The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [61]
“I’m afraid that the captain and Counselor Troi are busy with other matters,” Barclay said vaguely. For security reasons, he could not divulge that the Enterprise and the rest of its crew were currently engaged in a top secret test of the new soliton wave technology. Barclay fervently wished that he was taking part in that test as well, and not just because the soliton wave experiment, if successful, promised to revolutionize interstellar travel. “They send their apologies.”
” ‘Other matters’?” His explanation failed to mollify the miffed ambassador. “I can’t possibly imagine what could be more important than the vital talks to be conducted aboard this very ship, but I suppose I’ll just have to make do with whatever feeble assistance Jean-Luc deigns to bestow upon me.” She eyed Barclay with obvious disdain. “And where are your manners, Lieutenant? Don’t you know that you should doff your hat in the presence of a lady? Let alone a daughter of the Fifth House.”
Barclay’s heart sank. “With your p-permission, I’d rather keep it on.” Despite the yacht’s cozy environmental settings, which were actually several degrees warmer than the Enterprise’s, a chill ran down his spine. “Humanoids lose thirty-five percent of their body hea—”
Lwaxana couldn’t care less. “Take off that ridiculous cap at once.”
Barclay hesitated, frozen like plasma caught in a stasis beam. His eyes darted from side to side as he desperately looked for some way out of this situation. But there was no escape. He was trapped.
This is just what I was afraid of!
He fought to keep his hands from shaking as he reached up and removed the cap from his scalp. His mousy brown hair, mussed from its recent captivity, was in complete disarray. He nervously attempted to slick it back into place, while trying unsuccessfully to avoid the ambassador’s eyes. Her large black orbs, so very like Counselor Troi’s, seemed to bore into his skull. He tried, and failed, to clear his mind of any incriminating thoughts. How do you not think about something?
“Telepaths?” she blurted, immediately picking up on the source of his discomfort. “You’re afraid of telepaths?”
Barclay felt exposed, in more ways than one. Now everyone would know how much mind readers spooked him. Especially powerful and indiscreet ones like Lwaxana Troi. She can see right through me. Mortified, he fingered the lining of his cap. Specialized circuitry, which Barclay had cobbled together from pieces of a discarded neurocortical monitor, generated the psychic equivalent of white noise. In theory, the jury-rigged cap could protect his thoughts from prying minds. But only if he was actually wearing it.
“A little,” he admitted.
Lwaxana acted as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing—and sensing. “Telephobia? In this day and age?” Her hand went to her chest as she struck a horrified pose. “I am shocked, shocked to encounter such a barbaric attitude—and in the mind of a Starfleet officer, no less.” She peered down her nose at Barclay. “And I can’t say I approve of your fantasies concerning my daughter, either. ‘The Goddess of Empathy,’ indeed!”
Barclay’s face turned a bright shade of red. Having his atoms ripped apart by a transporter beam suddenly seemed preferable to having Deanna’s mother rifle through his brain. Why couldn’t the ambassador just be an empath like her daughter? Dealing with Counselor Troi was one thing; she could sense only his emotions, not what he was thinking. Besides, he knew that Deanna would never pass judgment on him. Her mother was another story altogether.
“Well, maybe there would be less telephobia in the galaxy,” Ro challenged Lwaxana, speaking up for the first time, “if certain telepaths had more respect for other people’s privacy.”
Lwaxana’s jaw dropped. Taken aback by Ro’s blunt rejoinder, the ambassador was rendered momentarily speechless. Barclay was caught by surprise as well. He hadn’t expected Ro