The natives maintained a communal house in the middle of the village, which Ramon identified as a shabono,of the type used by the Yanomami tribe. Whether or not these people were part of that tribe was unclear, but the geographical location of the village made it distinctly possible.

Over the following days, Aidan grew extraordinarily close to the aboriginal tribe. She never needed to use the universal translator, since she was quickly picking up bits and pieces of the tribe’s language and customs. She listened to their stories, to their history, to their gossip, to their hopes, and to their fears. They knew of the world beyond them, and some had-even departed to explore it, but most chose to stay safely within the bosom of their tribe.

One day, as Aidan was at the river with the other women, a great outcry came from the village. Two of the men—and [41] Ramon—had been mauled by a pair of jaguars who were intent on stealing the red brocket deer the men had brought down for food. By the time Aidan and the others reached the village, one of the wounded hunters had died.

Ramon and the other man were stable, but by nightfall, they were feverish. Although the decision caused her almost physical pain, Aidan used her communicator and activated an emergency beacon. She explained to the tribespeople that she had to get medical attention for Ramon, but they argued that their ancestral medicines were adequate to heal him.

Aidan wasn’t willing to take the chance. She offered to help get the other injured man to safety, but he refused, staying with his family and his tribe. Weeping, Aidan gathered up all the things which she and Ramon had brought into the village and repacked them. Moments before the Federation Forest Service shuttle beamed them to safety, she took the bracelet off her wrist and untied a knot.

Removing one of the two timeworn seashells she had gathered as a child, Aidan knelt and gave it to Omëbe, the sturdily built little girl who had always paid the most attention to Aidan’s stories of exploration. Aidan smiled as she closed the little girl’s hand over the tiny shell, then hugged her. As she stepped away, she saw tears in Omëbe’s dark eyes. Then the golden beam of the transporter took Aidan away.

She never found out if the villager had died from his wounds, or if the ancient tribal remedies had saved him. She never learned what became of Omëbe, but she hoped that the girl might one day explore the world herself.

Over the next thirty years, Aidan had changed. Her marriage to Ramon hadn’t lasted long, and she had found a new calling, working her way up the ladder through the Federation’s diplomatic service, discovering as she did so that the exploration of new cultures and new civilizations always brought her back to the things she loved.

She eventually remarried, but Shinzei, her beloved [42] husband, was by now a decade dead, and she had been alone ever since his passing. Her parents were now both long gone. She had no forebears and no children. Her legacy was her work, and of late, even that was wanting.

During her college years, she had come to despise the militarism that Starfleet represented. Now, as the century counted down ponderously toward its end, she wondered if too many years spent working alongside that blunt military instrument had hardened her, turned her bitter. She wondered how any diplomat could accomplish anything of lasting value in Starfleet’s heavily armed shadow.

Am I just marking time until the end of history, when the Federation—in all its well-intentioned beneficence—finally engulfs and devours every other technological society in the galaxy?

In her guest quarters aboard Excelsior,Aidan Burgess unpacked a special box. There, atop a velvet lining of deep indigo, lay the bracelet she had gotten as a child. Beneath the top layer of cloth was a collection of dozens of stones, bones, and shells, representing every planet she had visited.

Burgess held the bracelet up and moved to the mirror. Looking through her beloved keepsake, she stared at her reflection. She looked at her image and tried to find a glimmer of the girl from the park, or the woman from the rainforest, or the accomplished diplomat who had brokered momentous peace agreements on Epsilon Canaris III and Dreyzen.

But she could see no sign of them.

All she saw was a tired, bitter woman who had lost her dreams of exploration to a system of rules and regulations that too often seemed to value conflict over peace.

She closed her eyes, wishing she could break the rules and ride her purple bicycle off to adventure once again.

Then she came to a decision.

* * *

[43] A low-pitched chime announced her arrival at the door to the special reception area on Deck Eight that was still human-compatible. A narrow walkway, kept separate from the adjacent Tholian-friendly environment by a complex series of interleaved forcefields—their boundaries tinted orange so as to be easily visible—ringed a portion of the room. Although the gravity and atmosphere within this walkway were kept to M-class specifications, the oppressive heat from the artificially maintained Tholian atmosphere was stifling. Burgess hadn’t been anywhere this hot since the rainforest.

The Tholians were, of course, out of the environment suits they had worn when they’d first beamed aboard. Their scant clothing—chiefly flowing, bannerlike triangles of Tholian silk or some similarly tough fiber—seemed to exist purely for adornment’s sake. Their large, polygonal heads were composed of numerous triangular and pentagonal shapes. Their six-limbed, moist-but-hard-looking bodies were all planes and angles, colored in every shade of gold, red, green, and white. However, the light refraction caused by the hot, high-pressure Tholian atmosphere and the surrounding containment forcefields made their actual hues difficult to determine.

Just like humans,Burgess thought, these people can be judged only in terms of their own environment and experiences.

She touched the small vocoder she wore around her neck and called out to a Thalian who was diligently engaging three of his insectoid limbs in some repetitive task over a blocky, crystalline machine; Burgess surmised that he was typing up a report. “Junior Ambassador Mosrene. I greet you in friendship.”

“As I receive you,” Mosrene said, clambering toward her on his lower four appendages. “What purpose does your visit serve?”

“I wish to speak to Admiral Yilskene. Please contact him for me.”

[44] Mosrene cocked his polyhedral head to one side, rotating it oddly. “You cannot contact him yourself?”

“I don’t believe it is wise for me to do so,” Burgess said. If Sulu’s crew intercepted her message, they might cut her off before she’d had her say. The captain might even have her arrested. He might do that anyway.

Moments later, an apparently bewildered Mosrene had dragged a large viewscreen-communication device—apparently hewn from some sort of stone—closer to the forcefield, and keyed in the codes for contacting Yilskene’s flagship. The screen quickly produced an image of both Yilskene—whom she had not yet met face to face—and Ambassador Kasrene, who had evidently returned to the flagship to confer with the admiral for some reason or other.

Swallowing hard, Burgess cleared her throat and said, “Admiral Yilskene, Ambassador Kasrene, I believe that only an honest and truthful exchange will help our peoples reach an accord.”

Because of their lack of easily readable facial expressions, Burgess had trouble fathoming the emotions of the pair. Still, she thought their body language suggested intense interest.

“We concur on this,” Kasrene chorused in reply.

Burgess took a deep breath. “Then in the interests of honesty, truth, and peace, I must tell you something that I know you will find greatly disturbing. ...”