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“I don’t believe it!” Faal exploded, hopping off his stool to confront Barclay. His equipment might have survived its near miss, but the professor’s temper clearly had not. Faal’s ashen expression gave way to a look of utter fury. His face darkened and his eyes narrowed until his large Betazoid irises could barely be seen. His entire body trembled. “Years of work, of planning and sacrifice, almost ruined because of this…this imbecile!”

  Barclay looked absolutely stricken. Yep, Geordi thought, Deanna is definitely going to have her work cut out for her. Barclay tried to produce another apology, but his shattered nerves left him tongue-tied and inaudible.

  “I’m sure that looked a lot worse than it actually was,” Geordi said, anxious to smooth things over and calm Faal down before he had some kind of seizure. “Good thing we planned on rechecking all the instrumentation anyway.”

  Faal wasn’t listening. “If you only knew what was at stake!” he shouted at Barclay. He drew back his arm and might have struck Barclay across the face with the back of his hand had not La Forge hastily stepped between them.

  “Hey!” Geordi protested. “Let’s cool our phasers here. It was just an accident.” Faal lowered his arm slowly, but still glowered murderously at Barclay. Geordi decided the best thing to do was to get Reg out of sight as fast as possible. “Lieutenant, report back to the transporter room and see if DeCandido needs any more help. You’re off of this experiment as of now. We’ll speak more later.”

  With a sheepish nod, the mortified crewman made a quick escape, leaving Geordi behind to deal with the agitated Betazoid physicist. Fortunately, his violent outburst, regrettable as it was, seemed to have dispelled much of his anger. Faal’s ruddy face faded a shade or two and he breathed in and out deeply, like a man trying to forcibly calm himself and succeeding to a degree. “My apologies, Mr. La Forge,” he said, coughing into his fist. Now that his initial tantrum was over, he seemed to be having trouble catching his breath. He fumbled in his pocket for his hypospray, then applied it to his arm. “I should not have lost control like that.” A few seconds later, after another hacking cough, he walked over to the shelf and laid his hand upon the sphere. “When I saw the equipment begin to tip over…well, it was rather alarming.”

  “I understand perfectly,” Geordi answered, deciding not to make an issue of the professor’s lapse now that he seemed to have cooled off. What with his illness and all, Faal had to be under a lot of stress. “To be honest, I wasn’t feeling too great myself for a few seconds there. I can just imagine what you must have been going through.”

  “No, Commander,” Faal answered gravely, “I don’t think you can.”

  Geordi made two more mental notes to himself: 1) to keep Barclay safely out of sight until the experiment was completed, and 2) to remember also that Professor Lem Faal of the University of Betazoid, winner of some of the highest scientific honors that the Federation could bestow, was more tightly wound than he first appeared.

  A lot more.

  Interlude

  Like most Betazoids, Milo Faal was acutely aware of his own emotions, and right now he was feeling bored and frustrated, verging on resentful. Where was his father anyway? Probably holed up in some lab, the eleven-year-old thought, same as usual. He’s forgotten all about us. Again.

  Their guest quarters aboard the Enterprise were spacious and comfortable enough. The captain had assigned the Faal family the best VIP suite available, with three bedchambers, two bathrooms, a personal replicator, and a spacious living area complete with a desk, a couch, and several comfortable chairs. Milo fidgeted restlessly upon the couch, already tired of the same soothing blue walls he figured he’d be staring at for the next several days.

  So far, this trip was turning out to be just as boring as he had anticipated. He had unpacked all their luggage—with no help from his father, thank you very much—and put his little sister, Kinya, down for a much-needed nap on one of the Jupiter-sized beds in the next room. Monitoring her telepathically, he sensed nothing but fatigue and contentment emanating from his slumbering sibling. With any luck, she would sleep for hours, but what was he supposed to do in the meantime? There probably wasn’t another kid his age around for a couple hundred light-years.

  In the outer wall of the living room, opposite the couch, a long horizontal window composed of reinforced transparent aluminum provided a panoramic look at the stars zipping by outside the ship. It was a pretty enough view, Milo granted, but right now it only served to remind him how far away he was traveling from his friends and home back on Betazed. All he had to look forward to, it seemed, was a week or two of constant babysitting while his father spent every waking hour at his oh-so-important experiments. These days he often felt more like a parent than a brother to little Kinya.

  If only Mom were here, he thought, taking care to block his pitiful plea from his sibling’s sleeping mind, lest it disturb her childish dreams. It was a useless hope; his mother had died over a year ago in a freak transporter accident. Which was when everything started going straight down the gravity well, he thought bitterly.

  Their father, for sure, had never been the same after the accident. Where in the name of the Second House are you, Dad? Milo glared at the closed door that led to the corridor outside and from there to the rest of the ship. Sometimes it felt like they had lost both parents when his mother died. Between his illness and his experiments, Dad never seemed to have any time or thought for them anymore. Even when he was with them physically, which wasn’t very often, his mind was always somewhere else, somewhere he kept locked up and out of reach from his own children. What’s so important about your experiments anyway? You should be here, Dad.

  Especially now, he thought. Milo knew his father was sick, of course; in a telepathic society, you couldn’t hide something like that, particularly from your own son. All the more reason why Lem Faal should be spending as much time as possible with his family…before something happened to him. If something happened, Milo corrected himself. He could not bring himself to accept his father’s death as inevitable, not yet. There was always a chance, he thought. They still had time to turn things around.

  But how much time?

  Milo flopped sideways onto the couch, his bare feet resting upon the elevated armrest at the far end. His large brown eyes began to water and he felt a familiar soreness at the back of his throat. No, he thought, I’m not going to get all weepy. Not even when there was no one around to see or hear him. Staring across the living room at the streaks of starlight racing by through the darkness of space, he forced his mind to think more positively.

  Flying across the galaxy in Starfleet’s flagship had its exciting side, he admitted. Every schoolkid in the Federation had heard about the Enterprise; this was the ship, or at least the crew, that had repelled the Borg—twice. This wouldn’t be such a bad trip, he mused, if only Dad took the time to share it with us. He could easily imagine them making a real vacation of it, touring the entire ship together, inspecting the engines, maybe even visiting the bridge. Sure, his father would have to do a little work along the way, supervising the most crucial stages of the project, but surely Starfleet’s finest engineers were capable of handling the majority of the details, at least until they reached the test site. They didn’t need his father looking over their shoulders all the time.

  Of course not.

  The entrance to the guest suite chimed and Milo jumped off the couch and ran toward the door, half-convinced that his father would indeed be there, ready to take him on a personal tour of the bridge itself. About time, he thought, then pushed any trace of irritation down deep into the back of his mind, where his father couldn’t possibly hear it. He wasn’t about to let his bruised feelings throw a shadow over the future, not now that Dad had finally come looking for him.

  Then the door whished open and his father wasn’t there. Instead Milo saw a stranger in a Starfleet uniform. An adult human, judging from the sound of his thought patterns, maybe twenty or thirty years old. It was hard to tell with g
rown-ups sometimes, especially humans. “Hi,” he said, glancing down at the data padd in his hand, “you must be Milo. My name’s Ensign Whitman, but you can call me Percy.”

  Milo must have let his disappointment show on his face, because he felt a pang of sympathy from the crewman. “I’m afraid your father is quite busy right now, but Counselor Troi thought you might enjoy a trip to the holodeck.” He stepped inside the guest quarters and checked his padd again, then glanced about the room. “Is your sister around?”

  “She’s sleeping,” Milo explained, trying not to sound as let down as he felt. Humans aren’t very empathic, he remembered, so I might as well pretend to be grateful. Just to be polite. “Hang on, I’ll go get her.”

  I should have known, he thought, as he trudged into Kinya’s bedroom, where he found her already awake. She must have heard Percy what’s-his-name stumble in, he thought. She started to cry and Milo lifted her from the sheets and cradled her against his chest, patting her gently on the back until she quieted. Dad would never interrupt his work for us, he thought bitterly, taking care to shield the toddler from his hurt and anger, not when he can just dump us with some crummy babysitter.

  The holodeck. Big deal. If he wanted to kill time in a holodeck, he could have just as easily stayed on Betazed. And it wasn’t even his father’s idea; it was the ship’s counselor’s! Thanks a lot, Dad, he thought emphatically, hoping that his father could hear him no matter where he was on this stupid starship.

  Not that he’s likely to care if he does….

  Three

  The door to the captain’s ready room slid open and Deanna stepped inside. “Thank you for joining us on such short notice, Counselor,” Picard said. He waited patiently for her to sit down in one of the chairs in front of his desk, next to Geordi. The door slid shut behind her, granting the three of them a degree of privacy. “Mr. La Forge has informed me of an unpleasant incident involving Lem Faal and I wanted your input on the matter.”

  Geordi quickly described Faal’s confrontation with Lieutenant Barclay to Troi. “It’s probably no big deal,” he concluded, shrugging his shoulders, “but I thought the captain ought to know about it.”

  “Quite right,” Picard assured him, feeling more than a touch of indignation at the Betazoid scientist’s behavior. Granted, Mr. Barclay’s awkward manner could be disconcerting, but Picard was not about to let Faal abuse any member of his crew, no matter how prestigious his scientific reputation was. Had Faal actually struck Barclay, he might well be looking at the brig now. “I appreciate your effort to keep me informed,” he told La Forge. No doubt Geordi would rather be attending to matters in Engineering, where there was surely much to be done to prepare for the experiment. Picard looked at Deanna. “Counselor, what impression have you formed of Professor Faal?”

  Troi hesitated, frowning, and Picard felt a twinge of apprehension. Lem Faal had not struck him as particularly difficult or worrisome. What could Deanna have sensed in the man? Some form of instability? If so, he was concealing it well. “Is there a problem with Professor Faal?” he pressed her.

  Her flowing black mane rustled as she shook her head and sighed. “I can’t put my finger on anything, but I keep getting a sense that he’s hiding something.”

  “Hiding what precisely?” Picard asked, concerned.

  “That’s what I can’t tell. Unfortunately, Faal is a full telepath, like most Betazoids, which makes him harder to read. To be honest, sometimes I can half-convince myself that I’m only imagining things, or that I’m merely picking up on the normal anxiety any scientist might feel on the verge of a possible failure.” She watched Picard carefully, intent on making herself clear. “Then I get another trace of…well, something not quite right, something Faal wants to conceal.”

  “Are you sure,” Picard asked, “that you’re not simply sensing some deep-rooted anxieties Faal may have about his medical condition? Iverson’s disease is a terrible affliction. It can’t be easy living with a terminal diagnosis.”

  “I’ve considered that as well,” Deanna admitted. “Certainly, he has to be troubled by his illness and impending death, but there may be more to what I’m feeling. When he admitted his condition during the briefing, I didn’t get the impression that he was letting go of a deeply held secret. He may be concealing something else, something that has nothing to do with his condition.”

  “What about his family?” Picard asked. He had been less than pleased to read, in his original mission briefing, that Professor Faal was to be accompanied on this voyage by his two children. The devastating crash of the Enterprise-D, along with the heightened tensions of the war with the Dominion, had inspired Starfleet to rethink its policy regarding the presence of children aboard certain high-profile starships engaged in risky exploratory and military missions, much to Picard’s satisfaction. His own recommendation had come as no surprise; although he had grudgingly adapted to the family-friendly environment of the previous Enterprise, he had never been entirely comfortable with the notion of small children taking up permanent residence aboard his ship. Or even temporary residence, for that matter. “How are his children faring on this voyage?”

  “Professor Faal has children?” Geordi asked, caught by surprise. “Aboard the Enterprise?”

  “Yes,” Troi said, both intrigued and concerned. “Hasn’t he mentioned them to you?”

  “Not a word,” Geordi insisted. He scratched his chin as he mulled the matter over. “Granted, we’ve been working awful hard to get the modified torpedo ready, but he hasn’t said a thing about his family.”

  A scowl crossed Picard’s face. “The professor’s experiment is not without its dangers. To be quite honest, it hardly strikes me as an ideal time to bring one’s children along.”

  “Any time is better than none at all,” Troi explained. “At least that’s what the family counselors back on Betazed thought. According to Professor Faal’s personal file, which I reviewed after our meeting in the conference room, the children’s mother was killed less than six months ago. Some sort of transporter accident.”

  “The poor kids,” La Forge said, wincing. Picard recalled that Geordi’s own mother had been missing and presumed dead for only a few years now, ever since the Hera disappeared along with everyone aboard; it was none too surprising that the engineer empathized with the children’s loss.

  “Anyway,” Troi continued, “it was felt that now was far too soon to separate them from their father as well, especially since his time after the experiment is completed is likely to be so brief.”

  “I see,” Picard conceded reluctantly. He was no expert on child psychology, but he granted that Faal’s terminal condition necessitated special consideration where his children were concerned. “No doubt Faal’s illness, as well as the recent tragedy involving his wife, imposes a terrible burden on the entire family. Do you think you might be reacting to whatever difficulties he might be having with his children?”

  Troi shook her head. “I’m very familiar with parent-child stresses, including my own,” she added with a rueful smile. Picard tried hard not to let his own…unflattering…feelings toward Lwaxana Troi seep over into Deanna’s awareness. “Not to mention helping Worf through all his difficulties with Alexander…. No, I know what family problems feel like. This is something different.” She frowned again, clearly wishing she could offer Picard advice more specific. “All I can say, Captain, is that Faal is more complicated than he appears, and might behave unpredictably.”

  “By attempting, for example, to strike Lieutenant Barclay?” Picard suggested. To be fair, he admitted privately, it was Barclay, after all. While he could not condone near-violence against a crew member, Barclay was something of a special case; there were times when Picard himself wondered if Reg Barclay might not be happier in a less stressful environment. The man had his talents, but perhaps not the correct temperament for deep-space exploration.

  “For example,” Troi agreed. She turned toward La Forge. “Geordi, you’ve worked more cl
osely with Professor Faal than the rest of us. What are your impressions of him?”

  “Gee, I’m not sure,” Geordi waffled. “I mean, yeah, he gets pretty intense at times—who wouldn’t under the circumstances?—but I don’t think he’s dangerous or anything, just determined to get the job done while his health is still up to the task. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I think his illness weighs on his mind a lot. He’s aware that he hasn’t got much time left.”

  “I see,” Picard nodded, his irritation at the scientist fading. It was hard not to feel for a man who was facing death just as his life’s work neared completion. “Perhaps we should make some allowances for displays of temperament, given the professor’s condition.” Picard stood up behind his desk and straightened his jacket. Time to conclude this meeting, he decided, and get back to the bridge.

  “Faal’s reputation is impeccable,” he told Troi, thinking aloud. “At the moment, all we can do is keep an extra eye on the professor and try to be ready for any unwelcome surprises.” He glanced at the closed door to the bridge. “Counselor, quietly inform both Commander Riker and Lieutenant Leyoro of your misgivings. Mr. La Forge, please keep a careful eye on Professor Faal from now on. We may be worrying unnecessarily, but it’s always better to be prepared for any problem that might arise.”

  “You can count on me, sir,” Geordi promised.

  “I always do,” Picard said, stepping out from behind his desk and gesturing toward the exit. The door slid open and he strode onto the bridge. He nodded a greeting to Commander Riker, who rose from the captain’s seat, surrendering it to Picard. “Thank you, Number One,” he said. “How goes the voyage?”

  “Smooth sailing so far, Captain,” Riker reported. He tipped his head at Deanna as she took her accustomed seat beside Picard. Behind them, Geordi disappeared into the nearest turbolift. Back to Engineering, Picard assumed.