Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [35]
Geordi saw that poor Chops had woken up in the next room, and was standing, leaning unsteadily against the wall. The alarming conversation he’d been having with Worf had roused her. She’d gotten no more than a minute of sleep, but her eternally active hands were flexing, ready to be used.
“Sir,” said Worf, meanwhile, “I have an idea how we can take out that locksmith one-eye.”
There was little navigation for Wesley to do at the moment. The Enterprise, surrounded by Rampartian ships, automatically held the synchronous position Wesley had set above Rampart. As he looked at the curving blue horizon on his viewscreen, and simultaneously kept an eye on the console under his hands and an ear open to the soft crew-talk around him, an unsettling memory danced around in his mind.
It had been about a week ago.
The visit to the Holodeck had been Shikibu’s idea. She had programmed it for the rock garden at Ryoanji, Kyoto, in a softly falling morning rain.
They sat on the floor under an ancient wooden eave. After Wesley unsuccessfully tried several times to start a conversation, they lapsed into quiet. Wesley realized she wanted it this way, as usual. He became aware of the complexity of sounds created by the rain falling gently on the bamboo and the conifers, on the ancient tile roofs and on the rocks and sand of the garden itself.
Wesley couldn’t tell if the islands of rugged rocks in the large rectangle of raked sand had been there before the garden was built. The whole garden, in fact, was a careful blending of the works of man with the spontaneous works of nature, crafted so that the visitor could not tell where one left off and the other began.
Beside him, Shikibu was gazing at the garden. Her hair was the blackest he’d ever seen. It fell about her shoulders in an arrangement that told both of deliberate design and the chance of wind and movement.
He felt a sudden impulse to touch the fine black hair. For quite a while he sat there next to her, several times almost doing it, but always chickening out. She could embarrass him; she could be offended, scold him like a child and walk out. She could laugh, and tell him that he was clumsy, that he was doing it all wrong. Or maybe she would respond with some wild scary Kama pleasuring technique he’d never even dreamed of.
Dumb thoughts, he told himself. Those things were all out of character for her. And all he would do was touch her hair. That was no crime. They were friends. Stop stalling and just do it.
He reached out and let his fingers run through the soft jet-black hair, just once. Her head moved slightly, in what felt to Wesley like a reflex. But still she stared at the garden and said nothing.
Puzzled, Wesley withdrew his hand.
Shikibu got up and asked the Holodeck to show her the door. Wesley followed her out and she bade him a short, polite good-bye. She did not seem to be offended.
He was just as mystified as he had been by her wordless demonstration of Zen archery postures. He had the definite feeling she was trying to tell him something, but he had no idea what it was.
It had been the last time he’d seen Shikibu.
Just a few moments ago, as he sat at his station on the bridge, he’d heard his mother relay her report on the status of her patients in sickbay, among them Shikibu. It seemed Shikibu was sleeping under sedation, and had no permanent injury.
Now he stared at the bridge viewscreen; at the curve of Rampart, and the thick nebula beyond it, veiling Rampart from the rest of the cosmos.
Wesley wasn’t sure if he were in love with Shikibu. But he began to think—what if he were, and what if both of them lived on Rampart? It was a love-against-adversity scenario. He imagined the two of them on the run, hiding in abandoned buildings or alpine wilderness.
What exactly did the sexes do with each other on Rampart, he wondered. How could they fit sex and love into their lives of rigorous precision and