Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [13]
She had made a point of bringing the girl to her office initially, to make certain she hadn’t brought company, and so that the security sensors could scan her for concealed weapons or listening devices. Now that she was determined to be “clean” and acting alone, she could safely be moved elsewhere.
Uhura got up from her desk and surveyed the grounds below her window. As she’d anticipated, the fog had burned off and the day was radiant. Cretak’s messenger had had enough faith in her to allow herself to be brought indoors for the preliminaries, but now it was time for a change of venue.
“It’s a beautiful day, and I need some air,” Uhura said. “Walk with me.”
The young woman hesitated. Did she think she was going to be imprisoned, even executed, once she had delivered the core of her message?
“Sometimes the walls have ears,” Uhura suggested.
“Indeed,” the Romulan said, and instinctively pulled the hood of her travel cloak up over her own.
“You know my name,” Uhura began after they’d walked in silence for a while. “May I know yours?”
“Zetha,” she replied at once.
“Zetha,” Uhura repeated. “That’s your family name?”
“It is my name,” the young woman said tautly. “I was born in Ki Baratan. I have no family.”
And that, Uhura realized, was all she would get out of her. But it told her a great deal. Romulan society was built on kinship lines. A Romulan without family had no identity, and legally did not exist.
“I see,” Uhura said. They were in a remote part of the grounds few frequented. A pity really, since it was some of Boothby’s best work. Dewdrops sparkled on the glossy leaves of the gardenias, and a maze garden of carefully trimmed yews and azaleas beckoned to them, but Uhura deliberately kept them out in the open, amid the groundcovers and low-growing flowerbeds, so that Zetha could see they were not being followed.
Which was not to say they couldn’t have been monitored from across the quadrangle or across the sector, Uhura thought, mindful of some of the equipment her field agents and their Romulan counterparts had at their disposal, which could listen through fortress walls or starship bulkheads or photograph the rank pips on a subcommander’s uniform from a system away as he strolled the streets of the Capital on market day, but the gesture was necessary.
And if the occasional passing cadet noticed the two in conversation, they made nothing of it. Tomed had happened decades before any of these youngsters was born. Even the battle simulators were no longer programmed for Romulan scenarios, which Uhura personally thought was a mistake. On any Federation planet, someone like Zetha would be taken for a Vulcan, no questions asked.
Out of the corner of her eye, Uhura watched her young charge react to the weather and her surroundings. San Francisco had rewarded them with one of its better sunny days, and the girl had lowered the hood of her cloak and turned her face up to the sun like a flower, breathing deeply of the warm, scented air. But even then she did not relax. She watched and listened, absorbing everything.
No, not a child playing dress-up, Uhura decided, studying the grimness of the mouth, the stubborn set of the chin, but a child who never had time to be a child. It had occurred to her from the outset, code words or no, that Zetha might not have been sent by Cretak at all. What she learned about her in the next few hours would be vital in deciding that.
She had already noted several things. Zetha lacked the pronounced upswept brow ridges that so many Romulans, including Cretak, possessed. But there were as many Romulans, Uhura