Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Time (8) to Heal
by David Mack



p.-1 We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them.
     --François de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims

p.14 "I just don't get it," said another relief worker, a young man whose face was purpled with fat bruises. A clump of his light-colored hair had been torn out, and his nose was broken. "We're trying to help these people. What's wrong with them? Are they crazy or something?"
     "Maybe they are," Tenila said angrily, her nape feathers rising. "They just lost their homes, their families have been killed, and they're starving to death. Wouldn't you be crazy?" She was surprised to hear herself defending the actions of the elininae. She knew that Tezwan ethnic differences would seem petty to outsiders, but to her, as a trinae, speaking out for her tribe's most bitter rivals felt downright surreal.

p.17 "I have a substantial list of grievances," Ihazs said. "Do you want to hear them all?"
     "Could you summarize them? I am on a tight schedule."
     Annoyed silence was Ihazs's response for a moment; then he stretched his arms behind his head and crossed his ankles. "All right, then, the short version. We went out of our way to do you a favor, and we don't feel that you've reciprocated in kind."
     "That was seven years ago," Qafina said, his words garbled by his face being pushed into the carpet. "And five years ago the syndicate helped Dominion agents try to assassinate the Klingon ambassador to Faris Prime. I would say we're even."
     Ihazs rolled his eyes. "You shouldn't take things like that so personally. It was just business. And besides, he lived."
     "I see. I accuse you of duplicity, and your defense is incompetence. How inspiring."

p.87 undari, a curse in Nausicaan [noun]

p.89 "Your chili is foul," she said.
     "Tastes fine to me," he said, pushing another heaping spoonful into his gray-tattooed, ebony-hued face.
     "It deserves to be blasted out an airlock."
     "So do you. Eat it or shut up."

p.89-90 On her way to the main table, she plucked a canister of fruit juice from one of the dozens of open boxes stacked up in the dining area. She opened it and sat down across from Nolram, who ignored her in favor of focusing on his own lunch. Saff drank her juice and said nothing. It felt relaxing to be among people who shared the Zaldans' distaste for social falsehoods, which most species referred to as "courtesy." Some might have called the Caedara's crew unpolished or even rude. To her, they were just honest, hardworking criminals.
     Nolram got up, tossed his dirty bowl on the counter, and moved toward the exit. As he passed by, Saff said, "Want to have sex later?"
     "Maybe," he said. "I'll call you if I get bored."
     "Whatever," she said, and returned to enjoying her juice.

p.100 "But I had the biggest crush on you."
     Despite herself, she grinned. "Are you serious?"
     "Completely, and when I say this crush was big, I mean it was huge. Massive. Any bigger and it would've collapsed into a singularity."

p.131-132 As he passed the berthing deck, he heard the savage, animal wailing of Nolram and Saff violating each other, not as an expression of affection but as a desperate response to the tedium of shipboard life. Listening to Nolram's steady stream of Zibalian vulgarities, M'Rill sighed dejectedly. If today was Nolram's turn to bed Saff, then M'Rill's turn wasn't for another three days, after Gorul and then R'Lash. Saff's strict schedule of rotation gave their couplings a kind of drab institutional feeling, but its inherent fairness more than compensated for its lack of spontaneity.

p.155 Lagan hoped that La Forge's report would shed some light on this increasingly chaotic situation. Because the more that Tezwa's politicians said, the less she understood them.
     Pretty much like everyone else's politicians, she concluded with an exasperated frown.

p.165 "infamously irascible"

p.165 "ersatz paradise"

p.169 The president leaned on the bar and spoke in a low voice. "How are we doing with damage control?" As euphemisms went, "damage control" seemed to Zife like a perfectly apt substitute for "our criminal fraud on Tezwa."

p.233 Cultural friction between the trinae and elininae and spiked since the Lacaami rose to power. Hatred had metastasized not just within the Assembly but into the roots of Tezwan society. Regions of the plant had split under ethnic lines.
     It hadn't always been this way; when Yaelon had been a young man, the future had promised peace, unity, prosperity. He thought that he had seen the beginning of the end of this kind of tribal xenophobia. He recalled the day his fellow officers had learned his daughter had married a trinae man. More than one of them had asked, "What do they plan to call the children?"
     For years he had savored the looks on their faces when he had answered, simply and honestly, "Tezwans."

NAMES: Tenila, Savola-Cov, Sangano, Neeraj, Kuruk-Tau, Khota, Ihazs, Takaran, Deneva, GOl, Tuung, Trenigar, Erovan, M'Rill, Olaz, R'Lash, Kuda, N olran, Marlyn, Del Cid, Chiavelli, Sholo, Kellerasana, zh'Faila, Cort, Enaren, Bera, chim Gleer, Caedera, Trenigar, Hatrash, Salah, Gorul, CHalnoth, Zhod, Zaldan, Saff, Zibalian, Tzazil, Kaferian, Heyeradahl, Blancaflor, Cruzen, Gracini, Tsabo, Shrake, Lofgrin, Rolando, Valentin, Jourdonais, Chimelis, Kinya, Lirwon, Keena, Yaelon, T'aKala, Zogozin, K'mtok, T'Latrek, Liryn, Melo, Yenliya, McPherson, Whitmer, Shona, Otamad, Gorron, Zungu, Penga, McGlynn, Meldok, Kumbayla, Dema, Deelas, Izimo, Adrienne, Sorranno, Carranza

 

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