Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [98]
He looked at her, expressionless, not daring to react. It must have looked like a stone face to her, for she turned away again, with one of those soft, bitter laughs. “So it ends here, is that it? With no explanations.” She got up, pulling the blanket about her, and began to pace. “And you never even told me exactly why it was that you decided to take me away from Jack, one way or another.”
Beverly looked at him now, seemingly expecting an answer. Finding none, she returned to her pacing. “He told me once that you would praise me to him, then wait to see if he agreed. He said he thought you were trying to find out if I would be amenable to a little something on the side. Not that I was. And then the baby came, and that stopped for a while, didn’t it? Everything was fine for a few years … until that day you chose the landing party and sent them out.”
She sat down quietly on the bed again. “I never did understand. Oh, I saw it—that grim look on your face when you went to get the body back. Some last touch of remorse?” She looked at him. It would have been an expression of challenge were it not so dull, so weary with old hopeless thought. “Some last moment of regret at having had to kill your old friend? But friendship was never that much for you. Your blood ran too cold: friendship was too fragile a thing for you to get your teeth into. Domination, though …”
Picard sat very still. “Beverly,” he said, just wanting her to stop and not knowing how to make her. “This isn’t the time.”
“No, with your ship coming to pieces around you, I should think not.” There was some slight humor about that observation. “Find it difficult to bear, don’t you? You were always fonder of the ship, half the time, than of the people who rode in her. Cut her, and you bleed. Shields go down, and your composure falls off. Well it might, in this situation. If we fail at this mission, most of our lives won’t be worth much—certainly no one in command is going to survive unless they try pretty hard. Riker will just live to prove that this is all your fault somehow, all these things going wrong.”
“And doubtless Counselor Troi will help him,” Picard said thoughtfully, glad of anything that would turn the conversation away from him and Beverly for the moment.
Beverly laughed. “She wouldn’t miss the chance for anything. They may hate each other like poison, but she can’t do without him, and he can’t do without her. I’ve had to doctor the marks sometimes after one of their more … mixed … evenings together.” She smiled, looking rueful. “We haven’t had many of those nights together lately ourselves, have we? Found something new to keep your attention. The other woman.”
Beverly looked out the window into the starry night. “It’s been driving you wild ever since they dropped this project in your lap. The idea of an Enterprise you don’t control—that you could.”
“Ships of that name tend to be jealous mistresses,” Picard said softly. “But then, as you say, you know that.”
“You’d like me to think that, anyway,” she said, looking at him for a moment from under the beginnings of a frown. “Could I actually be looking too close to my own nose to see the truth? Could it actually .be another woman?”
He stood up and started to pace. “Do you suppose I wouldn’t tell you if it were?” he said roughly.
She laughed at him again. “Nice try! As if you ever tell anyone anything. That old cold, calculating mind, turning in circles on itself the same as always—even trying to imitate intimacy when it serves its purpose. Just another way to hurt me. The old pattern hasn’t changed.” She leaned back against the bedstead. “You still like to put a pin into me, every now and then, or a knife if you