Tooth and Claw Page 4

  “Mr. Worf shares your opinon,” Riker said. “I think he’s considering stowing away on the Rahjah to join us tomorrow.”

  “I would do no such thing,” Worf asserted, frowning with much disapproval.

  Riker sighed. “It’s a joke, Mr. Worf.”

  “Well, you sure wouldn’t get me inside that preserve, not without a pretty powerful projectile weapon,” La Forge said. “Phasers aren’t any good in there, you know. Nothing is. These people may have some trouble with their forcefields, but the technology dampers they’re tied to are something else again. Limited engine function under heavy shields, no energy-based weaponry . . . no tricorders, for that matter. The shuttle will run, but only with its own shields at full capacity—and, of course, there’s no way to communicate through the fields. Once you’re inside that preserve, it’s man against . . .” He glanced up, and up higher yet, to the leaping cartiga’s snarling mouth. “. . . that.”

  “Not strictly true,” Worf said. “They use tranquilizing darts.”

  Riker nodded. “Short-range propulsion devices, just enough to let the Tsorans gather a trophy from the animal. Actually harming any of them is forbidden.”

  “Emphatically. Why do you think those shields are so complex?” La Forge said. “They don’t need that much technology to protect the people from the jungle. They use it to protect the jungle from offworld poachers. And from what I understand, they need it. There’s quite an underground market for furs like the one that would come from this fellow.” He shook his head. “If you ask me, there’s plenty enough daleura to be earned just by surviving long enough in there to track anything down.”

  “The Tsorans must feel the same, or they wouldn’t include security teams to take down unexpected attacks.” Riker stared up at the animal, taking in its eerily feline-like gaze, and unaccountably reminded of the time—the one and only time—he’d played baby-sitter for Data’s cat, Spot. Not something he ever planned on doing again. “Nice kitty,” he murmured. “You can stay right where you are. I don’t have any intention of becoming your feline supplement.”

  A cough sounded behind his elbow; it sounded suspiciously like amusement. Riker found Akarr there, escaped from the throng and all but incognito without his escort. Although he stood out from the Fandreans present—for as similar as they were, the Fandreans appeared to be an entirely different branch of the species, with gentler features and longer, silkier pelt hair—there were enough Tsorans, all dressed in stiff, naturally colored leather vests, for Akarr to hide among if he chose.

  Apparently the opportunity to goad Riker was too much to ignore, for here he was. “I thought that might be your feeling,” Akarr said. “But don’t worry. We don’t expect you to come out of the shuttle. We each do what our courage allows of us.”

  Riker narrowed his eyes, only half-aware of La Forge’s uneasy shifting and Worf’s sudden deadpan expression, the one that meant you didn’t want to know what he was thinking. “I have found,” Riker said carefully, “that there is a difference between having courage, and having courage and also the wisdom to know when to challenge it.”

  Akarr didn’t seem the least affected. “Those are pretty Federation words,” he said. “But until one has proven the first, does the second matter?”

  Riker stiffened, lifting one shoulder. Does it really get any easier? Thanks a lot, Guinan, for putting that thought in my head. Beside him, he heard La Forge murmur his name—just as a concerned question. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. So he turned to Akarr, and looked down, and smiled a reasonably genuine smile. “Maybe someday you’ll have the chance to find out.”

  * * *

  Waves of pleasant heat from the morning sun washed against La Forge’s dark skin, reflecting from the paved staging area behind the museum. To the left sat the shuttles; several Fandreans loaded supplies into the back of the Rahjah. Soon enough Commander Riker would be on his way . . . and La Forge wished him luck. Plenty of it.

  He also hoped that the kaphoora went slowly, given what he had to accomplish here.

  He refocused his attention on the shield controls, a small station at the back of the museum, enclosed in its own environmentally controlled booth. Not room for two of them, but he was only here to watch, anyway— the guts of the system were on a lower museum level. Soon enough, that’s where he’d be, out of this beautiful day and into the exacting work of finding a way to get communication signals through the shields. Two layers of interlocking shielding with fluctuating frequencies, meant to foil any poacher, no matter how sophisticated.

  La Forge wasn’t sure but that it would foil him.

  He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Just to make things interesting, the Fandreans admitted that for the past several days, they’d been experiencing unpredictable surges in the technology damper; they thought it was interacting with the shields, but weren’t sure how. They wondered if La Forge might possibly take a look at that little problem, while he was at it. “Sure,” La Forge muttered to himself, looking out at the opaque forcefield dome arcing up and away from the edge of the staging area. “Why not?”

  “Did you say something, Lieutenant Commander La Forge?” His Fandrean liaison, Yenan—La Forge had the feeling he was of middling rank, but the Fandreans didn’t seem to go for titles—pulled himself out of the shield booth. Like most of the Fandreans, he came only to La Forge’s chest, but given the muscle on that stout form—and Yenan was stouter than most—La Forge wouldn’t want to get into a wrestling match with him. He’d stick to wrestling with the shields.

  “Just talking to myself,” La Forge said. “And call me Geordi.”

  “Geordi.” The Fandrean . . . well, La Forge supposed that was a smile; he drew his mobile upper lip down to completely cover his normally exposed teeth. And whether it was meant to be a smile or not, a smile was certainly the reaction it invoked in La Forge.

  “So you’re telling me,” La Forge said, picking up on the conversation they’d been having before Yenan ducked into the booth, “that out in the shield perimeter somewhere, there’s a device that will generate a fixed-dimensional portal within your shields.”

  The Fandrean nodded. “It nullifies the shields, in effect. Only because for that moment, we assign a stable frequency to the shields—which we change every time, so none of the poachers take advantage of that moment.” Yenan had an under-purr with a less gravelly tone, and it made him much easier to understand than Akarr—a fact for which La Forge had been instantly thankful. “But the procedure uses an enormous amount of power, and we can only trigger it a few times before we must recharge the system.” He gave La Forge a flutter-fingered gesture . . . chagrin? A shrug? “You can see why we have such need of communications. We cannot see through the shielding to know when someone needs to come out; we can only arrange intervals at which we open the portal. This often leaves our Legacy specialists out in the field much longer than we’d like them exposed.”

  “Yeah, I can see that would be a problem,” La Forge said. He scanned the shield along the perimeter line, looking for variations in the neat energy patterns his VISOR showed him. “There,” he said, pointing. “Is that the portal?”

  “That is where it will be,” Yenan said, surprised. He gave La Forge a curious look, and then smiled again. “That is an impressive device. If we have time, you will have to tell me more about its function.”

  “If we have the time,” La Forge said, not expecting to have any such thing. Right now, he wished Akarr would get a move on. He couldn’t start work until after the portal had been invoked and closed again, and he needed—

  There, finally. Akarr came strutting out of the museum. Unlike several hours earlier, this was a private moment, and one without excessive data recorders. La Forge saw only one, wielded by one of the museum officials. Riker walked just behind him, and the personal escort followed them, in formation. But once they reached the shuttle, the escort broke formation and entered first to see that all was to their satisfaction. Riker angled o
ver to La Forge. After a hesitation, Akarr followed him.

  “Any progress?” Riker asked La Forge, nodding a greeting to Yenan.

  “We’re ready to get started, as soon as you’re under way,” La Forge said. “This is a pretty severe shielding arrangement—it has to be, to protect these animals—so you’ll be flying a lot of seat-of-the-pants. None of your sensors will work; you’re going to have to navigate by speed and course. I’ve got it logged in for you. And don’t shut the power down completely upon landing— keep some trickle of energy to the shields, so you can go live again.”

  “Much advice,” Akarr said. “Maybe we should have had Picard pilot the shuttle after all.”

  Beside La Forge, Yenan made his fluttery hand gesture again. Definitely some kind of chagrin, Geordi thought. “No, you’ve made the best choice,” he said. “Commander Riker is the best shuttle pilot we’ve got. Even Captain Jellico had to admit that.”

  “Admiral, now,” Riker said, somewhat darkly.

  “This Jellico is no one to me,” Akarr said.

  “Let’s just say he doesn’t offer praise lightly.” La Forge nodded at the Rahjah, where Akarr’s men were now clustered around the shuttle door. “And I think you’re about to have an opportunity to find out for yourself.”

  Akarr rested a hand on his much-decorated trophy knife, and pondered Riker for another moment longer. “Of course,” he said, “flying in is not the hard part. The hunt . . . you are, Commander, welcome to join us on the hunt. But, given our conversation yesterday, I expect that you’ll choose to stay with the shuttle.”

  “I would happily join you on your hunt,” Riker said, snatching the challenge before the words even had time to settle.

  “Uh, Commander—” La Forge said. “The shuttle . . . someone really needs to be there to monitor—”

  Riker glanced sharply at him, and La Forge fell silent. His point had been heard, no need for more words. The ReynTa glanced between the two of them and gave a short laugh, a strange noise of which La Forge hadn’t been able to discern the origin. “As I thought,” Akarr said. “A shame. We would have liked a Federation witness to the kaphoora. So be it. Commander, shall we depart?”

  And Riker, giving La Forge one of those looks, chin at its most contentious angle, turned on his heel and stalked for the shuttle, overtaking Akarr on the way.

  Yenan seemed to come out of hiding. “I wouldn’t want to be on that shuttle,” he said, smoothing down the fur of his arms.

  “You and me both,” La Forge responded under his breath. “Now, how about we look at those shields? I don’t want to miss my chance to see them in operation.”

  Yenan straightened. Unlike Akarr, he didn’t strut; his gait was more of a lurching waddle. But it took him where he needed to go, into the booth with La Forge looking over his shoulder, trying to keep an eye on Yenan’s activities with the controls and the portal area at the same time. As the shuttle lifted, hovered, and then moved smoothly forward, Yenan made a few lightning adjustments to the frequency inputs, and then thumbed a sickly green switch that would have said don’t press me unless you mean it in any language.

  With a painful whine of power, the portal opened— starting at the ground in a semicircle, and expanding evenly outward until it was large enough for the modified cargo shuttle. The shuttle slid through with remarkably little fanfare, and the portal snapped shut behind it.

  La Forge transferred his attention back to the controls, where Yenan made a series of quick adjustments, then pointed at a timing indicator on the display. “There, you see? The countdown for the scheduled openings starts automatically. If the shield booth is not manned shortly before, the console will contact me, and I’ll make sure someone is here.”

  “Good system,” La Forge said. “But what’s this?” He pointed to one of the normally static readouts, and the glut of Fandrean number icons tumbling past. Just as quickly, it was over; the Fandrean didn’t even glance up in time to see them.

  “I’ll recall them,” Yenan muttered, jabbing at the controls. “Probably another one of the strange surges we’ve mentioned—ah, yes. Just that. Lucky we are, that you were right here for one. When we go back inside, we’ll call up the data and compare it to the previous surges. Maybe your outsider’s perspective will give us the answers we need.”

  La Forge shook his head. “That may well be, but I think we’d better let your people continue to work on that while I tackle the communications challenge. That is the one you want given priority, isn’t it?”

  Yenan made a face with his lower lip, similar to the one La Forge had seen on Akarr, but less extreme. “You are right,” he said. “Come, let us go inside.” And he suited action to words, nudging past La Forge to leave the booth.

  La Forge hesitated, looking at the spot in the gray, coruscating shield through which the Rahjah had vanished, shaking his head. “Good luck, Commander.”

  Chapter Four

  THE TSORANS CERTAINLY DID like their receptions. And Atann, who couldn’t pass up either the opportunity to attend a reception on the Enterprise or the daleura of playing host, was no exception. Once Nadann Jesson explained the situation, Picard offered the only possible solution: a request that Atann share with the Enterprise a sampling of Tsoran delicacies. Under Atann’s guidance the occasion quickly turned into a full-fledged social affair, for which Picard provided only a token supply of Federation favorites on a small, plain table set to the side. The two spoke briefly with one another—in person for the first time—as Atann commenced preparations in one of the larger function rooms; Picard could get no feel for the ReynKa’s character whatsoever.

  Shortly before the late-afternoon reception—and from all reports, Chief Brossmer had performed heroically at the transporter console during the preparation, both in dealing with the Tsorans and in the number of direct precision transports performed in the course of a single shift—Picard beckoned Troi into his ready room.

  “Any words of advice?” he asked, seating himself behind his gleaming black desk and gesturing for her to sit.

  She tucked herself into the couch and crossed her legs beneath the flowing skirt she’d adopted for the reception, looking comfortable—and, as was usual in the aftermath of such a question, as though she were searching inside herself for the answer, her black eyes distant. “I’ve read Nadann’s report, of course,” she said. “I have great respect for her work, but she’s barely had time to skim the surface. The Tsorans are a complex people. On the one hand, they appear very much prone to surface emotions—they don’t seem to hide either their feelings or their opinions about us. We certainly saw some of that between Akarr and Will in the conference room.”

  “But on the other hand?”

  She came out from inside herself to look at him again, and to give him a rueful little shrug. “On the other hand, Nadann has plenty of evidence that despite these apparent behavior patterns, the Tsorans have plenty that they do hide. For instance, a male Tsoran will do anything to avoid scratching in public, and if caught doing so—especially by a female—both Tsorans instantly turn their backs on one another. In the next moment, it’s as though they’ve forgotten it ever happened; neither will ever acknowledge the moment. If one Tsoran offends another socially—in manners of etiquette, one might say—they both similarly ignore the situation. For instance, Nadann has worn sleeveless or short-sleeved tops for most of her stay in the capital, in Aksanna—showing the flesh of her arms in a way that the Tsoran society sees only in females who sell their bodies. No one’s ever said anything to her.”

  Picard steepled his hands before his chin. “So if they are communicating with you, it’s likely to be . . . blunt.”

  “Or too subtle for a human to perceive,” Troi agreed. “It adds up to this, Captain—if you annoy or offend Atann, or do something that he interprets as daleura one-upmanship, you’ll hear about it in no uncertain terms. If you embarrass him . . . you’re not likely ever to know.”

  “Until the negotiation for the use of t
heir charted space fails,” Picard said dryly. He glanced at the replicator but decided against the tea that would go down nicely with this conversation. He was already late for the reception. “Counselor, I would appreciate it if you stayed close while I’m talking to Atann or his ReynSa, Tehra. I don’t expect to get past preliminary comments about the charted space during the reception, but if I can get a feel for their reaction to me . . .”

  “Of course,” she said, uncrossing her legs to stand in one fluid movement. “Shall we?”

  Picard hesitated on the way to the turbolift long enough to say, “Mr. Data, the bridge is yours,” and then to add, “though you should feel free to attend the reception if you wish.”

  “Sir, unless that is an order, I would prefer to monitor the increasingly unpredictable behavior of the Ntignano sun. I have one of the science stations tied into a feed from the Federation vessel Curie, and am maintaining contact with their science officer.”

  “Very good, Mr. Data. I’ll make your apologies to the ReynKa.” Picard headed for the turbolift, and turned back in an afterthought. “Data, I would like to see a summary of your findings, if you would.”

  “Yes, sir.” Data settled into the captain’s chair. “Paint the town red, sir.”

  “Excuse me?” Picard said—no, almost said, and then decided against it. They were late enough as it was.

  How apt, then, to walk into the reception room, Troi beside him, and discover the pleasant gray, maroon, and slate blue color scheme replaced with bright red. Or perhaps not replaced, but covered. Red curtains along the walls, red tablecloths, red throw rugs over the utilitarian floor covering. Four tall poles grouped together in the center of the room, all bearing identical red flags with a complex, jagged black and orange device. Both Picard and Troi stopped short.

  “Oh, my,” Troi breathed. “I’m not sure I can even think in here, much less pick up impressions from our guests.”