Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [68]
Zefan stared, caught in surprise at the change in tactics. Then he moved his hand in Fandrean agreement. With a hint of admiration, he said, “That’s good.” He smiled, teeth covered. “That’s very good.”
As one, they turned to Akarr, waiting for his reaction.
“Akarr?” Riker prompted. “You have to tell them something —”
Akarr found himself caught up in fear of the implications of the useless tranks, envy at the way even the Fan dreans responded to Riker—he hadn’t failed to see how even some of his own men admired the human, oh no!-and pure turmoil over how to proceed. His hair stood on end, his lips drew back from his teeth And Riker did the one thing Akarr never expected. The one thing that got his attention and got it fast. He dropped to one knee, lower than Akarr, and twisted his head to the side and back, exposing his throat. Akarr’s flaring temper deserted him, a response to the submission display all but hardwired into the Tsoran system. Confused, he could only stare—not a daleura stare, just a blank look.
“We’ll handle it your way,” Riker said, his voice strained by the angle of his neck, “as long as your men are protected.” Slowly, while Akarr recovered his composure, Riker got to his feet.
“Your idea is acceptable,” Akarr said, finally recovering his composure, and finding himself acutely aware that Riker had not submitted out of fear… not out of lack of courage. Out of wisdom. “Although they are probably to the shuttle by now.”
“There’s something to that,” Riker said. “Take your trophy before it wakes up, and let’s join them.” But Akarr turned his back on the arborata. He would not take trophy from that which had brought him awareness of betrayal.
“I don’t like the looks of this.” La Forge frowned at the Fandrean version of a padd, on which was displayed the most recent series of yet-unexplained Legacy shield
surges. “I’ve got confidence in the modified shields the Collins is carrying, but I sure didn’t want to put them to this sort of test.”
Yenan reclaimed the display and stared mournfully at it. “Since you’re working on the communications problem, I’ve released my best engineers to apply themselves to the shield surges. I regret to say they have not yet suggested any solutions.”
La Forge nodded at the displayed chart. “They’ve got plenty of data to work with after that. When did you say it happened?”
“Early this morning.”
“And no way to know if it affected the Collins, because I don’t have my part solved yet, either,” La Forge said. He raised his voice slightly, glad for his connection to the Enterprise, and for Data’s unfailing pattern of checkins. “You getting this, Data?”
“Everything but the padd display, although I can infer its contents.” Data paused, then added in a practiced tone, “It is just peachy.”
“How’s that?”
“Another twentieth-century colloquialism. I am drawing from a wide range of years. The point is not to see how familiar people are with any single time period, but to get a general sense of how much of the language lingers from generation to generation—despite the usual loss of the origin of each phrase.”
“Ah,” La Forge said, for the moment distracted—and willing to be distracted—by Data’s latest foray into the nature of being human. “Okay, but have you considered—”
“For instance, do you know the origin of the word okay?” La Forge hesitated. “Well, no,” he said finally. “I never thought about it.”
“In 1839, it became common to facetiously spell ‘all correct’ as o-l-l k-o-r-r-e-c-t. Later this was shortened to the initials O.K.” which eventually became the word okay.”
“Which brings me back to my original point. I was going to say—okay, but have you considered that your previous, um … explorations into language have exposed the crew to an unusual amount of this sort of variety in phrase and language usage?”
There was momentary silence from the other end-Data, in his quarters, most likely sitting at his complex computer science station with Spot in his lap and a puzzled