Unification - Jeri Taylor [46]
“Definitely not that. I saw enough of gardens in Indiana to last me all my life.” She looked up at him and smiled, and he could see flecks of another color— gold?—in her eyes. “You have to realize, I knew from the time I was a little girl that I wanted Starfleet. I knew what it would take to get accepted to the Academy, and I vowed I wouldn’t let anything get in my way.”
Riker nodded. He knew what it took; he had put in years of preparation himself. But somehow there had been time for sports, for playing the piano, for reading. Even, in the crisp wilds of the snowy Alaskan forests, time just to walk and dream. Maybe that had been his mother’s legacy: his father certainly never condoned giving time to daydreams.
“My parents were incredibly supportive,” she went on. “The whole family was. My brother and my sister took over my chores so I’d have more time to study. Getting me into Starfleet was a family goal. They all sacrificed a lot to give me that chance, and I always felt I owed it to them to succeed.”
She stirred vaguely at her salad. Riker found himself feeling sorry for her, this serious young woman with the overdeveloped sense of responsibility. He wondered if her family would enjoy knowing that she had given up everything in life that might be pleasurable except her work. Somehow he doubted it. They might be proud of her and gratified that the joint efforts had paid off; but surely they would want her to enjoy herself occasionally.
“Ensign, as your commanding officer, I have an order for you.” Her head jerked up at this and she fixed him with a clear gaze.
“Yes, sir,” she replied crisply. He almost smiled at her seriousness.
“I want you to find a hobby.” She looked at him, perplexed. “Doesn’t matter what, as long as you spend at least ten hours a week at it. And it cannot be work-related.”
They were in the midst of discussing options, with Riker suggesting that he could teach her to play stand-up bass—she’d never heard of a stand-up bass —when Dokachin sent a message from the surface informing them that he had found the collaborator.
The culprit was a female Zakdorn named Gelfina. She seemed pathetic to Riker, with her wrinkled, squat body and her whiny voice. She sat wringing her hands nervously, and her eyes were already wet. He felt that anything but a gentle approach would be brutal.
Gretchen felt no such compunctions.
To Riker’s amazement, she was an intimidating interrogator, hammering away relentlessly, unmoved by the Zakdorn woman’s tears and unswayed by her excuses.
“We’ve identified your computer-usage pattern,” snapped Gretchen. “We’ve matched your personal and duty logs with the files documenting the transports to the Tripoli. If you believe we’ve made a mistake you’ll be given the chance to make a typical entry so we can see if the same pattern occurs.”
Gelfina shook her head miserably. She knew that usage patterns for a race as precise and meticulous as the Zakdorn were as identifiable as fingerprints are on humans. No two people used a computer in the same way, and the technology that could recognize the user through his or her pattern was well established.
“Then you acknowledge that we have correctly distinguished your signature?” Gretchen’s voice was adamant, and Gelfina nodded, snuffling a bit as she did.
“Then you admit that you forged the locking coordinates of the Tripoli into the depot’s computer system?” The woman hesitated, looked around her, calculat-ing her chances of getting out of this. Riker saw her give that up when she turned back to Gretchen, and looked into those green eyes, blazing now with intent. Gelfina nodded.
“Why?” asked Riker. He was always interested in what motivated people to act in ways that were ultimately against their own best interest. But this question only caused Gelfina to dissolve in tears— huge, wracking sobs that caused her pudgy shoulders to heave and shudder.
Gretchen shot him a look. She clearly felt the question and its resultant histrionics had gotten in the way of her clean drive toward the truth. And she was right. But Riker was still