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“He just got his first lesson in physics, Ben,” Joseph said. “And you a good lesson in parenting. Sometimes you’ve got to let them go.”

Now Tuvok was telling Sisko the same thing. Would he ever be able to let Jake go? He guessed he’d have to learn the answer to that question one day at a time.

“The organism on Quirinus is indeed the same,” Selar reported during the next medical briefing with Uhura and Crusher. “At least as evidenced in blood and skin samples taken from those quarantined inside the enclosure.”

“But-?” Uhura prompted her, hearing something in her tone.

“But serum and skin samples taken from the outworlder killed by the villagers show no trace of the organism.”

“What if he had nothing to do with the infection?” Uhura asked.

“That is possible,” Selar acknowledged. “However, what is unusual is that his blood was remarkably free of any active organisms or even background noise.”

” ‘Background noise’?” Uhura asked.

“Everyone’s blood is a road map of their medical history,” Crusher supplied. “Immunizations, childhood illnesses, even the common cold, leave antibodies in the bloodstream long after they’re introduced into our systems. That’s why immunizations work. If you get a measles shot, for instance, you won’t catch measles, because the old germs are telling the new germs on the block: ‘Been there, done that, go somewhere else.’ “

“Gotcha,” Uhura said. “But you said ‘remarkably’ free.”

“Indeed. Given the small volume of blood Tuvok was able to obtain, I cannot say with certainty that the stranger was entirely free of antibodies, but there were none in the sample.”

“None?” Crusher echoed her. “That’s impossible.”

“Maybe he was just very healthy,” Uhura suggested.

“Hypothetically,” Selar said, “someone who had never received any immunizations, who had never been ill nor exposed to anyone who was ill, or someone whose entire blood supply had been dialyzed and replaced, might show such a pattern.”

“But-?”

“But there’s no such animal,” Crusher said.

“Such an individual would not have been cleared for offworld travel without receiving new immunizations,” Selar clarified. “And since Tuvok’s scans indicate this individual was most likely a Romulan surgically altered to more closely resemble a Quirinian-“

“Something stinks,” Uhura finished for her.

Selar, less literal minded than most Vulcans, merely said, “Agreed.”

“Is it possible,” Uhura said, thinking it through as she asked it, “that a person’s biology could be programmed to make them immune to a disease that they could spread to others?”

“Not by our science,” Crusher said. “It sometimes occurs naturally. Carriers who are immune, like Typhoid Mary.”

“Not by our science,” Selar agreed. “But perhaps the Romulans-?”

“That could solve the mystery of the delivery system,” Crusher suggested. “Admiral, are you okay?”

They sometimes forgot that, tough as she was, Uhura was no longer a young woman. This thing had been keeping her up nights, and it showed.

“Okay as I’ll ever be,” she said, passing a hand over her eyes and straightening the momentary sag in her shoulders. “Carry on.”

Their next stop was a world called Sliwon.

Vulcan, like many worlds, eventually entered a period of aggressive colonization, and perhaps a ship or ships from that era had ventured as far as Sliwon. Or perhaps its people were descendants of some members of the Sundering’s hegira who refused to travel further. Perhaps, too, there was an indigenous population of humanoids on Sliwon when they arrived, or perhaps the legends of the Preservers populating the galaxy with humanoids could once more be given evidence here. In the event, the Sliwoni, like the Rigelians, were a bit of both.

And perhaps it was the overlarge moon that made its people moody and given to extremes of temperament, or perhaps it was the uneasy agglomeration of their biology that made them quick of temper and prone to quarrel. It was Surak himself who, according to some accounts, said “Put two Vulcans in a room and you end up with three arguments.” Blessed with a mild climate,