But then the ship’s other predatory crewmembers, including the Caitian lieutenant Rriarr, the Betelgeusian ensign Kuu’iut, the S’ti’ach counselor Huilan, and the Chelon biologist Kekil, had begun to join Ree, making something of a ritual out of it, and a very messy one at that. Among most predatory species it was not only socially acceptable but virtually obligatory to play with one’s food; not only was there the instinct to play as practice for the real thing, but the metabolism of a hunter was geared toward a period of intense physical activity prior to feeding. (Back on the Enterprise,Data had discovered that playing with his cat Spot before dinnertime often improved her appetite. Worf, who had inherited Spot after Data’s death, had adopted the same practice when Deanna had mentioned it to him. Worf had been reluctant to take the cat at first, since Klingons as a rule were not fond of cute, furry things; but lately he seemed to have changed his tune. “The cat’s softappearance is deceptive,” Worf had told her in a recent letter. “Spot is in fact fierce, cunning, uncompromising, and supremely self-assured. What she wants, she demands, or simply takes. She has the heart of a warrior,” he had concluded—high praise indeed from him.) The predators’ dining ritual gave literal meaning to the term “mess hall,” and made many other crew members increasingly uncomfortable—particularly those from herbivorous species, some of whom saw it as a deliberate act of intimidation.
Huilan himself, one of Deanna’s assistant counselors, had worked out a solution, rearranging shifts so that the predators would have their mealtime at the quietest part of the night shift, and have the mess mostly to themselves. It had alleviated the problem, but Deanna wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. It seemed too much like the kind of “good fences make good neighbors” policy that this ship and crew were intended to challenge. But there were practical reasons for it, and at least it was an acceptable stopgap until something better came along.
Deanna felt she should stop in for a few minutes and say hello—watch them eat, maybe even try joining in as Will had once or twice. It was something she’d have to do if she wanted to overcome her own revulsion at the sight, and come closer to truly connecting with these crewmates of hers. Yet when she saw them tossing bloody chunks of meat and bone at each other, wrestling them into imagined submission and tearing into them with their fangs and beaks and tusks, it was all she could do not to become physically ill. In the wake of her nightmare, the sight seemed to inspire in her a sense of identification with the prey, a visceral urge to flee and hide. Letting out a shudder, Deanna decided that bonding red in tooth and claw could wait for another time, and briskly strode away. Maybe she was being a bit of a hypocrite, but she was off duty and it was the middle of the night, so that was her prerogative. Besides,she thought, the bloodstains would never come out of this wrap.
She wandered the corridors aimlessly for a time, greeting crew members when they went by but not seeking conversation. There were more people out than she was used to seeing on a starship’s “night” shift; but then, there was a greater range of diurnal cycles represented among the crew. Some species slept only every few standard days; aquatics like Ensign Lavena slept infrequently, generally with only half the brain asleep at a time; and several of the predators were adapted for short-burst activity and needed extended sleep periods. It had been a challenge reconciling duty cycles.
From around an intersection just ahead, coincidentally enough, Deanna heard the distinctive gurgle of water draining from the entrance lock to Lavena’s water-filled quarters. Rounding the intersection, she was surprised to see, not the Pacifican flight controller, but Dr. Xin Ra-Havreii, Titan’s designer, and now her chief engineer following the death of Nidani Ledrah during the Romulan affair. The Efrosian was wearing a robe and toweling off his long, white, dripping-wet hair and mustache, and Deanna realized he must have been engaged in an affair of another sort. She would have turned away and left him his privacy, but he spotted her and gave a wide, unabashed smile. “Counselor Troi, what a welcome surprise to see you!”
“Doctor,” she replied, keeping her tone casual.
“I hope you’ll pardon my appearance. Ensign Lavena and I were having the most intriguing…discussions. Selkies have such lovely speech, don’t you think? So musical, so nuanced, much like Efrosian languages. You can’t truly appreciate it out of the water.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.” She was not that surprised to see him emerging from a female crew member’s quarters; Efrosian sexual ethics did not generally include the concept of monogamy, and he was an attractive, charismatic individual. She was sure that Lavena was not the first to reciprocate his wide-ranging interest in the ship’s female crew members. But she was gratified that Ra-Havreii had demonstrated a tendency to be discreet about his liaisons; if she wished to satisfy her curiosity about how an air-breather could engage in sexual relations with the water-breathing ensign, she could always ask Will. (Well, that wasn’t quite right; Lavena had been in the amphibious phase of her life cycle when Will had known her nearly two decades ago. In a sense, Will had been in a different life stage then as well, and today he was more uneasy about the tryst than Deanna was.) That aspect of Ra-Havreii’s behavior, at least, was not typical of Efrosians; a people with an extensive oral tradition, they tended not to consider an event fully real until they’d spoken of it to someone else. Ra-Havreii was evidently willing to accommodate more conventional mores in that respect if not in others. Though she had no doubt he kept a detailed audio journal of his encounters.
But that was not something she wished to dwell on. “Actually I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “I’d been hoping we could schedule a talk in the near future.”
He spread his hands wide. “I’m at your disposal, Counselor. If you’d like to accompany me back to my quarters, then once I get changed I can offer you a drink and we can discuss whatever you like.”
“That’s very gracious, Doctor, but I was thinking of a discussion along more formal lines.”
Ra-Havreii grimaced, without losing his good humor. “In your office, no doubt. I saw quite enough of counselors’ offices following the Lunaincident, thank you. They’re all so calculatedly nonthreatening, so self-conscious in their attempts to put one at ease that they become oppressive.” Ra-Havreii, Deanna knew, had blamed himself for some time after the fatal accident aboard his prototype ship. For a time she had been concerned that Ledrah’s death from an engine-room explosion would have reignited the doctor’s guilt, but instead he seemed to have handled it constructively, embracing his new post as an opportunity to make amends for his past and move forward with his life. The problem now was that it wasn’t the only thing he was interested in embracing. “If you wish to discuss my personal life, where better than in my personal abode, where I can truly feel at ease?” he asked in a reasonable yet jaunty tone. “And where I will do my very best to make you feel equally at ease.”
Deanna didn’t need her empathy to sense the seductive undercurrent in his words. “Doctor, you know perfectly well that I’m a married woman.”
“A condition which the Betazoids I’ve known have been rather flexible about.”
“Well, I’m not one of them. And you’re not fooling me, you know.”
“Ahh, as perceptive as you are beautiful. What am I not fooling you about, my dear?”
“Efrosian or not, you know better than to seriously try to seduce the wife of your own very human captain. You’re only trying to distract me.”