Frane shrugged, staring at the red pieces before him over steepled fingers. “What is there to say?”
Riker returned the shrug. “I suppose I just expected you to be more talkative than the other Neyel we brought on board. Particularly the ones in uniform.” And a “thanks for the rescue” might have been nice, too,he thought.
“They all no doubt believe they are your prisoners.”
“I’ve asked Commander Troi to assure them otherwise.”
“She has,” Frane said, nodding. “Repeatedly. And I don’t doubt that she, at least, sincerely means us all well.”
Riker eyed the board, its sixty-four spaces pregnant with unrealized possibilities. True, chess had never seized his imagination in quite the way poker had, but the ancient game nevertheless satisfied a need for tactical one-up-manship in ways that made even fast-paced strategema tournaments pale in comparison.
Deciding that caution wasn’t likely to increase his opponent’s garrulousness, Riker decided it was best to get his “light brigade” of bishops, knights, and rooks ready for a skirmish as quickly as possible. He picked up the knight on his left and set it down again at c3.
“She told me she’s shown you our comparative genetic profiles, too,” Riker said.
“Yesterday,” Frane said evenly. “You, your first officer, your head nurse, her son, some of your bridge crew—even Commander Troi herself—all possess genes that originated on Auld Aerth, just as we Neyel do.”
Riker took this as an encouraging sign. Still, the Neyel seemed to have all his shields up, and at maximum intensity. “So what’s the problem? Why do I still get the feeling that you don’t trust us much more than you do the Romulans?”
Frane mirrored Riker’s move, then turned his head, apparently to look at the variegated group of perhaps a dozen or so Titancrew members that was present. To his right, Riker glimpsed Lieutenant Kekil, the large, pale green Chelon biologist, chatting with the golden brown-scaled, quadrupedal exobiology trainee Orilly Malar. Dr. Onnta, the gold-skinned Balosneean physician, crossed the room toward one of the replicators.
“Imprisoned by the Romulans, imprisoned by you,” Frane said. “What’s the difference?”
Riker leaned forward and got his other knight into play, setting it down on f3. “You’re not saying you want to go back aboard the Valdore,are you?”
Once again, Frane mirrored Riker’s move. “No,” he said, a vague smile playing against his hard, gray lips. The thin—and, according to Dr. Ree, very recent—scar that ran along his shorn temple flushed a dark, angry red. Human blood, and human emotion.
“Frane, if you and your friends really were prisoners here—”
“I would not describe all of them as my ‘friends,’ Captain Riker,” Frane said, interrupting. “Other than my Nozomi, all the other Neyel you recovered are soldiers who once answered to my late father. I believe I recognized Subaltern Harn among them.”
This piqued Riker’s interest; in a few seconds, he’d just learned more about Titan’s other Neyel guests than he had since they first came aboard.
“This Harn is in charge now?” Riker asked.
“He’s probably the ranking officer, now that my father has gone to his reward.”
Riker nodded, understanding at once that he’d struck a filial nerve. It was a sensitivity that he could easily relate to. “Friends or not, if the lot of you really wereour prisoners, then don’t you think we’d have made a serious effort to…break you before now?”
Frane and Riker exchanged their next several moves in silence, each player getting his pawns into motion just enough to enable the bishops to join the fray with the knights.
“Aren’t your counselors really nothing more than alternative, more-devious-than-usual interrogators, Captain?”
“Our counselors are an important means of maintaining the emotional health of Starfleet crews on long voyages. They’ve been indispensable aboard our vessels for nearly half a century now.” Riker couldn’t help but wonder whether the sainted Aidan Burgess would have succeeded in stranding herself in Magellanic space in her crusade to reform Neyel culture had a competent counselor been present aboard Excelsior,just to keep an eye on her.
“So says Commander Troi. Maybe she’s even right about that. But…” the Neyel trailed off.
“But?” Riker captured one of Frane’s pawns, and the Neyel responded in kind during his turn.
“But your chief counselor belongs to a telepathic species,” Frane said.
Frane’s misgivings didn’t surprise Riker in the least. “You really have been studying up on us, haven’t you?” he asked, impressed by the younger man’s initiative. Although none of the Neyel appeared to be able to read Federation Standard, the universal translator was able to translate any of the texts stored in Titan’s computers into Neyel-intelligible audio.
“You did give us unlimited access to your Federation historical records, Captain. Did I misunderstand something?”
“Only partly. It’s true, Betazoids are telepathic. But Commander Troi is only half-Betazoid. Her telepathy isn’t as well-developed as other members of her kind. She’s primarily an empath.”
“Meaning she reads emotions rather than thoughts?”
“Mostly.”
“Somehow I find that even more disquieting.”
“If you’d be more comfortable dealing with one of Titan’s other counselors, there’s Huilan—”
Frane shook his head. “Bizarre creature. I can remember playing with something that resembled him when I was small.”
“All right. Maybe you should schedule a session with Counselor Haaj. He’s a Tellarite, and one thing nobody’s everaccused him of being is overly cuddly.”
In the turns that followed, Riker lost a bishop and another pawn, then took down one of Frane’s knights. Frane castled, moving his king toward the right-hand side of his board.
All the while, the young Neyel kept glancing uneasily over his shoulder toward the various crew members who were using other areas of the room, eating, conversing, or strolling to or from either the food service areas or the wall-mounted replicator units.
“Something’s still bothering you,” Riker said, pausing in mid-move. “And I don’t think it has anything to do with our counseling staff.”
Frane turned back to face Riker. “No. It had more to do with the many…nonhumans I see aboard this ship.”
Riker’s eyebrows rose, then he reminded himself that the Neyel Excelsior’s reports had described had been nothing if not xenophobic and paranoid. Discovering that Frane perhaps shared those characteristics should have come as no surprise. Still, the thought came as something of a disappointment, considering the close relationship between humans and Neyel.
“Are you referring to any particular member of the crew?”
“At the moment…yes,” Frane said, and nodded toward a table located near the exit. Admiral Akaar sat at the table, quietly sipping a hot beverage that might have been tea. He was looking over his mug directly at Frane.
“His eyes,” the Neyel said, almost inaudibly. “So dark and cold and judgmental. He reminds me of my father.”
Riker suppressed a smile. Welcome to the club,he thought, recalling those all-too-infrequent occasions when his own father, the late Kyle Riker, had been present for mealtime staring contests of this very kind.
Riker suddenly felt a much greater degree of emotional rapport with Frane than he had since the Neyel had first asked him for permission to stay aboard Titan.
“I could go over there and ask him not to stare,” Riker said quietly, leaning forward conspiratorially.
Frane started at that, apparently having taken the suggestion more seriously than Riker had intended it.
“I was kidding,” Riker said, taking one of Frane’s rooks. Somehow, he hadn’t expected Frane to play the game so inattentively. “Whatever’s bothering you, I can tell there’s more going on than simple rudeness from Starfleet’s admiralty.”