The Red King - Michael A. Martin [59]
Riker tried to make his tone of voice as soothing as possible. “Relax, Mr. Frane. Remember, you’re among friends.”
Frane reached forward and moved one of his rooks. “Checkmate. Thank you for the game.” He stood. “Please excuse me, Captain. I wish to be with Nozomi and the others, to meditate.” And with that, he headed for the exit. Riker watched the Neyel’s retreating back long enough to see Lieutenant Hutchinson from security discreetly following.
Riker continued sitting, and stared dolefully at the board and its scattered game pieces as though he were surveying an ancient killing field.
“How’d it go?” said a gentle voice from across the table.
Riker looked up and saw that his wife had somehow taken Frane’s place without his having noticed.
“I think this is the last time I’ll try working your side of the street, Counselor.”
“That bad?” she asked, extracting his right hand from the wreckage of battle and holding it between both of her own.
“Let’s just say he’s got ‘daddy abandonment issues’ that make mine pale by comparison.”
Deanna, with whom he had been sharing every fact he’d been able to tease out of Frane to date, fixed him with a look of mock surprise. “No. Do you suppose he’s auditioning you as a replacement for his own late, emotionally distant father?”
“Very funny, Counselor. You really think I’m ‘emotionally distant’?”
“Not at all,” she said, squeezing his hand. “But the relationship Frane had with his father strikes me as very similar to the one you had with yours. Maybe he’s picked up on that, and therefore sees you as a kindred spirit.”
Riker shrugged. “There’s a lot more going on with him than father-figure issues, though. He’s also carrying around at least a couple of centuries worth of collective racial guilt on his shoulders.”
“That much was fairly clear to me from the beginning,” she said, nodding. “My impression is that ‘slavemaster guilt’ attitudes such as Frane’s are fairly common among Neyel of his generation. His reverence for the native religious tradition of the Sleeper may even be part of a growing Neyel countercultural movement. And another thing about Frane is even clearer to me now as well.”
“What’s that?”
“I already knew that he doesn’t want to talk to me because he perceives me as untrustworthy because of my empathic talents. But what I didn’t realize until now is just how much he genuinely seems to like you. I think he trusts you on some very fundamental level. Or at least he wants to, if he could only let himself do it.”
Riker chuckled. “He could have fooled me.”
“You’re just hearing his own self-hatred and fear talking. As well as his deep contempt for his people’s past excesses.”
“Why do you think he trusts me?”
“I’ve overheard bits of some of your conversations about your relationships with your respective fathers, and I’ve sensed that you’re right about his issues in that regard. You’ve definitely got that in common.”
“Wonderful.”
“It might not be much, Will, but at least it’s something. Besides, he knows that humans and Neyel are related, and I think he’s drawn to you because of that as well.”
“So what should I do?”
“Keep after him, but go gently.”
He chuckled quietly. “Isn’t ‘gently’ more your department than mine?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Will. Remember, Frane isn’t as apprehensive of you as he is of me and my staff. That makes you the best chance he has of successfully rejoining humanity. And maybe the best hope his entire people have of successfully finishing what Ambassador Burgess started eighty years ago when she began trying to teach the Neyel how to live without war and exploitation.”
“To think that humanity’s relationship with the Neyel might all come down to whether or not I start giving Frane trombone lessons…” he said, trailing off.
“That might not be a bad idea,” she said, nodding.
Riker thought that Deanna’s assessment of his importance might be more than a little grandiose. Then he considered the dozen-plus Neyel soldiers who were even now sitting in uncommunicative silence in their guest quarters aboard Titan. So far none of them