Star Trek The Next Generation - 25 - Chains of Command by Star Trek

Author:Star Trek
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780671742645
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1992-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

An hour later Riker was still marveling at Picard’s finesse, not only in handling the prickly Dr. Iovino but also in moderating the roundtable discussion between the humans and the Tseetsk. It was having its own tense moments.

Drraagh was fascinated to learn about the lives of “free humans,” as she called them. “I hope you do not find this personally offensive, but our exploration team initially believed they were dealing with a kind of hive mentality,” she explained.

“What’s a hive mentality?” piped up Lorens. The boy had just come in with a small notepad and a stylus, which he held out to Beverly Crusher. “Here. Neela wants you to okay this requisition.”

Crusher gave him a smile as she initialed the form. “There. Now scoot. We’re trying to have a meeting.”

“Can I come back and listen?” Lorens asked. “I want to know what a hive mentality is.”

“It’s sort of a collective consciousness. Individual people are expendable, so long as the community as a whole is safe,” Crusher explained, and Riker wondered at the warmth and indulgence in her voice.

Picard cleared his throat meaningfully. Crusher flushed. “All right, you’ve had your one question. Now go on, Lorens. Get going. Neela’s waiting for you.”

The beginnings of a rebellious frown appeared on the boy’s face. “Can’t I come back? I’ll be quiet.”

Crusher seemed to be trying to summon up the will to be stern.

Riker took pity on her. “Why not?” he said good-naturedly. “I tell you what, Lorens, we could use a few cups of coffee here. Would you bring us some?”

Lorens broke into a wide grin. “Sure, Commander Riker.” He hurried away.

A good kid. Riker smiled after him.

Picard coughed. “If we could get back to the subject,” he said pointedly. “You were saying, Drraagh, that your early explorers thought humans might have a hive mentality.”

“Yes,” the alien agreed. “The communal activities, especially child-rearing, the disregard for personal safety, and the apparent subordination of individuality to achieve common objectives all contributed to the notion.”

“Selfless actions don’t necessarily mean that people have no sense of self,” Troi said gently.

“How could your scientists come to that conclusion?” Beverly Crusher asked. “An examination of the evidence—”

“You fail to understand,” Drraagh said. “Our team expected to find nothing on Joost-klaara—the planet your people call Foothold. Not intelligent life, at any rate. Our people had never found non-Tseetsk sapient forms in our entire sphere of exploration.

“Thus, though no Tseetsk had been on Foothold for”—she suddenly ruffled her feathers—“for many years, our explorers were amazed and frightened to find the human colony. And they had no specialists on alien cultures to guide them.”

Drraagh’s orange eyes shifted from Crusher to the other humans. “Study of your people only alarmed our explorers further. First of all, males seemed to be dominant, and many of them were quite aggressive. Second, we learned that the humans had fled a catastrophic . . . war on their home planet. There was speculation in the humans’ records that the rest of the race was . . .

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