Lucky, lucky me,she thought. The terminal was active, the viewscreen displaying a root menu offering options ranging from data retrieval to food replication. I’ve got me a live one!

“Off!” Fazzle said, cocking his head.

“Excuse me?”

“Off.” Fazzle pawed at her uniform.

Ugh. It just gets better and better,she thought, stripping off her jacket and turtleneck. Thankfully, the Cheka kept the room temperatures high; sitting around shirtless wouldn’t be unbearably cold. Now how to get at that computer,she mused. I can pretend to trip and when I stumble forward, I’ll just—“Yikes!” she shrieked. “What isthat!”

Fazzle brushed the sense-artist goo on her shoulders. “Hold out your arms,” he ordered, demonstrating by holding two of his arms straight out to the side. “Like this.” Prynn complied warily, but cringed when he started in on her neck, down her back, down her front—and as it dried, it itched. Prynn started making her mental list of all the places she would inform her father she would vacation when she made it back to the Alpha Quadrant. Ewwwwww this is so disgusting!

Shar stood at attention in front of Ezri’s desk, eyes fixed on the wall behind her. In a way, Ezri was grateful that he avoided eye contact. She could say what she needed to without feeling like it was personal. The present situation was about authority—hers—and regulations. And while Shar didn’t blatantly disobey the letter of her orders, he rationalized his way into believing that flaunting the spirit of them was acceptable.

“While I understand your intentions were honorable, Ensign, your timing was poor. And you should have contacted me with Delegate Keren’s proposal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant McCallum, working with the Yrythny authorities, has been unable to uncover who used this workstation to send the “go” signal to the hydrofoil. Fortunately, no one on our team is under suspicion.”

“I assure you, Lieutenant, I took all necessary precautions before I left.”

“I believe you, but in hindsight, there were other precautions that ought to have been taken.” Of all the problems caused by Shar leaving Luthia, this was the worst. Yes, he’d left the offices secure and the terminals locked down, but he hadn’t made provisions for covering his station. There wasn’t a Starfleet officer anywhere in Luthia at the time the offices had been broken into and the signal sent. Lieutenant Candlewood, their computer specialist, had performed every diagnostic he knew and had come up with nothing.

Shar stayed silent, standing stone-still, his face composed. Even his antennae remained curiously unexpressive.

His mind must be elsewhere, Ezri thought, leaning back in her chair. She sighed. “Was it worth it, Ensign?”

“Permission to speak freely, sir.”

Ezri sat for a long moment, wondering if she was capable of responding fairly to anything that he said, whether her frustration with him had abated enough that she could listen without reacting. The day’s events had taxed her energy. She’d been placating angry Yrythny officials for hours; her rescue mission to the aquaculture village hadn’t exactly endeared her to the military. On the other hand, she was curious to know what incited a usually compliant officer to recklessness. Finally, she shrugged. “Of course.”

“I brought enough data back from the peninsula to conduct a statistically significant study of Yrythny DNA.”

“What?” Now this was news. She leaned forward to listen more closely.

“The farmers on the peninsula have been collecting and mapping Wanderer DNA for several centuries. They wanted to use it to match Wanderers with their proper Houses. That way, they wouldn’t have to be Wanderers any longer.”

Promising idea. “Go on,” she urged.

“But I think we can use this data to model Yrythny chromosomal architecture,” he said. “To see if there’s any genetic basis for the caste system.”

“Those models will only work if you have the Houseborn samples to compare them to.”

“We don’t have them, but we can get them,” he said pragmatically.

“That’s pretty optimistic of you, Shar. Do you honestly think the Houseborn will cooperate willingly with your study?”

“No,” Shar conceded. “But we can obtain the samples surreptitiously through Wanderer domestic laborers. I realize I haven’t mentioned this before, sir, but Delegate Keren took me to a meeting of the Wanderer underground, and through her connections there—”

“Hold it,” Dax said, standing. “Keren is connected to the underground?” The terrorists. Those responsible for planting the explosives in the village. The ramifications of Keren being the head of the Wanderer Assembly and working in the underground were staggering. All the negotiations, all their strategies, plans and schedules—she could be feeding confidential proposals to the underground. The agitators could have gained access to her office through Keren, if she had the security clearance. Ezri swore under her breath. Has Shar been lying to me? He had to know getting mixed up in this would come back to haunt him later. Please let me be able to trust you, Shar.

He met her eyes. “Yes sir, she is.”

“And why haven’t you come forward with this until now?” she asked. Shar hesitated a second too long and Ezri shouted, “I asked you a question, Ensign!”

Shar flinched. “I should have, sir. I knew I was wrong to go, but my curiosity got the better of me. Afterward I convinced myself that if I pretended it never happened, it would never come up. I was foolish. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” Ezri said, watching him closely. “You’re certainly full of surprises this evening, Ensign.” How the hell do I salvage this?“Tell me, from your observations of the underground, can Delegate Keren represent the Wanderer side fairly if she has any ties to those terrorists?”

“Respectfully, sir, to call them terrorists is an overgeneralization,” Shar protested. “They’re ordinary people who have been pushed to the verge of breaking. Not everyone affiliated with the underground endorses violence. Most of the agitators are looking for peaceful solutions.”

“The fact remains that you’ve consorted surreptitiously with a political leader who may have been involved in the destruction of the aquaculture village, and dozens of casualties. And you still haven’t answered my question. What can you say to convince me that Keren can be trusted?”

“Nothing, I suspect. But are you convinced that the Houseborn didn’t blow those villages simply to persuade you that the Wanderers can’t be trusted? Has anyone given you evidence that proves unequivocally that the underground is to blame?”

Ezri tried to ignore his insinuation that the day’s events had been staged to influence her opinion, and remained focused on Shar. “The planetside incident is, more or less, an internal matter. What isn’t in contention is that you acted in bad faith with respect to your commanding officer. You betrayed my trust, Shar.”

“If you want to discipline me for going with Delegate Keren to the agitator meeting, I won’t protest,” he said. “But we can’t ignore the potential significance of this scientific research. What we discover could transform their lives—”

“That’s enough, Ensign.”

“Please don’t punish the Yrythny for my error in judgment,” he whispered.

Was that the real question, then?Ezri wasn’t a fool: If the research Shar proposed bore fruit, it had the potential to redefine the Yrythny identity, to find out, once and for all, whether there was any biological basis for the caste system. On the other hand, the Assembly had requested that she help mediate a resolution to their internal conflict—to find a way to help these people live together in peace. They hadn’t asked her to conduct scientific research that would change the paradigm they’d built their society on. But truth was truth. If new truths forced the changes required to live in peace, their mission would be successful.