DINNER AT TEN-FORWARD
by ardavenport
- - - Part 8 continues: Deja Glue
Counselor Troi was late. Commander Riker checked the time. She was definitely 14 minutes late for their meeting. He checked the computer.
"Counselor Troi is in Ensign Ikainet's quarters." Riker called her.
"Uh, I'm a little busy," she answered hesitantly. He heard what sounded like other people.
"Is something wrong?"
"Uh, not exactly. Ow!"
"Deanna? What's going on?"
"We're having a little difficulty, Commander. " Doctor Crusher's voice came over the comlink.
"What's happened?" he demanded, now concerned.
"Ensign Ikainet accidentally glued Counselor Troi to a table with a molecular adhesive. We're getting her out of it now."
"I'm on my way." Riker headed for the door.
"You didn't have to tell him," Troi told the chief medical officer, annoyed.
"He was going to find out anyway," Crusher said matter-of-factly as she watched the Engineering tech carefully carve away a small portion of the table. A second technician similarly freed Crusher's assistant, who had unknowingly got her elbow stuck before the doctor had ordered Ikainet to clean up every drop of the glue. The ensign had scurried about picking up model pieces and randomly sticking them onto the model body. Other model pieces covered up the loose blobs on the table: tiny wooden planks, sail material, a miniature cannon. Once the contact bond was activated the glue was harmless.
Commander Riker entered just as Troi and Nurse Ogawa were freed.
"Ensign, what happened?" he demanded.
"They got stuck!" she replied, her big indigo eyes wide.
"I can see that. Why were you using a molecular bond adhesive?"
Her head tilted in a jarring fashion.
"I used it." She pointed at her work. It was the worst model ship Riker had ever seen. The hull was fine, but the masts were crooked and in the wrong places and pieces stuck out at odd places all over it. "Putting the model together."
"Where did you get it from?" Riker demanded.
"I got it from the replicator."
"You got it from the replicator?" he repeated, astounded that it had given her something so obviously dangerous.
"She just asked for the strongest glue available," Troi amended, holding the hand that still had a piece of table attached to her fingertips. The remaining bit would have to be removed in Sickbay. Riker couldn't resist casting a smirk toward the counselor. He'd expressed his doubts when she'd suggested the ship-building and now it appeared that he'd been right.
Riker spotted the glue bottle sitting amongst the other junk on the table. "And she got that from the replicator?" he asked, still disbelieving.
"It's actually very safe," Crusher told him. "It's not toxic; it bonds on contact and becomes inert too quickly to be absorbed into the bloodstream and it doesn't have any fumes. It normally comes with a safety dispenser, but since it doesn't stick to Ensign Ikainet, she took it off and used it quite liberally." Crusher indicated the table, covered with model parts.
Riker picked up the bottle. At once he realized he'd made a big mistake. The bottle, of course, was made out of a substance that the glue would not adhere to. His hand, unfortunately, was not. And neither was the label on the bottle where his hand was now attached.
"Ensign..." he growled.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Blakox picked up a pottery shard and delicately positioned it above the others. The restraining field holding the fragments in place made the air around them feel thickened to his fingers. The pieces formed 30% of a holographic image of the theoretically complete vase. The real, solid parts of it looked like the land masses of continents on a globe. He'd already scanned all the pieces and, with computer-guided force fields, assembled it, but experience had taught him to hand check some variations on the model before he cast the duplicate piece in the replicator.
"Verolian pottery," a familiar voice said. Surprised, Blakox looked up to find Captain Picard, in his red and black command uniform, standing right in front of his desk. Word was that Picard had a very quiet step, occasionally giving people the impression that the captain had intentionally crept up on them, but Blakox had never experienced the phenomenon before.
"Uh, yes." Blakox straightened his uniform, regaining his composure. "I picked it up on Rigel from a colleague," he finished non-specifically. Picard was well known to be an archaeology hobbyist and Blakox had always avoided getting into any history discussions-indeed any discussions at all-with his captain. Blakox loathed amateurs, no matter how well educated.
Picard silently eyed Dr. Blakox's work, his posture evidence that the captain had noted the lieutenant's disdain for his archaeological interest. Command line officer or not, even Blakox had to admit that Picard was not stupid. But Blakox wouldn't retreat from his private beliefs. He'd encountered too much damage and vandalism in archaeology from well meaning amateurs. He'd let Picard know this the first time he'd run afoul of the captain's hobby. Apparently Picard respected his opinion; the captain had hardly ever bothered him since then.
"Have a seat," Blakox invited politely.
"No thank you. I won't be staying long."
You couldn't possibly stand to have your head lower than mine either, I suppose, Blakox thought uncharitably.
"I merely wanted to ask how Ensign Ikainet was getting along here." Picard said.
Blakox shrugged. "Fine I suppose. She does her work. She works long hours. She answers questions when you ask them."
"You haven't had any problems, then?"
"Not really. Other than that she's as dumb as a bar of soap, she hasn't been any trouble at all." Blakox estimated that it was safe for him to insult Ikainet to Picard. He was right; Picard simply nodded thoughtfully.
She's really getting to you, isn't she? Blakox smiled to himself, a serene and subtlety exultant expression. She's really got to you. Tell me, Captain, what does it feel like to have a junior ensign who not only doesn't cringe when you give her the Evil Eye, but who isn't even capable of noticing. Must be just awful for you, Blakox thought with mock sympathy.
"Carry on," Picard said. He turned, left the office area and went over to Ensign Ikainet's corner workstation.
The other ensign at the workstation next to Ikainet glanced back behind her and nervously looked away when she saw her captain. She shut down her work and left, sparing Picard the trouble of asking her to leave. Everyone else in that end of the sociology lab silently found other places to go to.
Ikainet continued at her screens, glowing text and pictures whizzing by at fantastic speeds over her head, her fingers lightly tapping the controls. Picard recognized some of the data. According to Blakox's reports, Ikainet had done a superb job of clearing up the Enterprise sensor backlog, the one bright spot in her performance record.
Picard didn't believe for a minute that she didn't know he was there. Her senses, honed over thousands of years of imitating humanoid form, were far better than Data's. Her "eyes" could "see" more bands of radiation that Lieutenant Commander LaForge's VISOR. Picard doubted that he could be more aware of his surroundings with a tricorder than Ensign Ikainet was of hers.
"Ensign," he finally addressed her.
"Yeeeeeesss!" All the work at her station froze and she whirled around in her chair to face him.
He approached and stood over her as he spoke.
"Ensign, in spite of what happened last night, in spite of my disciplinary actions against you, you continue to find ways of making mischief." He'd just come from speaking with a rightfully embarrassed Commander Riker and an irritatingly amused Doctor Crusher about the glue incident with Counselor Troi. "Why?" he demanded.
Every minute detail of the incidents Picard referred to, every detail about Picard, and every detail about every disciplinary action that had ever been taken against her, jostled inside Ikainet's mind. But the captain's question just wasn't specific enough to single out a reply from the morass of information, so a standard technique emerged from her.
"Mischief?" she repeated.
"Don't play innocent with me, Ensign. You know what I'm talking about. I've already put you on report once, I've assigned you to two duty shifts to try to keep you out of trouble, yet this morning you found time enough to glue Counselor Troi to a table. Why?"
"Counselor Troi. She got stuck. The molecular adhesive bonded to her skin when she touched the table."
"Only after you put it there, dammit!"
Picard's voice rose loud enough to drive the few remaining people at the other end of the lab out. Only Blakox remained, silently arranging the pottery shards at his desk around the corner from Ikainet's station. Ikainet was still his immediate subordinate. And if Picard was to discipline her again, then he was entitled hear it. And the Iotian refused to be driven away from his work and his own lab by his captain.
"Ensign." He towered over her. "I want this to stop. I don't care what you were allowed to get away with on the Beawolf, while you're on this ship it won't be tolerated. Is that understood?" She nodded vigorously.
He glowered down at her gaping, happy smile. He knew he wasn't getting through. He knew that the next chance she had to glue somebody to a table or stuff croutons up her nose, she would take it, no matter how severely he reprimanded her. Was she capable at all of thinking in advance?
"No, Ensign," he told her. "I don't think you do understand." He pulled out the chair at the vacated station next to her and sat down. He hadn't ever really talked to Ensign Ikainet since she'd arrived. He hadn't expected to need to. Maybe it was time he should. Junior ensign or not, she was a focal point of their mission to Caro.
"Ensign, I've been reading about the H'cars on Caro. I've been trying to understand about you and your..." he almost used the word "people", but the H'cars or the Roocaroom didn't form a society. They were just an unusual species. "...the other H'cars and how they...lived on Caro," he said, in his "soft approach" voice that he sometimes used for difficult disciplinary cases. "I want to understand, Ensign," he told her sincerely. "But these constant distractions of yours make it very difficult."
"Difficult?"
"Yes," he answered in a harsher tone. She benignly looked back at him with her big eyes and her open-mouthed smile.
"Ensign," he started again, more genially. "For the sake of this mission, could we agree for you to not behave in your usual fashion?" Picard's request mated with similar Starfleet memories in her past brought forth a reply.
"You want me to stop doing the things I do."
"Yes."
"I don't know how."
Picard frowned. "Are you telling me that you can't control your behavior, Ensign?"
"Nooooooooo."
"Then I don't see why it should be a problem for you to moderate your actions in the future."
"You ask me. Now. Do this. Things come. Later. Not. Now." She held her arms up and jammed her fingers together. "Not the same. Your words. My doing. They aren't the same thing."
Single words. Picard remembered what Tzaki had said about Ikainet, that when she used single words she was forming her own sentences. Was he getting through after all?
"So, my asking you to not do something later doesn't mean anything later," he said.
"You learn things by doing them and associating them with other things you've done. If I ask you to do something, or not do something, and my request isn't specific enough, it won't mean anything to you when I expect you to act on it."
It took Picard a few seconds to decipher her answer and realize that the you's and I's in her statement should have been switched. She was using words that someone else had said to her. But her choice of that statement told him that she did understand, in some way, what he wanted from her.
"Ensign, you do modify your future behavior. You do follow Starfleet regulations."
"Starfleet regulations are very specific. Sir."
She was right. Starfleet regulations were volumes and volumes of tedious verbiage that had evolved over a hundred and fifty years of Starfleet bureaucracy.
"So, you're saying that if I want you to not do certain things, I have to spell out exactly what I don't want you to do for every possible situation?"
"Riiiiiiight!" She leaned forward in her seat.
Picard was reminded of what Tzaki had said about Ensign Ikainet trying to discover and do every annoying thing that didn't violate regulations. But why did she have to do annoying things at all? He did not believe that she couldn't see that she annoyed people.
"Why do you have to do what you do in the first place? It won't make people like you any more. I'm sure you do care in some way if people like you; you wouldn't be here with us if you didn't."
"Actions are the words of the H'cars." She quoted a translation of a post-industrial Caroomadi philosopher. "The actions of the H'cars are formed of what they are, and how they are treated by society. The H'cars are not gods. Treat them like gods, and they will become something else."
"I see." Picard sat back thoughtfully. They sat facing each other in the corner of the sociology lab, the chairs at the other workstations empty. "You don't want anybody to treat you like a god, so you act like a fool."
"Riiiiiight!"
"Nobody's going to treat you like a god in Starfleet, Ensign. Surely you learned that at the Academy."
"When you can do miracles, people treat you different. They ask you for them." She extened her hand to him. "They always have their hand out for something."
"Ensign, you can't do miracles. You can't do a lot of things that people normally credit to a god. You can't bring anybody back to life. You can't control time and space. Even to the ancient Caroomadi, it was clear that your powers were limited. What sort of miracles would they ask from you?"
"Weather!" she answered back breathlessly. "Big holes in the ground. The destruction of the cities of people you don't like."
"You can do that," the captain agreed. Or destroy Borg ships.
For the moment, Picard felt as if he did understand Ikainet's behavior. He wasn't likely to treat her with deference or go running to her for any favors because of it. It made some sense.
But no. That wasn't any kind of excuse. He'd read profiles of the other H'cars on Caro. Two of them, Zini and Maltod, were only mildly eccentric. Otherwise, they were quite social. They were the H'cars that the Caroomadi government brought out to any high dignitaries or scientists who wanted to meet Caro's gods. The third H'car, Gyaznek's, worst asset was a reputation for loud exclamations. And Warrin, The Imbecile, hardly spoke at all and was considered harmless, except for her talent for appearing in odd places at odd times. They had their own peculiarities, but none of them were as demonstrative as Ikainet.
She stared back at him with her oversized indigo eyes while he silently pondered her condition. He could see his own brooding reflection in them.
Her reputation for spoiling parties and doing tricks with food at banquets on Caro was legendary. Starfleet Academy had curtailed her activities considerably, but she still found ways to play the fool. He was convinced that at least part of her motive for doing so was her desire to be the center of attention. For some reason, the attention and fawning that a god received was unsuitable to her. She preferred the position of village idiot.
Now Picard was convinced that she was definitely not an idiot. And to satisfy her craving for the attention of the people around her, she was behaving far below her level of intelligence; that disgusted him. And, he decided, he wasn't going stand for it any longer.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Ensign Ayla Redhawk finished her sixth call to Caro that morning. Next to her Ensign Wesley Crusher was correlating the warp field technical information. Nearby, Lieutenant Gillan showed Lieutenant Commander Data his organization charts. A dozen other people worked around them.
"This is very curious," Data commented. "All of the administrative functions of the Tungaras observatory project and their Roocaroom research have been centralized through the head administrator's office. This is very inefficient. It forces all research decisions, even small ones, to be routed through that office."
"Yes, Sir." Gillan pointed at another display that showed a chart of the accomplishments of the research organization. "That's probably why they haven't gotten much done. The administrative bottleneck slows everything down. And no matter how hard they try, they can't keep track of everything. There are at least twenty-three projects here that have been stopped and started several times." Data looked where Gillan pointed.
"That is a reasonable assumption. It is puzzling why they would do this." To Gillan, it was obvious that the android had never appreciated the causes and results of academic departmental politics.
"I think, Sir, that if some people in the administrator's office thought that their control over the project was more important than the research itself, that this might be the result."
Data carefully considered this possible motivation and correlated it with what he knew of humanoid behavior. "I believe that could be a correct hypothesis. Captain Picard has informed me that the Tungaras administrators have been removed and their actions are under investigation. The Tungaras auditors should be contacting you presently." Data handed Gillan a data chip. "They have already forwarded valuable information directly to me."
On the other side of the room, Redhawk stared back at her screen; she'd been about to sign off when the scientist she'd been talking to asked her to hold for another person. Now she was staring at a new face with dark mauve skin, large blue eyes and bright lavender hair and mustaches.
"Uh, I don't really know much about the H'car's warp fields." She caught Wesley Crusher's attention.
"I'm not very good with it myself," the Caroomadi responded sympathetically. "But it seems to be integral to my investigation, though I am uncertain as to how. Is there someone there who knows something about it?" Redhawk inclined her head toward Crusher next to her, inviting him to speak to this new person. She got up out of her seat and let him sit down. The Caroomadi seemed surprised by the young ensign.
"Pardon me, but...are you not considered young for your species?" the Caroomadi asked. Crusher sighed and tried not to look annoyed by the question. He was nineteen, after all.
"Yes, Sir." The Caroomadi lowered her eyes as if distracted by a stray thought.
"Just curious, Ensign...?"
"Wesley Crusher."
"You are familiar with the warp field of the H'cars?"
"Yes, Sir."
"What is special about them?"
"The H'cars?" Crusher asked.
"Their warp field. What is special about their warp field?"
"Um, uh, a lot. Uh, can you be more specific?" It was entirely unclear what this person wanted. She responded with a few inarticulate technical questions. It was obvious that she was quoting and asking about things that she didn't really understand. Crusher tried to answer in as simple terms as possible, as if he were trying to explain it to his mother (if for some odd reason she ever wanted him to tell her about warp field theory).
"This does not help my immediate needs," the Caroomadi said after several minutes. "But you have been of more assistance to me than the best scientists on Caro have been. You have told me about much more than just a H'car's warp field. May I contact you in the future?"
"I'll have to check with my commanding officers," he told her.
"Of course, of course. They may contact me directly if they wish. I will certainly be speaking with them. I am Zor Bitarl. I am the chief investigator of the Tungaras University murders."
"Murders?" Wesley breathed, taken aback.
"Yes, Wesley Crusher," she responded perhaps a little overdramatically. "Murders."
- - - End Part 8