that I can only appreciate one work of art at a
time."
"And right now you're still appreciating me."
"I guess so, yes."
She sighed, took him by the hand, and said, "Come
on." She pulled him toward the building and through the
large columned doors.
Inside there was music playing, loud and
sonorous, and it sounded somewhat like organ music.
It was coming from a large, multiple-piped
instrument in the middle of a great rotunda. Seated
in circles around the musician were various
Betazoids, who were listening to the music, their
eyes closed, their faces blissful. Riker
looked around and tried to get a feeling for what was
going on. The music sounded okay to him, but nothing
particularly special. He couldn't understand why it
seemed to be affecting the listeners so deeply.
He looked at Deanna, and she, too,
appeared to be totally taken by it. Her eyes were
half-lidded, and she was swaying slightly to the
tones. Riker whispered, "Are you all right?"
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Her
stare was almost incredulous, as if she couldn't
believe that he was still capable of speech. "This is
soul music," she whispered. "Listen to it. Let
it pervade you. What does it say to you?"
He listened. He let it pervade him.
"What is it supposed to say?" he asked.
With an irritated noise, she pulled at him
and dragged him off down a large corridor.
The air in the cavernous building was cool.
Riker looked around, trying to take things in. His
eyes adjusted to the dimness, and he kept trying
to find something that would be startling and revolutionary
to him. Something that would give his innermost thoughts a
voice and fill him with understanding. Nothing in
particular seemed to leap out at him,
however.
Deanna led him into a room and made a
sweeping gesture.
Paintings hung on the walls. All of them
appeared to be what Riker would term "abstract"
... that is, they didn't seem to be pictures
of anything in particular. In front of every single
painting was a small bench, and in a number of
instances, Betazoids were seated on the benches staring
intently at the works.
"I come here once a week," whispered
Deanna. Her voice, although it was as low as she
could possibly make it, still attracted glances from
the occupants of the room. Silent communion was the
norm here. People looked from her to Riker and then
back to her, and their expressions changed from mild
irritation to understanding tolerance ... and even, in a
couple of cases, a degree of pity--mch
to Riker's annoyance.
"Once a week? Why?"
She led him over to one work in particular, which was
concentric splashes of red, blue, green,
white, black, and a couple of colors that Riker
didn't recognize. Here, in one of the more far-off
sections of the room, no one else was sitting
nearby at the moment.
"Because, W," she said quietly, "it's one of the
methods I use to stay in touch with myself." At his
blank expression, she continued gamely, "In
order to fully understand others, you must learn to understand
yourself. Only by being in touch with what motivates you
can you then grasp what motivates others."
"I studied this in the Academy. The course was
called Dynamics of Command."
"Commanding who?"
"Other officers. Crewmen."
"Yes, well, you see ... here the only
person you're trying to command is yourself. Now ...
I want you to look at the painting and tell me
what it says to you."
"This is supposed to talk to me, too? Can't
anything on this planet keep its mouth shut?"
His comment came out sounding a bit more sarcastic
than he would have liked, but Troi appeared
undeterred. "On Betazed, we believe in
full communion. Communion with each other.
Communion with our world. But before any of that can
occur, we must have communion with ourselves."
"What's the painting called?"
She stared at him in confusion.
"What?"
"What's it called? What's the name of the
painting? At least I'll have some clue to what the
artist was trying to put across if I know what he
called the damned thing."
"The "damned thing"' doesn't have a name. That
would be presumptuous ... it would be as if the
artist were trying to impose his own worldview upon the
viewer."
"Terrific. Look, maybe we can start with
another painting? Something that looks like something?"
He started to rise and she pulled him back
down again. "Will, you're not even trying. You said you
were going to cooperate."
"I'm sorry," he sighed. "I'll try,
all right?"
The problem was, every time he looked at her,
he kept thinking about trying to get her clothes off.
But he knew that such unguarded thoughts were only
going to get him into trouble again. So, gamely, he
focused on the picture again.
It was swirls. Splashes of color. No
matter how long or how intently he looked at
it, it still looked like jumbled paints and nothing more.
"You're trying too hard."
He blew air through his lips in exasperation.
"First you tell me I'm not trying at all, and
now you tell me I'm trying too hard. Now which
is it?" He looked at the painting. "Would you
mind telling me what it is you want of me?"
Then he felt two strong fingers at the base
of his skull, squeezing together and massaging him.
Deanna's arm moved in a steady, circular
motion.
He started to feel tension that he didn't even
know he had ebb from him. He was glad that he
couldn't see his face because he had the distinct,
detached feeling that he had a rather goofy expression
at the moment.
"Now," she said softly, "while you're
relaxing ... look at the painting and tell me
what you see. Learn to look below the surface,
beyond the superficial. What is there to learn from the
painting ... and what can we learn from ourselves?"
His head swayed back and forth in gentle rocking
motions. He stared at the painting for what seemed
an eternity.
"I see ..."
"Yes?"
He was silent for a moment and then said,
"I see ... paint swirls."
She stopped the rubbing. "That's it?" she said with
flat disgust.
"That's it. I'm sorry." He turned to her,
not sure whether to be more irritated with himself or with
her. "You wouldn't want me to lie to you ... and I
doubt I could, even if I wanted to. I see
paint swirls. Big, goopy paint swirls."
"Goopy? This is a ^w? Goopy?"
"I don't have much taste for
abstract art.
When I look at something, I like it to look like
something."
She paused, her hands carefully arranged on
her lap. "Tell me, Lieutenant. As you
further explore the galaxy, you will inevitably
run into things that don't look like anything you've ever
imagined that anything could look. What are you going
to do in those instances? Are you going to decide that
they're inferior somehow? Or that there's something
wrong with them? How are you going to judge? By their
degree of goopiness?"
"In those instances, when encountering new
life-forms beyond my experience, I'll have
instrumentation to help me. Sensor arrays.
Medical scans. Instantaneous translators
and communications devices. I won't have to--"
"You won't have to depend on yourself."
"Now I didn't say that."
"No, you didn't. But that's what it boils
down to, Lieutenant. And believe me, you're
going to find yourself in situations where all the
instrumentation in the world isn't going to do you a bit of
good. They can guide you, but you're going to have to rely
on something beyond that. As a matter of fact, I'll
wager that there will be times when you have to act in ways that
are contrary to what instrumentation is telling you ...
that are contrary to what people are telling you, for that
matter. And you have to be fully conversant in why
you think what you think, because otherwise you're going
to find yourself heading down the wrong road."
"Thank you for your opinions, Miss Troi
... drawn, no doubt, from your many years of
experience with Starfleet."
"I don't have to be experienced with Starfleet,
Lieutenant, in order to be aware of the
importance of knowing your own mind."
"Really?" He took her hand in his and
squeezed it firmly. "And what does your mind
tell you about your feelings for me? Hmmm?"
She met his gaze levelly. "It
tells me that perhaps we have to begin with something a bit
more fundamental than this." She stood. "Come on.
We're getting out of here."
"Where are we going?"
"Back to basics."
The tree towered over them, its trunk brown and
gnarled. There were no leaves on it, and its
branches seemed to stretch up forever.
The trunk was so twisted that climbing up it was
easy. Deanna did so and gestured for Riker
to follow. He climbed, relieved that this was at
least something that was mildly entertaining ...
particularly because he liked watching the play of
Deanna's muscles under her tight clothes.
She stopped at a point about ten feet above the
ground. Large branches stuck out in either
direction. She sidled out onto one, and when
Riker started to follow her, she shook her head and
indicated that he should go in the other direction. With a
shrug he did as instructed.
"Your problem, Lieutenant, is that the demands
of your body have too much sway on your mind," she
said once they were both perched on their opposite
branches.
"What do you mean?"
"Your attraction to me, for example. Indeed,
your attraction to most women, I would think. It's
purely hormonal. It's being fueled entirely
by your sex drive, which is biological, not
intellectual. But you are more than willing to turn
your intellect over to the requirements of your
biology."
"What about what you were saying before? About love
at first sight being something you believe in? Where
does biology figure into that?"
"It doesn't. Love at first sight is
spiritual. You're too primal for that."
"You're saying"--he smirked slightly as he
spoke--?t I'm incapable of falling in love with
someone at first sight because I think with my glands and
that automatically pushes out all higher
emotions?"
"That's correct."
"Well, thanks a lot, Miss Troi."
"It wasn't a compliment," she said primly.
"Higher emotions are what separate us from the lower
orders of life."
"Is that all?"
"Higher emotions, and table manners."
"Tell me, Deanna, have you ever had really
good sex? Or is that just a theory to you?"
She actually laughed at that. "You really can't
figure me out, can you, Lieutenant. You think that
all you have to do is smile at me, wink
devilishly, overpower me with your charm and strength,
and I will willingly succumb to your overwhelming
manliness."
"Something like that."
"Commander, welcome to the twenty-fourth
century. I don't know what goes on on
Earth, or even aboard starships ... but on
Betazed, a woman wants more from a man than for
him to simply be a strong hero figure. Someone
who is going to carry the helpless damsel off in his
big, muscular arms, causing her to swoon and
give herself over to him in hot and sweaty throes of
passion. Women aren't like that here. I'm not like
that."
"No, of course not. You're much too busy
doing precisely what Mommy tells you, and being
precisely what she wants you to be, to let yourself
be influenced by anyone as down-and-dirty as me."
Her expression was not a particularly pleasant
one. "Listen, do you want to do this or not?"
to separate the needs of my mind from the needs of my
body."
"All right. It's very simple, really. I
want you to get a solid grip on the branch, just
like I'm doing." He followed her demonstration and
she continued, "Then we're going to just drop off from
the branch and hang on for as long as possible."
"This is a test of muscular strength ... which
seems kind of silly, since obviously I'm
stronger than you. So if this is some sort of
competition ..."
"The only one you're going to compete with,
Lieutenant, is yourself. And furthermore, it
has nothing to do with muscular strength because
muscles, and the body, invariably have limits,
no matter how well trained they are. You reach a
point that can't be surpassed. But the properly
trained mind, on the other hand, has no limits.
Ready? And ... go."
Deanna dropped down off the branch and hung
there, her feet suspended more than a meter above the
ground. Riker did likewise.
He stared at her, noticing that her toes were not
pointed downward, but rather were straight out.
Her eyes were fluttering closed as she said in a
low, melodious tone, "Now ... sooner or
later, your fingers will want to release. Your
instinct will be to fight this impulse. Do not fight
it. Instead ... simply ignore it. Banish it
to the inner core of your being, and instead focus on
&nbs
p; something else."
"Like what?"
"Like anything. Anything that will take your mind
away from your body--the sky. The clouds.
Birds in flight. The creation of a star. Anything
to disassociate yourself from the demands of the physical.
Now do what I'm doing--bring an image to mind,
a focal image. Close your eyes. Breathe
slowly and steadily, in through your nose, out through your
mouth, like this," and she demonstrated. "Slowly,
steadily, gradually ... that's it."
Riker had closed his eyes, but now he turned
and peered again through narrowed lids at Deanna.
She seemed perfectly at ease. Her
breasts were rising and falling so slowly that the motion
was almost imperceptible.
Clear his mind. Think about something else other
than the fact that his fingers were starting to ache a bit,
and his upper arms were feeling a tad numb.
He thought about Deanna.
He pictured her as he had first seen her at
the wedding--naked and smiling.
She stood on a beach, having just come out of the
water, her body covered with thin rivulets of
moisture. She shook her head in slow motion,
water spraying out in all directions from her thick
hair. Then she came toward him slowly,
smiling, her arms outstretched toward him, her
fingers gesturing for him to approach her ...
Her fingers waving ... her arms outstretched
...
He felt an ache growing beyond his ability
to ignore it. He opened his eyes and found that his
fingers were covered with perspiration and were slipping,
losing their grip. He tried desperately
to readjust, but now his fingers felt nerveless. He
had no idea how long he had been hanging there,
for he had lost track of time ... but however long
it was, it was enough for him to have lost all feeling above
the elbows.
With a low, muttered curse, he dropped from the
branch and landed with a hard thud.
He sat there, dusting himself off, and looked up.
Deanna was still hanging there.
Serenely. Calmly. Looking as if she had
all the time in the world. Her eyes were still closed,
her breasts still rising and falling at the exact
same pace as before ... no. As a matter of
fact, they were moving even more slowly.
He sat there and watched her, shaking his arms
to try to restore circulation.
Deanna hung there.
As blood began to return to Riker's upper
arms, he felt a fierce pain, and he winced as
he touched the abraded skin on his palms. He