Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [32]
“Very good. But then, as I’ve always said, that Relda Sovar knows his twentieth-century artists.”
The montage was merely a copy, of course. An authentic Serra would have cost more than any Starfleet officer could afford. Sovar sat back and admired the piece nonetheless.
Robinson withdrew her head again and finished dressing. “So … is everything all right?” she asked after a moment.
Sovar turned and considered the wall his friend was standing behind. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Come on, Relda, it’s me. I can tell when something’s got you down. Besides, you don’t often visit the lounge in the middle of the day.”
He marveled at how well Robinson knew him. “Well,” the Xhaldian said, “maybe I am a little out of sorts. A little …” He was reluctant to finish the statement. “Homesick, I guess.”
His friend emerged from the next room with her dark hair freshly combed. “Homesick?” she echoed. “A big, bad security officer like you?”
Sovar frowned at her. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Just a little,” Robinson assured him. “Now, tell me, why would you be homesick? Didn’t you get anything from Xhaldia in the last subspace packet?”
He nodded. “I got something, all right. But it didn’t exactly give me reason to smile. My parents told me my brother Erid had left on his adulthood quest.”
His friend looked at him. “And that’s bad?”
“Not normally, no. But he didn’t leave a farewell message for me.” Sovar shook his head. “By the ancients … me, his older brother!”
Robinson considered the information. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to insult you,” she said optimistically.
“No,” he told her. “That’s exactly what he meant to do.”
The transporter operator sat down on a chair opposite him. “Was there some kind of trouble between you and your brother?”
Sovar frowned. “I never told you about it, but … yes, there was trouble. It’s been there for some time. You see, Erid didn’t like the idea of my leaving Xhaldia and becoming the first of our people to join Starfleet. He wanted me to stay and pursue a more traditional existence.”
“Maybe he just liked having you around,” Robinson suggested.
“Maybe,” he echoed. “In any case, he took my leaving hard. He refused to see me off as my parents did. But I thought when he got older, he would see my side of it.” He made a sound of bitterness deep in his throat. “Erid is twenty-two now. And by not leaving me a message, he’s showing me he still hasn’t forgiven me for leaving.”
Robinson’s eyes narrowed. “But the packet came almost a week ago. You haven’t been in a funk all that time. At least, not as far as I’ve been able to tell.”
The security officer sighed. “It was Commander Worf who rubbed … what is the expression you humans have? Salt in my wound?”
His friend looked at him. “Worf? How?”
Sovar shook his head. “I know it sounds foolish, but … I envy him. He seems so at home here on the Enterprise, as if the captain and the other officers were his family.”
Robinson considered what he was saying. “He really does seem at home here,” she commented at last. “But then, he spent seven or eight years as an officer on the EnterpriseD. When you work alongside someone for that long, they do become as close as family.”
He became wistful at the thought of it. “My brother hates me. And my parents are far away. What family do I have?”
“Hey,” his friend told him, “I think of you as family.”
“Do you?” Sovar asked.
She nodded.
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me so quickly,” Robinson replied. “I don’t particularly like my family.”
Sovar’s mouth fell open.
His friend giggled. “Just kidding.”
The Xhaldian scowled. “Now you’re really making fun of me.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said, taking his arm and leading him to the door. Clearly, she was trying to take his mind off his troubles. “Now let’s get over to the lounge before all the drinks are gone.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” said Sovar. “But then, in the last several months, I’ve seen a lot of things I once found hard to imagine.”
The door to Robinson’s quarters slid open as they approached it. Suddenly, they heard the sound