Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [139]
No, check that. One more odd thing. Under “personal statement/goals,” Luther Sloan had written “to someday be Head of Starfleet Intelligence.”
If she hadn’t met the man, Uhura might have taken that for what it was obviously meant to be-a brash young man’s egotistical fantasy, a little bit of top-of-the-world-Ma showing off. But there was nothing brash about the Luther Sloan who had just walked through that door.
This was no fantasy. Behind that bland mask of a face was a man driven by ambition. He’d meant every word. The very statement was a dare. He was showing his hand in the most blatant way possible, and daring anyone to challenge him.
“Head of SI? Not while I live and breathe, Mr. Sloan!” Uhura said very quietly, wiping the screen and any trace that she’d been prying into his file. Then she focused her attention on the message from Starfleet Command.
The virus heretofore designated Catalyst, it stated, did not exist. The entity which had claimed 1,076 Federation lives was judged to be a rare and self-limiting mutant off-shoot of R4b2 Rigelian fever, and precautionary vaccinations were just that, precautionary. No additional outbreaks of said R-fever had been reported effective this date, medical experts (Uhura wondered if Crusher, Selar, or McCoy were among them) were on record indicating no further outbreaks were anticipated, case closed.
Any rumors about an unusual fever affecting Romulans were just that, rumors, and had no connection whatsoever with R4b2 R-fever or the mythological Catalyst. There was no reason to suspect bioterrorism, and no information about the R-fever outbreaks would be relayed to any individual within the Romulan Empire or elsewhere, end of report.
Even as Sloan stood there pretending he wasn’t looking at her, Uhura had been running scenarios in her head, trying to think of a way around the interdict. There weren’t any. Once she gave the C-in-C her word, her hands were tied.
Now, if Sloan had arrived five minutes earlier…
Luxury, Zetha decided, is a hot shower. Not just a mob of you lined up to make a quick pass under the sonics to kill the bugs in your hair the way we did in the House, not the rusty lukewarm trickle that was all the plumbing in Aemetha’s house would ever yield, but hot running water coursing down your body, first thing in the morning, every single day. Maybe again at night before you went to bed, or any time you wanted. A real hot-water shower, the water pulsing so hard it hurt, or caressing you, flowing over you, washing away all the bad things, so that you always looked forward to the new day.
Luxury is clothes that fit, that have never been worn by anyone else. Luxury is knowing that you can fill your belly without anyone else going hungry. Luxury is knowing you have a right to live, a right to your own identity that no one can take from you.
But with that luxury comes uncertainty. When you have something to push against, the pushing becomes everything. When the fear is taken away, it’s as if the ground you’re standing on has suddenly slipped out from under you.
Who am I? What am I? Where do I go from here? She had never had time to ask those questions before, and now that she did, she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers.
Dr. Selar had restored her freckles exactly where they belonged. She was still a ghilik with no family name, but that didn’t seem to matter here. She still wore the sash Aemetha had given her; Tahir’s smooth stone was still in her pocket. And she had an important piece of information, courtesy of Dr. McCoy.
“Whoever told you you’re a hybrid never really studied your codes,” he told her, having completed one last favor for Uhura and double-checked the initial tests Crusher had done by performing a complete genetic scan. “Or else they flat-out lied. You’re as Romulan as I am human.”
And? she thought. That bit of knowledge was at once a shock and an indifference. Had someone,