Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [83]
Riker took Data’s arm. “It’s terrible. I can see the pain in your eyes. You’ll need lots of rest. Right, Dr. Crusher?”
“Oh, lots,” Crusher said, taking Data’s other elbow. “At least twenty hours. I’ll stay with him the whole time and press a cool cloth to his brow. Come on, Data.”
“Are we going somewhere?” the android asked innocently.
“Oh, yes,” Riker told him, and grinned at Worf. “You have an appointment at the beauty shop.”
Chapter Fifteen
“COMPUTER, REVERSE PROGRAM thirty seconds and resume.”
Jean-Luc Picard nudged Alexander back into his place at the trestle table in Jeremiah Coverman’s keeping room. Around them, the characters reversed like an old newsreel to a point before Worf had entered, and Picard sat down just as the scenario started moving again and the characters groaned to life.
“Alexander, don’t pout,” he murmured just as the characters took a reanimating breath.
“I’ve got a right,” the boy shot back.
“Not on my time, you don’t.”
“Lieutenant Picard?” Nightingale asked. “Is something wrong, sir?”
“Nothing at all, Midshipman,” Picard said, and turned. “Mr. Coverman, what affected you most in your new way of thinking?”
All eyes struck Picard like whips. He had dared to keep the flames of dissent burning. But he wanted to know, and turning away from a problem did nothing but cause it to fester.
To ease the dare, he handed the sergeant a chunk of bread and some cheese, causing Sandy to begin eating whether he liked it or not, because he couldn’t disobey an order.
Sometimes rank could be an advantage.
Jeremiah sighed, but there was no vice left in him. He had plainly thought all this through for months, possibly years, and done his emotional wrestling long since. He seemed also to have anticipated this confrontation with his family, though Picard suspected he hadn’t wanted to have it with Sandy.
He took the pitcher from Amy and poured Mr. Nightingale’s drink.
“The class system doesn’t work here. There is unthinkable mobility. The poor can become wealthy in mere months. The wealthy can lose fortunes even faster. Many live on the frontier. We are months away from Britain. Our remoteness reduces the edicts of the king to the baying of hounds in the distance. We scarcely hear it. No one cares to listen. The elite of Europe—Sandy, I’m sorry. For the elite, who have never set foot here and think of this place as a manure-filled backwater to be telling us what to do … it becomes untenable after a short time. British tariffs choke us, we are required to use their currency and none other, we are patently tried and convicted, treason is undefined—we may not even speak out against the Crown’s policies, lest we risk our very lives. Is that freedom?”
No one made any response, but Picard suspected there were a half dozen different responses running under the table, each riding on some condition or other. No, yes, maybe, only if—
Jeremiah put the pitcher down on the table and sat opposite his cousin. He laid out a hand and implored, “Sandy, please try to understand. Even you must have trouble defending the abuses of the monarchy. You defend the Magna Carta, do you not? This is the next step of granting rights to everyone. This rebellion asks, ‘Why do we need a king at all? Why does the gentry need the aristocracy?’”
Sandy swallowed the whole lump of breath that was in his mouth and buried his response in a slug of cider. His eyes never left his cousin’s.
“What’s that?” Alexander asked, and his voice broke Picard’s thoughts. “Magna something.”
Stepping back into an element he found more comfortable, Picard answered, “In the early 1500’s, King John I was forced to sign the Magna Carta because he was a bad king. It lessened the power of the Crown and shared it with the nobility. The power of the king was no longer absolute.”
“And he was a bad king,” Jeremiah picked up, “because he was king by blood and not by merit.” He looked again at his cousin, evidently finding his stride with his convictions. “Why should anyone be born