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“How did you come to be in Cretak’s employ?” Tuvok asked carefully.

“You mean how did a street urchin with no identity come to the attention of someone so important?” Zetha stalled. This was the question she had to answer most carefully, the answer she had been rehearsing since the skipper of the freighter had shown her to a makeshift pallet behind some containers that reeked of dried fish and left her alone-she’d had to find the communal shower and the food dispensers on her own-rehearsing it until it sounded not rehearsed but spontaneous and totally true.

“Godmother had friends. Old family connections despite what had become of her family. There was one rich patron who came every year at the same time and left enough currency to support the entire household through the winter. I never saw his face or learned his name, but he had a beautiful voice.” And have wondered ever since who he was, and whether it was guilt money he left, she thought, confident in her storytelling, because every word, so far, was true.

“Was this patron related to Cretak?” Tuvok’s voice did not change, but some nuance suggested he knew she was stalling.

“How can I know that if I don’t know who he was?” she shot back.

“Then what is his relevance to my question?”

Damn you! Zetha thought, though whether the thought was aimed at Tuvok or at herself, she wasn’t sure.

“Only by way of explaining that Aemetha knew people. She used to tell us stories about the dinners her family gave. Half the senior officers in the Fleet used to attend, she said. She was old enough to remember the time when your people stole our cloaking device.”

“And Cretak?” Tuvok persisted.

Now, Zetha thought. But carefully.

“She intends to run for reelection at the next session. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but it’s common knowledge in Ki Baratan, at least. She will require more aides than she already has, and was looking to train a new one. Aemetha recommended me.”

Tuvok weighed this against what little anyone in the Federation knew about the workings of government and social caste and custom within the Empire. On that basis alone, it was impossible to know for certain if Zetha’s answer was truthful. However, he had noted no change in her pulse or respiration. Again, the veracity of her answers depended on whether she really was what she appeared to be-a rank amateur telling the truth as she understood it-or an operative so skilled she could lie with impunity.

“On what basis did she recommend you?”

“I have an eidetic memory,” she replied, as if it were nothing special.

Cretak handed her the locket. “Any questions?”

Zetha hesitated only a moment. “What else?”

For the first time, Cretak smiled. “Much more. But first…” She took the locket back. “You have to be prepared for this. How good is your memory?”

“Perfect,” Zetha said, her eyes narrowing. She disliked being toyed with, even by someone who could snuff her life out without a thought. Especially by someone who had that much power. “You were testing me.”

“Wouldn’t you, in my place?”

The very thought that she could ever be in Cretak’s place gave Zetha pause.

“I suppose I would.”

“Even so. A perfect memory, you say. You’re overly confident.”

Zetha shrugged. “Just accurate. If I hear something, I can play it back in my mind like a recording. If I read it, it scrolls across the inside of my eyelids.”

Cretak tilted her head like a bird, skepticism written in every plane of her handsome face. She tapped something into her personal comm and turned the screen so that Zetha could read it. Zetha did. Then closed her eyes and recited it verbatim.

Even Cretak, it seemed, could occasionally be surprised. “Impressive,” she said, “but that puts us only halfway there. Try this.”

She coded a sequence into the keypad on her desk and a voice recording began to play. Zetha listened intently. After a moment or two, Cretak stopped the recording.

“What language is that?” Zetha asked.

“Inconsequential. If your memory is what you claim it is, you can reproduce it.”

Again Zetha shrugged, and began