We have excellent depth perception, and something beyond that -- we sense the distance as well as see it. We are, by your standards, living on our nerve endings. Our brains translate sensory data differently than yours. They have to. Instead of quantifying things into steps and distance, we perceive our surroundings in a more concrete way and inter-react with it. We didn't build houses, and we still don't -- this was built by the We'lassi." She gestured at the house. "They take into account our preferences, but it's still very much what they would do. When Ryxi build things, there are fewer corners, more curves. More space. And the design is meant to be part of the environment, not so artificial."
"I imagine you have a completely different approach to mechanized transportation," Picard said.
"Very different. We never bothered with boats, or ground transportation. That was a We'lassi thing. We dislike large bodies of water. We are made for the air. Our mythology claims we are part of the sky." Zakhad raised her eyes to the sky. "We must always be aware of our bodies and our immediate surroundings, and be able to predict the next gust of wind, the next barrier we might fly into. Until we began to develop our medical methodologies in greater depth, we didn't see ourselves as a collection of parts -- we are a whole, and we are part of our world. Not separate. Not mind, body, and soul. Our lives flow as the wind does, turning this way and that, guided by rock faces, temperature and pressure changes, tides and magnetic currents. In flight, we feel the shape of the air around us. Feel the changes around us. Smell the moisture, the ionization, the odors of plants and animals below us."
"Yes," Deanna whispered. Her eyes had that distant look she usually acquired when turning her empathy outward.
Zakhad interpreted it without hesitation, Picard noticed. She glanced overhead again. "Where is he?"
"On his way. He's going fast -- I can taste a cloud!"
"He's higher than he would be if he were simply coming home. What's he flying over?"
"Diving -- houses, on the cliffs. He's skimming over the canyon -- " She stood, knocking over her stool, and Zakhad grabbed the back of Deanna's uniform to keep her from walking off the edge.
"He's traded height for velocity," Zakhad said. "Here he comes."
Picard looked down the canyon. The tiny figure of a flier turned rapidly into Gwaheer, in full flight, going faster than Picard had imagined a Ryxian could. Gwaheer turned, banking over them, wings stretched to their full length and vertical, wind ripping across them, his left wingtip passing just a few yards over their heads. Air currents stirring in his wake blasted the women's hair awry.
Gwaheer banked in a wide turn that actually seemed shallow, considering his speed. Flipping wingtip over wingtip twice, he plunged headfirst into the gorge, disappeared, then rose suddenly into view. He hung a few seconds over their heads, wings and arms outstretched, in a perfectly-timed stall, then flipped backward in a complete turn, returning to vertical slightly below his original position. His wings beat rapidly, pummeling the foliage with gusts, and he hovered slowly downward. The tip of his tail caught Zakhad's upheld arm, coiled around it, then slipped off and did the same to Deanna's.
With a powerful clap of his wings, he propelled himself backward, turning in the air as he began to fall into the canyon and resuming his flight. And as he began a complicated series of turns and twists, Picard rose from his seat, gaping openly. After their flight lessons on *Jhegwa,* he appreciated the wonders of natural flight with a new and great respect, and the quickness and agility on display before him only increased it.
Gwaheer moved too quickly for the eye to follow. A snap of the wing sent him rolling one direction, a corresponding snap of the other wing rolled him back. He zigzagged up the canyon, occasionally adding a roll, a twist, a dive, a rise. When he flattened and glided in a slow turn, it was just as much a relief for Picard as it must have been for him. He folded his wings and dropped, then looped. Then looped again, flapping on the upswing. Then again, going higher, flapping harder on the upswing. The fifth loop took him so high that Picard had to tip his head backward to follow.
And on the down side, Gwaheer twisted his flight into a flat spiral, one wing folded to create the effect. With both wings cupped, he soared again for a moment, then vanished.
"The *hi'ghara,*" Zakhad exclaimed. She let go of the handful of Deanna's jacket, since Deanna seemed to be shaking herself out of her trance. The Ryxian glanced back at Will, Beverly and Picard. "It's for Deanna. It's traditional to fly this way for a new wife. It's an expression of joy and welcome, and it lets the rest of the clan know about her. The land around us, for more distance than I know how to measure in your terms, belongs to his clan." She looked at Deanna's face, which Picard couldn't see. "He's been feeding the sensations of it to Deanna directly. And flying like that feels. . . ." She looked again at Picard, apologetically. "Excuse me, but there's no other word that comes close to describing it. Our physiology, the hormones released -- such flying is nothing short of orgasmic."
Gwaheer dove on them from nowhere. He snapped his wings open ten meters over their heads and soared skyward again; the concussion of the air felt like a giant hand slapping them lightly.
Deanna looked up, as things -- red and yellow flowers, Picard realized -- floated down on them, landing on the table, on the ground, in their drinks and hair. One glanced off Picard's head; he caught it and gave it to Beverly, who added it to the handful she was collecting and smiled.
"Aren't these rekedzia?" Will asked.
"He must have gone to my mother's garden for them." Deanna collected them as well, tears drying on her cheeks. Orgasmic, indeed. She was even more brightface than she'd been before, and flushed as if she'd been the one expending all the energy in aerial acrobatics.
They sat down, passing flowers to Deanna until she had a lapful. Zakhad's ears perked a moment later. "Here they come!"
"Who?"
Grinning at Deanna, Zakhad pointed with her chin. "Part of the ritual entails the gathering of the clan. They've seen his acrobatics, and he went to meet them. Now they're coming to welcome you."
A flock of Ryxi approached, first as a flickering ball of blue, then individuating the closer they came. Spiraling, twisting, twirling, with songs bursting from at least a hundred throats, they swept past, reminding Picard of swallows on the wing. They gathered and spiraled en masse in front of Gwaheer's house, the ones reaching the top of the group kiting down the center and queuing again at the bottom. Then as if all of them had heard an unspoken command, they flew apart, landing on rocks and crags and treetops along the canyon walls. Echoes of wingbeats died down quickly.
Picard thought it was Gwaheer who rose first and began another round of acrobatics. He was shortly joined by another.
"Ka'zor," Zakhad said. "Sakhara will be next."
She continued to name off the innumerable participants in the circus as Picard, Beverly and Riker watched and drank, and munched on the tidbits of sour bread she'd brought out. Deanna didn't tear her eyes from the spectacle for food or drink. At last, after many formations and aerial tricks and even a feinting mock-battle between Tormal and Ka'zor, people started to leave, swooping low over Deanna's head and veering down the canyon. They left in threes, fours, fives -- family units, Picard realized. Probably husbands and wives. Sakhara had two, flying just off his wingtips like migrating geese.
The last remaining flyer was, of course, Gwaheer. He glided over their heads, flipped upright, stalled, and dropped into the center of the garden. A splash and a bellow followed his disappearance into the trees.
Zakhad and Deanna raced to meet him, the Ryxian leaping over a shrub and landing four-legged in her rush. Two more splashes and the indistinct murmur of happy voices verified the reunion taking place among the bushes and flowers, in the hot spring Deanna had shown them on the way in.
"She seems happy to me," Will said. He picked up a red blossom and twirled it.
"For now," Beverly added.
"Such pessimism," Picard said. "I think you forget, she's not exactly human, either."
"That's a good point." Will looked at Beverly with a half-smile. "During the time I spent on Betazed, I met several members of an open family."
"What?"
"Three men, five women. They were playing naked in the gardens at Janaran Falls. Really made the muktok plants chime."
Beverly's expression was priceless. "I had no idea. I always assumed. . . . But this is Deanna!"
"Will is right. We assume too much." Jean-Luc steepled his hands in front of him and leaned on the table. "The Ryxi, for example -- the ones we've met are friendly and comfortable for us to talk to. But they've made a study of us, of our language. Would we be so comfortable with them if they hadn't? Or would we find so much in common with Deanna if she didn't have her father's influence, as brief as it was? Or if she had decided to conform more completely to Betazed tradition, as her mother does -- how much of Lwaxana is really eccentricity?"
He looked at Will, who shrugged. "Can't say. I didn't spend a lot of time with any one Betazoid, other than Deanna. My general impression is that their society doesn't really impose limits on them." He smiled grimly. "It'll be interesting to see what Lwaxana's like around these Ryxi telepaths."
"What do you mean?" Beverly asked.
"This is part of what I'm not supposed to
tell you, but you'll know soon enough. A ship was dispatched two weeks ago, with
Federation representatives aboard. Lwaxana's one of them." Will leaned forward.
"And Worf is another. Admiral Nechayev is coming, too. It's about to get really
interesting. They're arriving tomorrow."
18.
Deanna walked out on the terrace as the remnants of the brilliant purple sunset faded to darkness and the first few stars came out.
The party had gone well enough, she supposed. Will held back a lot but caused no problems. They'd even gotten a poker game going; Jean-Luc had taught Gwaheer how. Data had taken a liking to Zakhad, a startling development, and she'd even started to flirt with him a little. Gwaheer laughed, and then explained to the android the mechanics of Ryxi flirtation. That had surprised Deanna. Encouraging another man, even an android, to flirt with his wife?
She had a lot to learn. She'd made a hasty decision -- she'd known it was a little risky when she'd made it. But the bond was there, and Gwaheer's affectionate regard never faltered.
"You shouldn't get that close to the edge," Gwaheer said, coming up behind her. She'd felt his approach. His arms around her were but a physical manifestation of the warmth he projected.
"It's beautiful here. When do I get my wings?"
"Patience, love."
She let her head rest against his, leaning into him. "I have a question."
The wind shifted the leaves in the trees. She shivered; the light wrap did nothing to keep out the cool night air. Gwaheer wrapped his wing around her and purred.
"About?" he asked finally.
"Why did you encourage Data?"
"He enjoyed learning how to flirt. She enjoyed teaching him."
"There isn't some tradition about loaning wives to house guests, is there?"
He laughed and pulled her from the edge of the terrace, guiding her down the steps. "*Kahzan'kahliu,* you ask the most amusing questions. You have nothing to be concerned about. I've already told you about the traditions and customs you might find objectionable."
He stepped into the steaming hot spring, hesitating on the top stair to remove her wrap for her. Her body reacted to the cold immediately, going gooseflesh from head to toe, and she hurried down the steps into the water.
"Are your flight muscles still sore?" she asked, watching him move his wings gingerly into a higher position to avoid striking the phalanges on the edge of the pool as he descended.
"Just a little. I credit my quick recovery to my wives and their healing hands." He settled chin-deep, balanced on his toes in the middle of the pool.
"Is Zakhad joining us?"
"She's gone out again. One of the Ba'ku had a baby. She went to examine it."
"Ba'ku? That sounds familiar."
"It should. Starfleet tried to help the Son'a relocate them. One of my clansmen is *Kreh'talliath* of that sector. He asked if the Ba'ku could take up temporary residence in the valley in front of my house, until the threat of danger has passed. He found it necessary to move them until negotiations with the Son'a are over."
Deanna frowned. "Starfleet wouldn't forcibly relocate -- would they? Are the Ba'ku part of the Conglomerate?"
"They were, when they still indulged in space travel. The treaty was never renewed, but their leader, Anij, appealed to us for assistance. They abandoned most of their technology for a simpler way of life." Gwaheer submerged momentarily, came up gasping, and shook his head. Deanna moved between his wings and began to massage his shoulders again.
"Beautiful woman," he exclaimed. "Oh, beautiful hands! *Kehvashla,* that feels good."
"Where does Starfleet come into the picture?"
"When the Ba'ku settled, they chose a planet in what Starfleet calls the Briar Patch. Heard of it?"
"No. Should I have?"
"No matter. The planet is surrounded by rings, which emanate metaphasic energy. The energy has a rejuvenating effect on most humanoid life forms. The adult Ba'ku on the planet are, in most cases, several centuries old, where before their life span wasn't much different than humans."
"Who are the Son'a?"
"The children of the Ba'ku who chose not to go into paradise with their parents. They didn't want to leave the technological wonders at their disposal. And they paid the price for it -- misuse of it has made them look like a completely different species. They used it to lengthen their life spans artificially, but it doesn't work as well as metaphasic energy." Gwaheer wriggled under her hands, and she kneaded harder. "That's what Sorkha tells me, anyway. I've only seen the Ba'ku, and that because Zakhad agreed to tend to any medical needs they have."
"You said Starfleet was helping the Son'a relocate them. We aren't supposed to participate in civil disagreements. In fact -- neither the Son'a nor the Ba'ku are Federation members, are they? That would've been in the public news broadcasts."
"Sorkha tells me Starfleet doesn't know they're related, and they aren't asking many questions. That they believe the Ba'ku are really a primitive people and the benefit of metaphasic energy to the Federation outweighs the needs of six hundred or so people."
"Then why don't you tell Starfleet about it?"
"Who would I tell? Your captain? Riker wouldn't believe me, Jean-Luc wouldn't be able to do anything, and the Ba'ku are taking refuge outside my front door. Sorkha is handling the matter well enough. If he needs help, he'll go to the *Veshad'lan* and they may or may not assign my unit to the task. Telling Starfleet is Lonan's responsibility."
Deanna took her hands from his shoulders. "But she's not trustworthy, and she's up to something, you said."
"If it makes you feel better, I'll mention it to Nechayev tomorrow. Deanna, don't be upset." He turned around and pulled her arm. She gave in, let him take her into his embrace. "Things will work out for the Ba'ku, one way or the other. We'll do our best to regain their home for them, and if it doesn't happen, we'll give them their choice of some of the better planets awaiting colonization."
She closed her eyes and trusted him to keep her head above water. The bubbling spring soothed her in a way artificial hot tubs couldn't. They listened to calls of nocturnal creatures, buzzing insects and creaks and croaks from unknown animals. Her body felt limp, weightless, and when she opened her eyes, the lavender moon had risen over the canyon.
Claw scrapes interrupted, and Zakhad appeared around the shrubbery, removing her clothing and sinking into the water before greeting them with a smile.
"Did I tell you how happy I am that you're here, Deanna?"
Deanna laughed. "I've lost count of how many times. Was it a boy or girl?"
"A girl. Beautiful baby." She smiled a moment longer, then began to cry silently. She ducked under the surface briefly to hide the tears, but Deanna could sense the sadness she felt.
And an answering sadness from Gwaheer. <You did not discuss children with her, did you?>
<No. I wanted to, but she changed the subject quickly.>
<Ryxi women do not have more than one child. In rare instances, two. But it's difficult to conceive, and gestation and birth puts a strain on the body. It damages their reproductive organs. Zakhad lost her child to a miscarriage, and she's been unable to conceive again. For her, dealing with children as patients and helping mothers give birth only rekindles the loss.>
<How terrible!> Deanna moved to touch Zakhad, but Gwaheer wouldn't let go of her.
<Let her be. Comforting makes it worse. Trust me. I've tried, for years. It will pass swiftly. I know you wish to help her -- as counselors, that's our first impulse. But this is one of those things that only worsens if you continue to dwell on it. She doesn't need our help in doing that.>
Zakhad did recover, within moments. She smiled, the light of the moon on her face. "The party went well. Captain Riker behaved -- and I even remembered his name properly."
"I think Data needs more practice with his flirting, though," Gwaheer said.
Zakhad's brow furrowed. "I can't believe you. Teaching him how like that. He was only interested in the concept of it, and he probably would've been satisfied with a technical explanation."
"Data wishes to become more human. Part of that will be learning that some things have no technical explanation, they simply are as they are."
<Gwaheer, could I carry a Ryxian child?>
She sensed his surprise -- he hadn't paid attention to her musings. <I wouldn't know. It seems feasible -- do you mean a hybrid?>
<No. I mean artificial insemination. Zakhad's child. Even children. I could have several.>
<That would coil her tail! I mean, it would make her extremely happy -- you have no idea how hard she's been on herself about losing the child.>
"You two are talking behind my back in front of me, aren't you?" Zakhad said.
Deanna giggled. She'd never heard it said quite like that. "Just a little."
"*'Khadlon,* have you made a study of our favorite hybrid yet? I know you were curious about her physiology."
"We did that this morning," Zakhad said. "She was very gracious and let me satisfy my curiosity."
Gwaheer tightened his arms around Deanna. "Do you believe she would be able to carry a Ryxian child to term?"
Zakhad sat very still, and for a moment Deanna feared the answer was negative, and they'd just caused her another wound in an already-sensitive area. With a great splash, Zakhad launched herself at them and hugged both of them, sending all three of them under water.
They surfaced simultaneously, coughing, shaking water out of their ears and faces. Zakhad threw open her wings and arms to the sky, and sang out a tune, trilling in Ryxian, Deanna assumed.
<I think that's an affirmative.> Gwaheer stood up and opened his wings, water streaming off them, and joined Zakhad's song. Deanna sat on the steps to listen, and in the moonlight-rimed water, she felt his tail wrapping around her ankle. Reaching down, she took it in her hand, and it transferred to her wrist.
When at last they went inside, they came to a halt in front of the room that now belonged to Deanna. Zakhad touched her forehead to Gwaheer's cheek, a new gesture for Deanna's rapidly-forming lexicon of Ryxi body language.
She and Zakhad had talked about this, hypothetically, but now the situation was real, and Deanna tried not to be nervous. The man of the house didn't have a bedroom, and the arrangement was so common that most houses were built with the standard three living areas, one each for three wives, with smaller rooms branching off each for the children. Gwaheer was a perpetual visitor in his own home, Zakhad had explained. The question at this point was whether he would visit Zakhad or Deanna, or both, and in what order. Deanna felt uneasy, like she'd showed up at a conference naked. Which was an appropriate comparison, she thought, remembering suddenly that she really was naked. She'd left the wrap in the garden.
"Let's go to the kitchen for a drink, and talk for a bit," Gwaheer said.
The way was illuminated by lights placed a few inches off the floor every few feet. Deanna still had difficulty not bumping into Gwaheer's wings, and he turned and took her arm gently, guiding her without hesitation through the hall. Moonlight streamed through the bank of windows along the north side of the kitchen, pooling on the counters and the tile floor. Gwaheer's claws clattered on the tile, then Zakhad's as she came in after Deanna.
For the first time in days, Deanna felt as though she'd walked into a room with aliens. Their dark silhouettes, above the pale rays spilling across the floor, were jagged and foreign. The sighing of their tails against any smooth surface they happened to brush up against; the faint smell of them, slightly citrus-like, definitely not Betazoid or human; the lingering odor of the Ryxian version of hors d'oeuvres Zakhad had prepared for the party; the lavender moonlight. . . .
Zakhad retrieved glasses and poured a warm, sweet beverage for them, passing glasses to Gwaheer and Deanna. Then they stood in silence a moment. Obviously, all three of them knew what they would be talking about. Zakhad felt nervous on Deanna's behalf, and Gwaheer -- the bond told Deanna that Gwaheer was grim, determined, and concerned for her, trying to project reassurance but slightly uncertain, probably about her reaction.
"I need your professional opinions," he said.
Zakhad glanced at Deanna; her head moved that direction, anyway. Deanna couldn't see their faces in the dark. They could see her, she knew, and it only made the alienation worse. A sense of foreboding crept up from Deanna's toes. She put the glass on the counter to avoid obvious signs that her hand started to shake.
"I have a patient," Gwaheer continued. "Female, mostly Betazoid. So far, my diagnosis is as follows. She shows some signs of post-traumatic amnesia. After much discussion, the patient recognizes the problem stems from a terminated long-term assignation with a Klingon. The relationship appeared to be based on sexual attraction, with an intent to explore the possibility of something deeper, but complications due to cultural differences arose. Patient was too involved emotionally at the time to objectively assess the declining state of the relationship and continued to attempt to salvage it, out of a combination of pride and loneliness. In the final stages, arguments became more violent and the patient began to unconsciously associate her partner's perceived lack of love for her with the sex act. In physically intimate situations, patient experiences a panic attack, triggered by a specific action on her partner's part. I suspect some additional trauma was caused by the brutality of her former Klingon partner."
Deanna couldn't believe her ears. It sounded so clinical, and so devoid of the concern she knew he felt. He'd just summed up her difficulties in a description that probably wouldn't even be a page long. She'd written such descriptions herself before. It was as though she were listening to him discuss someone else -- which was what he'd intended, she realized.
After Gwaheer finished, Zakhad asked, in a fuzzy voice that usually meant tears in the eyes, "Treatment so far?"
"Not much. I had to abandon formal sessions with her. But significant progress was well under way. She's motivated and the prognosis is promising. The more difficult part is the frustration she feels over her temporary sexual dysfunction."
Creeping away and dying in a hole wasn't an option, unfortunately, so Deanna leaned against the counter and hugged herself, trying not to cry. She was eternally grateful that Gwaheer hadn't turned on the kitchen lights. At least she could *pretend* they couldn't see her.
"What kind of dysfunction?"
Gwaheer stepped closer and draped a wing over Deanna's back. <Will you allow me to help you?>
<Do I have any choice?>
<Yes. You always have a choice. If there are no options, I will make them for you.>
It had the ring of a Ryxian cliche, one about love, no less. Given her understanding of the Ryxian focus on choices, it nearly crumbled her resolve not to sob. <Make me an option that helps me not freeze up when you lose control.>
"The patient," Gwaheer began, pausing and rubbing her shoulders with his hand, "responds involuntarily to passion. As her current partner begins to lose control to his base sexual urges, she becomes tense and frightened. Then she experiences immense frustration with herself for her reaction, which only creates further dysfunction and frustrates her partner, making her feel guilty and inadequate."
"And since her partner is a big funny-looking alien with lots of urges, it's scaring her to death," Zakhad said. "What a monster he must be. Frightening a poor young woman that way." The hint of humor jarred Deanna to attention. The feeling of dislocation increased with the thought that she was standing in the dark, in a kitchen, naked, listening to her husband and his *other* wife discuss *her* sex life.
She felt the urge to giggle at how silly that would have sounded, only a month ago. Gwaheer's response didn't help.
"I know. But she insists she loves him, can't live without him. I have to give the stupid beast some credit, though - he'd do anything to help her through it."
"Maybe he should try giving her a lot of non-sexual, affectionate attention. Sing to her by the light of the moon, and feed her chocolates. I hear some Betazoids believe that sex is an adequate substitute for chocolate. If he offered her chocolate -- "
Hearing one of her mother's favorite
eyebrow-raisers coming from Zakhad was
too much. Deanna burst out laughing, brushing tears from her face with her fingers as she
did so. She rode the mood until it abruptly swung the other way, and a wobbly sob made its
appearance.
Zakhad touched her face. "It takes time to heal, Deanna. You are too impatient with yourself. Just because you're a counselor does not mean you can think yourself into a complete recovery overnight."
"I thought you were a doctor, not a counselor," Deanna mumbled. "And you said you weren't telepathic."
"I live with a counselor. He's had his delusions. You all think you can analyze yourselves, until you learn the hard way."
Deanna studied their silhouettes in the darkness. "What do we do now?"
Gwaheer purred, deep in his throat. "We
let you decide what we do."
"I understand," Zakhad said quietly, with some surprise. "It makes sense
now."
"What does?" Deanna asked when Gwaheer remained silent.
"When you arrived this morning -- I could tell you'd been with him, but -- " Gwaheer shuffled restlessly. "I did not want to hurt her."
"What are you talking about? Did we not do something we should've done?" Anxiety made her voice shrill; Deanna hated that. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I think you would have felt unnecessary guilt, if I had. I wanted the chance to discuss last night with you before I brought it up. We didn't finish what we started. Or rather, I didn't."
"I know. I tried to -- " She cut herself off. Moot point. She couldn't fault him for being overly-protective, given her poor reaction to his first advances. "Are you saying that because the exchange of body fluids wasn't really complete, we're. . . just a little married?"
Both sets of ears swivelled to amused angles. "To put it gently. It's enough to puzzle the nose," Zakhad said.
"You wanted our professional opinions," Deanna said, returning to their original mode of conversation because she didn't think she could speak of it otherwise. "I think the only way the patient will overcome her involuntary fear is to expose herself to the stimuli and work through it. Avoiding the problem will only perpetuate it."
Gwaheer smiled -- though she couldn't see it, she sensed it -- and threw a loop of his tail around her ankle. "I doubt the partner would allow the patient to avoid the problem long."
"What I mean is that the patient's partner shouldn't stop when she experiences the symptoms. He should continue, and disprove the patient's fear that she'll be hurt."
"Is that what it is? The fear that you -- that she'll be hurt afterward?"
Deanna swallowed and calmed herself. Discussing it in third person helped, but his stumble didn't. "The reflex reaction is in anticipation of the climax -- during which the previous partner, the Klingon, would often inflict. . . minor bodily harm on her. The only way I can see that she might get past it would be for her to confront the same situation with her new partner and teach herself by experience that it won't happen again."
"Minor bodily harm?" Zakhad, horrified, gripped Deanna's arm. "He intentionally injured you?"
"It's a matter of interpretation. Klingons
have violent mating practices. It wasn't always so emotionally damaging," Deanna
said, pausing to clear her throat so she wouldn't sound hoarse. "I actually enjoyed
some of what he did, until the relationship began to suffer, until I began to feel
emotionally distant -- I stopped feeling that he loved me. He said he did, he tried to
behave the same. But I could tell the emotions were fading, the attraction was waning. I
told myself it was a phase and that we'd pull out
of it. And when that didn't happen, I internalized my anger and disappointment, and
blocked most of it out instead of facing it."
"You've remembered more," Gwaheer said.
"Yes. Your prognosis is correct. I'm not finished working through it, but I'm making progress. And maybe it was wrong of me to marry you before I'd finished working through it, but Gwaheer, I've been through so much in the last few years. Life is so short and so fragile. Everyone in Starfleet lost friends and loved ones in the war -- I don't want to lose you, especially if the negotiations don't go well. I'd rather be here with you and start my career over again."
Deanna had to stop. As she spoke, she felt their emotions change from shared pain to joy, and suddenly she was awash in Zakhad's happiness and Gwaheer's love.
<*Kahzan'kahliu.*> "*Khadlon.*"
He extended his wings around them both, and Deanna followed Zakhad's lead, stepping close and placing forehead to his cheek. He hummed, in that odd, purring way, and held them.
Zakhad pressed her nose to Gwaheer's neck. "Be with her, *zel'Gwahiri.* While the bond is new, while she needs reassurance, for as long as it takes."
"I don't want to -- " Deanna began, but Zakhad's hand tightened on her arm.
"Deanna, you do know I've been alone with this big ugly alien for many years? I've waited a long time for you to arrive. I would happily see him off to your bed for the next month." Zakhad made a rumbling sound that was neither purr nor growl, nudged Gwaheer's chin with her nose, and slipped out of his wing. She left the kitchen. Distantly, Deanna heard a door slide shut.
"Does it feel strange?" he murmured. "To hear her talk so openly?"
"Unusual, but not -- well, maybe just a little uncomfortable. She's gentle and has a wonderful sense of humor. That helps."
"She's been alone in this house with me too long. You really are what she needs -- what we need. The idea of having children, after so long believing it would not happen. . . . *Kahzan'kahliu,* you make me feel young again."
"You seem young enough to me."
"Middle-aged, but I feel older." He tipped her head up and kissed her. <Are we ready to begin treatment?>
Drinks forgotten, he walked close behind her to her room. The type of bed Ryxi used was easier for their assortment of limbs to take -- a large, gel-filled oval that actively conformed to body parts. Deanna had played with it earlier, and pressed the edge as she settled into it. The gel provided a gently-sloping surface for her to lie on. She propped her heels against the edge.
In the darkness, Gwaheer was a shadow standing
over her. <Are you certain
you wish me to do this?>
She laid her hands on his chest as he stepped up and stood astride her, hands and feet planted wide and not touching her. <I want to learn to enjoy being with you, without flashbacks or reminders of the past. It's worth a little anxiety.>
<Begin as you wish. Tell me when you are ready.>
<Kiss me. Touch me. Just let it happen.> Just thinking about it put a quiver in her stomach. At least it was anticipation and not fear. As he kissed her, he lowered himself slowly; she moved her legs, making him step in between them. His warm, light body against hers made her shiver.
For a while, he took his time tasting her, always moving back to her mouth as if to check in with her from time to time. She let her fingers explore, running them up his sides at the bases of his wings, holding his head as he suckled and nipped at her breasts.
He paused, hands on her shoulders, when he was poised on the verge of entering her. She sensed the slight trepidation even amidst his mounting desire for her. Sliding her hands up from where they'd been caressing his shoulders, she found his neck ridges and pinched them.
The charge of his passion overwhelming her senses eclipsed the minimal pain of his initial push. He let out a strangled, gasping cry, thrusting madly, throwing his head back. She had nothing of him to hold but his arms, so she closed her hands on his wrists and focusing on the waves of pleasure, hers and his.
Lost in her own ecstasy, she dimly recognized that her hips moved against him out of reflex, that it made him wilder still. It became a battle of sorts, each of them pushing and writhing against the other as if fighting over possession of his penis, she trying to capture it and he trying to get away then pressing the attack again. Suddenly he collapsed on top of her, startling her into stillness. His body rigid, he held himself as if waiting for something.
She took advantage of the pause by pulling his head down and kissing him again. At least that part of him unfroze; their tongues played together briefly, then he clutched her tightly, his wings snapping up to their fullest extension and his mouth crushing into hers. She felt him surge deeper and find that elusive release he sought, slowly, in pulsing waves, the horizontal ridges of his penis causing such unexpectedly pleasurable sensations that it tipped her over into orgasm. Her hands closed on his neck ridges but his reaction this time was different -- a throaty, chuckling purr, and he kissed her again, with less passion and more affection.
"Where was the reaction?" he whispered, shifting his grip slightly to push himself further in.
"New theory," Deanna murmured into his shoulder. "Patient combined traumatic past experiences with traumatic first experience, linking them by their common element, fear in a sexual situation with a big ugly alien. More preparation and adequate reassurance seems. . . mmmmm. . . to have cured the problem."
"That's such a good theory, but I think it needs more testing."
"Whenever you're finished. But -- ooouuhh,
just -- mmm. . . take your. . . time."
19.
The first thing next morning, Picard beamed down with Gregory, to attend the examination of his mind. Deanna met them outside the facility, and Picard couldn't help staring. The counselor had been glowing yesterday; this morning, she wore a contented look that rivaled all contented looks. She responded slowly, yawned often, and smiled every time she was spoken to regardless of what was said -- oh, yes. The honeymoon was under way.
They were shown to an examination room, and met a number of Ryxi, including a security officer named Deyloda, who had explained the procedure and what to expect, then reassured Gregory that his privacy would not be compromised; the telepaths would merely observe and ask him to remember. Because Gregory was his subordinate, Picard was allowed to observe the process; Deanna came in too, as Gregory's counselor.
Gregory sat in the center of the room, completely at ease. Picard couldn't believe the change in him -- if he hadn't known better, he'd have said it wasn't the same man. He wore a comfortable grey outfit instead of his uniform, and looked like he'd just gotten back from shore leave. No sign of the uptight, snappish XO who was at one time rumored to have a tricorder stuck where the sun didn't shine.
The procedure itself told Picard nothing. Telepaths worked in the realm of thought, and whatever went on wasn't translated for the only observing "numbskull" in the room. Four Ryxi sat in a circle around Gregory on simple stools, their tails occasionally lashing. The room was small, as Ryxi rooms went, and had a plain brown floor, off-white walls with no decoration, a stippled brown ceiling. The assortment of furniture shoved against the walls testified to the various body shapes of patients brought there.
Finally one of the telepaths rose, gestured, and Gregory came to sit between Picard and Troi. Then Sakhara entered the room, though no discernable summons had been issued, and sat where Gregory had been.
Less time, probably six or seven minutes, passed with him. Then Gwaheer's brother left, unsmiling, barely looking at them, and the head telepath gestured at Deanna. Picard smiled proudly at her; Sakhara obviously felt she'd done something extraordinary, and as little credence as she gave her skills in the presence of telepaths, she needed the encouragement. That they were calling her up for examination meant they believed she'd played an active and important role in Steichen's recovery.
She spent fifteen minutes in the hot seat. When she stood, she smiled and bowed to the lead telepath and returned to her seat.
Picard was surprised when the man gestured at him.
"This wasn't part of the plan," he said.
"He can't understand you, Captain," Deanna said. She looked at the Ryxian, and nodded. "He asks your forbearance, but he wishes to know your memories of the incident. He saw from Gregory's and mine that you were present for some of it, and that you had concerns -- they wish to know more about Gregory's behavior prior to his breakdown, from your point of view."
Picard looked at the four Ryxi. He didn't feel anything impinging on his mind. Remembering Sakhara's request in sickbay, he said, "Would it be permissible to have you participate, Counselor? I'm not comfortable with this."
She paused, then smiled. "He says that would be allowable."
Picard looked at her. "You understand why I want you there."
"Understood, Captain." Of course she would know how uncomfortable it made him.
When he sat down, Deanna stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder, to reassure, he thought. To his surprise, he felt her thoughts first. She'd never spoken to his mind that way before. <Relax, Jean-Luc. It will be easier that way. Close your eyes and imagine a door opening.>
He obeyed, and suddenly he was standing in a room. White walls, with no windows -- but one appeared to his right suddenly. Turning, he saw the four Ryxi standing on the other side.
He was Borg.
The appliances were heavy on his body. He looked down, choking on fear, to see the black body armor. He was in the rehabilitation center. They were staring at him.
<Captain, no. You must not allow that. Look at me.>
He raised his head, and the armor was gone, leaving him in uniform. Deanna stood before him, also in uniform. Her lips didn't move but she continued to speak.
<The images will come to you at random, out of your subconscious, if you do not give them direction. This is because there are others in your mind, stirring the waters. Would you like to join the Ryxi, instead?>
<Yes.>
The virtual Troi took his virtual hand and led him toward the window. They walked through it and stood with the observers. Though lips never moved, he was certain the one on the right spoke.
<Gregory Steichen. What do you know of him?>
The information replayed rapidly. He saw a stream of red spin up from the floor, separate into four threads, and flow into the four Ryxi's heads. The strangest sensation gripped him -- of being dislocated and knowing what they learned, of knowing each fact concerning Gregory but seeing the stream of indistinguishable bits of information, of being in control and yet feeling completely out of control.
<You are controlling this, Captain. It's only that you think of something and it happens that's confusing you. You believe telepathy and empathy are terrifically difficult things, complicated -- it's not like that. Relax. We are done.>
He opened his eyes. It felt like he'd fallen from the ceiling into his body on a cord, and been caught up just short of the floor. Deanna's hands on his shoulders grounded him.
The four Ryxi stood. Bowing as one, they filed out of the room, on their way to report to Deyloda.
"Captain, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to do some more sightseeing," Gregory said.
It took a moment to find his vocal chords. "Of course. Enjoy your leave, Mr. Steichen, and thank you for being willing to cooperate."
Steichen stood up. "You look a little shaken, sir. I hope you've got some leave scheduled, too. This is a fascinating world." He left without a backward glance.
Picard turned to Deanna, who smiled broadly. "Is that typical of Ryxi telepathic encounters?"
"They believe that controlling the subject in any way is unethical. It took Sakhara two days to help Gregory because he was following strict guidelines, helping the mind heal itself rather than simply wrenching the neural pathways back to where they belonged. You're probably trying to compare it to a Vulcan mind meld. Vulcans, in contact with a person with no control of their own, will take control and then be ethical. The Ryxi refuse to take control unless under extreme circumstances, such as when Gwaheer put Gregory to sleep to save the ship. Gregory was obviously under outside influence, and needed to be subdued for his own welfare."
The door slid open silently again, and Gwaheer rejoined them. He'd been the first in the hot seat. "Not traumatic, I hope?"
Picard licked his dry lips and mustered his resolve. "Is that what it would be like, to undergo the final stage of rehabilitation?"
Gwaheer blinked, resized his pupils, and tipped one ear forward. "It would be very like it. Have you changed your mind?"
They had discussed it briefly during the reception the previous afternoon, and Jean-Luc had decided against it. The idea of anyone intruding on his thoughts brought back echoes of the Collective, whispering in his head for his return. He knew that if he didn't try the procedure now, while he remembered how innocuous the Ryxi's telepathic contact had been -- and he was already forgetting; the experience faded as he thought about it as if the telepaths had meant it to do just that -- he would never agree to it again.
"Can we do it now?"
"I don't believe they have anyone else scheduled to use this room for another hour or so. It would take less time than that. Do you have a preference of telepaths? Sakhara -- "
"No. You. I can't. . . . It was you who began the process."
"Do you wish me to stay, Captain?" Deanna asked.
It occurred to him that she'd probably be able to sense some of it through that mystical bond of theirs anyway, but he shook his head. "I've put you through enough of my angst, Counselor. I appreciate the offer."
"We will need a second person, Jean-Luc," Gwaheer said softly. "It's procedure, to have someone else present. And it can't be Deanna. She's not one of our approved telepaths. She could stay with us, but I need Sakhara, or someone else, here with us."
"Fine. Sakhara, then. Before I change my mind."
Deanna touched his arm and left the room, and Sakhara returned. He pushed a button alongside the door, probably to lock it. "It's not going to be that difficult, Captain. You need to trust, however. Fear only nullifies anything we do for you."
Gwaheer moved a stool and sat knee to knee with him. "Do you trust me, Jean-Luc Picard?"
Sakhara sat in a corner, out of Picard's line of sight. It helped that he wasn't close. Picard could pretend the only other person with him was Gwaheer.
Gwaheer's pupils shrank to pinpoints. "Close your eyes. Think about home."
He closed his eyes, breathing through his mouth lightly, imagining the vineyards.
"Think of home, and walk through it. Feel the dirt under your feet. Smell the air. Remember what it feels like after spring rain."
He walked between the vines. The ground smelled damp, looked damp, and drops glistened on the grapes. He picked a single grape and broke the skin between his teeth, savoring the rush of the juice across the back of his tongue.
<What you think, will be. Remember.>
Gwaheer's disembodied voice echoed hollowly in the darkness. Picard stood on nothing, in nothing, turning in circles, looking for something. He saw a glimmer; he walked, then ran, but couldn't reach it.
<No. Stop. Remember.>
The cube. Pressure. Minds all around, but one thought. No -- one mind, many thoughts, a susurration of thoughts.
Data, with flesh.
Shreds of Starfleet uniform under Borg armor.
Single gleaming red eye.
Pain. Not pain. Not pain, because he was with the Collective, and there is no pain in perfection. No pain. Pain! No!
<Here I am. You and I. Talk to me.>
"Gwaheer!"
<Think of your family.>
Rene darted across the living room and hugged his mother. Robert came in the front door. The formally-posed picture of the three of them, in Jean-Luc's collection of family pictures.
A burning building. A gravestone. He had no family.
No. He had a family, the queen had said, in his mind -- he had the Borg.
<Jean-Luc -- >
Pain! My eye! Take it out out out out --
<Stop this -- Jean-Luc -- >
The cube. Walking. Readout of distance to alcove. Turning. Drone approaching.
Red hair.
"BEVERLY!" He opened his eyes, to find himself on his back on the floor, head hurting, pulse racing. "No more!"
Gwaheer's hand in the center of his chest prevented his rising. "Do you really want to leave it like that?"
"What the hell kind of question is that? I thought this was supposed to be easy!"
"Let's try something else. Put your head down and relax. Close your eyes. Try to clear your thoughts and breath evenly."
He did so, and lay there on the floor until he felt silly. "Well?"
"Your favorite color."
"Red."
"Favorite music."
"Bach."
"Favorite animal."
"Horse."
<Look at the horse.>
The tug of memory, and there was a chestnut mare standing tied to a post in a meadow.
<Look at the music.>
Sheet music replaced the horse and meadow. A sonata began.
<Look at the color.>
Red. Resolving itself into a uniform, then Beverly's hair, then a sunset.
<A peaceful place where you feel safe.>
His quarters appeared around him. Oddly, the ones from the 1701-D, not the E.
<I am sitting at the table.>
And so he was. "Have a seat, Jean-Luc," the Ryxian said with a smile.
He sat down, picked up the cup of tea that appeared on the table. "How are you doing this? When Deanna was here, I couldn't -- her lips didn't -- "
"I am doing nothing. Don't think about thinking about this. Just be. I am facilitating. That's all I'm here for. You feel safe, and calm. Tell me what you want."
"What?"
"What do you expect? What would you like your memories of the Borg to consist of? Or would you like to simply be able to control them better?"
Jean-Luc looked around. It was amazing how much detail there was. His Ressikan flute lay on the table between them. Gwaheer caught his hand before he could pick it up.
"It's tempting, but no. Look at me." He looked, and the Ryxian kept smiling. "I know it's difficult to keep your focus, Jean-Luc, but we are here to help you with a specific issue."
"We?"
Gwaheer pointed. Sakhara was standing in the shadows near the bathroom door, holding something. He stepped out of shadow. The thing in his hands was a large book.
"Is that what you want?" Gwaheer asked.
Jean-Luc held out his hands, and Sakhara placed the hardbound tome in them gently. "What is it?"
"What do you want it to be?" Gwaheer tapped on the table, now bare of tea and flute. Jean-Luc dropped it heavily, sending up puffs of dust. The book was ancient, huge. He opened the cover to the frontispiece.
"My memories of the Borg," he read aloud. He turned the page. A picture of Locutus, drawn in simple black ink on the parchment, confronted him.
"Do you like it?"
He looked up at Gwaheer, happy tears on his face. "Yes. This is just what I wanted. Thank you."
Jean-Luc opened his eyes and saw ceiling. He realized he was breathing steadily, rhythmically, and the floor against his back was hard. Sitting up, he looked up at Gwaheer, who sat on a stool a short distance away. Sakhara stood in the corner.
"What the hell. . . ."
"Think about the Borg," Gwaheer said.
He pictured a drone, walking toward him. Trepidation -- nothing more. Nothing like the horror he'd felt before. Jean-Luc scrambled to his feet and regained his bearings quickly. He imagined a cube, the queen, being Locutus, phasers blasting, tubules assimilating, Data with his hybrid flesh --
"Gone! I feel it, but . . . it's not terrifying any more, no more than being punished as a small child would be when remembered by an adult. What did you do?"
Gwaheer raised his head. "Nothing."
"I'm changed, you had to do something!"
"You changed you. I helped by providing feedback, and a little direction. Simply put, I taught you to objectify your experiences, or to put it another way, to disassociate from them -- just enough to make them bearable."
"Deanna's been trying to get me to do that."
"You were making it too difficult for yourself."
"It's really that simple? Just to think it away? Is that all you did? The images -- were they all symbolic? The book, the dust, the -- You were in the shadows," he exclaimed, turning to Sakhara. "Were you in the recesses of my mind searching for how best to format the memories?"
Nothing more enigmatic than a telepath hiding something. Sakhara's ears flat against his head and his pursed lips told Picard he wouldn't get an answer.
Gwaheer put his ears back, too. "I wish I could explain to you exactly what it entails. I don't think you would understand even if I put it in your mind telepathically. I used imagery, because you are not accustomed to telepathic contact, and you fear it. The images were from your own memories."
"But how did you find them? It all happened so quickly."
"Jean-Luc, I appreciate your interest in understanding this, but. . . . Spread your fingers and move them in sequence, like this."
He did so, moving them as if playing the piano.
"Now explain to me what muscles and tendons you just used to do it, and how they work. It's possible, but you don't know how to explain it to me, because I don't know the medical terms for those things in any language and you don't know the terms anyway. I know how to explain what I've done in your mind to another telepath, but there are no words, in any language. There is no need for them. Telepaths understand, and non-telepaths never will."
Jean-Luc moved his hand again and smiled. "Thank you. Both of you." He glanced at Sakhara. "I owe you a great deal, for helping me with this."
Sakhara grinned, one ear up and the other pointed down. "No debt owed to me. I just hope Beverly gets a good night's sleep once in a while now."
{ End of section three, part 1 - go to section 3, part 2}