Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [26]
Emily Bender’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you. We were a tight-knit group. Maybe we haven’t kept up with each other very well, but there’s no way you could have forgotten me.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I—”
She put her forefinger to his mouth, silencing him. “Don’t, Dikembe. I don’t know why you’re trying to give me the brush-off, but it’s not going to work.”
Ulelo moved her finger away from his lips. “It’s not a brush-off. I just don’t remember.”
Emily Bender smiled. “Do you believe in Fate, Dikembe?”
He frowned. “What does that have to do with—”
Her finger slid back across his lips. “You probably don’t know this, but I had a crush on you back at the Academy. A big crush, and I always regretted not doing anything about it. Then I saw you in the corridor and I realized that I’d been given some kind of second chance.”
Before he knew it, before he could say or do a thing to stop her, Emily Bender slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy it. She was a woman, after all, and a rather attractive woman at that.
But Ulelo wasn’t in a position to follow his instincts. Removing her arms from his neck, he shook his head.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
She looked at him disbelievingly. “What—?”
“A mistake,” he repeated. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Emily Bender stared at him for a moment longer. Then, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, she said in an injured voice, “All right. If that’s the way you want it.”
And she left Ulelo standing there in his quarters, feeling that he hadn’t merely failed to solve his problem. Somehow, he had increased the complexity of it.
Picard looked at his first officer as they stood in his ready room. “You did what?”
Ben Zoma shrugged. “I contacted my friend Tanya, who studied the Gnalish a number of years ago.”
The captain winced. “Please tell me you didn’t speak to her about Simenon.”
“Actually,” Ben Zoma said a little sheepishly, “I did. I wanted to find out what he was holding back from us.”
Picard held his hands out in an appeal for reason. “Gilaad, that is precisely what he asked us not to do.”
Ben Zoma nodded. “I know. I butted into his business. I betrayed the trust of a friend and a fellow officer.”
“To say the least,” Picard told him.
“But I may also have saved his miserable life.”
That brought the captain up short. “What do you mean?”
Ben Zoma explained. In detail.
Picard frowned as he realized what his engineer was up against. The odds against him were considerable. But that didn’t excuse what his first officer had done.
“We agreed not to pry into Simenon’s affairs,” Picard said. “You and I both. For pity’s sake, we gave him our word.”
“So,” Ben Zoma responded matter-of-factly, “does that mean you’re not going to talk with him?”
The captain wrestled with the question. Finally, he came to the only conclusion possible. “Simenon is going to hate us for lying to him,” he told his first officer.
“I know,” Ben Zoma conceded. “But if you can’t depend on your friends to lie to you, who can you depend on?”
Picard grunted. Who indeed?
Admiral McAteer sat back in his chair and tapped the rim of the bar glass on the table beside him. The previously clear liquid inside the glass began blushing with a host of different colors.
The admiral smiled appreciatively. “Best damned Samarian Sunset I ever saw. If it tastes as good as it looks, we’re all set.”
Of course, there was no answer. The replicator that had produced the cocktail had no more to say in response to his remark than any other inanimate object in the room.
McAteer didn’t mind in the least. The truth was he liked being by himself once in a while.
Not everyone understood that, he thought, as he picked up the Sunset and conveyed it to his lips. Just because he was good with people, because he could influence them, didn’t mean he wanted to be surrounded by them all the time.
The cocktail was sour and dusky sweet and a little bitter all at the same time, a riot