The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [49]
“Not anything I can be sure of,” Wesley reported.
“Like I told you before, it’s really”—he grinned at Geordi apologetically—”weird over there.”
Fifteen-year-old Will Riker was on his first one-day pass away from Starfleet Academy, and, after a day spent sightseeing in San Francisco, he stood marveling, as so many had marveled before him, at the beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge. It hung there against the sky, reflected in the water of the bay, looking like the bridge into Valhalla or Vorta Vor, the Romulans’ warrior paradise. The bridge to forever …
The boy’s eyes traced every line, enjoying this triumph of human engineering that had stood for so long. Shafts of light from the glorious purple-clouded sunset touched the amber towers, turning the suspension cables to threads spun from red gold.
He drank in the beauty of it, feeling the wind blow through his hair as he stood on Land’s End, with Golden Gate Park behind him and to his left, only a couple of kilometers’ pleasant walk from here.
Will had enjoyed the park very much. It had been great to walk on grass and see trees and birds—natural things instead of classrooms and corridors and starship mockups. Adjusting to the Academy hadn’t been easy. Will came from Alaska and was far more accustomed to a rugged outdoor life—camping, hiking, and fishing—than he was to city living.
Not to mention that he’d written to his father twice, only to get a message today from one of his father’s friends that Carl Riker had been called away to advise Starfleet Command on a tricky situation somewhere in the Procyon system.
Of course, telling his only son where he was going would be too damned much trouble for him, Will thought bitterly. I’m getting tired of always being at the tail end of his lists of priorities. He probably wouldn’t even care that I got the highest grade in the—
“Didn’t anyone ever warn you that if you scowl like that your face might just freeze that way, Cadet?” inquired a light, amused soprano voice.
Will started violently and swung around to see a woman standing beside him. She regarded him with wide, laughing eyes that were the color of the water in the bay below, a luminous greenish gray. Her face was exotic, arresting, with high cheekbones, a generous mouth with strong white teeth, and a pointed chin. Fashionably styled dark hair blew around her face like a fluffy cloud, and even though her features were not classically regular, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She wore a red dress of some silky material, and the wind blew it around her, molding it against her, outlining the shapes of her small, high breasts, the slight curve of her hips, the narrowness of her waist. Her legs were long and beautifully shaped. “I’m sorry if I startled you,” she said, smiling, though he knew she’d done it deliberately. “But you looked just like a thundercloud. You’re too young to be that mad.”
She was making fun of him, he knew it … but somehow he didn’t mind. Will looked down at her, realizing that, even though she was tall for a woman, he towered over her. He’d reached his adult height the year before; his weight was only now beginning to catch up to his length. He was still thin, but, because of faithful workouts in the Academy gym, he was beginning to fill out in his shoulders and chest. But most of the time he still felt skinny and gawky and homely. It was always a shock to realize that he was taller now than almost everyone he met.
He smiled back at the woman tentatively and managed to say, “My mom used to kid me about scowling and my face freezing, but that was a long time ago. I guess I forgot.” His grin broadened. “Sorry if I scared you.”
“Oh, you did,” she said, straight-faced. “But I forgive you.” She extended her hand, the mocking smile softening, growing more genuine. “Hi, I’m Paula Andropova.”
“Will Riker,” he said, taking her hand in his, feeling the warmth of her long, strong fingers. With a dim memory of an old book he’d read called