Текст книги "Catalyst of Sorrows "

Автор книги: Margaret Bonanno

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

This door was not locked. While there were indeed some cursory lists of the dead, apparently abandoned when the numbers became overwhelming and, perhaps, the one compiling the list also fell ill, what Tuvok found most significant was the corpse thrown carelessly onto a table in a corner, doubtless the interloper himself, set apart from the others as if not to defile them by his presence. Ironically, his being exiled in death had spared him the defilement of the rats.

Judging from the wounds inflicted on the body, he had not died easily. His clothing was Quirinian and so, on superficial examination in this dim light, were his features. But Tuvok’s tricorder told a different tale.

“Evidence of cosmetic surgery to remove pronounced brow ridges,” he reported to Selar on discrete. “On empirical evidence, I believe this individual was Romulan.”

“Interesting,” was Selar’s muffled response. Tuvok assumed she was preoccupied with gathering evidence of her own, and ended the transmission. Then, using the techniques Selar had taught him, he took blood and skin samples from the late and unlamented stranger and, making his way gingerly among the rats, returned the way he had come.

Zetha was tidying and prepping the lab in preparation for Selar’s return. She could hear Sisko and Uhura discussing her, even at this distance. Sisko might dictate where she could go, but not what she could hear. Knowing when and how to listen had gotten her this far.

“You are wallpaper,” the Lord told her. “A potted plant, a desk ornament. They will speak freely in your presence, because they will not notice you are there.”

I am wallpaper,Zetha thought. And it was true. Neither of the two men noticed her; they talked with their heads together as if she was not there.

Military, her instinct told her as soon as they had appeared in the anteroom of the shop, the younger of the two announcing that he had an appointment with the jeweler to look at some naming day gifts. Neither man identified himself, but there was no doubt they were military, though both were in mufti. It was in the way they carried themselves. All Romulans walked guarded in public, but these two were even more so; their very ears had ears. Erect spines, square shoulders even without the overpadded uniforms, voices correct even in whispers, that upper-caste accent they could never escape.

“But what else?”she could hear the Lord’s voice in her mind. He had arranged for her to apprentice to this particular jeweler expressly because his shop was frequented by officers. For all she knew, the jeweler himself was Tal Shiar. He certainly had the nastiness. “Observe, report. What else?”

Student and mentor? Father and son? Superior officer and subordinate? She did the exercise for her own purposes; she would tell the lord as little as possible. Even as she pretended not to look at them, concentrating on untangling a mess of fine neck chains the jeweler had dropped, she swore, on purpose just to give her something to do, and they made themselves comfortable on the couches in the anteroom while the jeweler went to fetch his trays of rings and pendants for their consideration, her peripheral vision took them in, her senses registering every nuance.

Report: They were a generation apart in age, and the younger man—not young, but younger than the other, middle-aged, the kind of man who might easily have children her age, who might even… Stop it, fool! Stop seeing every Romulan of a certain age as a potential father—all right then, the one in his prime, square-faced, ridge-browed, graying at the temples, deferred to the elder who was the handsomer of the two—silver-haired, smooth-browed, fox-faced, patrician.

Yes, military by caste and birth, when either might have chosen differently had there been a choice permitted. Aemetha’s speech about a people always at war rang in her head, and she found herself wondering if the elites as a caste would be quite as arrogant if they didn’t live under the knowledge that they would forever have to send their best and brightest out to the stars and to death.

The squarish one might have been an architect, she thought, the silver-haired one a poet. Stop it!she told herself. Shut off the voices in your head and listen to what they’re saying! The Lord is testing you, and you’ll have to tell him something…

“…always intemperate, Alidar,” she heard the elder say before the jeweler had emerged from the back of the shop. Did she only imagine he was looking her way when he said it? “Intemperate in war, and now you reverse course and speak too vociferously for peace. It’s going to cost you.”

His eyes were so blue she could determine their color from where she stood, and she’d always had a thing for cheekbones. There were bloodlines here, Zetha thought, that were far more easily traced than hers, and something else, anger and a deep and unremitting sadness, as if in his long life he’d seen enough and more than enough of death and most of it unnecessary. Stop it!

“But it’s too much, Tal!” the younger one said too abruptly. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude, but even you have to admit that these days it’s war for the sake of war, because if the Romulan in the street turns his eyes away from the stars and starship battles, he’ll see that the economy is in shambles, his livelihood threatened, his children poorly educated, his future mortgaged for yet another warbird. The entire system is corrupt.”

“And so it always has been!” the one called Tal agreed, then stopped himself as the jeweler came prancing toward them, balancing velvet-lined trays of precious baubles in both hands. “You see, now you have me doing it!”

“Perhaps I thought to have an ally,” the one called Alidar mused after a long silence spent contemplating the wares before him, waving aside a tray of silver rings, sending the jeweler to the back of the shop for more. “At least someone who agreed with me in spirit.”

“We’re reduced to family names now, I see,” the silver-haired one said, avoiding a direct answer. “Shall I call you ‘Jarok’ from here on?”

Jarok,Zetha thought. Now, why is that name familiar? Aemetha would know. Aemetha knows everyone of any importance. Knew everyone. Aemetha, how are you, where are you? Did the Lord leave you alone once I agreed to go with him? Stop it!

“Forgive me, Che’srik. I have become a bit…obsessive.”

“I’m glad you said it!” Tal muttered, fingering a filigreed pendant that had caught his fancy.

“First names, surnames, what does it matter?” Jarok asked bitterly. “Mine will be anathema if I’ve judged the climate wrongly…”

“The Hero of Norkan?” Tal snorted. “That alone will protect you, but only up to a point. Leave off this line of inquiry, I beg you.”

“Not this time, old friend,” Jarok said.

“How many such triumphs and reversals have you and I survived?” Tal leaned forward so as not to be overheard, but Zetha heard him anyway. “That business following Narendra III, for instance? How long did that measure of peace endure before it once again was set on its head? But you and I moved with it and are here today to tell of it. These days it’s not only the enemy at the gates we need to fear, but the one in the room beside us. Yet we do survive, if we’re careful. We have no alternative.”

Not kin, then, Zetha noted for herself, not the Lord, watching the white-haired Tal clasp Jarok’s shoulder in support. A mentor advising a student who he felt had surpassed him in rank, in accomplishment. What serious thing were they talking about? Something so serious no nonmilitary half-breed could begin to guess at it.

Jarok,she thought, as the jeweler returned as if to stay this time, plopping himself down on a couch at a deferential distance from the two, nattering on about the merits of this piece or that. If I’ve heard the name, or read it, it’s in my mind somewhere. Why can’t I retrieve it?The stresses of the past few months, the constant drills, the lack of sleep, more empty bunks in the barracks, the sense that something was building to a fever pitch, were taking their toll. She couldn’t endure this much longer.

I am wallpaper,she thought. They do not see me; therefore, I don’t exist. But what if they actually say something that the Lord wants to hear? How will I know what’s of value to him? How will I know what he will use it for? Is it only because these two are so interesting that I wish them no harm? Or is it because the only pleasure left in my life is thwarting his lordship?

“…and your family to consider,” Tal was saying, indicating with a gesture that he would take the delicate pendant after all, and motioning the jeweler off to wrap it and ring it up. “You’ve wed again, I hear.”

Jarok smiled then for the first time. “It’s why I’m here. To get her something suitable for her naming day.” He produced a padd from his pocket and displayed what was probably his wife’s holo. Zetha couldn’t see, but both men stopped to admire it. “Something suitable for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.”

“She is a beauty,” Tal acknowledged. “Children?”

Even from where she stood, Zetha could see Jarok’s eyes mist over.

“Not yet, but we were planning, if I could get enough leave time…” Jarok’s voice trailed off. “Perhaps it was a mistake to marry again, considering…”

“Haven’t you got those settled out yet?” the jeweler hissed, coming up suddenly behind her. She pretended to be startled, and dropped the tangle of chains so she would have to start over. Beyond fury, the jeweler stalked to the back of the shop to deal with the purchase of the pendant.

If the jeweler is Tal Shiar, then why do I have to listen?Zetha wondered. He’s practically sitting in their laps with his trinkets and his simpering; let the Lord ask him what he’s heard. Or is that part of the trap? The jeweler reports one thing, I another, the Lord assumes I’m lying and kills me.

She eyed the exit just beyond Jarok’s square shoulder, and wondered how far she’d get if she ran for it. One of the other ghilikhad told her there were sensors sewn into the hems of their clothing, something in the food they ate that made it easier to track them. She didn’t know what she believed anymore. Jarok, meanwhile, was angry about something. He never raised his voice, but it was clear he was furious.

“There’s never enough time, don’t you see, Tal? They work us to death, and for what? It used to be honor, but no more, no more. We give the Empire our lives—go here, fight there, rendezvous here, attack there—”

“Alidar, for Elements’ sake—!”

Jarok seemed to remember where he was. Shopkeepers and their apprentices were not on the same plane as senior officers of the Fleet, but they had ears.

“Forgive me; you’re right,” he said, somewhat subdued and, resuming his seat, continued his search among the baubles for a gift for the most beautiful woman in the Empire.

Jarok!Zetha remembered at last. Alidar Jarok, even a groundling like me knows who you are. The Hero of Norkan, Tal called you, and it’s what the Praetor called you in his speech when he awarded you that medal on the vidscreens for the whole world to see, but what I’ve heard in the catacombs among my kind is that you’re a cold-blooded killer. What harm in telling the Lord that? Takes one to know one, and none of my business.

But what I hear you saying now suggests a change of heart. Maybe you can do some good with that. Maybe that’s what his lordship is afraid of. Maybe, maybe, maybe, and all of it, if I want to go on living, is my business.

She tossed the tangled chains back in the bin they’d come from. The jeweler was too busy with his pricey customers to notice. Zetha knew what she would tell the Lord.

“Nothing!” Koval hissed. His voice became even softer than usual when he was furious, and Zetha could barely hear him through the ringing in her ears. Why was it, she wondered, picking herself up off the floor, that a blow to side of the head always sounded worse than it felt? “How dare you tell me you heard nothing? How stupid do you think I am? Get up. I didn’t strike you that hard.”

Zetha suppressed a giggle behind her usual deadpan (“You’d out-Vulcan a Vulcan,” Aemetha always said, but Aemetha had never been offworld, and Zetha doubted she’d ever seen a Vulcan, even in a vid). How stupid do I think you are? Don’t let me speak; you’d cut my tongue out!

“They must have said something. You were right there in the room.”

“Yes, Lord. With that damned background music, which is supposed to make them think there are no listening devices—if you don’t count the breathing ones—and my head still ringing from the blow you gave me yesterday. And the jeweler dancing attendance on them like a small yappy dog. Why don’t you ask him what he heard?”

Koval’s narrowed his eyes at her. By now she knew all his facial expressions and the threats implied by them. This one had absolutely no effect.

“What did they speak of?” he demanded. “I must know!”

“They spoke. What about I could not tell you; I didn’t hear a word. They spent more than an hour examining everything in the shop before the elder bought a pendant and the younger a pair of earbobs. Gaudy ones; I can’t say much for his taste. He said they were a naming-day gift. That much I did hear. Before he left, the older one clasped the younger one’s shoulder, and they left.” She took a deep breath before adding: “I didn’t even learn their names.”

I’ve guessed right!she thought, watching the satisfaction spread like rancid oil over his features. At best he wanted me to report on what they talked about; at least he wanted me completely ignorant of who or what they were. It seems he won’t kill me…today.

Yes, joke,she thought, for as long as you can, but the truth is the tension’s killing you, however slowly. Your hair’s starting to fall out, have you noticed? Your gums bleed, and it’s not the food, because plain as it is, you’re better fed now than you’ve ever been, even under Aemetha’s care. It’s the deciding. You have to decide, and soon, which way you’re going to jump. It’s only a matter of whether he kills you before you can. And then where do you go? And what becomes of Aemetha? And Tahir, because he was seen with you, and the others in the villa, and—?

Wait and see,she chided herself, as much because she wanted to live, regardless of the circumstances. Wait and see what the mission is, and then decide. If there’s a fragment of a possibility of a chance that you can act on your own behalf, without harming anyone else…

Well? What more can anyone hope for?

“You’re useless,” Koval announced. “I don’t know why I feed you. Back to the barracks; I’ll summon you when I need you.”

Only later did it occur to her that perhaps the two had deliberately spoken as they did within her hearing. Had they known she was there to spy on them? Had they wanted her to report on what they said? She didn’t know. She would never know. She wasn’t as good at this as she’d thought.

And I’m still not!she thought, lining up retorts, setting out pipettes, checking the containers of acids and reagents, removing sterile instruments from the autoclave, checking and double-checking the sterifields, the pH meter, the spectrophotometer. But each day I live is a triumph, and that will have to be enough.

Her sharp ears no longer heard Uhura’s voice, but a sudden commotion in the control cabin told her Sisko was not alone.

Chapter 14

“Your Citizen Leval has been less than honest with us.” Citizen Jarquin’s voice preceded his appearance on the viewscreen. “He led us to believe he had visited other prefectures before ours. But out of curiosity, one of my aides messaged several of the regional offices and found out otherwise. Naturally I am interested in knowing why Leval deceived us. I’m sure he has a very good reason, but I want to hear it from him personally. Kindly put him onscreen.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that right now, Citizen Jarquin,” Sisko said, hoping he sounded calm, also remembering to play the role of the hired ship’s pilot taking orders from his Romulan employer. Below the screen’s visual level, his hands were busy working the comm, trying to raise Tuvok, to at least let him hear the exchange and perhaps give Sisko some guidance. “He, um, gave me orders he was not to be disturbed, and I’ve learned from past experience never to disobey Leval’s orders. But I’ll give him your message and as soon as he’s available—”

Citizen Jarquin cut him off. “That is not sufficient, Captain Jacobs. I wish to speak with him now. If you do not put him onscreen immediately, my guards and I will be required to board your vessel and seek him out personally.”

Dammit, Tuvok, I know you can hear this!Sisko thought, trying to locate his reading amid a moil of small life-forms within the Sawar quarantine zone. He’d last tracked Selar moving among a small huddle of Quirinians, but now couldn’t pinpoint her at all. Tuvok, wherever you are, get your butt back up here, now!

A voice behind him, out of range of the viewscreen, said quietly, “The lab. I’ll do it.”

Zetha, Sisko realized, thinking on her feet. At least closing the lab was one less thing he needed to worry about. Now, where the hell was Tuvok? Sisko put on his best smile, and stalled.

“Citizen Jarquin,” he said sincerely, pouring on what Jennifer had always called the Sisko Charm (“Makes you think you can get away with anything,” she’d say, “and you usually do!”). “I’d like nothing more than to help you out, really I would. But I’m just the skipper here; all I do is steer the boat. And I’ve learned from hard experience that when Leval tells me to do something, I’d better do it. That’s what he pays me for.”

Onscreen, Citizen Jarquin was now flanked by two very large Quirinians, armed and in full combat garb. His personal guard, ready to board the ship and search it from stem to stern. A telltale on Sisko’s console told him someone in Jarquin’s vicinity was attempting to override Albatross’s transporter lock. While he did his best to charm, Sisko was also changing the transport codes. He wondered how long he could get away with that before the Quirinians caught on.

He had no doubt that if he refused Jarquin permission to board, there would be a Quirinian warship up his tailpipe within minutes, and Albatross,he reminded himself, was unarmed.

I’ll never see Jake or Jennifer again,he thought.

“Your loyalty is commendable, Captain Jacobs,” Citizen Jarquin was saying. “But in Quirinian space, my orders supersede Leval’s. Put him onscreen. Now.”

Zetha watched the lab modules slip silently into place. Would Sisko be angry that she’d pilfered the control mechanism from his pocket while he argued with Citizen Jarquin? She’d deal with that later. For now, she contented herself with checking to make sure nothing had been left lying around the cargo bay that might reveal its true nature. Then it occurred to her to police the sleeping quarters as well. All the while she kept one ear on the conversation in the control cabin.

How much longer could he keep this going? Sisko wondered, wiping his sweating hands on his trousers, then realizing that the familiar shape of the module control mechanism was no longer in his pocket. He hadn’t even felt Zetha take it. Never mind that now!he told himself. Think of something, anything, that’ll make Jarquin go away, at least until you can get a lock on Tuvok!

“Citizen Jarquin…” Sisko hesitated, using his nervousness to his advantage. “I shouldn’t tell you this…it’s a direct invasion of Leval’s privacy and it’ll probably mean my job. Hell, strong as your people are, it could mean my life. He’ll take my head off for telling you this, but after they came back from Sawar, Leval and his wife—well, how do I put it delicately? They retired early, ordered that I not disturb them. He has a favorite collection of Jandran string music, and I’ve learned whenever that’s playing…”

“That they’re having a little romantic interlude?” Jarquin finished for him. “Very touching, Captain. But if he’s a true Romulan, he’ll understand that official business supersedes the arts of love. Hail him, knock on his door, do whatever you have to do, or allow me to spare you the embarrassment and knock on his door myself. My aide will give you our coordinates. Beam us up at once.”

“But, sir—” Sisko started to say when Tuvok’s hail from the surface, on discrete in the small earpiece in his ear, interrupted him.

“Message received, Mr. Sisko. One to beam back.”

“One moment, Citizen Jarquin,” Sisko said distractedly, activating the transporter, then realizing he could hardly beam Tuvok aboard with the Quirinians watching. “Message breaking up. Some kind of interference. I’ll have to—”

He terminated the transmission clumsily. Oh, as if that’s going to fool them!he thought frantically, as Tuvok materialized and waited on the transporter pad for the decontamination beam. The specially shielded case containing the specimens he’d gathered, another Heisenberg design, would protect them from decontamination. Without a word, Tuvok handed it off to Zetha, who had once again materialized from nowhere and disappeared in the direction of the lab.

“Where’s Selar?” Sisko demanded. An incoming message from Jarquin blinked angrily beneath his hand, near where another telltale told him they were decoding the transporter lock as fast as he could recode it. If he didn’t answer them, Jarquin and his guards would override and beam themselves aboard.

“No doubt making her way to the rendezvous point,” Tuvok said mildly, stripping off his parka and the hazmat suit and stuffing them into a disposal on his way to the living quarters. “I will attempt to distract Citizen Jarquin while you locate Selar.”

“But what if he wants to talk to both of you?” Sisko demanded of his retreating back. “And how the hell am I supposed to beam Selar aboard while he and his guards are here?”

Realizing he was talking to himself, Sisko located Selar just as someone from the surface overrode the transporter lock, and Citizen Jarquin and his two guards materialized before his eyes.

“You will bring Leval to me, or I will go to him,” Jarquin said placidly. “The choice is yours.”

Just then the sound of breaking glass startled all of them.

“You said I could have half of every order I took myself! You promised me!” Zetha was screaming. “Father only gave me permission to come with you so I could add my earnings to my dowry, and you lied!”

The remains of a vase Selar had purchased on Tenjin crunched beneath Citizen Jarquin’s feet as he and his guards, slowed by the low ceiling in the gangway, followed the racket into the cargo bay. What they saw was a furious Zetha, backed against one of the containers by an equally furious Tuvok, whom she held at bay with an honor blade.

“This is not the time!” Tuvok was arguing. “Will you carry on like this where the human can hear? It’s unseemly!”

“Unseemly? Stealing my dowry is unseemly!” Zetha snarled, waving the blade back and forth as if she really did intend to cut him as he loomed over her.

As if totally unaware that they were being watched, Tuvok feinted right, then left, seizing Zetha’s wrist and wresting the knife from her grasp. Snaking one long arm around her waist, he lifted her bodily off the deck as she kicked and clawed and tried to bite him. He set her down, grabbed her hair and held the honor blade to her throat.

“Will you stop now?” he demanded quietly, but with a Romulan-worthy rage still etched on his face. His eyes took in the three Quirinians, and the glare he gave them eloquently expressed his feelings at being publicly humiliated by a mere girl. “Willyou?”

“Y-yes!” Zetha whimpered convincingly. She’d been clawing at the arm that held the knife, but stopped now, let her hands drop limply to her sides, surrendering.

Tuvok thrust her from him and she staggered a little before she could gain her feet. As if noticing the watchers for the first time, she stood on one foot staring at them, not knowing what to do.

“Ungrateful veruul!”Tuvok spat at her, tucking the knife into the sash of the sleeping robe he’d somehow found time to change into. His feet were bare, as if he really had been roused from bed. “Any girl your age would be grateful to see the worlds you’ve seen under my patronage, and all you do is carp about a dowry!”

“May I have my knife back?” Zetha dared, coming to her senses, straightening her clothes and running her fingers through her tousled hair, defiance on her face.

“You’ll get it back when you get your honor back!” Tuvok waved her off. “Leave me! And clean up the broken glass!”

She bolted from the cabin.

Tuvok laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. He addressed his uninvited guests for the first time.

“Gentlemen, forgive me. I apologize for that little scene. Young people, hm?” Tuvok tightened the sash of his robe, folded his arms and leaned casually against a container that contained mostly replicator parts and stem bolts.

“You see why she needs a dowry,” he went on. “Few men would have the patience for her tantrums if she didn’t come with money. I ought to toss her out the airlock for such behavior, but her aunt would never forgive me. And to think my wife slept through all of this! Citizen Jarquin, what brings you all this way to speak to me?”

Forward at the controls, Zetha looked at the welter of lights and toggles in dismay. Maybe if Selar hailed in from the surface, the Vulcan could talk her through the process of beaming her up. The very thought of scrambling and descrambling someone’s molecules visited her with such fear she couldn’t move her fingers. Then she realized Sisko still had the earpiece with him. Even if Selar did hail in, she could hardly let her voice be heard aloud in the control cabin with the Quirinians on board. Damn the human, anyway! Well, maybe Jarquin would be content to talk to Tuvok and leave Selar out of it. Maybe…

“This is somewhat embarrassing,” Tuvok, immersed in his role as Leval, was saying sheepishly. He found an empty storage crate, upturned it and sat down, scratching his head and yawning once more for emphasis. “The tax laws on the homeworld…well, let me begin from the beginning. Let us say for the sake of argument that I have a business partner. Let us say he puts up the money, then sits in his lavish villa while I travel the length and breadth of the Outmarches risking my life, and when I get home, he takes the bloodwing’s share. But lately his earnings have gotten the notice of the taxation advocates in the Senate, and he has instructed me to pad the expenses, claim more for travel than I actually spend, and take fewer orders than I have before.

“Quirinus was the first world where I tried it. Logged thirty prefectures, planned to visit only two or three. I’d have gone home and reported that I hadn’t been able to take any orders in the other twenty-six or -seven, business was that bad. Take the write-off for the time and travel expenses, claim the loss, then we would not have to pay taxes on whatever we actually did sell. Do you see?”

“I’m beginning to,” Jarquin said grumpily, so absorbed in Leval’s explanation that he didn’t notice the human had slipped quietly away.

“I will be honest with you,” Tuvok was saying. “I am not good at deception. It doesn’t sit well with me. But if my partner cuts me off without funding, I would lose everything. I thought by deceiving you, I could keep you clear of it. Now you’ve asked too many questions, and you’re implicated along with me. If anyone from the homeworld comes asking questions…”

“We never had this conversation!” Jarquin said abruptly. “I am here only to examine your cargo to make sure you’re not running arms or any other illicit goods.”

He waved an imperious hand toward the container behind Leval, who yawned once more and, in a very leisurely gesture, began keying in the code to open it.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sisko demanded, seeing Zetha in his chair at the controls. Selar’s voice in his ear, as much as his inability to listen to much more of “Leval’s” explanation with a straight face, had led him back here with all due alacrity.

“Your job, if I had the skills!” the girl snapped, leaping out of the chair. “Selar’s signaling. What do we do now?”

“You get out of my way and let me do my job,” Sisko said, locking onto Selar’s signal. He supposed he could keep her in the pattern buffer until the Quirinians left, a risky move if they stayed too long, and what if they wanted to talk to her? “Then you go back to the living quarters and figure out another diversion in case our guests go looking for your ‘aunt.’ ”

There was blood on Selar’s hazmat suit, and other stains Sisko didn’t dare examine too closely. Even after she stepped out of the decon beam he hesitated before taking the sample case from her, as if the exterior might somehow still be contaminated, stashing it under the control console where he hoped Jarquin wouldn’t notice it.

“I would have signaled sooner, had the patrols not been in the vicinity,” Selar explained as she disposed of the suit. Something in Sisko’s manner cautioned her to speak softly. “Is something wrong?”

He explained. “…and either I’m going to have to conceal you somewhere until they’re gone or, ideally, figure out a way to get you back to the living quarters without their seeing you. And since there’s only one gangway leading the length of the ship—”

Selar gestured toward the transporter.

“I’m not sure this transporter is safe for intraship beaming,” Sisko objected, reading her mind.

Selar retrieved her sample case and Tuvok’s before stepping back onto the pad. “We are about to find out, Lieutenant.”

Citizen Jarquin was bored. There were only so many cases of silk one could examine. Now it was he who was yawning as he gestured to Leval to reseal the third of the three containers he had asked to examine.

“Your cooperation is appreciated,” he told Leval. “And your rather creative approach to accounting is safe with me.”

Gesturing to his guards, he headed for the gangway, only to find his way obstructed by Zetha. The girl was on her knees picking up glass shards one by one. Apparently absorbed in her task, she didn’t look up until she realized one piece was directly under Citizen Jarquin’s boot.