"The fact is, M'Ress, that I am doing nothing that is outside my bounds as science officer." The pleasant tone
that he'd been maintaining was starting to fracture slightly. "You have taken it upon yourself to draw boundaries for me in other aspects of my life. I will thank you not to chal-lenge me on those that are proscribed by Starfleet com-mand. As long as you are under my command, you will do what you're told, when you're told. If you do not like the duties assigned you, you are always welcome to request a transfer to another department... or better yet, another vessel... providing you can find one that will have you."
She stepped in close to him. He was irritated to dis-cover that her mere presence was alluring to him. "Everyone in the science department," she said, her body trembling with anger, "looks at me as if I'm carrying a disease. You told them all about the situation, didn't you."
"It's a small ship. Word gets around."
"And you told it in such a way as to make me look like a shrew, correct? Like a whining, complaining, provincial complainer."
He met her with leveled gaze. "The truth hurts, Lieu-tenant."
M'Ress drew herself up and looked at him imperi-ously. "Gleau... we have been lovers, however briefly. But do not presume for a moment to know me. Don't presume to know what makes me tick. Don't think to know what I am and am not capable of. Certainly don't think to know what I find acceptable and what I do not from a sexual point of view."
"And I will thank you," he replied, "to extend me the same courtesy."
They glared at each other for a long moment, and then he sighed heavily. "M'Ress... look at this," he
said, indicating the stars around them with a sweeping gesture. All around them the star maps, projected against the wall, shined invitingly, not twinkling since they were not distorted by any atmosphere. "Look at the enormity of the galaxy... of the universe. Look at these stars, alive for millions upon millions of years. All of them there long before any of us came upon the scene, and all of them guaranteed to be there long after we are gone. This, M'Ress... this is what we're all about. This is the type of thing that should be concerning us: the ex-ploration of the greatness that is the universe around us. In the face of such boundlessness, why are we wasting time with petty, individual concerns? We need to have our priorities in place."
"Our priorities."
"Yes.
"In place."
"Yes."
She smiled. Unpleasantly. "Gleau... where do you think it all came from?"
Gleau tilted his head questioningly. "Pardon?"
"All this," and she gestured in the same way that he had. "The stars, the planets, the boundlessness. Where did it all come from?"
"Are you asking me about the origins of the universe, M'Ress? I don't pretend to have all the answers, but cer-tainly there are schools of scientific thought that were present even when you were first studying," he said sar-donically.
"Yes. Yes, there were." She circled him, and with one finger she played with a lock of his hair. It was a sur-
prisingly intimate gesture, considering. "But you know what the oldest one is, I assume."
"Presumably," said Gleau, "you are referring to the school of thought that says that some sort of cosmic being was responsible for it all. It's a quaint fairy tale."
"There are some who say that. Then again," she pointed out, still moving around him, "there are those who say elves are quaint fairy tales. Or that Earth stories of elves were based upon early visits by your own peo-ple to that world."
"A valid enough point, I suppose," admitted Gleau, "but I don't-"
"Believe it or not, Lieutenant Commander... to some degree, I embrace the notion that there was indeed some sort of guiding intelligence forming the universe."
Gleau laughed, leaning back in the observation chair. "Do you. How very intriguing. And how very unscientific."
"We haven't disproved the notion, Lieutenant Com-mander, which makes it to my mind a possibility. After all, have we not encountered our share of near-omnipotent beings in our travels? With so many crea-tures who are godlike, one can only wonder if there in fact might not be a god for them to be like. I consider it to be... an interesting matter for speculation."
He laughed again. "Very well, Lieutenant. Obviously I have not given the matter as much thought as you, and therefore I will defer to you. Perhaps there is indeed some sort of presence. Should there be, I can but hope that He will choose to make himself available for scientific obser-vation and discourse at some point, because I certainly have a variety of questions I would like to pose."
"As would I. Because if He exists, there are quite a few things He's done that make no sense to me. How-ever, He did do one thing that makes perfect sense: He gave us free will. And you," and then she leaned in very close to Gleau, and he felt her warm breath, and heard the low growl in her voice like a predator about to leap upon its prey. "You... usurped mine. Whether you admit to it or not, whether you believe it or not... that is what you did. You flew against the intention of the being who had a hand in creating all this."
"Should I fear His wrath?" he asked quietly.
"No. Fear mine."
He paused, and then, maintaining his ready smile, he asked, "Is that a threat? Because threatening a superior officer... is a court-martial offense."
She drew back at that point, said nothing at first. Then she told him, "I know that you're endeavoring to 'teach me a lesson' because I made a stand for my rights. Per-haps others don't understand that... but you know it's true, and I know it's true. And this is not over." She turned on her heel and walked away.
"I hope not," Gleau called after her. "Considering I am now laboring under an Oath of Chastity, I have to find my amusements where I can."
ii.
Si Cwan walked through the empty halls of the palace on his homeworld of Thallon. He remembered how, in his youth, he would tear around the place, much to his fa-
ther's consternation. The palace, while large under even the best of circumstances, was positively cavernous to Si Cwan at that age. It just seemed to go on and on. The cor-ridors seemed to stretch to the horizon; the curved ceilings appeared high enough to touch the sky. Sometimes-and this was the thing that would most drive his father to dis-traction-Si Cwan would throw back his head and let out a yell at the top of his lungs that would reverberate for what seemed hours. The paintings, the murals, the busts of famous Thallonians... the palace was rich with the her-itage and greatness of the Thallonian Empire.
The funny thing about the happiest times of one's life, Si Cwan mused, was that one didn't know that's what they were while one was experiencing them.
The solitude that he was experiencing now brought back that feeling of vastness he experienced as a child. The place was simply too big for one person. But one person was all that was filling it now. When Si Cwan was inclined to do so, he could move with utter silence. He did not choose to do so now. Instead he allowed his heels to click-clack up and down the hallways, listening to the echo and pulling from his heart all his recollec-tions of the times when the palace had been filled with life. So filled with life, in fact, that it seemed less a dwelling than a force of nature, as teeming with vitality and power as the mightiest waves rolling into the surf.
He heard footsteps behind him.
There was a ceremonial spear in a stand to his right. Without hesitation, he snagged the spear out of its place, whipped it around and stood, poised, and prepared to take on any unexpected opponent.
Robin Lefler let out a gasp, stumbled backward, and grabbed on to a bust for support. Unfortunately the bust was not affixed to the pedestal upon which it was stand-ing. It came away in her arms as Robin tumbled to the floor and, a moment later, the bust crashed to the ground beside her, shattering into a hundred zigzag fragments.
Si Cwan surveyed the damage in silence. Then he said, "You may be interested to know that my great-uncle, Jarek Cwan, never once fell in battle... until now."
"I'm so sorry," said Robin,
clambering to her feet. She made a halfhearted attempt to reassemble the pieces before she acknowledged to herself the hopelessness of the endeavor.
"Don't concern yourself with it," he said. "Had it been real... had any of this been real... I would be upset. As it is..." His voice trailed off. Then he smiled slightly as he looked at Robin with pieces of the statue gathered in her lap. He extended a hand to her. "Come, come. No point in sitting around clutching a pathetic ex-cuse for a bust."
She stood up and dusted herself off, allowing the pieces to fall to the ground. "Kalinda told me you'd be here. I'm starting to worry about you a little."
"Are you?" His red brow furrowed. "Why?"
"Because you're spending an inordinate amount of time in holodecks. It's making me wonder whether you just find everyone and everything else so deathly dull that we're not worth your time anymore."
"Hardly," he said. He continued to wander, and Robin fell into step beside him. "However, I find myself facing moments in my Life where I have to determine in what
direction it will go. It helps, in such instances, to remind myself via the firsthand aid of the holodeck, where it's been. The glory and majesty that was once Thallon lives only in my memory... and in the capabilities of this in-strumentation to reproduce it." He stopped and stared at her curiously. "Are you quite all right, Robin?" "Yes. Why?"
"Well, you're... you're looking at me... rather oddly. Not in a negative way, but still..."
"I just..." She cleared her throat and grinned. "I just... like to listen to you talk sometimes. You have a very musical voice. Even when you're speaking nor-mally, it seems like you're singing sometimes, accom-panied by an orchestra that only you can hear."
"Why, thank you, Robin." He reached over and squeezed her hand. It was so small in comparison that it seemed to disappear into his. Her smile widened. He took her other hand in his as well. "I so wish you could have seen this palace when it was real, rather than this... this construct. The pure majesty of our empire and heritage could only stir pride in the heart of any ob-server, no matter who they were."
"Unless they happened to be locked in a dungeon," Robin said, and then instantly looked as if she'd regret-ted saying it.
But Si Cwan took the comment in stride. "You mean as Soleta was, for a time. I will not deny, Robin, that there were darker aspects to our society. No matter how brightly any sun may shine, that upon which it sheds its light will always cast a shadow. Nevertheless, I regret that our empire did not have the time to learn and grow
more than it did. It was my goal to eliminate such unfor-tunate sides of our world. To aspire only to greatness." He shrugged. "But we shall never know what I might have accomplished in that earlier circumstance. Still... that does not preclude performing great deeds in the fu-ture."
Robin was smiling when she heard that, and contin-ued to do so until she fully digested just what it was that Si Cwan was saying. Then the smile began to fade. "Wait, you're..." She seemed at a loss for words.
"I'm what?" he prompted.
"You're not... seriously considering taking up the Danteri on their offer." She sounded thunderstruck, as if Si Cwan had suddenly announced that he was, in fact, a Hermat.
"I am very seriously considering it, yes."
"But... but you can't!" she stammered.
"Why ever not?"
Once more words did not appear to ally themselves with her. Then she found her voice. "First of all, you can't trust the Danteri..."
"Oh, I don't," Si Cwan said matter-of-factly. "I don't trust them at all. However, there are different degrees of lack of trust."
"I'm not following."
Except she was following: She was following Si Cwan into the main hall. He looked to the far end, to the great chair of judgment in which his father routinely sat when hearing matters of dispute between various races. Si Cwan had always wondered what it would be like for him to assume that mantle, to be the sole ruler of the
sprawling Thallonian Empire. In some ways, he felt as if he had let down the memories of those who had come before him. Granted, he knew he shouldn't have taken that failure personally. It wasn't as if, due to lack of at-tention on his part, planets had risen up in rebellion and he'd lost control. Instead he'd stood there and watched his planet be rent asunder by a gigantic flaming bird, ef-fectively sounding the death knell of the Thallonian Em-pire. How could anyone, short of a god, prepare for an eventuality such as that?
He brought his attention away from his free-floating thoughts, from the proud columns that lined the majes-tic hall, from the memories of what were, and focused instead on not only his conversation with Robin, but on the possibilities of what were to come. "I believe that the Danteri are motivated entirely by self-interest," he said. "On the one hand, they have admitted as much. On the other hand, it is entirely possible they are withhold-ing other elements of the current circumstances that will play even more to their favor... elements that I have not even begun to consider. I do not trust that they have been entirely forthcoming. Nor do I trust that they will not endeavor to toss Kalinda and I aside, once we have served our purpose to them."
"Well, then-?"
Slowly Si Cwan walked up the steps to the chair of his father, turned, and sat carefully in it. He wondered if doing so would instantly cause all his faculties of judg-ment to snap into the crystal clarity that his father al-ways seemed to possess. It didn't happen. He had known that it wouldn't. That was, after all, the province
of the child: to believe that adulthood would bring with it instant comprehension of the world and the ability to make the right choice in any given situation. Instead adulthood brought with it only the crushing realization that one spent one's childhood utterly misinformed, shattering forever the childlike aspect of one's psyche. The rest of one's life more or less amounted to damage control.
"On the other hand... Kalinda and I are not stupid," he told Robin. "Nor are we novices when it comes to playing political games. We have been in situations that entail and require the acquisition and maintaining of power. I believe that the Danteri are sincere in their de-sire to see the Thallonian Empire rise again. It suits their purposes. I have verified their accounts of their recent difficulties with ship's records and historical docu-ments. All of it is true. The region around Danteri has become a hotbed of unrest, and in those areas into which they attempted to expand their influence, they suc-ceeded instead in destroying what little stability there already was. They need help. To be specific," and he chuckled at the thought, "they need my help. Our help, mine and Kalinda's."
"And you're actually thinking of giving it to them." She stared at him in amazement. "Si Cwan, in all the time I've known you, I've thought you to be many things. But never, for one moment, have I thought that you were... were..."
"Stupid?" He arched a shaved brow.
"I was going to say 'naive,' but 'stupid' works just as well."
"And would be an acceptable term if I chose to pass
up this offer."
"But..." She approached him. He wondered if she was going to genuflect, as was the custom for those approach-ing the great seat of judgment, but she remained standing. He supposed that was all right; even if she had known the custom, chances were she wouldn't have attended to it. "But... why? Why would you be stupid? Why... ?"
He reached forward and this time took both her hands into one of his, placing his other hand atop hers. Si Cwan smiled indulgently, and he might have been imag-ining it, but it almost seemed as if she was melting at his touch. How charming, he thought. Despite the empti-ness of this place, she still feels a bit caught up in the grandeur that was the Thallonian Empire. I suppose it would be enough to make any woman weak-kneed.
"Robin," he said patiently, patting the top of her hands as he did so, "you seem to be forgetting how it is that I first came aboard the Excalibur. How it is that our paths first crossed."
When she spoke, it was with an obvious effort to keep her voice steady. "I... haven't forgotten anything. You
stowed away."
"Yes. I stowed away, aboard the Excalibur. You have no idea," and he looked down, "no idea at all how diffi-cult that was for me."
"I'd imagine so. Climbing into the cargo container, managing to remain that way for-"
He shook his head. "I'm not speaking logistically, or of the physical demands. I mean emotionally. Robin... I was a prince of Thallon. I had servants,
courtiers... people who responded to my every de-sire. To lower myself to a thief of services, to hide like the lowliest beggar... my actions revolted me even as I undertook them. But I did so, willingly, for two rea-sons, to accomplish two goals. The first was to find Kalinda, my sister. The second was to use the re-sources of the Excalibur to try and pull together the shattered remnants of my once-great empire. As a noble-even a noble with no homeworld-I could do no less."
Robin pulled away from him, then, her face clouding. "So what are you saying? That the Excalibur has served its purpose? That you don't need us anymore?"
Star Trek - NF - 12 - Being Human Page 10
