Felicia felt her heart go out to Estresor Fil, who she had always thought of as a kind of younger sister, even though the Zimonian was actually a little older than she was. She certainly hadn’t expected anything like this—well, she had, to be honest with herself, but judging from the way Will Riker had been oh-so-subtly checking her out all evening, she had thought it would be coming from him. But definitely not from Estresor Fil. She supposed, as Zimonians went, she was probably quite attractive. But that didn’t necessarily make her appealing to Felicia’s eye.

On the other hand, there was a kind of exotic beauty in her finely sculpted features. She was not someone to whom Felicia would be instantly drawn, but she wasn’t repulsive, either. And she had a good heart—she was kind and intensely loyal, and she’d been able to summon up the courage to pull this off. That was something a lot of people—again, Will came to mind—never seemed able to do.

“You haven’t messed anything up, Estresor Fil,” Felicia said gently.

“I haven’t?”

“Not at all. You’ve done just fine. Even humans find this sort of thing difficult with other humans.”

“That’s what Dennis told me,” Estresor Fil said.

“Dennis Haynes?”

“Yes. I went to him for advice on human pairing rituals.”

“I see,” Felicia said. Dennis wouldn’t have been the one to whom she’d have turned, but apparently his advice hadn’t been so bad after all.

“He suggested that I put my arm around your shoulders,” Estresor Fil went on. “But ... I can barely reach them. It might be awkward.”

“It might be,” Felicia agreed. “Why not just put it here, around my waist? Then I can rest mine across your shoulders, like this.” When they were in position, Felicia sighed and looked at the Earth. Boy, were things going to be complicated when they got back down there.

Chapter 20

It wouldn’t be quite so bad, Will thought, if only I didn’t have to look at them.

On the ship that took them home from the moon, Felicia and Estresor Fil were together virtually every minute. He couldn’t tell if they had become romantically involved or if their friendship had just taken a more intimate turn. They laughed together, they sat close and chatted, now and again they seemed to be holding hands or touching one another’s faces. But that might have been an illusion, just normal touching magnified in Will’s mind by his own dark mood.

By the time they disembarked at the Academy in San Francisco, Will had come to an understanding with himself. It was stupid to even think that he should get involved with a woman in the first place. He had his Academy career to worry about, and after that his Starfleet career. Maybe once that was on track he could start to think about women, maybe getting married and starting a family at some point. But not until then. A girlfriend now would just set him back, cost him time and energy he needed to spend studying and working. There was no room in an active, ambitious career for romance, and thinking that there was had been simply delusional.

When he saw Estresor Fil and Felicia walking to their dorm together, Felicia’s head bowed so she wouldn’t miss a word of whatever the little Zimonian was saying, he didn’t begrudge them their happiness at all. He didn’t, he decided, feel a thing.

Chapter 21

Roog seemed unhealthy at the best of times, and one misshapen foot in the grave at the rest. Kyle had ascertained that she was a female because Michelle referred to her as “her,” but that was all he knew about her beyond her political beliefs, which were strident, and her patience for fools, which was virtually nonexistent.

He and Michelle stood at the back of a large room in the labyrinthine bowels of The End, a room that might once have been a banquet hall or a ballroom. Today, it contained maybe two hundred people, mostly residents of The End and other impoverished neighborhoods, individuals of every race and description. On a raised dais made from construction scraps that afternoon, Roog, Cetra ski Toram, and Melinka sat. They had taken turns addressing the crowd, alternating between describing detailed political and economic scenarios and doing some pure rabble-rousing, trying to direct the audience’s anger at the Cyrian government. When Kyle had suggested that Michelle should also be on the dais, she had colored and waggled her hand in the Cyrian gesture of negativity. He was getting used to conversing with her in English with touches of Cyrian thrown in, like that or the back and forth hand wobble that indicated assent or agreement. “I’m just a foot soldier,” she protested. “Not a general.”

“I know a little bit about strategy,” he admitted. “And I know that generals aren’t worth much if they don’t have foot-soldiers they can count on.”

“I get the feeling you know about a lot of things, Joe Brady,” she replied. Then she hushed him, because Roog was talking and those near them were shooting them dirty looks.

“No plutocracy can survive indefinitely,” Roog was saying, “because, by definition, the majority of its citizens are shut out of power. And when a majority understands that it’s being used and abused by the powerful for the sole benefit of the powerful, then that majority rises up and takes back its proper role.”

This pronouncement was met by cheers and warm applause from the audience. Roog waited for it to finish and went on. “The Cyrian plutocracy is at that point now. They are willing to kill us—kill the majority—because we are inconvenient to them. That’s always—always—a sure sign of a plutocracy that has lost its way, with a leadership that has lost its collective mind. Individual members of government may still be sane, but the government itself is insane. Unsound. Mad. The time has come to stop fighting back with words—words can only influence those sane enough to hear and understand them. The time has come for action!”

A much louder roar of applause went up this time, and Kyle found himself hoping the government didn’t have spies in the neighborhood. This room was deep inside a large building that might have been a luxury hotel, in its prime, but to have contained the noise this bunch was making, he hoped it was still well soundproofed.

“I can’t promise you that victory will be easy,” Roog said when the applause had abated. “It won’t be. I can’t promise you that it will come without sacrifice—and you, of everyone in this nation, have already sacrificed plenty. It will not. I can’t promise that you will all be here to taste the fruits of your efforts—the fresh taste of freedom, of self-governance, of economic possibility. You won’t be.

“We are talking about a struggle, and in a struggle there are casualties, and some will die, and others will be injured, and along the way there will be dark days when you wonder if it’s worth the pain and the loss and the heartbreak. So I say to you today, look at yourselves. Look at those next to you, behind you, all around you. Look at your families, your young. It’s for them that we must fight. For yourself, of course. But also for your neighbors, your loved ones, and your offspring. For everyone that you know, and everyone you are ever likely to know. Because we fight for justice, and there is no justice if justice is selective. Justice must stand for all if it is to stand for any!”

When the crowd broke into more sustained cheers, Kyle turned to Michelle. “She’s good,” he said.

“She knows how to work a crowd,” Michelle agreed. “If she could address thousands, or tens of thousands, all at once, we’d have a revolution today and economic justice tomorrow. But she would be killed before she could get a word out, if the government knew she was doing this. As long as the struggle has to remain secret, it’ll be a hard road. As it is we need to rely on these people spreading the word to friends and neighbors, but doing so discreetly.”