looked back to his teacher.
Deanna hung there.
And hung there.
He had no idea how long it was ... ten,
maybe fifteen minutes. Maybe longer. Her
slim body continued to display no ill effects
whatsoever.
After what seemed an interminable length of time,
Deanna began to rock back and forth, slowly and
gently. Her eyes remained closed. She gained
enough momentum to swing upward like a gymnast, wrapping
her legs up and around the branch and bringing herself
back to sitting.
"What are you doing down there?"
"What are you doing up there?" he countered.
"Finally get tired?"
"No. I could have continued that way for quite some time.
A shame that you couldn't. Maybe the weight of
all those muscles dragged you down. What an
inconvenience, being so much stronger than little me."
He stood, brushing himself off, and walked toward
the base of the trunk. As he did so, Deanna
clambered upward, standing on the branch as if she
were a tightrope walker. She looked completely
at ease.
"All right, you've proven your point," he
said, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice. "You
can climb down now."
Deanna took a step toward the trunk so that
she could get a grip and descend ...
And her foot slipped.
Her arms pinwheeling, andwitha startled shriek,
Deanna lost her balance and tumbled off.
Riker, still a short distance away, moved like
lightning. His arms outstretched, he skidded in and
caught Deanna before she hit. But he hadn't
had time to brace himself, and the weight of her carried
him down. He dropped to his knees, the shock
rattling his teeth, but he still held on
to her.
Reflexively her arms had gone around his
neck. She tried to compose herself, automatically
doing the breathing exercise to regain her
equilibrium. Riker, meantime, shook his head
briskly. Then he looked at her ... and
grinned ear to ear.
He got to his feet, still holding her in his
arms. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. You can put me down--"
Their faces had been mere inches from each other,
and Riker now seized the initiative. He
kissed her full on the lips.
They held like that for a long time, and he felt her
body go limp. And then she just seemed to melt
against him, and reflexively her hands squeezed his
shoulder blades, as if afraid he might
vanish, or the moment might end.
But ultimately it was she who ended it, breaking
off with an audible popping sound. "Put me
down," she whispered.
He grinned and said, "But we were just getting--"
Put me down NOW!
He dropped her.
He hadn't intended to do it. But the imperative
was so startling and so overwhelming that it caught him
completely unawares. She fell at his feet
and, quickly scrambling to hers, backed away from
him.
"I heard you," he said, "in my head. That
must mean I'm getting better at this. Right?"
"You couldn't have heard me in your head."
"I know I--"
"You couldn't have!" she said with an infuriated
stomp of her foot.
She turned away from him in an obvious
attempt to compose herself. He made no move
toward her, stayed as far from her as he could.
She was in pain. My God, she was in pain
over him.
At that moment, he cleared his mind because
instinctively, he didn't want to think or even
feel anything that she might pick up on and
cause her more distress. Just like that, he was suddenly
thinking about nothing at all. And he felt totally
relaxed.
"Deanna--"
She said nothing. Her hands were pressed against
each other, palm to palm, and she had slowed her
breathing down. When she did turn back
to face him, all the confusion was gone. Instead she
was lit with inner calm.
clinical, "was that you were once again entertaining
erotic thoughts about me. All that did was focus you
on the needs of your body. You can't put yourself beyond
those needs if you use that as your focal point. You
should watch out for that, Lieutenant."
"Really." He took a step toward her.
"Well, you know what I think, Miss Troi.
I think your body and mind aren't quite as
synchronized as you like to think. I think your body
wanted to fall into my arms, contrary to what your
mind might think of me. And so your ever-s-sure
feet deliberately betrayed you."
"I subconsciously threw myself at you, is
what you're saying?" She laughed lightly.
"It's possible, yes."
Again she laughed. "No, Lieutenant. It's
not possible. For your information, a piece of bark
broke off, and that's what caused me to slip.
That's all. If you look around on the ground,
I'm sure you'll find where it fell. Now, if
you'll excuse me ..."
She turned and walked off. He called after
her, "When is our next lesson?" But she
didn't respond.
He spent the next twenty minutes searching every
inch of the ground, trying to find the stray piece of
bark.
But he never did.
CHAPTER 20
Dinner that night in the Troi household was
subdued. The only sound was a persistent and
gentle chiming as Mr. Homn stood at the
middle of the table repeatedly striking the small
instrument that gave thanks to the gods of Betazed
for the food being eaten.
Lwaxana kept glancing up at Deanna.
Her daughter seemed preoccupied this evening, her
gaze and thoughts focused entirely toward herself.
When, out of habit, Lwaxana sent a gentle and
subtle probe into her daughter's mind to find out
what was troubling her, she was astounded to find that her
mental inquiry was turned aside. She could have,
of course, immediately pushed more deeply andwith more force,
but that would have been utterly out of line. Casual
mind brushing was one thing; shoving one's
way in after meeting initial resistance was quite
another thing entirely.
Deanna ...?
There was no response, andwith an annoyed air,
Lwaxana resorted to the far more inconvenient,
since it meant she had to disrupt her eating,
verbal "Deanna."
Deanna looked up. "Yes, Mother?"
"What is troubling you, Little One?"
Her daughter smiled gamely. "Nothing,
Mother."
"Casual lies?" Lwaxana looked
disapproving. "First you thwart a mind brush, and then
you resort to telling me that nothing is bothering you
when something clearly is. I thought we were more open with
each other than that, Deanna. Frankly ...
I'm a little hurt."
"There's no reason to be hurt, Mother, just because
I don't want to share every intimate detail of
my life every moment."
Lwaxana raised an eyebrow.
"Intimate?"
"Mother, I don't want to get into it."
Lwaxana let a rather crude response
float from her mind into Deanna's, and it got the
expected reaction. Deanna flushed slightly
and said, "Mother, that was uncalled for."
"Perhaps. But how accurate was it?"
"Mo-ther ..."
"It's him, isn't it. That Starfleet
officer, Striker."
"Riker."
"Him." Lwaxana carefully arranged her
napkin in front of her and turned to her
manservant. "Mr. Homn, I'll want
to send a communiqu@e to Starfleet."
Deanna slapped the table impatiently and
said, "Don't you dare!"
She might just as easily have spit
into Lwaxana's food and gotten the same
response as she received. Slowly, with an air of
complete and utter shock, Lwaxana turned and
openly gaped at her child. ""Don't you
dare"'?" she repeated incredulously. Deanna
looked down, her mouth moving but no sound coming.
"You're telling me," continued Lwaxana,
"what I, the keeper of the Sacred Chalice of
Riix, should and should not dare? May I ask you,
young lady, who in the Great Fire you think you're
talking to?"
"Mother, please, I'm sorry--"
"I will not be addressed in that ... that
cavalier, offhand manner. I am not one of your
"palsea"' Deanna. I am not one of your
casual acquaintances. I am certainly not one
of your Starfleet friends."
"He's not a friend! He's not even ... Mother,
I don't even like him!"
"Then what is he?" demanded Lwaxana.
"What is he to you?"
"A frustration. A big frustration, that's
all. He's a ... a case study in surface
arrogance. He's ... he's nothing. Nothing.
Not on a personal level."
"Need I remind you," said Lwaxana
stiffly, "of your commitment to Wyatt?"
"I know about that, Mother. But frankly, I can't
believe that you're really going to hold me to that ...
that agreement."
"Little One, I'm not holding you to anything! This
is tradition and custom we're talking about. I
don't just fabricate things to inconvenience you and
make your life more difficult. I simply teach
you what they are and expect you to abide by them. And
you, knowing your place in society and the
responsibilities that place entails, are
going to abide by them. Aren't you." The last was not a
question.
Deanna looked down.
"Aren't you." This time there was even a bit more of
an edge than before.
"Yes, Mother," said Deanna automatically,
a phrase she had repeated any number of times
before on a variety of occasions.
"Good, because frankly ... and I'm only
giving you my surface interpretation here, since you
seem uncomfortable with allowing me to probe more
deeply on this ... you're making it quite clear that you
can't exactly control yourself when it comes to this
lieutenant."
Now Deanna looked up, her jaw set.
"I can control myself just fine, Mother. I'm not some
... some animal in heat."
"I never said you were."
"No, but you implied it."
"I didn't--"
"You did."
"All right, maybe I did," said
Lwaxana, putting her hands up. "But it's
understandable. You don't seem yourself when it
comes to thoughts of him. Perhaps I should have a talk with the
people at the university. If this lieutenant is
merely a case study for you, then I think that the
university is doing a pretty shabby job of
teaching you something as simple as clinical
detachment."
"They're doing a fine job, Mother. Please
... stay out of it. I can handle Lieutenant
Riker just fine."
Lwaxana stared at her piercingly. "And how do
you define "j fine"'?"
"I define it as being capable of rising to a
situation without your help."
Lwaxana appeared to consider this a moment, then
speared another piece of fish with her prong. And
then she said simply, "See that you do."
Mr. Homn hit his chime and Deanna winced
slightly. Funny how, after all these years,
she'd never realized just how damned annoying that
persistent chiming was.
Riker lay in his quarters at the embassy,
reading a primer on Betazed philosophy that
Deanna had recommended.
It was puzzling to him. In example after
example, situations were presented and the reader was
asked, basically, "What would you do or say in
such a situation?" And Riker was consistently
getting it wrong.
He went on to the next example and read it out
loud to see if it would make more sense: "A friend
tells you that she is very upset. Her immediate
supervisor has said several overly critical
things in regards to her work, and she feels
frustrated and hurt over the situation. How do you
respond?"
Riker thought about it and then said out loud, "All
right. I tell her one of two things: either she can
analyze her work habits, see where she's being
remiss, and improve her performance, or, if she
firmly believes that the criticism by her
supervisor is unwarranted, she can tell her
supervisor that and demonstrate why. If he
continues to be overly critical, she can inform him
that if he does not cease and desist in his
unreasonable demands, then she will go to the next
level in the chain of command and file a grievance."
He pondered that for a moment, decided that it was a
good, solid, reasonable response, and moved on
to what the text claimed was the proper
way to handle it.
He read it out loud without understanding it.
""Tell your friend"'"--and there was incredulity in
Riker's voice--?"t you understand her frustration.
That you know she's in a difficult situation, but have
confidence she'll work it through. Cite an instance in
your own life where you experienced similar feelings
of anxiety. Let her know that she's not alone and
that she can count on you as a source of emotional
support."'"
He stared at the ^ws floating there on the
screen and shook his head. "But what's that going
to solve?" he asked in frustration. "Sitting there
and commiserating about how difficult life is?
That's not going to do anything to address the problem!
It's not going to make things better. I mean, why
would she come to me with this problem if she didn't
want me to try and come up with ways to solve it?"
He pushed the screen away in annoyance,
&nb
sp; shutting it off. This was ridiculous. Tang had
been absolutely right about these people. They seemed
to dwell endlessly on how everyone felt.
He resolved to ask Deanna about it the next
time he saw her.
Which was not the next day.
Or the day after that.
Or the day after that.
By the end of the week, the silence on the part of his
"tutor" had become somewhat puzzling, if not
downright irritating. He made several calls
over to the mansion and was repeatedly told that
Deanna wasn't there or wasn't available.
He asked that she return his calls, but she never
did.
He was starting to become irritated, and his
irritability showed through when Sergeant Tang
happened to stop by to chat about a new piece of
ordnance. Riker was short-tempered with him and then
immediately regretted his tone.
"Sorry, Sergeant. That was uncalled for."
Tang stared at him and rubbed his beard stubble
thoughtfully. Riker wondered for a moment how in
hell Tang perpetually managed to look as if
he needed a shave. Did he just scrape along
the edges of the stubble, cutting it to a particular
disheveled length?
In a manner that was a bit too overfamiliar
for a sergeant to deal with a lieutenant--but nevertheless
seemed utterly in keeping with Tang's
personality--the veteran spacer
slapped Riker on the forearm and said, "Can'mon with
me, Lieutenant. I got something set up
downstairs that you look like you could use."
Riker followed Tang to the lower sections of the
embassy, to rarely used storage facilities.
At the moment, the facilities were relatively
empty, particularly because the reception for the
Rigelian ambassador had depleted much of the
stock. Riker knew there would not be a ship along
to restock for several weeks.
Riker was surprised--but not too surprised
--ffsee that Tang and his men had converted the large
facilities into a makeshift armory. "We're
good at making do with what we have," said Tang.
"Every so often, though, we fall into a bit of
luck."
"Good lord." Riker was looking at one of the most
massive pieces of armament he'd ever seen. It
hung on the wall and was almost as large as Riker
himself. He looked around to Tang and said, "May
I?"
Tang waved toward it. "You're the CO. Be
my guest."
Riker lifted the long, cylindrical weapon
down and staggered under the weight of it. He had
trouble placing his hands correctly and felt it