He pretended to hesitate, looking them over one by one. “That one,” he said finally.

Her face was a mask, but inside Cretak was gloating. She had guessed correctly! She motioned to the small one with the freckles and the jade green eyes. “Come with me.”

The girl set down the basket of weeds she’d been carrying and obeyed. Concentrating on maintaining her own performance for Koval and his spy-eyes, Cretak failed to notice at the time that he was gloating, too.

Had she made a mistake? she wondered now with the hindsight of darkness and a sleepless night. Had Koval somehow steered her toward Zetha, had she misinterpreted what she took to be terror in the girl’s eyes? Was it too late to do anything about it now?

She sat up abruptly, cursing herself for a fool. How could she get word to Uhura now? She could hardly go back to Koval and ask him for yet another messenger. She was certain most of the Senate’s supposedly secure frequencies were monitored, if not her private comm as well, and if she sent anyone else across the Outmarches, Koval would know. And even if she could share what was only a hunch, would it do more harm than good?

Chapter 16

The three doctors scanned the report Uhura had sent them (“A New Cure for an Ancient Illness? The ‘Magic’ of Hilopon”) at their own individual reading speeds. Uhura waited as they read, watching their faces for reactions. McCoy was the last to finish, but the first to speak.

“Well, well, what a coincidence!” he said dryly.

“So you think it’s genuine?” Uhura said.

“Could be,” the old grouch hedged. “Where’d it come from?”

“You’re not the only one who’s been fishing,” Uhura told him. “Intercepted by one of my Listeners from a submission to the Journal of Xenohistology and Interplanetary Epidemiology.”

“Okay,” McCoy said. “I’m suitably impressed.”

“Apparently the journal wasn’t,” Uhura reported. “They’ve flagged it for rejection pending verification from outside sources. Which gives us an in. But that’s your molecule, all right.”

“Confirmed,” Selar said.

“I agree,” Crusher chimed in.

McCoy was still ruminating. “It’s still got the Thamnos cartel written all over it,” he said. “That old pirate knows damn well where his son is!” he blustered. “There oughta be some way we can turn the screws on him.”

“Probably not necessary,” Uhura said coolly. “We have ways of monitoring him. If he tries to get in touch with his son or sends anybody looking for him, we’ll track it. You rattled his cage; that’s sufficient.”

“I’d like to rattle more than that!” McCoy steamed. “What about the author of this article? Who or what is a Cinchona, and where’s it located?”

“A logical assumption would be, at the source of the hilopon,”Selar suggested.

Koval’s inner sanctum was virtually soundproof, not only because it was thick-walled and deep underground, but because those walls contained the most sophisticated baffling and jamming equipment known to Romulans. A good thing, too. At the moment, Koval’s voice was shrill enough to shatter glass.

“…because by publishing your findings this soon, you idiot, you’ve risked antagonizing an entire planet full of xenophobic Renagans who are apt to kill you for it, that’s why!” he was shouting.

“But I didn’t tell anyone where to find it!” Thamnos protested. “When the Journalpublishes my article, they’ll have to come to me.”

“Hiloponhas been touted as a folk cure in that region for generations. You might have at least had the imagination to call it by another name!” Koval’s voice dipped down into a lower, ominous register. “Oh, they’ll find you, all right, and in so doing they’ll save me the trouble of killing you. Aside from that, your research is full of holes because you’ve once again paid someone else to write it for you!”

“That’s not true!” Thamnos protested. “I put this report together myself.”

“Only because no one on Renaga can read!” Koval ground his teeth. If he’d owned a sense of irony, he’d have burst out laughing at this juncture, if only from futility. “How dareyou publish without my permission? What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t expect so many people to die. You never told me so many people were going to die.”

“So one death or a hundred is acceptable, but not thousands or tens of thousands, is that it?”

Thamnos was silent. At least, Koval thought, his anger spent, his mind already ticking over with alternatives, the transmitter was audio only, so he was spared the sight of that nauseating pink face!

“You were supposed to await my instructions,” Koval said tightly. “We’re still trying to determine why hilopononly works on Renaga. By defying my orders and publishing now, you may well have destroyed any future with us.”

“My father won’t let you hurt me!” he heard Thamnos say, and if he could have reached through the transmitter and wrapped his fingers around the man’s throat, he would have done so. “What if you never find a way to make the hiloponwork off Renaga?”

Then I persuade the Continuing Committee to send a warbird to Renaga to lay claim to thehilopon , and I personally kill you!Koval thought, shaking with anger. He listened to Thamnos mouth-breathing, the only sound from Renaga at the moment.

“What do I do now?” Thamnos asked at last when he realized Koval was not going to answer his question.

“You do nothing. Absolutely nothing, until I tell you otherwise. Can you manage that?”

Koval didn’t wait for an answer.

“Idiot!” he added once more for emphasis before terminating the transmission.

Albatrosswas en route to Renaga. McCoy had gone off-line to take a nap. The holos were no longer broadcasting to the ship, but Dr. Crusher had something on her mind, and she was talking to Uhura on discrete from her office across the quadrangle.

“Admiral? Mind if I ask you what the hell we’re doing?”

Crusher’s office faced east, but Uhura had a view to the west. The sun had just set behind the Golden Gate Bridge, and the clouds were entertaining themselves with shades of slate blue edged in fuchsia and salmon pink before a turquoise and cobalt twilight won out over all. Uhura was visited with a sudden memory of a moment in time when the bridge had been awash with flood waters, a Klingon bird-of-prey foundered bobbing in the ocean beneath it, and Earth thought it would never see the sun again. So long ago, and yet it seemed like yesterday.

And I’m still at my post trying to save the universe,she thought. Just this one more mission, and—

“Go ahead, Doctor.”

“We’ve got more than enough evidence now to hang this on the Romulans.”

“No argument there,” Uhura acknowledged. On her desktop, reports on a half-dozen new crises were streaming in from Listeners flung across two quadrants and she watched them slot into different categories of crisis awaiting SI’s attention. “Now why don’t you say what’s really on your mind?”

“Lives are being lost, and we seem to be wandering around in circles. How much longer do we continue sending the away team from one planet to another to another before we bring the evidence we have to Command and to the Federation Council and whoever else we need to and—”

“And accomplish what exactly? Alerting the Romulan Empire as a whole to what we know won’t cure this disease, Doctor.”

“We can just ask them if they’re experiencing anything similar inside the Empire. Suggest we work together on a cure. Let them take all the credit if they offer one. Because if they created this, they must have a cure.”