Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [76]
It abruptly became too much for Picard. “Mr. La Forge,” he said, being careful to keep his phrasing neutral, keeping the anger out of his voice, “I will have my senior officers treat my junior officers with due respect.”
La Forge laughed, a single harsh, disbelieving bark. “Him? His people have lost any respect they might have ever had.”
Picard glanced sideways toward Worf. He merely looked at La Forge, his eyes surprisingly calm, and said nothing.
“Whatever the case may be regarding that,” Picard said, “he is an officer aboard my ship.” And he looked La Forge thoughtfully in the visor, then down at his badge, and up at his visor again.
“Yes, Captain,” La Forge said, actually through gritted teeth. “Well, if there’s anything else you need, please call me. I have work to do.” And, undismissed, he stalked away.
He is very certain of his position, Picard thought, and of his necessity to what’s going on here. He bears watching.
“I’m sorry about that,” Picard said to Worf. “It seems uncalled for.”
“On the contrary, he’s quite right.” The calm way that Worf put it had some unspoken tragedy at the bottom of it.
“Walk with me, Lieutenant,” Picard said. Together they began to make their way out of engineering, with Barclay behind at a respectful distance. They said little until they were well past the matterstantimatter exchange column and heading down the great main hall toward the exit.
“I do not condone his rudeness,” Picard said. “If discipline and effectiveness are to be maintained …”
Worf shook his head. “Captain, you have not often spoken to me in this mode.”
Picard glanced from left to right and back to Worf again. “Possibly, because the walls seem to have ears around here. I doubt many people on this ship speak what they’re thinking.”
“Indeed not,” Worf said. “To reveal your thoughts to a superior could be suicidal; to reveal them to an equal might alert them too soon to some trap you were laying for them. And as for inferiors, like myself …” He shrugged, and there was no tone of bitterness about the way he said it. “That would betray weakness. No one here betrays weakness and lives long to tell about it.”
Picard recalled an early writer’s description of hell as a bureaucracy run along much the same lines and repressed a shudder. “I should dislike to think that any of my crewmen actually considered themselves to be inferior, Mr. Worf.”
Beside him Worf shook his head slightly as they went out into the corridor. “Captain, when one comes from a race that has submitted, there is no other way to be perceived by most of the population of Starfleet, or any Starfleet ship. If you are not Earth human, or from one of the Earth-colonized worlds; or if you are not Vulcan, or from one of the Vulcan provincial planets—then you are a second-class citizen. A species that cannot at least fight the Empire to a standstill cannot be considered fit to stand with it in command, in rule. A species that submits or is warred down is good only to “hew wood and draw water.” Slaves at worst—a sort of tame curiosity at best.”
Worf was silent for a moment as they came around a curve in the hallway, and both he and Barclay looked ahead to see who was there. Then Worf said, “After their long war with the Empire, outweaponed and outnumbered as they were, the survivors of my people decided that life was sweeter than honor. By surrender, they thought, they could at least purchase the lives of the noncombatants on the Klingon homeworld. Perhaps they deluded themselves by thinking that at some later date, resistance could begin again and honor could be regained: their descendants would live to fight another day. But a delusion it was. Their descendants have known nothing but the Empire for three generations now. At this point in time, I doubt whether the fighting will happen on any “other day” at all.” He looked at Picard. “They have grown used to their position … perhaps wisely.