Being Human

by Peter David

  “Just fine?”

  “Better than fine. Great. Fantastic.”

  “Spectacular?”

  He gave it a moment’s thought. “I think that’d be pushing it.”

  With a gasp of mock annoyance, she slapped his belly with sufficient force that it got him to sit up. In retaliation, he yanked at the covers. She tried to pull back, but he was too strong for her, and a moment later he was completely cocooned in the sheets, leaving Shelby lying completely uncovered on the bed.

  “Okay, be that way,” she said archly. She rolled off the bed, padded across the room, and threw on Calhoun’s bathrobe. She was positively swimming in it even as she belted it and folded her arms—hands invisible inside the sleeves.

  “Seriously, Eppy,” he said. “It’s this assignment. You going to Danter . . .”

  She strode toward him and sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the sheet up a bit so that his feet were exposed, and started massaging his soles. This prompted Calhoun to let out a contented noise, one that Shelby was reasonably certain she was the only living being who’d ever heard. “I guess the honeymoon’s officially over, Mac, if all we can muster for postcoital pillow talk is a discussion of various assignments.”

  “This is not . . . mmmm . . .” Calhoun made a contented noise, and then with determination pulled his feet away from her ministrations. Curling them underneath the blanket, he propped his head up on one hand and looked at her, clearly deciding that he had to keep matters all-business. “This is not just one of our ‘various assignments,’ Eppy. I know the Danteri. You don’t.”

  “You know them, Mac, because they enslaved your homeworld of Xenex and you fought to drive them off. And you did so. But that was a long time ago.”

  “Meaning I should simply let it go, is that it?” Now he was sitting upright in the bed, and any hint of the lover he’d been merely moments before was gone. “I would let it go, Eppy, if I could comprehend Starfleet’s thinking on this. But let’s review.” He ticked off each item on his fingers. “The Danteri inform Starfleet that they want a starship to be dispatched to Danter. They state that they want that ship to carry Si Cwan, since he’s the one to whom they actually want to talk. They don’t give a reason for either of these requests. Instead they state that it’s a matter of ‘utmost urgency’ without giving any more detail than that. The entire thing smells of a trap . . . and Starfleet decides to send your ship instead of mine.”

  “Is your male ego wounded by the choice, Mac?” she asked, only half-teasingly.

  “It has nothing to do with male ego, Eppy. It has to do with who’s the more qualified.”

  “That may very well be the problem, Mac. It may be that Starfleet feels a fresh perspective on the situation is in order. There’s too much bad blood between you and the Danteri. They might well feel that you wouldn’t be able to handle the situation in a dispassionate manner.” She leaned forward, bringing her face that much closer to his. “Admit it: Isn’t there just a chance that they’re right?”

  He gazed at her for a long moment.

  “No,” he said.

  She growled and flopped facedown on the bed. Her face smothered in the sheet, she said, “You are the single most aggravating man I have ever met.”

  “Of course. That’s why you married me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I married you for the sex.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “But we only see each other from time to time. We don’t get to have sex all that often.”

  “Right. I married you for the infrequency of it, so I wouldn’t have to endure it all that often.”

  Calhoun let out a moan and threw himself back onto the bed. “Command has made you bitter and cynical, do you know that, Captain?”

  “I learned from the master.” She curled herself around so that she was next to him again, and she kissed him on the cheek. Then, her teasing voice aside, she said, “Mac, I know you don’t approve. But we don’t take those orders that we only approve of. The fact is that our two ships have their own respective areas of the sector for which we’re responsible, and Danter is in my section.”

  “It’s borderline. It could be either, depending upon orbit.”

  “Well, right now, it’s mine. What, are you saying that you think I can’t handle it?”

  “Of course not, Eppy,” he said wistfully. “I know you can handle it. There’s nothing out there I can handle that you can’t. But you shouldn’t have to handle it. It’s the Danteri. They’re not to be trusted.”

  “And I know what their track record is like, Mac. I know what to expect. And Si Cwan will know as well. Besides, you should be grateful.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, if we hadn’t had to have this unscheduled rendezvous between our ships, in order to transfer Si Cwan from one vessel to the other, then you and I couldn’t have had this little rendezvous as well.”

  “Gee, Eppy, you’re absolutely right. I’ll be sure to send the Danteri a nice fruit basket as a token of appreciation.”

  Suddenly the door chime sounded. Calhoun and Shelby exchanged puzzled looks. “Were you expecting anyone?” she asked.

  “I told Burgoyne we were going to be in conference.”

  “Oh, right,” said Shelby with a snort. “I’m sure that fooled hir completely. Because of course, there was a new directive that conferences should be held in the captain’s private quarters rather than in the conference lounge.”

  “What, you didn’t get that memo? I know I did.” Even as he spoke jokingly, Calhoun was already out of bed. Since Shelby was wearing his bathrobe and seemed disinclined to give it up, Calhoun pulled on his uniform trousers even as he called out, “Who’s there?”

  “Ensign Janos, sir.”

  Once again a look of befuddlement passed between the two captains. “Were you expecting him?” asked Calhoun.

  “Yes, I told him to show up about this time, because I figured I’d be through with you and ready for an escort home.”

  “Planning ahead. Good thinking,” Calhoun said approvingly and—ignoring Shelby as she stuck her tongue out at him—said, “Enter.”

  The door slid open and Janos walked in with the usual rolling gait that the white-furred, anthropoid security officer utilized. He looked from the barefoot and barechested Calhoun to the robed Shelby, who managed to expose her hand from the oversized sleeve and manage a little wave. He looked back to Calhoun. “I’m sorry, sir, I thought you were in conference.”

  “It was an informal conference,” said Calhoun. “What can I do for you?”

  Janos was busy staring at Shelby, who had by that point sat in a chair in a far corner of the room, neatly arranging the bathrobe around her knees. He forced his attention back to the matter at hand. “Yes, uhm . . . right. I was looking for Xyon. Not your late son,” he added quickly when he saw Calhoun’s momentarily puzzled expression. “His namesake.”

  “Oh. Right. Selar and Burgoyne’s offspring. But . . . he’s not here.”

  Janos’s nose wrinkled slightly and he sniffed the air. “Yes. He is.”

  “Janos, I really have to—”

  The door chimed.

  “I don’t believe this,” muttered Shelby.

  “Come in,” Calhoun called.

  The door hissed open and Si Cwan’s large frame filled the doorway. He paused, his eyes adjusting to the light. Since he remained in the doorway, the sliding door remained open. “Yes, Captain, I . . . oh,” he said. “Is . . . this a bad time?”

  “No, not at all,” Shelby chimed in before Calhoun could get a word out. “We were actually planning to have a party. You saved us having to send out invitations.”

  “If you’d wanted to speak to me, Ambassador, you could have just paged me on my com unit, which,” and he closed his eyes in pain, “I ordered the computer to shut down so I wouldn’t be disturbed. All right, Cwan, go ahead, what is it?”

  “Yes, well,” and he cleared his throat loudly, “I had wanted to infor
m you that I was ready to head over to the Trident, and I wanted to ask whether you had arranged for—”

  “For Robin Lefler to go with you? Yes, that’s been attended to,” said Calhoun.

  “Excellent. She’s proven invaluable as my aide, and I appreciate your loaning her to . . . Captain, perhaps this is not a good time.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Ensign Janos is crawling around on your floor.”

  Which happened to be the case. Janos, his nostrils sniffing the ground, was on his hands and knees, looking carefully around the quarters like an oversized bloodhound. Captain Shelby, her feet tucked up under her so they’d be out of Janos’s way, had her eyes closed as if she was imagining herself being somewhere else altogether.

  “Ah” was all Calhoun could think of to say.

  Janos tapped his com badge, his face near the underside of Calhoun’s bed. “Janos to Kebron. Please inform the first officer that I’ve found hir son.”

  That brought Shelby back to full attention, as she sat straight up and stopped thumping her head. “You’ve what? Where?”

  “Si Cwan!” came a female voice from down the hall. “Is the captain in there? I need to talk to him!”

  “Oh, my lord,” said Shelby. Calhoun was just shaking his head incredulously.

  Robin Lefler appeared at the door, said “Captain!,” and immediately spun on her heel, putting her back to the room, covering her face. “God, oh God, I’m so sorry, I’ll come back later . . .”

  “What is it, Lieutenant?” sighed Calhoun.

  “No, really, I think I should come back—”

  “Out with it, Lieutenant. I doubt I’ll be in the mood later.”

  “I doubt I’ll be in the mood ever again,” Shelby muttered, referring to something else entirely.

  Lefler’s hands moved as if she were priming herself to get the words out, and finally she found them. “You’re having my mother take over my station at ops while I’m on the Trident?” she asked finally.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Her mother?” said a puzzled Si Cwan. “Morgan Primus? That seems an odd choice.”

  “And the moment you join Starfleet, Ambassador, and this becomes a democracy, then your opinion will hold some weight.”

  “Can we go back a moment,” inquired Shelby, pointing at Janos, “to where he said that Burgoyne and Selar’s son was in here . . . ? I never quite got an answer to—”

  “Oh, he’s—” Janos began.

  But Lefler cut him off, her attention focused on Calhoun. “Why my mother, Captain?”

  “She took a Starfleet equivalency test, Lieutenant, at her own request. She said she wanted to provide help wherever she could around the ship. She tested off the charts. Plus the Excalibur has some systems that were cobbled in from older vessels. She was assembled when there was still a parts shortage after our last major tussle with the Borg. Her knowledge of some more antiquated aspects of the ship is extremely impressive. Not only that, but she has been working closely with Burgoyne to develop some extremely novel adjustments to the battle bridge which she herself conceived. She’s earned this opportunity, Lieutenant.” By this point Calhoun had gone to his closet and pulled on his uniform shirt. Shelby hadn’t moved from where she was. She seemed glued to the seat. “It was my call to make. If you have trouble living with it, then as luck would have it, you won’t be here to have to worry about it.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Suddenly Dr. Selar was there, pushing past the totally discomfited Lefler. “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “He’s under there,” said Janos, pointing to the bed.

  Shelby’s eyes widened. “You mean you were serious?” She jerked forward to the edge of the seat. “Oh no . . . no, you can’t be seri—”

  “Xyon!” called Selar sharply, her arms folded, tapping her foot in as close to annoyance as a Vulcan would allow to be shown. “Come out here this instant.”

  There was a silence then, and some shuffling from underneath the bed, and what sounded like a long, drawn-out yawn. Then a small child, about the size of an Earth two-year-old but considerably younger chronologically, with pointed ears and quizzical expression, crawled out from beneath. But his face had definitely taken on the distinctive angularity of his father . . . or second mother, thought Calhoun, or whatever it was that one would term Burgoyne to be.

  As Calhoun stood there, staring in astonishment, Shelby looked as if she wanted to curl up into a ball and die. Janos was all business, helping to dust the child off, and Si Cwan was doing everything he could not to snicker.

  “Thank you, Ensign,” said Selar primly as she reached down and hauled the runaway to his feet. He looked around in quiet contemplation of his surroundings, clearly uncertain as to why everyone was looking at him the way they were. Selar noticed Shelby’s barely contained consternation, and said, “Count your blessings, Captain. At least he hasn’t learned to talk yet.”

  Selar pulled him out of the captain’s quarters quickly. Everyone else remained rooted to his or her spots, until Calhoun finally said, “I think we’re done here.”

  With mumbled responses of “Yes,” “Definitely,” and “I think so,” everyone else cleared out. The door shut behind them, and Calhoun turned to Shelby. There was a touch of wry amusement in his eyes, but he said nothing. Shelby was sitting there, almost bent in half on the chair, her head tucked down, her arms up and covering it so that only a few tufts of her hair were visible.

  “I think I’m ready to return to my ship,” she said finally.

  “All right,” said Calhoun, maintaining an even tone. “I’ll arrange for the transporter . . .”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”

  “It won’t?”

  “No,” she said, and peered up at him. “Just load me into a torpedo tube and shoot me back to the Trident.”

  Slowly he walked across the room and knelt down to bring himself to eye level. “You know . . . Eppy . . . someday—”

  “So help me, Calhoun, if you say someday we’ll look back on this and laugh, I will kill you where you stand.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said, “Look at the bright side.”

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “Sure,” he said cheerily. “Just think: If we served aboard the same ship, we’d probably be subjected to this sort of humiliation all the time.”

  iii.

  The Ten Forward—or “Team Room,” as many on the ship preferred to call it, carrying over a popular term applied to a lounge in the previous Excalibu r—was unusually quiet that evening. That was precisely the way that Zak Kebron liked it. Then again, it was fairly widely known that Kebron liked it quiet, and as a result, the noise ratio tended to drop precipitously whenever he set his massive feet into the crew lounge. Kebron was staring into his drink, looking with bland interest at his reflection. He frowned slightly then, noticing something around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He brought one of his thick fingers to the corner and pulled, ever so slightly.

  A small piece of his skin, wafer thin, came away.

  He looked at it with unabashed curiosity . . . not that anyone would have been able to discern that just by looking at him. He placed it carefully on the tabletop, then reached up again and found that another small piece of his hide came away with only the slightest of tugs. This piece he tapped on the table. It made a satisfyingly loud clicking sound, still nicely retaining its durability and strength. Nevertheless, the fact that pieces were coming off him was not something that overly thrilled him.

  He held up his glass to eye level and tried to make out exactly where the pieces had peeled from. He thought it might be his imagination, but he could swear that the skin was a lighter color in the places where his nearly impenetrable hide had fallen away.

  Kebron was no stranger to Brikar physiology. He knew precisely the reason that his skin might be peeling. And if that was the case, then it wasn’t going to stop with this,
oh no. It would start slow, but there would be more and more, an almost embarrassing amount. There would be questions asked of him throughout the ship, questions that he was not remotely prepared to answer, or interested in answering. But they would come just the same, and the contemplation alone was sufficient to make him very, very uncomfortable.

  A shadow was cast over the table. “You all right, Zak?”

  He recognized the voice instantly. He half rose, and bowed slightly at the waist since, as always, nodding was problematic. “Fine.”

  “Oh, good. Good,” said Mark McHenry. As always, the ship’s reddish-haired conn officer had a ready smile and an air of being perpetually distracted that he wore as comfortably as an old pair of shoes.

  Kebron rose to get up, and then McHenry’s hand was on his shoulder. “Stay for drinks?” suggested McHenry in a tone of voice that indicated he was not simply suggesting.

  McHenry was no match when it came to strength, of course. But he was perfectly capable of pushing with a slight bit of force on Zak’s shoulder, making it quite clear that he far preferred Kebron to stay where he was. If Kebron had chosen to ignore the hint, to shove McHenry out of the way, he could very likely have done so. Instead, Kebron chose to simply ease himself back into his seat. No reason he shouldn’t, really. No reason he couldn’t. The only thing he would have needed to be worried over was McHenry himself, and Kebron would sooner be enveloped by an avalanche and pounded into a pebble than admit that the slight conn officer provided him with so much as a moment’s concern.

  When Kebron was reseated, McHenry dropped into the chair opposite him. He had that familiar, distracted smile on his face. “Lovely day we’re having,” he said cheerily as he signaled the waitress. Kebron said nothing, not bothering to point out that there was no weather in space, and even less weather inside of a starship. It wasn’t as if a summertime squall was going to break out on decks three to seven. Kebron just stared at him.

  “So,” McHenry continued, once a drink had been brought over to him, “the Trident is on its way to Danter, with Si Cwan, his sister Kalinda, and Robin Lefler aboard. Interesting the way that worked out, didn’t it.” When Kebron said nothing, McHenry continued, “And we’ve set our course to check out some sort of odd energy emissions, being generated in empty space about three days’ travel from here. So I suppose there’s plenty of interesting things to go around, here in beautiful Sector 221-G, right?”