FORTUNE'S LIGHT

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Riker looked at her. “How so?” he asked, though he had an inkling of what the answer might be. After all, the evidence had been piling up.

  “He began smuggling,” said Norayan.

  There—the final nail in the coffin.

  “You see, Will, he started to change after you left—perhaps even before you left, though neither of us saw it. We Imprimans . . . we have a great love of wealth. By the standards of some races, I know, it would be called an obsession. But we have learned to live with it, to place limitations on it, so that our basic social fabric remains intact.

  “Teller was exposed to our culture all at once. It was too much for him. He was surrounded constantly by riches and by individuals whose daily pleasure was to acquire more wealth. He finally became more Impriman than any of us, and he got into the game in the only way he could.”

  “By taking advantage of his position as trade liaison—to spirit out historical artifacts to collectors all over the sector. On Federation ships, no doubt.”

  And who was he holding accountable for that? He could hear Picard’s words as clearly as if he were still sitting in his ready room: “You feel guilty for having allowed your close friend to go astray. You feel as though you should have done something to prevent it.”

  Riker had seen Teller’s pronounced affinity for things Impriman, but he hadn’t seen where it might lead. Should he have? Could he have stopped his friend from destroying himself and his career?

  Or was the captain right? I am not my brother’s keeper. “You sound bitter,” said Norayan.

  He shrugged. “Maybe I am. It seems to me that I could have prevented this. I don’t know . . . somehow.”

  “I was here,” she reminded him. “And I couldn’t stop it. By the time I found out, it was too late for me to change him. Teller was in too deep. The day came when I realized I could no longer trust him. He still loved me, but he had found a greater love.”

  “I understand,” said Riker. She had been right to call this a confession; he offered her whatever absolution he could. “The risk had become too great.”

  “And the stakes too high. It was no longer just a question of fidelity to Criathis or to the Federation. Now there were crimes against the Impriman world government, crimes I knew about and, by rights, should have reported to the authorities. Association with Teller’s activities could have brought sanctions against my madraga—crippling sanctions—from the other madraggi. So . . . I ended our affair. Just like that, I’m afraid.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “He was stunned,” said Norayan. “He claimed he had done it all for me, that he only wanted to become my peer in wealth and power, to put us on an equal footing. But I knew better. He said that if I’d leave things as they were, he’d stop smuggling then and there, but it was plain that he wouldn’t. That he couldn’t. I told him to leave this world, to remove himself from temptation, to find another post somewhere else. Or to rejoin Starfleet, as you had done.

  “He promised me that he would do this. It gave him hope, he said, that perhaps he could return to Imprima someday, reformed, and on the morning my tenure as administrator was over, claim me for his bride.” She drew a long breath, exhaled it softly. There was only the slightest hint of a ragged edge to it, but Riker noticed. “I couldn’t destroy his hopes entirely. I said that was a possibility.”

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “A few months ago, just before I was named to the council of Criathis. But that wasn’t the last time I saw him. About a week after my ascension, he came to see me at my father’s estate here in Besidia—openly, as one would visit a friend. But at his first opportunity Teller took me aside and told me he couldn’t abide by his decision. He wanted things to be the way they were before. I stood firm, for his sake and mine, and for the sake of the Federation and Criathis as well. When he left, he was terribly disappointed.

  “I didn’t know what to do, Will. I didn’t know what Teller would do in his desperation. Every day that passed was an agony of uncertainty, but I could not turn him in, not while there was a chance he would eventually come to his senses.

  “Then he disappeared—and Fortune’s Light along with him.” She regarded Riker. “You know the rest.”

  “Do you believe that Teller took the seal?” he asked Norayan.

  She frowned. “Yes, I do. He had easy access to it. After all, he was trusted by everyone in Criathis, not only because he was a delegate of an honorable entity like the Federation but also because of his long-standing friendship with me.”

  Riker grunted. “His big haul?” He’d said it out loud, but the question was really directed to himself.

  Thinking a response was required, Norayan nodded.

  “But once he had it,” he asked, “what could he have planned to do with it? During the carnival there would be no opportunity for agents to contact prospective buyers, not with the high-tech ban limiting offworld communications. And afterward, with the merger destroyed and the disappearance of Fortune’s Light made public, no sane outside dealer would touch it. There would be too much scrutiny—from the authorities as well as from Criathis’s retainers—to make even the grandest commission seem tempting.”

  “You’re right,” said Norayan. “That’s why I believe Teller chose to find a buyer on his own. Not among offworld collectors but among the madraggi themselves.”

  “The madraggi?” echoed Riker.

  “Just one, really. Madraga Rhurig.”

  It was starting to make sense. Rhurig, a powerful rival of Criathis, had never taken kindly to the trade agreement with the Federation, possibly because the Federation wasn’t interested in any of the resources Rhurig controlled.

  “By making a shambles of the merger,” Norayan explained, “Rhurig stood to prevent its two most influential political adversaries—Criathis and Terrin—from joining forces. What’s more, after they had arranged safe passage for Teller off Imprima, and after his involvement in the theft became known, Rhurig would have been rid of the Federation as well.”

  “A neat package,” said the human.

  And his friend was even more of a traitor than he’d thought—that is, if Norayan’s speculations jibed with reality.

  “And of course,” she continued, “Teller would reap the additional benefit of seeing me suffer. He would make me regret my rejection of him.”

  That didn’t sound like the Teller Conlon that Riker knew. He said so.

  “Does any of this sound like Teller?” asked Norayan. “I tell you, he has changed.” She looked at Riker. “We must find him.”

  “We’ve been trying,” he told her. “Though it seems we’ve hit a dead end. My partner had one lead, and it didn’t pan out.”

  “I think I know where he might be hiding,” Norayan said. “In the Maze of Zondrolla.”

  “The maze?” Riker asked. “What would he be doing there?”

  “Well . . .” Norayan began. Was that a faint blush in her cheeks? “It was the place where Teller and I used to . . . to meet.”

  “Of course,” said Riker, sparing her the indignity of further explanation. He didn’t have to be bludgeoned with a blaster butt to figure out why they met there.

  “My story,” she said, “was that I liked to go there to contemplate the affairs of my madraga. To seek wisdom from the ancient stones.”

  He nodded. If Teller knew the maze, he might have chosen it as his hiding place, or at least hidden the seal there. “Say no more. We’ll search the maze.”

  She put her hand on his. “But you musn’t tell anyone how you came to look there. Not even Lyneea. If it becomes known that it was I who pointed you to the maze, people will start to ask questions. How did I know Teller would be there? How often did I visit Zondrolla to meditate? And I will be ousted from my office as surely as if I’d been discovered in Teller’s arms.”

  He smiled as reassuringly as he could. “Put your mind at ease,” he told her.

  “Thank you, Will.” She got up, put the vei
l in place, and drew the cowl back over her head. “I will see you again. Sooner rather than later, I hope.”

  He escorted her to the door. “That depends on what I find in the maze, I guess.”

  She looked at him. “Yes. Of course.” Then she departed.

  Riker watched her go. Then he went back inside, shut the door, and sat down on the couch. He stared into the tiny molten caverns created by the burning logs.

  The memories started to come again—one in particular. It ate away at him as the fire ate at the logs.

  Nor did he do anything to distract himself, to stop it. If it hurt to remember, maybe that was just the price he had to pay. . . .

  “Teller?”

  “Um? Oh—Will. About time you showed up.”

  “They wouldn’t let me in until the surgery was over. Can you imagine that?”

  “Hard to figure out these medical types.”

  Teller didn’t look as bad as Riker had expected. Then again, the lighting here in sickbay was designed to make people look a little better than they felt—at least, that had always been his personal theory.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Not bad, considering. I guess the ceiling caved in, huh?”

  “The whole damned power station caved in. If you hadn’t found me by that time, Ito would have been forced to beam you up alone. And I would have been a historical footnote—the only casualty in the Gamma Tobin colony earthquake.”

  Teller grunted. “You could have been famous.”

  “I’m not complaining, though I wish that last tremor hadn’t come when it did. Then I wouldn’t have fallen, and I wouldn’t have lost consciousness—or my communicator.”

  Another grunt. “I would have preferred that, too. What made you climb that catwalk in the first place?”

  Riker smiled sheepishly. “A cat—what else? He must have scampered up there when the quakes started getting bad, and he wasn’t about to come down on his own.” A pause. “It was stupid, I know. But my mother always had a soft spot for cats, and . . . hell. Anyway, we found him later on—reunited him with his owners and all that.”

  “Terrific,” said his friend. “I love happy endings.”

  “Teller . . . I heard you volunteered to go in and get me.”

  “Somebody had to. Why waste real officer material?”

  “Somebody didn’t have to. The captain wanted to conduct a sensor search. He said it was too dangerous for anyone to beam down. The understructure was too delicately balanced.”

  “All the more reason to go. The sensors would never have found you in time.”

  “You know that now, but you didn’t know it then. By rights, you should’ve stayed put.”

  Teller chuckled, his blue eyes dancing. He brushed back some of that unruly reddish blond hair. “Lucky for you I was stupid and irrational, huh?”

  “Yes. Lucky for me.”

  “Say, Will . . . while you’re here, why don’t you make yourself useful? Hand me that glass of water, will you?”

  “Sure. Here.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “I think it’s the other way around.”

  “Uh-oh. I had a feeling this was coming.”

  “You saved my life, not only by finding me but by covering me when the place started coming apart. I can’t just let that slide.”

  “If I’d known you were going to get all teary-eyed on me, I’d have left you there.”

  “Bull.” A hard swallow. ‘“I appreciate what you did, Teller.”

  His friend looked at him. “You’d have done the same thing for me, right?”

  “Sure. But that’s different—you owe me half a month’s salary after the last card game.”

  Teller smiled. “Right.”

  “Not to mention the card game before that.”

  “You’re a real bloodsucker, Riker. No wonder they made you a lieutenant.”

  “Um . . .”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look now, but I’m not the only lieutenant around here.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  ‘“I wish I were. But the captain insisted. Something about bravery and a job well done. I forget the exact words.”

  “You sure you’re not kidding?”

  “I never kid a kidder, Teller. It’s bad form.”

  “Boy, Will.” Teller whistled softly. “Can you imagine if you were somebody important? They’d probably have made me an admiral.”

  * * *

  Riker sighed. Teller had saved his bacon without even a thought for his own life. If he hadn’t taken the brunt of that ceiling collapse, at least until their transporter chief could beam them up . . .

  He had to return the favor. No matter what his friend had done, Will had to get him out of this mess. Put him on his feet again.

  Certainly he owed him that much.

  Suddenly the door opened. Before Riker had a chance to react, he saw Lyneea slip inside and close the door behind her.

  “So?” she asked.

  “So what?” he responded.

  “What was so important that only you could hear it?”

  “I think I’ve got a lead.”

  “Oh?” She took a seat on the couch. “Tell me more.”

  “There we were,” said Geordi. “One mangled shuttle and three apple green rookies, lucky to be alive. The damned photon storm made communications impossible, so our ship had no idea which Beta Bilatus satellite we were on—and Beta Bilatus happened to have twenty-two legitimate planets, not to mention a whole mess of oversize moons. Our food dispenser was squashed in the crash, we had one working phaser among us, and the local fauna had decided we looked tastier than lemon meringue pie.”

  “Sounds rough,” observed Guinan, seeming to absorb the story with every pore in her body. Nobody listened the way she did. “What did you do?”

  “Glad you asked,” said the chief engineer, plunking his glass down on the bar. “The first thing I did was calm my buddies down. The two of them were as fidgety as guinea pigs at a python convention. Then I phasered us out a hole underneath the shuttle. The wildlife couldn’t move the twisted hulk to get at us, and it was easy enough to defend a little hole from unwanted intrusions.”

  “What did you do about food?” asked Guinan.

  Geordi shivered a little, remembering. “Sometimes you eat the lemon meringue pie,” he said, “and sometimes the lemon meringue pie eats you.”

  Surprisingly Guinan didn’t seem put off by the idea. She just smiled that knowing smile of hers.

  “Fortunately,” said Geordi, “we weren’t there long enough to get bored with the menu. As it turned out, our planet was the third one on the search agenda. Our phaser was still three-quarters charged when the cavalry arrived.”

  “I see,” said Guinan. She paused. “You know, it’s funny.”

  Geordi looked at her. “What is?”

  “This story of yours. I could swear I’ve heard it somewhere before.” She gave it some thought, then nodded. “I have. On Starbase Eighty, while I was waiting to be picked up by the Enterprise.” Her brow wrinkled ever so slightly. “If I’m not mistaken, it was told to me by someone named Stutzman. Jake Stutzman, I think it was.”

  Geordi felt an unwelcome heat creep into his face. “Oh?”

  “Yes. You don’t know him, by any chance, do you?” Geordi was starting to feel like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Actually,” he said, “he was one of the other two rookies.”

  Guinan made a sound of mild surprise. “Small galaxy,” she remarked. “But you know, the really funny thing is that this Stutzman fellow told the story differently, as if it was he who’d had to calm down his companions.” She shook her head. “And now that I think about it, he also took credit for making that hole.” A sigh. “Can you imagine? I guess some people just let their egos run away with them.”

  “Right,” said Geordi. The jig was up. He could see it in her eyes. “Uh, Guinan . . . ?”

  “Mm?”

 
“Maybe I mixed up a few of the facts.”

  She regarded him. “You? Of all people?”

  “You’re laughing at me,” he said.

  “I never laugh at people,” she corrected. “Only with them.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I suppose I deserve it.” He leaned closer. “But do me a favor, will you? Don’t let it out that I . . . um, embellished the story a little.” With a tilt of his head, he indicated the young medical officer to whom he’d related his tale the night before. “I kind of impressed her, I think—and with the shape my love life’s in, I need all the help I can get.”

  Guinan clucked softly. “Geordi, Geordi, Geordi. All you need to do is be yourself. When will you learn that?”

  He grunted. “When myself starts seeing some romance. So—will you keep this in confidence? Or do I have to admit to that nice young lady that I’m not the hero of Beta Bilatus Seven?”

  “I’m your bartender,” said Guinan. “Whatever you tell me is strictly confidential.” However, something about her expression told him she wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

  Guilt, he mused. Just what I needed. “Fine,” he said flatly. “I’ll tell her the truth. But you’re the one who’s going to have to listen to me after I ask her out and she laughs in my face.”

  “If it comes to that,” said Guinan, “I’ll be here.”

  Geordi was so wrapped up in his own life’s drama that he hardly noticed Wesley’s approach. It was almost as if the boy had materialized at his side—a stunt he wouldn’t quite put past Transporter Chief O’Brien.

  “Hi,” said Wesley, acknowledging both Geordi and Guinan. He claimed an empty stool, but not with his usual alacrity.

  “Hi, yourself,” said the Mistress of Libations—a sobriquet Will Riker had bestowed on her in one of his more jocular moments.

  “Looks like you’ve got something on your mind,” remarked Geordi.

  “Actually,” said Wesley, “I do. I’ve been researching Imprima. You know—to see if I can figure out what Commander Riker’s up to.”

  “And?” prompted Geordi. He’d been a little curious about the first officer’s mission himself, though he’d known better than to press Captain Picard for details.