by Peter David
And it wasn’t just for the retelling, either. If he let her get him once (without her realizing, of course, that he had allowed it) then it would go a long way toward restoring her sense of self-worth.
Just the one shot. Just the one.
Just throw one engagement. Move a hair too slowly, react a second less quickly, and she would tag him on the arm or somewhere, gain a point, and have a moral victory that would enable her to step back and announce, “Now we’re done.”
He saw her readying herself for another charge. She took two quick steps—or at least what passed for quick at that point—and then feinted a strike to the head. As feints went, it was fairly pathetic. She had telegraphed it; it was rather clear to Worf that what she was intending to do was reverse the direction of the staff and make her genuine attack to the chest, probably to the solar plexus. But all he had to do was be “fooled” by the feint. Bring his staff up, block it, and that would leave him open for Lwaxana to hit him.
All this went through his mind in a second.
Lwaxana’s staff arced toward his head, and Worf made as if to block it. And then she reversed the staff and tried to strike him squarely in the chest.
The thrust came up several inches short of its target…the reason being that Worf’s hand had snaked out and snared the staff about a foot from the end, away from the sensors so that it didn’t register as a hit. Lwaxana’s staff was held immobile by the Klingon’s superior strength and then Worf shoved her staff right back at her. But he had overestimated his strength and the amount of resistance Lwaxana had left. The staff slid right through her sweat-soaked palms and struck her squarely in the forehead.
“Lwaxana!”
She stood there for a moment, wavering, her eyes blurring and then refocusing.
“Lwaxana, are you all right? Do you want to sit down?”
“Excellent idea, Pierre,” Lwaxana announced. “The corn muffins look scrumptious today.” And with that utter non sequitur, Lwaxana fell forward like a tree. If Worf hadn’t caught her, she would have hit the ground face-first.
“So how are the lessons going?” asked Deanna, her face bright and smiling on the vidcom.
“As…well as can be expected,” Worf replied, standing in the foyer of the Troi mansion.
“Do you feel you’ve learned anything?” She sounded almost playful with the question. Worf wondered just how playful Deanna would feel if she knew he’d nearly decapitated the Keeper of the Holy Rings of Betazed.
“Oh…yes.”
“Like what?”
Desperate for an answer and looking for a way out, Worf fell back on possibly the oldest dodge in civilized history. “I…have to go…I hear your mother calling.”
“I didn’t.” Deanna looked puzzled.
Worf tapped his head. “In here.”
“Oh. Of course, how foolish. Well, I’m just glad to know the two of you are getting along. See you tonight. Love you.” And she blinked off.
Shaking his head, Worf went to Lwaxana’s bedroom, where she was lying with what appeared to be some sort of green liquid-encased compress on her head which Mr. Homn had just placed there. She had switched to a simple white shift, and Worf saw bruises lining her upper arms. He winced inwardly but said nothing as he wondered just how angry she was going to be.
Without turning her head, her gaze went in his direction, and to his surprise her expression actually softened to one of—well, not affection, but not overt hostility. If anything she seemed a little…sad, somehow. “Sit down, Worf.”
He turned to look for a chair and was mildly startled to see that Mr. Homn was sliding one in behind him. He had not even realized the giant manservant had stepped away from the bed, so silently and effortlessly had he moved. Worf couldn’t help but wonder just how much there was about Homn that he didn’t know.
Worf sat with his back ramrod straight. He had absolutely no idea what to expect.
“Tell me…what you were thinking. Toward the end of our bout, I mean.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m interested,” she said matter-of-factly.
“No, I mean…why do you not just tell me what I was thinking?”
She made a soft, impatient clucking noise in the back of her throat as if annoyed that he had to ask. “Worf…believe it or not, I am capable of turning my abilities on and off. This is supposed to be about you. If I tell you what was on your mind, it becomes about me.”
“Very well. It may hurt your feelings…”
“Hurt away,” she said dryly.
“I felt…sorry for you. I thought you were pathetic.”
“Good.”
He blinked. “Good?”
“Yes. That’s what I was going for. You don’t seriously think I was under the impression that I could match you physically?”
“Well…” The question was clear on his face: What was the point of it all?
“What were your options? What were you considering, Worf? Faced with this pathetic, desperate old woman who seemed anxious to prove something to herself…what was going through your mind?”
“I…considered quitting.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. Then I considered allowing you to score a hit.”
“And you didn’t do that, either.”
“No, I did not.”
“Why?”
“Because…I felt it would do you a dishonor. That you deserved only my best effort.”
“Oh, tribblefur,” snapped Lwaxana.
Had Worf been a Delian Optistalk, his eyes would have lunged out of his head. “What?”
“You heard me. Your decisions, your combat tactics, had nothing at all to do with my ‘honor.’ You just couldn’t stand to show anything that could possibly be interpreted as weakness. To quit, or to allow me to score would have threatened your Klingon pride.”
“That is not true.”
“It most certainly is. Here you had a helpless opponent. You could have withdrawn. But you refused, even though you had nothing to prove. Then, toward the end, I muttered, ‘Just once,’ just loudly enough for you to hear. You could have figured out a way to allow me to score, to salvage my ‘pride.’ But your own pride wouldn’t allow it. You put yourself and your sense of duty above everything…in this instance, your duty to the Klingon code of honor, whether real or imagined. You couldn’t allow a helpless woman even the most meager of triumphs against you because it would have been threatening to you. You had to fight; you couldn’t refrain from it, could not justify it in your own mind no matter how much you tried. Your problem, Worf, is that you have too overpowering a sense of yourself.”
Worf gaped at her. “With all respect, Lwaxana, when it comes to a sense of one’s self, I do not believe I can begin to approach your own attitude. How many times have we heard your assorted titles bandied about with pride?”
She sat up, but too quickly, because clearly from her perspective the room was tilting dangerously. She lay back, keeping the compress against her head. “A valid enough point, Worf, as far as it goes. However, I am capable of putting aside myself. If I didn’t…do you think I could have willingly subjected myself to our little sparring match earlier? It’s not always easy, I admit, and as I get older I get more set in my ways. But I do have the ability to reach into myself…and cast myself aside.”
“I do not understand.”
This time she sat up a bit more carefully. Next to her bed was a large vase of cut flowers, and ever so gently she reached over and extracted one. It was large and fragrant, and had many petals of assorted colors. She removed the stem and cradled the bud itself in the palm of her hand. “To be Betazoid…is to be like this flower, Worf. Look at it. See the beauty of its shape? Its fragrance? See all the petals that surround it?”
He nodded.
Lwaxana then, one petal at a time, began to disassemble the flower. She did so very carefully, and each petal would be removed only to reveal another of a different color. When she spoke it was so
softly that Worf had to strain to hear her.
“Each of these layers,” she told him, “compose the flower. Just as we ourselves are composed of different layers and varying textures. Our experiences, our personal histories, our likes and dislikes, are all part of it. But you cannot let yourself define yourself by these trappings. They are merely aspects of you that the outside world is able to see. But if you strip it all away…what do you have?”
She held up her hand. It was empty. The petals lay scattered on the bed.
“You have…nothing,” said Worf.
But she shook her head. “Wrong,” she said with a smile. “The flower is still here. I can feel it in my palm…feel the texture of it, the slight weight. The fragrance of it stays with me. The core, the essence of it remains, even though it cannot be seen. You only believe in what you can see and touch, Worf. You believe in yourself. You have to be able to put yourself aside, to make yourself unimportant. Once you are nothing…then you can become something.”
“That is double talk,” he growled. “Klingon honor can neither be seen nor touched. I believe in that.”
“You believe in it because it is results-oriented. It gives you things of substance. By attending to that code of ethics, the result is title, or properties, or higher rank, or makes you more desirable to the opposite sex, or at the very least minimizes the ways another Klingon can try to kill you since any number of ways would be dishonorable.”
“I do not appreciate your cavalierly dismissing my way of life.”
“I’m not dismissing it, Worf. I’m just giving it some thought rather than accepting it blindly. Have you ever done that?”
His jaw twitched slightly, the muscles flexing in annoyance.
“Why did you kill Duras? What was the purpose?”
The question caught him off-guard. “How do you know of that?”
“It was on your service record. I read up on you last night. Jean-Luc officially reprimanded you. So…what was the purpose?”
“He killed K’Ehleyr, Alexander’s mother.”
“That was the catalyst for your killing him. Not the purpose.”
“I claimed the right of vengeance.”
“And that was the excuse.” She swung her legs around so that they were dangling off the bed. “Again, what was the purpose?”
“So that K’Ehleyr would be avenged,” he said with growing impatience. He was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, even angry, with the line of discussion.
Lwaxana shook her head. “K’Ehleyr was dead, Worf. She was beyond Duras’s ability to hurt or your ability to make her care.”
“He framed my father as a traitor…deprived me of honor…”
“And with those offenses revealed, your father’s name would have been cleared, your precious honor restored. So I ask again, what was the purpose of—”
Worf was on his feet with a roar that nearly shook the rafters, his hands balled into fists. “Because I wanted him dead!”
A hand slammed down on Worf’s shoulder and, to the Klingon’s astonishment, he was shoved forcibly back down into the chair. He craned his neck around to see Mr. Homn standing behind him. Worf couldn’t believe it; Homn had done it with no apparent effort whatsoever. Very slowly, Mr. Homn shook his head from side to side in mild rebuke.
“You wanted him dead,” Lwaxana said mildly, as if Worf hadn’t blown his temper, “because his murder of K’Ehleyr compromised your sense of maleness…your ego, your pride. He had taken something away from you…”
“And from Alexander,” Worf reminded her. Homn removed his hand from Worf’s shoulder, apparently convinced that the Klingon had himself under control.
“If Alexander had never been born, would you still have killed Duras?”
“Yes,” Worf admitted.
“So for his offenses…you had to take his life away from him. And it solved nothing. His sisters perpetuated the cycle of vengeance…a cycle which ended in the destruction of the Enterprise through the efforts of Duras’s sisters. Innocent people died in that crash, Worf. Not many, thank heavens, but some. Innocent people who never knew K’Ehleyr, or cared about Klingon honor. People who were just going about their business and then they died…thanks to vengeance.”
“That is a gross distortion of the facts.”
“Is it?”
He rose, more carefully and unthreateningly this time. “I do not wish to discuss these matters any further. And I do not wish you to mention K’Ehleyr’s name again.”
For a long moment her dark eyes fixed on him, and then she lowered her gaze. “Very well,” she said. “I apologize if I overstepped myself. I will see you tomorrow, Worf.”
He nodded in acknowledgment and turned to leave. “Worf…” she called to him. He turned and looked back at her.
She was holding out her empty hand, palm up. “Would you like a flower?” she asked.
Worf sighed, shook his head, and walked out. Lwaxana raised her hand to her nose, inhaled deeply, saw the flower in her mind, and smiled in appreciation.
“So how did it go?” asked Deanna when Worf returned to the inn.
He considered the fact that he had battled hand to hand with Lwaxana, knocked her cold, had his entire system of honor brought into question, was manhandled with frightening ease by Mr. Homn, and offered a big handful of nothing as a parting gift.
“Actually,” he said thoughtfully, “it went more or less as I expected.”
Ten
William Riker hadn’t realized that he was going to look in the mirror first thing that morning and that, in doing so, it was going to change his life. But that was what happened.
The investigation into the crash of the Enterprise 1701-D had gone about as well as it could have gone. Admiral Jellico was his usual charming self, leading the inquisition and asking most of the truly intense and combative questions. But Picard, doing most of the talking, managed to handle them with aplomb. After a day or so of deliberation, both Picard and Riker were cleared of any negligence and wrongdoing in the ship’s demise.
After that had come the truly positive news. There was going to be a new Enterprise, designated the Enterprise-E. There had been some discussion about the possibility of simply starting over with a new registry number, but the ship had too much of a history about it. Indeed, it had been Picard who had argued most strenuously against redesignating her. “We owe it to the commanders of the earlier vessels…including, most notably, James T. Kirk,” he had said, and he had spoken so forcefully about it that it was almost as if he were defending a personal friend. Consequently, the ship was indeed going to be designated “E.”
Unfortunately, it was going to be a year before she was ready to go.
Picard was already guaranteed the captaincy, that much was a given. But then Picard had faced his toughest fight: keeping his command crew intact. There was any number of vessels and assignments available that were long-term, and the Enterprise officers were considered a highly valuable commodity. Keeping all of the assignments of Picard’s key officers frozen so that they would be available for the new Enterprise when she was ready was considered by several key officials in Starfleet—including, most notably, Jellico once again—a tremendous waste of resources.
That had not daunted Picard, who had pulled every string he could and called in at least half a dozen favors accrued over the years. As a result, the assignments handed out to Picard’s command crew were all short-term, most of them well within range of Earth or even planetside.
The only sticking point had been Riker.
There was a push to promote him. Enough was enough, it was felt. He had more than adequately proven his value in a command capacity, and it was time to assume a captaincy of his own. But as he had before, Riker had resisted the concept, citing the same reasons as he always had: There was no ship like the Enterprise. Anything else was going to be a step down. He was comfortable serving with Picard. More than that, in fact. “As long as there is an Enterprise, and Jean-Luc Picard is in the captai
n’s seat,” Riker had told Picard, “I would consider it an honor to serve as second-in-command.” On that basis, Picard had pushed for—and gotten—Riker instated as his Number One. There was no reason for him to disbelieve Riker’s sentiments. After all, he’d been saying it for years.
But this morning, after Riker had gotten out of bed, stretched, and trudged to the bathroom, he’d looked in the mirror and—for the first time—started to wonder.
What caused him to wonder was his beard.
For the first time he noticed truly pronounced gray hairs in it.
He frowned, tilting his head around, examining it from several different angles. Yup. Definitely, gray hairs. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed them before. He reached up, plucked one out and winced as he did so. But there were more of them, scattered throughout.
He brushed back his hair at his temples and saw a few telltale gray strands there as well. He was barechested at that moment, clad only in pajama bottoms, so he studied his chest hair. No gray there, thank goodness. Wasn’t a hopeless cause, not yet.
It was funny. He’d never thought of himself as particularly vain before. But something about the encroaching gray bothered him more than he could comprehend. He could get it touched up, of course. That would be easy enough. It went against the grain, though, hiding something like that. Besides, all that would do was hide it. But it wouldn’t stop it.
Why did it bother him so? Why?