“Hypothetically,” Selar said quietly. “If it worked.”

Crusher had been studying the two organisms intently. “You started to say something about its being inert.”

“Correct. I have tested it against the Gnawing. It is ineffective. In fact, it does not kill even ordinary staphylococcus. There are several potential reasons for this.”

“There’s something I’m not getting here,” Uhura interrupted. “Why would something found in the soil of a planet hundreds of light-years from Romulus cure a disease found only on Romulus?”

“You mean a disease found only in the soilon Romulus,” McCoy supplied for her. “Who knows? Why do targeted histamines ingest some kinds of cancer? Why does bread mold kill everything from pneumonia to the clap? And why does Rigelian fever affect humans as well as Vulcans, and why it is cured by something found on Holberg 917-G? One of the universe’s unanswered mysteries, one of God’s little jokes. From a purely empirical point of view, it does, that’s all. We’ll philosophize about it later; for now, we work with it.”

“It would fit with Sagan’s theory about star stuff,” Crusher said thoughtfully. The others looked at her. “C’mon, guys, am I the only one who knows this? Carl Sagan, late twentieth century Earth, taught physics in a way so simple a child could understand it. God, I think I can recite it from memory! ‘We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the Cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.’ ”

She stopped, suddenly embarrassed.

“Why, Doctor, you’re a poet,” Uhura said appreciatively.

“Brava!”McCoy chimed in.

“In other words,” Uhura went on, “whatever cosmic forces formed this part of space might have split these two molecules out of a single matrix and scattered them across parsecs of space to form two separate, compatible entities on two distant worlds.”

“Something like that,” Crusher acknowledged. “Even a passing comet could have scattered biological debris on both worlds.”

“Well, now isn’t that interesting…” Uhura said, accessing something on her office screen that the others couldn’t see yet.

Awake despite the sleeping draught, Cretak reviewed everything she had done since Taymor’s death. It all had the quality of dream. Sometimes her own temerity amazed her. But she had been consumed with rage when she showed up in Koval’s office that day, and her anger had neutralized her fear.

In the old days, she might simply have accused Koval and his office of complicity in her cousin’s death, drawn her honor blade, and exacted his life for Taymor’s. Then, of course, Koval’s second would have had to challenge her, and then her family—well. While some might simplemindedly think that all disputes could be resolved at the point of a knife, others had learned to be more subtle.

She would use the Tal Shiar’s own methods against them. She could not bring Taymor back, nor any of the others the disease had already taken. But she could expose the plot, and at least stop, if not bring down, the plotters, without their ever knowing it was she.

Thus she appeared in Koval’s office, flustering his aide with her silky request to speak with him even though, oh, dear! she had committed the unconscionable gaffe of showing up without an appointment.

Don’t simper!she warned herself as the aide asked her to wait in the soundproof antechamber and she scowled at the official decorators’ consummately bad taste. You were never girlish, even when you were a girl, and he’ll remember that. He also knows your record in the Senate, and that fluttering is not your style. You will appear preoccupied, but not silly.

“Kimora?” Koval managed to act ever so slightly surprised without altering his face, his stance, the tone of his voice. Cretak assumed whatever genuine surprise he might have experienced at the mention of her name had been brought under control well before she crossed the threshold. “What ever brings you here? You’re looking well. Flourishing, in fact.”

Then I’m a better actress than I thought!Cretak thought as the aide brushed past her a touch too close for propriety. Listening, taking readings, or simply rude?

“I am as well as can be expected, thank you, given a recent death in the family, as I’m sure you know.”

This time Koval allowed something resembling embarrassment to touch his features momentarily. “Yes, of course, your cousin. How stupid of me to forget. My condolences.”

She acknowledged this with a brief nod, lowering her head just enough so that he wouldn’t see the fire in her eyes, thinking: You, forget? Since when? I will see to it that you never forget, murderer! At least one result of my visit here today will be that you give orders to your purveyors to steer clear of important families from here on.

“That is not why I’m here,” she said. “As I’m sure you also know, I am part of the diplomatic mission to the Border-lands. There is much to do before we leave, and my staff is overworked as it is….”

“Is there anything I can do?” Koval asked helpfully.

Cretak allowed her expression to brighten, as if with great relief. “Possibly. In fact, you were the first I thought of. I need a messenger. Someone discreet, possibly expendable. I know you are training a cadre of young people for special missions, and I thought perhaps—”

“Well, if dense as a stone qualifies as discreet…” Koval was ruminating. “Walk with me.”

He would not bring her to the barracks; the crowding and the squalor might offend her delicate sensibilities. Instead he brought her to the official gardens, where he had sent some of his charges to pull weeds and rake up debris.

There were official gardeners to maintain the official gardens, but Koval didn’t trust them. Afraid that someone might plant listening devices or introduce dangerous bacteria or poisonous plants, he insisted that only his ghilikwork the gardens surrounding his office. He personally hated greenery and would have preferred to pave everything over to give himself a clear field of vision but, if official decree said that he must have official gardens, his mongrels could serve as the first line of defense therein.

“You may have any of these,” he told Cretak with a proprietary air, as if offering her the choice of a hunting dog or a steed from his stable. “They’re all at the same level of training. Most of them can even read and write.”

“You joke!” Cretak feigned a smile, though her eyes betrayed something else. “I’m sure they’re all as bright and able as—”

“—as a true Romulan? Don’t be so sure. But, please, feel free.”

There were seven of them, working with varying degrees of assiduousness. As she approached them, each one stopped work long enough to offer a bow and a murmured “my Lady…” in deference to her caste and office. Most looked down at their shoes as they spoke. Only one looked her briefly in the eye, and the look all but rocked Cretak back on her heels.

Nevertheless, she passed that one by and moved to the next and the next until she had completed a circuit of the gardens and studied each of them.

“Well?” Koval said airily, but with a touch of impatience, his tone implying that he really had far more important things to do.

Cretak pretended to hesitate. “It’s difficult to decide. If I could speak to each of them…”

Koval shrugged. “Take all the time you wish. But I don’t want to leave you alone with them. Not that they’d try anything. They know they’re monitored constantly—” He indicated the spy-eyes set into the walls. “—but I’d prefer that you have guards with you as well.”

He snapped his fingers at the nearest ghilik,but Cretak stayed him.

“I’ve taken enough of your time already,” she said and, drawing upon everything she had learned about him during their brief affair so long ago, added: “Tell me which of them you can most easily spare.”