The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [68]
Crusher cast a quick look at her desk chronometer and was amazed to see she had worked through most of the evening. “I’ve been rather absorbed in my work and lost track of time. He should have called me hours ago …” She could feel a slow burn of anger working its way up her neck. “In fact, I do believe the captain has stood up his chief medical officer … again.”
“Oh,” said Troi, her eyes bright with undisguised curiosity. “So this happened before?”
“Yes,” said Crusher with a tight smile.
“Last night we were supposed to have dinner to make up for a breakfast we missed. Only Jean-Luc didn’t show up. This morning he apologized and explained that he had been distracted by an unexpected meeting with Guinan.
To make amends, he promised to meet me for dinner tonight.”
“Knowing Captain Picard, he’s probably forgotten to eat entirely and is off somewhere studying the Heart.”
“Probably.” The doctor found scant consolation in this explanation. “He certainly is fascinated by it.”
“Well, I just stopped by to see if you wanted to help me celebrate. I just won fifty credits from—” “The poker game!” cried Crusher. “I forgot all about it. If the captain had bothered to cancel our dinner plans, I could have gone to the game instead.”
“Beverly,” said Troi in her most pedantic counselor voice, “it’s still not too late to call him.”
“Oh, no!” she said, sweeping the work tapes off her desk into a drawer and slamming it shut.
“After all, who am I to come between a man and his rock?”
He sat cross-legged on the bed, just as young Surak had sat on the cold ground of the desert, and the Heart rested in the cradle of his hands. The boy had been waiting for morning, but Picard was waiting for night.
It was so difficult to keep his eyes open, yet he fought to stay awake just a little while longer.
His cabin was dark, just as it had been that first night when he wakened from the dream of T’Sara’s death and saw the stone transformed. He wanted to see the change again. Or had its glittering light been part of the dream as well?
Could he even tell the difference between waking and dreaming any more? For three nights in a row, he had been left with memories of other lands and other people that were too vivid to dismiss as fantasy, yet he had no other name for them.
Visions, perhaps.
Starship captains were not supposed to have visions.
He knew he should tell someone, but he feared the telling would shatter the spell.
So tired. Too tired to watch the stone any longer. He slumped down onto the bed, curling himself around the warm, round shape.
Dreams were the voice of the Heart, and he would listen to what it had to say.
CHAPTER 19
Halaylah darted through the gathering crowd, skipping and twisting between the lumbering heavyset bodies that towered above her. News of the approaching bier had traveled quickly, outstripping even her nimble race to the doors of the Great Chamber. She wondered, in fact, if that knowledge had spread too quickly, whether there had been an air of veiled expectation when the cart lumbered up the causeway with its blood-sodden burden.
Three armor-clad admirals stood at the threshold of the throne room, planted like boulders in solemn and unperturbable authority, yet the guttural exchanges they whispered to each other betrayed their unease. As a rule, Klingons were not given to whispering; they bellowed and roared like wounded targs whether they were in a good humor or bad. She had been told they sounded much the same in battle or in lovemaking. After a decade of living on this planet, she still found the unleavened noise of its natives to be the most oppressive element of her captivity.
Skirting closer to the guarded entrance, Halaylah caught a whiff of the admirals’ fear, incongruously sweet compared to the normal acrid smell of a Klingon adult.
She listened to their awkward sibilant speech, then tucked a hidden smile inside her cheek.
These mighty warriors, with the blood of a dozen space-faring races on their hands, feared facing the emperor. Each was desperately trying