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Riker sat next to her on the couch, close but not too close, trying to remind himself that he was speaking as her captain, not her husband. That was why he’d come to her in her office. “You must have known that we’d need your empathy when the time came. Your own reports said that emotion seemed to be their primary form of communication.”
“I know, Will…I’ve just been hoping to avoid it.”
He paused, choosing his words. “You told me, back on the Enterprise,that contact with the jellies was a beautiful experience. Exhilarating, you called it.”
“When they were happy, yes. But even then it was overpowering. And I was a different person then.” She looked inward. “You can’t know what it’s like…having another being’s emotions forced into you like that. Even though it’s not intentional or malicious, it’s still…like being inundated, swept away in a flood. Being totally helpless to control or resist it…”
To hell with protocol,Will thought, and took her in his arms. “Imzadi,”he said, and then nothing more for a moment. Then he pulled back and met her eyes. “Dea
She gazed at him for a long moment, a smile gradually growing. “You’re not so bad a healer yourself, you know.”
“Just something that rubbed off from my wife.”
“Hey, no rubbing during work hours.”
“Ahh…there’s the rub.”
After Will left, Dea
Dea
But nothing came. Time was subjective in this state, but the durationof the silence became palpably greater. Dea
Which brought her to Orilly Malar. “Thank you for seeing me, Cadet,” she said when the Irriol arrived in response to her page. She shook Orilly’s trunk in greeting and invited her in. “Please, sit,” she said, offering her a low floor cushion. The quadrupedal cadet thanked her and settled down on her haunches, then blinked her big black eyes inquisitively at the counselor. Dea
Dea
Orilly fidgeted, twisting her trunks together. “What you ask…it would be better if you had another Irriol. I am…not someone you should trust with a gestalt.”
“I know you’re an exile, a criminal by your people’s laws. But your service to Starfleet has been exemplary. I know you can be trusted.” She knew, indeed, that even the most malicious Irriol criminal could be trusted to serve Irriol interests offworld in order to earn points toward freedom from exile, since the desire to return home was an instinctive need, overriding all other concerns. But there was nothing in Orilly’s psych profile to indicate any malicious drives, and the nature of her crime was still unclear to Dea
“Not with this, I ca
“Can you try to explain to me what your crime was?”
“It is not easy. Perhaps as an empath, though, you can understand better. I will try.”
Orilly explained as best she could, with both words and empathic impressions. She strove to convey to Dea
The catch was intelligence. Sapient beings had more power of choice, a more complex range of responses than creatures of instinct. Irriol felt the gestalt as much as any animal, and it influenced their choices even when they did not know why; but sometimes choices were made in defiance of gestalt, and the balance was disrupted.
Orilly told Dea