“This is not the time,” Tuvok repeated. “We will return later, perhaps after nightfall, or choose another locale. Otherwise we risk a choice between being accosted by an angry mob or, since we do not yet know how it is spread, possibly contracting the illness ourselves.”

Selar had no choice but to go with him. She continued surreptitiously scanning the crowd as they walked, her readings indicating that perhaps one person in fifty was affected.

The street narrowed to an alley, which dead-ended abruptly. As they doubled back and returned to the herb sellers’ street, they heard more shouting.

Chapter 15

Ki Baratan was sweltering that night under an unusually early heat wave. Romulus, it was said, had only two seasons—too hot, and too cold. From the comfort of her climate-controlled suite high above the pavement, Cretak watched the streets empty of pedestrians as the curfew sounded. Soon there was nothing to see below but an occasional air-car on patrol, stirring the debris at the curb as it passed. And were those—? No, they couldn’t be. Vermin, even in this part of the city? Disgusted, Cretak let the filmy drape fall over the window and moved away.

What would this city be like?she wondered, not for the first time. This prefecture, this province, this region, this planet, this system, this empire, if we weren’t always at war?

But how can we not be, when whom we are most at war with is ourselves?

The aristocracy hid themselves behind the walls of their great estates, the Senate saw to it that the areas surrounding official buildings, the places outworlders saw, were maintained, but the rest of the city was a shambles of potholed, muddy pavements, piles of uncollected refuse rotting in alleys and banked against the sides of buildings by the prevailing wind, swirling into ever-changing tels of new piled upon old, chaotic time capsules evidencing: Here we were when this happened, when this emperor died and this war overtook us, when we invaded here and were invaded there, all the way back, it wouldn’t surprise her, to the Sundering. In that case, there would also be evidence of the Gnawing buried in the debris of their past. Always, like a knife scar through the psyche, the Gnawing.

Is it only that?she wondered. Only the Gnawing that has conditioned us so that, no matter how much some of us have, we always want more?

She couldn’t see the decay from here, but knew the signs abounded throughout the city, the broken cornices and battered facades of once beautiful buildings, windows shattered and patched and repatched with scrap lumber and great running globs of adhesive, coming unstuck when it rained. And dirt, always dirt, no matter how many times the old ones came out with their twig brooms to sweep, like some antique parody of what once was, but was still, because the sanitation bureau was too corrupt and the automated cleaners were more often broken down and in the shop than not.

Everything gray. Gray buildings, gray pavements, gray clothing, gray souls. Why must we all dress alike,she wondered, affect the same helmetlike hairstyle, if not to blend in, disappear, say to the forces that can track us by a fingerprint, a breath, a smattering of chromosomes: “It’s not me. I didn’t do it. You want someone else!”

Elements,Cretak thought. I am so sick of it! It’s in the very air we breathe, gray air, gray food, gray souls. We swallow down the grayness, the broken, the trashed and rubbishy; our very souls are chipped and worn and in need of replacement, replenishment, renewal.

And now this new thing, this illness, scattering among the colony worlds but, evidenced by the new reports her sources brought to her, moving inward, toward the homeworld, even as it moved outward, across the Zone, to the other side. Ahundred cases here, a thousand there, an entire suburb cordoned off on such-and-such a world. And yet, in the official news sources…nothing. People who have lost relatives are told it was a chance thing. There is no epidemic, and anyway the government is investigating it. Return to your homes and go on with your lives. Or else.

Only one entity within the power structure would have the temerity to experiment thus on its own citizens, Cretak thought: the Tal Shiar. And why, without any proof, when she thought of epidemics did she automatically think of Koval? He had been fixated on sickness for as long as she had known him, perhaps only because Tuvan’s Syndrome ran in his family and he sensed his life would be shorter than most. Cretak had no proof he was behind this—pestilence—and even if she did, what could she do with it?

She had been offworld often enough to know that it wasn’t the universe that was gray, but only those things touched by Romulans. We left Vulcan because it was nothing but sand and logic,she thought grimly. Now we have become nothing but dust and deviousness!

Yet here am I,Cretak thought, secure in the Senate despite my early association with Pardek, currently in disfavor, with whatever power that gives me to oppose the sort of calculated chaos the likes of Koval plays at, if only I can stay ahead of the knives. Madness. If Koval loses control of whatever he’s doing, I shall be senator of a dung-hill. Some distinction! But this is my world. What else can I do?

It was late. There was much to do on the morrow. Cretak hated sleeping draughts, but took one anyway, knowing there would be no sleep this night if she did not. As she waited for oblivion, she went over the day’s events in her mind.

Once word had reached her in its roundabout way that her Pandora’s box had been delivered safely and its message understood, she had thought her part in this was over. She did not understand enough about medicine to know if this horror could be cured or at least defended against. Her only thought in giving the information to Uhura had been to say: Don’t let me carry this alone!

But she was embroiled now. Even as she wanted to stop up her ears against the influx of reports, they continued to come to her, all but driving her to despair. Had she sent the messenger too late, or too soon? Or if there truly was nothing to be done, had there been any point in sending the messenger at all?

“…guaranteed to cure what ails you, stranger!” a hoarse voice croaked. “Come try a free sample on that bruise on your arm.”

“A snake-oil salesman,” Tuvok concluded. And at Selar’s inquiring look, he elaborated, “Terrestrial culture, pre-warp. Dealers in false medicinals. Their cures were always fake, usually harmless, occasionally dangerous. An interesting example of the placebo effect. Such individuals would sell everything from herbs to wood shavings to common soil, presented in a pleasing form.”

The salesman was a scrawny, red-faced humanoid with a raucous voice worn down by a lifetime of shouting out his wares. A small crowd had gathered around his booth to listen, but no one was buying. Even after he “cured” a “volunteer” from the crowd, no one was buying.

“A common technique,” Tuvok whispered to Selar. “The ‘huckster’ frequently planted a ‘shill’ in the audience to feign an illness. This person’s ‘cure’ often inspired purchases in others.”

“Curious,” Selar replied. “I would be very interested in the composition of this miraculous substance.”

“Indeed,” Tuvok said as they began to work their way through the crowd.