“That is the problem—I am doing it in my sleep, because the assistant technology secretary is quite possibly the single most boring individual in the entire galaxy. To make matters worse, I have to write this for the president.”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
Toh sat down in a chair that faced the giant alligator that hung from the ceiling. Joseph said it guarded the restaurant at night, and that it always was a pain to wrestle it back to the ceiling before he opened, a story that everyone accepted without question. Toh had thought it odd at first, until he’d spent some time in New Orleans; something about the city fostered the absurd, the paranormal, and the ridiculous, so that you accepted even the most outlandish notions as fact.
“It is what I do, yeah, but—” He sighed. “For three years, I wrote speeches for Ambassador Worf. It was the easiest work of my life—the man is the most taciturn Klingon in existence. Verbose for him is six words. Now I’m writing for Nan Bacco. Did you see her speech about the Aligar a couple months back?”
“Saw bits of it on FNS,” Joseph said. “My grandson wrote for them, you know.”
Toh plowed on, having heard Joseph talk about his son, his daughter, his two grandchildren, and his daughter-in-law plenty of times over the four months that he’d been coming here. “Well, nobody wrote that speech for her. She did that on her own, off the cuff. I don’t know why she even bothers with a speechwriting staff. She’s one of the most eloquent people in modern politics, and I have to make her sound interesting when wishing a hundredth birthday to the most spectacularly uninteresting person in the cosmos.” He looked up at Joseph plaintively. “Please tell me the jambalaya’s good tonight.”
Joseph’s expression grew grave. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” Then the grin came back. “The jambalaya’s great tonight.”
Toh laughed, an action he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of an hour ago. “Sold. Bring me the biggest bowl you have—and some kava juice.”
“Coming right up.” Joseph again put his hand on Toh’s shoulder. “And don’t worry—you’ll do fine. Everybody’s got a story—even the boring ones. It’s just a matter of dig-gin’ around a little.”
With that pearl of wisdom, Joseph went off to place Toh’s order.
Heartened by the prospect of imminent jambalaya, Toh took the padd out of his jacket pocket and started making notes. Maybe there’s something to what Joseph said. There’s got to be something . And if not—I don’t know, I’ll riff on the number one hundred. Can probably get five minutes just on that, especially with the famed Bacco Proclivity for Unnecessary Adjectives and Adverbs.
Shortly after he finished the jambalaya—and three kava juices, as the spices were particularly inflammable today—and was starting to almost approach the possibility of feeling vaguely confident about small portions of the speech, someone walked up to the table.
“Excuse me—you work at the Palais de la Concorde, don’t you?”
Toh looked up to see a Triexian—or maybe an Edoan, he always got those two species confused. “Uh—”
“Actually, I know you do. You’re Bey Toh, and you work for Fred MacDougan, right?”
Thinking it best to neither confirm nor deny, Toh said, “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m—”
“I have something I need to tell you.” The stranger sat in the chair opposite Toh, which he found unconscionably rude. “It is something that you need to tell Mr. MacDougan, and that he needs to tell Ms. Piñiero, and that she needs to tell the president.”
Wryly, Toh said, “Your grasp of the chain of command at the Palais is nice to see, Mister—?”
“My name isn’t important.”
“It is if you don’t want me to call Joseph over here and have him throw you out.” Toh smiled sweetly as he said it.
Reluctantly, the stranger said, “I’m Kralis na Then.”
Triexian, then. “And what do you do when you’re not interrupting meals and sitting at people’s table without permission?”
“I did wait until you were done eating, Mr. Bey.”
“Fine, but you’re still on the hook for the second one, and I’m giving you ten seconds before I call Joseph over.”
Kralis was wearing a coat with a flared bottom underneath his middle arm. With that arm, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a padd. “This is a judgment that was rendered by the Supreme Magisterial Authority on Triex eight years ago.”
Toh frowned. “The SMA on Triex eight years ago was Councillor Artrin, wasn’t it?” Fred had been going on at great length about how he’d had to put endorsements of Artrin, and President Bacco’s other appointments, into several speeches, not all of which were natural fits. At least Beltane finally got ratified….
“Yes, it was. Trust me, I don’t want to do this—but I don’t have a choice. Someone gave this information to Councillor Severn-Anyar. I don’t know who did—but it doesn’t matter now.”
Toh shook his head. “I don’t understand—we have all of Artrin’s decisions. They’re public record.”
“Not all of them.”
With that, Kralis rose from his chair and left Sisko’s without another word.
The padd remained on the table.
Sighing, Toh picked it up. For a moment, he feared activating it, but then he dismissed the notion. Nobody would want to blow up someone on my level. Which, was why he came to me. Anyone else, he’d never get near, so shove it under the nose of the junior staff person.
Not knowing whether to be flattered or insulted, Toh activated the padd and read the only file that was on it: A decision rendered by Supreme Magisterial Authority Artrin na Yel on the fifth day of Torus in the year of the Fortil. To his surprise, it was an emergency session, called when the magisterial office was usually in recess.
Toh read the decision.
Then he read it again.
Then he read it a third time.
“You okay, Toh?”
Toh looked up in surprise at Joseph, who looked concerned. “Huh?”
“You’ve gotten mighty pale, son. Do you need—”
“It’s nothing,” Toh said quickly. “Or, rather, it is something, but it’s not you.” He got up from his chair. “I’ve got to get back to the office. Sorry. Talk to you later!”
Toh didn’t hear what Joseph said as he ran out the door toward the nearest transporter station.
Within twenty minutes—there was a line at the station, and his government ID didn’t do anything to expedite matters, which rather annoyed him—he was back in his office. The first thing he did was contact Rol Yarvik Rol, who was working late on a project for Fred.
“Whatever you need, Toh, can it wait? Fred is—”
“Just a quick question, Yarvik. You’ve read over all of Artrin’s decisions, right?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Was there a decision on 5 Torus Fortil?”
“There aren’t any decisions in Torus, that’s when they’re in—”
Toh snarled. “I know that, I mean an emergency session.”
“Artrin didn’t preside over any emergency sessions.”
“You sure?” Toh had been afraid Yarvik would say the very words he was saying now.
“Completely sure. Why?”
“Nothing.” This was too big for a researcher. This is too big for me, he thought. “Is Fred still in his office?”
“He’s with Ashanté down at that café they like. He said he’d be back in an hour.”
“Okay, thanks.” Toh cut off the connection, took a moment to pray to the Prophets for guidance, then put a call through to Fred. He’s gonna hate being interrupted like this, but he’s with Ashanté, and that’ll save some time. And better to tell them sooner than later, especially if the council already has this.
The last time Esperanza Piñiero felt this ragged was after the U.S.S. Gorkon was told to hold the Delavi system for three weeks during the Dominion War. They were at red alert the entire time, and by the end of the second week, Es
peranza felt like she had run six marathons in the space of two hours. Her muscles ached, her mouth tasted like engine coolant, and a phaser drill was on overload behind her right eye.
Four months in the Palais gave her a tremendous sense of déjà vu for those days in the Delavi system.
Still, another day seemed to finally be at an end. The president’s speech on Titan had gone well. The shipbuilder’s guild seemed mollified about Aligar—though they were expressing concern about the Rigel colonies following the directive to change over their warp drives.
She opened an intercom channel to her assistant. “Please, Zachary, by all that is holy on thirty worlds, tell me that we’re done for the day.”
Her office door slid open to reveal Zachary holding a padd. “Not quite. Sorry, this just came in from the travel office.” He walked it over to her at her desk.
“Let me guess,” Esperanza said as she took it. “They felt bad for not having screwed anything up in a few months?”
“Sort of. They had to change the president’s itinerary for the goodwill trip.”
Esperanza glowered at Zachary. “We spent six weeks hammering out the details of the trip. It was vetted by half the people in this building. What could they possibly want to change now?”
Zachary smiled. “It’s kind of funny, actually.”
At Esperanza’s look, his smile fell. “Right now, Zachary, you could get the entire Luna-See Troupe up here and have them perform their whole repetoire from Again, the Ears to Zakdorn’s Sun Is Going Nova Tomorrow, and it wouldn’t be funny.”
“Okay, well, in any case, it turns out that the original itinerary had one problem—we would be arriving on Lembatta Prime on the day before an eclipse.”
The phaser drill now moved to her left eye. “What, they don’t have lights on Lembatta?”
“Oh, they have lights, but, uh—” Zachary took a breath. “Whenever there’s an eclipse, and also the day before and after, it’s a major religious holiday. Essential work is still done, but anyone not actually doing that is obligated to stay at home and meditate.”
Esperanza leaned her head back and looked to the ceiling in supplication. To her annoyance, the ceiling was wholly bereft of aid or comfort.
She looked back at her assistant. “So if we hold a town hall meeting on the day before an eclipse—”
“No one will show up.”
“Wonderful. They rearranged the itinerary?”
Zachary nodded. “And that should be it.”
“Good,” Esperanza said with more enthusiasm than was probably politic. Knowing it was wholly futile, she still said to Zachary, “You can go home, I’m just gonna read this and then head out.”
As always, he said, “I go home when you go home.” Then he went back to his desk, the door sliding shut behind him.
Esperanza’s eyes were glazing over as she read over the itinerary. None of it seemed untoward. Lembatta had been moved to a week later, so Ventax II would be a week earlier, Kessik IV would be at the end of the trip instead of the beginning, and Cestus III—
Oh hell.
The phaser drill was now working on both eyes.
Slamming her hand on the intercom, she said, “Zachary, who put this together?”
“The travel offi—”
“I mean who in the travel office?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are any of them in now?”
“I think Ne’al G’ullho is still—”
“Get it up here now.”
Esperanza got up and went over to the replicator that was inset in her office wall. She was about to ask it for an herbal iced tea, then she decided to throw caution to the wind. Putting her hand on the activator, she said, “Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel, neat, alcoholic.”
If this were regular business hours, the computer would point out that Federation law prevented members of the government from drinking alcoholic beverages during working hours. Whoever passed that law didn’t realize that every hour is a working hour in the Palais.
She slugged down the amber liquid; it burned as it went down her throat, then formed a warm spot in the upper part of her chest.
Her intercom beeped. “Ne’al is here.”
“Get it in here.” The thick-bottom glass made a resounding thunk as she placed it on her metal desk with a bit more force than was necessary.
A young Damiani entered, its goatee untrimmed. “Yes, Ms. Piñiero, what can I do for you?”
She held up the padd. “Do you know about this?”
“I don’t know what this is,” Ne’al said slowly.
Great, now I’m doing it, Esperanza thought with a sigh. “This is the president’s updated travel itinerary for the goodwill tour.”
“Oh, right. I think Mantor handled that one himself.”
“Good, I know who to fire tomorrow, then.”
Ne’al’s teal skin started to lighten. “Uh, Ms. Piñiero, I don’t understand what—”
“All right,” she said with a sigh, “I probably can’t fire him for this. But the only way to keep him from being in the president’s doghouse for the rest of his natural life is to either get him in here tonight or fix this yourself.”
Now looking confused, Ne’al said, “Ms. Piñiero, I’m afraid I still don’t understand. The itinerary had to be changed to accommodate—”
“I know all about the Lembattans. What I have a small problem with, and what the president will have a huge problem with, is that you moved the Cestus III leg of the trip.”
“Oh, that. Well, we figured since it was the president’s home, it didn’t matter when it was. Good thing, too, because if we kept that on the same date, it would make the rest of it damn near impossible.”
“Well, you get to do the impossible, Ne’al, because the way this itinerary runs now, the president is going to miss Opening Day.”
A blank look. “Opening Day of what?”
“The baseball season on Cestus III. And before you ask another stupid question with your mouth hanging open the way it has been for this entire conversation, let me explain the basics. Baseball is a sport. It’s been played professionally on Cestus III since the president was first elected governor. It’s the president’s favorite sport, and watching it is one of her primary leisure activities. She has also, every year since the incorporation of the CBL, thrown out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day at Ruth Field in Pike City. Now you are going to go back to your office, and you are going to move solar systems if you have to, but you are going to keep Cestus right where it was on the itinerary and rearrange everything else. If we have to extend the trip an extra week—”
“We can’t do that.” Ne’al said those words with more assuredness than it had said anything else since walking into Esperanza’s office. “She has to get back on the first, because that’s when the Trinni/ek delegation is arriving.”
Damn. Esperanza had forgotten about the Io’s first contact, which had been followed by conversations over subspace with a diplomatic team led by a bright young ambassador named Colton Morrow. A Trinni/ek team was going to visit the Palais at the beginning of May, right when the president came back from the goodwill tour.
“Fine, then do what you have to do to make it work.”
Ne’al let out a long breath. “We can probably get someone from Starfleet to rig up a hologram that can do the job.”
Esperanza stared in open-mouthed stupefaction. “Please tell me you were kidding.”
“No, those Starfleet Corps of Engineers guys can do pretty much anything. They—”
“I don’t mean kidding about being able to do it, I meant kidding about taking that seriously as a legitimate alternative to being there.”
“Why not? You know how good holograms are these days—nobody’ll know the difference.”
Putting her head in her hands, Esperanza sat back down at her desk. “It doesn’t matter what the audience thinks. This is something that is very important for the president to do herself. I suggest a hologram t
o her, I guarantee that I’ll be fired inside of six seconds, and the president’s known me my entire life, so I think you can figure out how fast your ass’ll be out the door if you ever say that out loud again.”
Sounding surprised, Ne’al asked, “It’s really that important?”
“It’s really that important.” Esperanza picked up the glass of Jack Daniel’s. “A lot of this job is larger than life, Ne’al. And the president can handle that—she can handle the council snits and the press laughing at your office and Remans who approach the border without saying why—but every once in a while she needs something that’s real.”
“So she planned this entire goodwill tour as an excuse to go home and throw off a pitch?”
“Throw out a pitch.” Esperanza made the correction without even thinking. “And don’t be an idiot, of course not.” She took a sip of her drink. “We did a study right after we came in here and discovered that in seven years, President Zife never once—not a single time—went and talked to ordinary citizens. He visited starbases and Starfleet outposts. He met with other politicians and other people connected to or in his government and similar people in other governments. But he never talked to the people who voted for him.”
She set the drink back down, more gently this time. “When she was governor, once a month, for one whole day, the president always made sure she had town meetings. She’d just let anybody who lived on Cestus who wanted to talk to the planetary governor come in and say their peace. She’d answer questions, tell stories, share anecdotes, and listen.” Esperanza shook her head. “The president’s one of the best talkers I know, but on those days, she also listened better than anyone I know, and she always made sure that whoever she was listening to had her rapt attention.” She looked up at Ne’al. “I asked her about it, wondered if it was maybe a waste of time to spend twelve days a year listening to this nonsense, and you know what she said? ‘I spend three hundred and sixty-five days a year listening to this nonsense; on twelve of those days, I just eliminate the middle party. This is how government’s supposed to work.’ ” Esperanza smiled. “I think that’s when I decided that I had to convince her to run for president.”
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