The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [75]
“Can’t say I’d blame them for not being eager to put all their dirty laundry on display,” Phuong said.
Trip nodded, still watching the dour-faced alien who was staring back at him from the mirror. “I suppose that’d be especially true on the eve of the signing of the Coalition Compact.”
Does T’Pol know anything about this? Trip thought, feeling adrift.
“Exactly,” Phuong said. “Regardless, the Adigeons have surgically altered you not just to make you look generically Romulan, as I do. You have, in fact, been made to resemble a particular Romulan, right down to your voice prints- specifically, you are now a junior warp scientist named Cunaehr, who was Doctor Ehrehin’s most trusted assistant.”
“Was?” Trip asked, turning to face Phuong. “Past tense?”
“He’s dead,” Phuong said, nodding. “Killed in a recent warp-test accident.”
A worm of suspicion was beginning to turn deep in Trip’s gut. “You knew beforehand what they were going to make us look like?”
Phuong held up a placating hand. “I knew about Cunaehr and his relationship to Ehrehin, thanks to our intelligence dossiers. But as far as what Romulans look like in general, I’m as surprised as you are. The Adigeon surgeons seem to have their own sources regarding the exact likenesses of prominent Romulans.”
Trip stroked his own now very alien-looking cheek. “Well, let’s hope they did a good enough likeness to fool this Doctor Ehrehin.”
“Ehrehin might not be all that hard to fool, if our dossier on him is correct,” said Phuong.
Trip’s enlarged brow crumpled inquisitively. “What do you mean?”
“Doctor Ehrehin is an elderly man, Commander. And he’s reportedly been only intermittently lucid during recent weeks. As far as I know, this hasn’t affected his theoretical and mathematical work, and it may even make him tractable enough to allow Earth and the other Coalition worlds to benefit from his expertise- provided he’s comforted by the presence of one of his most trusted assistants.”
Comforted by a dead man, Trip thought. He was beginning to feel that he was about to participate in something exceedingly ugly. “All I have to do is pretend to be Ehrehin’s beloved apprentice. Then take advantage of a feeble old man’s vulnerabilities.”
Phuong scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “This is war, Commander.”
“Sure it is, Tinh. Never said I had to like it, though.” Trip turned back toward the mirror and looked once again into the face of Cunaehr. As important as he knew this mission was, he now felt determined not to allow it to completely swallow his real identity- at least, not forever. He couldn’t let the role of Cunaehr, or for that matter Phuong’s apparent tendency to allow the ends to justify the means, to engulf the man he still was at his core.
After all, Trip thought, I’m going to have to go home sometime and be able to put all this behind me.
Running his index finger along the side of one of his oddly natural-feeling pointed ears, Trip asked, “What did the Adigeons do to us exactly?”
“The details?” Phuong said. “Well, the bureau spared no expense, Commander. The Adigeons not only performed all the necessary cosmetic alterations, they made quite a few temporary internal changes, all of them reversible. They even resequenced our genes.”
Trip turned back toward Phuong, his fists clenching involuntarily. “That’s illegal.”
Phuong shrugged. “It’s illegal on Earth, Commander. But the Adigeons weren’t a party to either the Augment tyrannies of the twentieth century, or to the Eugenics Wars. So they’re a little less squeamish about such stuff than we are.”
“But why change our DNA?”
“Because it’s our best chance of fooling suspicious Romulans- particularly those equipped with medical scanners. Cut yourself shaving and you’ll even bleed green. Only an extremely deep tissue scan will reveal the truth.”
Or an autopsy, Trip thought, though he tried very hard to push that unpleasant notion aside.
“Besides, the Adigeons say we may even receive some ancillary long-term health benefits