After the way the meeting at the Prime Ministers’ residence had ended, Reade Latta feared Starfleet would be abandoning them for another decade, if not longer. So when he learned that a Starfleet team was to come calling to discuss security matters, he resolved to show them how much he welcomed their presence.

“Ten-year-old whiskey,” he announced, holding up the bottle and beaming at his guests. “Distilled from the finest Bringloidi-raised quadrotriticale; none of that biosynthesized swill for you good folk.” The Starfleeters—Corsi, the tall blond security chief he’d met earlier, and Soloman, whose large skull clearly identified him as some manner of technological genius—were clearly overwhelmed by his graciousness, and they could only smile silently as he filled their glasses. “To fallen comrades,” he said as he lifted his glass, “and absent friends.”

Corsi nodded solemnly, raised her glass in kind, and added, “And to new friends.”

The Starfleeters both brought the drink to their lips, but Latta hesitated. He stared into the amber liquid for a long guilty moment, as if only then remembering his promises and his responsibilities. But you only promised Brenna you would stay sober for the duration of the crisis, the demon in the back of his head reminded him. Well, now Starfleet is here to put things right, aren’t they? Besides, you were the one who proposed that toast; it would be an insult to Kevin Hammond and all the rest not to—

Latta slammed the untouched drink down on the desk, sloshing a good share of it onto his hand. Stupid weak old man, he cursed himself. Pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his hand, he put on a smile to meet the questioning gazes from across the desk. “Well then, friends, shall we get to business?”

Corsi set her still half-full glass aside. “The da Vinci stands ready to offer our assistance in securing the safety of this colony. Soloman and I are here to determine how to best organize those efforts.”

“Ah, yes, yes. Very wise, very forward thinking.”

“Thank you,” Soloman said. His glass was also sitting forgotten in front of him, the level barely a centimeter lower than what he had poured. “To this end, we hoped you would grant us access to your computer systems.”

“Oh, well, certainly,” said Latta, gesturing to the fancy chrome and glass panels set into the wall to his right.

The Starfleeters looked at the device, and then back to Latta, as if they had expected something else. After a moment of awkward silence, Mr. Soloman spoke. “Minister, we would require an authorization code in order to fully access your systems.”

“Um…” Latta replied. “Yes. An authorization code. Of course.” Kevin Hammond had mentioned something to him about codes, maybe, when he set off on his counterstrike against those A.M.P. madmen. But all power was out then, so Latta hadn’t bothered remembering any of it. Hell, in his younger days, back on the Old World with Danilo Odell (God rest his sweet soul), you didn’t need computers or any of the rest of this machinery to keep order. Danilo lay down the law, and Reade needed nothing but his own two fists to enforce it. Now, that was how you maintained security….

Soloman and Corsi were still staring at him expectantly. “Well, the thing is, you see…these contraptions are very temperamental. They have to be dealt with in just such a way—”

“Minister,” Corsi interrupted, frowning at him suspiciously, “I understand that you would be hesitant to give outsiders access to restricted data at any level—”

“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Latta insisted. He still needed help from these people—over half the Public Safety Force was dead, another quarter were gravely ill, at least eight of those remaining had revealed themselves as A.M.P. sympathizers. But to admit his ignorance, to appear weak to them…

“Perhaps I could attempt to circumvent the encryption protocols myself,” Mr. Soloman suggested. “With your permission, of course, Minister.”

“Yes, of course, permission granted,” Latta said magnanimously. Soloman rose from his chair and went straight to work on the machine. In the back of his mind, he wondered, what with all this to-do about access authorization and restricted files, whether he was too readily giving away the store.

That worry was shoved aside when Corsi said, “I’d also like to hear from you a narrative of what, exactly, happened here. What was the trigger event, the chain of events that followed, the parties involved?”

“Ah, that I can tell you,” Latta said. “’Twas an explosion and fire, dead center of the Life Science Center, in the cloning labs.”

Corsi’s entire body snapped taut at that. “Cloning labs? But I thought—”

“Oh, they’re not used for cloning anymore, of course. They’re just regular science labs now. One woman working down there was killed in the blast—Sandra Vallis, a fine lass, deserved much better. Then when the emergency responders answered the call, they started dropping dead on the floor. Just the clones, of course. By the time anyone realized what was happening, it was all up in the air ducts, and everything went straight to hell.”

“Any way of tracking who’d been in and out of there?” Corsi asked. “Any security restrictions? Visual recordings?”

“No, not that I know of. And like I said, it’s the middle of medical center; everyone goes through or around there. Would have been too simple.” His hand went to his whiskey glass again, and he had to fight the urge to wrap his fingers around and pick it up. “It would have taken less solution than this to do the damage, I’m told. Could’ve been snuck in in a small pocket flask, and no one’d be the wiser.”

“You would think there would be more protection around what used to be their clone labs,” Corsi said. “So you have no idea who could’ve done this.”

Latta sighed and shrugged. “The A.M.P., the Dieghanists, the Wilmut Party, the Sons of Bringloid…any group of bloody splitters who think they can run this world better than it is now.”

Corsi showed deep concern hearing that. “Is there really that much discord in this colony, that any of these groups is as likely a suspect as the next?”

Latta shook his head. “As you said yerself, miss, we cannot discount anyone.”

Corsi looked ready to say something more, but then Soloman announced, “I’ve gained access.”

“Good. Let’s start by pulling together all the professional and educational information on the colony inhabitants we can, ranked by level of expertise.”

“What are you looking for?” Latta asked.

“We need to find individuals who would have the knowledge and ability to have created this bioweapon—not just the actual work of gene splicing, but the design of complex new genomes.”

After several seconds, the chrome contraption beeped. “I have the list of geneticists’ names,” Soloman said.

Corsi rose from her seat, and went to look over Soloman’s shoulder at the display. Latta joined her to look at the fifty-one names, all with the surnames of the Mariposan Progenitors, listed on the screen. Poor Sandra Vallis’s name immediately jumped out at him from the list. “You should know, Commander Corsi,” he said in a somber voice, “if you’re looking for a guilty party to charge, that a goodly number of these people have already gone on to their Final Judgment in recent days.”

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.