“In English, please.”
“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders score. With some modifications, it’s how we’ve assessed human mental status for the past four hundred years. I can’t tell you if it will work. But I have an idea what might.” Crusher hesitated. “I’d like to take her home with me tonight.”
“Doctor…” Uhura nodded toward the room behind her, where Zetha had chosen that moment to pick up a small mediscanner Crusher had left on a side counter. It bleeped sharply enough to startle her, and she set it down a little too forcefully as Crusher turned abruptly in her direction. Almost sheepishly, the girl moved away from the counter and retreated back to the bed.
“Some spy!” Crusher remarked before Uhura could state the obvious. “She’s just curious. It’s normal. My radar would go off if she wasn’tcurious. And if she could spend an evening with Wes and me in a less clinical setting, I think I could learn more. See how she socializes, get her to drop her guard.”
“Absolutely not!” Uhura said. “Don’t get soft on me now, Dr. Crusher. She’d be a security risk, and you know it.”
“Respectfully, Admiral,” Crusher said, “you’ve asked me for a psych assessment; this way I can give you one. You’re not going to get that with her sealed up in a windowless room with no one but Tuvok to talk to. Oh, I know, SI’s containment rooms have all the amenities of a luxury hotel, if you overlook the fact that the door locks in the wrong direction. She needs socialization, not just a bunch of SI types asking her questions all the time.”
“I agree,” McCoy chimed in. He had the annoying habit of presenting himself as just a voice, even though he had Uhura and Crusher on visual.
Who asked you?Uhura wanted to snap at him, but she restrained herself.
“You might remind yourself that she’s as strong as a Vulcan,” she told Crusher. “Would you be able to overpower her if she attacked you?”
Crusher held up a hypospray. “This can. Done it before with psychotic patients. Has she attacked anyone so far?”
“She’s been contained so far.”
“Do you want me to do a psych profile or don’t you?”
“Are you blackmailing me, Doctor?”
“What do you think? At home I can run her through DSMs and Rorschachs and anything else you’d like and give you an evaluation in the morning. I can also feed her a home-cooked meal and show her that humans aren’t the monsters her upbringing has no doubt led her to believe. You want to be paranoid, fine. Have Tuvok tag along. He can bunk in with Wes; they can play kal’tohtogether. But Zetha gets the guest room.”
Uhura drummed her fingers on her desk, weighing options. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind, but was she balking just because McCoy was siding with Crusher?
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said at last.
Crusher held up the hypo once again. “Where the safety of my son is concerned? Always.”
Sisko was the last to arrive at the briefing the next morning, and realized something at once as he glanced around the room.
I’m the only human on this mission,was his first thought. His second was, Get over it. Not every Vulcan is like Solok!
That particular Vulcan and his notions of racial superiority had left Sisko with a sore spot ever since his Academy days. The resentment still festered, though he hadn’t seen Solok in years. Solok was one Vulcan who didn’t seem to understand that it was illogical, not to mention unjust, to continually point out to humans where they were lacking in comparison to Vulcans, whether it was in physical strength, longevity, emotional control, or intellect.
All the more reason not to judge all Vulcans as a species. You’re in command of this mission,he reminded himself. You can’t afford to let old baggage get in your way. Besides, no Vulcan will ever be able to throw a split-finger fastball. Console yourself with that.
His reactions to his fellow Starfleet officers were fleeting. But then he caught sight of Zetha. A civilian. And another Vulcan? If so, something about her was…off, Sisko decided, but he couldn’t figure out at first what it was.
“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Sisko,” Uhura said evenly. “I believe some introductions are in order. Lieutenant Tuvok, Dr. Selar, Lieutenant Benjamin Sisko. And this is Zetha. She has come to us from across the Neutral Zone.”
“A Romulan—?” Sisko blurted before he could stop himself.
Zetha’s chin came up, her eyes narrowed, assessing this human, but saying nothing. Uhura cleared her throat, and Sisko settled himself into the only empty chair in the room.
“I’ll make this brief, people,” Uhura began. “Your goal is to attempt to track this disease to its point of origin. You’re to start with worlds where we have Listeners, and work your way backwards, following the disease vector Dr. Selar has plotted from known cases. We need to know where this began, even if you have to go all the way across the Zone and into the Empire to do so.”
She didn’t give anyone time to react, but forged ahead.
“Your cover will vary from world to world. We don’t know a lot about the worlds inside the Zone. Some are Romulan sympathizers, some would prefer to be allied with us, but the majority seem, not surprisingly, to resent being marginalized to a DMZ between two enemies whose differences they refuse to recognize. So I don’t think I need to tell any of you to get the lay of the political land before you speak.
“Mr. Sisko, you are in command. Your cover is as the skipper of the Albatross.She’s your ship. The others have chartered your ship and your services. You’re a Terran, but a freebooter with no loyalty to any government. Your cover name is Captain Jacobs. All the necessary documentation is in your personal logs onboard.”
If he noted his sudden promotion, Sisko didn’t mention it. He did notice Uhura had given him his son’s name as cover, and it was enough to make him smile. Uhura read his thoughts on his face and spoke before he could.
“Don’t get sentimental on me, Lieutenant. I gave you that name as a mnemonic. It’s one thing you’ll never forget, whatever the circumstances.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your goal is simple,” Uhura continued addressing the group. “Target the places where people gather. Talk to them, monitor news reports, listen to gossip. If possible, monitor the medical clinics. Any report of unusual illness, get in as close as you can and collect what you can, bring it back to the ship for testing, and interface with Starfleet Medical.
“Tuvok and Selar, where you believe it best to be Vulcan, you will use your true names; where Romulan cover would be preferable, use the names Leval and Vesak. You are itinerant merchants, husband and wife, and Zetha is your niece.”
Selar nodded. Tuvok reacted not at all. Zetha looked as if she were about to speak, but thought better of it.
“Your course has already been laid in; the ship knows where she needs to go, but you can override if necessary. Specifics on known worlds are in the memory banks; you’ll have plenty of time in transit to memorize the details. Dr. McCoy, Dr. Crusher, and I will be available to confer on holo whenever necessary. I don’t have to tell you that if for any reason you’re boarded, use your discretion, but if you’re taken in tow, you dump everything.
“I wish I had time to go into more detail now, but the one thing we don’t have is time. This thing is spreading. There are now over thirty Federation worlds reporting deaths, and the media’s picked it up; we can no longer keep this quiet. People are dying. We have to track this thing to its source and put a stop to it.”
She made eye contact with each of them, trying unsuccessfully to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“Dismissed,” she said, “and all my hopes go with you.”
“So you’re Romulan?” Sisko broke what seemed like an eternal silence, punctuated only by the hum and bleep of instrumentation and the odd, ominous creak from the old bird now and then that he was determined to track down as soon as he had a moment. Even though Albatrosshad been on autopilot since she’d coughed and grumbled her way out of one of the most remote berths in the Utopia Planitia yards, he still felt a strange obligation to sit at the conn and watch the stars go by. At some point, Zetha had joined him.