Two weeks, RO thought as she leaned back in the chair behind the security office desk. Unbidden, a muscle in her upper back began rhythmically clenching and unclenching itself. Rolling her shoulders to work out the kink, she tossed the padd containing the incident report—the unfinished incident report—onto the desk.

Two weeks, and I’m still mopping up after Thriss.

The door chime rang. Ro looked through the glass to see who was trying to monopolize her time now. But the moment she saw who it was, she relaxed and ordered the computer to open the door.

“Didn’t expect to find you still in your office so late, Ro,” said Lieutenant Commander Phillipa Matthias, leaning tentatively through the doorway. “Got a minute?”

Ro smiled. She genuinely liked the station’s new counselor, not simply because she was friendly toward her—not to mention solicitous of her sometimes prickly moods—but also because she spoke plainly and directly. Starfleet counselors were rarely so refreshingly free of professional psychobabble as was Matthias.

Ro also knew that she could rely on Phillipa not to waste her time. “A minute?” she said as she rose from behind her desk and stretched. “I’ve got as many as you need. Tell me: Have the Andorians agreed to talk to you?”

Phillipa bit her lip, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Well, doctor-patient confidentiality would have constrained what I could tell you. If Dizhei and Anichent had decided to open up to me. But they haven’t. Frankly, I’m not a bit surprised. Andorians aren’t known for being overly fond of the counseling trade.”

“I wonder why.”

“It’s the antennae.”

“Come again?”

“Those antennae are a wonderful means of nonverbal communication. Sometimes unintentionally so. That’s why Andorians are lousy at keeping their poker hands a secret, but absolutely terrific at judging other people’s emotional states. They probably realize it, too, which explains why they aren’t keen on having counselors around. Especially when they’re this raw emotionally.”

Ro felt another slow, pounding, warp-core-breach of a headache coming on. She understood, and sympathized with, the anguish Anichent and Dizhei were experiencing. She recalled all too well the desolation she had felt after a Jem’Hadar minefield claimed the life of Jalik, a fellow Maquis fighter. And there had been her father’s grisly death at the hands of Cardassian torturers, which she had witnessed at the tender age of seven. But she also knew that it was possible to survive such horrors. Despite all the death and cruelty she had witnessed during her brief span, Ro had never felt so completely paralyzed as those two young Andorians seemed to be. After so many interminable days of mourning, couldn’t one of them find the emotional wherewithal to give her a somewhat coherent statement regarding Thriss’s death? Even in the face of personal tragedy, official reports still had to be filed.

Life had to go on for the surviving members of Shar’s bondgroup.

“Have they let Dr. Tarses speak with them?” Ro said. “Or changed their minds about letting him perform an autopsy?”

Phillipa shook her head. “They let Simon in tonight, just before he went off-shift. He visited on the pretext of checking on the stasis chamber they’ve borrowed from the infirmary. But that’s all they’d let him do. For me, they wouldn’t even open up the door to their quarters.”

Shar’s quarters, Ro thought. The rooms where the despondent Thriss had taken her own life. Where two of her soul mates still maintained a vigil, two long weeks later.

“Do you feel they’re dangerous?” Ro said at length, recalling how Anichent had charged at her, lunacy shining in his cold gray eyes.

“Anyone that overwrought always has the potential to be dangerous, at least to himself. But when the person in question is an Andorian, that makes things even more volatile.”

“In other words, I’d better maintain the guards I posted outside Shar’s quarters.”

Phillipa nodded, but looked apprehensive. “As long as they stay out in the corridor, and a few doors away. Like I said, those antennae can be pretty sensitive, especially to the EM fields produced by phasers. That said, my sense is that they’re likely to refrain from any further, ah, demonstrative behaviors.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because they have each other. And grief shared is grief halved.”

Ro wanted to believe that. But she understood only too well the impulse to spread grief around, the way nerak flowers scattered themselves on the wind beside the River Glyrhond.

“Maybe I should make another stab at talking with them,” she said, recovering her padd and walking toward the security office door with it. Phillipa followed her out into the corridor, her brow scored with consternation.

“I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Ro.”

Ro stopped in front of the turbolift just as its doors opened. “You just finished explaining that they wouldn’t talk to you because you’ve got too much empathy.”

Ro stepped inside, treading on Phillipa’s response as she moved. “That’s an accusation nobody’s ever made about me.”

The turbolift doors quietly closed on Phillipa’s wordless you’ll-be-sorry expression.

 

Standing in the habitat ring, Ro looked down the corridor to her left. Four doors away, Corporal Hava stood at parade rest, his hand near the butt of his phaser. Ro turned her head to the right, where Sergeant Shul Torem stood quietly an equal distance away in the opposite direction. Somehow, the grizzled veteran managed to appear both relaxed and vigilant.

Clutching a padd tightly in her right hand, Ro was uncomfortably aware of her own weapon’s conspicuous absence as she pressed the door chime before her.

“Go away.”

It was Dizhei’s voice. Though the gray duranium door muffled it considerably, Ro could hear the underlying rawness.

“Go away. Whoever you are.”

“It’s Lieutenant Ro,” Ro said, relieved that Anichent hadn’t been the one to answer the door. “I’m here on official business.”

A long beat passed before Dizhei spoke again. She sounded calmer now, though she seemed to be trying very hard to rein in her emotions. “Please, Lieutenant. We do not desire any visitors right now. Anichent and I will contact you. Later. When we are ready. After Shar returns.”

Ro was quickly growing tired of conversing through a metal door. “Shar isn’t due back from the Gamma Quadrant for several more weeks. I understand your grief, Dizhei. And you already know that I respect your people’s funerary customs. But I have regulations to follow and reports to file. Certain things need to be resolved, sooner rather than later.”

The heavy gray door stood as mute and inert as a Sh’dama-era stone monolith.

After nearly half a minute, Ro broke the silence. “How does Anichent feel about speaking with me? I’ll only need a few minutes of his time.”

More silence. Ro’s spine suddenly felt as though it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen as a thought occurred to her: What if Anichent wasn’t merely being reclusive?

Perhaps he couldn’t come to the door.

“Dizhei? Open the door now. Please. I really need to speak with Anichent.”

Nothing.

Ro gestured toward both guards, who responded by quietly drawing their weapons. She hated that things were coming to this. But she had to know what was going on behind that metal slab.

Tapping her combadge, Ro said, “Computer, security override at the personal quarters of Ensign Thirishar ch’Thane. Authorization Ro-Gamma-Seven-Four.”

The door slid aside and Ro entered the room, holding herself bowstring-taut. Hava and Shul followed a few paces behind her.

The air was moist, and hot as summertime in Musilla Province. The darkness of the small main room was broken by the flames that danced atop a pair of tall, pungent-smelling candles. Countless bejeweled pinpoints adorned the emptiness beyond the large oval window. Between the candles, at the room’s spinward edge, stood a bier surrounded by the faint bluish glow of a large stasis chamber. Thriss’s corpse, clad in a simple white gown, lay in state atop the bier, per Andorian custom. The pale cerulean light that bathed the body gave it an oddly lifelike aspect, as though Thriss were merely sleeping and might be awakened by an errant footfall or a creaking deckplate.

In spite of herself, Ro made a special effort to be silent as she stepped toward the two figures who knelt before the bier. She stood for a long moment behind them, allowing her eyes to adjust to the wan candlelight and the room’s fluttering, crepuscular shadows.

She watched Anichent and Dizhei in profile, observing that they both seemed to be in a deep meditative state. They looked tired and gaunt, their nondescript Andorian prayer robes draped over their bodies like sails. Ro couldn’t determine whether they had continued cutting their flesh, as they had begun doing immediately after Thriss’s death. Their eyes were closed, their limp antennae draped back across disheveled white hair. Neither of them acknowledged her presence. Ro couldn’t tell whether they were indeed sharing their grief, or if each was trapped in some solitary emotional purgatory.

Thanks to a briefing Phillipa had given her, Ro felt she knew at least the basics of Andorian biology and funerary customs. Because their species’ reproduction depended upon all four members of a bond, the death of any one of them was a terrible blow to the survivors—and often produced some extreme grieving rituals. Obviously, neither Dizhei nor Anichent seemed able either to let go of their lost love or to go on with their lives. They wouldn’t prepare Thriss’s body for interment or even allow a proper autopsy. Before any of those things could happen, all three surviving members of their sundered marriage quad had to assemble in shared grief beside Thriss’s body. Therefore, they were determined to await Shar’s return, consuming only water—and interacting with no one—until that day.

No matter how far off that day might be.

If not for their tangled white manes, blue skin, and antennae, Dizhei and Anichent might have been a pair of Bajoran religious acolytes, beseeching the Prophets for guidance. Ro had always felt somewhat detached from—not to mention bemused by—the fervent religious beliefs of many of her fellow Bajorans. Her father’s murder at the hands of Bajor’s Cardassian oppressors had taught her that piety and a concussion grenade nearly always got better results than did piety alone.

The self-abnegation on display before her stirred up some of the conflicted feelings the Bajoran faith frequently roused within her. And even though she knew that it was useless to judge another culture’s practices against those of her own, the sight roused an even deeper, more fundamental sentiment.

It made her angry.

She brought her padd down against the top of a low table, hard. In the silence of the room, the noise sounded like a thunderclap.

Dizhei started as though she’d been dealt a physical blow. She turned toward Ro, glowering. Ro could hear Shul and Hava moving in behind her, ready to react. But Dizhei did not rise to her feet.

“Is this intrusion a sample of what we can expect from Bajor after it enters the Federation?” Dizhei said, fairly hissing the words. Gone was the veneer of amiability Ro had noted when the Andorian first came aboard the station several weeks ago.

Ro picked up her padd, ignoring the comment. “I apologize for barging in, Dizhei. But I had reason to suspect that Anichent might be in danger.”

Dizhei laughed, a harsh sound that contained no humor. “Because we Andorians are such a violently emotional lot, no doubt.”

“I never said that,” Ro said. She clutched the padd in a death grip.

Dizhei’s gaze softened as she seemed to consider her next words carefully before uttering them. “You didn’t have to, Lieutenant. We both know it’s true.”

Anichent lifted his head then, as though it were supporting an enormous weight. Still kneeling, he gazed up at Ro, who felt her legs and shoulders tensing in an involuntary fight-or-flight reaction. Her pulse quickened, and she heard a sharp intake of breath from Hava, who now stood beside her.

“She saw it so clearly,” Anichent whispered, the despondence behind his words almost palpable. “More clearly than any of the rest of us ever could have.”

Ro knew that he could only be referring to Thriss. “What did she see?”

Before Anichent could respond, Dizhei cut him off with a harsh Andorii monosyllable. Anichent lowered his head and closed his eyes once again, as though lost in prayer or meditation.

Dizhei fixed her eyes on Ro’s. “Your men can lower their weapons,” she said quietly. “Anichent can barely move, let alone attack you.”

“Stay alert,” Ro told Shul, who grunted an acknowledgment. To Dizhei she said, “I really hate to be indelicate, but without an autopsy, station regulations require me to log an official statement from Thriss’s closest available family members. Councillor zh’Thane doesn’t qualify, but as members of Thriss’s bondgroup, either of you does. I’m sorry, but this is the only way I can officially close the matter. It’ll take maybe ten minutes. Then we’ll be gone, and won’t bother you anymore.”

Dizhei looked incredulous and angry. “Surely you have more important things to do with your time right now than to harass us.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Ro said, feeling her own pique beginning to rise with the inevitability of gravity. “This station is going to be swarming with Federation and Bajoran VIPs over the next few days. I’ve got to stage-manage the Federation signing ceremony, and it’s going to be a security nightmare as it is. I can’t afford to have a case like this still open and unresolved here with all of that going on.”

“I see,” Dizhei said, her ice-blue eyes narrowing, her antennae moving forward as though searching for something to impale.

Tamping down her anger, Ro raised a hand in supplication. “Look. I know this is a terrible time for you. But surely two weeks has been time enough—”

“Time,” Anichent said in a voice rough enough to strike sparks, his speech slurring as he raised his head again. “What is time when there is no future?”

Ro approached Anichent more closely, watching as the candlelight flickered in his gray eyes. Gone was the upbeat, sharp-witted intellectual she’d observed weeks ago. This Anichent was a mere husk. A vacant, hollowed-out revenant.

“You’ve drugged him,” Ro said to Dizhei. It wasn’t a question.

Dizhei nodded. “To save his life.”

“We’ve got to get him to the infirmary.”

“No. I know the Andorian pharmacopoeia better than your Dr. Tarses does. Anichent is far safer here. Where I can watch over him.”

All at once, Ro understood. Anichent would be safer in a place where he wasn’t likely to come out of his drug trance at an inopportune time. In a place where he couldn’t succumb to the temptation to throw himself willfully into death’s jaws. A semantically twisted phrase she’d encountered once during a Starfleet Academy history course sprang to her mind.

Police-assisted suicide.

The remainder of Ro’s anger dissipated as she considered the likely source of the Andorian people’s violence. It wasn’t innate, as with the Jem’Hadar. Or indoctrinated, as with the Klingons. Instead, it was born of pain.

I understand pain.

“Stand down,” Ro said to the guards. “Dismissed.” Hava didn’t need to be told twice, but Shul required a moment’s persuasion before he, too, departed.

“Do you truly believe that you understand now?” Dizhei said after she and Ro were essentially alone. Anichent had retreated once again into his drugged stupor.

Dizhei rose to her feet and approached Ro, who managed to keep from flinching, but steeled herself against the possibility of another violent outburst.

Ro nodded cautiously. “He’s lost hope.”

Dizhei responded with a barely perceptible shake of the head. She spoke softly, as though fearing that the oblivious Anichent might overhear. “No. It’s more profound than even that, Lieutenant. He believes that hope itself no longer exists. That Thriss’s death is merely an augury for our entire species.”

“There’s always hope,” Ro said, without convincing even herself.

“Looming extinction has a way of snuffing out hope,” Dizhei said.

My son has also ravaged the lives of Anichent and Dizhei, zh’Thane had said. Ro recalled the councillor’s explanation of how Andorian marriage quads were groomed for their unions from childhood, and how few years the young adult bondmates had to produce offspring. It came to her then that the odds of Dizhei and Anichent finding a replacement for Thriss might be remote—perhaps impossibly so.

She saw it so clearly, Anichent had said. Ro knew that utter, bleak despair was what Thriss must have seen. Not just for herself, but for her entire world.

And here I am, barging in and interrogating them about her. Good job, Laren. Ro felt as though she’d just kicked a helpless Drathan puppy lig.

Dizhei resumed speaking. “Anichent truly believes that we are dying as a species because of our complicated reproductive processes. I tell you this only because I know that Shar considers you a good friend. He trusts you.”

Ro felt the warning sting of tears in her eyes, but held them back by sheer force of will.

“It’s mutual,” Ro said. “We have a number of things in common.” We’re both outsiders who don’t share our secrets with very many others. And especially not our fears.

Dizhei’s antennae slackened once again. She studied Ro in silence, obviously waiting for her to make the next move.

“Do you believe that Anichent is right?” Ro said softly.

Dizhei closed her eyes and sighed, composing her thoughts before speaking. “There are times when I’m not at all certain that he’s wrong. But I can’t afford to let myself think that way often. If I do, then the rest of us will be lost, along with whatever tiny chance remains of finding another bondmate to replace Thriss in time to produce a child.”

Dizhei straightened as though buoyed by her own words. Her bearing suddenly became almost regal. This is how Charivretha zh’Thane must have looked thirty years ago, Ro thought.

“I will watch over Thriss until Shar returns, as our customs demand. And I will do the same for Anichent, to keep him from following her over the precipice. Even if doing so occupies every moment of every day until Shar returns. Even if it kills me.”

Ro considered the despair that had stalked so many of her friends and loved ones. Few, if any, of her intimates had ever had such sound reasons for despondence as bond-sundered Andorians. These were people for whom complex reproductive biology was the single defining attribute of their lives. After suddenly losing that capability, how could one not succumb to hopelessness? Ro felt an uncharacteristic but irresistible urge to get a drink. Or perhaps several.

“Now, about that report you wanted,” Dizhei said, her antennae probing forward as though sniffing the air.

Ro shut down her padd and lowered it. A bead of sweat traced a leisurely path between her shoulder blades.

“It will wait,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of Dizhei’s burden—and by Anichent’s hopelessness. Routine police work now seemed utterly trivial by comparison. “Please forget I asked. And forgive me.”

Ro hastily excused herself, then stepped back into the cool corridor before Dizhei could see the tears she could no longer restrain.

 

Halfway through her third glass of spring wine, Ro felt considerably calmer.

“Whoa there,” said Treir, who sat across the table in Ro’s dimly lit booth. She eyed the two empty wine-glasses significantly. “Maybe you’d better consider slowing down to sublight speed, Lieutenant.”

“I’m off duty at the moment,” Ro said, swirling her wine. This vintage was a little drier than she was used to, but still serviceable. “And sometimes the best way to handle your troubles is to drown them.”

The Orion woman offered a wry smile, her teeth a dazzling white against her jade-green skin, much of which was displayed by the strategically placed gaps in her designer dabo girl costume. She raised her warp core breach, a beverage Ro had never been able to distinguish from industrial solvent, in a toast. Although Treir’s drinking vessel dwarfed Ro’s, in the viridianskinned woman’s large but graceful hands it was proportionally the same size.

“To the drowning of troubles,” Treir said, and they both drank. “Or at least to taking them out for a nice, brisk swim. Let’s see, now. Which troubles are in most urgent need of drowning? There’s the Andorians that have taken up residence in Ensign ch’Thane’s quarters. And the signing ceremonies for Bajor’s entry into the Federation.”

Ro offered a wan smile as she raised her glass to her lips. “You should talk to Lieutenant Commander Matthias about apprenticing in the counseling business.”

Ro reflected on how much their relationship had changed since she and Quark had rescued Treir from the employ of the Orion pirate Malic a few months back. There was obviously a great deal more to Treir than her brassy exterior had initially led Ro to believe.

Treir glanced quickly over her shoulder, then returned her attention to Ro, to whom she spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh, and don’t forget the single most horrific item on the entire dreary list of troubles to be drowned—there’s still the matter of that second date my boss somehow tricked you into.”

Ro nearly spit her wine across the table. Lately she’d been so wrapped up in station business that she’d completely forgotten.

“I heard that!” The voice belonged to Quark, though it took Ro a moment to zero in on his exact whereabouts. Then she saw that the owner and proprietor of DS9’s principle hospitality establishment was standing three booths away, beside the small group of Terrellians whose drinks he had just delivered.

A moment later, he stood next to Ro’s table, scowling at Treir and gesturing accusingly at the drink in the statuesque green woman’s hand.

“Is this what I’m paying you for?”

“Check the schedule again, Quark,” Treir said, nonchalantly sloshing what little remained of her warp core breach. “I’m off duty. And when I’m off duty, I sometimes moonlight as Lieutenant Ro’s bodyguard.” She threw Ro a wordless I-can-make-him-leave-you-alone glance.

“Hello, Quark,” Ro said, involuntarily warming to his presence.

Quark’s rejoinder to Treir appeared to die before reaching his lips. “I hope we’re still on for tomorrow night,” he said to Ro with an anticipatory smile. “We’ll have Holosuite Three all to ourselves, starting at 2100 hours.”

Ro noticed Treir staring at her. No-really-I-can-makehim-go-away-if-you-say-the-word, she seemed to be saying.

Ro smiled back at Quark, and it felt like the first time she’d done anything other than scowl in weeks. “We’re still on, Quark. I haven’t forgotten.”

Shaking her head in incomprehension, Treir excused herself and departed, evidently having seen and heard quite enough. Let her think whatever she wants, Ro thought, amused.

“You know, I’m really beginning to look forward to this,” Ro said, more than a little surprised to discover that she actually meant it. “I think I could really use the diversion.”

Quark looked surprised for a moment, then quickly recovered his best tongo face. “You chose the program last time. So tomorrow night, I get to pick, just like we agreed.”

“I remember,” she said. Then she let her smile collapse in order to make her next point with absolute crystal clarity. “Now you’d better remember: Don’t even think about running one of your Vulcan Love Slave holonovels, or else it’s going to be an extremely short evening.”

He looked wounded, his hands raised in a don’t shoot! gesture. “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that.”

“And no programs that require me to dress like Treir.” She’d had to do that once already, in the line of duty, and that was once too many.

Quark was making quite a show of agreeing with her. “That’s fine with me. That sort of apparel wouldn’t be appropriate for Las Vegas anyway.”

“Las Vegas?” She didn’t recognize the name. “Is that a Gamma Quadrant planet?”

“It’s a city on twentieth-century Earth,” Quark said, cheerfully baring his snaggly teeth. “Courtesy of Dr. Bashir. Full of bright lights, indescribable sounds, and inhaled carcinogenic vapors. Harmless holographic carcinogenic vapors, of course.”

“Sounds like a Cardassian labor camp,” Ro said with a frown. “Except for the part about the holograms.”

“I suppose my description hasn’t done the place justice. Actually—”

Ro’s combadge chose that moment to speak up. “Kira to Ro. I’ve got a situation on my hands, Lieutenant.”

The sound of Kira’s voice neutralized the spring wine as authoritatively as a bucket of cold water. “Ro here, Colonel. Please tell me nobody’s hurt or dead this time.”

“It’s nothing quite that serious. At least, not yet. But I still need to see you in my office right away.”

“On my way.” Ro stood up and excused herself. “Tomorrow night, 2100 hours.”

“Wear a nice evening gown,” she heard Quark say as she walked quickly away from the booth. “Something semiformal and off the shoulder would be nice. With sequins!”

As she moved toward the bar on her way to the Promenade, she practically collided with Morn, who had chosen precisely the wrong moment to step down from his perch. Ro felt like an astronomer bearing witness to the formation of an antimatter quasar; the sight of Morn disconnected from his barstool had to be at least that rare.

Smiling politely, she picked her way quickly past the massive Lurian before he had a chance to draw her into yet another one of his interminable family anecdotes.

Moments later, she strode from the ops turbolift and into the station commander’s office.

Kira rose from behind her desk. “It’s Gul Macet,” she said in response to Ro’s unspoken question. “He’s asked for immediate departure clearance for his ship. And he won’t explain why, or when he intends to return.”

Ro frowned. “The Trager was supposed to stay at the station for at least the next few days. Macet told me he’d placed his ship at the disposal of the Cardassian delegates still on the station doing the low-echelon stuff.”

“Yes, the people who have diplomatic meetings about whether and when Bajor and Cardassia will have more diplomatic meetings,” Kira said, nodding. “My instinct is to tell Macet to just sit tight and wait his turn.”

Ro mulled that over for a moment. With the current levels of station traffic, that would bump back the Trager’ s departure by at least six hours. Why was Macet in such a hurry?

“Has he given you any reason to suspect anything other than an innocent internal scheduling mix-up?” Ro said.

Kira’s smile was small and rueful. “Besides his looking so much like Gul Dukat that it’s virtually impossible to think about him objectively?”

“Besides that.” Ro knew that Kira’s point, though made flippantly, was entirely valid. How could any Bajoran who’d endured the casual brutalities of the Cardassian Occupation keep a level head around a man who wore the face of Bajor’s most hated oppressor?

But Ro also knew that there were larger issues to consider, namely Bajor’s relationship with Cardassia during that world’s postwar reconstruction—and the Federation’s evaluation of the Bajoran government’s actions before formally accepting Bajor as a member.

An event that now loomed only days away.

Kira’s furrowed brow told Ro that the colonel was busy weighing those very same issues.

Ro followed Kira from the office and down the steps into ops, where Ensign Selzner stood beside a communications console. She was clearly awaiting Kira’s instructions as to how to handle Macet.

“Hail the Trager, Ensign,” Kira said before turning back to Ro. “Trust has to start somewhere. Even at the risk of misplacing it.”

Absurdly, Kira’s comment reminded Ro of her upcoming date with Quark.

 

“Thank you, Colonel,” Macet said, doing his best to smile in an ingratiating manner. “You’ve just made my life immeasurably easier. Macet out.”

Kira’s image vanished from the viewer on the Trager’ s cramped bridge. Macet’s smile likewise disappeared.

Macet turned his command chair toward the Bajoran man who stood less than two meters away, just out of range of the viewer’s visual pickup. “I am loath to do anything that might serve to undermine Colonel Kira’s trust. You have no idea how difficult it was to gain whatever small measure of it I may have squandered just now.”

“I understand,” Vedek Yevir said. “Neither trust nor true faith comes easily to Colonel Kira.”

“Yet you still insist on the necessity of all this…subterfuge,” Macet said as he stroked the tufts of hair on both sides of his chin and considered what Yevir was asking of him.

“I assure you, it’s entirely necessary.” Yevir’s face was overcome with a passionate intensity that Macet had rarely seen before. “I regret these deceptions every bit as much as you do. And I assure you, if our pilgrimage fails, I alone will assume the responsibility before your superiors as well as my own.”

Macet smiled, more than a little reassured. He’s a step away from the kaiship. He has more friends and influence in the Vedek Assembly than anyone else alive. Other than perhaps First Minister Shakaar, there are no superiors he’s obliged to answer to.

“All right,” Macet said. “But there are considerations here that are far more important than either of our personal reputations. And I’m still not certain what I can do to assist, other than providing transportation.”

“Oh, there’s a great deal you can do, Gul Macet, with the right help. Things that politicians and diplomats won’t or can’t do. And when the politicians and diplomats fail to do the right thing, then we must seek the help we need from others.”

Macet could no longer hold back the obvious question: “Who?”

“Get the ship under way,” Yevir said, his smile growing even more beatific. “And I will explain everything during the voyage.”