Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [16]
His eyes glazed over again, as if he were trying to see something far away. “No,” he whispered, “not the Andorians. Of course not. It was the Vulcans….”
Wu took a breath, then let it out. The Vulcans. As if that made any sense at all.
It was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to get anything out of Ulelo. What wasn’t clear was why. Was he just pretending to have lost his mind in order to stonewall her? Or was there something truly wrong with him?
One thing was certain: She wasn’t going to find out by remaining in the brig. Getting to her feet, she signaled to Pierzynski, who had been watching from the other side of the barrier.
The security officer let Wu out, then reactivated the forcefield. It hummed a little—or rather, its generators did—as the second officer paused to consider Ulelo again.
He looked peaceful once more, innocent, returning her scrutiny with the same mild interest he had shown earlier. It was as if they hadn’t had a conversation at all.
Wu regarded him a moment longer. Then she looked up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling and said, “Wu to Doctor Greyhorse.”
“This is Greyhorse,” came the reply.
“I’d like you to examine Ulelo,” Wu told him.
“You think there’s something wrong with him?” Greyhorse asked. He sounded skeptical.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “He seems confused at times. Muddled. Hardly the behavior of a man clever enough to do the things we’ve accused him of doing. I want to find out why.”
“All right,” said the doctor. “Bring him down to sickbay. I’ll put him through the ringer.”
“Thank you,” said the second officer. “Wu out.”
“It angers me,” said Gerda Asmund.
Her twin sister, Idun, who was sitting beside her at the Stargazer’s helm console, glanced at Gerda. “Ulelo?”
“Yes,” said Gerda, the muscles bunching in her jaw. “Ulelo.” She said the name as if it were rancid meat, as if she found each syllable more loathsome than the one before it.
Idun was angry as well. As someone who had been raised on Klingon virtues, she despised the notion of treachery. It made her skin crawl like a plate of serpent worms.
She remembered the stories her Klingon father had told them about those who betrayed kin and comrades. There was Lifdag, who—appalled by his brother Farrl’s treachery—not only killed Farrl but took his own life thereafter. And then there was Tupran, son of Tuprox, who opened the doors of his father’s house to its enemies—and ironically became their first victim.
Traitors were even worse than cowards, Idun’s father had said. Tradition said that cowards were to be shunned, but traitors had to be killed on sight.
Gerda made a sound of disgust. “Had I been the first to discover Ulelo’s deceit, I might not have been as patient or as restrained as Lieutenant Paxton.”
Idun felt the same way. Once Ulelo’s guilt became plain to her, it would have been difficult indeed not to go after him.
“But you didn’t know,” she reminded her sister. “You never even suspected that Ulelo had another agenda.” Which was why Gerda and Idun were as surprised as anyone when security showed up and took the com officer away.
“You’re right,” said Gerda, her voice husky with emotion. “I didn’t suspect Ulelo. I didn’t question his loyalty for a moment.” She turned to Idun, her eyes hard and fierce. “And that is precisely what angers me.”
There were three of them in the captain’s ready room—Wu, Greyhorse, and Picard himself.
The doctor, who didn’t come to see the captain there very often—didn’t leave his office very often, for that matter—looked cramped and constrained. It wasn’t just that the plastiform chair was too small to accommodate his bulk. It seemed that the whole room was too small for him.
“You have examined Ulelo,” said Picard, already regretting that he hadn’t called this meeting in the roomier precincts of Greyhorse’s sickbay.
“I have indeed,” said the medical officer. “Actually, I gave Ulelo a routine checkup just the other day and found nothing of concern. But at Commander Wu’s request, I ran an expanded battery of tests on him—including anything I could