Unification - Jeri Taylor [3]
What he needed was an adventure. His own adventure. They were even now racing through space to-ward Vulcan, hoping to discover the events leading up to Ambassador Spock’s strange disappearance. But that was the captain’s mission, and though he would do everything he could to support and abet that mission, it was not his.
Riker stopped outside Holodeck Two, his mind still tumbling with these unwelcome thoughts. The holodeck had been his destination, for he often came here when he was feeling restless, and usually found some measure of satisfaction in an hour or two of music. Music had the power to quiet his mind, to restore his serenity, and to rejuvenate his enthusiasm. It made the difference in his life.
What program would he choose tonight? He’d often lost himself for hours playing trombone with a simu-lated New Orleans jazz group. But ever since the appearance of the remarkable female holofigure Min-uet in that program—and her reemergence in the elaborate scheme of the alien child Barash—the puri-ty of that music had been compromised.
“Earth,” Riker found himself saying after he had keyed instructions to the holodeck computer. “Memphis, Tennessee. Year, 1925. A honky-tonk called Stumpy’s.”
“Program complete,” came the dulcet tones of the computer, and the doors to the holodeck slid open.
The noise and the smoke greeted him immediately. The babble of happy voices was welcoming; the smoke not so. It was necessary background for a bar on Earth in the twentieth century, of course, and holodeck technology had long ago found the means to re-create the smoky atmosphere without injecting dangerous particulates into the air. Still, Riker found it incomprehensible that people long ago had systematically occluded their lungs with the foul-smelling stuff and considered it a mark of sophistication.
He walked into Stumpy’s—a tiny place crowded with tables—and saw a room of smiling faces turn toward him. There were welcoming calls and a smat-tering of applause and encouragement as Riker walked toward the piano standing on a makeshift platform.
“Willie… tinkle them things, Willie…” This from a gravel-voiced black man with white tufts of hair over each ear.
“They’d rather hear you, Stumpy.” Riker smiled at him. “I’m not in your league.”
“Naw, naw… you got the licks, man.”
Riker sat down at the piano and let his hands drift over the keys for a minute, getting his bearings, letting himself absorb the atmosphere. This was where the blues was born, and he was now a part of that energy and excitement, the unique creativity that spread throughout the South of the United States in the early part of the twentieth century.
His hands came down on the keys and the patrons of Stumpy’s became quiet. Riker started slowly, gen-tly, letting the music come from inside, not imposing anything but simply letting it happen. His pain, his restlessness became part of the music and were lifted out of him and into the air of the funky little club in Memphis. The people listening absorbed the music, sensed the intensity of the feeling within it, let it wash through them and reflected it back until everything was one huge, shared experience, music and hurt, music and longing, music and aspiration turning and twisting with one another— “Captain to Commander Riker.”
Riker opened his eyes as the clipped tones intruded into the holodeck. It was always the rudest of awaken-ings, the invasion of the outside into the fantasy experience, but it was the price one paid for serving on the Enterprise.
“Freeze program,” he instructed the computer, and the patrons of Stumpy’s became instantly stilled. He touched his communicator. “Riker here, sir.” “Could you join me in the conference lounge?” “Right away, sir.” Riker rose from the piano and cast one last glance around the honky-tonk. So much for the restorative powers of nmsic. He would sum-mon the discipline to function as he must, providing his best to his captain.