Star Trek: Pantheon (37 page)

Picard gazed at Serenity Santana across a table in the
Stargazer’
s mess hall. She, in turn, was gazing into her drinking glass, her raven hair liberated from its ponytail.

The woman had been happy to leave the brig, no question about it. It couldn’t have been a picnic sitting in the same small enclosure hour after hour, denied access even to the ship’s library computer lest she stumble across something of some small tactical value.

The second officer glanced at the open doorway, through which he could see a watchful Pug Joseph. A necessary precaution, he conceded, but one that made having a casual conversation a bit awkward.

“You’re right,” Santana observed. “It
is
a little awkward.”

Picard turned to her. “You read my mind,” he said, hearing a mixture of surprise and delight in his voice.

“Of course,” she returned.

“You know,” he said candidly, “I haven’t had much experience with telepathy. Few Federation species are capable of it. And none of them are capable of telekinesis.”

“Unfortunately,” Santana replied, “neither talent is very highly developed in our case. Captain Eliopoulos must have mentioned that.”

The commander nodded. “He did. Still…”

The woman’s dark eyes narrowed with mock suspicion. “Are you angling for a demonstration, Commander?”

He chuckled. “Can’t you tell?”

Santana looked at him askance. “If you’ve spoken to our friend Eliopoulos, you know I’m only privy to active thoughts.”

“I do know that,” he admitted. “And for the sake of expediency, I’ll make no bones about it…I
would
like to see a demonstration.”

She seemed charmed by his manners. “All right. One feat of mental dexterity coming up.”

Gradually, her eyes took on a harder cast. Then the skin around them began to crinkle. It was clear that she was focusing on something, concentrating as hard as she could, though the second officer didn’t know what kind of task she had set for herself.

Then he heard a tinkling sound and he looked down. Santana’s drink was moving, levitating off the table, the ice in it clinking merrily against the sides of the glass.

As Picard watched, the drink gradually rose to a height of perhaps twenty centimeters. Then, just as slowly, it descended, eventually coming to rest on the table again.

He looked up at Santana. “Impressive.” He meant it.

She shrugged. “Eliopoulos didn’t think so. He kept waiting for me to send his station spinning through space like a top.”

“You have tops where you come from?” Picard asked.

“We
are
human,” she reminded him. “If you saw my world, I’m sure you’d see a lot that’s familiar about it.”

He found himself smiling. “And a lot that’s
not,
no doubt. To be honest, it’s the latter that intrigues me.”

“You want to know how we’re different?”

“I do indeed.”

Santana thought for a moment. “As Eliopoulos must have told you, we value our privacy.”

“He mentioned that,” Picard conceded. “But surely, that’s not the only quality that sets you apart from us?”

She thought some more. “We’re good gardeners, as a rule. And good musicians. Unfortunately, I’m one of the few exceptions to the rule. I couldn’t carry a tune if my life depended on it.”

“Anything else?”

Santana shook her head. “Nothing. Except for our mental powers, of course. But I think we’ve already covered that topic.”

“Not completely,” the second officer said. “You haven’t shown me much of your telepathic abilities.”

She waved away the suggestion. “They’re not very impressive in comparison to my drinking glass trick.”

“Nonetheless,” Picard insisted.

“Persistent, aren’t you?”

“So I’m told.”

Santana sighed. “Have it your way, Commander. You’ll have to think of something, of course. Something pleasant, I hope.”

“I’d be happy to,” he told her. And he did as she had asked.

Santana’s brow furrowed for a second. Then she said, “Your mother was a lovely woman. And if I’m not mistaken, a wonderful cook.”

Picard was intrigued. He had created an image of his mother in his mind’s eye, but he hadn’t pictured her preparing food.

“Why do you mention her cooking?” he wondered out loud.

“The smell of her,” Santana explained. She closed her eyes. “I don’t recognize it, but it’s some kind of spice. Sharp, pungent…”

Abruptly, the second officer realized what she was talking about. “Cinnamon,” he said. “She would use it in her apple tarts.”

Her eyes still closed, Santana inhaled deeply, as if she were in Picard’s mother’s kitchen. “And you liked those tarts, didn’t you? In fact, you used to think about them on your way home from somewhere.”

“School,” he confessed.

She opened her eyes. “Yes. School.”

“Extraordinary,” said Picard.

Santana shook her head. “No. What would be extraordinary is if I could read your mind like a book, finding any memory at all. They say some of our people could do that in the days when the colony was first founded. But we can’t do it anymore.”

Perhaps it was the look on her face, a little sad and a little dreamy, as she contemplated something she considered wondrous. Perhaps he had crossed some invisible threshold of familiarity. Perhaps many things.

Picard couldn’t explain it. He just knew that he was intensely aware of how beautiful Serenity Santana was, and that that awareness was making his heart beat faster.

Then he saw her blush, and he realized that she had read his thoughts again. He felt embarrassed and ungainly, like a youngster whose crush on some girl had inadvertently been exposed.

“I’m sorry,” the second officer told her.

Santana looked sympathetic. “Don’t be.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I didn’t mean to—”

She held up a hand for silence. “I’m serious, Commander. There’s no need to feel awkward.” Unexpectedly, her expression turned coquettish. “After all, who knows how embarrassing
my
thoughts might be.”

For a heartbeat, Picard was lost in the dark, sorcerous pools of Santana’s eyes. Then he swallowed and pulled himself back out again.

“An…intriguing notion,” he replied.

She seemed on the verge of saying something in response. But instead, she picked up her glass and sipped her drink. By the time she put it down again, the second officer had regained his composure.

“I hate to say it,” the commander began, “but—”

“I know,” Santana said, saving him the trouble. “It’s time I was returning to the brig.”

He nodded soberly. “Yes. After all, I have a shift starting on the bridge. But I enjoyed our conversation. Perhaps we—”

“Could have another one some time? Here in the mess hall?” The woman shrugged. “Why not?”

Picard couldn’t help feeling there was more to say. However, he didn’t want to make this any more personal than it had to be. When it came to Serenity Santana, he was simply doing his duty. He was following the orders his captain had laid out for him.

He didn’t dare consider the possibility of falling in love with the woman.

Without another word, the second officer got up and gestured to the doorway. Santana rose as well and preceded him out into the corridor. Then she allowed Pug Joseph to accompany her back to the brig.

Picard watched them go for a moment. Heaving a sigh, he turned and headed for the bridge.

Carter Greyhorse was sitting behind his desk, studying the results of the examinations he had already conducted, when he spied Gerda Asmund through one of his office’s transparent walls.

The last time the doctor had seen the woman, she had been wearing a tight-fitting exercise garment, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her skin tantalizingly moist with perspiration. Now, she was dressed in the cranberry tunic and black trousers of Starfleet, looking like anyone else in the
Stargazer’
s crew.

No, Greyhorse corrected himself quickly and emphatically…
not
like anyone else. Not at all. Even in her standard-issue uniform, with her spun-gold hair woven into an austere bun, Gerda Asmund was a most attractive woman.

A most
exciting
woman.

But she was there to see him as a physician, not someone with whom she might share a love interest. He forced himself to remember that. Taking a deep breath, he assumed his most professional demeanor.

Unaware of Greyhorse’s inner turmoil, the blond woman came to a stop at the entrance to his office. “Lieutenant Asmund,” she said in a husky but eminently feminine voice, “reporting as requested.”

The doctor smiled—not an activity at which he had had a lot of practice—and gestured for his patient to take a seat on the other side of his desk. She complied without comment.

Her eyes were so blue it almost hurt to look at them. He tried his best not to notice. “Thank you for coming,” he told her. “Do you have any questions about why you’re here?”

She shrugged. “You need to test my extrasensory perception quotient before we penetrate the barrier. It’s straightforward enough.” She frowned. “Though, as you must know, I’ve been tested before.”

Greyhorse tapped his key pad and brought up Gerda’s medical file. It took no time at all to locate the results of her last ESP test, which showed she had no talent in that area whatsoever.

“Let’s see,” he said. “ESPer quotient…oh-one-one. Aperception quotient…two over twenty-five. As you say, you’ve been tested before.” He looked up from his monitor. “However, things can change, and Starfleet regulations are rather specific in this regard.”

The woman nodded. “Of course. Let’s just do what we have to.”

The doctor pretended to review other parts of her file, though he had come to know them pretty much by heart. “You’re the primary navigator,” he noted, “and have been since the ship left Utopia Planitia some seven months ago.”

“That’s correct,” she said.

“Prior to that,” he observed, “you served on the
da Gama,
and before that you graduated from the Academy with honors.”

“Correct again,” Gerda told him.

Greyhorse looked up at her. “It also says here that you were raised in a…Klingon household?”

“Yes,” the navigator said matter-of-factly, as if such things happened all the time. “As children, my sister Idun and I were the only survivors of a Federation colony disaster. After several days had gone by, Klingons intercepted the colony’s distress signal and rescued us. Apparently, we impressed them with our resourcefulness.”

He grunted thoughtfully, seeing an opportunity to establish some kind of rapport with her. “It must have been quite…”

“Yes?” Gerda prodded.

He felt himself wither under her scrutiny. “Nothing,” he said at last. “Nothing at all.”

It was no use, he reflected. He wasn’t good at small talk. Truthfully, he wasn’t good at
any
kind of talk.

If someone gave him a disease to cure or an injury to heal, he was as sharp as any physician in the Federation. But when it came to being a person, a social creature capable of interacting with other social creatures, he fell significantly short of the mark.

Greyhorse had come to grips with his shortcomings a long time ago. He had gotten to the point where they didn’t bother him. But they bothered him now, he had to admit.

And it was all because of Gerda Asmund.

“Doctor?” she said.

He realized that he had been silent for what must have seemed like a long time. “Yes,” he responded clumsily. “Sorry. I was just thinking of something. Er…let’s begin, shall we?”

Gerda nodded. “Indeed.”

“I’ll bring a picture up on my screen,” Greyhorse explained for the fifteenth time that day. “You try to develop an impression of it in your head, using any means that occurs to you. And while you’re at it, the internal sensors in this room will monitor your brainwaves.”

She smiled a weary smile. “I know. As we’ve established, I have undergone this test before.”

He smiled back as best he could. “So you said.”

And he began the examination.

Picard studied the small, blue-and-green world on the
Stargazer’
s forward viewscreen from his place beside Captain Ruhalter.

“Establish a synchronous orbit,” said Ruhalter.

“Aye, sir,” replied Idun Asmund from the helm console.

Nalogen IV was an M-Class planet, which meant it was inhabitable by most oxygen-breathing species. Indeed, there was only one sentient form of life on the planet, and it required oxygen to survive. However, it wasn’t an indigenous form of life. It had originated in a solar system one hundred thousand light-years away.

Nearly a century earlier, several ships’ worth of Kelvans had set out from their home in the Andromeda Galaxy to find a new place for their people to live. One of their vessels was damaged as it penetrated the galactic barrier and its crew was forced to abandon ship.

Since Kelvan technology allowed them to change form, they took on the appearance of humans—a populous species in that part of the Milky Way galaxy—and put out a distress call. Ultimately, they hoped to commandeer a starship and use it to return to their homeworld.

However, their takeover attempt was thwarted by Captain James Kirk—the same near-legendary Starfleet officer who had dealt with the menace of Gary Mitchell a few years earlier. Once the threat to his vessel was defused, Kirk arranged for the Kelvans to settle on a world in Federation space.

That world was Nalogen IV.

“Hail the colony,” said Captain Ruhalter from his captain’s chair.

“Aye, sir,” responded Paxton.

The comm officer’s fingers flew over his communications panel. A few moments later, he looked up again.

“I’ve got the colony administrator,” Paxton reported. “His name is Najak. But he says he’d like to restrict communications to audio only.”

Ruhalter frowned as he considered the viewscreen. “Very well, Lieutenant. Tell him I’ll comply with his request.”

Picard had to admit that he was disappointed, if only to himself. He had hoped to get a glimpse of Kelvan civilization. Now it looked as if he wouldn’t get the chance.