The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [103]
“You sound very sure of that. Why?”
“Because,” said Guinan, “all the stories I’ve heard speak of temptation rather than coercion. The Heart can turn your own desires against you, but it can’t make you do anything against your true nature.”
“And Captain Picard would never choose to hurt the Enterprise or the people on it.”
Guinan nodded, and Deanna toyed with letting the whole matter end on this comforting note, yet she knew Riker would not be so easily reassured.
“Could I have another one of these drinks?”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Guinan whisked away the empty glass, and plucked up a clean one from beneath the counter.
“Guinan, the captain trusts you more than any other person on board the Enterprise. If you could persuade him to give the Heart to you for safe—” The glass the hostess had been holding slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Troi was surprised that her request could rattle the imperturbable Guinan.
“Are you afraid that he won’t hand it over to you?”
“No, Counselor, I’m afraid that he might.”
“But it would be for only a short time,” said Troi, “long enough to carry the Heart to a storage vault where Will could secure it for the remainder of our journey.”
Guinan shook her head back and forth as Troi talked, then said, “One of the advantages of growing old is learning your own limitations, and this is definitely a risk I’m not qualified to take. I trust Jean-Luc Picard with the Heart far more than I trust myself.”
“But why?” Troi’s alarm concerning the stone’s powers returned in full force.
“Among my people the Heart was known as the Master of All Stories, and for a race of Listeners, that can result in a fatal enchantment.”
“Enchantment? You make it sound like a fairy tale, and the captain is the unlucky prince who has fallen under an evil spell.” Troi laughed at the analogy, but then she asked, “Guinan, do you think the Heart is evil?”
“Only living things have the capacity for good or evil. So, do you think the Heart is alive?”
“I sense nothing from it … yet more and more the captain speaks of it as a sentient being.” The empath thought for a moment, then shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
“Neither do I, Counselor,” said Guinan softly. “Neither do I.”
As the doors to the ready room opened, Data regarded the interior scene with dispassion. The android was an impartial observer, and as such the presence of the Heart on Picard’s desk did not arouse any emotion in him. However, the stone did trigger a complex set of associations with recent disruptive events. On purely intellectual grounds, therefore, Data would have preferred that the Heart had never been brought aboard the Enterprise.
“Did you enjoy your rest, Captain?” asked Data as he walked across the room.
“What?” Picard looked up from his desk viewer. “Oh, my rest. Yes, I did, thank you.”
Data had often observed that Humans used certain phrases for their iconic value in expressing a sense of connection with community members, rather than in a literal sense of providing accurate information. He concluded that this must be one of those occasions because the captain’s physical condition did not appear to have substantially improved since the conference in the observation lounge.
Picard glanced back at the computer, then over at the padd in Data’s hands. “Didn’t I just receive your Ops report?”
“This is not a status update,” said Data.
“Rather, I have identified the pertinent coordinates of the location in which you were interested.”
“Let me see.” Leaning forward over his desk, Picard reached out eagerly for the padd, then sighed with relief at the sight of the Federation star map that had matched his sketch. “Yes, that’s the place exactly! But it certainly took you long enough to find it.”
“My apologies for the delay,” said Data.
“However, my search was complicated by a rather curious aspect of the scene you drew. That particular juxtaposition of the comet against the designated constellation of stars has not occurred yet; in fact,