Part 2 (2/2)
Geordi allowed himself an indulgent gaze at Data's face as the android glowed with concentration. He saw the structure of synthetic facial bone, tiny blood-fed fibrous ligaments attached to impulse interpreters, stockinged by the cool involucrum that was his skin. Geordi saw a handsome face, unafraid of its own features, a face that could show many feelings, from courage to calculation, confusion to compa.s.sion, to those sensitive enough to see its minute changes. And Data's eyes, no matter their brimstone cast, were unfailingly gentle.
Geordi shook his head and uttered, ”Machine, my a.s.s.”
Picard looked up. ”Lieutenant?”
”Secure distance, sir.”
”Speak up, then.”
”Yes, sir.”
The door's buzzer sounded clearly, but Troi didn't respond to it. Once again lights played across her face, but not the lights of yellow alert. She sat at her private desk, watching a holograph simulate the motion of a patch of blue ocean water. At the ends of the foot-wide holograph, the ocean faded and became table. Dead center on the patch of churning water was a three-dimensional image of an old military vessel. It was wedge-shaped, piled high with steel-gray metal mountings that made no sense to her. On the screen at her wrist came the simple description: First iron screw steams.h.i.+p, S.S. Great Britain.
She frowned and tapped the continue b.u.t.ton. The 3-D image sucked in on itself as though imploded, twisted around a little, and reanimated into something utterly different, something bigger, flatter, clunkier, chugging across her table. The dark band of screen beneath it said: Tanker, Edmund Fitzgerald, lost with all hands, Lake Superior, Michigan, United States, Earth 1975.
Troi hit the b.u.t.ton almost angrily. Those weren't right. They weren't right. A new image came almost instantly, a big black, white, and red s.h.i.+p, very elegant and slim this time, obviously meant to carry people. People-that was right. She looked at the display band. Luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II, Cunard Line, Earth.
No ... no ... Troi's mulberry-tinted lips lost their perfect shape. No. Her finger moved again.
H.M.S. Dreadnought, battles.h.i.+p, Great Britain, Earth, 1906.
She leaned forward now as she recognized some element-the color, the demeanor of this s.h.i.+p ... closer. She tapped the b.u.t.ton again, this time saying, ”This type of vessel.”
”This is a naval defense/offense vessel which would be used during and after World War One,” the computer courteously told her.
”Continue.”
The holograph winked, and she was gazing at another s.h.i.+p of the same kind, but from a different angle as it crashed through the little round patch of sea. Its slate-gray bow rose and fell in the sea. The computer image turned as though Troi were circling it in an aircraft, to give her a complete look at it from all angles. It had a crude kind of grace about it, certainly a strength, but it had no lights at all, no colors like the stars.h.i.+p's sparkling yellow and white lights, its glowing reds, its vibrant electrical blues.
Aegis cruiser, built by SYSCON for the U.S. Navy, Earth, 1988.
The door buzzed again.
”Oh-yes; come in.”
She let the old-style s.h.i.+p pierce its way through the tiny sea in front of her as she looked up to see Will Riker stride in. As soon as the door opened, his eyes were already locked with hers. How long had he been waiting out there? She faintly remembered now that the buzzer had sounded once before.
”I was worried about you,” he said. He settled into the other chair and leaned one elbow on the desk just short of the holograph. The bulky cruiser splashed toward him, and yet stayed right where it was. ”I didn't know you were a history buff.” He nodded at the Aegis. ”That's nice.”
Troi tilted her dark head. ”I've never seen anything like this before.”
So that was the end of the easy transition, Riker realized. Something in her tone told him her statement was more significant than it pretended to be.
”What happened?” he asked, no longer protecting her from her own behavior on the bridge.
She gave him an uncharacteristic shrug with one shoulder and shook her head, a self-conscious smile tugging at her lips. ”Did you see what I did? I'm so embarra.s.sed. I've never mistaken a dream for reality before. I must really have looked funny. Did anyone laugh?”
”Laugh?” Riker said saucily. ”You should've seen them. Captain Picard had to be wheeled off the bridge, Worf was-”
”Oh, you!” She swatted his nearest knee and chuckled at herself again.
”I wouldn't worry about it,” Riker told her, lounging his big frame back in the chair. ”Everybody does something like that sooner or later. The more stoic you are, the worse the goof-up seems.”
”Am I stoic?” she asked, the smile broadening again.
”I don't know, Counselor,” he said. ”I don't remember the last time I looked at you and only saw the professional. I've got more flowery things to remember about you.”
Troi pursed her lips, leaned forward, ignoring the holograph of the s.h.i.+p as it continued its nonvoyage, and propped her chin on one hand. ”Tell me, Bill. Make me feel better.”
”No fair. Figure it out for yourself. You of all people could do it.”
Settling back, she said, ”That's not very comforting for a person who just dashed onto the bridge in a frenzy.”
Will Riker's bright eyes flashed before her impishly. ”You want comfort? How's this? I was a.s.signed as second officer on a destroyer right after my promotion to lieutenant commander-about a thousand years ago, if memory serves. I got my a.s.signment at Starbase Eighteen, and keyed the coordinates to the new s.h.i.+p into the transporter, stepped on the pad, and boom, there I was. I strutted around being the almighty second officer, puffed up just like a souffle, and we were ten hours out of s.p.a.cedock before I figured out I had beamed myself onto the wrong departing s.h.i.+p.”
”Oh, Bill! Oh, no ... ”
”And the s.h.i.+p I'd landed on wasn't a destroyer, either. It was the U.S.S. Yorktown-an Excelsior-cla.s.s stars.h.i.+p, heading out on a two-year mission. Her captain made Picard seem like Francis of a.s.sisi. They'd already been delayed four days by diplomatic entanglements, and here's Second Officer Riker having to report to the real second officer.”
Her hand was clapped over her mouth by now, and she parted her fingers enough to burble, ”What did they do?”
He spread his hands. ”What could they do? They turned the whole s.h.i.+p around, this huge s.h.i.+p, and they came all the way back through s.p.a.ce to rendezvous with the destroyer I was supposed to be on. So there was the destroyer, having to meet a stars.h.i.+p just to pick up its second officer, who was supposed to have reported in ten hours before.”
”Oh, dear ... ”
”So quit complaining.”
”Is that a true story? You're not making it up to make me feel better?”
”Make it up? Deanna, n.o.body sane could make up anything that punis.h.i.+ng. It's like a practical joke somebody plays on a bridegroom on his wedding night, except I did it to myself.” Shaking his head musingly, he added, ”I could never quite look at a transporter platform the same way again. I always wonder if I'm going to end up beaming into somebody's shower by mistake. And the worst was yet to come. Two years later, I really was a.s.signed as Yorktown's second officer and I had to report to that captain again!”
She giggled, bringing an unlikely girlishness to her demeanor. ”Did he remember?”
”Remember? First thing he asked was if I'd been hiding in the hold all this time.”
Their laughter entwined and filled the dim room, chasing away the discomfort.
As Riker watched her custodially, he noticed she had picked up on his feelings and was actually doing the blus.h.i.+ng for him. At first he was tempted to draw back within himself, but he knew it didn't matter. With Deanna, holding back showed up like a beacon. There was no point. He wished he could be this relaxed with the other members of the crew.
They sat together, grinning at each other, warm in their mutual memories and the privacy of a relations.h.i.+p and a past they had allowed no one else on board to see. It was like starting fresh, with a whole new life, with their attraction to each other getting a second chance, because no one else knew. No one else on the entire s.h.i.+p knew.
Breaking his gaze at her gentle face, Riker looked at the unlikely holograph beside him and asked, ”You had a nightmare?”
Her expression made his smile fall away. He forced himself not to say more, to give her a chance to answer in her own time, while he indulged in the presence of her troubled onyx eyes.
”A nightmare,” she murmured. ”But in this nightmare I could feel the emotions of the strangers in it. It was nothing I recognize ... sharp images of things I know nothing about. Names I've never heard.”
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