Текст книги "Catalyst of Sorrows "

Автор книги: Margaret Bonanno

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“I don’t look like me,” Zetha said to the face in the mirror, wondering if it was the freckles that had marked her as non-Romulan.

Without them, might she pass? Well, for Quirinus, anyway. Ironic that there were Vulcans who looked like Selar and Vulcans who looked like Tuvok, Romulans with brow ridges and without, and variations in both races to encompass ever possible color of skin and eye and texture of hair, and no one on Tenjin had questioned her supposed Vulcan ancestry, yet on Romulus there was something about her that other Romulans could see and judge that she was not one of them. Would she ever know what it was? Since she would probably never see Romulus again, did it matter?

“I have preserved their exact pattern in your medical chart,” Selar told her, sensing her concern. “Once we leave Quirinus, I can restore them. Or you can remain without them until we complete our mission and then have them back just as they were.”

Zetha said nothing. Why did such a minor change disturb her when so many major changes hadn’t? What if she died without her true face?

“They are, after all, a part of you,” Selar said mildly. Zetha suppressed a sudden wave of what a human might call hero worship. She found herself wondering how old Selar was, whether she, like most Vulcans, had been betrothed as a child, whether she had children.

In Ki Baratan, she had often searched the crowds on the streets for males and females of a certain age, imagining any one of them might have engendered her. The little monster with the booted feet was not even part of her consideration.

She thought she had gotten out of the habit by now, but she’d been wrong. The face that looked back at her in the mirror was not only naked without its characteristic sprinkling of extra pigmentation (“As if when the gods were making you they got distracted and forgot to stir the batter properly before putting you in the oven to bake!” Aemetha used to say), but the look in the green eyes was vulnerable. She had never had a mother; why crave one now? She had Selar’s trust, and she had found ways to make herself useful. What more did she want?

Everything, Thamnos had thought, balefully eyeing the stranger blocking the light at the entrance to his cave. I am about to lose everything!

“How did you find me?” he asked, pretending to be calmer than he felt.

“Your father sent me,” the stranger said.

“But—” Thamnos began, and only then, after how many years, did it occur to him that of course his tiny ship, only one of many in the family hangar, would have had a homing device.

But the stranger was not interested in Thamnos family matters. He came straight to the point. “He owes us certain…considerations. Control of the hiloponis ours from here on.”

Chapter 12

As a matter of cosmic history, one man’s terrorist can be another man’s freedom fighter, and if a Rigelian by any other name can pass for a Romulan to the cursory scan of a tricorder, the reverse can also true.

The path to the office of chairman of the Tal Shiar was a steep and necessarily twisted one. In the course of his climb, Koval had had to do a lot of traveling early in his career.

Everyone knows what spies do. They infiltrate a society, eavesdrop on its conversations, study its fleet movements and weapons technology, report on unrest and sedition in its streets, send encrypted messages back to headquarters on often-compromised frequencies and, with luck as much as spycraft, live to spy another day.

But that sort of legwork is largely for the young spy, and the goal is always to come in from the streets and out of the cold to a room of one’s own. The secret world, like any organization, has its middle management. Those spies who survive the years of ground-level sneakery without capture, torture, execution, or, perhaps worst of all, reprogramming, eventually plateau here, unless they have the sheer temerity to step on as many necks as possible on their climb to the upper echelons.

In the world of spies, much of a middle manager’s daily work lies in trying to “turn” spies from the other side, convincing them to join his cause; the rest of his time is spent in recruiting civilians to be spies. How and why the Thamnos family ended up in Koval’s pocket was a tale too long in the telling. But the sins of the fathers often pass to the sons, even if the sons are not sophisticated enough to understand the agenda their fathers have created.

All this weighed on Koval’s mind as he stood in the entrance to the makeshift underground laboratory, the dust of Renaga sullying his otherwise meticulously shined boots. The Tal Shiar had had sleeper cells on Renaga for decades. They knew someone had come to ground in a small private ship over a decade ago and had reported their finding to their superiors, who filed the information for future reference.

When Koval needed a front man for his latest freelance project, he had thought of a Rigelian. There was a saying about Rigelians on both sides of the Zone—“looks like a human, scans like a Vulcan”—and they had been of use to both sides often in the past. Koval recalled that Thamnos the Elder owed him a favor. If he believed in gods, Koval might have thought they were smiling on him when the senior Thamnos told him of his son’s disappearance and provided him with the call signal for the missing ship.

Marvelous!was Koval’s first thought. Everything I need in one place. Pity it’s such a backward, out-of-the-way place and I shall have to travel there personally, but even so…

Mindful of the bewilderment in Thamnos the Younger’s squinty eyes—the fool had no idea what this was all about—Koval considered the mediocrity of the material he sometimes had to work with. But the stupid ones were often the most easy to manipulate, and it was all for the glory of the Empire, was it not? Koval looked down his aristocratic nose at the man who on this world called himself Cinchona and asked:

“How would you like to be immortal?”

The poor dupe’s answer was exactly what Koval expected.

“What does that mean?” he said and, on that tenuous basis, Koval worked his alchemy.

Utilizing a lifelong fascination with biological warfare, he had become a specialist within the Tal Shiar, responsible for not a few covert experiments on colonials and subject populations. Now it was time to take his skills to the next level. Since Jekri Kaleh’s ouster, he was one step away from the chairmanship, and the Continuing Committee was rumored to be seeking a replacement for the current chairman, who was well past his prime. This action, Koval hoped, would prompt the Committee’s hearts and minds to turn toward him.

In his research he had of course searched the archives for the Gnawing, and found its potential encouraging. In fact, he wondered why no one had thought to use it before. He now had a place to begin. One never knew when the ability to depopulate a planet without damaging its infrastructure might come in handy. And there were so many other things one could do with a manageable disease along the way.

But there were problems. For one thing, fear of the Gnawing was so entrenched in the Romulan psyche that, even after a thousand years free of it, it would be among the first things any reputable physician would test for. Further, its incubation period was too short to be effective. Within a day or two of exposure, those afflicted died. Civil authorities, faced with an outbreak of something so virulent, would quarantine affected populations, terminating the spread. One could hope at best to kill a few hundred per world. Not what Koval had in mind.

Then, of course, there was the question of checks and balances. One wanted an antidote, a way of stopping the disease from spreading to one’s own troops, being inadvertently carried onto a warbird, and turning it into a ghost ship or, worse, a carrion bird bringing the disease back to the homeworld.

Problem: Create a disease with a long incubation period for which there is a cure that only you control.

Solution: the Gnawing, grafted onto R-fever (which had the added advantage of crossing species to affect humanoids as well) and other chimeric entities, to confuse anyone trying to deconstruct it, potentially curable by a substance called hilopon,which your sleeper cells report is only found on Renaga.

He could have done all of this himself, although obtaining the R-fever might have been problematic, but for safety’s sake Koval wanted a dupe to take the fall in case anything went wrong. Who better than a former Federation citizen, who just happened to be a research physician of sorts, living in exile on the very world inside the Zone that held the cure? It was almost too easy.

Using the simplest words possible, Koval told Thamnos what was expected of him. Not that he told him everything. He offered Thamnos virtual immortality and Thamnos, being who and what he was, didn’t bother with the details. The disease he would create, with the help of Romulan scientists, would simply evidence itself on selected worlds, Koval explained, with no possible way of being traced back to him. His role would be that of the great savior who offered the cure. Fame, fortune, the Nobel Prize, the Zee-Magnees Prize, all would be within his reach.

“But what if the hilopondoesn’t work?” Thamnos asked.

“Oh, but it will,” Koval assured him. “We’ve already tested it on the Gnawing. We assume you’ve tested it on the R-fever. If it kills both, it will kill the two in combination. We’re certain of it.”

“ ‘We’?” Thamnos echoed him.

Koval’s answer was a cryptic smile, and even Thamnos knew enough not to follow that line of questioning further. Then something else occurred to him.

“If word gets out that I’ve got the cure, what’s to stop anyone with a big enough fleet from invading Renaga and stealing all of it?”

“Now, there’s a curious thing,” Koval said. “Hilopononly seems to work on Renaga. We’ve tried taking it offworld, and it’s useless. Our scientists are not certain whether it’s something in the atmosphere, the sun’s radiation, the climate, some interaction with other elements in the soil, or simple magic. We’ll figure it out eventually, but how fortunate for you that we haven’t yet, hm? And because Renaga’s inside the Zone, the machinations necessary for either side to violate treaty, confront the other side’s patrols, invade and conquer, are simply too costly in this day and age. Both sides will have to come to you.”

But Thamnos wasn’t even thinking that far ahead. It never occurred to him to ask why, if Romulan scientists knew all about hilopon,Koval even needed him. All he could think of to ask was “Why me?”

“Because you’re here. Because you were resourceful enough to bring specimens of R-fever with you. And because if a Romulan scientist announced that we’d discovered the curative effects of hilopon,we’d be accused of violating the Neutral Zone, wouldn’t we? Suspicions would be aroused no matter what. Romulans are always blamed when there’s trouble, seldom honored when honor is due. But you’re a Federation expatriate, married to a Renagan female. You’d have immunity. Do you see?”

Thamnos did, but he didn’t. Ultimately, Koval knew, it was all too complicated for him. It never occurred to him to refuse. Maybe it was the echo of the words “the Nobel Prize, the Zee Magnees Prize” that crowded everything else out of his brain. He’d asked Koval what he meant by “immortality,” and now he finally understood it. He thought.

McCoy wished he hadn’t said anything about “house calls” within Uhura’s hearing.

“You are not—repeat notgoing to Rigel IV to talk to any member of the Thamnos family,” she scolded him, surprised that McCoy, who had previously resisted so much as moving off the porch, was suddenly packing a bag and arranging transport. “Someone from Medical can handle this, or one of my Listeners. There’s no need for you to—”

“This is personal!” McCoy interrupted, his jaw set. “There’s a special circle in hell reserved for doctors who create illness instead of treating it, and I have no doubt whoever did this has a front-row seat, but I’d be happy to hasten his journey. What was it Jim used to say about risk?” he asked rhetorically, stuffing clean socks into a travel bag.

“Leonard, I’m serious. Stop it right now! If you want to talk to Thamnos Senior, rattle his cage, that’s fine. But you do that onscreen, not in person. Neither of us has time to waste on this.”

“Is that the real reason?” McCoy demanded testily. “Or are you just mothering me?”

“It’s not about that. I want a record of the transmission. We can analyze it, determine if he’s telling the truth or not.”

McCoy stood there with the last pair of socks in his hand; he seemed to have forgotten what he intended to do with them. Finally he remembered what he was doing and began unpacking the travel bag.

“Hadn’t thought of that,” he acknowledged. “All right, you win. I’ll try to get him to talk to me on subspace. Won’t be easy, but before you ask, yes, I’m up to it. Anger is a wonderful tonic, young lady. Now get off my screen; I’ve got work to do.”

Some of the bluster had worn off by the time he’d been routed through a maze of security checks and retina scans and spoken to half a dozen Rigelian authorities, each more officious than the one before, and he had no doubt that if he wasn’t who he was he’d have been ignored entirely. But even Papaver Thamnos knew better than to let Leonard McCoy talk to his automated comm system.

By the time the lanky, liver-spotted old pirate, who was not much younger than McCoy himself, appeared onscreen, McCoy was ready for his afternoon nap. Still, they managed to exchange pleasantries and talk about the weather and what to do about arthritic knees, and McCoy was about to do his diplomatic best to lay out his case for needing to know the whereabouts of Thamnos the Younger without telling the old man why when, as if on cue, a pack of multicolored five-toed Rigelian emillihounds came bounding into the room where Thamnos the Elder was, setting up a fearful baying racket.

The old pirate feigned surprise, but didn’t order the dogs away. Instead he began laughing and playing with them, encouraging them, in a scrabble of toenails and a kind of breathless yapping, to race around the room in a kind of bizarre choreography as he sat back and watched McCoy’s reaction. His face—an older, cannier version of his son’s—was a grinning mask.

McCoy, to his credit, didn’t rattle. He’d figured the dogs had been introduced in an attempt to distract him, and he was not about to be distracted. He also knew the yapping would make it difficult for the voice-print analyzers to do their job. He waited calmly until most of the hounds tired and flopped panting on the floor before he asked Thamnos where he might find his son.

“No idea,” Thamnos said. “Wouldn’t tell you if I did know. Wouldn’t be prudent. None of your business, anyway. Can’t help you. Don’t know why I should. Only professional courtesy, one physician to another, letting you get this far. Goodbye.”

And that was that. The two men sat glaring at each other for a few moments while the senior Thamnos sat stroking of one of the dogs, stonewalling him. Then McCoy tried again.

“There’s a disease akin to the Fever,” he began. “Some of the first victims were on your own world—”

But Thamnos merely held up one liver-spotted hand to silence him.

“Not interested. Someone else’s problem. Isn’t it?” he asked the dog, fondling its ears and checking them for ticks.

How long they sat there at an impasse, McCoy couldn’t tell. He cleared his throat and tried one last time.

“Dr. Thamnos—”

“Can’t hear you.”

Now it was a question of who would terminate the transmission first. Much as it irked him to do so, McCoy shut it down from his end without saying goodbye. He hoped Papaver would eventually divert his attention away from the dogs and wonder how long he’d been performing to an empty room, but he doubted it.

“Tuvok? What is a ‘red herring’?”

Tuvok was scanning transmissions from the worlds they passed on the way to Quirinus, searching for any report or rumor, official or otherwise, of unexplained fatal illnesses. Had they the time and the guarantee of safety, they might have come closer and scanned the worlds themselves. But Uhura sent them daily updates on the spread of the disease; it bloomed from world to world on the starcharts like the blight of fungus on an endangered tree. There was no time to refine the search process. Perhaps if there were Listeners in the vicinity, they could go to ground and search out data on the worlds they passed, but Albatrosshad to hurry.

Thus Tuvok scanned, encoding his findings and sending them back to Earth for Dr. Crusher’s team to analyze.

And now this question, the sort of question one of his children might have asked when they were far younger than she, Tuvok mused. But if Zetha was what she claimed to be, her education has been incomplete at best, and such questions could logically be expected.

She was tending the orchid he had brought with him. An indulgence, he had told himself at the time, most illogical. And yet, he thought now, it provided an esthetic touch to the Albatross’s drab, utilitarian surroundings, and each of his crewmates had, at one time or another, admired it. Zetha seemed particularly taken with it.

There were orchids on Romulus, Tuvok knew. Perhaps it was because it was familiar that she was attracted to it. Or perhaps it was that she had never had the luxury of caring for one herself. An illogical impulse to make her a gift of the orchid at the end of their mission teased at a corner of his mind.

In any event, the sight of the young face, bereft for once of its ever-watchful sideways glance or almost as familiar scowl, complemented by the exotic shape and bright splash of color provided by the orchid, was pleasing to behold. Near space was quiet for the moment. Tuvok sat back from his console and gave Zetha his complete attention.

“A herring is a fish, often used for food on human worlds,” he began. He saw her frown, wondering what fish had to do with the disease they tracked, but to her credit she waited for his explanation. “When it is smoked or cured prior to consumption, its ordinarily gray flesh turns red. It has a distinct odor. When training hunting dogs, humans traditionally set red herring in their paths in order to condition them to ignore false data and continue to pursue their prey.”

He watched her process it, the fine-boned face and mobile mouth contorted with concentration. As he had learned to do with his children, Tuvok waited for the next question, suspecting it would not be about fish or hunting dogs.

“They’re violent, aren’t they? Humans, I mean,” she said. “As violent sometimes as Romulans. Not like Vulcans.”

“Some are,” Tuvok acknowledged. “Just as I am certain there are some Romulans who are not. It is wiser not to judge an entire species by a few examples.”

Zetha’s shoulders hunched slightly, as if she wondered if she was being reprimanded.

“As for Dr. Crusher’s use of the term ‘red herring,’ ” Tuvok completed his thought in order to let her know he was not reprimanding her. “It has come to mean any false evidence set in one’s path to distract one from the object one is searching for.”

“I see,” Zetha said and then, as this extra datum was added to her education, she smiled.

The smile was a gift, and Tuvok recognized it as such. Acknowledging it, he returned to his scanning.

“If it were up to us, we’d become part of the Empire, but we’re stuck here in the middle of some arbitrarily drawn-up ‘neutral zone,’ and so it’s not allowed!”

The speaker was an angry bureaucrat named Jarquin whose office the landing party had been referred to in order to obtain the proper travel permits. Selar and Zetha had taken the two chairs in front of his desk. Tuvok, snow dripping from his boots, stood behind them.

The office was oppressively warm, as might be expected in a region inhabited by vulcanoids where it snowed eight months out of ten. Jarquin’s taste in decorating was decidedly Romulan. Despite the climate, he had somehow managed to acquire fresh hothouse flowers, arranging them in the minimalist Romulan style. The geometric light sculptures had no doubt been imported from the homeworld. A human would have called the look Art Deco. Narrow buttress windows framed by dark blue patterned drapes set high up in the thick walls looked out over a public square that might have been anywhere on Romulus, except for the ever-swirling snow.

“Our young people grow up and emigrate,” Jarquin grumbled. “There’s nothing to keep them here. The Empire allows a certain quota every year to complete their educations or find work on the homeworld. My own sons were among them. Most decide to settle and never return. They do it to get away from the damned snow.”

“Of course,” Tuvok remarked.

The three outworlders were dressed in “fur”-lined parkas, replicated to look as close to what the natives wore as possible without actually being made of fur. Their boots were also authentic, right down to the retractable cross-country skis built into the soles, the best means of local transport in a city where the snow fell so fast and so often that there was no point in clearing it. Citizens merely skied on top of it to reach their destinations. The tall, slope-roofed buildings lining the streets had multistoried windowless basements that were used to store food in the winter, because these levels were uninhabitable in the cold months; a bright-green “snow line,” twice the height of a tall Quirinian in the season when there was no snow, was painted around the foundations to show how far an average winter’s accumulation reached.

Jarquin glowered at the snow, closed his eyes, cleared a space amid the datachips on his desk, folded his hands and sighed. His features—the hawklike eyes and upswept brow ridges, the characteristic bowl-shaped haircut, even a tendency to fat in his middle years—were more Romulan than Romulan.

“Tell me what it’s like. Is it true it’s warm enough in summer to swim in the lakes and rivers? Is it true that when all the moons are in the sky, it’s as bright as day? Do you know how rarely we can even see the sky on this world?” He did not give any of them a chance to answer before he went on. “I read a book about Romulan butterflies once. Can’t imagine what it must be like to see such delicate, multicolored things actually flying through the air. Here they’d freeze in mid-flight!”

The mere memory of the illustrations in the book was enough to make his eyes moist. He shook himself as if shaking the snow off his shoulders and demanded once again: “Tell me what it’s like!”

Speak up!Zetha told herself. It’s situations like this for which you’ve been sent along as cover, because the Vulcans can’t provide the detail you can. He may only be making conversation, awed because he so rarely meets what he thinks are true Romulans, or it may be a ploy to test who we really are. It all depends on you now. Say something!

Back on the ship, Sisko was less than happy. While he was willing to accept input from his crew, Admiral Uhura had put him in charge, and he hadn’t expected Tuvok, of all people, to try to undermine his command decisions. But Tuvok had decided the antihuman sentiment on Quirinus was strong enough for Sisko to remain on Albatross.

“I figured we’d work in shifts,” Sisko said when the subject first came up. “Selar and I, you and Zetha. That way there’s always someone here to monitor the landing party in the event there’s a problem and we need to beam up in a hurry.”

“This will be the first time Selar and I have to pass as Romulans,” Tuvok pointed out. “I would prefer Zetha accompany us. And, as security officer, I am compelled to point out that you would be put at unnecessary risk on Quirinus.”

Disgruntled though he was, Sisko had to concede that Tuvok was right. It was ironic, though, that the Vulcans, who hated the cold, were obliged to go, but he had been looking forward to a visit to Quirinus and was forced to stay behind. He and Jennifer had gone cross-country skiing in Calgary once before Jake was born; he’d been a natural at it, and wanted to try it again.

Well, so what?he thought. This isn’t a vacation, and it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without Jennifer, anyway.

He contented himself with running diagnostics and keeping a weather eye on the three onscreen blips among the several thousand heat readings in the city below whose safety he was responsible for. That was another thing. Except for the rare occasion on Okinawawhen his name came up for bridge duty—and he always made it a point to request gamma shift, when things were usually quiet—he had never been responsible for people’s lives before. It was one thing to make command decisions onboard a ship, particularly one as small as Albatross,but seeing those three small blips on his screen made him feel almost as vulnerable as they were. He liked that not at all. And suddenly he was not alone.

“Mr. Sisko?” It was Dr. Crusher’s voice, soft as always, but it made him jump. Dammit, he thought he’d shut the holos down! He was beginning to feel like a Romulan, under scrutiny all the time. “Got a minute?”

He took a breath before he trusted himself to speak. “Yes, Doctor? What is it?”

“We’ve had a breakthrough with the Tenjin carcinoform.”

“Selar’s on the planet, but you can relay the data directly to her computer,” Sisko suggested.

“I’ll do that anyway, but right now I wanted to share that with somebody in person.”

Behind her, Sisko could see the lab at Starfleet Medical, and members of her staff working round the clock on the R-fever that had been rushed to them from Starbase 23, as well as the Tenjin virus.

“It must be awfully late where you are,” he said.

“It is. That’s why I didn’t want to disturb the Admiral.”

“So you want to share it with me? I’m listening.”

“Before you signed on for this mission, I did a little dog-and-pony show for the admiral, McCoy, and Selar. Mostly for the admiral’s benefit, to help her understand what we were dealing with. Just at random, I compared our neoform to human HIV. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it; it’s an artifact from the twenty-first century—”

“I’ve heard of it,” Sisko said. “Are you telling me that’s what this thing is like?”

“At the time I did the presentation, it was just a lucky guess. But putting together the pieces your team has been gathering, it turned out to be an accurate guess. This germ doesn’t kill by itself; it does what HIV used to do and turns the body’s own defenses against it. That’s why it shows up as a killer flu on some worlds, as a cancer on others.”

Sisko thought about that for a moment. “I have a feeling that’s not good news.”

Crusher sighed. “No, it isn’t, not in terms of isolating and/or treating this thing, not yet. But I just wanted you to know that what Albatrossis doing out there is important.”

Sisko didn’t say anything to that.

“Want to talk about it?” Crusher asked against his silence.

“Talk about what?”

“Feeling outnumbered? Only round-ear on the mission and all that?”

How long had she been watching him? he wondered. How much of his muttering had she overheard?

“You know I am,” he said, wondering if she was reading his vital signs from there and registering his stress levels as well. “And I don’t appreciate Tuvok’s second-guessing me about beaming down to Quirinus. I might have reached the same decision he did, if he hadn’t overridden me. Maybe he doesn’t think I’m experienced enough to make command decisions…” Sisko stopped and thought about that. “And, dammit, he’s probably right. But I should have been allowed to arrive at that on my own. It seems to me Vulcans can’t resist telling us mere humans what’s best for us. I pride myself on being able to get along with anyone, but—”

“—but you’ve been bent out of shape since you were drafted for this mission, and Tuvok’s second-guessing you only makes things more difficult.”

“Is that an official prognosis, Doctor? Or are you just minding my business?”

“Neither. Just a prelude to asking you to put on your best face for a moment. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. Admiral Uhura arranged it especially. It’s a little earlier on Okinawa,so it’s only a little past his bedtime…”

“Daddy?”

“Jake?”Sisko couldn’t believe his eyes. His son was standing there in his pajamas rubbing one eye, a favorite stuffed “critter” so raggedy Sisko couldn’t remember what it had once been trailing behind him. He found himself kneeling on the deck to be at eye level, wishing more than anything that he could put his arms around the boy. But while the holos were good, they weren’t that good.

Yet,Sisko thought. Someday, maybe. But for now…

“Jake-O? Son, how are you? How you feeling, little man?”

“Daaad—!” The kid managed to stretch the single syllable out to at least four. “I’m not little! I’m almost five and a half.”

“So you are. My mistake. It’s just you’re growing up so fast. What’s going on? How’s kindergarten? How’s Momma? Did Grandpa Joe call you since I’ve been gone?”

Shut up!he told himself. Let the boy speak. What’s the matter with you?Jake was rubbing both eyes now.

“Sleepy!” he announced. “Goin’ back to bed. Momma’s here, though.”

“Okay, Jake-O. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you!”

“Love you, too, Daddy…” And, dragging his critter behind him, he was gone.

“It’s my guess you miss him,” Jennifer said, and this time Sisko had no words at all; he just rose to his feet and gazed at her. Had she been this beautiful the last time he saw her?

It was at that point that Crusher made her exit.

“I’ll put you two on discrete,” she said. “Lieutenant, you can let me know when you want to terminate.”

“What?” he said vaguely, his eyes and mind only for Jennifer. “Affirmative, Doctor. And…thank you.”

“It rains a lot,” Zetha told Jarquin, as usual blurting out her words without giving anyone else a chance to speak, though this time, she suspected, it was welcome. “But, yes, it’s very warm in the summer. Warm enough to walk bare-armed in the sun. And when any two of the moons rise, it’s very bright, and everyone has two shadows.”