Chapter Twenty-Two

“AND NEVER COME WITHIN A BOATHOOK’s length of the captain unless you have a good reason. Remember that, Number One.”

“Oh, I will, sir. How long a boathook?”

Picard led Will Riker into the ready room off the bridge and headed for his desk, but never got a chance to sit down.

The door slid open without the courtesy of an entry request, and a gargantuan fit of fury plowed in.

“My son has been wounded in the Revolutionary War!”

The walls rattled. The desk buzzed. Riker backed off a good four feet.

“Yes,” Picard responded, and continued getting behind his desk. He didn’t sit down. No sense dying in a chair. “Yes, Mr. Worf, I know. I’m very sorry about that. I understand I was supposed to protect him, and you left him on the Enterprise for safety—”

Worfs brow came down. “I am proud of his wound!”

With a blink, Picard asked, “You are? Oh—of course you are.”

Stepping closer, Worf demanded, “Captain, I must know if the scar will be an honorable one.”

“Oh, yes,” Picard assured him. “He fought valiantly to protect our ship. I was hard-pressed to tell him from the actual soldiers.”

Worf fell silent for a moment, absorbing all this, all the parental worries about a wounded child crashing up against the Klingon sensibilities about where this fit on the honor scale of injuries.

Yet there were other things playing in those nut-dark eyes, things more complicated, more tortuous.

Before either spoke again, the door opened a second time without a chime for permission, and Alexander charged in at full tilt, almost slamming into the captain’s desk.

“Father!” the boy blurted.

Worf worked to control himself, and did about as well as any overheating steam engine. “The Captain has informed me that your wound was an honorable one.”

“Mr. Worf,” Picard broke in, “I’m glad you came. I’m logging a commendation for you—or, rather, I would be, if your ‘mission’ had been authorized. On a more pratical note, I have blocked the reprimand that will no doubt be forthcoming from Commissioner Toledano—”

“Captain,” Worf interrupted, “I cannot accept any commendations, or any other consideration, for this particular mission.

Picard eyed him. “Because of…”

“Yes, sir.” Worf lowered his voice a little. “I do not suffer about my decision, Captain, but I must not gain from it. To honor me in any way would be an insult… to Grant’s memory.”

Startled, Alexander looked up at his father. “What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

A chilly tension blanketed the ready room as both Picard and Riker realized just then that Alexander hadn’t been told what had happened on the planet. Worf did not shirk the moment. He looked at his son and said, “Alexander … I was not strong enough or fast enough to rescue Grant.”

Father and son stood barely beyond arms’ length from each other. Between them the terrible meaning of Worfs words festered and cried.

“He’s dead?” Alexander’s voice was thin, tiny.

Picard buried a shuddering desire to interfere. His custodial feelings toward the boy were supposed to be released now, yet he couldn’t retire them. He wanted somehow to soothe Alexander, and hold the program long enough to explain how such things could happen.

But life was no holoprogram, and there would be no pauses to think things out. There would be no scrolling back to save Grant’s life.

“He died,” Worf said slowly, “before I could get to him. I failed him, Alexander … I failed you.”

Grief twisted Alexander’s face. He averted his eyes from everyone for a long minute, working valiantly to keep control. Alexander kept staring at the carpet, nodded at some thought or other with which he grappled, then finally looked up. He couldn’t look in his father’s eyes, but stared instead at his father’s uniform.

“Some things are worth dying for,” he rasped.

At the boy’s generous words, Worf twitched, squinted, and fixed a perplexed look on his son. His lips parted, but nothing came out. What his son said was something all Klingons knew, but until now Worf had never known if his child believed it in his heart.

Tight-lipped, Alexander stepped back a pace or two, so he could face his father without seeming to look up so sharply. His voice was thready, full of effort.

“The Day of Honor is meant to help us understand that our enemy might have honor, right?”

Worf forced his voice up. “Yes …”

“Mrs. Khanty didn’t understand that. She didn’t think her enemy had any honor, but she was the one who didn’t have any. So she underestimated you. I don’t know if what you did was right, but I know honor isn’t simple. Sometimes it means both sides might be partly right, and you’ve got to figure that out before you go killing people.”

The room fell silent. All three men were riveted by the echo of a child’s words. And the same pride.

Alexander’s gaze rose to his father’s face, never flinched, never wavered.

“I still don’t know what honor is,” the boy said, “but I know it’s why you fight, not how you fight.”

Speechless, Worf stared down at his son. Then he looked up at Picard, and his expression changed. Anger still lingered, but there was something more—as if he thought that perhaps Picard did far more than had been expected.

“If it’s all right,” Alexander said, “I have to talk to the captain for a minute.”

Perplexed by his son’s command of the moment, Worf squeezed the tension out of his hands, nodded, and said, “Very well. Captain … thank you.”

Satisfied, Picard nodded back. “My pleasure, Mr. Worf.” Given the price paid, Worf guarded his reaction and left the ready room.

After the door panels closed and Worf was gone, Riker asked, “Do you want me to leave, too, Alexander?”

“No, you don’t have to.” Alexander came forward to the desk and looked at Picard. “I checked on some things.”

“Oh? Things like what?”

“Like whether or not Mr. Nightingale died that night. He did. And the name of the British colonel. And Patrick O’Heyne really did have a business in London and New York. And Mr. Pennington wrote some articles and letters that were published, so the computer was probably using his own words when he was talking to me. A lot of what we saw really did happen.”

“That’s good work,” Picard told him. “Did you also check as to the fates of Jeremiah and Sandy?”

“No … I thought about it, but I decided not to.”

“Why not? You have the rest of the journals, don’t you?”

“My relatives have them. I can get them.”

Picard leaned forward suddenly. “Just a minute—you’re not thinking about using a holoprogram again, are you?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, I want to go back. But … I think I’ll wait until next year’s Day of Honor to see the rest. And if it’s all right with you,” he added, steeling himself, “I think I’ll go with my father next time.”

Behind the boy, Riker’s blue eyes gleamed and he smiled.

“It’s quite all right with me,” Picard said. “A most honorable decision. Dismissed, swab.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Like a proper sailing man, Alexander came to attention, turned on a heel, and strode out of the ready room.

Picard leaned back and grinned at Riker. “Hmm … what do you know about that? Perhaps I wouldn’t do such a bad job of raising a child after all.”

Riker chuckled. “Well, sir, I have to admit—”

The door flashed open again. Wasn’t anybody using the damned door chimes anymore?

“Captain Picard!”

“Ah, Mr. Toledano … good evening.”

“You are going to be the captain of a mule train when the Federation Council gets done with you! You handed Odette Khanty over to the planetary law enforcement!”

“Yes, I did. And she’s been charged with assassinating her husband, along with a long trail of other corruptions. Mr. Data’s recordings are admissible as evidence and—”

“With her present on the planet, the election could still be held! It was held today!”

“And the lieutenant governor won,” Riker supplied. “He’s now planetary governor.”

Toledano rounded on him. “And they also voted to secede from the Federation!” He whirled back to Picard. “We’ve lost the planet because of your damned defiance!”

Picard kept his voice controlled and relaxed. “Think what you will, Commissioner, but I refused to put myself in the position of the British.”

“The what?”

“Sindikash has the right to set its own course. Independence was once a concept to be warred over, but I see it as the right of any colony that can prove itself self-reliant and stable. There’ll be a muscle-stretching period, a generation or two of struggle, hunger, weakness, and, if they survive, they’ll probably join forces with us again someday.”

“Assuming they don’t self-immolate! The whole area will be unstable for decades! How many colonies flare briefly, only to be snuffed out in power struggles? The toll is always high—”

“And the story disastrous and the songs very sad,” Picard filled in, “but that is part of political autonomy. It’s up to them, Commissioner, not us. In all conscience, I can’t deny the people of Sindikash the same advantage of hindsight with which I look upon the early United States.”

Toledano put a pointed finger on the edge of Picard’s desk, tried to think of something more to say, then decided he’d be better off saying it to the Federation Council. He stalked out.

Riker let out a long breath, and sat down. “What a week, sir.”

“On two fronts,” Picard agreed. He leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’ve got a peculiar taste for a rum toddy tonight. Isn’t that odd? Care to join me?”

Riker tipped his head. “Are you worried, sir?”

Picard raised and dropped one shoulder. “It’ll be a black mark on my record. There’ll be people who want my head on a pike. Sindikash voted for independence, but its new governor wants a relationship with the Federation. The Council can work with that, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir, I do think that.”

“As for me… if I lose the ship, well, nothing lasts forever. Maybe I’ll never get an admiralty, but I’ll be able to sleep at night. So we made a value judgment—if not us, then who? And don’t forget, if you look at history, it’s simply not believable that the United States actually won the Revolutionary War. So keep up hope, Mr. Riker. Save the galaxy a couple of times, you get some friends in key circles.”

Picard puffed up and raised his chin.

“After all,” he declared, “we’re not brutes, you know.”