Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [10]
For the moment, however, Starfleet was very eager to learn anything they could about the aliens in the silver teardrop. Were they friend or foe? What could the Federation and these new aliens learn from each other?
The hours of Wesley’s watch dragged by. Memory Alpha, the central information depository of the Federation, was a well-known destination. There was nothing between them and it but empty space. No Romulans, no Ferengi, no Borg. Nothing but the unexpected, and one, Wesley thought, could get a little too clever about always expecting it. If necessary, the Enterprise could fly itself to Memory Alpha. Wesley’s presence at the conn was almost a formality.
Captain Picard was in his ready room, and Counselor Troi was off on some errand of mercy. Commander Riker was on the bridge and would be available in an emergency if one should arise, but at the moment he was grunting over the composition of one of the many reports Starfleet inevitably required.
Data was where Wesley wanted to be, with Professor Eric Baldwin. Wesley shook his head in wonderment. What a guy that Baldwin was. Wesley wondered what kind of a smart, arrogant, warlike imaginary alien Baldwin could come up with, Borders scale or no.
Wesley knew many of the women on the ship were having lusty fantasies about Baldwin. Never before had Wesley thought of sweat as sexy, but there it was. He wondered if he would ever understand women. The fact that even Riker was occasionally mystified by them did not give him hope.
When his watch was over Wesley went to his cabin, keyed into the ship’s library computer, and looked up the Borders scale. To his chagrin, he discovered that it was less a shopping list than an encyclopedia of characteristics. The instructions alone—page after page of cultural jargon and mathematical formulas—took up three volumes.
Wesley sighed and dived in. He became fascinated. But when he came up for air some hours later, be found that he had barely begun. He didn’t mind working hard for what he learned—finding a subject that could make him sweat was a pleasant change—but he was in a hurry. He wanted to invent those challenging aliens right now. He thought about giving one of the characteristics a number at random, just to get the ball rolling. But that was too much like cheating, and cheating, even if it seemed necessary, never appealed to him.
He drummed his fingers on the table while he considered what to do next. The answer was obvious. When he had a computer problem, there was only one person for him to go to.
Wesley found Data in his cabin harassing his own computer terminal. When Wesley entered, Data looked up, his fingers poised over the keyboard, his face holding its usual expression of mild surprise.
“What are you working on?” Wesley said.
“Some research for the captain,” Data said and blanked the screen.
“Does it have to do with Commander Mont?”
“That would be a logical assumption,” Data said, admitting nothing. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”
“Yeah. Do you know anything about the Borders scale?”
“It is a quantitative scale of the physical, emotional, and rational characteristics of various races. It is used—theoretically—to compare them in an unbiased and logical way.”
“Theoretically?”
“Of course. As you must know, any such scale reflects the biases of its creator, in this case of Dr. Sandra Borders, senior exobiology librarian at Memory Alpha.”
“So it’s no good at all, then,” Wesley said glumly. He’d have to look elsewhere for a solution to his alien problem.
“Some researchers take the scale very seriously. But Vulcans,