As soon as Guinan had put their tray down and departed, Kenny hunched forward with a worried furrow across his brow. “What do you mean, ‘so far’?”
“Oh, nothing. Just that maybe I might ask her out—unless you beat me to it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t like me,” Ken moaned, his resolve deserting him. Then he sipped his coffee, swallowed painfully, and made a disgusted face. “You’re right. I don’t drink black coffee.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t ask Gina out. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ken rolled his eyes. “She could say no.”
“So? Then you’ll be no worse off than you are now.”
“Except for my fragile ego getting stomped flat on the deck.”
Wesley gave his friend a sardonic half-grin. “Trust me—egos are reinflatable. I read it in one of my mom’s medical texts.”
Ken managed a laugh, then spotted something across the room that brought a plainly pained expression to his face. “Uhhh—this whole discussion may just have been rendered academic,” he said, looking past Wesley.
“Huh?”
“Over there,” Ken said, nodding with his chin.
Wes turned to look over his shoulder at a table where a half-dozen young people were seated. And there was Gina, just getting up—her hand clasped by a solidly built young man with wavy hair.
“She’s holding hands with Coggins? I don’t believe this,” Wesley said, his disappointment obvious.
“He’s got shoulders out to here,” Ken whined as he slouched down in his seat. “Do you think she saw us?”
“I don’t think so. And they’re leaving . . . together.” Wesley’s eyes tracked Gina and Coggins until they’d reached the door. Then he turned away and leaned forlornly on one elbow. That was when he saw that Ken had perked up noticeably. “What’re you staring at?”
Ken not only did not reply—he seemed not to have noticed the question. So Wesley turned again to follow his friend’s gaze—and realized that the object of Ken’s attention was the only girl still at the other table, with three remaining male companions. She had an ivory complexion, dark hair past her shoulders, and a musical laugh that carried across the room.
“Polly Park,” Wes said in admiring appraisal, “has the longest legs I have ever seen.”
Ken’s mouth quirked in annoyance. “I suppose you’ve asked her out, too?”
“Nooo. But I’ve thought about it.”
“So we’re back where we started from—just with a different girl.”
“Why? Were you planning to ask her out?”
“Maybe.”
Wesley flashed a challenging smile. “She’s too tall for you, Ken.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ken slid out of the booth and stood, stretching to his full height. “Let her tell me that.”
“Where’re you going?”
“To ask out Polly Park.”
As Ken marched across Ten-Forward, Wesley watched him go. That’s more like it, Kenny, he thought. Make it so.
Picard, Arit and Keela stood on a cliff, overlooking a canyon so deep that they could barely hear the white-water river rushing along the bottom of the gorge. Rainbow mists clung to the canyon walls, and a choir of animals, hidden among peaks and ridges that extended to every horizon, bayed at the setting sun. As a gentle breeze riffled through the manes of mother and daughter, Picard marveled at the bond between them. Even envied it a little.
The Tenirans had struggled mightily to hold together what remained of their families and their society, and he hoped that struggle would soon reach a happy conclusion.
He also found himself thinking about his own family ties. He’d spent all those years—all his adult life, really, after the deaths of his parents—estranged from his brother. How peculiar then that his recovery from the Borg ordeal had not felt complete until his return home to Earth to make his cranky peace with Robert.
That trip had also enabled him to forge new links with Robert’s wife Marie, whom he hadn’t even met in person before, and with the next generation of Picards, his nephew René.
René, who wants to grow up to be a starship captain like the uncle he barely knows . . . It seemed wondrous to Picard that he could have been such a presence in his brother’s family despite his physical absence.
For years, he had considered that separation from his blood relatives an unbridgeable rift. He and Robert were just too different, and too damned stiffnecked to acknowledge the love and respect that bound them together. It had been much easier to perpetuate their differences than to accept them and get on with the business of being brothers.
Picard had made his choices, and he’d been living with them for twenty years or more. Counselor Troi would probably have characterized it as compensation or somesuch, but he had come to believe that his family was right here aboard the Enterprise—the officers who were like brothers and sisters and children to him, the people who gave his life shape and meaning.
After that visit home, though, he had happily found that his view had changed. His crew members were still his everyday family; but his new and renewed bonds with his real family back on Earth were what made him more whole than he’d been in years.
And now, the Tenirans were on the verge of being whole once again.
“Tenira must have been a beautiful place,” Picard said in a soft voice.
“It was, Picard. It definitely was. I don’t know how to thank you for letting me visit it one more time.” Arit sighed and glanced down at the child clinging to her hand, looking across the canyon with wide, wondering eyes. “For letting us visit it.”
“My pleasure.”
“Keela, this cliff is where your father and I were married.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm. We traded our vows at sunset on a day just like this. At least, I remember it like this.” With a final lingering look, Arit turned away from her past and started back down a trail that wound through a tall stand of golden trees.
“You can stay a little longer if you like,” Picard said.
But Arit shook her head. “No . . . it’s time to go.”
It didn’t take them long to reach the holodeck’s access archway. “Save program,” Picard said as the door slid aside and they exited into an Enterprise corridor.
“Save it?” Arit asked. “Why?”
“Someone may want to visit Tenira again someday.”
Picard led them back toward the bridge via a corridor lined with observation portals. As they neared a turbolift, the intercom pager beeped. “Riker to Captain Picard.”
Picard touched his uniform communicator. “What is it, Number One?”
“Message from the Glin-Kale, for Captain Arit.”
Picard looked at her. “Would you like to take it privately?”
“No.” She took a deep breath of foreboding. “Whatever it is, you may as well hear it, too.”
“Will, transfer it down here, please.”
“Aye, sir.”
At Picard’s nod, Arit found her voice. “Captain Arit here.”
“This is Valend Egin, Captain.” Egin spoke in an officially momentous cadence. “The Council has finished its deliberations.”
“And what have you decided?”
Arit held her breath—and so did Picard.
“The surviving elected government of Tenira has decided . . . to accept the offer of the Shapers.”
Arit exhaled and grasped Picard’s hand. “Good, Egin. Have you announced it to the ship yet?”
“No, we have not,” Egin said. “As Captain, yours is the voice our people are most accustomed to hearing. We felt that should be your duty—and privilege.”
“Maybe he’s not as bad as I thought,” Arit whispered to Picard. “Uhh, thank you, Egin. I’ll be returning shortly. We’ve got a lot of preparations to make. Arit out.”
She had let go of Keela’s hand during her conversation with Egin, and found that her daughter ha
d drifted over to a nearby observation window. Arit touched the little girl’s head. “Back there on Captain Picard’s holodeck—that was our old home. And that . . .” She and Keela both gazed out at the blue-white globe just outside. “That will be our new one.”
Epilogue
CAPTAIN’S PERSONAL LOG, Stardate 44295.7. An interesting denouement to our surprising encounter at Domarus Four, which shall henceforth be referred to as Mirrillon, the name given to it by its native inhabitants, the Shapers. Our shuttle and its crew have, of course, been returned to us. We have made friendly contact with an unusual life-form previously unknown to us. And the Tenirans have a world to share, a splendid new place to call home.
COMMANDER RIKER strode into a cargo bay buzzing with activity, and found Engineer La Forge surveying a dozen jumbo containers queued up near the cargo transporter. Each one measured four meters high by five on each side, and a half-dozen technicians were busy checking logs listing the containers’ contents and making sure they were ready to be sealed.
“Progress report, Geordi?”
“Good work.”
“Thank you, sir,” La Forge said casually.
“No, I mean it, Geordi,” Riker said, shaking his head in amazement. “I never realized how fast we could mobilize—you and your staff have shipped an incredible amount of survival gear down to Domarus.”
“You mean Mirrillon.”
“Right. Mirrillon.” Riker grinned. “We never had that much of a chance to get used to calling it Domarus, so it shouldn’t be too hard to adjust to a new name.”
“Especially now that both the Tenirans and the Shapers want Mirrillon to join the Federation. How long before supply ships get here to provide the Tenirans all the stuff we couldn’t give them?”
“Two weeks or less. You’ve scrounged up more than enough to tide them over.”
“Well, in spite of the way we met them, they do deserve a break in the luck department.”
Riker nodded. “Amen to that.”
Picard stood in the center of the Enterprise bridge, facing Arit’s image on the main viewscreen. “I know the accommodations will not be luxurious, but they will keep you warm and dry.”
“Luxury can come in due time, Picard. For now, you have no idea what it means to us just to be able to call someplace, other than the Glin-Kale, home. So, for now, warm and dry will be more than enough reason for thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving,” Data said, looking up brightly from his console. “That brings to mind an episode from the history of the United States of America on Earth. Settlers fleeing religious persecution by the nineteenth-century monarchy of England established a colony on the North American continent, known as Massachusetts, and they received considerable assistance from the native population during their early months of residence in what was, to the colonists, a harsh and unknown environment.”
The turbolift whooshed open and Riker came onto the bridge in the middle of Data’s recitation.
“Following their first year of survival,” Data continued, “colony leaders declared a feast of thanksgiving and invited members of the native tribe which had helped them. That feast became a regular holiday which is still celebrated some eight centuries later. Many other cultures throughout the galaxy have analogous celebrations.”
“Tenira never had such a holiday, Commander Data,” Arit said, “but maybe it’s time to start a new tradition. Of course, I’m not sure whether the Shapers would appreciate a feast. But Captain, one year from today, you and your crew are invited to return to Mirrillon to join us in our thanksgiving celebration.”
“We’d be honored to do so.”
“Perhaps I’ll cook you some fish, Picard,” Arit said with a grin as a young female officer approached and whispered a relayed message to her. “Very good, Lieutenant. Captain, I’ve just been told your crew has beamed down the last supply shipment to the planet. I guess that means you’ll be on your way.”
Picard nodded. “We have a delayed mercy mission to complete, so we are in a bit of a hurry. We have already transmitted Mirrillon’s application to the Federation Council. I am sure a positive response will be arriving with the first assistance teams.”
“Well, Captain—there is no way we can possibly thank you and the Enterprise crew for all your help, and for extending the Federation’s hand of welcome.”
“We had a bit of a rocky start, but it was our pleasure, Captain Arit. Good luck to you—and to the Shapers. We’ll be looking forward to your thanksgiving feast.”
“So will we. Safe voyage, Picard.”
“Welcome home, Arit. Enterprise out.”
Arit faded from the viewer, replaced by an orbital view of the world henceforth to be known as Mirrillon. Riker joined Picard and Deanna Troi down in the starship’s command well, easing into his seat at the captain’s right. “Ready to leave orbit, sir.”
But before Picard could respond, a multicolored cloud of energy materialized beneath the bridge’s observation dome—with one golden sparkle inside, accompanied by the faint jangle of distant chimes.
:This is Ko, Captain Picard. The Shapers wish to thank you. We look forward to sharing the World—and to meeting other new life-forms from your Federation.:
“It is we who should thank you, Ko. Your willingness to embrace the unknown has given the Tenirans a second chance—and I’m sure your membership will enrich the Federation.”
:Farewell, Captain.:
Then Ko was gone.
The bridge intercom beeped, followed by Beverly Crusher’s voice. “Sickbay to Captain Picard.”
“Picard here, Doctor.”
“I just wanted to let you know we’ve conjured that promised medical miracle.”
Picard’s eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise. “Oh?”
“Yes. We just finished running our lab tests, and I think we’ve got a promising new treatment for ridmium poisoning. If it works on people even half as well as it does on the computer models, those injured workers at the Chezrani outpost have an excellent chance for full recovery.”
“Ensign Crusher,” Riker said, “set course for the Chezrani system.”
Wesley’s practiced fingers skipped across his console. “Course set, Commander.”
“Warp factor seven, Ensign,” Picard said, pointing ahead. “Engage.”
As the Enterprise broke out of orbit, Riker leaned forward with a mischievous glimmer in his eye. “Data, there’s something that bothered me about your Thanksgiving analogy.”
The android swiveled slightly in his seat. “Oh? What was that, Commander?”
“You neglected to mention how American colonists and their descendants nearly exterminated the natives over the next couple of centuries. I’ve never known you to be any less than exhaustively complete in any factual report.”
Data’s eyebrows arched innocently. “I was, of course, aware of that unfortunate progression of historical events. But I did not believe the negative aspects of this particular account would serve a constructive purpose. So I delivered an edited version that seemed to be more . . . appropriate . . . for the occasion.” He paused for a moment. “Was that judgment incorrect, sir?”
Riker’s face spread into a smile. “Data, my friend, I couldn’t have done it better myself.” Then his expression turned pensive. “I just hope things work out better this time around. When you think about it, the Shapers and the Tenirans have even less in common than the American Indians and colonists did.”
“That may be true, Will,” Troi said, “but that could enhance the chances for harmonious coexistence. The Native Americans and the colonists wound up in competition for the same lands and resources. Here, because the Tenirans and the Shapers are so different, they may not step on each other’s toes.”
“Still,” Riker said, “I wonder what it would be like to have the neighbors rearranging the mountains every thousand years.”
“Unusual, to say the least,” Picard said with a smile. “But the Shapers have promised to move mountains c
arefully, and the Tenirans have promised to be an appreciative audience.”
“Audience, sir?” said Data.
“Yes, Data—providing one possible answer to an age-old debate.”
“What debate is that, Captain?” Troi asked.
“Do sentient beings create for creation’s sake, and self-satisfaction? Or do we create to communicate and share with others? Luckily for the Tenirans, these creators wanted to share.”
With the satisfaction of a man who knew well the value of a smile from Lady Luck, Picard settled back into the command seat, turned to face the main screen, and enjoyed the view as his ship swept toward the stars.
About the Author
Perchance to Dream is Howard Weinstein’s fifth “Star Trek” novel, following the previous best-sellers Deep Domain and The Covenant of the Crown from the original “Trek” series, and two other “Star Trek: The Next Generation” novels, Exiles and Power Hungry.
Since early 1991, Howard has also been the regular writer of the continuing adventures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the original “Star Trek” crew in the monthly comic-book series from DC Comics. (At home, he now speaks in word balloons.)
In 1974, as a 19-year-old University of Connecticut communications student, he became the youngest human (or alien, as far as we know) to write professionally for “Star Trek,” selling The Pirates of Orion episode to NBC TV’s Emmy-winning animated revival of the original series (now available on home video). A decade later, Howard was one of several writers consulted by Director Leonard Nimoy during his story-development idea hunt for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and received a screen credit for his help.
In addition, Howard has written three original novels based on the NBC TV science fiction series V; articles, columns and reviews in Starlog, The New York Times and Newsday; and award-winning radio public service announcements. His slide shows have been seen by “Star Trek” convention audiences from coast to coast.
Yanked up by his New York roots, Howard was transplanted to Maryland where he lives with his wife Susan (who waters him daily) and their Welsh Corgi, Mail Order Annie.
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