Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [7]
“Captain,” said Data, “the nebula is known to reflect subspace frequencies. We will be unable to contact Starfleet while inside it.”
“Yes, Mr. Data, Starfleet knows we’ll be out of touch for a while. I’ve had to speak with our two diplomatic passengers, who are most understanding. Starfleet has gotten permission from their government for the delay in their travel schedule. Number One,” said the captain to his first officer, “you and I will meet later to plan the particulars of this mission. That’s all.”
Picard, Data, and Riker left. Deanna Troi rose, but lingered in the room. She looked out the port at the rho Ophiuchi nebula: a dense blue veil with a single star-eye behind it, peering at her.
The prospect of being in there, cut off from Starfleet, was ominous. It made her feel trapped. It made her more aware of the nearby presence of the Other-worlders, hidden in their own universe or state of being but following with the ship, following her, and she began to shiver with a kind of ague.
She tried to stop her shivering. There should be nothing wrong with me physically, she thought.
She had just come from an examination by Dr. Crusher. “Evidence of stress, that’s all,” Beverly had said. “Nothing a little rest won’t cure.”
Dear Beverly had made Troi promise to rest for at least two days. But that wouldn’t be possible. She had to talk with the ship’s computer, find out what she’d been doing during those hours before her experience with the Other-worlders.
The thought of being alone in her cabin and asking the computer anything filled her with dread, though she didn’t know why.
She considered the calm curiosity with which Captain Picard always faced the unknown, and wished for a moment that she could be like him. But the thought made her feel lonely. He seemed so solitary and self-contained, his feelings and affections streamlined like a tree growing in a wind tunnel.
No, she thought. I couldn’t be like that.
His father had sneered that the pace was too slow, and had hiked off on long adult legs and left him there, a nine-year-old boy on a faltering, treacherous mountain trail. He’d never been alone in the wilderness before, and he panicked, and lurched along, crying, feeling lost in the cold landscape and in the world as a whole. Where do you turn for solace or justice when your own father is unfair to you? He looked about but got no reply from the frigid glacier and the foreboding shadows under the rocky cliffs.
First Officer William T. Riker returned from this memory with a familiar aching feeling as he approached the turbolift.
If I ever find the time to get married and have a family, he thought, I won’t be like my father. I’ll be kind to my kids. I’d probably have to watch out for overcompensation, for being too kind.
He boarded the turbolift and was surprised to see that it already contained two preschool-age children.
“Deck Twelve, gymnasium,” Riker told the lift, which began to move.
Riker wondered what the two children were doing unattended on a turbolift. He’d have to ask them. He felt it odd that they seemed to have appeared as if cued by his own reverie.
The toddlers were turned toward each other in a close huddle, and Riker couldn’t see their faces. They were whispering and giggling and making soft smacking noises.
Riker was about to speak but suddenly his eyes widened in alarm and his question died in his throat. The toddlers were kissing. This wasn’t just child’s play. This was Eros. They were really making out.
Riker was baffled. Surely they shouldn’t be engaging in such behavior for at least another decade. What was he supposed to do, throw water on them? He wished someone more experienced were here to handle it.
He coughed discreetly.
They kept