Articles of the Federation - Keith R. A. DeCandido [140]
None of those places made her as nervous as she was right now as she sat outside the president’s office in the Palais de la Concorde.
An elderly Vulcan sat at a workstation, giving her the occasional disdainful look. She wondered if that disdain was a direct result of what she had been refusing to do for the past two weeks and would continue to steadfastly refuse to do, no matter what it was that President Bacco said to her when she went into her office.
She knew what was going on, of course; given the fact that the patient in question was in Starbase 1’s infirmary, it would be impossible for her, as the head of that infirmary, not to know. The son of one of the Tzelnira-the people who’d ordered the attack on Starbase 55, during which Emmanuelli had been captured; the people who’d ordered her to be declared dead so she could remain on Tzenketh and treat their sick and wounded-was now in one of her biobeds, awaiting an operation that only she could perform and that she swore she would never perform again as long as she lived.
The door to the office slid open, and Rebecca saw the face of the president herself. Under any other circumstances this would be a thrill. It had been a big enough deal, talking with the chief of staff back in August during that mess with the Trinni/ek, but now…
“Dr. Emmanuelli, please come in.”
The Vulcan looked at the president. “Is the intercom no longer working, ma’am?” he asked in an arch voice that made Rebecca realize that the disdain was more general and not directed necessarily at her. For some reason, that relieved her.
“It’s a personal touch, Sivak.”
“Whatever excuse you feel compelled to give to cover your inability to remember how to use the intercom from day to day is- “
Gesturing to the inside of her office, the president interrupted her assistant. “Come in, please, Doctor, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Emmanuelli got up and followed the president in. Seated on the couch was the very same chief of staff she’d spoken to before, Esperanza Piniero, as well as Chirurgeon P’Trell. I guess I should’ve expected Ghee to be here, Emmanuelli thought with a sigh. They weren’t going to make it easy on her.
Well, I’m not gonna make it easy on them, either.
“Have a seat,” the president said as she herself sat in one of the chairs perpendicular to the couch.
Rebecca took the chair facing the president, grateful that Bacco had given her the opportunity to sit face-to-face. The president could just as easily have chosen to preside at her desk, with all the power that conveyed. Instead, she was treating this as a conversation among equals, even though it most assuredly wasn’t. Rebecca truly appreciated the gesture.
“My head speechwriter has this thing for old, dead languages. He likes to put references to them in my speeches. Half the time I take ‘em out, since I don’t think it’s such a hot idea to try to convey something to people by using words they’re not gonna understand. But thanks to him, I know all kinds of odd bits and pieces in Latin and ancient Greek and the like. So I know a certain phrase that goes, primum non nocere. It’s the start of an oath you- “
Rebecca had intended to interrupt much sooner, but it had taken her this long to screw up the courage to do so. “Madam President, with all due respect, I think throwing the Hippocratic oath in my face is cheap.”
“Maybe it is, Doctor, but so’s what you’re doing.”
Aghast, Rebecca asked, “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not the only one who took an oath, Doctor. I took one a little over a year ago, and it said that I would lead the Federation and do what was best for its people.”
“And how does my operating on a Tzenkethi fulfill that oath, ma’am?” Rebecca asked in a tight voice.
“First of all, it’s not ‘a Tzenkethi.’ It’s a two-year-old boy named Zormonk. Secondly, the Tzenkethi have been at loggerheads with us for decades. We fought more than one war against them, and they still view us as some kind of evil empire that has to be stamped out of the galaxy. Not a day goes by without