Now as she approached, he saw on her lovely face a sly half-grin.
“Excuse me,” she said, projecting a naivete that he knew was an act, but which he found somehow appealing anyway. “You look a lot like a young man I used to know. His name was Will Riker. Have you ever heard of him?”
Will had to laugh. “Yes, Felicia,” he said. “Yes, I’m a big fat loser. I admit it. I’m sorry.”
“I was thinking along those same lines, Cadet Riker,” she said. “Though a little stronger, perhaps. Hello, Dennis.”
“Hi, Felicia.”
“I don’t suppose you’d mind leaving Cadet Riker and me alone for a little while,” she said, still directing her words to Dennis. “Will and I need to talk about how he’s going to atone for his foolish and, may I say, ungentlemanly behavior.”
Dennis seemed a bit flabbergasted, but she had made it clear that she was demanding this, not really asking, and he responded with his typical good humor. “I…uh, sure. I’ll leave you two alone. Send Will’s pieces back in a bag when you’re done with him.”
“I’ll do that, and thank you for your consideration.” She stood with her hands on her hips, watching Dennis get beyond earshot, then faced Will. Her stance was determined, and Will figured he was in for a severe admonishment. Which I no doubt deserve, he thought. Not that that’ll make it any easier to hear. She pointed to a nearby bench, and they both sat down.
“Felicia, I—” he began, hoping to ward off the brunt of her attack with some kind of excuse. But he didn’t really have one, and she didn’t give him a chance to get it out anyway.
“Be quiet, William Riker, and let me talk. I get the distinct impression that you’ve been avoiding me, ever since September. I also have the feeling that if I hadn’t made a point of ‘accidentally’ being outside your classroom today, I still wouldn’t have seen you. What I’d like to know is what terrible crime I committed to deserve this exclusion from your life, because I must have done something.”
“You…” Will began, and then he stopped because he didn’t know where else to go. “It isn’t anything you did, Felicia,” he said. As he spoke he watched a bird struggle to lift a crust of bread nearly as large as it was. He knew how the bird felt. “I…I had a rough summer, I guess. And then that kind of led into a rough year. I’ve been busy, you know, trying to knuckle down and get my grades up.”
“Even so…”
Will shrugged. “I guess I’m not always good at understanding women.”
Felicia stared at him, open-mouthed, as if he had just emerged from a particularly disgusting cocoon. “Understanding women? It isn’t like we’re a separate species, much less a nonhumanoid alien life-form, Will. We’re just like you, only with some different parts.”
He felt duly chastised. “I guess it’s those different parts that throw me off.”
“You don’t have to let them. It’s those different parts that make things interesting. Anyway, how would you feel if you knew I had avoided you for the last six months?”
“I didn’t realize you hadn’t been,” Will offered. “I mean, I wasn’t so much avoiding you as just not seeking you out. And I thought…” He stopped, once again not quite sure how much he wanted to say, or in what direction he really wanted to take the conversation. “I think I thought you weren’t interested in me. In being friends with me.”
“Well, you were wrong. And I have looked for you, a few times. But after you didn’t answer my messages during the summer, and then during the school year you never seemed to be where I could find you. I got the feeling you just didn’t want to be bothered. At least, not by me.”
Will found that he was smiling for the first time since they’d taken their seats on the bench. “So I’m not the only one who doesn’t always understand other people.”
“People are hard to understand if they don’t communicate,” she said. “But yes, apparently I misjudged you as well. Will you forgive me?”
“I think there’s going to have to be some mutual forgiving,” Will suggested.
“Maybe we should just start over from the beginning,” Felicia said. She offered her hand. “Hello, Cadet. I’m Felicia Mendoza, from El Salvador, Earth.”
“William T. Riker,” he said with a smile. “Valdez, Alaska, Earth.”
“Can we be friends, Cadet Riker?”
“I think I’d like that, Cadet Mendoza.” He felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that had been there since the end of school last year. The awfulness of the summer had been compounded, he knew, by his confusion over Felicia’s feelings—or, as he understood now, his misjudgment of Felicia’s feelings. He still didn’t quite know what had happened, but he thought that it might be better just to let the details slip away, rather than dredging them up and having to undergo the discomfort of facing them specifically. For now, the softness of her hand in his, her warm smile and the light that danced in her brown eyes and the way a strand of her dark hair rested against her olive cheek, where it had escaped her ponytail, all conspired to make him believe that he had come out of a long tunnel into a glorious day.
When Felicia had dismissed him—and he’d been a little hurt by then, because, after all, who wouldn’t want to be the other person in that triangle, the one that Felicia sent somebody away in favor of?—Dennis had taken the opportunity to go back to his room and start searching for a soldier he could research. But his eyes kept glazing over as he tried to focus on his computer screen, his attention kept being drawn to the city beyond the window. The occasional shuttlecraft flashed by, lights blinking in the darkness, and the nighttime illumination of the city spoke of thousands of lives being lived out there.
Felicia was a beauty, there was no doubt of that. But it was to Will, not Felicia, that his thoughts kept wandering. William Riker had something, some quality, that Dennis couldn’t put his finger on.
It wasn’t just that Felicia obviously preferred Will to him, though they’d both known her for about the same length of time. Certainly Will was a handsome guy, and Dennis was a little surprised he didn’t have girlfriends all over the place. But what got to Dennis was that, although Will struggled, he always seemed to come out fine in the end. He had turned his grades around, and now seemed to be on course to finish this year near the top of their class. His other, nonacademic pursuits—athletics and extracurricular activities—were career builders that could take Will far in Starfleet. He was popular, and had made contacts among faculty, staff, and fellow students that would help him immensely in the years to come. He had never made it look effortless, but he made it look possible.
Dennis, on the other hand, felt as if he were drowning, like the water got deeper every day and he could barely see the sky above its surface anymore.
He had just turned back to the computer screen, intent now on finding someone he could study up on, of turning at least this one assignment into a success instead of adding it to the pile of work not-quite-done that threatened to swamp him and drown his career before it started, when there was a knock on his door. “Come in,” he called.
Estresor Fil opened his door and walked in. He waved her toward his couch, and she sat down, her feet no longer touching the floor when she eased her bottom all the way back into it. “Hello, Dennis,” she said as she made herself comfortable.
“Hi, Estresor Fil. What are you up to?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “Visiting,” she pointed out.
“Of course,” he said. “I meant…never mind.” He was, in fact, a little surprised by her appearance. They were friends, certainly, but rarely saw one another outside their group.
“Am I disturbing your work?”
He sighed. “If I had been actually working, you might be. But so far, not.”
“You would let me know if I were, right?” she asked.
“Yes, Estresor Fil. Don’t worry about that. Is there some particular reason for your visit, or is it just a social call?”
She considered the question for a
moment, causing Dennis to believe there was something more to it than a simple drop-in. Maybe she was uncomfortable talking about it, though. Which, given her ordinarily blunt nature, probably narrowed down the likely topics considerably.
“Social call,” she finally said. “Or possibly not…I do, in fact, find myself in need of some assistance. Dennis, how much do you know about love and romance? Earth-style, I mean.”
Dennis had had a few casual girlfriends over the years, but hardly considered himself an expert on such things. And then there was the question of why she had come to him with such a thing. Did Estresor Fil have a crush on him? He wasn’t quite sure how he would feel about that. Complimented, certainly, but she looked just a bit too much like a praying mantis for him to be able to return the compliment. “Not really that much, I guess. I mean, I know the basics, in principle, but when it comes to putting them into practice I’m as useless as the next guy. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just all so confusing to me. I try to figure these things out by myself when I can. And there’s an episode of Squirrely Squid that is really quite helpful, I think.” Dennis wasn’t sure what a primitive holotoon series for children would really have to say about adult love and romance, but he knew Estresor Fil too well to point that out and he kept his doubts to himself. “But even with that, there are some things I just don’t understand.”
“Like what?” Dennis asked. He didn’t have high hopes, but he’d be helpful if he could.
Estresor Fil crossed her ankles and broke eye contact, another indicator that she was oddly uncomfortable. “How do you tell? If someone likes you, I mean?”
Dennis had struggled with that one his whole life. Who didn’t? After third or fourth grade when there was a lot of arm-punching going on—although at the time, he remembered, he had not correctly interpreted the punching either, he had been pretty much lost unless a girl actually came to him and more or less confessed her attraction. “I guess you just sort of have to know it. By the way they talk to you, the way they look at you. If they touch you a lot, you know, just casually. Or sometimes you have to come right out and ask them, I think. And always be prepared to get turned down.”
“That’s just so silly,” Estresor Fil said. “It’s so much easier for Zimonians. If we’re interested in someone, that way, we simply display ourselves. If they are interested in us, they will come over and say so. If not, they pretend they didn’t see the display and there’s no more discussion of it. But there is no ambiguity, no wondering or trying to guess.”
“By ‘display,’ you mean…?”
“Of reproductive organs,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. I don’t think that would go over well here,” Dennis warned her. “Especially at the Academy.”
“Oh, I know that,” Estresor Fil reassured him. “I wasn’t suggesting it, just pointing out that our way is vastly preferable to yours. When you leave it all up to guesswork, mind reading, and so on, I think you are just creating barriers to happiness. Particularly since there are so few genuine mind readers among you.”
“Maybe so,” Dennis admitted. “But the other way might be just a little bit distracting to those around you. Is there…some special person you’re interested in?”
Estresor Fil still couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes,” she admitted after a long moment. “All of you—humans, I mean—looked sort of funny to me when I first got here. So tall, with skin colors that are so bland, and such odd facial features. I think part of why I like your cartoons so much is that there’s such variety in the characters, far more than in your actual species. But I have come to see that there is beauty among you, and one person in particular has caught my interest. I think I might be in love, but I’m not really sure how you tell. And I am definitely not sure how to tell if that person loves you back.”
“If you could come up with a certain answer to that one,” Dennis said, “you’d be the most popular being on the planet.”
“I feel…shy…about telling you who it is,” Estresor Fil said, almost in a whisper.
Dennis wanted to put her at ease if he could. Even though she had definitely unsettled him with this whole line of conversation. “Don’t feel like you have to, if you’re not comfortable.”
“But I want to talk to someone, Dennis. Someone who may be able to help answer my questions and concerns.”
“And you think I’ll be able to do that?” he asked.
“Possibly. But I find myself oddly embarrassed.”
Dennis wasn’t sure how someone whose idea of the proper way to express romantic attraction involved the public display of reproductive organs could be embarrassed about speaking a name, but decided that was a matter for sociologists, not for him. “I’m not very judgmental,” he assured her. “And I promise I won’t laugh or anything. If you want to talk, I’m here to talk to.”
She took a deep breath, which he found a very human thing to do, and let it out slowly. “Very well. I find myself quite taken with Felicia Mendoza. Do you think that she would ever return my interest, Dennis?”
Felicia? Dennis was in shock. He had always assumed that Felicia and Will would get together at some point, and when she had chased him away to corral Will this afternoon, he thought maybe that point would come sooner rather than later. He’d never really talked to Felicia about her love life, but he had never seen any signs, at least that he recognized, that she was attracted to the diminutive green alien with the huge popping eyes.
He could feel her gaze on him, and now he couldn’t bring himself to meet it. “Am I just being foolish, Dennis?” she asked. “Do you think…” He could hear the hurt in her voice as she considered the possibility.
“I…I really don’t know, Estresor Fil.” That was the truth, at least. “I don’t know what Felicia is looking for, that way, or who. If anyone. I’ve never really discussed it with her.”
“So there’s a chance?” Now her voice sounded hopeful, and he didn’t want to be responsible for dashing that hope.
“A chance? Of course there is,” he promised her. “There’s always a chance.” I think.
Riker?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
But the search continues?
Of course it does.
Friends, family, interviewed? All known prior whereabouts examined?
Except Starbase 311, of course.
Of course.
Otherwise, yes. The son, Will Riker, knows nothing. Neither does the woman.
Pulaski? The doctor?
That’s right. She hasn’t heard from him. She’s not happy about it. They were together only a brief while. He seems to have hurt her badly.
No surprise. It’s the kind of man he is. Cold, unfeeling.
It was hard to tell if she was angrier about the fact that he vanished without telling her, or about the fact that she was being asked about him.
She’s a good doctor? This Pulaski?
One of our best.
Then let her live.
Are you sure? He might still have some feelings for her.
Her punishment, for caring about Riker, will come when she learns of his death.
Fitting.
It’s all fitting. That’s the point. It isn’t truly justice if it doesn’t fit the crime.
That’s all I want. Justice.
That’s all any of us want. Justice. And Riker’s head in a box.
Chapter 17
“The land here is as God-forsaken as ever a man has set eyes upon. It is swampe, most of it, with almost no solid erth to walk on. With every step your boots sink deeper into the muck and fill with brackish water. The swampe stinks and is ful of bugs and even gaters which can bite a man before he sees it coming. Fore the last three days and nights I have never been dry but always wet and misirabel. Priv. Rector pulled a leech from my neck, afternoon yesterday, and then found four on his own legs, under his trous., drinking his blood. We are only days from Savanna, they say, where the Navy waits for us
. But the days and nights are cold and we are hungry and ready to fight.
“Its a good thing the taste of our victories in Atlanta and since still remain in our mouths, and the cheers of the slaves who follow us from place to place, to drive us on through this because in a long and hard campaign I cant remember the boys ever beeing so unhappy and fed up. We know what we do is importent and Gen. Wm. Sherman, or Uncle Billy as the boys call him, keeps telling us so. I just keep going, try not to complane, and some of the boys have started calling me Old Iron Boots because they say nothing can stop me from taking the next step. Maybe they are right. Anyhow I guess its all a man can do is to keep marching. We havent seen a Johnny Reb to shoot for two days so we just keep pushing threw the swampe trying to keep powder dry and muskets ready.”
Will closed the old book and carefully set it down on his desk. He’d meant to just skim through it, but he found that the stories Thaddius Riker told—despite his rather primitive literary skills—were fascinating. Riker had accompanied Major General William Tecumseh Sherman on his long fight to Atlanta, and at this point in the tale, they had moved on after putting that city to the torch, headed for Savannah and the sea. Will knew enough about military history to realize that Sherman’s assault on Atlanta and then Savannah proved more than successful, that it was a turning point in the war, capturing one of the Confederacy’s most vital supply centers and cutting Southern rail links. Additionally, by leaving detachments behind to maintain his own supply lines all the way back up to Nashville, Sherman had cut off the South’s western states from the capital in Richmond. The move had been bold, brilliant, and extraordinarily effective.
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