Текст книги "Catalyst of Sorrows "

Автор книги: Margaret Bonanno

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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 is 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.”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

An OriginalPublication of POCKET BOOKS

   POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright © 2004 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

   STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of

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For Jack, ever and always.

And in memory of Alan Ravitch,

who never met a pun he didn’t like.

The world’s a sadder place without you.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Rick Sternbach for technical advice par excellence (and for using nice small words, so I could understand it)….

To Susan Shwartz for helping me to see Aemetha. Jolan tru….

To Alex Rosenzweig, Big Jim McCain, daedalus5, and everyone else at psiphi.org and the trekbbs.com who got me back on the radar when it was most important….

To Marco Palmieri, an editor with a deft touch and a prince among men, for welcoming me aboard….

And with homage to the master, John Le Carré, for providing the template, and for teaching me how.

Historian’s Note

This story is set in the year 2360, sixty-seven years after the presumed death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations,and four years before the launch of the Enterprise-D in “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

—John Le Carré: A Perfect Spy

Prologue

No border, however hostile the forces on either side of it, is ever impermeable. Even after almost fifty years of silence, the Romulan Neutral Zone was no exception.

Cretak grimaced as she and her attendant passed the sentries on either side of the no-man’s-land between the designated Romulan and Federation sections of the space station. It wasn’t the presence of the guards that disturbed her. She had the proper credentials, and they scarcely noticed her. It was the filth.

The station lay nominally within what humans called the Neutral Zone and Romulans the Outmarches—the two sides unable to agree on even that much—at one of several points where inhabited planets with allegiance to neither side had made it necessary for the mapmakers to do a bit of gerrymandering. Succinctly, the Zone ran rather narrow here, and more species than not pretended it did not exist, traveling within the Zone with impunity, as long as they didn’t venture into either Federation or Romulan space. The station itself was run by a consensus of those species loyal to neither side, and functioned primarily for those myriad other species, allowing Federation and Romulan presences as long as neither “started something.” Thus the need for sentries between the two areas designated specifically for them.

Apparently no one in the consensus,Cretak thought crossly, is acquainted with the merits of a mop and broom!

The walls were smudged, the floors sticky beneath her boots. Exposed bits of circuitry blinked feebly where fixtures had apparently been ripped out and never replaced. There were whole sectors where lighting was dim or nonexistent, and atmospheric control sporadic, creating pockets where it was hard to breathe. Stray clumps of somethingrolled sluggishly along the curve of the corridors, propelled by the ambient breeze whenever an airlock opened and closed, and in the darkest corners other somethings moved more rapidly, hissing and squeaking when disturbed. It was said they would eat anything that didn’t move.

The areas immediately surrounding the guard posts were properly maintained, and Romulan personnel kept the corridors leading to their designated berths in pristine condition (Cretak could only assume the Federation did likewise), but the rest of the place, even the few bedraggled shops selling trinkets and replicated food in the main hub, clearly showed the disdain the unallied species felt for both sides.

It was a crossroads, a waystation, the kind of place where as many species as were known to travel across two quadrants—and even some who weren’t—could be seen intermingling in the crowded, dirty corridors. At the moment, an air of watchfulness pervaded the place as well. Three Romulan ships were currently in port, effecting a transfer of diplomats on their way to a conference on a remote colony world. The rest of those on the station would be grateful when they shoved off. It was said that, while Klingons were given to brawling and breaking the furniture, Romulans were humorless, and that was worse.

Ordinarily a Romulan senator would have remained on the ship and sent one of her attendants on whatever errands might need doing in such a place, but Cretak had been overheard complaining about cabin fever and, since no one told a senator what not to do, she was free to explore the common areas of the station, attendant in tow, as long as she returned before the evening’s first round of meetings and receptions began.

Someday,Cretak mused, I shall have to learn to be more circumspect. But if this adventure is not successful, will there be a someday?

Once far enough around the curve of the station’s outer rim to be invisible to the guards at the warbird’s airlock, she threw back the hood of her travel cloak, and nodded to her attendant to do the same.

“Is this wise, Lady?” the younger woman questioned. “I see no other Romulans here.”

“It’s as wise as your ability not to act like a Romulan!” Cretak said abruptly. “Has your training taught you nothing? For our purposes here, you are vulcanoid, allegiance unspecified. Comport yourself accordingly!”

You might begin,Cretak thought, perhaps unfairly, by not staring wide-eyed at every non-Romulan you see.She reminded herself that the girl had never been outside the Capital in her brief life, much less offworld and so far across the Marches, where Romulans were the minority. A little giddiness was to be expected. She herself had hardly been a model of decorum the first time she met a human.

“Forgive me,” Zetha replied, lowering her eyes and her voice and walking behind Cretak as she had been taught. Nevertheless, she continued to scan her surroundings, as Cretak did. The only difference was that Cretak knew what she was looking for.

Zetha studied the unfamiliar text on the Departures padds beside each airlock, memorizing the scrolling symbols in several languages out of force of habit, even though she had no notion what they might mean.

“Wait here!” Cretak commanded, and went to talk to an unpromising-looking humanoid slouching against a particular bulkhead, in a language Zetha did not recognize. She studied tone and gesture, intrigued. She already knew what the conversation was about, anyway.

“My attendant has been visiting family in the Zone,” Cretak would say, or something to that effect. “She requires passage to the Alpha Quadrant. She will sleep anywhere, eat whatever your crew eats. She does not speak your language and owns nothing worth stealing. You will have full payment when I receive word she has arrived safely.”

Some manner of delayed-activation currency would be exchanged, and the humanoid, no doubt the skipper of the battered merchanter Zetha could glimpse, partly lit by an overhead but mostly in shadow, just beyond the airlock, would take her aboard.

“Speak as little as possible,” Cretak had warned her. “Most of them can’t tell the difference between Romulan and Vulcan, but don’t test them.”

“Especially since I’m not Romulan,” Zetha had reminded her, only to earn one of Cretak’s cutting looks. Whoever said brown eyes could not go cold had never angered Cretak. “What if I am missed?” the younger woman had said to change the subject. Why did she care what the senator thought of her, when they would probably never meet again? Yet, for some reason, she cared. “If someone notices you have one attendant fewer…”

“Someone might notice if Iwent missing,” Cretak had answered dryly. “But my staff are interchangeable as far as anyone else is concerned.”

“What if I encounter a Vulcan?” Zetha asked, ignoring the insult. “What if I’m asked—”

“Once you’re on the Federation side, it will not matter.” Cretak said.

Zetha could not imagine what it would be like not to constantly be questioned about one’s identity or origins. That alone might be worth the adventure, even if her survival was reckoned only in days.

While she had been reliving the conversation in her mind, Cretak and the humanoid had apparently reached an agreement. The humanoid sized up this last-minute addition to his cargo under eyebrows that all but met in the middle, muttered something that didn’t sound encouraging, and gestured for Zetha to follow him.

Cretak had raised the hood of her cloak and was already walking away. For some reason she turned one last time to see the question in the youngster’s eyes.

Poor you!she thought. What a shock this all must be. Your first offworld flight, and you didn’t even get space sick. Your first look at the stars up close, and all you did on the first leg of the journey was stare at them all through the third watch when you should have been sleeping, as if they would vanish if you didn’t watch them! Poor child, have I put too much responsibility on those narrow shoulders?

None of it showed on her strong-jawed face, she hoped. “What is it?” she asked in the same imperious tone she had adopted since she had wheedled Zetha away from Koval expressly for the purpose that had brought them to this gods-forsaken place. “I have not much time before I am missed. Speak!”

“Am I to return, Lady?” was all Zetha asked.

“I try not to predict the future,” Cretak said. “Nor should you, if this is the life you want.”

Zetha hesitated for only a moment, then shrugged. “Any life is better than no life.”

“Then go!” Cretak ordered her, thinking: And what little faith I have left in the future go with you!

Chapter 1

Not every crisis,Admiral Uhura believed, begins with exploding planets or even a starship battle. Sometimes it is the things we cannot see that cause the greatest harm.

“Joshua Lederberg,” McCoy said, glowering at her from the comm screen in her office at Starfleet Intelligence, “Twentieth-century Earth geneticist. Said something to the effect that the single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance in the universe is the virus. They were here long before us, they’ll be here long after we’re gone.”

“So you will help us, then,” Uhura said.

“Yes. Repeat: No.”

Uhura frowned back at him. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, young lady, that I can’t help you with this one. I’ve gone fishing.”

Uhura counted to ten before she trusted herself to speak again. Age hadn’t mellowed Leonard McCoy one iota; he was as ornery as ever. He was pretending to ignore her, puttering with something just below the comm screen’s sight-line, and she wondered what it was.

“What if I told you it’s urgent?” she asked.

“It’s alwaysurgent!” McCoy grumbled. “Is Starfleet so devoid of decent medical personnel these days that every time there’s a crisis you have to drag an old warhorse like me out of the barn? Dammit, woman, I’m retired! Leave me in peace!”

He had a point, Uhura thought. He was at least a decade up on her, and every other week she thought of retiring. Not that Command would let her.

She supposed if she insisted they’d get someone else to cover her class at the Academy, but she likedteaching! It was being head of Starfleet Intelligence that Command wouldn’t let her wiggle out of. The C-in-C would have her believe that she was the only one in the quadrant who could handle that.

Meaning no one else is crazy enough to take the job,Uhura thought wryly. Also, the theory is I know too many secrets to be trusted to take them with me to some quiet country retreat and be relied upon to keep my mouth shut.

But McCoy had no such burden. He was legitimately retired…again. But every time he stepped down, someone or something lured him back in. A man of 130-something ought to be allowed to enjoy a little leisure. Maybe she’d leave him in peace after this assignment, but right now Uhura really needed his expertise.

“I already have a team in place,” she explained, wishing he’d stop fidgeting and pay attention. “All I’m asking you to do is consult by remote. I’ve got some excellent people working on this already, but I need your wisdom and experience, Leonard.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere…”

“You won’t even have to get off the porch,” Uhura wheedled.

“Then you don’t need me!” McCoy grumped. “You’ve got all of Starfleet Medical at your disposal. How many Vulcan physicians are there in the fleet these days?”

“It’s not just about Vulcans,” Uhura said.

“Affirmative, Admiral,” Dr. Selar had told her, after no doubt staying up all night to run the algorithm. “I am investigating all reported cases of unusual illness on Federation worlds bordering the Neutral Zone.”

“And—?” Uhura prompted.

“Ruling out an outbreak of neo-hantavirus on Claren III, which was self-limiting and contained in a single sector, and a previously unidentified aerobacter found in the soil of Gemus IV, which caused flulike symptoms in 1,700 children in two of the three settlements before it was isolated, and for which a vaccine has since been developed, there are so far seventy-three cases in seventeen different locales proximate to the Neutral Zone which potentially fit the parameters.”

“Demographics of the victims so far?” Uhura asked, jotting notes on a padd for a memo to her Listeners on the ships that patrolled the Zone.

“Thirty-one Vulcan, twenty-three Rigelian, nineteen human.”

“All fatal?”

“Affirmative.”

“Did they infect anyone else?”

“Unknown at present, Admiral. All of the Rigelians were from the same extended family, but the Vulcan and human casualties were isolated and, apparently, unknown to each other. The last confirmed case occurred three weeks ago, so it is assumed the current outbreak was self-contained.”

“Which is not to say that there couldn’t be further outbreaks,” Beverly Crusher chimed in from the other screen on a three-way conference call. She was across town from Uhura at Starfleet Medical HQ; Selar was parsecs away aboard a Vulcan research vessel on its way to Earth from the Beta Quadrant. “It could be something geographic, something seasonal or cyclical, something that occurs every few years or even centuries.”

“And except for the Rigelians, none of them knew each other?” Uhura said. “Traveled between worlds? Had a friend or relative in common? Ordered supplies from the same source? Ate at the same restaurant?”

“Admiral,” Selar said, “may I respectfully point out that we do not yet know, purely on symptomatology, whether this is the same illness in each case?”

“I realize that, but—”

“Nevertheless, I am attempting to establish a commonality among the victims,” the Vulcan physician added primly. “As for ordering supplies from offworld, irradiation procedures at point of origin and point of arrival would have precluded the possibility of any known disease organism—”

“I know, Selar.” Uhura sighed. “It’s the unknown disease organisms I’m concerned about. Dr. Crusher, suggestions?”

“I’d suggest Selar expand her algorithm to include all Federation worlds.” On her screen, the Vulcan nodded, unperturbed by the amount of extra work this would require. “In the meantime, I’ll need tissue samples, or at least readouts, from as many of those seventy-three cases as possible to run a comparison. I’m still trying to isolate an organism in the samples you gave me from…the other side. There isn’t very much to go on. I’m doing my best.”

“I’d expected nothing less,” Uhura said warmly. “Carry on, Doctors. Keep me informed.”

“My people are already working on it,” she told McCoy now, preparing a data-squirt about “it” even as she spoke. Her talented fingers ticked over the controls like a concert pianist’s. “There’s this weird fever that’s been cropping up in some of the colonies. Starfleet Medical thinks it might be similar to something that my sources tell me may be happening inside the Romulan Empire. I’m sending you the readout now.”

“Readout on what?” McCoy demanded, intrigued in spite of himself.

“Medical’s initial analysis of Romulan tissue samples,” Uhura said concisely.

“Did I hear you say ‘Romulan’?”McCoy asked. “My God, that’s not a word I thought I’d hear again within my lifetime! How the hell did you—?”

“Not at liberty to say,” she replied. “Not even on Scramble.”

“That hot, huh?”

I’ve got him!Uhura thought. He can’t resist a mystery. As soon as he sees this data…

“Let’s just say there could be…political ramifications. The colonies affected are very near the Neutral Zone.”

“Cloak and dagger stuff,” McCoy muttered. “Your baili-wick, not mine. All the more reason why my answer’s still no.”

Just then Uhura’s Andorian aide stuck her head through the door, antennae twitching, whispering, “Admiral? You’ll be late.”

Uhura waved her away. “The class is not till 10:00, Thysis. I’ve still got thirty minutes.”

Uhura’s lifelong ambition was to be able to do one thing, just one thing, at a time. As if this were the only crisis on her desk—! As if she didn’t have to monitor hotspots across the quadrant, know the whereabouts of every one of her operatives at any given time, not to mention staying awake at staff meetings and—

“It’s not just the class,” the Andorian hissed. “You have a press conference scheduled beforehand. It was last-minute. I thought you might have forgotten.”

“Leonard, hang on a minute. No, I haven’t forgotten, Thysis. Tell them I’ll be with them in five. Now, shoo! Go away!”

The floss-white head popped back out through the door as quickly as it had popped in.

In those few seconds, McCoy had turned his back to the screen, rummaging for something on a worktable in the background, then returned, pointedly ignoring Uhura, as if that would make her and her troubling news go away. At last she could see what he was doing. He was tying trout flies, one eye half shut, his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration.

“You still here?” he demanded at last, tying and snipping, examining the finished product with something like disgust, then scowling at her.

“Rigelian fever can cross species,” was Uhura’s response.

“Wiped out for more than twenty years,” he shot back. “Last known case recorded in 2339. Samples kept in stasis on Starbase 23 just in case. Any new outbreaks, they can replicate a vaccine from there.”

“Worse,” Uhura cajoled him.

“Not interested.” McCoy examined the lure in his hand one more time before rejecting it. “Hands shake too much!” he reported, starting over. “Dammit, you’re ruining my concentration. Go away now. This conversation’s over.” He made shooing motions toward the screen. “Come back when you want to just chat instead of always picking my brains.”

“The Gnawing,” Uhura said.

That got his attention. “Say again?”

“The Gnawing. At least that’s how the translator renders it out of Romulan. Know anything about it?”

“Just rumors. Something Spock said once about…” Uhura watched the transformation on his wily old face. One minute he was blustering, the next he got that kind of glaze-eyed look which meant he was running permutations through his mind, calling upon more than a century of past experience, tempted to get to a lab and start running tests, just as she’d hoped he would be.

“Now, wait just a goddamn minute!” McCoy snapped, breaking the spell. “I know what you’re up to. Trying to reel me in with some rumor about a disease that’s only legend. It won’t work!”

“Apparently it’s not a legend anymore,” Uhura said, coding and scrambling the data-squirt while she talked. Multitasking is my middle name!she thought, sending it before McCoy had a chance to block it. “We have first-person reports of what amounts to a small epidemic. Not in Federation territory. Yet. But it may correlate with something similar that’s crept over to our side. As I mentioned, we do have tissue samples. And I’ve got agents in the field double-checking the veracity of the reports. It’s all there. If you’ll just read what I’m sending you before you—”

“I hear Starfleet Medical’s developing some sort of new-fangled android or hologram or something that’s supposed to replace living beings in high-risk areas…”

How the hell,Uhura wondered, had he found out about the Emergency Medical Hologram project? Starfleet was at least a decade away from so much as a working prototype, and even that was classified. Parsecs from nowhere, Leonard McCoy still heard all the scuttlebutt.

“…get yourselves one of those, you won’t need me!” he finished.

Uhura sat back and waited, casually drumming her perfectly manicured nails on the surface of her desk while her screen bleeped: Message Received.She knew once he read the first few sentences, McCoy’s curiosity would get the better of him. She buzzed Thysis while she waited.

“Tell the media people I’m on my way.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

McCoy never could read as quickly as Spock did, but he skimmed the report, his practiced eyes picking out the pertinent data. Outbreaks of high fever and wasting sickness in Romulan and Federation space, signs and symptoms, failure to respond to standard treatments, mortality rates, projected outcomes if the disease spread unchecked. Uhura almost regretted involving him when at last those tired blue eyes found hers; the look on his face was stricken.

“Where the hell did you get these figures? Especially the Romulan data?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“One hundred percent mortality?” he asked incredulously. “That can’t be accurate. Is this thing bacterial or viral?”

“I don’t know,” was what Dr. Crusher had said after the preliminary lab work. “We don’t know enough about Romulan genetics to distinguish damaged genes from healthy ones. There are some bacteria that can disguise themselves as viruses, and some viruses that can mutate and integrate themselves at the genetic level so they look like a normal part of the DNA sequence.”

She’d tucked a strand of bright red hair behind her ear and sighed in frustration. Uhura could see Dr. Selar nodding agreement.

“As soon as I get readouts on all the samples from the colonies, I’ll compare them,” Crusher said. “But it could be weeks before we can find a match, Admiral, if at all. I’m sorry.”

“All right,” Uhura had replied, not expecting it to be good news, not this soon. “Do your best. There’s someone else I need to talk to in the meantime.”

That was when she called McCoy.

McCoy was talking to himself. “Can’t be bacterial. The bubonic plague by most estimates only killed twenty-five to forty percent of the population of Europe and Asia.” He glared at Uhura, annoyed at being drawn into something she’d known he wouldn’t be able to resist. “Gotta be viral. Even so, those numbers…the Ebola virus’s mortality rate was eighty-eight percent at most, but it was transmitted person-to-person, and it was self-contained. It didn’t go hopping across solar systems.”

“What if it’s airborne?” Uhura asked. She’d been learning more than she wanted to know from Medical ever since this thing first crossed her desk.

“Then the spread would be faster, but mortality would be much lower,” McCoy pointed out. “Ever hear of the Spanish flu?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

“Earth, 1918. End of what some historians at the time took to calling the Great War. Now, there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one…”

Uhura glanced at the chrono, trying not to be impatient. Thysis would be back any minute pestering her about the press conference. She could picture the roomful of reporters from half a dozen worlds clearing their alimentary canals and shifting their appendages restlessly.

“…theory is that those who didn’t die in the trenches brought this bug back home with them. Or it could have come from Asia, which is where most flu bugs came from at the time. It killed more people within a year than the Black Death did over several centuries. Lowered the life expectancy in the industrialized world by ten years. People would keel over in the street with a high fever and not last the night.”

“Which sounds very much like what we’re dealing with here,” Uhura suggested. “And that’s exactly why we need your help.”

McCoy ignored that last remark. “Except that the mortality rate for that particular strain of flu—which thank God was never replicated, at least not on Earth—was only 2.5 percent. Millions of people got sick, but most of them recovered. Even in 1918, with no vaccines or even palliative treatments like antibiotics. Not that antibiotics work against a viral infection, but—”

“Leonard, this is fascinating, but—”

“—but I’m dithering, and you’ve got work to do,” he finished for her. “All I’m saying is you can’t have every single one of your patients dying from a possibly viral, possibly airborne infection. Either this isn’t viral or these numbers are wrong.”

“Then help me make them right,” Uhura challenged him.

“A one hundred percent mortality rate?” McCoy was talking to himself again. Uhura sighed. She’d wanted him onboard, but wished he’d get off the pot. “No response to treatment, and across species? How do you know these numbers from inside the Zone are accurate? And why are you in charge of this instead of Starfleet Medical?”

Good thing this is a secured frequency,Uhura thought. It was past time for her to take control of this conversation.

“Are you finished?” she asked quietly. “The reason this was brought to my attention…” Well, not the entire reason,she thought, but he doesn’t need to know that now, if at all.“…is because—and Leonard, we never had this conversation—those numbers suggest that whatever this is, bacterial or viral, airborne or direct contact, it’s not a natural phenomenon. That it’s been manufactured, either by the Romulans or by someone from our side. It’s my job to figure that out before this becomes more than just a particularly nasty flu bug killing a few thousand people on a half-dozen worlds and becomes an Interstellar Incident, uppercase. It’s your job, if you decide that saving lives is more important than trout fishing, to assist my medical team with the microscopic stuff, lowercase.”

“If you’d—” McCoy started to say, but Uhura rode right over him. She was slow to anger, but once there, she was dangerous.

“I’ve got two of the best MDs in the fleet doing the lab work, agents in place on the other side attempting to confirm the reports of outbreaks there, and I’m gathering a team to go in and investigate this on the ground. But nobody has the decades of experience you have, and Dr. Crusher asked for you specifically…”

Thysis’s antennaed head appeared in the doorway again; she heard the tone in the admiral’s voice, and vanished again without a sound. If Uhura had so much as noticed her, she gave no sign.

“I’m not asking you to go hopping galaxies, just to consult,” she told McCoy, building to a crescendo. “And if you’re going to balk, I’ll get someone else. Someone probably not as good as you, but a lot more cooperative. I do not have the time or the patience to coddle your ego or put up with your carefully nurtured idiosyncrasies. Now, are you in or are you out?”

There was a long moment of silence while McCoy waited for her to cool off.

“Are youfinished?” he asked carefully. It wasn’t everyone who could bite his head off from across the quadrant.

“Yes, I am.”

“Tell me about the tissue samples,” he said doggedly. “What kind of tissue samples, and from where?”

“I’d rather not discuss that unless I’m sure you’re in.” She knew that would get a rise out of him.

“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” he demanded.

“You know, you’re probably right,” she said, suddenly changing course, pretending she hadn’t heard him, shuffling datachips on her desk, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Someone younger, more up-to-date on current pandemic management techniques, would probably be a better choice.”