Three - Michael Jan Friedman [47]
Heading straight for Greyhorse’s office, she entered without knocking. The doctor was sitting at his desk, consulting his monitor in some medical matter.
He looked up at her, then automatically peered past her at the rest of sickbay—as if to see if anyone would notice a brief liaison. But that wasn’t why the navigator had come to see him.
“I need to talk,” Gerda said.
Greyhorse looked at her, clearly a little surprised. But then, she had never said anything like that to him before. In fact, she had seldom said it to anybody, Idun included.
“About what?” he asked.
She closed the door to his office, but declined to sit in the room’s only other chair. “About Gerda Idun.”
The doctor’s surprise turned to concern. “Is there something wrong with her?”
Gerda shook her head. “She’s fine. In perfect health. In fact, she just acquitted herself rather well against Idun in the gym.”
Greyhorse looked confused. “Then what’s the problem?”
[139] She looked at him. “Gerda Idun may have acquitted herself well, but I did not.”
Seeing that the doctor’s confusion had only increased, she started at the beginning. She told him about the look she had seen in Gerda Idun’s eyes, her sister’s seemingly blind acceptance of the woman, and the childish way she had acted in the gym.
“I embarrassed myself,” Gerda said. “I made myself an object of scorn. And I still haven’t recovered sufficiently to look Idun in the face.”
Greyhorse nodded. “I see. But why did you act that way in the gym? It’s almost as if you were ...”
“Yes?” she said. “Go ahead and say it. As if I were jealous of Gerda Idun.”
“But,” said the doctor, “that’s ... ridiculous.” He turned away from her to resume his work. “I mean ... how could you possibly be jealous of her?”
Gerda frowned as she recalled the incident in the gymnasium. “You haven’t seen the way Idun acts when she’s around. It’s as if Gerda Idun is her sister, her confidante, and I’m ... I don’t know what. Something else.”
The doctor looked back over his shoulder at her, a look of distraction on his face. As it cleared, he said, “Right. I see how that could be a problem.”
For the first time, Gerda noticed that his cheeks were redder than usual. But why would he be blushing? Unless ...
The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Gerda Idun looked just like her. But unlike Gerda or her sister, Gerda Idun had been raised by humans.
That made her more like Greyhorse as well. And [140] men—human or Klingon—were timid creatures at heart. Few of them liked to venture far afield when it came to matters of the heart.
Gerda lifted her chin. “It seems there is a bigger problem than the one I came here to tell you about.”
Greyhorse’s brow gathered in a knot above the bridge of his nose. “What do you mean?”
She made a sound of disgust. “You prefer her to me, don’t you? Because she’s human. Because she won’t leave marks on your flesh when she makes love to you.”
The doctor’s Adam’s apple climbed his throat and descended again. “You’re mistaken,” he insisted. “I haven’t got the slightest interest in her.”
“Liar,” Gerda spat. “I can see it in your eyes. She would be the best of both worlds for you, wouldn’t she?”
“Gerda,” Greyhorse protested, “I—”
She didn’t let him finish. With a last seething glance in his direction, she made her way out of his office and then out of sickbay—her stomach churning at the thought that she had lost not only her sister’s affection, but her lover’s as well.
Chapter Eleven
THE FIRST THING Nikolas noticed when he walked into the Stargazer’s lounge was Gerda Idun—or, more accurately, the back of Gerda Idun’s head.
The second thing he noticed was Joseph, who was sitting across a low table from Gerda Idun. His expression indicated that their conversation wasn’t an especially jovial one.
Someone else might have taken that as a sign that his company might not be appreciated. But then, Nikolas had been barging in where he wasn’t wanted all his life. He saw no reason to diverge from that policy now.
As