formidable of challenges, it is a pity that the
simple act of explaining human goals would
prove to be so insurmountable."
"Ah!" said Geordi desperately. "A
castle!"
Data swung his head around in the
direction that Geordi was looking. "Would you be
referring to that somewhat ramshackle inn
approximately ten kilometers away?"
"You see a humble inn, faithful Sancho? But
I see an extravagant palace that might
afford us lodgings!"
Data frowned, trying desperately to share in
the divine madness of his friend. "I would suppose,"
said Data slowly, "that if one were to build up the
exterior considerably--substitute stone walls
instead of a tattered wooden barricade--and were,
in addition, to supplement the structure with towers,
turrets, and a moat ... taking into account all of
that, I could see where the inn could be transformed into a
castle."
Geordi smiled approvingly. "Now you're
getting it," he said.
"Am I?" Data considered that. "I am not
saying that I perceive it as a castle, in the manner
that you saw--or claim to have seen--the windmill as
a giant. I am merely analyzing the
possibilities that the inn could be reworked into a
castle-like structure."
"The dreamers are the ones who conceive of what could
happen," said Geordi, "and the scientists are the
ones who make it happen. The best of humanity
are those who combine both traits."
He urged the broken-down horse forward, with
Data close behind on the hapless ass known as
Dapple.
When Geordi had worked out the holodeck
scenario concerning the adventures of Don
Quixote, born Alonso Quixana, he had
added in a random factor. They were not living out the
sequential life of Quixote so much as existing
in his world for a time, with the various elements jumbled
together. It made for more stimulating entertainment that
way.
Moments later they had ridden their mounts into the
central courtyard of the inn. They caught odd
glances from those weary travelers who were relaxing
nearby with mugs of ale. There was some guffawing and
chortling, and even a good deal of pointing. Data
absorbed it all but was incapable of taking offense,
even if these had been real humans rather than
holodeck simulacrums. As for Geordi,
well--Don Quixote would not have taken offense,
and therefore, Geordi would not either.
He swung a leg down off the horse, and his
boot caught momentarily in the stirrup,
almost throwing him to the ground. He recovered just in
time and managed, with not much grace, to save himself from
a painful and embarrassing spill. Nevertheless,
several of the men noticed his near mishap, and got
a few more chortles at his expense. Data
gracefully dismounted from his smaller jackass.
Geordi turned and took a step back,
surprised by the woman who was approaching them.
"Guinan?" he said in confusion.
The hostess of the Enterprise Ten-Forward
lounge, clad in flowing blue robes and, as
always, a large, flat-brimmed hat, spread her
hands wide and said graciously, "If my eyes
are not deceiving me, we have a knight here in my
humble establishment."
"Your--?"
He turned toward Data in confusion, and then a
slow smile spread across his face. Data
confirmed with a nod and said, "Other crew members
learned of your scenario and requested the
opportunity to participate and surprise you."
Geordi nodded briskly and unconsciously
straightened his shirt a nd rearranged his armor in
imitation of the little motion the captain did whenever he
rose or sat--the motion which, in good-natured
kidding around the ship, had been nicknamed "The
Picard Maneuver." "A knight errant," he
said briskly, "is surprised by nothing because he
expects everything. Is that not right, Sancho?"
"That is right, sir," said Data affably.
"We seek lodging," Geordi told her
imperiously.
"And do you have money with which to pay for your stay?"
Guinan had a proper air of skepticism about
her.
"Money!" said Geordi in outrage. "Good
woman, I'll have you know that the lodging of a knight
is an obligation and a debt that all people are
expected to support. You should be flattered that I
have chosen your abode, and relieved that the sword of
Don Quixote de la Mancha will be present
for a night to defend this castle!"
Guinan took all this in and then nodded her head
slightly. "It would be the height of foolishness
to argue with so brave and determined a knight. Or
his squire," she added as an afterthought, with a slight
nod towards Data.
"You are most kind," said Data.
But Geordi wasn't listening anymore.
Instead, his VISOR'-ENHANCED gaze was
levelled at a woman who was bent over a
well, drawing water up in a bucket. Any
other man on the ship would have had to wait until
she turned around to see who it was, but
Geordi's VISOR immediately fed him body
readings, thermal readouts, and uniquely
identifiable bio traces that promptly informed
him of the identity of yet another unexpected
participant in his holodeck fantasy. He
wondered for a moment if everyone on the ship was going
to turn up. How many people had caught wind of his little
informal birthday party, anyway?
The woman turned, balancing the bucket on
one sturdy shoulder. She was medium build, the
black ringlets of her hair falling about her
shoulders, her tattered and poor clothes hanging
on her body threadbare in places. She looked
at him with curiosity. "Senor Quixana!"
she said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
He took a step toward her with as much reverence
and amazement as he could muster. "She stands before
me! Oh blessed lady, to come to me now when I am
on my quest! It is she, Sancho!" He
grasped Data firmly by the arm and pulled the
android down next to him. "It is the lady
Dulcinea!"
Data tilted his head slightly. "It is the
lady Counselor Troi."
"Hush!" said Deanna Troi with an
impatient stomp of her slippered foot.
"Lady Dulcinea," said Geordi
dramatically, "long have I worshipped you from
afar. Now I embark on my great quests, all
dedicated to the ideal beauty of womanhood that you
represent. In order that I accomplish great
deeds, I must have the ideal woman upon which to bestow
their honor!"
"But Senor Quixana, don't you
recognize me?" said Troi. "I am merely
the daughter of your next-door neighbor. You have
known me for many years. Why do you now call m
e
by this strange name?"
"I call you only by that name which you have always
possessed, but none have dared utter," said
Geordi. "But I, knight errant, on
God's own quest, must--"
"Report to the conference room."
The utterly unexpected voice was, to put
it mildly, a jolt. Geordi's head snapped
around, as did the others.
Captain Picard was standing there, in full
uniform; arms folded across his chest.
Geordi felt that awkwardness one always felt
when someone walked into the middle of an elaborate
holodeck scenario and knocked the props out from
under one's suspension of disbelief. Not that
Geordi had been having any sort of easy time
losing himself in the travails and imaginings of la
Mancha, thanks to Data's incessantly
rational view of the world of Don Quixote. Not
to mention the well-meaning, but jolting, appearances of
fellow crew members from the Enterprise. And
now the captain himself had shown up, presumably
to shut the whole thing down over some emergency or
other.
In a way, considering the way things were going,
Geordi was almost relieved.
Counselor Troi stepped forward. "You seem
distressed, Captain."
Picard turned towards her and his mouth dropped
and, indeed, had wondered over the overt
familiarity that a holodeck being was having with him.
"Distressed ... Counselor," he said
cautiously, as if still uncertain of whom he was
addressing, "is an understatement." He turned
back to Geordi. "I am truly sorry
to interrupt this scenario, Mr. La Forge. I
am aware you've put a great deal of energy into it.
But a matter of some urgency has presented
itself."
"Yes, sir," said Geordi. With a sigh and a
last, quick glance around, he called out, "Computer.
End program."
The castlesthovel vanished silently around
them, to be replaced by the black, glowing grid
walls of the holodeck. "In five minutes,
up in the briefing room," said Picard. His
officers went out quickly in order to change to garb that
would be more presentable. Somehow, armor or peasant
rags didn't seem suitable to whatever situation
might present itself in Starfleet life.
Guinan walked over to Picard and regarded him
with bemused curiosity. "You could have summoned
Geordi, or Data, or Troi, via
communicators," she said. "Why didn't you?"
He permitted a small smile.
"Captain's prerogative," he admitted.
"An indulgence, if you will. I'm something of a
Cervantes enthusiast myself. I was
intrigued to see what Mr. La Forge was going
to develop." He looked at her askance for a
moment. "Guinan, are you quite all right? You seem
a tad ... distracted today."
Her eyes darkened for the briefest of moments, and
then she smiled, although when she spoke, it was with her
eyes half-lidded. "I just haven't been resting
well lately. It will pass."
"Well ... if you have continued problems, I
want you to go to sickbay and have Dr. Crusher
look you over. Understood?"
She nodded slightly. He'd never had to give
her any sort of order in the past, and this was
probably the closest he would ever come to issuing
one. So she treated it with appropriate weight.
"Understood, sir."
He started to turn away and then Guinan added,
"Deanna was quite lovely, wasn't she?"
"Appropriately so," said Picard. "After
all, she is Dulcinea, the ideal woman, the
woman that Don Quixote strives for, and for whom
he endures hardship after hardship. Yet he
derives emotional strength merely from the knowledge of her
existence."
"He performs deeds to prove himself worthy of
her, yet feels he never can be worthy of her,"
said Guinan. She fell into slow step next
to Picard. "Did you ever have a woman like that,
Captain? A dream girl? An unattainable
woman?"
He paused and pursed his lips. "Once, many
years ago. A dream girl. The very idea of her
reality vanishes into the misty haze of youthful
memory."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Guinan
in bemusement.
He turned to her in all seriousness, his brow
creasing. "It means that I would prefer if you did
not ask again, Guinan." He turned away from her
and strode out of the holodeck.
She inclined her head slightly in the direction
he had departed. "Message received," she said
to no one.
Picard walked briskly down the corridor,
paying no attention to where he was going. He gave
quick nods of acknowledgement to all those who greeted
him, but he didn't pay the least bit of attention
to whom he was greeting. Thanks to Guinan, his
thoughts were--albeit briefly--a
million light-years and half a lifetime
away. By the time he got to the turbolift,
however, he had neatly tucked his mind into its
proper, ordered fashion, and there it would remain,
if he had anything to say about it.
Which, as things turned out, he didn't.
Chapter Four
The captain of the U.s.s. Chekov
regarded the vista of space before him and pondered
seemed to become. The endless freezing vacuum was
dangerous enough without massive cubes that could spring
out of warp space without warning, filled with soulless
mechanical beings that crushed everything in their path.
He winced when he thought about the friends that he'd
lost in the hopeless fight at Wolf 359.
Forty ships. Gods, forty ships. And where had
he been? Too far away. Too damned far
away.
And who saved the day?
"Picard," he muttered, shaking his head.
From his right-hand side, his first officer looked up
from the fuel consumption report that she was
initialing. "Jean-Luc Picard?" she asked.
He afforded her a glance before allowing a rueful
smile to touch his lips. "Yes, Jean-Luc
Picard."
"The finest captain in the fleet," she said
firmly, and then, in quiet awareness of the
importance of politics, she began to add,
"Present company excepted, of course."
But her captain waved her off. He
uncrossed his legs and stood, taking several
short steps across the bridge. His bridge, the
bridge of an Excelsior-class ship. It
was a good bridge, a solid bridge--
Not an awesomely spacious bridge, however.
The bridge of a Galaxy-class ship, now that was
spacious. He'd never had the opportunity
to step onto one, but he'd heard you could
practically play field hockey in one of those.
But
there were only a handful of those magnificent
ships in the fleet--one of which had been destroyed
at Wolf 359--and, of course, the finest of those
rare ships, the most renowned, the most sought after was
commanded by none other than--
"Jean-Luc Picard," said the captain
softly. "You don't have to be
deferential, Number One. I know how highly
regarded he is by everyone in the fleet--not the least
of whom is yourself. I can't blame you at all.
You were there when he pulled off "The Picard
Miracle.""
"Is that what they're calling it now?" she said
in amusement. "Well, I suppose it was, in
a way. It was something to see. I thought we were dead
for sure."
The rest of the bridge crew, ostensibly going
about their business, were nevertheless slow in their
duties, so that they could pay attention to what the first
officer was saying. There were so many stories of
destruction and loss surrounding the attack of the
Borg, that starship crews--what few there were
left--savored any telling of the one tale that
ended with the Federation triumphant.
"It must have been a tense moment," said the
captain drily. He scratched idly at his
graying sideburns and glanced around the bridge in
quiet amusement at his whole bridge crew,
trying to look as if they weren't paying any
attention. He caught the eye of his helmsman,
who grinned sheepishly at being noticed.
With the air of someone who had repeated a story
to the point where she had every single beat and dramatic
moment down pat, she said, "I'll never forget the
look in Commander Riker's eye when he said he was
about to give the order for us to ram the Borg ship.
I'm not sure what he hoped to accomplish--
damage it, maybe for a few minutes. Buy the
Earth that much more time. ...
"And there was this teenage boy at the helm,
youngest ensign I'd ever seen. I thought he'd
crack when Riker ordered that a collision course
be laid in. Give the boy credit. He
sucked it up, said, "Yes, sir," and laid
in the course command."
By now no one was making a pretense of doing
anything other than listening to her. "What were you
thinking, Commander Shelby? Right then, when it looked
all over," asked the navigator. His name was
Hobson, and he was so fresh out of the Academy,
he practically looked like he had a sheen to him.
Shelby paused, scratching her thick red
hair thoughtfully. Hobson had addressed her with a