The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [24]
Data regarded him with the android’s customary unblinking candor. “For humans, it certainly does,” he agreed. “I can only envy you that richness of existence. Most of the time, my life seems all too simple by comparison, Wesley.”
The lift arrived, and they stepped into it and were whisked away.
Thala watched the flickering outline of the android and the more solid, flesh-and-blood silhouette of Wesley Crusher walk away and, after a moment, step into the turbolift and vanish. Then she turned and headed back to her quarters, a suite of cabins that she had once shared with her father but that now were hers alone. At least for the moment. Thala was under no illusion that they would remain hers for much longer. Soon she would be sent away from the starship, away from all that she knew, and the prospect filled her with fear and the determination to take matters into her own hands.
Even though the child had never set foot on Andorian soil, she knew far better than the humans or Selar that a person such as herself would find no welcome among Andorians. Thala had studied her world’s history and customs for years. She’d also learned a great deal about her people from listening to her father while she was growing up, times when Thev had talked frankly to his crewmates, never realizing that his daughter could hear them. Thala’s hearing was exceptional, even for an Andorian—one compensation for her lack of sight.
It was a funny thing, the child reflected, that many people seemed to assume that just because you were blind, you couldn’t hear, either. She wondered idly whether deaf people got treated as though they were also blind.
Resolutely she turned her thoughts back to the matter at hand. Wesley had said that they were on a mission, a mission that would occupy the Enterprise for at least another week. Doctor Crusher had told her today that she would not be going to Thonolan Four, so Thala intended to be ready the next time the starship docked—wherever that might be.
Crossing her quarters, she avoided the furniture as much from habit as from the measurements and data that her sensory net supplied her, until she stood before the small statue that was a representation of an ancient Andorian hive-goddess. The sculpture was made of a smooth, cool stone that felt to the child’s fingers much like the jade inlays in the hilt of a ceremonial Vulcan dagger that Selar displayed in her quarters. Except that Thala had been told that this stone was yellow, and Selar said the dagger hilt was red.
Red … yellow … The Andorian girl remembered that Selar had been trying to perfect eyes for her that would allow her to know what those words truly meant, and she had to clench her fingers on the statue’s smoothness for a heartbeat before she could gain control.
Why was I born this way? she wondered for the thousandth time. Being born blind was bad enough, but to be Andorian and born blind …
Thala experienced a sudden wave of longing for Thev. To his credit, he had managed to overcome the ways instilled into him from childhood; he had had great affection for his daughter and had encouraged her to develop skills that would prepare her for a life away from their people. Thev had planned for both of them to settle on Delma, a planet in the Vega sector, as soon as his diplomatic tour was over. On that world there were many opportunities for bright individuals, and everyone was judged for what he or she could do, not what they could not do.
Thev and Selar had taught Thala that her handicap was only a handicap if she perceived it as such. It had been a terrible blow to the child when they’d told her he was gone.
The Borg ship had blown a good-sized hole in the Enterprise, and Thev had been the only non-crew individual in the area when the hull was breached and the section decompressed. They’d never even found his body. Thala knew that her father was dead, she knew it—but at times she was tormented