She endured their efforts to entertain her, uncertain of the rules. No one had ever singled her out for such attention before, unless they wanted something in return. Assuming Crusher was monitoring her as much as Tuvok had been, she watched and waited for cues. Did she want to watch a video with Beverly, or play a game with Wes? She would do either, both, whatever was needed to get through this night until Tuvok retrieved her and she learned her fate on the morrow.

Had Zetha been amazed to learn that she would be going with the away team? There were not words enough in her vocabulary to encompass her amazement. Yet nothing showed on her face. She would find acting the part of a Vulcan, when the time came, easy enough.

So the Crushers had accepted her, and even the ancient one named McCoy, who otherwise seemed so abrasive, had found a smile for her.

“Zetha, is it?” he’d asked, deigning to appear in full for a change instead of as merely a voice or a floating head. “My, aren’t you a pretty little thing! Or am I allowed to say that? My guess is both our worlds allow an old geezer like me to say pretty much whatever I want. Feel free to tell me to shut up.”

“I would not do that,” she said, repressing the urge to smile for the first time in a long time. Aemetha would have liked this one, she decided.

But this Sisko,Zetha thought, watching him out of the corners of her eyes. What does he want? He is in charge, and it is a given that I will obey his restrictions. Does he think I know how to operate this ship or, more to the point, how to sabotage it? He speaks of food. Perhaps he intends to cook some elaborate meal, and I can praise it and win his trust that way. If he knew what I have had to eat or not eat in order to get to this point…

“Are you hungry?” the Lord had taunted her on the third day of the survival course.

“Are you?” she shot back, for the sheer pleasure of watching his hand half-curl into a fist involuntarily before he became aware of it.

“Tanclus fainted during the forced march today,” he told her instead.

“Did he? Tanclus is twice my size. He needs twice as much food as I do.”

“And you think that makes you stronger?” the Lord sneered.

“If you say so, Lord,” she said, waiting for the blow to fall. For once, it didn’t.

I cannot do the impossible,she thought now, getting up from the seat Sisko had assigned her and heading for Selar’s lab, letting Sisko have the stars to himself. But I will do the best I can.

They were two days into the journey before she understood what the problem was.

Crew quarters on Albatrosswere cramped; the four of them lived, ate, and slept in a single compartment. There were two bunks, one atop the other, built into each side, and a table in the center that did service for meals from the nearby replicator or the minuscule galley adjacent. At other times, it served as map table, writing desk, showcase for the one prized Vulcan orchid Tuvok had brought with him, or anything else any of them might be working on.

It wasn’t the crowding. On cold nights, she and as many as a score of other street brats had bundled together under the piles of clothing in Aemetha’s salon to keep warm. It was because the tidiness and order reminded her of the barracks, and it was because she dreamed.

Chapter 10

The day was overcast and chill; it had been raining. She and Tahir had finished their purloined meal in the alley behind the Orchid and were loitering in the main square near the Senate, watching vids in the window of the Bureau of Announcements, when it happened.

Scroungers’ Second Law: Hide in plain sight. The shadow of the Senate was always replete with scroungers, forgers, black marketeers, operating under the premise that there were more guards per square meter here than anywhere else on Romulus, and where better to conduct one’s illicit business than right beneath their noses because, in their bureaucratic smugness, the powers that were assumed no one would dare?

Thus she and Tahir, having earlier in the day relieved a priggish apothecary of two crates of simple remedies that might keep the foundlings’ winter-long sniffles from becoming something deadlier, were celebrating by filling their own bellies first for once and watching snippets of the narratives that people who had vidscreens could see in the comfort of their homes.

There were two rows of screens, usually reserved for official announcements, but the Praetor was away at his winter palace and there were no official announcements that day. So the two rows of screens warred with each other, one row portraying a space battle, the other a lurid romance replete with betrayals, elopements, suicide pacts, and lamentations by both families at the funerals.

Because there were no announcements, the loudspeakers were turned off, and no sound penetrated the window. Thus she and Tahir watched both vids simultaneously, supplying their own mocking dialogue and holding each other up against paroxysms of laughter when something, and it was not Tahir’s hand working its way, as if accidentally, down from her shoulder, made her entire body tense.

“Something…behind us!” she hissed, jabbing Tahir in the ribs to get his attention. “Go, now!”

Never run when you’ve stolen something. When you’re afraid, act brazen. But when an unmarked black hovercar with sealed windows begins to slow on its way past you, run as if your life depends on it, because it does.

Scroungers knew every escape route in the rabbit warrens of the old city—every alley, cellar, tunnel, catacomb, roof access, secret entrance, and exit. But sometimes the escape routes simply weren’t there.

“The cellar!” Tahir called out behind her, but she slewed around long enough to shout “No!” before zigzagging past it. Part of a network of tunnels through the cellars of boarded-up buildings, she’d heard rumors that it served as a meeting place for a mysterious group whose name meant roughly “unification” and, while she personally thought they were insane, she would not endanger them. Her breath coming shorter, she continued to run.

They should have split up, she thought later, then realized it wouldn’t have mattered. Perhaps Tahir thought he was protecting her by following, ready to throw himself in the hovercar’s path so she could get away. She would never know. They ran until they could run no more, then stopped, exhausted, in an alley where a high crumbling wall separated an ancient burial ground from the featureless rear walls of a row of warehouses.

“A lovers’ tryst,” Tahir said with what little breath he could catch, grabbing her elbow and positioning her with her back against the wall while he stood in front of her, ready perhaps to shield her body with his own if there was to be any shooting. The alley dead-ended a few meters beyond them. They could hear the hovercar’s purr somewhere overhead as it rose above the rooftops, as only official cars were permitted, to scan the alleys, no doubt reading them on infrared. “Only reason we were running was so your lover didn’t spot us. We’re only stealing kisses now.”

Or you’re only using it as an excuse!Zetha thought with what little of her attention wasn’t fixed on the hovercar, begging it: Go on, search elsewhere. It’s not us you want; we’re nothing! There’s nothing here to see!

Tahir raised his right hand, the first two fingers together, and touched them to her lips. The proper way was to touch hand to hand first, but he wanted it to seem to their pursuers that they had been doing this for a while. Zetha touched her fingers to his lips in turn. Ironic, she thought, her mind squirreling, that after months of teasing each other, their first kiss should come on the verge of death! Fingers and lips were numb with terror; only her heart, threatening to pound its way out of her chest, and her eyes seemed to work. The latter were filled with the sight of the lone aristocratic figure flexing fingers gloved in expensive leather, casually making its way toward them.