She seemed to leave all her misery behind on the Enterprise, as if it were a physical thing. As soon as the shuttle approached Lanthenon's outer atmosphere, she was filled with a heady excitement that had echoes of the thrill she always felt in approaching an unknown planet, sweetened by the knowledge that this time she was safe. She didn't even have to do anything, though she was seated in the co-pilot's position. On an Alphan mission, if she hadn't been piloting she would have been watching the computer's screen output for atmospheric analyses and indicators of trouble. This ship didn't even seem to have such instruments visible from the pilot's seat. She supposed it was all automatic.
They got clearance from space traffic control to descend into the atmosphere, and the shuttle dipped through a rapidly changing pool of violet air until they could see the long swirls of clouds and pastel smudges of green and blue.
"I ought to try it this way more often," said Riker. "Transporters take away the sense of travel."
"And the beauty!" Maya wondered if she sounded artless, but Will was looked at her warmly.
It was only a few more minutes before they came over an unbroken cloudless patch, and saw a long sparkling lake of incredible brilliant blue in mountainous terrain. As the shuttle descended, Maya saw a structure perched on the side of the mountain, overhanging the lake. She saw when they were close that it might have been some kind of defensive building originally, but had been added to extensively in a newer style. The shuttle skimmed over the rooftops of the complex to a bulkhead set into the mountain. Riker communicated with the hotel and the door opened into a parking place for shuttle and personal transporters that seemed to go on into the mountain forever. It was nearly empty. Only a few small vehicles, looking lost, occupied the occasional bay.
"The woman who took my booking said that she expected business to be slack for the time of year," Riker said. "Apparently everybody's gone to the capital for the wedding. We might have the place to ourselves."
"That's all right. I don't like crowds."
"I know."
They were conveyed by an automated cubicle like a luxurious version of a travel tube to the hotel's entrance foyer. It was a vast hall, carpeted and mirrored and adorned with decorations in red and gold that there undoubtedly in honour of the forthcoming royal wedding. There were only two visible guests, a very old man and a very old woman who were sitting in huddled conference in an alcove. As Maya followed Riker across the hall she felt their eyes staring at them, frankly. This planet, she remembered, was new to the Federation. They might never have seen aliens before, and both she and Riker must appear unnaturally tall to the Lanthenons.
The receptionist, however, was undisconcerted. "Mr William Riker of the planet Earth, and Miss Deanna Troi of the planet Betazed?" she enquired brightly.
"Miss Troi was unable to come," said Will, without embarrassment. "This is Maya, daughter of Mentor, from the planet Psychon."
The receptionist made no comment, tapped something onto a pad on her desk, and said, "You're in room 522 and room 530. Very nice rooms, both with views of the lake. If they're not to your liking you can certainly change, I'm afraid we're not at all busy because of the Royal Wedding, of course."
"We'll take a look," said Riker, accepting two small rods of clear plastic from her.
Maya had been anticipating a moment of awkwardness over the room arrangements, and had half prepared a question and response at the back of her mind. She was actually surprised by this, and was wrong-footed enough to react when he handed her the key to her own room.
"What did you expect?" he said in a low voice, as they walked away from the reception desk. "I told you Deanna and I don't have that kind of relationship any more. Didn't you believe me?"
"Well, perhaps not."
"Of course, if you're unhappy with the arrangement, I can always get it changed."
"No," she said, smiling.
He grinned back.
I'm really going to do this, Maya thought, and a disturbing, delightful physical emotion ran over her.
"We've lost a couple of hours to the day," he said, as they were going up in the lift. "It's mid-afternoon. Shall we explore down by the lake, first?"
Their rooms were on the same corridor on the uppermost floor of the hotel. Maya's room was not as large as her suite on the Enterprise, but like the rest of the building it had a more solid feel. And it smelled of real air and natural fabrics washed in scented soaps, a powerful indoor aroma that caught her unawares. The two windows were open, blowing filmy curtains on the slightest breeze. She stood by them and looked over the lake far below, wondering how long it was since she had been in something as simple as an ordinary room.
She unpacked her case and chose a white sleeveless dress, as it seemed very hot outside. That was something else she had almost forgotten about; the vagaries of planetary weather. She let her hair fall loose and studied herself in the full-length mirror. Sometimes, these days, when she caught sight of her own face it seemed for a moment alien, because she was so used to looking at humans. She wondered how Will would react if she made herself aged and ugly; he would probably only be amused.
Tony had once refused outright to kiss her in the form of an ugly old woman. She had teased him in front of everyone in Command Centre, and he had declined to take the joke. She remembered how she had been confident and carefree, enjoying his frustration and her power over him, her heart untouched. That had been a very long time ago, before -
She shut down her thoughts in the way she stemmed memories of Psychon and her father when they started to hurt, and turned away from herself.
Riker had changed too, into the casual clothes fashionable for men; loose fitting trousers with an ornamented belt, and a tunic top, half split open at the front. Out of uniform he looked significantly different in a way that Maya found difficult to define. She felt more intimate with him even though they walked along the path by the lake without touching, and he made no move at all to get closer. She was pulled between overwhelming delight in the beauty of everything around her, and an equally powerful consciousness of her situation.
It was only mid afternoon. The night was a long time off.
The lakeside path wound for miles through woodland, with lush vegetation to the water's edge. Wildfowl dappled in the reeds and small mammals darted through the undergrowth. Everywhere underfoot were clusters of blue flowers, filling the air with perfume.
"Daquetha," said Riker, when Maya commented. He stooped down and pulled some up. "Gargatha is famous for its carpets of daquetha flowers at this time of year. I was talking to the receptionist while I was waiting for you to come down. Do you want some?"
"You shouldn't pick wild flowers," said Maya, half seriously. "It can be dangerous." She took them from him, suddenly fascinated to see how tiny the delicate blooms were in his hands.
The silence was pleasant, and filled with birdsong.
"We picked the right time to come here," said Riker. "The receptionist said this place was thronging with tourists last week."
"You seem to have had a very long conversation with the receptionist."
"You were a long time. Here it is."
"What?"
"The boat hire place she told me about. Ever been on a boat?"
"Not since I was very young."
They had come into view of a long low building partly concealed by the trees. There was a reception terminal into which Will put his room key, and tapped in some instructions on a keypad. A slip of plastic whizzed out of a slot, and there was a rumble of machinery from inside the building. At the waterfront, Maya saw a small vessel slide into the water. They followed the path down to a boarding quay.
Will stepped into the boat confidently from the platform, and then held up his hand to help her in. She was unexpectedly uncertain, and had a moment of panic as the boat swayed under her weight. He caught her and steadied her, and helped her sit on one of the two scooped-out seats. It was a tiny boat clearly intended for only two people, and she suspected that the Lanthenon designers had expected those two people to be smaller.
"Our starships," said Riker, "are the very distant ancestors of vessels like these. Here's the warp drive." He indicated two free-moving propellers that were attached to the boat. "I hope it works like an Earth rowing boat." He pulled back on the oars and the boat glided away from the quay with surprising smoothness.
Maya found the sensation of being afloat uniquely soothing. Will rowed confidently, with rhythmic strokes, and she enjoyed watching his strength. The feeling of sun on her bare arms and her face was delicious. Riker manoeuvred the boat into the very middle of the lake and then stopped, lifting the oars out of the water.
The slapping noise stopped.
"We're alone," he said.
"Yes."
"Feel better than you did on the Enterprise?"
"Yes," she said frankly, with a smile. She felt, in fact, as if she had just stretched her limbs after being physically confined for a long time.
"Good."
Riker, she thought, knew when not to say much.
They floated in silence, savouring the stillness.
"Can I ask you something?" he said eventually.
"Of course."
"Your transformations - do they tire you?"
"Not significantly, if I choose something close to or smaller than my own size. If it's something much larger, it can drain me, and if I try to hold it for too long, that's very difficult."
"How
long is too long?"
"About an hour."
"What does it feel like, being another creature?"
"Very interesting."
"Do you have the abilities of the animal that you change into - if you're a bird, can you fly?"
"Do you want me to show you?" she asked blandly, knowing very well that he did.
She threw herself into the form of an eagle, the bird symbolised by the Alphans' small spacecraft and a safe option in an unknown ecosystem, and soared up above the lake. It was something she had been longing to do anyway, to escape her own body and dive through the clean air. Riker and the boat grew smaller and smaller but acutely distinct. She saw tiny creatures darting about on the ground, and was filled with the desire to swoop at them, though she controlled it. She flew towards the hotel, covering in seconds the ground it had taken them half an hour to walk, and caught a flash under her. It was a person, on the roof of the hotel, angling some kind of telescope towards her. The birdwatcher would never have seen anything like an eagle on Lanthenon. She circled twice, to puzzle him, then glided back over the lake.
Emotions as a bird of prey were sharper and simpler. Riker smiled widely as she descended and held up his hand, and without hesitation she landed on him. The human flesh felt spongy through the scales in her claws. Then she let go and became herself again, soft flesh and heavy body and a hammering heart, and found herself tangled up in his arms.
The little boat rocked.
"Careful," she said.
"No," he said, and kissed her.
It was no different from the sensual pleasures all around her; the sun, the lapping water, the smell of woodland and flowers. She relaxed and let herself enjoy it, suddenly uninhibited. She could feel how deliberate and restrained Will was, kissing her slowly, luxuriantly, without fervour and without moving, demanding hands. A dispassionate passion, she thought with the part of her mind that was still clear.
When they parted her held her for a while longer, studying her. They were precariously balanced. Maya made the first move to let go and ease her way back to her own side of the boat.
She supposed they had stopped pretending now, but Will made no comment and took up the oars again.
"When you can do that," he said, glancing upwards, "human life must seem limited."
"No, not at all. It has advantages."
He grinned and pulled back on the oars. "Want to see the other side of the lake?"
She agreed, sank back in her seat, and let her fingers trail in the water. Her ankle touched Will's leg and she left it there.
The meeting to put the colonisation option to all the Alphans went well, as far as Helena could judge. John made a simple address to their assembled people, explaining what Captain Picard had proposed and concluding, to her surprise, by saying, "This is something that Helena and I very much want to do. If at least one hundred and ninety-eight of you feel the same way and want to give it a go, we're on. Now I don't expect anybody to make up their minds right now. We'll have another meeting tomorrow, to discuss where we go from here. If anyone wants to come and see me in private, please do. One other thing." He paused. "I'm not your commander any more. I'm sure a lot of you have thought it through and come to that conclusion. If so, that's fine. We were in a survival situation, and you all did your duty with courage and discipline. Now - we're free. You're free. I can't tell you what to do now, and I don't want to. All I can do is ask you if you want to join us."
Helena was unexpectedly affected, as he stepped down from the speaker's platform. "Was that an abdication speech?" she said, in a low voice.
"Could be. That's up to the populous now."
"I never though I'd see the day when Alpha became a democracy."
"Well, since most of my command staff seem to have deserted me, I guess it's time to go to the polls."
They spent about an hour discussing the plan with those who stayed behind to talk about it. Nobody seemed to have taken any notice of what John had said on one point; he was still 'Commander' and 'sir' to everyone, and he didn't bother to correct them. Helena could sense guarded enthusiasm and the beginnings of excitement even in those she had expected to be sceptical.
When the meeting broke up eventually, John put his arm around her shoulders and said, "Why don't we try out all this leisure and go swimming, or maybe see if we can use that amazing holodeck?"
"I don't feel like swimming just right now."
"Okay - then why don't we go back to our quarters, and catch up on things?"
"John... let's do that, let's go to our quarters, but - because there's something we have to talk about."
He saw her expression, and stopped and held her arms. "Something serious?"
She nodded.
"You've changed your mind about the colony?"
"No - "
"Is it something more personal than that?"
"Yes - can we at least go somewhere private, not standing out here in the middle of the corridor?"
He frowned and was silent until they got back to their quarters. As soon as the door slid shut he said, "Well?" He might not have meant his tone to be accusing, but that was how it sounded to Helena.
She walked round the room, twisting her wedding ring on her little finger. She felt as if she was one foot over the edge of a precipice, and she couldn't shut her emotions down. "I'm pregnant," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean - we're going to have a baby."
He stared at her, as if still uncomprehending. "How the hell did that happen?"
"Well, John, you know, the usual way."
"You know what I mean."
"It's very simple. Three months ago, after our last big fight about it, I decided to stop taking contraceptives."
"You ignored the decision that we made - "
"No, John, you made it."
"Helena - that wasn't about us, it was about surviving on Alpha. How would it have looked if we had a baby and no-one else could? What could I tell people?"
"You could tell them whatever the hell you liked. You know I didn't believe we couldn't support babies on Alpha, and I wanted a child, with you - or - or without you."
"Okay," he said quietly, his eyes going cold. He turned abruptly and left the room.
The door slid shut with its usual even sound.
Helena walked carefully to the nearest chair on legs that she couldn't feel, and burst into tears.
Deanna noticed the Alphan officer Tony Verdeschi when she dropped in to Ten-Forward in a half-hour gap between appointments. At 1500 hours in the afternoon there were only a few people round the bar, having coffee or snacks. He was sitting alone at a far table, examining a glass. Although she was used to screening out random emotions, his misery caught her as soon as she entered the room. It was impossible to focus away from it; the pain drilled into her diaphragm. As usual, she was mildly annoyed that everyone else in the bar was oblivious. She sometimes wondered if it would be nice to live in a self-contained cage of feeling, untroubled by others. She ordered iced tea and went to join him.
"Hi," she said, smiling.
He gave her a quick, surprised look, and shifted in his seat.
She appraised him rapidly, having the chance to study him properly for the first time. He was young, no older than thirty, and had the kind of dark good looks that she found appealing. She did not need her empathic sense to tell that he was sunk into unhappiness, so preoccupied that he was past caring how his behaviour appeared to others.
"I don't think we've met properly," she said. "I'm Deanna Troi, the ship's counsellor."
"Yes, I know that," he said.
"It's my job to help people on the Enterprise feel comfortable with themselves and each other," she said. "I sense your unhappiness."
"That's very perceptive of you." He drained the glass in one gulp, then gazed into it. "The worst thing about this bloody place is that you can't get blind drunk if you want to."
"I would advise you against trying to drink enough synthohol to get drunk. Although it doesn't act on the brain in the same way as alcohol, too much of it at once can certainly act on your stomach. You'll only make yourself unpleasantly sick."
"Don't worry, I've just decided to give up." He pushed the glass aside. "So, the fact that your boyfriend has taken my girlfriend on a dirty weekend qualifies you to come and cheer me up?"
"Will is not my boyfriend," Deanna said, with a smile.
"Yeah? Well, Maya's not my girlfriend any more, either, so that gives us something in common."
"I'm sorry."
He looked up again, and she realised that he had noticed her eyes for the first time. "Are you an alien?" he asked, in a different tone.
"We don't use words like 'alien' any more, Mr Verdeschi. Why should one species feel themselves to be deviations from a norm? Everyone is normal to themselves. My father was from Earth, like you are, but my mother is from a plant called Betazed, and that's where I grew up."
"How do you buy a girl a drink around here?" he asked.
Maya had brought only one evening dress with her, and there were no replicators on Lanthenon to confuse her with further choice. It was a deep blue, ornamented with deeper blue scrolls of shining material, and it had no shoulders and almost no back; it clung to her body so tightly that she could only move because there was a slit in the skirt to the top of her thigh. It was very elegant, and too formal, she thought, to be construed as provocative. But it left more of her accessible than she would usually like.
She tied up all her hair into tight coils, leaving her neck bare.
She had showered, and dressed, and now put the final ornamented pins into her hair, with a sense of excitement that was almost hypnotic. She felt that she was a different person, as if she had transformed into something that looked like herself, but was not the same. As this alternative woman the feelings and loyalties and obligations that defined what she could do no longer bound her. As, when a bird, she could escape gravity.
But she could only be a bird for an hour.
She met Riker in the lounge which served as an ante-room to the hotel's banqueting hall. He rose and clasped her hands, greeting her with a smile of unambiguous appreciation.
"You're beautiful," he said. "But then, I guess you've heard that many times before."
"Would we be here if I weren't?"
"I'd like to think so. I hope I can separate physical attraction from personality, though the way you make me feel now - how can I do that?"
"I could be ugly, if you want, for an hour." She could only draw half her breath, and her voice sounded stifled to her own ears.
"No," he said, drawing her into his space. "Let me enjoy you, the way you are. And the way you look is part of who you are."
She closed her eyes and felt his breath.
"Would you care to look at the menu now, sir?"
She moved back with a start, shocked to find a small Lanthenon waiter inserting a scroll between them. Will caught her eye with amusement, nodded at the waiter, and unrolled the menu.
"I particularly recommend the baked whole elquath in a sauce of scented hapla beans," the waiter added, and retreated with his stare still fixed on them.
Maya suddenly noticed that the elderly couple, who appeared to be the only other guests in the hotel, were watching them openly from the corner of the lounge.
"We should have signed in as Mr and Mrs Smith," said Will, in a low voice, sitting down and studying the menu.
"What?"
"I get the feeling we're offending the local mores."
The elderly couple had returned to reading some kind of papers.
"Perhaps we should choose what we're going to eat," Maya said.
"You're not used to this, are you?"
She said nothing, suddenly embarrassed again.
He leaned towards her, without touching her, his eyes serious. "Maya, I don't care about the Lanthenons - the way I see it, if they want to be part of the Federation, they have to tolerate the customs of other planets - but I do care if I'm offending you."
"No, Will, you're not. But I understand how these people feel, Psychon society wasn't dissimilar. When I was sixteen, I became friendly with a boy who studied with my father for a while. He came from another city to stay for the summer. I was convinced I was in love, and we used to go for walks along the banks of Lake Tamyara together, sometimes after sunset."
"And
kiss in the moonlight?"
She smiled. "Yes. And my brother was
very concerned for my honour."
"Had he any reason to be?"
"Certainly not. But my brother talked to him, and not long after Jovak decided to go home."
"Did you hear from him again?"
"Of course not."
She wasn't sure why she had told him this. She hadn't thought about it for years, nor had she realised that she remembered the boy's name.
"The only good thing about teenage romance," said Will, "is that you get it over with first. Do you want to go for the baked whole whatever he recommended? Because the rest of this menu means nothing to me."
She nodded, and they went into the banqueting hall together without further impropriety.
Riker claimed not to understand the menu, but he did seem to have an uncanny ability to grasp the contents of a wine list. After a cursory perusal he had ordered a clear wine full of tiny pink bubbles that streamed up the side of the glass and burst over the surface of the liquid.
"It's quenarana, a celebration wine."
"Like Earth champagne? But sweeter," she added, sipping it.
The baked equath were unfortunate small animals, served on a bed of spicy vegetation. Numerous sweet-sour accompaniments were provided alongside the meat dish, beautifully presented in jewelled bowls.
"There's no substitute for going planetside and eating real food," said Will, dismembering his elquath with enthusiasm.
"I thought you couldn't tell whether food was replicated or not."
"On board a ship, when someone puts something in front of me and says 'this is real caviar', no - I can't. On a planet, the food is part of the whole experience and then there's a real difference. Even on Earth, they say that regional food only tastes right in its own country. What was Psychon food like?"
"Different from this, different from Alphan food. I can't easily describe it."
"Is Lanthenon like where you lived on Psychon?"
"In some ways. This is much more mountainous than Tamyara, and the lake is longer, and we didn't have such lovely blue flowers, but the climate is similar, and the trees are much the same. The wildness, the untouched natural beauty - that's very like where I grew up."
"What happened to the planet? How could it have deteriorated in so short a time - that you remember it being like this, before it got to a state where it broke up? I would have thought that kind of change would take millennia, not years."
"We don't really know. It was some catastrophic seismic chain reaction that caused the planet to self-destruct. Our geophysicists had a theory that Psychon was never stable as an ordinary planet is, that it was a time bomb and what happened had always been waiting to happen. Science did not predict it, the disaster was upon us before we had any way to react."
"Did your scientists try?"
"Of course, but it was hopeless."
"Were you involved? You must have been very young."
"I was seventeen in the year when volcanic eruptions destroyed most of the Far Lands. That was the beginning. I knew about what was happening because my father and my brother were both on the High Scientific Council."
"What happened to your education?"
"I was always taught by my father, and that continued."
"You didn't go to school, or college?"
"When I was very young, a small child, I did. After my mother died, I couldn't really leave my father, so I had to stay at home with him. On Psychon, it wasn't uncommon for children to be taught by one parent or another anyway, not everyone went to school."
"You know, my mother died when I was a kid too."
"Oh?"
"Yes, when I was a baby. I don't remember her, but I grew up feeling her loss all the same."
"You always feel the loss of a parent," said Maya firmly, driven to talk about this to ease the pain of what Tony had said. "I was twelve when my mother Ilana died, and after that Mentor - my father - changed. He was never the same, he became obsessive to the point - perhaps to the point of madness. I had to look after him."
"Who looked after you?"
"My father did. However difficult things became for him, he was always my father."
"Where did your brother fit into this? Aside from breaking up your romances."
"My brother and I had misunderstandings, sometimes." And that, she thought, was the valued Psychon art of understatement. "He didn't believe in Mentor's vision to restore Psychon. My father had developed a biological computer which could harness psychic energies, and when the planet began to disintegrate he worked on ways to use its power to transform matter on a global scale. The scientific establishment believed he was years away from getting results, if he ever would, and that's why they organised a mass evacuation."
"You stayed to help your father?"
"Yes. I couldn't leave him."
He put his hand on hers. The warmth of contact shocked her for a moment; she had started to feel cold. "You must have been close."
"We always were. Even before Ilana died - and after that, I was all he had. I believe that if you have parents who love you, and who love each other, for at least the first few years of your life, nothing inside you can really change afterwards. Whatever's happened to me since, I still have that."
He had twined his fingers through hers. "What did happen - in the end?"
"Mentor's computer was destroyed - he died in the fire - Commander Koenig saved me. Because Psyche, the computer, drew its power from the planetary core, its destruction caused the planet to explode. We barely escaped in the Eagle, but we did escape - I wasn't even injured."
"You've been through a lot," he said, steadily.
"So had everyone on Alpha. They had all lost their families and their homeworld. Maybe that's why I found it easy to fit in."
He picked up his cutlery again to finish off what was on his plate. "You know, these people have seen you through a bad time, but you don't have to stay with them."
"What do you mean?"
"It seems to me that all your life you've been loyal to other people, doing what you think you have to do for others, and not necessarily what's right for you. Maybe it's time you put yourself first. You're still a very young woman, you've got your whole life in front of you. I can tell you now that if the Alphans go to establish a colony they won't be choosing the easy option. Do you want to spend your life as a farmer, sowing crops and baking bread and maybe patching up some old machinery? You could join Starfleet instead - had you thought of that?"
"Yes. I had thought of that."
They were interrupted by the waiter, who removed their plates and brought them a selection of sweet things in tiny, elaborate bowls. There were perhaps twenty altogether, covering the table, fashioned as birds and animals and glistening with jewels. Another bottle of much sweeter wine appeared, but Maya allowed Will to pour her only half a glass. She had drunk her fair share of the quenarana and, for the first time since the terrible officer's party, felt alcohol going to her head. This time the sensation was different, it was as if a delicate, sparkling film had been cast over everything. Perceptions were heightened, thoughts were slightly blunted. She felt the bones in Will's hand and the pressure of his leg against hers, but no anxiety.
"How long were you alone with your father on Psychon?" he asked.
"Just over three years."
"And two years on Moonbase Alpha. It's a long time since you've led a normal life."
"That depends what you mean by normal."
"Normal," he said, raising his glass, "is walking along the side of a lake, in the moonlight, with someone you like, wondering what to do about your honour."
After the sweet, the waiter returned.
"After dinner is over we usually have dancing in the ballroom," he said. "Usually, every table is full - this time last week."
"Let's dance anyway," said Riker. "Can we have music?"
"Certainly, sir. The ballroom is through here."
It was at the end of the banqueting hall, behind manually-operated double doors. The waiter touched a switch and crystals embedded all round the walls glowed, illuminating a huge room with a soft, jewelled light. The floor was made of an extraordinary translucent many-coloured stone, which mirrored them as they moved across it. She saw the waiter touch another switch to make music come from nowhere, then pull the doors closed behind him.
They were alone. Their fellow guests, the elderly couple, had been eating in the far corner of the dining hall but had gone out some time previously.
At the other end of the ballroom, patio doors were standing open to a balcony. Out of curiosity, and enchanted by the incongruity of being left alone in possession of such a grand public place, Maya explored out there first. The balcony was more like a terrace, curving round a corner of the old part of the building. It was very high up. She leaned cautiously over the balustrade and saw a sheer drop to the lake below.
"The Enterprise," said Riker, putting a hand on her bare shoulder and pointing up at a bright fixed star. "I can always tell. Shall we dance?"
Their footsteps echoed as they returned into the ballroom. Maya felt self-conscious at first, sure that to dance alone was odd, but as she fell into his rhythm it seemed natural.
"I'm glad you came," he said.
"I'm glad too." She returned his smile and it felt comfortable to slide her arms up round his neck.
They stopped still.
With the same air of calm, he kissed her. Maya closed her eyes and thought of nothing, letting delicious desire and heat rise through her body.
"I like long hair," he said. "Let it loose." He tugged gently at the bands and she felt her hair unwind down her back; he took handfuls of it and arranged it. Then he drew her against him again, and for the first time, with a slight shock, she could feel his arousal.
"Come on," he said, suddenly pulling back. "Come out here. I want to ask you something."
She followed him out onto the balcony, pleasantly mystified.
He dropped her hand and went to lean on the balustrade. "We were talking earlier, over dinner, about your future," he said after a few moments silence, turning to face her again. His tone was straightforward.
Not understanding why he had broken off the physical contact, Maya joined him a little way along the railing. "Yes."
"I mentioned the possibility of your joining Starfleet and you said you'd thought about it."
"Yes. But not in detail, I've no idea of the procedure."
"The usual way is to enter Starfleet Academy then train there for three years, on Earth. That's how you become an officer, that's what I did. But there are other routes. It's possible to gain experience in the field and pass qualifying exams as you go along. How would you like to stay on the Enterprise, serve on the ship in some capacity? The last two weeks might have been dull, but we've seen things you can't even imagine. From what you've told me about your experiences on Moonbase Alpha I know you're used to surviving danger. We go out there in the Enterprise and conquer it. Everyone in Starfleet wants to serve on the Enterprise - I've turned down three promotions to Captain to stay there. You could learn anything, see everything. Would you like that?"
"Yes. I would."
"There's only one way. Marry me, and they'll let you stay."
"Marry you!" She stared at him, unconsciously gripping the balcony rail.
He no longer looked dispassionate, or even at ease. His eyes were full of some desperate emotion. "It's the only way," he said again. "You're a welcome guest on the ship now, but sooner or later, you'll have to leave. Only spouses and children of officers can live on a Starfleet ship."
"Hang on a moment. Two weeks and a few kisses, and you want to spend the rest of your life with me?"
"Maya - "
"Or are you suggesting some kind of arrangement for convenience?"
"No! No. I put it like that because it does, I know it does seem sudden. It is very soon. And I don't know how you feel, perhaps you don't know how you feel. But I want to marry you because I've fallen in love with you - I love you, and I want to be with you."
"Oh boy." It was a Tony-ism. Maya took half a step back, avoiding the hand that he reached out. "Will, you can't possibly want to marry me. You don't know me!"
"I feel as though I do. I thought if we came here we'd have the chance to get to know each other away from all the pressures on the Enterprise. What did you think this was about? Sex?"
"Well, everybody who's taken it upon themselves to offer me advise about you has said that your interest in women is - limited."
"It is now. It's limited to you." He sighed. "Look, fifteen years ago I walked away from the love of my life, my imzadi, for the sake of my career. I've wondered ever since if I was a fool. There was nothing trivial about that, it's affected my whole life, and I feel as if I'm standing at the same kind of cross-roads now - and I would put nothing before you, Maya."
"So, if I said I wanted to help the Alphans establish their colony, you would resign your commission and become, as you put it, a farmer."
"Yes."
"I see."
"But I'd rather you married me in three days time, and stayed on the Enterprise."
"Why in three days time?"
"That's how long it takes to get a licence."
"You certainly like to do things in a hurry."
"When I make up my mind, I do."
"Will - I can't give you an answer now, I'll have to have time to think."
"Give me hope, then," he said seriously, stepping close to her.
"I want some time alone," she said firmly, without moving. "I'm going to bed."
"Yes. Of course."
She walked with him, separately, back through the ballroom and the now-deserted dining hall to the lift and the upper corridor where their rooms were, and stopped outside her door.
"I'll say goodnight, then." He kissed her softly and swiftly.
Maya nodded and shut the door behind her.
