Maya was trapped on the ship by her inability to use the transporters, so she helped in the Starfleet crew in the transporter bays to receive the Alphans. They looked shabby and crumpled in the bright surroundings of the Enterprise, their faces drawn and pale and their uniforms dingy. Her spirits were uplifted by how many people were delighted to see her, and she was fully occupied for the next two hours in showing everyone to their guest quarters and answering questions about the ship and what had happened to her. She hardly had time to think about Tony or the others. She was showing Sandra Benes how to use a replicator when Riker called her.
"I thought you'd like to know that the evacuation's complete," he said, his voice slightly tinny against her chest. "The Enterprise will be setting off for Lanthenon almost immediately. It just occurred to me that you haven't had a chance to get your own things off the base."
"No,
I haven't - but it doesn't matter. I haven't very many personal
possessions anyway. Those I do have, I can easily pick up when we
come back. The Captain said we'd be returning in about five day's
time."
"If everything goes smoothly on Lanthenon, yes."
"Why shouldn't it? I thought it was only a wedding."
"Weddings
are notorious for going wrong. There's something else I wanted to
say - this opera. They're all ready to go, and the singers have
lined up their off-duty time for tonight. Are you still
interested?"
"Of course I am, but I thought we had to go to
dinner with the Captain."
"I had a word with the Captain. He doesn't mind if we go to the opera instead, he knows what we both look like."
"If you're sure."
"No problem. I'll see you in your quarters in half an hour."
Maya went back down to the transporter deck to check that there was nothing left for her to do, and ran into the Commander, Tony and Helena in the company of the Captain, Dr Crusher and Counsellor Troi. They had been the last to beam up, and were being shown to their own quarters.
Tony acknowledged his earlier coldness by hugging her shoulders as they walked along, silently asking whether he was forgiven. Maya wasn't sure that he was, but she could never stay angry with him and she was too glad to be with him again.
"I'll show you my quarters," she said. "I can take you to yours later."
"That sounds like some kind of invitation."
When they got there and the door was shut behind them, Tony grinned and said, "I thought we were never going to get a chance to be alone." He grabbed her and kissed her hungrily.
"Do you want to see how a replicator works?" she said, emerging.
"Not particularly."
"It can make beer."
"Then definitely not."
She laughed. "Oh Tony, I'm so happy to see you," she said with an impulsive burst of warmth. It wasn't the sort of thing she usually dared say to him, but he was too busy looking her up and down to react, as she feared he might, with flippancy.
"You look different," he said. "You've done your hair differently - looser."
"It's the fashion on the Enterprise."
"And the dress - "
"Do you like it?"
"It's very nice. How does it come off?"
"Tony!" Still laughing, she tried to wriggle away from him when she realised he was searching down her back for a fastening. "Not now."
"Why not now? We don't have to go to the Captain's dinner for another hour."
"No, but - Tony, you've just arrived on this incredible starship, and this is the only thing you can think about?"
"After nearly three weeks without you, you bet it is." He gave up looking for the fastening and tried to pull the dress down round her shoulders, pressing kisses on the exposed flesh.
"Tony - no - I mean it - we can't. Will's going to be here any moment."
"Will? Who the hell's he?"
"Commander Riker."
"Oh, I see. What's he coming here for?"
"He's taking me to an opera."
"He's taking you to an opera? Where do you think we are, La Scala Milan?"
"No, the ship's amateur opera group are doing it. He arranged it for me specially."
Tony drew away with an expression of annoyance. "You haven't lost any time hob-nobbing your way up the hierarchy, have you?"
"Tony! You're jealous."
"Me, jealous? How can I be jealous of a man who forgets to shave in the morning?"
"You can come too."
"No thanks, I wouldn't want to play gooseberry."
"Oh, Tony."
The door sounded.
"Ignore it," he said, in a more serious tone, drawing her close again. His quick dark eyes were soft with passion.
She wanted to, and she struggled with her conscience. "I can't," she said, breaking away and opening the door.
Riker stood politely outside, his hands folded behind his back, instead of entering immediately as he usually did. He gave her a brief smile in greeting, then glanced down at her dress.
Maya hitched the sleeves back over her shoulders, and her face flushed.
"I'm interrupting," said Riker quietly. "I'd better go."
"No - don't. Is it all right if Tony comes with us?"
"Of course it is."
"I'm ready, then." She turned to him expectantly.
Tony crossed his arms and stayed where he was. The pause became embarrassing.
"Excuse me a moment," she said to Riker.
He nodded, and she left standing in the corridor and went to Tony. "Come on, Tony."
"I told you, I don't want to go."
He was serious. Exasperated, Maya said, "Why are you being like this?"
"Well, for a start I don't want to go to Captain what's-his-name's dinner on my own."
"But Will arranged this performance for me, I have to go. Look, Tony, Will's been very good to me since I got here, he's spent a lot of time looking after me."
"I bet he has."
"What do you mean by that? You are jealous!"
"No, but I think you should tell him to go off to his opera by himself and stay here with me."
"I can't." She took his hands. "Please, Tony."
"No!" He snatched away.
Both irritated and hot with embarrassment, Maya gave up and joined Riker, who was examining the wall. The door hummed calmly shut on Tony's glare, and she marched heedlessly along the corridor.
Riker followed her pace easily with his large strides. "If there's a problem - "
"No! There's no problem. I'm sorry about Tony's rudeness."
"That's all right. I can take it."
His calm affability was soothing. There were a few moments when Maya thought she ought to change her mind and go back, but by the time anger had propelled her as far as the theatre she was trapped by courtesy. As she took her seat she decided she may as well relax and enjoy it. She would find Tony and make him sorry later.
Helena had struck up an immediate rapport with Beverly Crusher, when she discovered that they had a lot in common beside their profession, and after the Captain's dinner was over they went to Ten Forward to continue swapping their life stories. John had only had about two hours sleep, and had to go to bed to catch up. Helena was used to getting by on any small disjointed amount of sleep, and was able to stay awake without strain. She felt brilliantly awake anyway, her senses sharp and flooded.
Beverly brought her an iced drink in a glass. "Raktajino," she said. "Klingon coffee. Try it. This is the sophisticated thing to drink late at night, this year anyhow."
Helena sniffed at the black oily liquid, and tried a sip. It tasted like it looked. Sophistication in the twenty-fourth century was evidently not going to come easily.
"Tell me if I've read this right," said Beverly, settling down with her own cup of raktajino and leaning forward. "You and Commander Koenig - are you together?"
"Yes, we are."
"How do you find that? I mean, I've often wondered, in a general kind of way, whether it would be difficult being in a relationship with your own commanding officer. And if that commanding officer is also in command of the ship, or starbase or whatever, I imagine you'd run into all sorts of conflicts of interest and awkward situations. Have you found that?"
Helena considered. "Yes, I suppose so. It's something I've gotten used to, so I haven't thought about it much recently, but - yes. We used to be very careful. It certainly wasn't love at first sight. When we first met, just before breakaway - John had only been assigned to Alpha a few days before it happened - we were circumspect with each other. We were attracted - I mean, you are, aren't you - but I remember I was wary, and I didn't think it would be the best idea to get involved. It was almost a year before anything happened, and then it was a case of a late night, a bottle of wine on his birthday, and waking up the next morning wondering if we'd done the right thing. We did try to backtrack, and cool it off after that, but - well, that didn't work. And then, for a long time, we tried to keep it quiet. But Alpha is hopeless, of course, everybody knows everybody's business. It became a charade and we dropped it."
"How about your patients, though? In a closed community, wouldn't it affect your relationship with them?"
"To some extent, yes. Everyone on Alpha thinks that I make the decisions - which isn't true - and I wonder if people are wary of opening up to me because I'm assumed to have the Commander under my control. The truth is, if John and I do have a conflict of interest in a professional matter, he thinks he has to be firmer than he would have been if he weren't involved with me. And he's always out there, at the forefront of any mission, putting himself at risk - and I find that hard to cope with, sometimes."
"Captains of starships don't do that anymore," said Beverly. "It's not considered good strategy to risk the life of a captain by letting him lead an away team."
"John feels it's his job to be first in the line of fire, or he can't ask anyone else to follow him. I've nearly lost him so many times and yet I never get numbed to the fear. When you lose your husband so young - well, you know that - you know, ever after, what can happen, and how it will feel. I think that's why I wasn't interested in having another relationship for so long after my first husband died. I did the classic thing, I threw myself into work. Moonbase Alpha seemed like a good assignment. If breakaway hadn't happened, I'm sure I'd still be single. I just wasn't interested. But in a survival situation, you realise what things really matter."
Although Beverly was watching her with an expression of concentration, Helena realised that she had been talking too much about herself.
"What
about you?" she asked. "Have you anyone special?"
"No,"
said Beverly. "From what you say, I think I'm still where you
were six years ago, and my
husband died more years ago than I care to tell you. I really do
admire your courage."
"Me? I'm afraid almost all of the time."
"But you've had the conviction to commit yourself in spite of that, and acknowledge, as you said, what really matters."
"You had a child. I wish more than anything else I'd had the resolution to do that."
"Why didn't you?"
"Oh, we were going to concentrate on our careers, and then, ten years down the line or so, start a family when we were secure in our professions. Lee was an astronaut, I should have considered the possibility that he might have been killed, but when you're young you just don't, not seriously. Three years after we were married, my career was all I had left."
"But you couldn't have known," said Beverly. "Jack and I made the opposite decision, we had a child as soon as we were married. In Starfleet you often have to be apart sometimes, a lot of Starfleet couples seem to have children to maintain the bond and cope with the separation. That's one reason, anyhow. And, of course, I'm glad we did, because part of Jack lives on in Wes."
"Yes. I guess, though, if Lee and I had children, I would never have gone to Moonbase Alpha, and I wouldn't have met John."
Beverly was silent for a moment, then began in a more measured tone. "Maya told us about the decision you all made on Alpha, not to have any children while you were stranded there."
"Yes."
"I have to say, if it had been me, I would have argued against that."
"I did," said Helena. "It's the only thing John and I have serious arguments about. At first I was in complete agreement, it was obvious. Then, as time went on, and more couples came together, and we didn't find a planet to settle on, and we lost more people, I began to change my mind. I thought that for all the resources they would consume, a few babies would give a tremendous boost to morale. John just didn't see it that way. We've fought about it on and off for maybe the past three years. He says we can't risk adding an extra burden on our resources, but I can't help feeling there's more to it than that."
"You
think he doesn't want children himself?"
"Yes," said
Helena, glad that she was so quick on the uptake. It was heady, and
liberating, to be able to talk like this to someone who understood
and who was unconnected with the humid tangle of Alphan society. "He
didn't have children with his wife, and they were married nine
years before she was killed in the war. He says she wasn't
interested, but he dropped the subject very quickly the one time I
asked him. Maybe the memory's painful for him, so I never press it,
but who knows? Perhaps it's paranoid of me to think that he'd
condemn everyone on Alpha to childlessness just because he didn't
want them, but it might be at the back of his mind."
"Jean-Luc hates children," said Beverly, "and I can tell you, he'd happily have the entire ship cleared of them."
It was a moment before Helena realised that she meant Captain Picard.
"Have you asked him whether that's the case?" Beverly continued.
"Of course I have. And he just says 'don't be ridiculous' and won't talk about it. No reassurances, just a cut off."
"So you decided to go ahead anyway, hm?"
Helena stared at her, stunned. "No, of course not," she said, automatically.
Beverly looked at her intently, then dropped her eyes and gave a slight shrug. "Okay. I'd have considered it myself."
Disconcerted, Helena looked round the bar. It was filled almost to capacity with people of all races and species in chatting, intimate pools. Suddenly, near the entrance, she spotted Maya in the company of the officer who had not been at the Captain's dinner. They appeared just to have come in, and were looking round as if searching for someone. Helena waved her hand to attract Maya's attention, and Beverly followed the direction of her gaze.
Maya caught her eye across the long room and made towards their table. The Enterprise officer followed her.
"Have you seen Tony?" Maya asked.
"Not since the dinner. I think he went to bed, Maya. It was the middle of the night when the Enterprise reached Alpha and I know for a fact that Tony hadn't had any sleep before that."
"Oh." She looked distracted, and glanced back at Commander Riker. "I'd better not disturb him."
"We might as well have some dinner here, in that case," he said. "I could do with something to eat now."
"All right," said Maya, and smiled at them. "I'll see you later? We haven't had a chance to talk yet."
"Tomorrow I guess we'll have all the time in the world," said Helena. She watched, slightly puzzled, as Commander Riker led Maya away to a table at the other end of the bar. There was an atmosphere of intimacy about them, and she saw Riker touch her hand as he offered her a seat and Maya smile up at him.
Beverly had twisted round in her chair to watch them too. She turned back, sipped at her coffee, then said, "How close are you to Maya?"
"Oh - fairly close, I should say."
"Enough to give her some advice on a personal matter?"
"Well - possibly."
"Look, maybe this is none of my business. Correction, it is none of my business. But one reason I suggested we come here was to have a word with you about - " She indicated over her shoulder with a slight motion of her hand. "I didn't want to say anything to Maya herself because I don't know her, and I don't think it's my place therefore to interfere. You're her friend - if I tell you how I see it, you can judge whether or not to pass it on."
"Go on," said Helena, intrigued.
Beverly
cupped her hands round the glass and leaned further forward. "Will
Riker has been courting Maya ever since she got here. There's no
other way of describing it. He specially requested to be her liaison
officer when she first arrived. Normally, that would mean he'd look
after her for a couple of days til she settled in. As far as I can
see, and a friend of mine who's very close to him confirms it, he's
spent every minute of his off-duty time with her."
"Maya
always attracts attention from men. She's very good at fending them
off."
"She hasn't been doing much fending. It's become the talk of the ship. I promise you, for the past two weeks I have never seen them apart."
"Maya is already involved with someone."
"Hm. Your security chief, the one who said nothing at dinner?"
"Yes. He's been under stress recently."
"You see, I was surprised when I saw the way she greeted him when we met you on the base. I was convinced that she had been receiving Will's attentions quite happily."
Helena was about to say that this couldn't be the case, but she looked again at Maya and Riker eating together at the far table. Maya was laughing, her expression animated, and Riker's head was dipped quite close to hers across the table. She looked extremely relaxed. Helena thought about Tony's brooding silence and dark face at dinner, and wondered with a sudden qualm if anything unpleasant had passed between them.
Beverly continued, "Will's a good friend of mine and I'm very fond of him, but as a romantic prospect he comes with two major drawbacks. One, he's a dedicated Starfleet officer and, as I've already said, ambition in Starfleet and commitment to relationships don't usually mix. He likes women, but for the short-term pursuit I would say. Now maybe that's what Maya wants too, and if so fine, but she seems very young to me and I wondered if she might appreciate a warning."
"What's the other - drawback?"
"He has a long-term relationship with our ship's counsellor, Deanna Troi. They were serious about each other years ago before they came to serve on the Enterprise, and they still spend a lot of time together. You know, they take holidays together and things like that. I can't see him giving her up altogether. If I were contemplating a romantic involvement with a man, it's not the sort of thing I'd like going on in the background."
Helena didn't know what to say.
"This is all confidential," said Beverly.
"Of course."
"If you want to say something to Maya, it's up to you. Just don't mention my name."
"I must admit I'm surprised to see her with Commander Riker," Helena said. "I would have thought she'd want to be with Tony tonight. Thank you for the advice. I'll test the waters tomorrow."
She yawned, against her will. Tiredness was creeping over her like a sudden tide, and her brain was stretched thin with new stimuli. Beverly offered to show her the way back to her quarters, and before they parted at the door she said, "If you want to see my about anything, find me in sickbay."
Helena nodded and said goodnight, and curled into the strange wide bed awake with thought.
