Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [30]
“I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing ahead of time whether you’re going to be space-sick,” Cretak mused, almost to herself. “You’re going with me.”
Tuvok frowned slightly. Everything the girl said had the ring of truth. He had no doubt she believed everything she had just told him. But whether she had been programmed thus, or had simply chosen to omit some things, would require deeper questions.
But she was yawning, and he wondered how long it had been since she’d slept. She was so young, younger than his youngest child. He suppressed a parental urge to suggest she rest now. Illogical, and self-defeating. Nevertheless, if she was overtired, her answers would make no sense. Only one more question, for now.
“Are you a member of the Tal Shiar?”
For the first time she laughed outright. It would have been a pleasant sound, if it hadn’t been laced with sarcasm. “You mean am I a spy? There are no spies on Romulus; don’t you know that? There is no need for spies, because everyone in a spy.”
“Answer the question, please.”
That made her angry. She leapt out of her chair, almost knocking it over.
“I am nothing! Don’t you understand? I don’t exist. On the way here, Cretak and I went past two sets of sentries and three sensor arrays inside the space hub. The sensors recognized Cretak, but they never even registered me, because I don’t exist. You’re aiming in the dark.”
“Are you a member of the Tal Shiar?” he asked again, unperturbed by her outburst.
Did he notice that she hesitated for the space of half a breath? No, Zetha told herself, watching sidelong as the impassive face revealed nothing. He has not noticed.
“No,” she said carefully. “I am not.”
Chapter 5
“Okay, what have we got?” McCoy demanded, rubbing his hands together, exhilarated by the chase in spite of himself.
“A bug of unknown etiology which can affect humans and Vulcans, kills everyone it infects, and may have been artificially created,” Crusher reported grimly.
“And a possible disease vector,” Selar chimed in from aboard the science vessel whose ETA at Spacedock was 1900 hours that evening.
“This is new,” Uhura said from the center seat. “Let’s hear it.”
She had “assembled” all three of them in a holoconference in her office. Each of them, wherever they were, experienced the presence of the other three in situ. This level of holo technology was not yet Fleet standard, but was something Uhura, working with the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, had been instrumental in developing. It not only gave the impression that she and the three doctors were actually, three-dimensionally present in four locations at once, but the transmission frequencies were virtually impenetrable by at least current Starfleet technology. At the moment the prototype could be transmitted only from her office at SI, though she knew that some of the newer starships were being fitted with holodecks employing the same principles.
For now, Crusher, looking tired but no less groomed in her characteristic blue smock, her waves of bright red hair barely contained in a practical ponytail at the nape of her neck, had arranged three empty chairs in a clear space between the countertops and autoclaves in her lab at Medical HQ. Dr. Selar, for her part, had arranged some low couches in a space in her vessel’s sickbay, confident that, on a Vulcan ship, neither she nor the confidentiality of the meeting would be disturbed.
McCoy, in his favorite rocker on the porch of a retreat so remote only Intelligence had been able to track him down, was enjoying the company of three beautiful women seated in a semicircle of cushioned Adirondack chairs on his back lawn, under a starlit sky and accompanied by the sound of crickets. Uhura, hosting all three of them in her office had, just to be whimsical, seated his flannel-shirt-and-old-Levi’s incarnation on a windowsill overlooking San Francisco Bay, where the sun was starting its late-afternoon slide down the sky beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. McCoy had refused to shave for the occasion and, with his tousled white