Chapter 13

“I’ll put my Listeners on it,” Uhura promised. “A migration of that magnitude from an unallied world to Romulus should be easy to track. If Jarquin’s sons or any concentration of Quirinians are registered on the homeworld, we should be able to learn something, however tenuous. Meanwhile, I assume you’re scanning the so-called enclosed areas from orbit?”

“Affirmative,” Selar reported.

“And-?”

“And several regions appear to have been abandoned altogether. There are no life-sign readings other than those indicating small animal life-forms, most likely verminous.”

Rats, Uhura thought, suppressing a shudder.

“Of the other quarantined or ‘enclosed’ areas, most appear to be very sparsely populated,” Selar went on, “and there is evidence of reduced activity among the few remaining inhabitants. Scans show elevated body temperatures, indicating the likelihood of infection. Since I began scanning the village of Sawar less than one hour ago, there have been four fatalities in the quarantined area.”

“But there’s no way of telling for certain if that’s caused by our neoform,” Uhura suggested.

“Without actually collecting biosamples? I believe not.”

“It is unfortunate we were barred from traveling to the quarantined areas,” Tuvok interjected suddenly.

“Yes, it really is too bad,” Uhura agreed. “But of course I’d never tell you to disobey Citizen Jarquin’s directive and try to infiltrate those regions illegally.”

“Obviously,” Tuvok said. “A pity, since we do have hazmat suits against just such a contingency. And, given the necessity for bulky clothing in the Quirinian climate, it would be quite possible for us to conceal all but the face mask of a hazmat suit beneath our parkas. Further, were we traveling at night…”

“Hypothetically, of course,” Uhura said, her face as deadpan as any Vulcan’s.

“Hypothetically,” Tuvok agreed. “Of course.”

Selar watched this exchange with great interest. She wasn’t certain what was going on, but it intrigued her. Sisko, being human, understood entirely, and managed, just barely, to suppress a chuckle. A glance in Zetha’s direction told him she got it, too. Sisko crooked a finger at her.

“You come with me,” he said, indicating she was to follow him forward, out of earshot of the briefing.

Zetha shrugged. She had grasped immediately what was going on. But if Sisko felt it necessary to exert his authority, she would humor him.

“You begrudge me the knowledge that Tuvok and Selar intend to infiltrate the enclosed areas,” she observed when they were alone in the control cabin, where he had assigned her a seat far away from the instruments. “Why?”

“I begrudge you any detailed knowledge of this mission,” Sisko said honestly, frowning at one of the readings. The environmental control adaptor had been hinky since departure, but since when had it refused to respond? “I think the less you know, the better. There’s no guarantee you won’t run to the first Romulan you see with the information you already have-“

“No guarantee except Lieutenant Tuvok, who can no doubt outrun me,” Zetha said, too low for Sisko to hear.

“-and no idea what disposition SI’s going to make of you once this mission is over-“

“I assumed I would be sacrificed.”

She also said this so quietly Sisko almost didn’t hear it, but he did.

“Sacrificed? What are you talking about?”

Zetha shrugged. “I am still learning your language. ‘Executed’ might be a more accurate word, ‘eliminated’ easier on your sensibilities. But killed, in so many words.”

Sisko stopped fidgeting with the controls and gave her his full attention. “Run that by me again? You honestly believe Starfleet will have you executed once this mission is over?”

“It is what the Tal Shiar would do,” Zetha said.

“Then why in God’s name are you going along with it?”

Does he not see? Zetha wondered. No, of course he doesn’t. His life to this point has been far too soft. When he speaks so fondly of a dead mother who loved him, a father who taught him to cook, his wife, his son-a family, a place to belong, in so many words-how can he possibly know?

“Perhaps I don’t understand,” she said ingenuously, watching him out of the corners of her green eyes. “Is not the purpose of this mission to trace the origins of this disease, apprehend whoever has created it, and save the lives of those who might be afflicted by it?”

“Ideally, yes, but-“

“Then that is why I am ‘going along with it,’ as you say. When ‘it’ is over, so is my usefulness. You cannot imagine I will be allowed to return to your Federation knowing what I know?”

“That’s exactly what-” Sisko started to say, but stopped himself. “You can’t tell me you’re just here to help us. We’re strangers to you. Enemies, as far as your conditioning has taught you. There’s got to be another motive.”

Zetha shook her head, almost pitying him, as she had almost pitied the elites on her own world whom she had spent a lifetime mocking, eluding, pilfering from. He really did not understand.

“Every day I live is a day I live, human,” she said with a coldness no one so young should possess. “It is one day more snatched from the jaws of death. Understand that, and you understand me.”

 

At last Selar got the joke. Anyone who thought Vulcans had no sense of humor need only study her face. Her eyebrows threatening to disappear into her hairline, she did not trust herself to speak, but allowed the two trained operatives to have the floor.

“Well!” Uhura said at last, as if a decision had been reached. “My log entry will show that Albatross intends to remain in Quirinian space while you complete your cover mission with a visit to the village of Sawar, which is badly in need of replicator parts. I’ll expect your follow-up report by this time tomorrow.”

“Affirmative,” Tuvok said, ending the transmission.

Selar allowed him a moment’s silence before she asked: “Lieutenant, am I to assume we will have need of those hazmat suits after all?”

 

At least the weather favored them. Quirinus offered the landing party one of its rare sunlit days. Citizens Leval, Vesak, and Zetha wore UV goggles to keep from going snowblind as they made their way on their short skis through an untouched alpine landscape beneath a cloudless lavender sky. The air was warm enough for Zetha to lower the hood of her parka and turn her face like a flower to the sun. Emulating her-if they were truly Romulan rather than Vulcan, they would be more adaptable to the cold-Tuvok and Selar did likewise.

It was hard to believe that only a few kilometers distant from this pristine beauty a wall sealed healthy citizens off from those suffering an agonizing death.

Tuvok and Selar wore their hazmat suits beneath their parkas, the face masks stored in rucksacks that also contained samples of the merchandise they had ostensibly come to Quirinus to sell. Zetha carried only a sample case in her rucksack, and wore no hazmat suit.

“We will require your talents as we mingle with the citizens on the ‘safe’ side of the quarantine enclosure,” Tuvok instructed her. “Obviously we will be forbidden access to that enclosure. We will appear to acquiesce, as long as it is daylight. After dark, Dr. Selar and I will infiltrate while you return to the ship.”

Their arrival in Sawar, a village sheltered in a valley surrounded by high mountains, was greeted with some curiosity and not a little suspicion. The curiosity they had expected. Offworld visitors seldom ventured beyond the major cities, and rumor had run ahead of them that they were selling not only genuine Romulan replicator parts (someday, Tuvok thought, he must ask Admiral Uhura where she acquired those) but Tholian silks, noted for their durability as well as the brilliance of their colors. Safe and warm inside their thick-walled houses, where they could remove the multiple layers of utilitarian clothing necessary to survive the climate, Quirinians often dressed quite resplendently. Orders for the silks were expected to be plentiful.

But why the suspicion? Tuvok wondered. The trio had permits from Citizen Jarquin, worn prominently displayed on their parkas. Had the effects of the plague in their village made the citizens distrust even that?

“You sense it, too?” Selar asked softly.

“Indeed,” Tuvok said. “And I believe we are about to learn something of its source.”

A group of citizens who had been milling about an outdoor information kiosk reading the day’s news had broken away and was heading toward them. The trio had perfected a response to just such an approach by now. Tuvok would speak first, Selar only if addressed directly, and Zetha only if the conversation ventured into an area, such as Romulan butterflies, whose nuances the other two might not be conversant in.

“You are Citizen Leval,” the group’s apparent spokesperson, a rawboned angry-eyed female almost as tall as Tuvok addressed him from behind a breather mask.

The entire crowd wore breather masks, not against the cold, but against the possibility of infection by outsiders. Illogical, was Tuvok’s first thought, since there is no concrete evidence that the disease is airborne. As the crowd moved toward them, a stout elderly man with what looked like a bulky antiquated medscanner in his hand was obviously reading them for signs of infection. One could only hope the scanner was too antiquated to distinguish Vulcans from Romulans.

“Correct,” Tuvok replied with a touch of arrogance, wearing his Romulan persona like a second skin by now.

He noted that even with the supposed security of the masks and the scanner, the woman still stood back at some distance. Quirinians, like Romulans, Tuvok had noted in their visit to Jarquin, only seemed to trust each other when they stood closer than arm’s length, a throwback, no doubt, to the age of swords when they had needed more room to safely draw arms. This woman and her constituents stood at a distance, the distance one might consider safe from casual contagion transmitted by a cough or sneeze.

“We were notified that your party would arrive today. You’ll have to wear these to go among us.” The woman thrust three face masks into his hand. Tuvok noted that she also wore surgical gloves, which she removed after her hand had made contact with his, and threw into a nearby disposal painted with a bright green sign signifying hazardous waste. “We can’t be too careful of strangers after what happened.”

“Citizen Jarquin has made us aware of your situation-” Tuvok began, but the woman interrupted him.

“My name is Subhar. I am magistrate here,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Ordinarily I’d invite you into the warmth of my house to conduct your business. But even as we speak, some of our most esteemed citizens are dying without remedy behind that wall…”

She nodded toward the end of the street, where the landing party could see that part of an ancient wall that had no doubt once encircled the first settlement here had recently been haphazardly bricked up once again. What looked like electrified wire topped the hasty two-meters-tall construct, and armed guards patrolled the perimeter.

“…so we will conduct our business outdoors, where the fresh air at least gives us a fighting chance against contagion.”

Subhar seemed to be struggling to maintain her composure. The landing party said nothing as she blinked back tears before they froze in her eyes.

“I didn’t want you here,” she snapped. “It seemed…in-appropriate. But we need the replicator parts, and one of my advisors…” She indicated a gray-haired elder, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his parka, who merely nodded in acknowledgment. “…reminded me that our future will not always be about death. So far no one outside the wall has gotten ill. This was what we did in ancient times, and it seems to have been effective. Some have said it’s barbaric, but what else could we do? We have contained the damnable thing, and we will need bright colors in order to celebrate the lives of those who died, after we have mourned their deaths. So you see why we must be wary of strangers, even though bearing official approvals,” Subhar concluded, her anger and sorrow having given way to a kind of weariness. “It was a stranger who brought the illness.”

“A stranger?” Tuvok dared after what he hoped was a suitable silence.

“He said he was from Qant Prefecture, but his accent gave him away. Clearly he was lying, but lying’s not a crime, not yet. After this, it might be. We never did find out where he really came from. By the time we investigated, the first casualties were already affected. He had no identification on him when we searched him.”

“What became of him?” Tuvok asked.

“Oh,” Subhar said, as if it were an afterthought. “We killed him.”

Tuvok reacted to this as a Romulan might, which was to say not at all. “Then he did not succumb to the illness?”

“No. But it wasn’t here before he came, and once we contained everyone he’d come in contact with behind the wall, no one else got sick. And now you’ve asked enough questions, Citizen. Show us your samples, and let’s be done with it. This weather won’t hold for long.”

As if on cue, the sun disappeared behind a fast-moving cloud, and the wind picked up. Motioning her visitors toward the news kiosk, where a counter was cleared for them to set their rucksacks down, Subhar and the townspeople gathered around, though careful that none of them touched their visitors or anything they had brought with them.

 

“It’s hit the fan,” Crusher told Uhura. “I’ve just received a memo from the C-in-C wanting to know what the hell-and I’m quoting here-kind of progress we were or were not making on this disease. Which, by the way, I’m told they’ve code-named Catalyst.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Doctor,” Uhura said wearily. “I’ve gotten the same memo.”

“The news media’s suggesting every rash or runny nose could be evidence of germ warfare. They’re quoting numbers in the millions.”

“At least we aren’t!” Uhura said a little more sharply than she’d intended. “Yet. I’ve got a press conference this afternoon to try to do some damage control. Can you give me a bone to throw them?”

“Nothing I’d want getting out to the public at large,” Crusher said, tossing her bright hair over her shoulders. “And, off the record, we’ll never develop a serum against something where everyone dies.”

Uhura thought of everything she’d learned about viruses in recent weeks. “Which leaves the genetic route.”

“Hypothetically,” Crusher said. “We finished mapping the human genome in the early twenty-first century. The Vulcans, not surprisingly, had their genetic codes down centuries earlier, and the Romulans probably have as well. There are some genes that all three species have in common, but-“

“Go on,” Uhura prompted.

“But a retrovirus that can infiltrate all three species at the genetic level, particularly one that mutates the way this one does…well, it took thirteen years to map the human genome. It took longer than that to cure HIV at the genetic level, even when we knew exactly what it looked like. This is more like cracking secret codes than practicing medicine.”

“So even if the away team succeeds in tracing this to the Romulan side…”

“There might be some political value in pointing out that they created it, but unless they’ve also got a cure up their sleeves, it’s not going to save any lives.”

“Political value in the negative sense,” Uhura mused. “A chance to let slip the dogs of war on both sides.” She shook her head. “Not if I can help it. I’ll give the C-in-C the same sweet talk I give the press. You get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” Crusher said.

 

Despite the citizens’ unease over the deaths behind the wall, the “Romulan merchants” were doing good business. Zetha faithfully recorded several orders for Tholian silk, aware that in the corner of her eye Tuvok was assessing the wall, the guards, the odds of successfully infiltrating the enclosure. In one ear, a Quirinian matron was asking her whether she personally would choose the gold print or the green-

“Well, I’m assuming green for you, dear, because of those beautiful eyes, but I think the gold would look better on me, don’t you?”

-while in her other ear, Selar was dangerously close to blowing their cover.

“…curious about the flora and fauna extant in your warm season,” Selar was saying. “The preponderance of calcareous and dolomite rocks in combination with cretaceous sandstones and marls suggests an edaphic ecology dominated by small wildflowers with a very short growing season. Am I correct?”

That’s probably more words than she’s put together since we left Earth! Zetha thought frantically, noticing as Selar did not that some of the citizens were watching her more warily than they had, even with the fear of contagion, on their arrival. What in the name of Gal Gath’thong did she think she was doing? Without thinking, Zetha kicked her sharply on the ankle. The Vulcan did not wince, of course, but she did give Zetha an odd look and, much to her relief, stopped talking.

“Forgive me, Aunt, but all this talk of the warm season, while we and the citizens stand here freezing…. And it’s getting dark….”

“Of course,” Selar said, and they concluded their official business just as the clouds closed overhead and the snows began again.

 

The beam-out, Sisko thought, was one of the better ones of his career. He managed to pull all three of his charges up to the ship just long enough for Zetha to step down and Tuvok and Selar to seal up their hoods and the masks of their hazmat suits and then, while the citizens of Sawar were still talking among themselves about the goods they had just ordered-to be delivered, they assumed, on the next convoy arriving to take more of their sons and daughters offworld to Romulus-and even the guards patrolling the enclosure were momentarily distracted by the transporter sparkle, he pinpoint-beamed the Vulcans to one of the more abandoned sectors inside the enclosure, where they could do what they had to do.

 

“Corpses,” Selar reported, shielding her tricorder from the blowing snow with a mittened hand, which also muffled its whirring sounds as she scanned what appeared to be a storehouse of some kind, a heavy lock and chain securing its only door. “Well over one hundred of them, stacked several deep and chemically preserved, presumably until they can be cremated or interred.”

“One would think the cold would be sufficient,” Tuvok remarked, his own tricorder alert for signs of movement in the narrow, high-walled streets, where the wind howled around corners, adding to the chill.

Selar silenced her tricorder. “A charnel house. An attempt to at least contain all the dead in one place. Doubtless waiting until everyone has succumbed before any effort is made toward disposal.”

“Apparently stored here in the earlier stages of the disease,” Tuvok observed, indicating the frozen corpses littering the narrow street before them. “These others were not so fortunate. Can specimens be gathered from the recently dead?”

“Perhaps,” Selar said, kneeling in the snow to examine the two nearest them, an elderly woman and a child wrapped in a final frozen embrace against the perimeter wall. “Ideally, however, those still living would be preferable.”

“But to trouble them when they know that they are dying…” Tuvok suggested. Was it only the cold that made his voice husky?

“Indeed. But if the evidence they provide can prevent further deaths…”

Tuvok frowned. “I would be most interested in ascertaining the identity of the stranger whose arrival coincided with that of the illness. Lieutenant Sisko has us both on locator. I suggest we split up and communicate on discrete.”

“Agreed.”

 

Once again, Sisko was monitoring life-sign readings and talking to one of the holos. This time it was Uhura.

“Not good news on Jarquin’s sons,” she reported. “Or any Quirinian who emigrates to Romulus, for that matter.”

“From what I understand of the situation, Admiral, why am I not surprised?”

“Most of them are recruited by the military. The Empire essentially uses them for cannon fodder for the most dangerous missions. The ruling families have always preferred to use colonials on the frontiers. Looks like they’ve refined it to a science.”

“Glad it’s Tuvok and not me who has to give Jarquin that information,” Sisko mused.

“Status report?” Uhura asked, bringing them back to the present.

“Tuvok and Selar have both infiltrated the enclosure and, judging from the readings, except for the occasional patrol, they’re the only thing moving down there. They’ve split up. I’m assuming Selar’s gathering specimens. Tuvok said something about wanting to find out anything he could about the stranger the citizens claim brought the disease.”

“And Zetha?”

“Aft, puttering in the lab, last time I checked.”

“Do you check often, Lieutenant?”

 

Tuvok moved like a shadow. The lock on the storehouse door proved too strong for him to break, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick it. But the mechanism was sluggish with the cold, and it took him longer than he expected. He had timed the patrols outside the walls earlier in the day, and now could only hope to be inside the storehouse and out of range of their scanners before they happened by again. His life-signs would read normal, not feverish, and the guards might consider that worthy of investigation.

At last the lock yielded to his skills, the massive door opened inward and, mercifully, did not either scrape the floor or squeak, and he slipped inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, it took all of his Vulcan discipline not to react to what he saw.

He had expected the corpses, but not the rats. They swarmed everywhere, feeding on the dead, hissing and squealing but refusing to give ground at his approach, swarming with the mad purposefulness of a single entity. Wondering if a rat bite would breach the fabric of a hazmat suit, Tuvok moved stealthily so as not to rouse them further. He also wondered if there was some way to warn Subhar and those outside the wall to exterminate the rats.

An enclosure in one corner of the vast, high-raftered room-doubtless at one time an office of some sort-drew his attention. Perhaps there were records, lists of the dead, even information about the interloper who had purportedly brought the illness among them.

This door was not locked. While there were indeed some cursory lists of the dead, apparently abandoned when the numbers became overwhelming and, perhaps, the one compiling the list also fell ill, what Tuvok found most significant was the corpse thrown carelessly onto a table in a corner, doubtless the interloper himself, set apart from the others as if not to defile them by his presence. Ironically, his being exiled in death had spared him the defilement of the rats.

Judging from the wounds inflicted on the body, he had not died easily. His clothing was Quirinian and so, on superficial examination in this dim light, were his features. But Tuvok’s tricorder told a different tale.

“Evidence of cosmetic surgery to remove pronounced brow ridges,” he reported to Selar on discrete. “On empirical evidence, I believe this individual was Romulan.”

“Interesting,” was Selar’s muffled response. Tuvok assumed she was preoccupied with gathering evidence of her own, and ended the transmission. Then, using the techniques Selar had taught him, he took blood and skin samples from the late and unlamented stranger and, making his way gingerly among the rats, returned the way he had come.

 

Zetha was tidying and prepping the lab in preparation for Selar’s return. She could hear Sisko and Uhura discussing her, even at this distance. Sisko might dictate where she could go, but not what she could hear. Knowing when and how to listen had gotten her this far.

 

“You are wallpaper,” the Lord told her. “A potted plant, a desk ornament. They will speak freely in your presence, because they will not notice you are there.”

I am wallpaper, Zetha thought. And it was true. Neither of the two men noticed her; they talked with their heads together as if she was not there.

Military, her instinct told her as soon as they had appeared in the anteroom of the shop, the younger of the two announcing that he had an appointment with the jeweler to look at some naming day gifts. Neither man identified himself, but there was no doubt they were military, though both were in mufti. It was in the way they carried themselves. All Romulans walked guarded in public, but these two were even more so; their very ears had ears. Erect spines, square shoulders even without the overpadded uniforms, voices correct even in whispers, that upper-caste accent they could never escape.

“But what else?” she could hear the Lord’s voice in her mind. He had arranged for her to apprentice to this particular jeweler expressly because his shop was frequented by officers. For all she knew, the jeweler himself was Tal Shiar. He certainly had the nastiness. “Observe, report. What else?”

Student and mentor? Father and son? Superior officer and subordinate? She did the exercise for her own purposes; she would tell the lord as little as possible. Even as she pretended not to look at them, concentrating on untangling a mess of fine neck chains the jeweler had dropped, she swore, on purpose just to give her something to do, and they made themselves comfortable on the couches in the anteroom while the jeweler went to fetch his trays of rings and pendants for their consideration, her peripheral vision took them in, her senses registering every nuance.

Report: They were a generation apart in age, and the younger man-not young, but younger than the other, middle-aged, the kind of man who might easily have children her age, who might even…Stop it, fool! Stop seeing every Romulan of a certain age as a potential father-all right then, the one in his prime, square-faced, ridge-browed, graying at the temples, deferred to the elder who was the handsomer of the two-silver-haired, smooth-browed, fox-faced, patrician.

Yes, military by caste and birth, when either might have chosen differently had there been a choice permitted. Aemetha’s speech about a people always at war rang in her head, and she found herself wondering if the elites as a caste would be quite as arrogant if they didn’t live under the knowledge that they would forever have to send their best and brightest out to the stars and to death.

The squarish one might have been an architect, she thought, the silver-haired one a poet. Stop it! she told herself. Shut off the voices in your head and listen to what they’re saying! The Lord is testing you, and you’ll have to tell him something…

“…always intemperate, Alidar,” she heard the elder say before the jeweler had emerged from the back of the shop. Did she only imagine he was looking her way when he said it? “Intemperate in war, and now you reverse course and speak too vociferously for peace. It’s going to cost you.”

His eyes were so blue she could determine their color from where she stood, and she’d always had a thing for cheekbones. There were bloodlines here, Zetha thought, that were far more easily traced than hers, and something else, anger and a deep and unremitting sadness, as if in his long life he’d seen enough and more than enough of death and most of it unnecessary. Stop it!

“But it’s too much, Tal!” the younger one said too abruptly. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude, but even you have to admit that these days it’s war for the sake of war, because if the Romulan in the street turns his eyes away from the stars and starship battles, he’ll see that the economy is in shambles, his livelihood threatened, his children poorly educated, his future mortgaged for yet another warbird. The entire system is corrupt.”

“And so it always has been!” the one called Tal agreed, then stopped himself as the jeweler came prancing toward them, balancing velvet-lined trays of precious baubles in both hands. “You see, now you have me doing it!”

“Perhaps I thought to have an ally,” the one called Alidar mused after a long silence spent contemplating the wares before him, waving aside a tray of silver rings, sending the jeweler to the back of the shop for more. “At least someone who agreed with me in spirit.”

“We’re reduced to family names now, I see,” the silver-haired one said, avoiding a direct answer. “Shall I call you ‘Jarok’ from here on?”

Jarok, Zetha thought. Now, why is that name familiar? Aemetha would know. Aemetha knows everyone of any importance. Knew everyone. Aemetha, how are you, where are you? Did the Lord leave you alone once I agreed to go with him? Stop it!

“Forgive me, Che’srik. I have become a bit…obsessive.”

“I’m glad you said it!” Tal muttered, fingering a filigreed pendant that had caught his fancy.

“First names, surnames, what does it matter?” Jarok asked bitterly. “Mine will be anathema if I’ve judged the climate wrongly…”

“The Hero of Norkan?” Tal snorted. “That alone will protect you, but only up to a point. Leave off this line of inquiry, I beg you.”

“Not this time, old friend,” Jarok said.

“How many such triumphs and reversals have you and I survived?” Tal leaned forward so as not to be overheard, but Zetha heard him anyway. “That business following Narendra III, for instance? How long did that measure of peace endure before it once again was set on its head? But you and I moved with it and are here today to tell of it. These days it’s not only the enemy at the gates we need to fear, but the one in the room beside us. Yet we do survive, if we’re careful. We have no alternative.”

Not kin, then, Zetha noted for herself, not the Lord, watching the white-haired Tal clasp Jarok’s shoulder in support. A mentor advising a student who he felt had surpassed him in rank, in accomplishment. What serious thing were they talking about? Something so serious no nonmilitary half-breed could begin to guess at it.

Jarok, she thought, as the jeweler returned as if to stay this time, plopping himself down on a couch at a deferential distance from the two, nattering on about the merits of this piece or that. If I’ve heard the name, or read it, it’s in my mind somewhere. Why can’t I retrieve it? The stresses of the past few months, the constant drills, the lack of sleep, more empty bunks in the barracks, the sense that something was building to a fever pitch, were taking their toll. She couldn’t endure this much longer.

I am wallpaper, she thought. They do not see me; therefore, I don’t exist. But what if they actually say something that the Lord wants to hear? How will I know what’s of value to him? How will I know what he will use it for? Is it only because these two are so interesting that I wish them no harm? Or is it because the only pleasure left in my life is thwarting his lordship?

“…and your family to consider,” Tal was saying, indicating with a gesture that he would take the delicate pendant after all, and motioning the jeweler off to wrap it and ring it up. “You’ve wed again, I hear.”

Jarok smiled then for the first time. “It’s why I’m here. To get her something suitable for her naming day.” He produced a padd from his pocket and displayed what was probably his wife’s holo. Zetha couldn’t see, but both men stopped to admire it. “Something suitable for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.”

“She is a beauty,” Tal acknowledged. “Children?”

Even from where she stood, Zetha could see Jarok’s eyes mist over.

“Not yet, but we were planning, if I could get enough leave time…” Jarok’s voice trailed off. “Perhaps it was a mistake to marry again, considering…”

“Haven’t you got those settled out yet?” the jeweler hissed, coming up suddenly behind her. She pretended to be startled, and dropped the tangle of chains so she would have to start over. Beyond fury, the jeweler stalked to the back of the shop to deal with the purchase of the pendant.

If the jeweler is Tal Shiar, then why do I have to listen? Zetha wondered. He’s practically sitting in their laps with his trinkets and his simpering; let the Lord ask him what he’s heard. Or is that part of the trap? The jeweler reports one thing, I another, the Lord assumes I’m lying and kills me.

She eyed the exit just beyond Jarok’s square shoulder, and wondered how far she’d get if she ran for it. One of the other ghilik had told her there were sensors sewn into the hems of their clothing, something in the food they ate that made it easier to track them. She didn’t know what she believed anymore. Jarok, meanwhile, was angry about something. He never raised his voice, but it was clear he was furious.

“There’s never enough time, don’t you see, Tal? They work us to death, and for what? It used to be honor, but no more, no more. We give the Empire our lives-go here, fight there, rendezvous here, attack there-“

“Alidar, for Elements’ sake-!”

Jarok seemed to remember where he was. Shopkeepers and their apprentices were not on the same plane as senior officers of the Fleet, but they had ears.

“Forgive me; you’re right,” he said, somewhat subdued and, resuming his seat, continued his search among the baubles for a gift for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.

Jarok! Zetha remembered at last. Alidar Jarok, even a groundling like me knows who you are. The Hero of Norkan, Tal called you, and it’s what the Praetor called you in his speech when he awarded you that medal on the vidscreens for the whole world to see, but what I’ve heard in the catacombs among my kind is that you’re a cold-blooded killer. What harm in telling the Lord that? Takes one to know one, and none of my business.

But what I hear you saying now suggests a change of heart. Maybe you can do some good with that. Maybe that’s what his lordship is afraid of. Maybe, maybe, maybe, and all of it, if I want to go on living, is my business.

She tossed the tangled chains back in the bin they’d come from. The jeweler was too busy with his pricey customers to notice. Zetha knew what she would tell the Lord.

 

“Nothing!” Koval hissed. His voice became even softer than usual when he was furious, and Zetha could barely hear him through the ringing in her ears. Why was it, she wondered, picking herself up off the floor, that a blow to side of the head always sounded worse than it felt? “How dare you tell me you heard nothing? How stupid do you think I am? Get up. I didn’t strike you that hard.”

Zetha suppressed a giggle behind her usual deadpan (“You’d out-Vulcan a Vulcan,” Aemetha always said, but Aemetha had never been offworld, and Zetha doubted she’d ever seen a Vulcan, even in a vid). How stupid do I think you are? Don’t let me speak; you’d cut my tongue out!

“They must have said something. You were right there in the room.”

“Yes, Lord. With that damned background music, which is supposed to make them think there are no listening devices-if you don’t count the breathing ones-and my head still ringing from the blow you gave me yesterday. And the jeweler dancing attendance on them like a small yappy dog. Why don’t you ask him what he heard?”

Koval’s narrowed his eyes at her. By now she knew all his facial expressions and the threats implied by them. This one had absolutely no effect.

“What did they speak of?” he demanded. “I must know!”

“They spoke. What about I could not tell you; I didn’t hear a word. They spent more than an hour examining everything in the shop before the elder bought a pendant and the younger a pair of earbobs. Gaudy ones; I can’t say much for his taste. He said they were a naming-day gift. That much I did hear. Before he left, the older one clasped the younger one’s shoulder, and they left.” She took a deep breath before adding: “I didn’t even learn their names.”

I’ve guessed right! she thought, watching the satisfaction spread like rancid oil over his features. At best he wanted me to report on what they talked about; at least he wanted me completely ignorant of who or what they were. It seems he won’t kill me…today.

Yes, joke, she thought, for as long as you can, but the truth is the tension’s killing you, however slowly. Your hair’s starting to fall out, have you noticed? Your gums bleed, and it’s not the food, because plain as it is, you’re better fed now than you’ve ever been, even under Aemetha’s care. It’s the deciding. You have to decide, and soon, which way you’re going to jump. It’s only a matter of whether he kills you before you can. And then where do you go? And what becomes of Aemetha? And Tahir, because he was seen with you, and the others in the villa, and-?

Wait and see, she chided herself, as much because she wanted to live, regardless of the circumstances. Wait and see what the mission is, and then decide. If there’s a fragment of a possibility of a chance that you can act on your own behalf, without harming anyone else…

Well? What more can anyone hope for?

“You’re useless,” Koval announced. “I don’t know why I feed you. Back to the barracks; I’ll summon you when I need you.”

Only later did it occur to her that perhaps the two had deliberately spoken as they did within her hearing. Had they known she was there to spy on them? Had they wanted her to report on what they said? She didn’t know. She would never know. She wasn’t as good at this as she’d thought.

 

And I’m still not! she thought, lining up retorts, setting out pipettes, checking the containers of acids and reagents, removing sterile instruments from the autoclave, checking and double-checking the sterifields, the pH meter, the spectrophotometer. But each day I live is a triumph, and that will have to be enough.

Her sharp ears no longer heard Uhura’s voice, but a sudden commotion in the control cabin told her Sisko was not alone.