Unification - Jeri Taylor [17]
“I won’t tell a soul about your eyes, sir,” Riker said with mock seriousness.
“Anything from Gowron?” asked Picard. The crew had had quite enough fun at his expense. He was becoming eager to get this demeaning procedure over with and get on with his business.
“No, sir. But after your tailor is done, would you join me in the cargo bay? La Forge has made some progress on those metal fragments.”
But apparently Doctor Crusher wasn’t ready to release her hold on him. “These two still have to report to Mister Mot to get their hairpieces designed,” she cautioned. Picard groaned inwardly. The blue-skinned barber would talk his ear off, protracting the process from half an hour to twice that.
Well, he’d have to control the situation. He’d give Mot a half-hour and no more. “Thirty minutes, Number One,” he said firmly. Riker nodded and exited.
“Hold still,” said Beverly. “I’ll never get these measurements right.”
The way Mot saw it, a lot of people in Starfleet did a lot of things they just didn’t think through too clearly. Take the time they’d delivered Ambassador T’Pel to the Romulans. If they’d asked Mot about that one, he would have told them never to rendezvous with Admiral Mendak. You just had to know that was a questionable move, and sure enough it resulted in handing over a spy with twenty years of classified Starfleet information to reveal to the enemy.
Maybe it was because he had more time to think things out than the average Starfleet officer. His job as ship’s barber gave him time to ponder. That’s what some of these high-ranking people didn’t seem to do. Ponder. Look at things from all sides, turn a situation upside down and backwards and inside out and then back straight on again. Pondering was a unique ability, and one that Mot prided himself on having developed to a fine turn.
That’s why it didn’t make a lot of sense to him that he wasn’t consulted more frequently. He had many times correctly predicted the outcome of one situation or another—usually while the people on the bridge were busy running into themselves or whatever it was they did up there. He was sure he could save everyone a lot of time and trouble if they’d let him get to the heart of the matter and tell them what to do.
Of course, he frequently got the chance to make his views known anyway. The captain came in regularly for a trim, as did commanders Riker and La Forge. You can bet that he didn’t miss the opportunity to point out a few of their wrong choices. And they seemed to appreciate it. Eventually, he was sure, they would realize what a prize they had in him and would insist that he not hide his light in the barbershop but join them in important strategy sessions. It was just a matter of time.
Today, he had some very important matters to discuss with the captain. Picard and Commander Data were coming in to get fitted for Romulan hair forms, and Mot intended to show the captain how knowledgeable he was about this current mission. He had no doubt the captain would be amazed.
“All, Captain! And Commander Data!” he greeted them as they entered his establishment.
“Mr. Mot, how are you?” asked the captain in his gracious manner. He was a gentleman, no doubt about it.
“Fine, fine,” replied Mot. “You gentlemen have a seat and I’ll start right in.”
“That would be good, Mr. Mot. We’re on a rather tight schedule. I have to meet Commander Riker in just half an hour.”
“We’ll have you out of here in no time,” breezed Mot, quickly measuring the captain’s skull with an optical scanner. “Let’s see… I think I’ve got the basic hair form right here, we’ll just see how it fits.”
He drew from his supplies a brown hairpiece, which would eventually attach to the scalp with an epider-mal adhesive. He placed it in position on the captain’s head and inspected it. It was the correct fit, but the hair would have to be trimmed into a Romulan cut; now it was of one length and fell over Picard’s eyes, rather like a sheepdog in winter.
“Well, Captain, sounds like you’re off on