The Farther Shore - Christie Golden [8]
“Complete,” said the computer.
“Read names of files,” instructed Libby.
“Experiment H247. Analysis of Parker’s Second Theorem.” On and on it went. Libby’s shoulders sagged. There was a lot of long, detailed, boring reading ahead of her tonight.
[23] “Memo from Admiral Kenneth Montgomery, star-date—”
“Stop.” Excitement rushed through Libby. Her hunch had been right. This guy did have something on Montgomery, or else why would he keep the memos?
“Compile all documents that have any reference to Admiral Montgomery.”
“Compiled.”
“Display.” There were hundreds of them. “Jackpot,” she said softly. She read the first one:
TO: All members of Section 9
FROM: Admiral Kenneth Montgomery
RE: Lieutenant Hegwood’s Party
Friday is Lieutenant Hegwood’s 40th birthday. He thinks we don’t know, but we admirals have our sources. We’re planning a little surprise for him, so …
“What the ...”
She went on to the next one. This one concerned Commander Grafton’s maternity leave. The next one was a reprimand concerning filched office supplies. The one after that urged all members of Section 9 to keep to the requested limit of fourteen teraquads of data for personal use on the computer.
Slack-jawed, Libby plowed through a few more startlingly banal memos and then leaned back in her chair, thinking. These just couldn’t be what they seemed to be. Sudden inspiration struck—maybe these were fakes. Maybe they had hidden messages encrypted in them. She ran them through, but no luck. Hard as it was for her to comprehend, it appeared as though Trevor [24] Blake had simply never gotten around to deleting commonplace office memos from four years ago.
“No wonder you haven’t had a date in a while, Mr. Blake,” she murmured.
There remained the possibility, however unlikely, that there was something of substance in the memos, so she continued reading. She read all 420 of them. She read a data comparison between Setoya’s Theory and Parker’s Fourth Theorem. She read about experiment F638-H. She read Trevor’s grocery lists from the last eight months and noticed without surprise that he almost always got the same thing.
She had endured stoically, and then she got to Royal Protocol.
“Oh, please God, no,” she moaned.
The lengthy and ponderous Royal Protocol essay was the bane of everyone—everyone—-in Starfleet Intelligence. It was a long-winded document that dealt with the various diplomatic nuances involved in dealing with royal families throughout the Federation.
With little pleasure Libby recalled a few. In the Royal Family of Tarkulis, one first dropped to one’s knees in front of the youngest member of the family, then to each in succession. When greeting the Malshu of Verjuu, one covered one’s eyes until one was graciously given permission to look upon the Blessed One. There were about a million things to memorize and well over a million things one could to do give offense and quite possibly start a war. The Royal Protocol document was, among Starfleet Intelligence members, a symbol of everything that was exquisitely boring and yet required one’s full attention.
[25] She wondered why he had it. It was more likely to be found in her computer than in Trevor Blake’s. And she wouldn’t have had the nasty thing in her house if she could have avoided it. Why would Trevor?
He was not the most socially adroit person she’d ever met. Maybe he simply wanted to get a few “pointers.” Or maybe he was hoping to shift fields. Neither explanation seemed very likely. Probably what had happened was that Trevor had been issued a copy when he first started out in Section 9 and had just never bothered to delete it.
Feeling slightly sick, Libby realized she was going to have to plow through the damn thing. No stone unturned and all that. Even though she knew full well that anything that might reveal a connection to Montgomery was not likely to be found in the single most boring document to grace Federation Intelligence records.
Libby closed her eyes, gathering strength, and