Interview Two

"You have twenty minutes, Captain," said the taller of the guards, and Picard felt like luxuriating in the glory of almost twice the previous time allotted. At the table, Lore looked up at him with a lazy contempt that Picard was almost certain was fake.

Almost, but not quite. Again, the problem with Lore: if you looked at it in a certain way, everything about him was fake. Programs dictated his every blink, thought and expression. Fakery upon fakery. He wasn't convinced by what the woman had told him either. His ten minutes with her had barely been enough to scratch the surface of the story, and he'd left frustrated by his conviction that she was hiding something.

So she'd literally fallen at his feet, and he'd…what? Taken pity on her? Certainly not. Been her good samaritan, as he claimed? Equally unlikely. The captain held Lore's gaze as he pulled out the chair and sat down opposite. The cat-like yellow eyes never wavered. The ultimate poker face, as most of the senior staff had discovered in Data.

There were two guards this time, and they stood closer to Lore than Picard remembered them doing previously. Was he imagining that they were also holding their guns higher? A glance at the Divemaster's aide (who was doing his best to hover inobtrusively with a recording padd) revealed nothing. He wasted precious seconds on the question:

"Has something happened?"

"All sorts of things have happened," said Lore, humourlessly and deliberately non-specific. "I've had a fascinating night." He cracked an eerie, feral smile. "How about you?"

Picard decided not to be baited. It would achieve less than nothing and took up valuable time.

"I've been talking to Sarah," he said.

"Have you?" said Lore, with an annoying lack of reaction. Picard had been hoping at least for a look of incomprehension at the name, which would have proved that the woman was lying to him. "And what did she have to say for herself?"

What indeed, thought Picard. It had hardly been useful, and had raised more questions than answers. It had been dark: there had been mud: it had been raining…

It was raining in the city by the bay…

Picard could hear Data's pseudo-gangster drawl even now. He tried to put it out of his mind. Dixon Hill, this was certainly not. Although some of the elements were right for a good noir plot - the damsel in distress who might not be all she claimed, the villain thrown in prison protesting his innocence…

"I'd rather hear from you," he said, and pursued his enquiry even as Lore snorted. "So. She was helpless, friendless and alone. You told me you were helping her. What did you do?"

Lore hesitated for what felt like an unbearably long moment and then put his feet up on the table, giving Picard a frankly disrespectful view of the soles of his boots.

"She couldn't get up by herself. So of course I gave her a hand."

"…..son of a motherless WHORE!"

The woman's voice reached a crescendo; the rain continued to belt down as if it were personally punishing the surface of Blackjack for some perceived sin; and Lore actually stopped, ten yards away and with his back to her.

She'd actually been quite inventive, for an organic being without access to an extensive memory bank of invective and alien languages. She'd screamed at Lore, calling him every name under the suns and accusing him, his family and his friends of activities that were colourful, remarkably unlikely and, in one instance, physically impossible.

It was interesting. Anybody that angry at someone they'd never met before had to be harbouring grudges that even Lore would find extreme. And there was absolutely nothing better to manipulate than a good grudge. They could be very valuable, and at the moment he didn't have anything more going for him on this backwater planet than a dead ship and the clothes he was wearing. So he stopped, knowing he was still in her view even in the sodden, dirty darkness.

Lore put a hand on his hip in a cocky fashion that he knew from experience made humans in particular much more irritated at him, and raised his voice to be heard.

"Is this always how you ask for help? Because if so I have to tell you, that may be the reason you're lying in the mud right now."

"The hell with you!" came the response. "You're not going to help me. You already said so."

"Who are the rest of them?"

The apparent non-sequiter caught her off guard.

"What?"

"You said 'You're an even bigger bastard than the rest of them.'".

The pitch-perfect imitation of her voice silenced her.

"So who are the rest of them?"

He turned now, took a step back toward her. "The people in this town? The people on this planet? Males?"

She looked as if she was going to spit at him, but eventually curled her lip and looked away.

"Are you," she said, flatly, "going to help me up or not?"

Lore grinned in the darkness.

"Say please."

She wiped her face with a hand that was just as grimy, and glared.

"Only if you say thank you. Help me up. Please."

He shrugged, then reached down and hauled her up out of the mire as if she weighed no more than a piece of cotton. Mud sloughed away from her clothes and body in great gobbets. A great deal of it spattered onto Lore's bare feet.

He raised his eyebrows at her and said "Thankyou."

"You're welcome. Let go of me." After he made no move to comply, she went on, her voice sounding strained: "My feet aren't on the ground and it's making me quite uncomfortable. Let go of me."

"In a moment. A question for you." He held her a little further away from him, keeping her hanging. "This planet doesn't seem to like you. How did you get here?"

"I didn't mean to! The guidance system on my ship malfunctioned." She jolted as she was set back on her feet. "I was heading for Tractusaria to get the thing fixed."

"What a wonderful co-incidence," said Lore, helpfully.

While Picard was listening to Lore's continuing account with an entire sack of salt mentally deployed, Data was reviewing all the most recent news items (recent in Data's mind encompassing the past hundred years) relating to prisoners, passengers and ethical history. His data padd had finally been provided, and he was reading through all of the permitted material at his usual rapid rate

It was interesting to note that there was a growing area of Intractan popular culture dedicated to fictionalising the invasion of the Benaii. Data noted over fifty novels, sixteen holographic scenarios and an extremely popular periodical written by a purported anonymous source who claimed to be a descendent of one of the Benaii invaders.

Data set a subroutine to analyse the content of all these, and then set the majority of his attention back to visitor/prisoner information. About fifty years ago there had been a prisoner killed in custody, and a typically lengthy Intractan investigation had ensued. Data sifted the news reports for details of what had happened, but they were sketchy at best.

"Prisoner Lieutenant Commander Data, it is time for you to visit the recreational lounge. Follow me."

Data obeyed, and even though the previous shift of Intractan guards had warned the new shift about the loquaciousness of this particular alien scum, his new guard still wasn't quite prepared for the sheer volume of apparently inane questions his charge bombarded him with on the way.