“It’s so beautiful here,” Felicia said. She still wasn’t sure why Estresor Fil had brought her out to Tycho’s lunar plain, away from the party and all their friends. But she was awed by the sight of the moon’s surface as it had been for so many millions of years, before humanity swept over it, and even more so by the vast array of stars visible once you got beyond Tycho’s brilliant lights. She could see the Earth, hanging in the sky like a blue marble, and a dizzying display of white dots representing billions of other stars and planets.
“I hoped you would like it,” Estresor Fil said. “I’m not sure why but walking at night seems popular with some humans.”
“I think it’s just the natural beauty of the night sky,” Felicia told her. “Pregnant with possibility, always different and amazing. I never get tired of it.”
“I am pleased,” Estresor Fil said. She never sounded completely comfortable speaking English, and tonight she seemed even a little more on edge than usual. Felicia wondered if it had something to do with whatever reason they were out here. Estresor Fil obviously had something on her strange alien mind. Felicia hoped she’d get to the point soon. They flew home tomorrow and she had planned to be in the rack early.
“How did your flight go today?” Estresor Fil asked her. Without waiting for an answer she continued. “Ours was uneventful. I wish I were still in a squadron with you.”
“I miss you sometimes too,” Felicia told her.
“You do?” Estresor Fil sounded surprised, and the smile on her face was so rare and unnatural that Felicia thought for a moment the Zimonian was choking on something.
“Of course I do,” Felicia said. “I thought we became pretty good friends last year, and we work together well.”
“I agree,” Estresor Fil replied. They had reached the first row of warning signs posted by Tycho City officials. There were three sets of signs, and anyone who went beyond the third set was taking their life into their hands. “Very much so.”
Estresor Fil stopped near one of the signs, and Felicia came up next to her. Estresor Fil glanced at Felicia, as if measuring the distance between them, and then stepped to the side, halving it. “Are you comfortable?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Felicia assured her.
“I am sorry, I’m so bad at this,” Estresor Fil said. When Felicia looked at her again, the smile was gone and she was afraid the other girl might cry.
“Bad at what? Estresor Fil, what’s going on?”
Estresor Fil took a big, wet breath. “I think I love you, Felicia,” she said. “I am quite sure, in fact. But I don’t know how these things work, among humans, and I so wanted to do it right. But now I’ve made it all stupid and wrong!”
Felicia felt her heart go out to Estresor Fil, who she had always thought of as a kind of younger sister, even though the Zimonian was actually a little older than she was. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like this—well, she had, to be honest with herself, but judging from the way Will Riker had been oh-so-subtly checking her out all evening, she had thought it would be coming from him. But definitely not from Estresor Fil. She supposed, as Zimonians went, she was probably quite attractive. But that didn’t necessarily make her appealing to Felicia’s eye.
On the other hand, there was a kind of exotic beauty in her finely sculpted features. She was not someone to whom Felicia would be instantly drawn, but she wasn’t repulsive, either. And she had a good heart—she was kind and intensely loyal, and she’d been able to summon up the courage to pull this off. That was something a lot of people—again, Will came to mind—never seemed able to do.
“You haven’t messed anything up, Estresor Fil,” Felicia said gently.
“I haven’t?”
“Not at all. You’ve done just fine. Even humans find this sort of thing difficult with other humans.”
“That’s what Dennis told me,” Estresor Fil said.
“Dennis Haynes?”
“Yes. I went to him for advice on human pairing rituals.”
“I see,” Felicia said. Dennis wouldn’t have been the one to whom she’d have turned, but apparently his advice hadn’t been so bad after all.
“He suggested that I put my arm around your shoulders,” Estresor Fil went on. “But ... I can barely reach them. It might be awkward.”
“It might be,” Felicia agreed. “Why not just put it here, around my waist? Then I can rest mine across your shoulders, like this.” When they were in position, Felicia sighed and looked at the Earth. Boy, were things going to be complicated when they got back down there.
Chapter 20
It wouldn’t be quite so bad, Will thought, if only I didn’t have to look at them.
On the ship that took them home from the moon, Felicia and Estresor Fil were together virtually every minute. He couldn’t tell if they had become romantically involved or if their friendship had just taken a more intimate turn. They laughed together, they sat close and chatted, now and again they seemed to be holding hands or touching one another’s faces. But that might have been an illusion, just normal touching magnified in Will’s mind by his own dark mood.
By the time they disembarked at the Academy in San Francisco, Will had come to an understanding with himself. It was stupid to even think that he should get involved with a woman in the first place. He had his Academy career to worry about, and after that his Starfleet career. Maybe once that was on track he could start to think about women, maybe getting married and starting a family at some point. But not until then. A girlfriend now would just set him back, cost him time and energy he needed to spend studying and working. There was no room in an active, ambitious career for romance, and thinking that there was had been simply delusional.
When he saw Estresor Fil and Felicia walking to their dorm together, Felicia’s head bowed so she wouldn’t miss a word of whatever the little Zimonian was saying, he didn’t begrudge them their happiness at all. He didn’t, he decided, feel a thing.
Chapter 21
Roog seemed unhealthy at the best of times, and one misshapen foot in the grave at the rest. Kyle had ascertained that she was a female because Michelle referred to her as “her,” but that was all he knew about her beyond her political beliefs, which were strident, and her patience for fools, which was virtually nonexistent.
He and Michelle stood at the back of a large room in the labyrinthine bowels of The End, a room that might once have been a banquet hall or a ballroom. Today, it contained maybe two hundred people, mostly residents of The End and other impoverished neighborhoods, individuals of every race and description. On a raised dais made from construction scraps that afternoon, Roog, Cetra ski Toram, and Melinka sat. They had taken turns addressing the crowd, alternating between describing detailed political and economic scenarios and doing some pure rabble-rousing, trying to direct the audience’s anger at the Cyrian government. When Kyle had suggested that Michelle should also be on the dais, she had colored and waggled her hand in the Cyrian gesture of negativity. He was getting used to conversing with her in English with touches of Cyrian thrown in, like that or the back and forth hand wobble that indicated assent or agreement. “I’m just a foot soldier,” she protested. “Not a general.”
“I know a little bit about strategy,” he admitted. “And I know that generals aren’t worth much if they don’t have foot-soldiers they can count on.”
“I get the feeling you know about a lot of things, Joe Brady,” she replied. Then she hushed him, because Roog was talking and those near them were shooting them dirty looks.
“No plutocracy can survive indefinitely,” Roog was saying, “because, by definition, the majority of its citizens are shut out of power. And when a majority understands that it’s being used and abused by the powerful for the sole benefit of the powerful, then that majority rises up and takes back its proper role.”