Imzadi. Part 18

"The two hundred credits you owe me over the bet about Deanna."

"I've got considerably more time on that, don't you think, Mark?" said Riker evenly.

"Time?" Roper laughed. "Captain, time doesn't make any difference. She's cut ties with you. Now or doomsday won't make any difference. It's not going to happen. Lwaxana told me-"

"She told you what?" demanded Riker, his eyes turning keen and a bit angry. "When did you speak to her?"

"Casual conversation a week or so ago."

"Why didn't you tell me?" He crunched down on the toast.

"I am telling you. Frankly, you weren't even the topic of conversation. We were comparing notes about the dificulties of raising daughters. And Lwaxana was boasting about how Deanna listens to, and does, everything Lwaxana tells her to do because she has Deanna so well trained in her responsibilities as a daughter of the Fifth House. And an example she gave was how she shut down the relations.h.i.+p between Deanna and 'that Starfleet fellow' because it wasn't appropriate."

"Oh, she did," said Riker icily. "Odd. That's not how I see it."

"I don't imagine you would see it that way," was Roper's calm response. He speared a piece of egg and said, "But then again... I suppose how you see it doesn't matter all that much, does it, Captain?"

Riker looked daggers at Roper, but the older man was the picture of tranquillity. And why shouldn't he be? As far as he was concerned, he'd won a two-hundred-credit bet.

But Riker saw it a bit differently.

The problem was, Sergeant Tang had made a valid point. Running in pursuit of Deanna, making calls to the mansion, trying to start things up when she was clearly so intimidated by her mother... it didn't sound like a pleasant experience. The question was, which was the potentially more humiliating? Throwing himself at Deanna? Or losing the bet?

He kept hearing Tang's voice in his head, warning him about strategy. Warning him...

...his voice in his head.

That's when it hit him.

The next day, after an early-morning meeting with Tang to review the latest Starfleet reports about raider activity, Riker headed over to the university. He staked out a place for himself, seated on the edge of a large, ornate sculpture in the middle of the campus. And he simply waited. Sooner or later, Deanna was going to have to pa.s.s by.

He spent half a day there, watching the sun pa.s.s over in the sky, watching the shadows s.h.i.+ft position. They were simple, meaningless things. But he stared at them, focused on them, practicing. And as he did so, he slowed down his breathing, drawing out each breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

He did so with more than just an interest in finding his calm, inner self. He had a purpose, a drive to his actions. He used the urgency and determination to focus his thoughts, focus everything he did.

He had completely lost track of time, but something made him look up.

There she was.

She was walking across the campus, chatting with a couple of friends. She was laughing at something, and for a flash of an unreasonable instant, Riker felt tremendous resentment. Why should she be cheerful when he was feeling so much mental clutter?

But that wasn't what this was about. He couldn't submit to that clutter; he had to brush away the confusion, concentrate fully on the matter at hand.

He didn't look at her. Instead he was staring at the lengthening shadows, once again performing the steady in-and-out breathing. He reached down into himself, down into that determination that fueled the drive of his career. Except now that core of energy was going to fuel something else.

He felt it welling up inside him, felt-or at least hoped he felt-the ability, the potential, there for him to tap. And now he sought out Deanna.

There she was, her measured strides having taken her only a couple of meters beyond where she had been before. And she was looking his way. Apparently she had just noticed him, and she gently elbowed one of her girlfriends and nodded in Riker's direction. The other girl looked, too, and all three of them seemed to be sizing him up for a moment before putting their heads together and giggling.

And Riker took Deanna's image, took a mental snapshot, and imprinted it onto his mind. And then he cut loose in an undisciplined, inelegant burst.

You're afraid of me, he informed her.

The reward to his herculean effort was immediate. Deanna was thrown off-step, and her head snapped around in astonishment. She looked right at him, and on her face was utter shock.

To her credit, she recovered immediately. She fell back into step and made every effort to act as if nothing unusual had happened.

But Riker knew, dammit, he knew.

He tried to send again, but now his thoughts were cluttered, whirling and flushed with the excitement of his success. He couldn't pull himself together again fast enough-he hadn't developed nearly enough discipline.

He realized that he'd had the equivalent of beginner's luck. That didn't change the fact, though, that he had let Deanna know precisely what he was thinking. He had, in essence. thrown down the gauntlet right on her own turf of the mind.

She studiously looked away from him as she and her friends made their way across the campus. Deanna had, in fact, picked up the pace. It was clear to Riker why: she was concerned that he was going to come running after her.

However, he had no intention of doing that. In fact, when Deanna was almost out of sight, she risked a quick glance behind her. All she saw was Riker sitting precisely where he had been before, his legs crossed, looking like a smug Buddha.

Riker was sound asleep when an insistent rapping came at his door. He sat up in confusion, checking his chronometer. It was the middle of the night.

The first thought he had was that there was some sort of attack. He tossed the blanket around himself and ran to the door.

Deanna was standing there, her arms folded, her eyes bright.

"I am not afraid of you."

It took a moment for Riker to s.h.i.+ft gears and realize that there was no danger from imminent alien a.s.saults. Still, he composed himself quickly. "You could have fooled me."

"Obviously you're not all that difficult to fool. On what grounds do you say that I'm afraid of you?"

"On the grounds that you cut off all communication with me. On the grounds that you're steering clear of me."

"I cut off communication with you because, as far as I was concerned, I had better things to do with my time than devote it to someone who couldn't possibly understand the subtleties of our philosophies."

"Well, obviously I'm understanding something," he said, leaning against the doorframe, "because I projected thoughts to you."

"A fluke. Pure happenstance. Besides, you didn't do it for the satisfaction of opening up your mind. You did it so that you could get my attention; maybe even get back at me, in some crude way. As for steering clear of you, my presence here should be enough to show how ridiculous that is. On what grounds can you-?"

"On the grounds," Riker interrupted remorselessly, "that every time you're close to me you start to lose control. Your body starts sending you signals that your brain doesn't want to accept. Face it, Deanna... I'm upsetting your nice little intellectual applecart."

Her gaze was steady and unrelenting. "Get dressed."

"Where are we going?"

"Out."

"Where? Why should I go with you if you won't tell me where it is we're going."

She looked at him defiantly. "What's the matter, Lieutenant, afraid of me?"

"All right," he said after a moment. "Give me a couple of minutes."

"Take all the time you want."

It was a fairly warm night. Where Deanna stood, she was framed in the moonlight reflecting off a large lake, providing some degree of illumination. Her arms were crossed as if she were cold.

Riker stood behind her, waiting patiently. "Lovely area," he said tentatively. "You come here often?"

"Yes." She sounded distracted. "From time to time."

"It's pretty remote."

"That's deliberate."

They were at the edge of a forest. Riker glanced up at the trees with their outstretched branches, like fingers that wanted to drag him into the darkness of the woods. "So now what? We hang from branches some more?"

She turned to face him. "Take your clothes off."

He stared at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's a therapy technique I learned in cla.s.s a couple of days ago. Take your clothes off. All of them."

He grinned lopsidedly. "Okay. What's the joke? One of your girlfriends hiding in the woods here? I get naked, you guys grab my clothes and run off. I have to make my way back to town, show up at the door of the emba.s.sy, and explain why I'm seriously out of uniform. Big laugh on the human. Right?"

Deanna gave a loud sigh and reached back around to the back of her tunic, undoing some fastenings. Within seconds she stood naked in front of Riker and tossed her outfit to him. It landed in a small bundle at his feet.

"Take your clothes off."

Riker did so.

They stood nude in the moonlight, facing each other, and then Deanna walked toward him. Riker's body was trembling inwardly, but he tried not to show it.

"Lie down." Her voice was firm, but Riker wondered if she was just as nervous inside as he was.

Now why in h.e.l.l was he nervous? It certainly wasn't as if she were his first.

Deanna saw him standing there, unmoving. "If you want, and if you still think this is some sort of prank, you can keep your hands on your uniform so no 'accomplice' can grab it."

Slowly Riker lay down on the ground.

"On your side. Your back towards me."

Completely puzzled, Riker did as she asked. He tucked his legs up slightly, looking slightly fetal and feeling slightly foolish.

He heard motion behind him and then Deanna was lying next to him. She curled up against him in the manner that humans still called spoons, for the way that spoons fit together when stacked. She slid one arm under him and brought the other over, wrapping herself around him.

He felt her chin against his shoulder, and that particular connection was easily the least incendiary that occurred to him. The rest of her front was pressed against his back, and his pulse and mind were racing. She felt incredibly warm against him. Every muscle was aching; he felt as if his entire body had too much blood in it... that it didn't know where to go, and any moment he was going to explode out every pore.

"Now," she said softly, "we're going to talk."

His voice was strangled. "T-talk?"

"Yes. You see... you still have to develop mental discipline. You still have to learn control. You have to be able to deal with me without thinking about me on a physical level."

"And this is supposed to make me stop thinking about you physically!" He wanted to flip over and face her, to grab her, to turn her over and- "That's right." She sounded inhumanly calm. "We are going to chat about whatever you want and just stay like this. You are going to become comfortable with the notion of my s.e.xuality and yours, and that way you'll be able to move beyond it to more spiritual matters."

"I can-" But his voice had gone up an octave. He cleared his throat, trying to ignore the horses galloping through his brain, and started over. "I can think of a far better way to get comfortable with s.e.xuality-and it'll be a lot more fun than the way I'm feeling right now."

"How are you feeling right now?"

"My body hurts, and I want to bay at the moons."

To his surprise, this actually prompted a soft laugh. But then she said, "To give in to those impulses, Will, only undercuts everything I've said. The desires of the body must be secondary to the desires of the mind."

Riker was ready to kill her. "Why in h.e.l.l are you doing this?" he grated. "Why are you making me feel like I want to jump out of my skin? I mean, obviously it has no effect on you. but it's making me crazy!"

She said something so softly that he didn't hear it at all. "What?"

"I said," she repeated, not without effort, "that it is definitely having an effect on me."

"It is? What... um... what sort?"

One of her hands moved across his chest, and she said, sounding somewhat frustrated, "Well, now, what do you think?"

Doing the best he could to control his voice and keep the tremble out of it, he said, "Deanna... if both of us are feeling this way... then maybe it would make sense if we...?"

"Will." For the first time she actually sounded pleading. "Will, I can't. Don't you see? First and foremost, two people have to connect on an intellectual and spiritual level. If they make love purely because of the physical attraction, then it's just... just a s.e.x act. It would be a mistake."

"Deanna... how could giving in to what we both want be a mistake?"

"I don't want to, Will."

"But you said...?"

"I don't want to give in to the impulses that I'm feeling. How can you not understand? It would undercut everything that I believe in. I don't feel a connection to you on a spiritual level. I don't feel comfortable with you. I can't just give myself over, I..."

"You're afraid of me." This time when he said it, there was no challenge in his voice, no mockery. This time he said it and there was... sympathy? Understanding? He wasn't sure what it was, but all he knew was that he wanted to comfort her. He wanted her to feel better.

He held her arms tightly against himself, and there was nothing s.e.xual about it. It was as if he were trying to send some of his strength into her.

"A little," she said in a voice so small he had to strain to hear it. "I feel a little afraid. When you live by a certain philosophy, and then you meet someone who disrupts that philosophy..." She paused a moment. "It goes back to what we were talking about... about love at first sight. I can accept love at first sight. I can accept l.u.s.t at first sight. But the latter is something I don't feel I want to be a part of."

"There's something to be said for just giving yourself over to the pleasure of the moment."

"I'm sure you'd be the expert on that, Will."

They were silent for a long time after that. He still felt the heat from her, and the slow in and out of her breathing. But it wasn't affecting him quite the same way.

"So... so what do we do now?" he asked.