Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [84]
Crusher leaned closer to her patient and checked the moaning young woman’s temperature in a particularly unscientific yet somehow instinctive way-with the back of her hand.
“Mmm… brink of death’s a prickly place, Data. Sometimes you gotta dance to keep standing there.”
Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could still somehow see, perhaps only in her mind, the android’s perplexed expression. He didn’t counter her comment, though, or question the risk she was taking. Instead he turned back to the portable comm console and relayed the latest thread of hope.
She wished she could speak more freely, venture some opinions about the crassness of hereditary rulership, mutter a few truths about how it always compromised freedom somewhere down the line-and not usually that far down either-but the four guards were always there, and one of the two women. The guards took turns standing watch every six hours, never leaving the immediate chambers or sitting rooms. And Sentinel Iavo floated in and out… at the moment he was floating back in. “Any success, Doctor?”
Crusher looked up and took the moment to stretch her back and shoulders. “A little. Nominal. Enough to give us an idea that we might eventually beat some of this.”
Iavo went to the fireplace, which until now had been stone cold, and turned the head of an unrecognizable carved creature on the mantel; a hissing sound was heard, as flames jumped up in the fake logs, rose to a certain height, adjusted themselves, and settled as if they’d been burning all night. The royal chamber was instantly haunted, medieval.
“The empress may live because of your ministrations,” Iavo gauged. All across the empire, the royal family members are beginning to slowly outlive their symptoms.”
“So,” Crusher said, “you’ve been listening in on our relays, Sentinel?” He paused. After a moment, he admitted, “Yes, of course.” Still he did not turn from the fire. Turning in her chair, Crusher surveyed his tall form, narrow and dark against the flickering golden glow from beyond it, and marveled not for the first time-that no matter where she traveled in the stars, no matter what strange forces she witnessed or what bizarre life forms she encountered, what twisted trees grew or weeds crawled, all over the galaxy fire was always the same color.
And also the same was the smell from the cauldron of ambition.
Sentinel Iavo held his hands toward the fire. Crusher saw them spread before him and slightly to the side, framed in paint-by-number fireglow.
Stretching one arm out, Crusher snapped her fingers once, quietly, toward Data. Flinching as if awakened, the android swiveled away from his console and sat watching. With her other hand, she waved Ansue Hashley into the comer behind her, then put a finger to her lips and gave him the evil eye. The man paled, his eyes widened, and with some wisdom garnered from years running an illegal route, he measured the sense of not arguing or even speaking.
Crusher leaned over the empress and touched the pallid cheek whose changes of color and heat had been the cusp of the doctor’s life for many hours. The empress moaned softly. A tear appeared in the comer of the quiet girl’s eye. Perhaps she knew.
The two standing guards moved away from the end of the bed. The two who had been resting now stood up.
“I suppose,” Crusher began quietly, “you’ve never had a problem like this come your way, Sentinel.” Iavo gazed into the fire. “Nothing like this.”
“How does temptation taste to someone who has been loyal all his life?”
For a moment he was silent. He sighed. “It has a certain bitter spice.”
“Are you enjoying the chance?” she asked him. “Or are you cornered by other pressures?”
This time Iavo did not answer. The guards stood now in a line, three on one side of him, one on the other, all four facing Crusher, Data, Ansue Hashley, and the dying empress in her bed.
“It must be frustrating” Crusher said, “always to be on the periphery of glory, nearly able to touch it, always condemned to taste but never swallow… and now to see yourself