Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [8]
“But patience is the key, as usual,” Picard said.
“Oh, yes,” Riker said, “there was some excitement yesterday. We caught two antimuons with their pants down, one after the other. The physics lab got so excited, they threw a party.”
“I heard,” Picard said. “What did you say to Lieutenant Hessan that made her put the ice cream down your shirt?”
Riker’s casual expression didn’t change, but he colored slightly. Troi grinned and turned away.
“Yes,” Picard said, “quite.” He got up and stretched. “Well, keep at it, Number One. Find enough of those needles and Fleet will let us stop this particular roll in the hay and go somewhere livelier.”
Riker leaned back in his chair. “All the same, we may not need to. I really want to know what made the Laihe so nervous.”
“Doubtless we’ll find out,” Picard said.
CHAPTER 2
The briefing happened just after shift change. Riker chuckled a little while setting it up. “A buffet briefing,” he said; “this might be setting a dangerous precedent.”
Picard smiled. “If civilization is the ability to slide gracefully into customs not our own,” he said, “let’s get out there and slide.”
Food at the briefing was simply courtesy to their guest. While there were species who did not discuss business over food, most of the cetaceans, except under most unusual circumstances, didn’t discuss business without food. To them, food was business—had been, for a long time, the only business they had. Everything else—song, love, birth, death—was counted play—in much the same way, scientists theorized, as Earth’s cetaceans had regarded the universe centuries before. When Triton’s cetacean species came into the Federation and discovered all the other kinds of business there were, they dove into them gladly, but they insisted on taking a lunch.
The buffet was, in their guest’s honor again, mostly a fish dinner. There were turbot, bream, sea trout, salmon fresh and smoked, glinting mackerel, herring in what Picard thought was almost too many kinds—as usual, it reminded him of that Nobel Prize weekend on Earth, at the end of which he thought he would never want to see a herring again. But lobster, crab, fresh mussels, all those were there, too, as perfect as the replicator could make them. Commander Hwiii came gliding in and looked the spread over and squeaked with delight. “Down to business,” he said, “please!”
Everyone laughed and started to fill their plates. Hwiii had brought up from his luggage a set of the manipulators he used to manage control panels geared to the ten-fingered. Now Picard watched with interest as Hwiii flicked his watery “sleeves” up and slipped his fins into the manipulators, which promptly sprouted long graceful tendrils of metal, five from each glove. “There’s a neural-transfer net installed just under the skin of each flipper,” Hwiii said, flexing the tendrils. “It transfers even very small movements of the phalangeal bones to the waldoes.”
“”Cyclic” metal?” Picard said.
“Yes, the only moving part is the long-chain molecule in the metal itself. It’s like the Clissman “self-trimming” struts they use these days in solar-sail craft. Useful on the rubber-chicken circuit.” Hwiii dropped his jaw in the genuine delphine grin. “There are people who aren’t surprised that a dolphin can talk, but zut, are they surprised to see one use a knife and fork!”
“I would imagine. Caviar, Commander?”
“I haven’t seen you take any yet,” Hwiii said virtuously. “Rude to start before one’s host, even among my people.”
Picard served out the beluga. “Bon app@etit,” he said, and for a while there was only small talk, Data querying Riker about the smoking method used on the original salmon, Geordi trying to analyze the wine, as usual, and missing the year by a mile, also as usual. People found seats, got comfortable, while Hwiii floated comfortably on his pad by the captain’s chair and talked old neighborhoods and common acquaintances with him, research fellows at the Sorbonne