Uhura and Curzon had met for a drink in the officers’ lounge on Spacedock in orbit above Earth, a tradition whenever he was in town, and were watching the big ships going to and fro like so many gigantic stately birds, while shuttles flitted among them like dragonflies.

Uhura looked at Curzon under her eyelashes. “As if I could!”

“You know you can,” he coaxed her. “I’ve got the same security clearance you do. Over the course of several lifetimes, I’ve probably done more covert work than you. In this instance, I have a fair idea what’s going on. I just need you to fill in the details.”

Two can play at this game!Uhura thought. She smiled at him.

“Why don’t you start by telling me how much you know, so I won’t have to repeat myself?”

“I know you received a, shall we say, interesting little special-delivery package from the other side that set this whole thing in motion.”

“Well, then,” Uhura said, shaking her head “no” to the Quallorian bartender when he gestured toward her empty glass, “it sounds to me as if you know as much as you need to know.”

“I’m primarily curious how the, ah, other side—” Curzon did not say “Romulans.” Out of long experience, he knew that the noisier the locale, the easier it was for someone to be listening. “—knew to send their little gift directly to you.”

“I’m head of Starfleet Intelligence, Curzon. It didn’t exactly require rocket science.”

“But why would you accept the messenger so willingly?” he persisted. “ ‘Beware Romulans bearing gifts,’ and all that, especially after we’ve each spent nearly half a century pretending the other doesn’t exist. How could you know that the gift was genuine? How did you know it wasn’t a trap?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I still don’t. Know whether or not it’s a trap, I mean. But I’m reasonably certain it’s genuine, considering the source…”

Oops!she thought, too much information.She waited for Curzon to pounce on it.

“ ‘Considering the source’?” Curzon pounced.

Uhura realized what he was doing and stopped. “Oh, no you don’t! That much I won’t tell you.”

“You don’t trust me.” It was not a question. He managed to look like a hurt child.

What was it about him? Uhura wondered. How this frail-looking man had ever found the nerve to walk out on the Klingons at Korvat was beyond her, yet something about him made her believe that he could, and it was only one of the diplomatic ploys he was famous for. She was among the few non-Trills who knew enough about them to understand the concept of the symbiont, physically vulnerable outside of its host body but, safely joined, virtually immortal. And this immortality lent Dax a vast and deep-running wisdom. But while the Curzon part was appealing enough, by himself he was truly rather unprepossessing—bookish, white-haired, with a certain elfin twinkle, but really, he was not her type. Unless, of course, it was the spots.

Most Trills had those leopard spots, starting at the hairline and going all the way down to…where? Any non-Trill who knew a Trill always had to wonder how far the spots went. But while there was an almost overwhelming desire to connect the dots and see where they would lead, in Curzon Dax’s case it was something more. Was it the synergistic blending of the two personalities that made him all but irresistible?

“I trust Curzon,” Uhura said, wanting more than anything to soothe the little-boy pout off his face. “But I don’t really know Dax. I don’t think anyone does. Trills are like elephants; they never forget. A hundred years from now or a thousand you could let something slip—”

“My lips are sealed,” he said, still twinkling at her.

“Sorry.”

“Maybe there’s something I can do to help,” Curzon suggested.

“Not unless you can join Starfleet by tomorrow afternoon and learn how to run a ship all by yourself,” she joked.

Curzon smiled. “Maybe I can’t,” he said. “But I can recommend someone who can. I believe he’s already on your short list.”

Once more Uhura didn’t ask him how he knew, but she took his recommendation. The following evening at the reception for the senior officers of the K’tarra,Curzon found her in the crowd.

He had, as she’d predicted, been drinking blood wine with Thought Admiral Klaad all evening, but while Klaad was drowsing in a corner and the reception was winding down, Curzon managed to look as if he’d been imbibing nothing but Altair water and was ready to start a new day.

Maybe that’s the secret,Uhura thought. You don’t have to outshout a Klingon, just outdrink him.

“Well?” he greeted her. “Any luck in talking my hard-headed young protégé into joining your mission?”

“I gave him twenty-four hours to think about it,” was all Uhura would say.

“I warned you it wouldn’t be easy.”

“So you did,” she acknowledged. “But one way or the other, I did want to thank you.”

“You can do that better in private,” Curzon suggested. “I’m staying in my usual suite on Embassy Row. I have an unopened bottle of a rare aperitif from Izar that will spoil you for anything else, and some recordings of Hamalki 3D string music you’ll never see or hear anywhere else. The composer is a dear friend who wrote several pieces just for me. We could…”

At her wry look, he stopped. They danced the same waltz every time they met.

“Just as friends,” he suggested. “Two intelligent people who share the same tastes in the finer things. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. I know you need to keep your mind occupied now that you’ve set this thing in motion.”

Uhura glanced at him sharply. She didn’t know how much he picked up through diplomatic channels, how much just on hearsay. If he asked her anything further, security clearance or no, there was only so much she could tell him. But he was right. Very soon, depending on the cooperation of the assistant engineer from the Okinawa,she would send a team on a very dangerous mission inside the Neutral Zone that, whether it succeeded or not, officially never happened. After that, there was nothing she could do but monitor the situation and wait. Shuffle documents on her desk, teach her class, give the occasional press conference, field the crisis or crises du jour,and wait. Go home at night to an empty house built into a hillside overlooking the Muir Woods, and wait.

Or spend at least one evening in good company while she waited.

“Spend the rest of the evening with me,” Curzon asked again. “I promise not to ask you anything more about the mission. Just two friends having a little private visit. Anything else is up to you.”

It wasn’t as if Uhura hadn’t considered other things. Curzon Dax was urbane, witty, and charming, and if he had been anything other than a Trill, she might not have been able to resist him all these years. But it was the thought that, however brief or extended their relationship might be, he or at least his symbiont would carry the memory—and no doubt the urge to gossip; she knew Trills—into subsequent lives, possibly forever, that put her off.

“Just as friends,” she agreed finally. “After all, I do owe you a favor.”

“Oh, you mean talking Captain Leyton into lending you young Benjamin Sisko?” Curzon waved it off. “That might not prove to be much of a favor. He can be incredibly stubborn. The lieutenant has a natural command ability, but anything beyond the theoretical scares him. He really has no idea who or what he is, so he loses himself in diagnostics and hypotheticals. But once you bring him around, he’ll give you the best he’s got.”

“I understand humans have an expression about ‘hiding your light under a bushel,’ ” was how Dax broached the subject with Benjamin Sisko once he knew Sisko had gotten Uhura’s summons. “One of these days, Benjamin, you’re going to take your head out of your technical manuals and notice the universe at large.”