"The choice to watch Oleph and Una's movie. Take a risk in the interest of discovery."

"No. I learned something. I had an anxiety I wasn't even aware of. You remember I had been telling you lately that you were concealing too many emotions?"

"Yes. I believe we still have a meeting pending on that."

"Well ... I was actually afraid that I was burying my own feelings and needs too much. That was my anxiety. That, being an empath among a crew of a thousand, responsible for their emotional well-being, I was neglecting my own feelings."

"You wouldn't be the first counselor to have that problem."

"Well, whether it had any basis or not, the anxiety itself was there and had to be reckoned with, and before all this happened I was projecting it onto others.

"Still, I couldn't see the cause of it all. But in those Other-worlder myth-dreams, I ran right up against it. That's why I kept seeing myself turn into a statue-it was my own fear of turning into a cold, unfeeling person. In the end, when I pa.s.sed through that stone state and came out alive again, the fear worked itself through."

"The statue-woman who wakes," said Picard. "The Winter's Tale." He patted the book on his desk, and was silent for a time.

"Are you going to continue your research into the works of human imagination?" he asked finally. "The research you started after seeing Oleph and Una's movie?"

She felt herself tense up at the thought.

"On an intellectual level, I know I should continue the work. But the flesh is weak. That research was how this all began. When I started the research I released the mythical characters from the movie to run rampant inside me, and I'm not ready to face that kind of loss of control. It could happen all over again, as soon as I make my first inquiries to the computer. And neither I, nor Oleph and Una, can say how long that danger will persist."

"Counselor, I'm not suggesting you should do anything you don't want to, or anything dangerous. I just hope you'll one day continue with the research, that's all."

"I promise, I will."

She had tried to sound fearless, but failed.

He paused before speaking again, and she could see the little wheels turning.

"Deanna," he said casually, "do you remember that Big Number you once told me about?"

She had to smile at his mental agility. He had a way of coming up with something you said long ago and rubbing your nose in it.

"You're talking about the number," she said, "based on average synapse count, of possible states of one human brain-the number of possible thoughts and feelings one individual is capable of."

"Yes, I think that's it. How big did you say it was?"

"Two raised to the power of ten trillion."

"And that's considerably more than the total number of atoms in the entire known universe. Which, as I see it, means the exploration in here," he pointed to her head, "is as unbounded and vast as the exploration out there." He pointed out the porthole. "And bear in mind the occupation of the man who is making that claim."

"I know what you're telling me. I won't give this up."

"Good. Now, did you still want to speak to me regarding my own suppression of feelings?"

Troi laughed. Then she realized the captain really meant it.

But at this moment she didn't feel the necessity. As an empath she could tell that the captain was allowing more of his emotions into consciousness. He wasn't showing them as openly as she might want, but that was his style of command. At least the feelings were there; especially now, after the mission to Rampart. That would figure. Amoret had apparently sifted through his mind-through everything, no matter how private and emotional. And afterward she had decided to save his life. Anyone would be less stiff after that.

"No, I don't think that's necessary right now."

"Thank you. Since I now have the counselor's seal of good mental health, I think I'm ready for some recreation. Care to join Will and me for a little horseback riding?"

"No, but thanks," she said. She was grateful enough that the two top officers of the ship would carve out some time to relax together.

She followed him onto the bridge.

"Come on, Will," said Picard. "Some holographic horses need a holographic sweat. Data, you have the bridge."

The first officer rose and accompanied Picard toward the turbolift. Troi noticed that the captain had his hand on Riker's shoulder in a decidedly paternal way. They could indeed have been father and son.

It was enough to make a ship's counselor proud.

After a day off, Wesley had already caught up on his sleep.

Now he paced around his cabin, considering the present alternatives for possible diversion, some edifying, some just fun.

The one that popped into his mind was in a different category altogether. A startling idea. He decided to act on it immediately, lest he lock himself into a hesitation-loop and delay it forever.

He called Shikibu and suggested the holodeck. She answered simply, "Yes, Shikibu out."

He beat her to the holodeck entrance and programmed in the Ryoanji rock garden, with the same soft rain as before.

He let the slim young woman precede him into the holodeck. Her black hair was free, swaying, her feet silent as mist on the stones. She led him toward the wooden patio. The rain was hypnotic, pattering on the gravel, dripping from the cedars and running in rills off the ancient tile roof.

For a moment Wesley found himself worrying what he would say to her, and if he should touch her again, and why he still felt awkward. She was still a mystery to him, after all those koan and mondo he'd read trying to understand her.

As they sat under the eave, he decided to just do what she was doing, and watch the garden. He decided not to try and understand any of it and simply gave up.

Then, as he looked at the garden which so skillfully blended the works of man with the works of nature, he had a strange sensation. He, himself, was a work of nature. At the smallest level he was composed of an inconceivable number of quarks and leptons, oscillating and spinning. These particles were organized into atoms, which were structured into vastly complex molecules in frenetic interaction that, in turn, made up his trillions of cells-each cell containing a DNA polymer with two billion "bytes" of information ...

And all of it happened spontaneously, with no volition on his part. He didn't have to tell the quarks or the DNA what to do. In fact, he wasn't even the same person from moment to moment-the cells of his body were continually dying, and new ones were growing in their places, and as he looked at his hand now he knew that it wasn't the same hand that had existed yesterday. The very quarks and leptons that comprised him were not exclusively "his"-they were descendants of the energy of the universe-creation explosion, and after they existed as Wesley they would exist in a star or planet or tree.

He was, he felt, like a wave, which travels briefly across the surface of an ocean-the waters form the wave momentarily and then transfer that wave-energy elsewhere. The wave has no permanent parts; it is only a process, inseparable from the rest of the ocean, as he, Wesley, was not a separate ent.i.ty confronting the universe. Rather, he was a manifestation of the universe. He was a natural process of a nameless infinite "it."

He remembered something Shikibu had told him, when he prodded her about explaining Zen archery. She'd said the archer himself does not shoot the arrow. If the technique is right, the shot falls spontaneously. She explained it this way: When a sage bush produces a flower, the sage doesn't "know" that a bee will be attracted to it; and when the bee takes the pollen from that flower, the bee doesn't "know" that some of it will be deposited on his back, and later, miles away, pollinate another sage plant. Yet the bee does take the pollen and, thus, other sage is pollinated. Through both bee and sage, "it" dances. Just so, the archer, in proper frame of mind, does not deliberately shoot the arrow. "It" shoots the arrow.

Now, just as spontaneously as that proper arrow-shot, Wesley found himself turning toward Shikibu, and kissing her, as she spontaneously did the same to him, and through them both, "it" danced.

The Dissenters had returned to the caves and tried to retrieve their books. But the cache had been found, and the books were gone.

They had then flown, on the backs of the swift haguya, high up into the mountains.

Now they were encamped for the night just below a very windy pa.s.s, an inhospitable place not likely to be visited by pragmatic Rampartians.

The Dissenter tradition of campfire bard-stories was being fulfilled. The haguya were perched on surrounding rocks, listening.

Suddenly one of the haguya, perched on the highest rock, took flight in alarm.

Coyote climbed up to the rock to look around. He saw a figure coming from far down the trail. The Dissenters hid, and when the newcomer appeared, Coyote confronted him.

He was a CS officer, but he wore no sidearm.

"I want to join you," he said without preamble.

"Why?" asked Coyote.

One of the haguya swooped in low, almost touching the CS officer. He looked at it in awe.

"I was at CephCom when you people came. After I saw you, and those creatures ... I had to, uh, rethink some basic a.s.sumptions. In other words, I decided everything I'd been taught was a lot of bull."

Coyote gave the man a long, penetrating stare.

"Good reason," he said finally. He looked at the man's nametag. "Does anyone else know you're here, Lieutenant Redman?"

"Well, actually, I'm accompanied by some others who'd like to join as well. We've brought a little present."

Coyote climbed nimbly back onto the rock, to see if he could verify Redman's statement. He saw a most amazing convoy. Books, the Dissenters' books, still wrapped in their old cloth bundles, were being brought up the trail at the head of a procession of several hundred unarmed CS men and women. At the front was an old, white-haired, slightly paunchy Hispanic man. Coyote recognized him as a Dissenter-sympathizer from years back, whose name had been Montoya. He'd been arrested for trying to smuggle a book to the Dissenters.

The new arrivals had brought blank paper with them. Later that night Amoret got hold of a pad and a pencil, and went to sit alone at the top of the windy pa.s.s.

All the excitement had inspired her. She felt like writing a story.

She wanted to tell a story about Captain Picard. She would extrapolate, interpret, tell it how she felt like telling it.

For some reason-and she had no idea where this inspiration came from-the first adventure she imagined had him shipwrecked on an ocean, on some far-off planet. He would float and swim until he found a beach, and then fall asleep on it. A race of people six inches tall would find him and tie him up ...

Chapter Twenty.

As THE E NTERPRISE sped on its way, the staff on the bridge was complete save one-the ship's counselor.

And though the seat on the captain's left was thus empty, the seat on the right was commodiously filled by the first officer.

First Officer Riker was staring at Worf.

Riker had just remembered incidents over the last few days that suggested a clandestine activity on the part of Worf, and involving Oleph and Una. There had been hushed meetings between Worf and the two little beings. There had been the a.s.sertion by the ship's counselor that Worf was hiding something ...

Worf stared back, obsidian-eyed, stubborn, knowing why he was the object of attention and disinclined to respond. He bent his gaze downward to his tactical console, and presented to his audience the mute prospect of his sagittal skull-b.u.mps.

This action caused Riker's eyes to twinkle with amus.e.m.e.nt. He knew Worf well enough to a.s.sume that the Klingon's secret was harmless. And he had been through so much serious business lately that his innate lightheartedness just insisted on taking the reins.

Some of the officers presently on the bridge had already heard rumors of Worf's furtive behavior. And, as all of them knew each other well enough to sense the subtle whorls in the currents of their shared company, Worf now became the focus of several more stares, some covert, some brazen.

"Worf," said Riker, "you know, just the other day I was thinking about how many times you've told us personal things, Klingon things, and how that candor always helped us all in the end. Have you ever noticed that effect?"

"That has been the pattern in the past, sir."

"And I've been trying to imagine a circ.u.mstance when it would be better for you, and all of us, if you didn't tell us, but it's the d.a.m.nedest thing-I can't come up with one. Can you?"

Worf stared at his console, and cleared his throat several times. Finally he lifted his ma.s.sive head and spoke.

"As I am tired of being stared at, I shall satisfy your curiosities. Soon after Oleph and Una were brought on board, they asked me about Klingon culture and I read them some of my own poetry. They saw my writing talent and suggested I write a novel. Their advice was to keep it a secret as long as possible so as to be unenc.u.mbered by the expectations of others. I have been writing that novel and contacting Klingon publishers."

He looked around with a slightly challenging air, as if he expected someone might try to ridicule him.

"Worf," said Captain Picard, "I think I can speak for all of us when I wish you the best of fortune with your novel. I'm sure you will attack it with the thoroughness you bring to everything. And I intend to exert no enc.u.mbrance."

"Thank you, Captain. I believe the recent incidents in the rho Ophiuchi system ill.u.s.trate that the warrior of the pen achieves a glory outlasting the warrior of the sword."

Worf seemed taken aback, but not entirely displeased, by his own sudden outburst of verbosity.

"I couldn't agree more, Worf," said the captain.

"So what sort of book are you writing?" asked Riker. "Are we in it?"

"Will," said the captain, "I think we should let Worf choose when he wants to say more about it."

"Thank you sir," said Worf.

"Worf," said the captain, "did you know that our own Mr. Data has been involved in literary pursuits?"

"Sir," said Data, "I would hardly call it-"

"Don't be modest, Data. Your poetry has already saved several lives, after all. Why don't you give Worf a sample."

Data looked down at his console.

"Sir, too many of my internal processors are at the moment involved in the tasks of ship's operations to allow for random word and phrase recombination."

"Not inspired at the moment, is that it, Mr. Data?"

"Perhaps you could say that, sir."

The android glanced at his console.

"I will observe, though," he went on, "that as we have just pa.s.sed the point in s.p.a.ce where Counselor Troi had her first experience with the Other-worlders, we may be said to have followed the pattern observable within the very first and very last sentences of Finnegan's Wake ..."

"How so?"

"The end comes back to the beginning."

For Troi, at this moment, conditions were indeed similar to that moment when she first encountered the "Other-worlders," the characters of imagination. She sat in the same chair, in the same cabin, and looked at the computer monitor as she finished a personal log entry.