He saw a twinge of sadness pass behind Corsi’s eyes as she said, “Cross-check this list against hospital records over the past three days.”
With another beep from the wall panel, the list of fifty-one shrank to fourteen. Both Latta and Corsi drew in a short hiss.
“Transmit this list and the associated files up to Hawkins,” Corsi told Soloman. “Let him know these are our ‘A’ level investigative targets.” She then looked to Latta. “Do any of the rest of these names stand out for you, Mr. Latta?”
Latta squinted at the list, though he didn’t expect to see anything. He’d only noticed Sandra Vallis because he’d just been talking about her; the rest of the names all blurred together just like the clones themselves. DiCamino, Angela. DiCamino, Frances. DiCamino, Martha. How was he supposed to—
“Wait a tic,” Latta said, his eyes flicking back up the column of names, then stabbing one with a forefinger. “Frances DiCamino? Why is she still on yer list?”
“She holds advanced degrees in microbiology, with secondary degrees in—”
“No, no,” Latta said, beginning to wonder whether it was the contraption or the Starfleeter making such an outrageous mistake. “That’s not the problem.”
“What is the problem?” Corsi asked.
“Frances DiCamino is more’n ten years dead,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
The Bringloidi prime minister crouched on her hands and knees in the dirt, digging the weeds out from around her beets. It was almost as if they understood she had greater matters to deal with, and decided to take full advantage of her absence. With a soft grunt and a tug, she pulled another long invading weed out by its roots. She smiled in small satisfaction as she tossed it on the pile behind her with its mates.
If only everything could be so simple, she thought as she attacked the next offending stalk with a small hand trowel. Leave the good plants, get rid of the bad ones. Her mother had taught her how to tell the difference between the two when she was barely out of nappies. The Bringloidi lived an idyllic life then. Oh, it was a hard one, certainly, working dawn to dusk, helping Mother and the other womenfolk cook and clean and a hundred more chores, then practicing her letters and numbers by oil lamp until bedtime. But by the time the family did turn in, there was a great sense of pride in all that had been accomplished.
Then one morning, Mother didn’t wake up, and the whole world seemed to fall apart. Now that she was suddenly the woman of the Odell household, she was entrusted with the knowledge that the sun had been growing measurably hotter for years. When her da was a boy, he would tell her, the entire valley had been lush green, not just the narrow strips along the riverbanks. But of late, the droughts had been worsening, and the adults—including Mother—had been letting themselves go hungry most nights to keep the young ones fed, and to save enough for the truly bad times to come.
And they did come.
It fell to young Brenna to take up all the responsibilities that were inherent to the wife of the colony’s leader, from organizing the work groups, to caring for and teaching the younger children, to making sure the men’s thirst for poteen was kept under some semblance of control.
Once the Enterprise had found them, and Starfleet and the Mariposans introduced them to the technical advances of their worlds, she thought life might possibly become simple again. But she only traded one set of hardships for another: her “courtship” (if one could call it that without laughing) with Wilson, the Dieghanist emigration, and of course, poor Danielle….
“Madam Prime Minister?”
Suddenly jerked back to the present, Brenna spun inelegantly on her knees to face the white-haired man in the Starfleet uniform who had appeared behind her. “Sweet mercy, what do you mean, sneaking up on a person like that?” she snapped, hoping that her broad-brimmed sun hat kept the tears that had been welling in her eyes in shadow.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, Minister Odell. I’m David Gold, captain of the da Vinci.”
“Oh, ho. So you’re the man who gives that gasbag Tev his orders.”
Gold gave her a pained smile. “In theory, I suppose. Actually, I came to offer my personal apology to you for Lieutenant Commander Tev’s impolitic behavior, and for any offense he may have given you and yours.”
Brenna studied Gold’s kindly eyes and grandfatherly face, and found she couldn’t doubt his sincerity. “Thank you, Captain. Although my delicate sensibilities are hardly the issue.”
Gold lowered himself on his haunches, matching their eye levels. “No, obviously, you have greater concerns—the future of your world, and your people.”
Brenna nodded. “Yes. And whether we will even have a future.”
“Let me ask you, Minister,” Gold said, taking a stalk from her pile of weeds and absently twirling it between his fingers. “As I understand it, this world has actually been quite peaceful in the years since the Bringloidi and Mariposans were reunited. Despite the vast differences, you have made considerable progress integrating yourselves. You’ve raised a generation of children together.” He paused, and looked her in the eye. “After more than a decade of this, how is it the two cultures are now incompatible?”
Gold had such a mild manner that she almost missed the criticism beneath his words. But Brenna resolved to maintain the civil tone of their conversation as she answered. “Our cultures were never compatible, Captain. Good heavens, they’re complete opposites! All that we’ve ever had was our mutual dependence on each other for survival. And as recent events show, survival isn’t a concern for some.”
“Some. A small minority.”
“A small minority who can kill hundreds of innocents at a single blow, because of this clone technology!”
“Yes. And it’s terrible,” Gold said with a grimace. “But don’t you need to look first at why those few would want to do such things—”
“‘Why?’ When has ‘why’ ever mattered? Since Cain and Abel, killing is just what men do.”
Gold said nothing in response to that, but just stared at her, trying to read her. Brenna set her face as she stared back, willing herself not to betray any emotion, any deeper thoughts or insecurities.
“You do understand the scope of what you are suggesting here,” he said. “The logistics of dismantling so much technology, so integrated with the existing infrastructure, are daunting to say the least. The da Vinci is a small ship; our engineers wouldn’t be able to do it all on their own.”
“Well, there’re more ships in the Starfleet, aren’t there?”
“Of course…and there are also a lot of places across Federation space for those ships to be. It would probably be weeks before a ship suitable to the task could be dispatched, if not months, or years.” Brenna waited for Gold to drop the other shoe. “However, it would only be a matter of a day to bring in a negotiator from the Federation’s Diplomatic Corps.”
“To talk me out of it. Ho, I should have known better than to think your grand Federation would willingly lift a finger to help us!”
Gold took a long breath before saying, with not a little heat in his tone, “My people are right now looking for whatever gen-engineering equipment and bioweapon stocks are out there. My chief medical officer is in your hospital taking care of your sick. And I am here right now to try to help you understand how a rash, ill-considered decision impacts—”
“Oh, you’re one to talk about rash, ill-considered decisions, Mr. Starfleet Captain! For over ten years I’ve been trying to make the best of an ill-considered decision one of yours made for us. But the decisions on how we live our lives are now ours to make. And if you’re not willing to respect that, then you can go straight to the devil.”
Gold said nothing for the longest time, but simply stared at her. She couldn’t quite read his expression, but there seemed to be more sadness in his eyes than anything else. He pushed himself off the ground, back onto his feet. “You remind me of my oldest daughter, Eden,” he told her as he brushed the dirt from his knees. “
Being in Starfleet, I missed a lot of her childhood, and that caused a lot of tension and animosity between us, all the way through her adulthood. I can’t go back now and be the father she wanted me to be. The best I can do is say I’m sorry for my mistakes, and let her know that even though I realize she’s an adult—a grandmother, no less!—I still care, and I only want what’s best for her.”
“That paternalistic attitude is a bit arrogant, isn’t it?” Brenna asked, surprised to hear how mild her voice sounded as she posed that question.
He shrugged. “So be it.” With that, he turned and walked off toward the road to the Capital Complex. Brenna watched him until he disappeared behind a row of quadrotriticale stalks. Then with a loud sigh, she turned back to the simplicity of her weeding.
Chapter
8
Sonya Gomez sat in the captain’s chair at the center of the da Vinci bridge, her crew around her, standing ready to fill any orders she might issue…and silently felt sorry for herself.
Rarely was she given command of the ship—despite her position as first officer, the separate structures of the ship and S.C.E. crews dictated that one of the bridge officers take the conn when the captain was off duty, leaving her and her engineers free to concentrate on their specialized duties.
Right now, though, David Gold’s skills as a veteran starship captain were in greater demand than any engineering contributions. And, as she had so spectacularly demonstrated earlier, her own diplomatic and people skills didn’t amount to jack.
You can’t blame yourself for Tev’s inability to carry himself like a proper Starfleet officer, she tried to tell herself. That was Tev being Tev. He had shown some improvement of late, though it had taken one of the harshest ass-chewings Sonya had ever had to give to get him there. She really had believed they had turned a corner, and now this…
Gomez stopped, and reexamined the last thought that had just flashed through her mind: believed they had turned a corner. Maybe she was putting too much on Tev, when she should’ve been examining her own shortcomings. After all, Tev had been in Starfleet for close to twenty years. He’d earned his promotions from ensign up to lieutenant commander, and while his record did include more than a few marks, there was nothing that indicated the kind of regular interpersonal conflicts that had marked his tour on the da Vinci. Maybe it was her command style, or her lack of understanding of Tellarite psychology, or something she said when they first met that pissed him off.
Her reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Domenica Corsi on the bridge. “Commander,” she said, frowning. “The captain hasn’t beamed back yet?”
“He’s only been down there half an hour or so,” Gomez said, standing up from the center seat.
“Only half an hour,” the security chief grumbled. “Like nothing can go wrong in so short a time as thirty minutes.” She and the captain had a nice, loud shouting match when he announced that he was going down to meet with the prime ministers, that he was going alone, so as not to create the same negative first impression they had earlier, and that Corsi was not going to stop him.
“He is a grown man, Domenica,” Gomez reminded her. She understood that there were regulations about when a captain should or shouldn’t leave his ship, and that Corsi took those regulations seriously, but there was such a thing as overkill.
Corsi shut her eyes and took a short deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she looked significantly more composed. “Could I talk to you in the captain’s ready room, then?”
Gomez nodded, and the two stepped off the bridge into the small office. They both took seats in front of Gold’s desk. “Soloman and I met with Minister Latta, and together we compiled a list of fourteen members of the Mariposan scientific community who we determined could pose a future risk to this colony by advanced biological attack. Of those fourteen potential risks, five are dead.”
Gomez dipped her head. “In the bioattack.”
“No,” Corsi said, causing Gomez’s head to snap back up. “That list of fourteen excluded anyone confirmed dead in recent days. These other five deaths all happened nine or more years ago.”
“And their deaths were never officially recorded?”
Corsi shook her head. “They were also, all five, still on file as still being on their jobs. Now, a death certificate doesn’t get filed, that’s an oversight. Five don’t get filed, that’s incompetence. All other official records pointing to them still being alive? That’s a cover-up.”
Gomez’s jaw fell slack. “How could they cover it up up for ten years?”
“There was a huge influx of people here eleven years ago. They start up these rural settlements, and the population starts spreading out from the enclosed complex the Mariposans have concentrated themselves in for two hundred and some years. Not to mention,” Corsi added, with a half grin that conveyed no amusement, “there are dozens of duplicates of these dead women walking around all over the place; how hard is it going to be to miss any specific one?”
Gomez furrowed her brow. “All five were women? That can’t be random chance.”
“No,” Corsi agreed. “It wouldn’t be.”
Gomez studied the security chief’s expression. “You have a theory.”
Corsi nodded slowly. “We managed to track down the families of two of the women. We’re looking for the other three. I don’t want to jump to conclusions before I have more facts…”
“But?”
“But…I’m afraid this colony’s problems could run far deeper than any of us imagined.”
The first thing Gold noticed entering the special ward in the Life Science Center was its peacefulness. The ten patients slept steadily, their faces marred by scabbed-over sores, but nonetheless serene. He’d been in enough sickbays and infirmaries in crisis situations, and he was comfortable saying that the crisis here was passed.
Lense approached from the opposite end of the long room, a young woman he guessed for a medtech tagging along beside her. “It looks like congratulations are in order here, Doctor.”
Allowing herself only a slight smile as she rubbed a finger at the corner of her tired-looking eyes, Lense said, “The battle has been won.”
Gold cocked his head to one side. “But the war?”
Lense took a deep breath, then turned to the Bringloidi woman at her elbow. “Kara, would you run a series ‘A’ blood test from all the patients, and a series ‘B’ from the thirteens, fourteens, and fifteens.” Kara nodded and went to carry out her orders, as Lense turned and led Gold into the small office.
Once they’d both been seated, Lense said, “I’ve isolated and identified the viral agent used against the Mariposans, Captain. It’s rop’ngor.”
Gold’s eyes widened slightly. He recognized the language, of course, but was surprised to hear it spoken in this context. “This is a Klingon bug, you’re telling me?”
“Yes. Or it was. It’s been significantly altered, to the point where it was almost unidentifiable.”
“How would these people get their hands on such an exotic…” The answer dawned on him before he had even finished asking the question. “Ambassador Worf. Of course; he was a lieutenant on the Enterprise at the time.”
But Lense shook her head. “Rop’ngor is a childhood disease; it would’ve been quickly diagnosed and treated in an adult Klingon. But humans can be carriers, and never know. I believe that’s the reason for the violent relapses I’ve been seeing here.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Rop’ngor got its name—it roughly translates as ‘the cheating disease’—because it will attack the body, and then go into a dormant state before antibody production can get up to full strength. That ‘tricks’ the immune system into thinking it’s beaten the thing back. Then, when the white blood cells start dying off, the virus comes out of dormancy, and hits hard, fast, and often.”
“A disease that fights with no honor,” Gold noted. Little wonder the Klingons had given it such a pejorative name.
Lense nodded.
“Now, in humans, when they’re first infected, there’s the same trigger for antibody production, just like with any foreign microorganism. But when the virus launches its secondary attack, there are no Klingon proteins for it to feed on. That gives the human autoimmune system plenty of time to counterattack. Except for a mild fever, you’d never even know you were sick.”
“So how does that account for the relapses?” Gold asked.
“Those people who had previously contracted rop’ngor, in its unaltered form, had already built up a resistance to the disease. That let them ‘recover’ from the initial infection by the modified virus.”
“Which was in fact just the virus’s dormant phase,” Gold nodded in understanding. “But now that you know what it is, you have it under control?”
“Not quite,” Lense said through gritted teeth. “I can trigger its dormant stage, but its taking more time to kill it off. The thing is, it’s not rop’ngor anymore. It’s been gen-engineered to target different cell types, mutate their DNA, tie the entire endocrine system in knots….” She sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids. “Whoever created this damned thing was one sadistic petaQ.”
Gold considered the top of the doctor’s head in silence for a long moment. “Why don’t you take a break, Lense, now that things are under control?”
The doctor’s head snapped back up immediately. “No. There’s too much more. Too much I don’t know yet.”
Gold sighed softly. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by—”
“Captain,” she cut him off sharply. “I can do this. I have to.”
Since her rescue from the Jabari’s homeworld, Gold had sensed that the doctor had been affected by the ordeal in ways that went beyond what she reported in her debriefing. But she had refused to take any recovery time, and now Gold was worried she was pushing herself too hard, too soon. Yet, he knew from past experience that nothing, short of the ship’s tractor beams at full power, was going to pull this woman away from a medical puzzle she had set her mind to solving.
Out of the Cocoon Page 7
