“My commission for the grand foyer of the Master General’s suite,” the creature said proudly. “I need the last element. I have waited for weeks. And now you are here!” His grin revealed a mouth of crooked, graying nubs Vaughn assumed were teeth.
Prynn combed her fingers through her spiked hair. “We’re only visitors and won’t be staying long.”
“Oh please oh please oh please change your mind. Oh please oh please oh please!” He threw himself prostrate before Prynn. “Only you!”
Taking Prynn by the elbow, Vaughn extracted her from the creature’s ardent attention to her feet. “Tell you what. If our business concludes and time allows it, we’ll come back and you can take your impressions.”
“Commander!” Prynn exclaimed, drawing back. Vaughn expected she might throw him a punch under different circumstances.
The creature knelt penitently and while its ratty hair failed to camouflage his despondent posture, Vaughn’s words mitigated his sadness somewhat. “Fazzle. Ask anywhere in the Core for Fazzle and you will find me.”
As they walked off, pushing their way through the thronging crowds clogging the Core’s central district, Vaughn couldn’t resist teasing his daughter, “Think of it as a new cultural odyssey: immortalizing yourself for posterity.”
She smirked at him. “I’ll stick to living fast, thanks.”
Waiting for the lifts back to Avaril’s platform, Vaughn approached the minister. In a low voice, he asked about making contact with a shadow trader.
“Word of the needy spreads quickly. The Exchange is watched. When the shadow traders figure out what you have, they will find you.”
“So we wait,” Vaughn said.
M’Yeoh nodded.
Vaughn closed his eyes, wishing circumstances could be different. From the first moments after the Defianthad triggered the Cheka weapon until now, Vaughn had felt he’d been standing at the helm of a rudderless craft. At every turn, he’d been compelled to accept whatever course circumstance had selected, whether it was the not-so-subtle attempt of the Yrythny government to engage Dax as a mediator, having to turn over bartering to a broker or this latest pronouncement of M’Yeoh’s. Vaughn didn’t like it. He understood that part of the hunt was patiently waiting in the tall grass for your prey to stroll into your sights, but some part of him couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the one doing the strolling, not the waiting.
“So how much fun are you having, Ensign ch’Thane?” Keren asked, taking a seat on the edge of Shar’s desk. They were alone in the government office Lieutenant Dax’s team had been provided.
“Work doesn’t need to be entertaining,” Shar said practically, dropping an unused data chip into a drawer.
“But your antennae…they’re drooping. You could borrow my headpiece to cover them up and then no one would be the wiser.”
“Oh.” Andorian antennae often conveyed emotional states. Any hope he’d had of getting to his genetic research today had vanished when Ezri had given him his daily orders. His antennae must be betraying his down mood.
Keren examined a statue of a naked Yrythny riding a whale-size sea animal—a gift from a well-meaning Assembly member courting favor with Ezri—now residing on Shar’s desk. Upon seeing this odd gift, Ensign Juarez had doubled over, convulsed with laughter. The Wanderer delegate appeared equally bemused. “Where’s Lieutenant Dax?”
“I’m surprised you don’t know. She went with Jeshoh and the Houseborn contingent for a planetside tour of one of the Houses.” Juarez, Candlewood, and McCallum had gone with her. Shar had—meetings. Ezri apologized profusely for asking him to act in her stead, but she felt the mission needed to proceed on two fronts.
“Ah. Probably House Tin-Mal. One of Jeshoh’s pet stories. I’ll be interested in her conclusions.”
“Tin-Mal?” Shar thought he knew the names of all the Yrythny Houses, but Tin-Mal wasn’t familiar to him.
“My Houseborn brothers and sisters are excavating the bones from the House crypt in an effort to make a point. I’ll have my office send over the Journals of Tin-Mal,” she said. “I’m certain they aren’t in the database you’ve been given.”
“You’re saying the historical and cultural data the Houseborn have been providing us is incomplete?”
Keren shrugged. “A politically sound tactic. Select the facts that prove your argument, suppress the rest.”
The constant push and pull of politics had always seemed futile to Shar. It had been his observation that after the arguing and manipulation and propaganda, truth eventually won out. Dealing in postulates and suppositions and perceptions…what a muddle. He liked pursuing causes he could measure—and not in votes. “What do the Houseborn want Lieutenant Dax to see?”
“The ancient majesty of these castles rising out of the water, with the lava and coral walls, sea glass sparkling. It’s quite seductive,” Keren reached over Shar’s shoulder, tapped in several access codes, bringing up a vid of an underwater seascape played on his viewscreen. “But Tin-Mal happened because both sides made mistakes and I believe she’ll see through the facade put up by Jeshoh’s people. She has to.”
But how would that help?Shar thought. For almost a week, Shar had stayed on Luthia. He had watched Houseborn and Wanderers live in segregated neighborhoods and walk on opposite bridges. Houseborn Yrythny congregated, usually by House affiliation, for dinner and social events. Wanderers, orphans all, used separate eating and recreational facilities. How Ezri Dax could find a working solution when the Yrythny were determined to live separately, Shar couldn’t imagine. Behavior patterns had been ingrained for generations. And now, with the Cheka siege, when the planet would most benefit from putting internal disputes aside, the Houseborn and Wanderers seemed to be finding more reasons than ever to distrust each other. If only I had more time for my study,he thought. A realist, he knew that science couldn’t solve everything, but it was a solid way to start.
Keren interrupted his thoughts. “You’re certainly solemn about something.”
Shar flushed. “I-I—” he sighed. “I have an idea about how to approach your internal issues, but I don’t have enough time or resources to make it workable.”
“Go on,” Keren said, resting her elbows on the desk and watching him intently.
“I’ve studied your DNA and to say that it’s a marvel of genetics is an understatement.” He’d spent hours last night, watching the computer simulate Yrythny cellular mitosis, the DNA unzipping, spiraling in a dance of base pairs lacing together to create life. “I have a…a hypothesis that whoever aided your evolutionary process—call it the Other if it suits you—whoever could engineer your biochemistry to the extent I’ve observed so far, could have forecast problems with genetic drift or mutation. Like those recessive traits that make Wanderers, Wanderers.”
“And you think the answer to our problem might be in the Turn Key?”
Shar nodded. “Maybe. But access to your labs is restricted—even to Ezri—and I can’t organize a statistically significant sampling in the time we’ve been given.”
“For fear of the Cheka stealing and exploiting our results, we haven’t done significant genetic research in decades. What we havedone is barricade what data we have behind layers and layers of security.” She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “You need a large body of DNA samples to make your generalizations and forecast possible conclusions, correct?”
“Yes,” Shar answered. “And because one of my specialties is cytogenetics, I’m actually uniquely qualified to undertake genetic mapping. I could process the information quickly if I had it.”
“Let me look into it,” Keren said. “I may be able to help.” She turned on her heel to go, but suddenly spun back around. “Oh. I almost forgot the reason I came to see you. The Cheka broke through the defense perimeter again.”
“That’s the third time since we’ve been here.” Beetlelike strikers had penetrated Yrythny defenses, raided the mating grounds and attacked planetside villages. The assaults happened so quickly that the military could rarely be mustered in time.