“Granted, Captain. Suspicion is a difficult beast to tame. You may have more of a gift for diplomacy than I’d given you credit for.”

“Thank you,” he said, surprised by the compliment.

Burgess continued. “So I’m sure you’ll bear in mind that the Tholians’ next actions will no doubt be greatly influenced by whatever they may discover about youractivities here, in their sovereign space. If you arespying on them, Captain—and if they catch you at it—you could very well touch off a war.”

Sulu bristled at that. “That’s a lot of ‘ifs,’ Ambassador.”

“Good diplomacy is largely about managing contingencies,” she said, her emotions now seeming to be under far better control than they had been when she’d first come in. “And one of the contingencies I now must plan for is the possibility of a tragic error on Starfleet’s part. A mistake that may frighten the Tholians back into belligerency and isolation.”

Sulu was growing weary of the ambassador’s Starfleet-as-the-villain perspective. He considered pointing out that some of the most accomplished diplomats in Federation [36] history had begun their careers in Starfleet. Then he decided that his life’s work, and the ideals it embodied, needed no defense. It was time to turn the tables.

“The outbreak of war is often seen as a failure of diplomacy, Ambassador,” Sulu said.

She paused as if to consider his words. If they roused her anger, she concealed it well. Finally, she said, “If diplomacy fails because of the actions of the warriors, Captain, then whose failure is it, really?”

And with that, she crossed to the door and departed, leaving Sulu alone with his growing misgivings about the prospects for peace with the Tholians—and with Burgess.

She’s on the same side I am,he reminded himself. But the Tholians are definitely hiding something, whether she wants to face that or not.

Chapter 4

Aidan Burgess carefully unlocked the purple bicycle which was chained to a post in the cramped alleyway between the townhouses. She made sure that it didn’t clink as she laid it on the ground in the darkness. Since it was summer, the windows to her parent’s bedroom were open, and she knew that Mama Maére and Mama Diana would punish her if they knew she was sneaking out this late.

But Aidan was ten years old, and there were lots of things she did that were secret. She had been coming out at night for two weeks now, pushing her bicycle up the steep incline of San Francisco’s Lombard Street, and coasting on it all the way back down the other side. The first time, she had just wanted to see what the city looked like after everyone else had gone to bed.

The second night, she had ventured all the way out westward to Golden Gate Park, and had seen two people sleeping there, in bedrolls, under the stars. She watched them from a distance for a while, then crept closer. Eventually, one of them, a girl in her late teens, spoke to her.

Ever since then, Aidan had returned to the park nightly to have conversations with her new friends, Lynna and Cal. They were traveling across the country, seeing the sights, exploring the world around them. They had little that they [38] took with them, but people took care of them along the way. Sometimes their benefactors were fellow travelers, sometimes they were locals.

Lynna and Cal told Aidan all about their adventures, good and bad. A few spots in North America, they’d said, still hadn’t been put quite right after World War III, and that had happened over two hundred years ago. And while some areas had rebuilt their sprawl of cities, other sections of the country—just like here in the San Francisco Bay Area—had reverted to a greener, more natural state as portions of Earth’s population traveled to the stars.

Aidan wanted to accompany them as they explored the country, but they told her it wasn’t right, it wasn’t her time. When she was older, she could make such decisions about her life. She could explore the world, meet people, perhaps even join Starfleet and see the galaxy. But for now, she had to be content with listening to her new friends’ stories of life on the road.

One warm summer night, Aidan rode up to the usual meeting spot, but found that the sleeping bags and packs were gone. Lynna and Cal were missing as well. Aidan called for them, but no one answered. She sat in the grass where they had always sat together, and waited. Eventually, she decided she had to go home. But as she turned to go back to her bike, something at the base of a nearby tree caught her eye.

The small package had a piece of paper with her name on it, and the words “fellow traveler” written underneath. She opened the package to find a bracelet inside. Holding it up in the moonlight, she saw that it wasn’t a fancy one made of metal, but was instead constructed of multicolored strings. None of the stones—which were strung like beads on the bracelet—matched. But Aidan knew that each one came with a story. Lynna and Cal had picked up the rocks on their travels—turquoise in Montana, an agate from somewhere in the Southwest, polished conch shell from the FloridaGulf[39] Coast, an Oregon sunstone—and Lynna had carried them with her in a sack.

Aidan came back to the park the following night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Each time, she wore the bracelet left for her by Lynna and Cal.

One day, Aidan’s mothers took her to the beach, and she found some small seashells in the wet sand. Mama Diana went swimming in the ocean, and emerged with some seaweed or kelp draped atop her head. Aidan threaded two of the small shells onto her bracelet that evening, and vowed to remember the story about her day at the beach when she saw Lynna and Cal again.

Ten years later, Aidan Burgess had more stories to tell if she ever ran into her friends from the park again. She knew it wasn’t likely, but stranger things had happened. Her explorations of the world had shown her that.

She and her fiancé, Ramon Escovarre, had come to the rainforests of the Amazon a few weeks earlier. Those forests had flourished during the two centuries following World War III. Now that the miners, factory farmers, and loggers were gone, most of the land was green again. There was little to explore here that technology had not laid bare in some fashion, though; sensor sweeps and mapping had shown exactly how many neo-hunter-gatherer tribes now lived within the jungles.

Although most of the tribes had frequent visitors from the outside world, many of them lived in relative isolation. The concept fascinated both Aidan and Ramon, the notion that there were humans living, loving, and thriving on Earth who had deliberately absented themselves from modern culture and technology.

So they had embarked on this journey of exploration, bringing with them as little of the outside world as possible. They had communicators and transponder tags, just in case of emergency; should they need medical aid, they could quickly be beamed or shuttled to safety. But they had [40] debated whether or not to bring a universal translator and a hand-phaser. Finally, they had agreed to bring both, but remained determined to use them only in the direst of emergencies.

On the tenth day, Aidan could feel other presences in the trees and shadows around them. They were being watched, studied, measured, scrutinized ... She called out to them numerous times, but an answer did not immediately come.

That night a response came, as shadowy forms approached from outside their encampment. Ramon saw them first, past the flickering flames of their small campfire. And then Aidan saw them, too. They were nearly naked, with dark skin and even darker hair. Aidan motioned them closer slowly, proffering the hand signs she had learned from explorers who had visited other indigenous tribes.

The tribespeople left later that night, but were back again in the morning. They led Aidan and Ramon to a village, where more of the natives viewed them with wide, curious eyes. Aidan allowed them to prod and touch her, feeling her clothing and her skin and her hair.