Текст книги "Harbinger"

Автор книги: David Mack

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“Aye, but not what I’m after. I—”

“If you say you’ve come looking for mandisa, my associate Zett is going to push you out an airlock.”

Words logjammed one after another in Scott’s throat as he shifted gears in midsentence. He had come here hoping to acquire a bottle—or a case—of the rare Orion aphrodisiac, on the assumption that, because they were outside the official borders of the Federation, a loophole might have made it accessible at last. Unfortunately, the stony gaze of the gangster in front of him made it apparent to Scott that he was not the first one to have entertained this notion—nor the first to have dared to bother Ganz with it.

“Of course not,” Scott lied, his prevarication as obvious as it was desperate. “In fact, I was going to ask you or your”—he looked around at the coterie of thugs, who were inching closer—“your esteemed colleagues to recommend something exotic.”

“Something exotic,” Ganz repeated, an evil grin broadening his face. “I think we can accommodate you after all, Commander Scott.” He turned and bellowed across the room, “Reke! Come here!” One of Ganz’s shabbier-looking henchmen staggered away from his table on the far side of the room. Ganz pointed him back the way he’d come. “Bring the bottle.” The bedraggled hoodlum turned, snagged the bottle with a broad sweeping grab, and resumed plodding toward the dais. When he reached Scott’s side, Ganz held up his hand, and Reke stopped. Pointing at Scott, Ganz said, “Give him the bottle.”

Reke looked at Scott, struggling to focus through eyes dilated with intoxication. Perplexed, he looked down at the bottle in his hand, then glanced pleadingly at Ganz, who scowled back. Cowed, Reke thrust the bottle toward Scott, who took it.

The chief engineer stared at the bottle for a moment, then lifted the cork and sniffed its aggressively pungent contents. “Good God, man, you could strip dilithium with this! What in blazes is it?”

Wobbling on his feet, the henchman belched. Through a thick gurgling croak, he forced out the words “It’s green,” then he doubled over and vomited on Scott’s left boot.

Imagining himself back in Starfleet basic training prior to the start of his academy classes twenty-odd years ago, Scott simply pretended that nothing was amiss. He didn’t flinch. His posture remained straight. Eye contact with his host was unbroken. Ganz nodded at him, apparently satisfied with what he had seen. “Enjoy it in good health, Commander.”

“I will. Thank you…. What do I owe you?”

“Call it a gift,” Ganz said. “I don’t do business with Starfleeters. Too many…complications.”

“Right,” Scott said. “I see. Mighty generous of you, then.”

“You know,” Ganz added, “if I was you right now, I’d be—”

“Leaving,” Scott said enthusiastically. “A capital idea.” Scott lifted his soiled boot free of Reke’s mound of ejected stomach contents and shook away the larger chunks. He gestured his farewell to Ganz with the bottle of green mystery booze, then departed without another word to the Orion boss.

Zett was at Scott’s back by the time he reached the stairs to the lower level. “I trust you can show yourself out?”

“Aye, count on it.”

Despite Scott’s assurance, Zett shadowed him all the way to the airlock and escorted him into the corridor beyond. He offered up his unctuous, jet-black grin. “A pleasure.”

Scott was halfway down the corridor to the station core before he heard Zett head back inside Ganz’s ship. Only as he rounded the corner did Scott permit himself a heavy sigh and an unheard, softly muttered retort of “Wankers.”

Rana Desai’s feet dragged like leaden weights. Exhaustion had left her feeling like a shell of herself. She had expected to be home more than two hours ago, but a flurry of last-minute work had made this evening into just one more of a long series of painfully late nights in Vanguard’s office of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General.

Turning the corner toward her quarters, she imagined the look on her boyfriend’s face. She had wanted to let him know about the delay that kept her and two of her lawyers trapped after-hours in the JAG office, but she hadn’t been able to steal a private moment to relay the bad news. He’ll understand, she hoped. It’s the nature of the job. He knows that.

Her door swished open as she approached, and she entered to a faint aroma of grilled fish. She stopped at the dining table. A pair of still-burning tapers had consumed themselves to within half an inch of their bases. At her place, an immaculate plate was flanked by gleaming silverware. Her water goblet was filled. An open bottle of Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse stood behind her tulip-shaped wineglass.

Reyes stood and stared out the broad window on the far side of the room. He downed the last dregs from the wineglass in his hand, then spoke without turning around. “I started without you.”

“So I see.” Desai picked up the serving fork and poked the untouched fillet of sea bass, which had long since gone cold, neglected in the middle of the unoccupied table for two. She placed the fork back on the platter, perfectly parallel to the fillet. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, pouring herself half a glass of the vintage white wine. “But it’s all Pennington’s fault.”

Reyes continued to gaze out the window. “Mm-hm.”

She picked up her glass, circled around the table, and joined him at the window. Trying to read his silences was still a challenge for her, but sensing his moods was getting easier. “What’s wrong?”

He looked down into the bottom of his empty glass with a forlorn expression. “Bad news from home.”

Placing one hand on his arm, she gently turned him toward her. “What news?”

“My mother.” Anguish had recast his normally intense, stoic visage into something tragic. “She’s been diagnosed with Meenok’s disease.”

Desai’s voice was a dismayed whisper. “Oh, no. What’s the prognosis?”

Reyes’s voice cracked and faltered like he was being strangled. “Terminal. A couple months, maybe.” He fought to pull in a new breath and exhaled through clenched teeth as he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the window. “And here I am, at the ass end of the galaxy.”

Meenok’s disease was a degenerative neurological affliction that continued to haunt the descendants of Earth’s first lunar settlers. Its similarity to other, more benign conditions meant that it was almost always misdiagnosed until its final, fatal stages. Victims of Meenok’s almost always remained lucid. Unfortunately, its chief symptom during its final stage was gruesome, debilitating pain. Just about the only mitigating factor was that this suffering, though extreme, was brief. So brief, Desai understood, that there was little chance that Reyes could make the journey back to his family’s home in New Berlin on Luna before the end came.

A lonesome tear escaped from Reyes’s closed eyes. Desai took the empty glass from his hand and set it down on a corner table beside her own. Normally, she found budging him to be like moving a mountain, but tonight Reyes responded to her gentle guidance, like a vessel set adrift. With a gentle nudge, she guided him toward the sofa, eased him down onto it, then settled herself beside him.

“When did you hear the news?”

“About an hour ago. I got the message while I was waiting for you.”

Taking one of his large, weathered hands into her own, she said, “Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head. “Funny thing about life—it sneaks up on you.” Squeezing her hands, he continued, “We get over the illusion of our own indestructibility, but we forget that our parents are mortal. Then, one day, one of the people who made you is gone…and you realize you’re next in line.”

“She’s not gone yet,” Desai said.

“No, not yet. But soon. I recorded a message…but it’s not the same. It’s not like being there.” Reyes leaned back and craned his head over the back of the sofa. She watched him study the featureless gray ceiling. He sighed. “I’d always imagined the way she’d smile when I finally told her she was a grandmother…. Then I went and married Jeanne and wasted eleven years.”

Desai nodded but said nothing; Reyes rarely spoke of his ex-wife, and she had learned that asking him questions about Jeanne or their marriage or their divorce was strictly verboten. The real reason for her reticence, however, was that this was the third time in as many months that Reyes had made some kind of oblique reference about a desire to be a father. As enamored as she was of him, she found the idea of starting a family to be premature. At times like this, she struggled not to hear her own mother’s voice chiding her: You’re not getting any younger, Rana! A few more years and you won’t be able to have children! What are you waiting for?

She pushed her back to the end of the sofa and pulled Reyes toward her. He leaned back against her torso, and she began kneading the tension from his shoulders. His muscles were rock-hard, coiled with the kind of stress that—according to Rana’s father, a doctor—would send a person to an early grave. Her delicate-looking hands clenched and pulled at his rocklike trapezius until it slowly became pliable. Reyes rasped out a half-grunt, half-sigh that spoke of pain, pleasure, and relief.

Half an hour later, his neck and shoulder muscles once again feeling like human flesh instead of marble, Reyes was asleep in Desai’s arms. She leaned down and kissed his deeply creased forehead. Her stomach growled and gurgled softly from beneath him, but rather than risk waking Reyes she ignored her hunger and decided to try and get some sleep instead.

It had been a long day, for both of them.

Human rituals, by definition, were already half-alien to Spock. Their curious predilection for self-intoxication as a means of stimulating interpersonal communication only enhanced Spock’s sense of having little in common with the majority of his shipmates on the Enterprise, even after being aboard for more than twelve years.

The retirement party for Dr. Piper was to be, Spock had heard chief engineer Scott proclaim, “a ripping good send-off.” That, too, confused Spock. Piper was scheduled to remain with the crew until they returned to Earth roughly ten weeks from now, at which time Starfleet Medical and Starfleet Command would assign the Enterprise a new ship’s surgeon. Celebrating the end of Piper’s service while it was still in progress seemed premature, and Spock had said as much to Captain Kirk earlier in the evening, when the ship’s senior officers had congregated here in Manón’s, a cabaret lounge in Stars Landing.

“Just kick back and enjoy yourself, Mr. Spock,” Kirk had said to him. “It’s a party. He’s earned it…. We all have.”

Spock was uncertain what, precisely, constituted the value of a party, or against what standard one could be said to have “earned” it as a reward. It was “an intangible fringe benefit of socializing with humans,” his former commanding officer, Captain Christopher Pike, had once explained to him. Tonight, however, lacking Mr. Scott’s interest in imbibing alcohol, Dr. Piper’s yen for telling ribald stories, or the captain’s penchant for making impetuous advances toward unfamiliar women, the half-Vulcan officer concluded that “benefit” was not necessarily the word he would have selected for this category of experience. Astrophysicist Sulu and communications officer Uhura, at least, displayed a greater sense of decorum as they sipped at their juice drinks and held themselves at a slight remove from the senior officers’ increasingly unfettered revelry.

Clutching his empty glass, Spock got up from his chair. No one else in the group seemed to notice. After moving even a few meters away, he could tell immediately that the Enterprise group was currently the loudest one in the nightclub. There was a fairly substantial clamor of overlapping voices, but Piper’s and Scott’s guffawing laughs pierced the din. Other tables of Starfleet officers and civilian residents were casting furtive, irritated glances in his shipmates’ direction.

There was a line of people three layers deep at the bar. Spock waited his turn, and used the delay to examine the details of the spacious, softly lit club. High ceilings gave it good acoustics, but the dim illumination concealed the room’s height, creating a more intimate impression. Squat, movable chairs, ottomans, and tables, combined with oversized floor cushions, permitted the patrons to group themselves comfortably in both small and large numbers. Most of the clientele appeared to be well-to-do civilians or commissioned Starfleet officers. A group of Bombay personnel whom Mr. Scott had asked for directions had indicated that Manón’s, despite being a privately owned establishment, served as the de facto officers’ club on Vanguard. There was a real officers’ club on level sixteen, one of them had said, “but no one ever goes there.”

He placed his glass gently on the polished stone bartop, just past an imaginary midpoint dividing line. The bartender snatched up the glass as he darted over from one side. Eyeing Spock, he deposited the glass—with a dexterity that bordered on sleight-of-hand—into a sanitizer. “Another ice water, friend?”

“Yes, please.”

A pleasant, soft purr of a voice turned Spock’s head. “Ice water?” An elegantly dressed woman stood beside him with her back to the bar. “I do love a big spender,” she added. To the best of his recollection, he had never seen her species before. She was pale and, by most humanoid species’ standards, quite aesthetically pleasing. The irises of her large, almond-shaped eyes were vaguely feline and shimmered emerald-green. Her nose was tiny almost to the point of being imperceptible. She wore her multihued hair in an ornately coiffed swirl, like a breaking wave. Her off-the-shoulder dress could at first be mistaken for black, but a closer inspection revealed that it was an intensely saturated purple, like that of the ripest plums. In a very literal sense, she radiated warmth.

“I was not aware that there was any charge for water,” he said, resisting the pull his human half felt for the woman.

“Every day I learn something new,” the woman said. “I had no idea Vulcans were ignorant of sarcasm.”

“Not ignorant, madam. Unfazed.”

“Touché,” she said. Lifting her chin toward the bartender, she instructed the young man, “Put his water on my tab, Roy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the bartender said with a grin.

The lady extended her hand to Spock. He clutched it gingerly between his fingertips, hesitant to grasp it fully because of the potential for unwanted telepathic contact…and because of the length and apparent sharpness of her curved fingernails. She shot him an unflinchingly provocative stare and introduced herself. “Manón.”

“Spock.” He released her hand. “I do not believe I have ever met one of your species before.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Only a few Silgov have traveled this far from the homeworld. Exploration is not what one might call a ‘cultural imperative’ for my people.”

Intrigued, Spock said, “And yourself?”

“Call it wanderlust,” she said with a seductive grin.

An excited buzz of discussion rippled through the crowd. Spock turned to see the cause of the sudden hubbub. Crossing the room, from the front entrance to the slightly elevated main stage at the rear of the room, was a tall, young Vulcan woman. He noted that her crimson uniform was of the new miniskirt variety, and that its sleeve cuffs bore the stripes of a lieutenant commander. She ascended the stairs to the stage and seated herself in front of the baby grand piano.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Manón nod to someone. A moment later, a soft spotlight affixed itself to the woman onstage. She sat patiently—waiting, Spock surmised, for the silence that spread quickly across the room. A few dozen people shushed his shipmates at their table. Seconds later the room fell quiet with anticipation.

Manón leaned over and whispered confidentially to Spock, “You’re in for a treat. T’Prynn doesn’t do this often.”

After the briefest hesitation, T’Prynn’s fingers danced in a flurry across the keys, building into a classical crescendo that just as quickly melted away into a few slow, melancholy notes that fell like rain. As she segued into a gently flowing jazz measure, Spock marveled at the fluidity of her performance style, which was riddled with breaks, tiny flourishes and hints of influence as disparate as Terran blues and gospel. Even simple measures took on unexpected complexity as she counterpoised mellow bass lines with up-tempo melodies, demonstrating a pianist’s natural gift for harboring and reconciling two seemingly contradictory musical ideas at once. Around the room, her audience bobbed in unison, tapped their feet, and seemed to surrender themselves to the unmistakable passion that infused T’Prynn’s music.

The tempo increased as she played, subtly at first, then with greater assertiveness after she crossed a musical bridge into a more robust passage of the tune. Then, like turning a corner, she doubled back into quieter territory—only to reverse herself again, leading her performance and the audience into a decidedly muscular, bluesy barnstorm of a run that shook the tables, chairs, and even the bar itself with its simple ferocity. It was several seconds before Spock was able to divert his attention to realize that almost everyone in the room was clapping in tempo with T’Prynn’s music, providing her with joyous and completely spontaneous percussion.

A sudden break from the surging of major chords and she was into a series of rapid, virtuoso solos across the right side of the keyboard, each separated by a majestic thumping of the baby grand’s lower-register keys. Nearly seven minutes after she began, she prolonged the inevitable with a brazen parade of chords punctuated by witty solo asides, and then sailed to a finish with a few graceful—if theatrical—sweepings of her hand across all the white keys from right to left, and a final proud slam of a note.

The room erupted with applause, a standing ovation that was deafening in its exultation. T’Prynn remained seated for a few moments, then she stood and nodded politely to the audience before demurely stepping down off the stage. Spock watched her approach the bar, and he realized that from the moment she had entered the lounge, and even through the duration of her performance, her facial expression had not seemed to change. If one had not seen her hands, she would have appeared to be the very portrait of calm. Her hands, however, had belied her quiet composure, attacking the keys with an intense, ferocious, and sometimes deftly playful quality that Spock could not remember ever seeing in another Vulcan musician. By almost any standard, she had rendered a remarkable performance, but Spock could think of only one adjective that, in his opinion, best described his impression of T’Prynn’s musical style: human.

As she neared the bar, the low undercurrent of conversation returned to the nightclub. A handful of patrons stepped away from the counter, ostensibly as a gesture of respect for T’Prynn. She took a freshly vacated seat between Manón and Spock. “Thank you,” she said to Manón, “for the use of your piano.”

“I should be thanking you for the free entertainment.” With a small gesture in Spock’s direction, she added, “T’Prynn, this is Mr. Spock.”

T’Prynn turned her head and regarded Spock with a neutral expression. “Commander.”

“Your performance was impressive,” Spock said.

She seemed unmoved by his praise. “Most kind.” Lifting her hand, she summoned the bartender. “Green tea, please.”

“Where did you study?”

She seemed reluctant to answer, then saw that Manón had already moved away. Looking back at Spock, she said, “Earth.”

He hazarded a guess. “At the Academy?”

“During those years, yes. But not at the Academy proper.”

“Your interpretation of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ was most…emphatic.”

“It was not my interpretation.” The bartender delivered her drink, and she nodded her thanks. “The arrangement was by a twentieth-century jazz pianist named Gene Harris. I merely emulated his approach.”

“Regardless, the result was profoundly affecting.”

“Are you saying that you felt an emotional response to my music, Mr. Spock?”

“Not at all,” he said. “But many in the audience clearly did. Indeed, the profusion of raw emotion in your performance—”

“I permitted myself no such indulgence.”

Spock realized that he had misspoken. “Forgive me. I meant no offense. Perhaps it would be more correct for me to speak of the emotional impact of your music.”

“Such is in the ear of the listener,” T’Prynn said. “Logic would suggest that music is applied mathematics coupled with digital coordination and acoustic manipulation.”

His right eyebrow arched with suspicion. “As a fellow-musician, I cannot agree with your definition of music.” He noted that she seemed to deliberately break eye contact and turn slightly away from him. He continued, “If your hypothesis is valid, it begs the question, Why have I never heard another Vulcan musician perform in such a style?”

“Perhaps because the majority of them play only for Vulcan listeners,” she said. “I doubt that a recital audience in Vulcana Regar would respond to the music I performed tonight with the same approval I received here.” She sipped her tea, then added, “Always know your audience.”

“There is another possible explanation.” He waited until she resumed eye contact with him before he continued. “Perhaps you have found a way to use music as a clever circumvention of the Dictums of Logic.”

Now it was her turn to lift an eyebrow at him. “A peculiar notion, Spock. Why would a Vulcan do such a thing?”

He met her stare. “That is an interesting question.”

“One that I am certain you will ponder in exhaustive detail,” she said. “Please share your eventual conclusions with me. I will be most curious to see where your speculations lead.” Standing and facing him, she lifted her hand in the Vulcan salute. “Peace and long life, Spock.”

Returning the gesture, he said, “Live long and prosper, T’Prynn.” He watched her walk away, moving through the crowd with the grace of a dancer. Without succumbing to emotion, he savored the irony that, after all his decades serving aside several perplexing individuals of many different species, he should find a fellow-Vulcan so utterly foreign.

Picking up his ice water and feeling the cool drops of condensation on its exterior trickle over his fingers, he considered that perhaps he had been away from home for too long. Then he thought of his father, Sarek…and banished all thought of a homecoming from his mind.

He looked across the room at his laughing, illogical, inscrutably human friends and knew that, as alien as it might once have seemed—and likely would feel again, from time to time—the Enterprise was his home.

Though he had nothing to add to their conversation, he returned to the table with his shipmates. Kirk slapped his shoulder. “I saw you chatting up that piano player, Spock. I also saw her leave alone. No sparks?”

“If you are referring to a romantic attraction, Captain, then no. Our conversation was…professional in nature.”

Kirk didn’t look convinced. He smiled at Sulu and Scotty, then said to Spock, “So you’re not interested in her, then?”

“Quite the contrary,” Spock said. “I found her—and her music—extremely interesting.”

8

Tim Pennington watched from the observation deck above the Bay Two airlock as the Starship Bombay was guided in reverse out the open spacedock doors. It was just after midnight, station time. As he had suspected from the flurry of activity that had surrounded the ship all day long, its three-day shore leave had been canceled, though he did not yet know why.

He felt melancholy. The Bombay’s early departure—and the continued presence of the Enterprise—had prevented him from bidding farewell to Oriana. She had spent what little free time had remained to her with her husband, Robert.

Adding insult to injury, Robert D’Amato stood only a few meters to Pennington’s left, watching the Bombay’s departure with a sad but wistful expression. Pennington worked very hard to avoid making even accidental eye contact.

The ship’s primary hull cleared the spacedock doors. Now under its own power, it initiated a graceful pivot-and-roll maneuver away from Vanguard, the domes of its warp nacelles glowing brightly. As it slowly accelerated away, the spacedock doors drifted gradually toward each other. A vibration on Pennington’s wrist drew his hand to his pager. He pushed back his sleeve and read the incoming message.

It was from his editor—a simple heads-up to say that the story Pennington had filed about the deaths of Enterprise officers Mitchell and Dehner had gone live network-wide. Pennington authorized the message’s return receipt and pulled his sleeve back over the pager. He smiled to himself as he anticipated the response the story might provoke. Nothing to do now but wait for it to hit the fan with Kirk, he mused.

Outside the spacedock doors, the Bombay was little more now than a distant speck of shimmering silver-white against the stars. Godspeed, Oriana. Be safe until we say hello again.

When he turned to walk away, D’Amato was standing right next to him. “My wife’s on the Bombay,” the officer said. “First time I’ve seen her in almost a year, and we got less than six hours together.”

“Rotten luck,” Pennington said, not quite masking his discomfort over talking to the man he had been cuckolding for three months.

D’Amato nodded. “Life in Starfleet, I guess.” He tilted his head in the direction of the departed starship. “Who do you know on the Bombay?”

“No one.” It was a clumsy, amateurish lie. He realized only after he’d uttered it that he could name at least half a dozen casual acquaintances on the Miranda-class vessel. “No one special, anyway,” he amended.

“Oh.” Robert shrugged. “I just figured because you were watching her ship out—”

“I watch all the Starfleet ships come and go. Kinda goes with the job.”

Only now did D’Amato seem to take notice of the laminated FNS credentials strung on a lanyard around Pennington’s neck. His tone instantly became one of suspicion. “Journalist, huh?”

“I prefer to think of myself as an investigative reporter.”

“What scoop are you hoping for here?”

“You never know.”

“Get anything good lately?”

It took all of Pennington’s willpower not to blurt out, Your wife. “Actually, I just did a story about a pair of suspicious deaths on the Enterprise.”

D’Amato’s suspicion turned into outright hostility. “Oh, really? And what would you know about it? I didn’t see you there.” He advanced toward Pennington, who backed up a few steps. “Do you like making up sleaze about good people who died in the line of duty?”

He stopped and let D’Amato come nose-to-nose with him. “Listen up.” Pennington poked his index finger into the Starfleet officer’s chest. “Don’t call my work sleaze. I’m not some hack working for a gossip sheet, I’m a reporter for FNS. I’m a pro. Try reading my story before you bash it.”

Tension lingered hot and thick for several moments while the two men stared each other down. D’Amato backed off but kept a cautious eye on Pennington. “Your story better check out,” he said. “Or else.”

Nothing that Pennington could think to say would sound less than provocative, so he kept quiet and watched D’Amato walk away. Glancing out into the main spacedock, Pennington noted that the Bay Two doors were once again closed. He thought of Oriana, then about her husband. Confronting him had not been part of Pennington’s agenda, and letting the guy have the last word had been particularly galling.

Consolation would come soon enough, Pennington knew: When he’s on his way back to Earth, he gloated, and Oriana’s back here with me.

Dr. Mark Piper had expected to find a large, well-supplied infirmary on a station as large as Vanguard. His expectations had been far exceeded when he followed the station map to the medical center to find an entire hospital, still sparkling new and as antiseptic-smelling as a freshly sanitized scalpel. Nestled deep within the station, the heavily shielded complex occupied levels twenty-one through twenty-five, near the core.

The range of its facilities impressed Piper. Vanguard Hospital included a fully staffed emergency room; an infectious-disease ward with an isolation wing; intensive-care units; dozens of specialty units such as pediatrics, obstetrics, physical therapy, and biosynthetics; suites of surgical theaters; a trio of operating rooms that could be reconfigured for various xenophysiologies; eight medical laboratories; a pharmacy; and even a separate dentistry office.

By the time Piper had finished wandering through the multilevel maze of the hospital’s many wards and labs and arrived in the waiting room outside CMO Fisher’s office, he was, as his father would have said, “plum tuckered out.” Eager to finish his business, he headed for the fanciest-looking door in the room.

From an adjacent office, a young human man wearing a short-sleeved blue physician’s tunic called out to Piper before he could knock on Fisher’s door. “I’m sorry, sir, Dr. Fisher has left for the day.”

“Serves me right for going sight-seeing,” Piper said. “I wanted to see what medical miracles had been invented since I last made port. Should’ve figured he wouldn’t wait up for me.”

The young doctor had risen from his desk and joined Piper in the waiting room. “Dr. Fisher waits for no man.” He offered his hand to Piper. “Jabilo M’Benga.”

He shook M’Benga’s hand. “Mark Piper, Enterprise. Pleased to meet you.” Jerking a thumb toward Fisher’s office, he added, “Your boss told me he could resupply my sickbay.”

“Did he have you submit a requisition?”

“On paper. In triplicate.”

M’Benga chortled. “That sounds like Dr. Fisher, all right.” He guided Piper to follow him out the door. “If it was approved, it’ll be on file in the pharmacy. You’ll just need to come down and sign some forms…. In triplicate.”

“Great,” Piper said, walking beside M’Benga into the corridor. “Nothing screams efficiency like red tape.”