Gauntlet - Michael Jan Friedman [31]
“You look troubled,” Greyhorse observed dryly.
“I am,” Simenon told him.
The doctor knew he would regret asking, but he asked anyway. “Any particular reason for your discontent?”
“You know the new sciences chief? Valderrama?”
“Of course I do,” Greyhorse responded. “I gave the woman a physical.”
“So what do you think of her?”
Greyhorse looked at him askance. “Is this a trick question?”
The engineer scowled. “What do you think of her?”
The doctor shrugged. “I hadn’t given her much thought. She seems efficient enough, I suppose.”
Simenon harrumphed, obviously not happy with that answer. “Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“Is there a problem?”
“I’d say so. Yesterday I showed Valderrama some sensor enhancements in anticipation of our encounter with Beta Barritus. What do you think she said?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Greyhorse replied. “I’m a doctor, not an engineer.”
“Give it a try.”
Greyhorse rolled his eyes. “She thanked you for what you’d done and said she expected you to do better.”
Simenon pointed to him triumphantly. “That’s what you’d expect, right? For her to goad me into enhancing the sensors even more? That’s what a science officer does.”
Greyhorse frowned. “Am I to understand that Valderrama fell short in this regard?”
“She sure as hell fell short. All she did was smile and thank me for all my hard work, and go about her business. It was as if she didn’t care how well the sensors worked.”
“And this bothers you?”
Simenon’s lips pulled back, exposing rows of small, sharp teeth. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?” Greyhorse inquired casually. “Your people are probably working on the sensors even as we speak, regardless of Valderrama’s reaction.”
The Gnalish snorted. “Not probably.”
The doctor held his hands up, palms facing the ceiling. “So why should I be bothered?”
“Because,” Simenon said, “I’m not going to be there to pick up her slack all the time. That’s why.”
As the Gnalish’s remark hung in the air, Greyhorse heard the shuffle of feet in the central exam area beyond his office door. Though he couldn’t catch a glimpse of anyone from where he was sitting, he could venture a guess as to the newcomer’s identity. Lieutenant Paxton was scheduled to come in for a routine physical.
“Paxton?” he called out.
“Right here,” came the comm officer’s response.
The doctor regarded Simenon and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Duty calls, I’m afraid.”
The engineer nodded his lizardlike head. “Mine too.” And he left without saying another word.
As soon as Simenon was gone, Greyhorse got up from behind his desk and went out into the central exam area. Paxton was sitting on a biobed, waiting for him.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” the comm officer said.
“Not at all,” the doctor replied.
Then, putting everything else aside—Jiterica’s problem as well as Simenon’s—he focused on the matter at hand. After all, even a routine exam deserved his undivided attention.
And sickbay, Greyhorse resolved, would continue to be a model of order and efficiency on the Stargazer—even if some of the ship’s other sections were not.
Idun Asmund sat cross-legged on the floor of her quarters. Wisps of sharply scented smoke escaped from a small iron receptacle in front of her, a receptacle blackened by use and time, in which she had set fire to a tiny chunk of s’naiah wood.
“Uroph, son of Warrokh,” she intoned.
And she added, in her thoughts, batlh Daqawlu’taH, meaning “you will be remembered with honor” in the Klingon tongue.
For more than a thousand years, the warriors of Clan Warrokh had recited the names of their known ancestors before taking their evening meal. It was a tradition that had been passed down from father to son and mother to daughter.
“Weyto,” she said, “son of Uroph.”
Batlh Daqawlu’taH.
The list was nearly a hundred names long, but Idun never forgot any of them. To do so would have brought dishonor both to her and to the mother who taught her to remember.
“Ukray’k, daughter of Weyto.”
Batlh Daqawlu’taH.
They were the blood of her adopted father and mother, not her