Текст книги "Catalyst of Sorrows "

Автор книги: Margaret Bonanno

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“Give it up, girl. It’s probably beyond salvaging,” he suggested not unkindly.

“My aunt is going to kill me!” Zetha muttered. “It was her favorite.”

“Has your aunt truly slept through all this uproar?” Jarquin wondered, looking down at the girl with a smile. Skinny little thing, he thought, but those eyes—!

As if in answer to his question, the door to the sleeping quarters opened partway, and a tousled-looking Selar appeared, wearing a sleeping robe of the most luxurious Tholian silk drawn directly from their inventory. The neckline was cut invitingly low, and she held it halfway closed with one enervated hand.

“Citizen Jarquin? What are you doing here?” she asked with a bewildered smile, as if she might be dreaming and he, realizing at last that this really was beyond the bounds of propriety, merely nodded and hurried toward the transporter pads, his guards in tow. If he heard Selar’s reaction to the discovery that her “niece” had broken her favorite vase, he paid it no mind. Romulans, after all, were noted for their tempers. Everything was as it should be.

Albatrosswas light-years out of Quirinian space before Sisko trusted himself to laugh out loud. “I’m beginning to think that, all your rationalizations notwithstanding, Vulcans are more adept at lying than humans! I heard you back there. You lie like a rug!”

His laughter masked the sense of futility they all felt. The stains on Selar’s clothing were the closest Sisko had come to the reality of this thing so far, and he wondered if there was any point in going on, deeper and deeper into the Zone, increasing the odds of being challenged by friend or foe. Didn’t they have enough evidence by now to connect this disease to the Romulans? And so what if they did, if there was no cure?

He couldn’t get the thought of all those dead out of his mind, and naturally any such threat turned his thoughts toward Jake and Jennifer. The concept of anything so awful even touching his family filled him with such despair he wanted to hit something. So he joked instead.

Tuvok, perhaps sensing his gloom, managed to look properly indignant.

“ ‘Lying’, Mr. Sisko? Having done as much research as is possible into Romulan tax structures, given the silence between us, I assure you that the fictional merchant Leval certainly could encounter precisely such adversities in his effort to support himself and his family.”

“Oh, so you’re writing fiction now! Maybe you should submit it to a publisher. Or write a holodrama. You and Zetha scuffling with that honor blade was one of the best performances I’ve seen in my life. Come to think of it, Selar did a damn fine job of looking like she’d just rolled out of bed, too. I’m surrounded by talent! Which reminds me…”

He went looking for Zetha, who was as usual in the lab assisting Selar. He didn’t say anything, merely stood there with his hands out, palms upward.

Zetha, gauging his mood, fished in a pocket and handed him the master control device without a word. Selar, restored to her prim and proper self, was testing monocyte chemotactic peptide recruitment in the specimens gathered on Quirinus, but found time to watch what was going on.

“I’m not going to ask you where you learned to pick pockets like that,” Sisko said. “I’d probably only embarrass myself for letting you get away with it.” He sighed; his features softened. “But I did want to thank you. You saved our lives.”

Zetha shrugged. “My own primarily. If Citizen Jarquin had seen through our ruse, it would have meant my life as much as yours.”

Sisko cleared his throat, started to say something, wondered what it was. Compliments rolled off her as readily as criticism. Was there any way to get through her shields? To his surprise, she greeted him with one of her rare smiles.

“Does this mean I’m allowed to watch the stars on the forward screen without your permission?”

His eyes narrowed. “All right. But keep your hands out of my pockets!”

“I should thank you as well,” Selar said quietly when Sisko was gone. Zetha gave her a puzzled look. “For destroying the vase.”

“I thought you’d be angry.”

“It was aesthetically pleasing,” Selar said ruefully. “However, it was foolish of me to acquire any object which might connect us with Tenjin.”

Zetha hadn’t thought of that. They’d been following an erratic course through the Zone for just that reason, to make it difficult for anyone who might be tracking them to determine their point of origin or where they’d been before.

“It was Tuvok’s idea to stage a quarrel to distract Jarquin until we could locate you. The vase was the first thing that came to hand.”

“Fortunate for all of us that it did,” Selar suggested.

“Tuvok, how do you do it?” Sisko asked him during aquiet moment. The ship was on autopilot, and he was allowing himself some downtime to whip up a soufflé with the last of the vegetables from Tenjin.

The Vulcan was adding nutrients to the potting soil containing the orchid one drop at a time. “Do what?”

“Spend months or even years away from your family? Maybe it’s just thinking of all those dead on Quirinus, but all I want to do is rush home and be with my wife and son.”

Tuvok found the nutrient level to his satisfaction, set the orchid under its gro-light, and gave Sisko his complete attention.

“I submit, Mr. Sisko, that all you have wanted to do since we left Earth is return to your wife and son. However—” he said before Sisko could object. “To answer your question, it was necessary for me to leave Starfleet in order to start a family. Once I was confident my sons and my daughter were sufficiently mature not to require my guidance on a daily basis, I was free to return. As I understand it, you and your spouse have been fortunate enough to be assigned to the same ships for much of your career.”

“It’s true, I’ve been a little spoiled. This is the first time I’ve been away from Jennifer this long since Jake was born. Maybe if he were a little older I wouldn’t feel so bad, but…”

Uncertain what answer Sisko was looking for, Tuvok said, “It has been my experience that one of the most difficult, yet most essential, aspects of being a parent is knowing when to let go.”

For some reason Sisko found himself thinking of when Jake was a toddler and first learning to walk, how he’d gone from room to room making sure everything was safe. He’d put extra carpeting in the living area, cushioned the corners of every low table, and still followed the boy around with his hands outstretched, ready to grab him any time he seemed about to fall. It had been his own father who set him straight.

“You intend to be around to cushion his fall for the rest of his life?” Joseph Sisko had demanded. Ben had some leave time and had dropped in to New Orleans so that Jake could spend some time with his grandfather and vice versa. They were in the restaurant just before opening, setting the tables.

“I just don’t want him getting hurt,” Ben had answered, not taking his eyes off Jake, who was toddling from table to table, and from chair to chair around each table, rocking the chairs against the hardwood floor to hear their sound and laughing at his newfound skill as he went.

“And what’s that supposed to teach him?” Joseph wondered, smoothing out each tablecloth as they went.

Ben didn’t answer. Jake had gotten hold of the edge of one tablecloth and was starting to pull. “Be careful, Jake-O. Don’t do that; you’re going to fall—”

Just then he felt his father’s grip on his arm, hard.

“Let the boy go, Ben. How else is he going to learn?”

“But it’s a hardwood floor,” Ben started to say. “There’s no protection. If he—”

But Joseph refused to relieve his grip, and Jake kept pulling on the tablecloth until it slipped off the table, knocking him back on his well-diapered bottom. Jake seemed surprised for a moment, then giggled, pulled the tablecloth over his head, and crowed. “Peekaboo!”

“Peekaboo to you, too, young man,” Joseph said, letting go of Ben’s arm and retrieving the tablecloth. “Give that to Grandpa, now, and go on about your business.”

The boy clutched the rungs of the closest chair, pulled himself upright, and continued his exploration around the next table and the next. His father, whose every muscle had tightened when the boy fell, finally relaxed.

“He just got his first lesson in physics, Ben,” Joseph said. “And you a good lesson in parenting. Sometimes you’ve got to let them go.”

Now Tuvok was telling Sisko the same thing. Would he ever be able to let Jake go? He guessed he’d have to learn the answer to that question one day at a time.

“The organism on Quirinus is indeed the same,” Selar reported during the next medical briefing with Uhura and Crusher. “At least as evidenced in blood and skin samples taken from those quarantined inside the enclosure.”

“But—?” Uhura prompted her, hearing something in her tone.

“But serum and skin samples taken from the outworlder killed by the villagers show no trace of the organism.”

“What if he had nothing to do with the infection?” Uhura asked.

“That is possible,” Selar acknowledged. “However, what is unusual is that his blood was remarkably free of any active organisms or even background noise.”

“ ‘Background noise’?” Uhura asked.

“Everyone’s blood is a road map of their medical history,” Crusher supplied. “Immunizations, childhood illnesses, even the common cold, leave antibodies in the bloodstream long after they’re introduced into our systems. That’s why immunizations work. If you get a measles shot, for instance, you won’t catch measles, because the old germs are telling the new germs on the block: ‘Been there, done that, go somewhere else.’ ”

“Gotcha,” Uhura said. “But you said ‘remarkably’ free.”

“Indeed. Given the small volume of blood Tuvok was able to obtain, I cannot say with certainty that the stranger was entirely free of antibodies, but there were none in the sample.”

“None?” Crusher echoed her. “That’s impossible.”

“Maybe he was just very healthy,” Uhura suggested.

“Hypothetically,” Selar said, “someone who had never received any immunizations, who had never been ill nor exposed to anyone who was ill, or someone whose entire blood supply had been dialyzed and replaced, might show such a pattern.”

“But—?”

“But there’s no such animal,” Crusher said.

“Such an individual would not have been cleared for offworld travel without receiving new immunizations,” Selar clarified. “And since Tuvok’s scans indicate this individual was most likely a Romulan surgically altered to more closely resemble a Quirinian—”

“Something stinks,” Uhura finished for her.

Selar, less literal minded than most Vulcans, merely said, “Agreed.”

“Is it possible,” Uhura said, thinking it through as she asked it, “that a person’s biology could be programmed to make them immune to a disease that they could spread to others?”

“Not by our science,” Crusher said. “It sometimes occurs naturally. Carriers who are immune, like Typhoid Mary.”

“Not by our science,” Selar agreed. “But perhaps the Romulans—?”

“That could solve the mystery of the delivery system,” Crusher suggested. “Admiral, are you okay?”

They sometimes forgot that, tough as she was, Uhura was no longer a young woman. This thing had been keeping her up nights, and it showed.

“Okay as I’ll ever be,” she said, passing a hand over her eyes and straightening the momentary sag in her shoulders. “Carry on.”

Their next stop was a world called Sliwon.

Vulcan, like many worlds, eventually entered a period of aggressive colonization, and perhaps a ship or ships from that era had ventured as far as Sliwon. Or perhaps its people were descendants of some members of the Sundering’s hegira who refused to travel further. Perhaps, too, there was an indigenous population of humanoids on Sliwon when they arrived, or perhaps the legends of the Preservers populating the galaxy with humanoids could once more be given evidence here. In the event, the Sliwoni, like the Rigelians, were a bit of both.

And perhaps it was the overlarge moon that made its people moody and given to extremes of temperament, or perhaps it was the uneasy agglomeration of their biology that made them quick of temper and prone to quarrel. It was Surak himself who, according to some accounts, said “Put two Vulcans in a room and you end up with three arguments.” Blessed with a mild climate, abundant rain and rich soil, in between arguments the Sliwoni grew things. They clung to certain customs, such as the use of archery for personal weaponry, even as they advanced in-system space travel. They had no desire to venture beyond their own system, though they welcomed visitors from offworld, particularly those who had things to trade, but insisted that they land their ships instead of leaving them in orbit.

Sisko set the ship down where the Sliwoni authorities instructed him to. A party of officials met Albatrossat the designated landing area, scanned a few of the containers, issued travel permits good for three days and maps to the nearest town, then went on their way. Fascinated by their traditional use of archery, Tuvok set about gathering native materials to construct a longbow.

Once again Sisko suggested the landing party work in teams.

“I don’t want to leave the ship unattended. Even sealed up she’s vulnerable, no matter how many reassurances the Sliwoni authorities give us. We should either pair up, or at least Tuvok and I should take turns remaining behind.”

“Agreed,” Tuvok said.

More than a little surprised that this time he’d gotten no argument, Sisko organized his thoughts.

“Right now my main concern is getting that environmental adapter back online. Apparently it’s the one thing Heisenberg overlooked in the refit, and he didn’t leave me a spare. I can gather air and soil samples in the vicinity of the ship while the rest of you go into town. Then tomorrow I can go with Selar and Zetha while you stay with the ship.”

This seemed to sit well with Tuvok, who nodded in agreement, then returned to sanding the riser on the longbow, deep in concentration.

Zetha found him testing the tensile strength of the completed bow.

“Must I go with you this time?” she asked quietly.

Tuvok unstrung the bow and considered. She had been inordinately calm and quick to react when the Quirinians were on board. Had the event taken more of a toll on her than was evident?

“Do you wish to remain here?”

Still unable to ask directly for anything, she shrugged.

“Selar and I will be employing our Vulcan cover,” Tuvok said. “There is no necessity for you to accompany us. You may remain here with Lieutenant Sisko if you wish.”

“I’ll speak to him,” she said, and was gone.

Sisko was up to his elbows in machine parts. Assuming he was alone, he was cursing in all the languages he knew.

“Not going well, is it?” Zetha asked over his shoulder.

She was sitting cross-legged in the doorway, looking like nothing so much as a mischievous elf. That was another thing about her that got under his skin. She was never outright disrespectful, but she didn’t go out of her way to be anything more than civil, either. Sisko found himself glowering at her. “Thought I told you to stay out of the engine room?”

“I’m not in the engine room,” she pointed out. “I’m sitting on the floor of the gangway looking into the engine room.”

“It’s not a ‘floor,’ it’s a deck,” Sisko said crossly, then realized how petty he sounded.

“Something’s wrong with that thing,” Zetha observed. “You’ve been fussing with it for days. Is it dangerous?”

“Not at the moment,” Sisko said, turning his back on her, tinkering. “But it’s failing. If it fails altogether while we’re in space, it could affect the air we breathe.”

“Enough to kill us?”

“Probably not.”

“But it might?”

She’s a kid,Sisko reminded himself. She’s concerned about her welfare, that’s all.He gave her his complete attention.

“Remote possibility. If I can’t fix the adapter. Which I can. Or jury-rig a bypass. Or, worst case scenario, go into town and see if the Sliwoni have something similar I can trade for.”

“Is that likely?”

Sisko returned to his tinkering. “According to Starfleet records, they trade with humans. Their tech is a little behind ours and, given the age of some of Albatross’s original components, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“So they’d use it in their offworld ships?”

Sisko sighed. Even Jake didn’t ask so many questions when he knew his dad was busy.

“It’s a universal adapter. Could be used in a transport vehicle, a hovercraft, anything motorized.”

“What does it look like?” Zetha asked.

Sisko gave her an odd look and pulled the adapter out of the manifold, holding it up and motioning her to cross the invisible line that separated the engine room from the gangway. “Like this. Composite polymer single-walled carbon nanotube. Semi-conductor nanowires. Titanium casing. Only without the points worn through here and here. That help you any?”

She took it from him, hefting it in her hand and examining it from all sides before giving it back, wiping her hand on her trousers.

“It might,” she said cryptically.

“Mind if I go back to work now?” Sisko asked.

Zetha shrugged and disappeared back the way she’d come.

Sliwon had an extensive public transit system. One merely had to stand at designated positions along any of its vast network of highways in order to be retrieved by a pneumobus that joined the endless trucking convoys bringing produce to and from its multitude of small communal cities strung along the road system like beads on a necklace.

There was no currency, only barter, one commune’s grain traded for another’s sugar beets for another’s wild fowl for another’s tubers, all on an endless convoy of hover-vehicles whose hydrogen-powered engines only slightly disturbed the otherwise tranquil air of a truly beautiful climate.

Selar’s tricorder was active from the moment she and Tuvok climbed aboard the bus; the hum of the engines and the chatter of Sliwoni going to market masked its sounds. She shook her head imperceptibly when Tuvok raised an inquiring eyebrow. No sign of unusual illness so far. She continued scanning as they strolled through the marketplace.

“Nothing,” she reported. “The occasional cold virus, a few cases of eczema, and the sausage vendor has a precancerous condition.”

Tuvok read what she was thinking. “You will not mention this to him, of course.”

Selar gave him a studied look. “Not directly. But I see no harm in recommending he take antioxidants.”

They had not gone far before they heard the disturbance. Wending their way among the fish and poultry stalls and past the herb sellers, they rounded a corner to find an angry knot of Sliwoni, most of them chatting into the headsets affixed as if permanently to the left sides of their faces, but also gathered around to listen to a sidewalk orator.

“…and it is because we are too open a society that these things happen!” he was shouting hoarsely. “We let anyone and everyone land here, and look what it gets us! This disease didn’t come from one of us. It came from outside!”

Murmurs of both agreement and disagreement greeted him from the crowd. Selar’s tricorder was busy. Her eyebrows told Tuvok more than anything she might have said.

“Affirmative,” she said anyway. “Perhaps a dozen individuals in the crowd, including the speaker, are running a low-grade fever.” She closed the tricorder. “Superficial scan suggests an organism bearing the Catalyst signature, but without specimens—”

“I submit this is neither the time nor the place to gather specimens,” Tuvok suggested, taking her arm in an uncharacteristic gesture and moving toward an opening in the crowd through which to return the way they had come.

“Those two!” the orator shouted, pointing directly at them. “Do we know who they are? Do we know where they came from? Do we know the documents they carry are legitimate?” Some of the crowd were turning to stare at the Vulcans now, not quite menacingly, but with purpose. “We all know Romulans have been guilty of biological warfare in the past. How do we know that’s not the case again?”

His voice faded as the Vulcans retreated down yet another busy market street where the crowd swallowed them up temporarily, out of reach of the restless mob.

“I believe we have gathered enough evidence,” Tuvok said. “The sooner we return to the ship—”

“Evidence that the disease is here, but no indication of how it got here,” Selar said with a trace of stubbornness. “We need to ascertain the source, the delivery system. Perhaps another ‘stranger’ such as the one you found on Quirinus. Further, Admiral Uhura’s instructions—”

“This is not the time,” Tuvok repeated. “We will return later, perhaps after nightfall, or choose another locale. Otherwise we risk a choice between being accosted by an angry mob or, since we do not yet know how it is spread, possibly contracting the illness ourselves.”

Selar had no choice but to go with him. She continued surreptitiously scanning the crowd as they walked, her readings indicating that perhaps one person in fifty was affected.

The street narrowed to an alley, which dead-ended abruptly. As they doubled back and returned to the herb sellers’ street, they heard more shouting.