“She can’t,” Kressn said. “She’s half human. She’s not remotely the telepath her mother is. And…speaking of Mother…what should we do with her? With both of them?”
“Well, the big one is dead…”
“No, he’s not.”
Sure enough, Mr. Homn was still among the living. He wasn’t moaning. Instead, incredibly, he had repositioned himself so that he was next to Lwaxana…and, operating as if from pure instinct as much as anything else, he had draped a protective arm over her and was looking at them defiantly. The wound was still very much in evidence, and there was a large pool of blood on the floor, but the bleeding had stopped.
“Now, that’s impressive,” said Sela. “We don’t need a mental vegetable and a nearly dead man; the daughter and the boy will do. Kill these two.”
“No!” shrieked Deanna.
The Romulans stepped forward, prepared to do as ordered, bringing their disruptors up and aiming them to finish the job.
That was when a firm voice rang out, loud and clear: “Weapons down. Sela…no.”
It was a tone that was so obviously accustomed to command that the Romulans froze in the act. Sela, without even turning to look at the speaker, said, “This is none of your concern, Riker.”
“Oh, yes it is,” said Riker, crossing the room quickly and stepping around in front of Sela. “You asked me how far I would go, what I would be willing to do. What would I stop short of. Well, I stop short of this, Sela: being party to the cold-blooded murder of two helpless innocent people.”
“Really.” She snorted derisively. “You’re a member of the Maquis, Riker. That’s a terrorist organization. Do you truly believe that no harm has ever come to innocents during their activities? You took the Defiant and attacked Cardassian installations. Military targets, but there might well have been innocent people there: visitors, friends or family, simple maintenance people just trying to eke out a living. How many of them did you destroy, hmm? You don’t really mean you won’t be party to it. You just don’t want to be involved with it when they wear the faces of people you know.”
“Be that as it may…you hurt them, Sela, and I’m out.”
“You’re ‘out’?” She raised one curved eyebrow. “Are you under the impression you can just pull out at any time?”
“Are you under the impression that you can stop me?” he replied tightly, his voice like a knife. “And do you think anything is going to be gained by both of us trying to find out?”
She appeared to consider the merits of the situation, and then she said to the others, “Get them out of sight. Move them upstairs.”
“Shall we clean up the blood?” asked a Romulan.
“No. Leave it. The blood will upset him, make him aggressive and sloppy.”
For a moment Deanna was confused, but then she understood. “Worf. You’re laying a trap for Worf.”
“That’s right.”
“But…I don’t understand…why…why did you have to attack this house? Involve my mother and Homn, why…”
“Because,” Sela said easily, “we wanted to have some fun.”
Deanna couldn’t believe what she had just heard. “Fun? Fun? You call all of this…chaos fun?”
“We all seek our amusements where we can, Deanna,” Sela said. She had taken a step back to Riker’s side, and then she suddenly wrapped an arm up and around the back of his head, drew it forward and kissed him with an almost violent enjoyment. Their faces drew apart, but she kept her teeth dug into his lower lip for an extended moment before releasing it. Then she cast a contemptuous glance at Deanna. “I take it we understand each other.”
“Only too well,” said Deanna, her eyes blazing as she looked at Riker. “Only too well.”
Fourteen
The painting was exactly where Will Riker had remembered it being.
It hung on the wall of the Betazed museum of art, a canvas of concentric splashes of red, blue, green, white, black, and several colors that Riker still didn’t recognize. A dozen years ago, Deanna and he had stood in front of it and she had tried to urge him to see something in it, to examine what it had suggested to him. At the time, all he had seen were paint swirls. Riker had never been much for abstract art. His feeling was that a painting should be of something recognizable. Otherwise he was always worried that somewhere out there, the artist was laughing at his admirers by simply splashing together whatever colors he felt like at random and calling it a painting.
But Riker had learned much during the intervening years, and when he gazed at the painting now, he relaxed his mind, let it wander. The curious thing to Riker was that, whenever he was willing to do that—let his thoughts simply run in free-floating directions rather than in nice, ordered headings—invariably they would always turn, sooner or later, to Deanna. One would have thought that consistent happenstance alone would have been sufficient to make him realize the depths of his feelings for her, but such had not been the case.
This time was no different than the other times, as the colors in the painting, in his mind, swirled and coalesced. And they seemed to form a face, smiling and loving, filling him with completion. As it happened, Riker felt connected not just to his past but to his future, as if he was standing at a crossroads in his life and seeing all the possibilities of his actions played out for him, here and now.
The face seemed to speak to him, and it was her face, it was her soul intertwined with his, and as if she were talking to him from every point in his existence, as if they had always been meant to be together and always would be, she said to Will Riker, Welcome home…Imzadi…
“Glad to be back,” he murmured.
He closed his eyes, holding the image in his mind for a time longer, and then allowed it to dissipate. In doing so, he felt as if he was drawing it into every aspect of himself, fortifying his spirit for what was to come. It was not going to be easy, that much was certain. Will was going to have to talk to Deanna…talk to Worf…explain himself, make his case…
It was a daunting prospect.
He had already been on Betazed for a day or two. He had not come in through the normal spaceport, which was the required port of entry for standard commercial transports. His concern had been that, if he came through the main port of call and been ID’d as Will Riker, it might have set off bells in Jellico’s office. But the transport pilot had been a friend of former Sergeant Tang’s, and had been kind enough to bend the rules and drop him off a distance from the city. Unfortunately, to make sure that they were far enough away to avoid detection, he’d had to let Riker off quite a few miles from the city. But that had been okay, for Riker had found that he was anxious to give himself time to build up—of all things—his nerve. He knew he was going to have time; just before he had left, Deanna had dropped him a chatty vid in which she mentioned, among other things, that they had decided to extend their stay on Betazed. “Mother and Worf are getting to know each other,” she had said perkily…or at least, it seemed as if she was trying to look perky. Riker didn’t know whether to take that as a good sign or a bad one.
For all he knew, once he came to her, she would smile at him pityingly as she explained to him that it was over. And Worf…would look at him with pure contempt. He would be forever diminished in the Klingon’s eyes for his weakness and uncertainty in waiting as long as he had. But then Will squared his shoulders, reinforcing his confidence. Whatever was going to happen would just have to happen. He’d live with the consequences of his actions.
Worst came to worst, he could always leave Starfleet and join a traveling circus.
He’d arrived on Betazed only a short time before. His first impulse had been to go straight to the Troi home, but he fought it. Instead he needed time to steel himself for what was to come, and had done so by visiting the museum. It had, after all, been the last place that he had seen Deanna before he embarked on a career that would take him away from her, only to wind up reuniting them. It was only fitting somehow that he return to the museum to pay his re
spects.
“Will!”
The voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t immediately place it as he turned to see the speaker…and then he recognized her instantly. “Wendy! Wendy Roper! I don’t believe it!”
The woman approaching him was small and slim, with her long black hair tied back in an elaborate braid. “Will Riker, you old sleaze!” she said in amazement. “When did you get so scruffy?”
“About eight years ago.”
“Makes you look ancient.”
“I feel ancient.” He paused, thinking about the fact that the last time he had seen Wendy Roper, they had been naked together in his quarters, sleeping off a slightly (but only slightly) alcohol-supplemented assignation. Then Deanna, with whom he had thought he had broken up some hours before, showed up and discovered them together. The rest was history.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re still here. I mean, you can’t still be assigned here with your father…”
“Actually, Daddy left his job at the Federation Embassy about three years ago. And it’s Wendy Berq, actually.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Married?”
“That’s usually the way.”
“When?”
“Actually, about two years after you left. My husband is Betazoid…a teacher. That’s why I stayed.”
“My God…”
“But Will,” she said urgently, her mood suddenly changing, “I heard about Deanna…”
“You did.” He sighed.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“In a way…it is. I mean…you know…in a way, I wanted it to happen to her…”
He didn’t notice that Wendy was staring at him in clear astonishment. “What?”
“It’s just, after all these years, she deserves something like that…in many ways, it couldn’t happen to a better person…”
“Will, are you out of your mind?”
The intensity of her reaction caught him off guard. “Wha—? Wendy…what are you…?”
“How can you say that? No one deserves to have something like that happen!”
“Wendy, what’s the matter with you?” He gripped her arms, noticing that people were looking at them in confusion. “Get ahold of yourself.”
“What’s the matter with me? Will, I know that you and Deanna had a bad breakup, but it was a dozen years ago! You can’t really think that after all this time, she deserves to have her home destroyed, her mother mentally brutalized, her—”
Will Riker went completely ashen.
“What…” he said slowly, “in heaven’s name…are you talking about?”
Will ran through the hospital corridors so quickly that he nearly knocked over at least half a dozen people. Fortunately enough the Betazoids, being a fairly hypersensitive race, were adept enough to get the hell out of his way so that they didn’t wind up with his footprints on their backs. Wendy ran behind him.
The news that Wendy had told him was simply beyond belief. Gart Xerx, whom Riker knew quite well, had stopped by the Troi household to visit on the spur of the moment and found the entire place a wreck. Destruction from above and the sides. Lwaxana and Homn, lying insensate in an upstairs room, Lwaxana in some sort of mental coma and Homn unconscious and having lost a ton of blood. No sign of Deanna, or Worf, or Alexander. No clue as to when any of it had happened. It was as if the galaxy had gone crazy.
“Excuse me,” said one thin, gray-haired Betazoid woman, stepping deliberately in his way, “but you absolutely should not be running in—”
“Lwaxana…where is she…?” he managed to gasp out. He had run ten blocks and up several flights of stairs, and was feeling a bit winded.
“Lwaxana? You mean Lwaxana Troi…Daughter of the Fifth House?”
“That’s right.”
The woman seemed taken aback. “I can take you to her. I’m her doctor. Come.”
She turned and walked away. Will and Wendy fell into step behind her. They headed down the corridor, and Will could tell before they got there which room was very likely Lwaxana’s. There were a number of people standing outside, most of them fairly tall and broad men, and they were wearing pale blue uniforms. Riker immediately recognized them as part of the Betazoid Peace Keepers force. The Peace Keepers were, for the most part, a figurehead force only, since crime was almost unknown on Betazed. Since all Betazoids were capable of mind-reading, getting away with any crime was virtually impossible. So outside races rarely bothered trying anything on Betazed, and the Betazoids themselves were—to all intents and purposes—above that sort of thing. All in all, the Peace Keepers’ main function was to provide a nominally comforting presence to tourists and look good on a float during the annual Betazed Unity Parade. There was also a Starfleet security man, apparently connected to the embassy.
When they saw Riker coming, however, they stared at him with what appeared to be surprise. “You!” one of them said, and another called out, “He’s here!”
“They know you?” Wendy asked.
“I’ve been back here from time to time, but I don’t remember these guys in particular,” Riker said in a low voice, and then he switched into “command mode,” adopting the tone of voice that came so naturally to him when he was striding the bridge of a starship. “How is she, gentlemen? And Mr. Homn, what’s his condition? I’m going to want to inform Starfleet of this immediately. Do we have any idea of the whereabouts of Deanna Troi? Or Mr. Worf, or his son? Or any clue as to the identity of the perpetrators of—”
A blunt object came down from behind Riker, catching him squarely in the back of the head and sending him to his knees. Wendy let out a shriek as Will pushed himself forward, trying to get distance between himself and whoever had just assaulted him, and staggered to his feet. He turned and saw, to his astonishment, a Cardassian. He was holding a shock prod, tapping it gently against his lower leg. He was tall, with the darkest and most pitiless eyes that Riker had ever seen in a sentient being. It had been the prod that he had used to slam Riker from behind, but it hadn’t been activated. If it were, Riker would be immobile from the neck down.
“Who the hell are you?!” demanded Will.
“Are you going to pretend you don’t remember me, Riker?” asked the Cardassian. “Your old friend, Mudak?”
“Remember you? I’ve never even met you! Will someone tell me what’s going on?” He was rubbing the back of his aching neck.
“You should have finished off Homn when you had the chance, Riker. He regained consciousness for a time…long enough to tell us who was behind the attack. Romulans…and you.”
“And…me? Are you insane? He’s insane!” he said to Wendy.
Wendy turned to the Peace Keepers and said, “This is a mistake…Will Riker would never do something like th—”
“Will Riker?” Mudak laughed derisively. “This isn’t Will Riker.”
“What?” Wendy asked. “What do you mean, this isn’t—”
“This is Thomas Riker, or at least that’s what he calls himself,” continued Mudak. “Terrorist. Member of the Maquis. Escapee from a Cardassian labor camp. And freak of nature…a walking accident, a duplicate created by a transporter mishap.”
“No…I am Will Riker,” Riker said, trying to fight down a rising sense of panic. “I didn’t know that Tom had escaped…until recently, I didn’t even know that he wasn’t aboard the Gandhi…”
Wendy stared at him in astonishment. “You mean it’s true? There’s another…another you running around?”
“Yes,” said Will, “but I’m not him. You,” he said urgently to the Peace Keepers. “Look at my mind…you’ll see that I’m Will Riker….”
One of the Peace Keepers, the leader apparently, took a step forward and frowned momentarily. “He is Will Riker…”
“Of course he is!” said Mudak. “I explained that to you people when I first arrived! Timing worked against you, Riker. I’ve been tracking you ever since you escaped. Made you my pet project. I’d left word with key, discreet
informants on certain worlds to be on the lookout for you, and when word of your involvement in this assault surfaced, I was here in no time. I didn’t think you’d actually be foolish enough to return here. I’ve been waiting for Lwaxana Troi to recover so I could try and get more information from her, on the chance that she had scanned your mind and knew where you were going. But here you are. What were you doing, Riker? Coming back here to finish her off?”
“I am not…Tom Riker…I am Will Riker, now what do I have to do to make that clear to you? Lwaxana!” he suddenly raised his voice. “Lwaxana, I need to talk to you!”
The doctor was still there, and she was interposing herself between Riker and the entrance to Lwaxana’s room. “You can’t. Whatever happened to her, it left her in severe mental shock. She underwent some sort of psi attack. There may be memory loss…she’s still not conscious, she has to build up her strength…”
“But she’ll know me. More than anyone else could, except for Deanna, she’ll know me…and maybe she can tell us where Deanna went, maybe—”
The Peace Keepers were gathering around her on either side, adding their bodies to the blockade. “I’m sorry,” the doctor said firmly.
“All right, Riker, enough games,” Mudak said, and with a click of a switch he activated his prod. “Please, I’m begging you…make this difficult….”
“He might know where they are,” one of the Peace Keepers pointed out.
“Their whereabouts are none of my concern,” Mudak replied impatiently, “but if you wish to scan him on that matter, do it and be quick about it. I’m growing tired of these games.”
Once more the Peace Keeper delved into Riker’s thoughts. “He has no knowledge of their whereabouts. In fact, he has no recollection of, or knowledge of, what happened at all.”
“You see?” Riker said.
But Mudak shook his head. “That proves nothing. The Troi woman had her mind tampered with; you said so yourself. They may have done a similar thing to him, in order to protect themselves, cover their tracks.” He pointed the prod at Will. “I checked with Starfleet as soon as my contact passed the report on to me. Will Riker is still on Earth. I have that directly from one of their admirals who gave Will Riker his latest assignment. This is Tom Riker. He is my prisoner and he is coming with me now!” And over the startled gasps of the Peace Keepers, who were not remotely accustomed to even seeing the use of force, much less utilizing it themselves, Mudak lunged at Riker with the shock prod.