Broken Bow - Diane Carey [13]
Archer watched her. She was already disappointed, upset, just from seeing him here. Her right eye got a little tighter.
He’d hoped to ease her distress a bit with his Hawaiian shirt, a kind of peace offering, but not much of a disguise. Was it working? Big flowers and uncaptain-like colors, jeans and tennis shoes? About as passive as wardrobe could get. Archer rubbed his hands and tried not to appear as self-conscious as he felt. The shirt he liked, but interrupting a class wasn’t so pleasant. He felt like a tardy kid.
“Keep trying,” the young lady said to her chanting pupils. She kept her eyes on Archer. “I’ll be right back.”
As if stepping through a looking glass, she came out of the classroom and skewered him with a pure glare. “You’re not here, are you, sir? Not here.”
Her voice was musical and happy despite her annoyance. Archer smiled. “Well,” he said, “you’re here, so I had to come ... here.”
“Outside, please.”
Outside was a jungle garden. For all its wildness, it was, in fact, artificial. Everything here was native to Brazil, but had been brought here and nurtured in this domed university under controlled environments. The eerie part was how real it all looked. The only telltale element was the smell. No rot.
“I need you,” he stated bluntly as she stepped out before him on the constructed pathway.
“You promised,” she moaned. “I took this job because you promised I could finish. There are two more weeks before exams. It’s impossible for me to leave now.”
Archer managed not to groan at her flimsy excuse. “You’ve got to have someone who can cover for you.” He avoided commenting that it was just a foreign language class and she might have to rearrange her priorities to a more galactic mentality. No, probably not the thing to say right now.
“If there were anyone else who could do what I do,” she said, “you wouldn’t be so eager to have me on your spaceship.”
She had him there.
“Hoshi,” he began, but didn’t finish quickly enough.
“Captain, I’m sorry. I owe it to these kids.”
He almost laughed, though managed to keep from it again. Kids? She was hardly a crone herself. And there were other things at work besides devotion to this particular cluster of students, who would be scattered far and wide in a matter of weeks.
“I could order you,” he attempted, just to see what kind of a rise this would get.
“I’m on leave from Starfleet, remember? You’d have to forcibly recall me, which would require a reprimand, which would disqualify me from serving on an active vessel.”
He shrugged. “I need someone with your ear.”
“And you’ll have her. In three weeks.”
This angle was all wrong and wouldn’t work, Archer knew. She was a sweet and benevolent person, intelligent and clever, but she was lousy at lying, and this was a lie. Nobody was quite this irreplaceable. There were plenty of teachers out there who could gargle in front of a group and get them to repeat it. This wasn’t the first time she’d put him off. She was afraid. They both knew she didn’t want to go out on an experimental ship on a mission that could turn dangerous on a whim. Hoshi wasn’t the pioneer type.
How could he broach the reality? Tell her she was right to hesitate? He wanted to open up and reassure her that being scared of scary things wasn’t the same as being a coward.
Except for one thing. She wanted to be out there speaking languages, not down here teaching them, and he knew it. Time for the heavy artillery.
From his breast pocket he took a small device and clicked it on, letting a stranger’s voice speak for him—a Klingon voice, speaking the garbled ancient language never heard on Earth before a few days ago.
The tension left Hoshi’s brow. Something else replaced it. “What’s that?”
“Klingon. Ambassador Soval gave us a sampling of their linguistic database.”
“I thought you said the Vulcans