Brinkmanship Page 5

  Crusher turned to look out the window. Although they were only one floor up, this building seemed to be the tallest in the capital and consequently gave her a good view out across Guwine. Long avenues curved around the city, with short spirals of smaller roads branching out. Low buildings and little gardens were gathered haphazardly around these roads such that it was difficult to see where the greenery ended and the buildings started, as if nature and culture were indistinguishable. It gave the whole settlement a serene, pastoral quality. Crusher saw children playing in a large green space across the nearest avenue, and wondered whether “park” was the right word, implying as it did some sort of barrier between it and the rest of the city. She wondered what life must be like for Venetan children, surrounded by so many wise and ancient elders. She smiled. Perhaps not too different from René, growing up on the Enterprise.

  “It’s a beautiful place,” Ilka said.

  “Reminds me of Paris,” Crusher said absently, refilling her glass with a pale yellow sparkling liquid that tasted pleasantly like elderflower. Ilka, accepting a refill, sipped and wrinkled her nose.

  “Not a patch on your champagne, Doctor,” she said with a dismissive sniff.

  The chatter in the room from all the Venetans now present was very noisy. They made an interesting sight. Four of their species were easily distinguishable either by their heights (varying from petite to imposing) or by the soft fur upon the bodies of two of them. Everything else was simply a matter of counting fingers. They mixed together freely and, having taken their seats, seemed amused if rather perplexed by what their visitors were doing. Crusher, wondering who they all were, realized that they must simply be ordinary people interested in seeing firsthand the visitors from other worlds.

  Looking around the room, something on the far wall caught her eye. She tapped Ilka on the arm and pointed. “Recording devices,” she said. “These aren’t closed proceedings, are they?”

  “The Venetans have a completely open society,” Ilka said. “Closed proceedings would make no sense to them. First to the room gets a seat; everyone else can watch live.” Ilka nodded across the room to where Picard, his frown deepening with each moment, was in whispered conversation with a very unhappy-looking Detrek. “Shall you inform Captain Picard, or shall I?”

  “I’ll pick my moment, thanks.”

  “Then in the meantime,” Ilka said very softly, “may I ask whether your government has yet taken advantage of the offer from the Venetans to inspect Outpost V-4?”

  Crusher, circling the remains of her drink around the base of her glass, considered the question and the potential reasons for asking. Remember that she’s an ally—but she’s not Federation. You don’t have to tell her everything.

  “I understand that the offer is being seriously considered.” Crusher smiled at her new friend over the rim of her glass. “I’m just the doctor, Ilka. They don’t tell me half of what’s going on.”

  “Beverly, I don’t believe that for one moment!”

  Their amiable fencing halted when a set of large double doors at the far end of the chamber swung open. Even the Venetans went quiet as Rusht swept into the room.

  Rusht was on the very imposing end of the Venetan height spectrum, nearly two meters tall. Crusher checked immediately for high heels but couldn’t see below the hem of Rusht’s long pale-green gown. Nor was her hair adding any extra height: it was pulled back sharply from her brow to give the effect of a dark peaked cap. In fact, Rusht’s whole style was unornamented to the point of severe, as if dressing up was something that took attention away from more serious business, something that children might do. Ilka murmured under her breath and reached up to touch one of her earrings in an almost nervous gesture. Not for the first time in her career, Crusher was grateful for the low-pressure anonymity of a uniform.

  Another Venetan, smaller and covered with beautiful gold fur with darker stripes along her arms and temples, followed Rusht into the room. Rusht’s aide, perhaps? Did the Venetans have aides? How was this going to work? But Crusher’s attempts to guess how this already bewildering meeting would play out stopped when the third figure entered the room and her startling beauty nearly took Crusher’s breath away. This tall, glowing woman, fluid in movement and yet clearly very strong, was surely a Tzenkethi.

  Crusher exhaled slowly. She had never seen one in person before. The aesthetic effect was remarkable, and the inclusion of a Tzenkethi in the Venetan diplomatic team sent about as strong a signal as possible about the strengthening ties between their world and the bigger, more powerful empire at their border. The Venetans really were angry.

  What’s behind that? Crusher wondered. Why such depth of feeling? We were careless, perhaps, but we were also preoccupied. We were at war, for heaven’s sake! Surely our lack of attention was understandable. So why was the snub felt so deeply?

  “Well, Beverly,” murmured Ilka, “I believe we are outclassed—visually, at least.”

  Rusht and her companion spoke quietly to the Tzenkethi for a few moments. The Tzenkethi moved to one end of the table and, with infinite grace, rearranged her body so that she was comfortably seated on the floor. Her face was a mask, unreadable. Rusht took a seat near her at the end of the same curved table. Her colleague sat beside her.

  “I am Rusht,” she said simply. Her voice was low, but it carried. She gestured to her companion. “This is Vitig. We’ve decided that we’ll be the ones to speak to you.” She looked around the room at the confusion of delegates, sighed, and said, “Sit wherever you like. We should begin.”

  The chaos among the delegates, which had subsided when Rusht entered the room, did not pick up again. The members of the three delegations, much subdued, quickly organized themselves around three points across the two tables, with Jeyn and Picard diagonally opposite Rusht and Vitig, and Detrek and the Cardassians along the curve to their right. Dygan, sitting behind Detrek, was making an effort not to look anxious and instead ready and eager to respond to any request his government’s representative made of him. The Ferengi took their place to the left of the Federation representatives, around from the Venetans on their table. Ilka put down her glass and went to join her delegation. As she moved away, she murmured to Crusher, “First point to Rusht.”

  But Crusher wasn’t too sure. Yes, on the surface it seemed that with one well-judged entrance and a few well-judged words, Rusht had managed to take control of the proceedings, but something about her demeanor suggested that she found the behavior of her guests rather wearying. She seemed . . . tired by their antics. Much like Jean-Luc, in fact, Crusher reflected. Still, it was true that whatever Rusht’s intention, the delegates from the Khitomer Accords were now on the defensive.

  Crusher picked up a chair and put it down behind Jeyn and Picard, and found herself beside a cheerful Venetan who offered her his bag of sweets. At his insistence she took a couple, putting one in her pocket for later. Rolling the other slowly around her mouth (it had an almost peppery flavor—surprising, but not unpleasant), she leaned back so that she had a good view of the opposing parties—or, rather, a good view of the Tzenkethi behind Rusht.

  In fact, everyone who wasn’t a Venetan was goggling at the Tzenkethi, or pretending not to. Rusht said, “I should introduce a good friend of the convention, Alizome Vik Tov-A.”

  An approving murmur rose up from around the room as the Venetans welcomed their guest. Crusher flipped mentally back through the briefing documents she had read en route and tried to decipher the mysterious code of the Tzenkethi naming system.

  Alizome Vik Tov-A . . . Alizome was a personal name. Tov was a status marker, indicating her importance as part of the governing echelon, the ruling class. Vik, as Crusher understood it, was a functional designation, indicating her specific purpose within that echelon. It meant Alizome was a speaker, permitted to conduct negotiations on behalf of her Autarch and speak in his voice. Was she sanctioned to do that today, Crusher wondered, or was she here simply to observe and then report back to her mas
ters? As for A, well, the genetic grading spoke for itself. Altogether, if intelligence on Tzenkethi naming conventions was accurate, Alizome Vik Tov-A was a very prestigious member of Tzenkethi society. This person might even have the ear of the elusive and mysterious Autarch himself.

  Ambassador Jeyn, taking the lead for the allies in their negotiations, got the nod from Ilka and Detrek. Jeyn stood up and smiled across the table at Rusht. The Venetans, politely, went (mostly) quiet. Crusher relaxed. Jeyn was as much a veteran of this kind of occasion as Jean-Luc.

  “On behalf of my own government,” Jeyn said, “and on behalf of my two colleagues, I’d like to thank you formally for your welcome today, Rusht—”

  A raised palm from Rusht stopped Jeyn in mid-flow. “You are mistaken,” Rusht said.

  Jeyn, who had simply been warming up, blinked at her in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

  “You are mistaken. I have offered no welcome. It would be better for all of us if you were not inaccurate. This has caused difficulties between our governments in the past and brought us to the unfortunate situation in which we find ourselves now.”

  There was a short, charged, and extremely embarrassed silence. Then the Venetans began to murmur to each other. There was no glee or schadenfreude in them, but Crusher rapidly got the impression that they agreed with what Rusht had said. Again, it was not that a point had been scored but that something necessary and accurate had been said. Across the room, Alizome glowed gently and turned an impassive golden eye upon Ambassador Jeyn.

  Jeyn was completely at a loss as to what to say in response to such blunt hostility. Not so Detrek, however, who, eyes flashing, leaned forward and said, “This is outrageous! You invite us to your world simply to insult us—?”

  Dygan, seated behind her, flinched. Crusher saw him throw an anxious look across the table at Picard.

  Who swiftly intervened. “You are correct, Rusht,” he said, “that you have made no formal welcome. Yet in the hospitality that has been shown since our arrival—the rooms, the refreshments—and in your simple willingness to meet us after the disappointments of the past, I fear we must be forgiven if we misconstrued these signs as a welcome. Our gratitude for this my colleague has, I think, accurately conveyed on behalf of all of us.”

  That voice, Crusher thought fondly. Who could possibly be immune to its charm? I know I’m not.

  And Rusht, if not charmed, seemed at least prepared to be persuaded by the sentiment expressed.

  “Skillful words,” she said with a slight smile. “We knew that already about the Federation, of course. Words came easily, although action did not. But I’m ready, for the moment, to hear more.” She glanced briefly across at Detrek (was that contempt in her eyes?) and then looked back at Picard. “From you, Picard, at least.”

  Crusher breathed out slightly and relaxed. She saw Dygan do the same. Nice save, Jean-Luc. That’s why they send you on these missions.

  4

  FROM:

  Civilian Freighter Inzitran, flagship, Merchant Fleet 9

  TO:

  Ementar Vik Tov-A, senior designated speaker, Active Affairs, Department of the Outside

  STATUS:

  Estimated time to border: 32 skyturns

  Estimated time to destination: 47 skyturns

  Waypoint 42. Fleet course adjustment executed successfully.

  The next time Efheny went to the eatery at the covered market, there was no sign of Hertome. She was able to enjoy her leti and biscuit in peace. She watched the bustle of the crowd and observed the servers, moving silently between tables, signaling orders back to the kitchen with a kind of finger poetry that made her xenoanthropologist’s heart sing. She needed this moment of solitude. She was still uncertain what to do about Hertome.

  She had thought of killing him, of course, but murder was unusual on Ab-Tzenketh, and the enforcers investigated any instances fiercely and effectively. Far too risky for an undercover spy. She had debated working with him, as he’d suggested, but she could not bring herself to trust a human, even one as highly trained as Hertome must be. She’d already seen him slip too easily out of his role. She couldn’t request a transfer from her work unit. The whole point of her presence on Ab-Tzenketh was to be in the rooms used by the civil servants in the Department of the Outside. They could keep up the pretense indefinitely, but Hertome was a problem that wasn’t going away. So what should she do? She went into work the next day still undecided, keeping her head down and rushing to obey Hertome’s every order.

  That evening she went back to the eatery. To her dismay, Hertome was there. Worse, the only available space was at the same table. With a sigh, Efheny began the complex series of supplications that would allow someone of her grade to request permission to sit opposite someone of his comparatively elevated status.

  “We can speak freely, you know,” he said rather impatiently, when at last she lowered herself down to the ground. “My bioengineering enables audio disruption, as I’m sure yours does too. I activated it when you sat down. Anyone listening will hear us exchanging prerecorded pleasantries. But keep your eyes down, Mayazan. You still have to look the part.”

  She did keep her eyes down and she did not reply, simply signaled her request to the server. Hertome’s fingers, darkly stained with the cleaning agents that they both used, fiddled with his cup as she ordered.

  “I saw on the C-bulletin the other day,” he said chattily, as if they were old friends soaking up the heat in some city stone room, “that the Ret Ata-EE genome is under revision. Some of the Yai scientists have suggested that the next generation of servers should be bred not to speak. They’re arguing that such a feature is redundant in them because they can perform all of their functions perfectly adequately without. They don’t need to speak to serve. What do you think of that, Mayazan? Or whatever your name is?”

  “This one would not question the decisions of superiors. Whatever is decided will be best for her.”

  Hertome sighed deeply. From beneath her eyelids, Efheny could see him watching her.

  “Cardassian,” he said at last. “You have to be. You didn’t even blink. Genetically manipulating an entire class so that they no longer have speech? If you were Federation, if you were Ferengi, certainly if you were Klingon, there’d have been a muscle twitch at the very least. Revulsion is almost impossible to suppress.” He leaned back in again, close, and spoke very quietly. “But Cardassians? You’re made of colder stuff, aren’t you? Bet you’d have done it yourselves if you were able, at several points in your history.”

  Stung, Efheny looked up—yes, looked directly at him. “This one suggests,” she said softly back, “that her training might simply be better than yours.”

  “I thought about that,” he admitted cheerfully. “Thought about whether you were Federation and nobody had bothered to brief me. Even wondered whether you were from another Typhon Pact power—no reason why you wouldn’t all be spying on each other, after all—but when I woke up the morning after our little tête-à-tête here and I wasn’t dead, I figured you were probably an ally. So the question then was, what kind? Ferengi? Klingon?” He shook his head. “The thing is, I’ve worked alongside you for months. You like it here, don’t you, Mayazan? You like how calm it is, how ordered. I’ve seen you staring out across the lagoon as if it was a glimpse of paradise. You’re Cardassian, or my name’s not . . .” He smiled crookedly. “Well, my name’s not Hertome Ter Ata-C.”

  Her leti arrived. She sipped it.

  “How did you know I wasn’t Tzenkethi?” Hertome said conversationally.

  Efheny thought, How do you think? Because humans are a menace and we are trained to watch out for them in case their impulsiveness gets us killed. She said, “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to be careful. I wouldn’t be surprised if this meeting hadn’t already attracted attention. It’s not illegal for an Ata-C of breeding age to associate outside of work with an Ata-E of a similar age, but it’s not usual, and a biomedical check is considere
d appropriate first—”

  “So take my hand.”

  Startled, she looked up at him over the rim of her cup. “What did you say?”

  “Take my hand. If we’re already marked, we might as well give them a reason to mark us. But it’s surely better if it’s nowhere near the truth.”

  She considered his words, weighed them, moved the kotra pieces of their game around in her mind. Then she came to her decision about what to do. Keep him close. That’s all you have to do for now. She put down her cup and reached across the table to clasp his hand.

  “If it becomes necessary,” she said, looking deep into his alien eyes, “this one will kill you.”

  He smiled. “Mayazan,” he said, “I think that might be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  • • •

  With the Aventine under way to Outpost V-4, Ezri Dax called her senior staff together to brief them on the new mission. Peter Alden sat at the opposite end of the table. No, not sat. Slumped. He looked exhausted.

  “Seeing as you’re all bright and able graduates of Starfleet Academy,” Dax said, “I imagine you’ve already gathered that we’re no longer delivering Commander Alden to the Enterprise. Our mission instead is to take him to the Venetan Outpost V-4, where the Tzenkethi are currently making free with the outpost’s facilities.”

  “And all within spitting distance of Starbase 261,” Security Chief Kedair noted, as Alden brought up the relevant star charts. “What exactly do you mean by ‘making free,’ Captain?”

  “That, as they say, is the question,” Dax replied. “The purpose of our journey is to observe what’s going on. The story the Venetans are putting out is that it’s a trading agreement, plain and simple. Goods coming in, goods going out. Everyone happy. However, Commander Alden and his colleagues”—she nodded down the table and he nodded back—“fear darker purposes behind this arrangement.” She stared again at the star chart. “It is damned convenient that these bases all lie on the border . . .” She shook herself. Remember, Ezri, we know nothing yet, nothing substantial. “But we need proof of any plan to militarize these bases. The Venetans insist they have nothing to hide, but it’s a delicate situation, and we can’t simply blunder in waving our phasers around and kicking over consoles to search for long-range weapons.”