They'd never get away now. Stiles battled inwardly, wrestling with the idea that getting away wasn't the best idea, wouldn't get them where they needed to be, wouldn't find Zevon.

"You needn't call me 'sir,' "Spock told him, as if they were sitting over a dinner table or playing badminton. "I have no Starfleet rank any longer, and you are the commander of the vessel that matters in our lives today."

"Yeah, well... well, it'll be long time before I can think of you as anybody other than Science Officer Spock of the Enterprise."

The plane circled the area, keeping them inside its surveillance area while no doubt calling for backup. Stiles never let his back turn to the plane, moving constantly to stay between the aircraft and the amba.s.sador, a shield of vellum against rockets if they decided to open fire. Each step drove him deeper into his troubled thoughts.

"Do you know," he began, "do you realize how many hours on end I rehea.r.s.ed calling you 'Amba.s.sador' before that evac mission? I just knew I'd get down to that planet and call you 'Mister' or 'Captain' or 'First Officer' or 'Your Honor' or 'Your Highness'-something stupid was waiting to pop out of my mouth and I could just taste it. All the way in Travis and the evil twins kept saying, 'Eric, will you quit mumbling the word amba.s.sador?' I'll bet... I just bet Captain Kirk never had that kind of problem."

Spock paused a moment. His eyes never flinched nor did his expression change much. He peered solemnly into the past and seemed to enjoy what he saw.

"No," he said. "He had others. Those were excellent days. But they are pa.s.sed now."

Despite the circ.u.mstances, Stiles found himself sighing. "Maybe for you. Not for the rest of us."

Looking up now, Spock said, "Because you feel you must live up to them?"

Somehow there was no right answer to that question. d.a.m.ned if he did, d.a.m.ned-Apparently the amba.s.sador didn't expect an answer, because he kept talking himself. "If James Kirk's mission logs are the barometer against which you measure yourself, you set too high a task for yourself You must temper your awe. You can never attain so high a standard."

Even though a patrol scout craft now appeared over the mountains and streaked toward them across the meadow flats, Stiles turned to Spock and didn't bother to look at the patroller as he heard its humming engines approaching.

"Oh, is that right?" he challenged. "I 'always admired you for the things you did and the-I guess 'style' is a good way to say it... I never got the idea you were filled up with yourself. Till now, anyway .... Why are you nodding? I just insulted you."

"Rather, you just complimented yourself" Spock corrected. "And you must not expect me to argue with the ship's commander."

His tone was somehow cagey, manipulative, carrying palpable ulterior messages. And that eyebrow was up again. Stiles scoured him silently, wondering what to make of the amba.s.sador's expression. Was he being teased? "Are you feeling ill?" Spock asked him then. Stiles flinched. "What?" "You're very pale?' "Well... it... isn't easy getting needled by a... by a..." "A super-eminence?" Spock supplied.

Stiles peered at him, able for a moment to ignore the approach of the Pojjana security scout. Was Spock smiling? Was that a little smile? Was it?

As the Pojjana scout came to a hover over them with its warning lights flashing, its containment field snapped on to enshroud them in red spotlight-they could no more walk out of it than through a vault wall.

"Stay quite still," the amba.s.sador warned. "They will a.s.sume we're armed."

With the flat of his hand Stiles shielded his eyes from the containment field's glare. "We should've been. I botched it."

His hands were ice. Emblazoned on the flank of the scout, the Pojjana symbol of a gray lighting bolt crossed by a red arrow seemed alive to him, a swollen symbol of his captivity. Those terrors and miseries rushed back at him. His legs trembled so violently that he could barely stand. Only Spock's steadying presence kept him from bolting, a spontaneity which would've fried him to a flake at the edge of the containment field. Strange-he knew that if he were the senior "eminence" here and his crewmates were with him, he wouldn't be so shaky. He would never let them bolt. How there could be two men in one suit- "HOLD POSITION? the scout's broadcaster boomed, so loud it knocked Stiles back a step.

Spock held up both hands in a surrendering gesture. Stiles couldn't manage that. His hands were frozen at his sides, his chest heaving, his leg muscles bound up.

"Relax, Mr. Stiles," Spock called over the scout's hum as the craft nestled into the crusty burned stubble, his dark eyes squinted into shafts.

Without looking at him, Stiles gulped, "Remember what happened last time you told me that?"

The Pojjana craft settled completely and gave off a loud hiss as its antigravs equalized. The sight of Pojjana guards lumbering down the hatch ramp as it crashed down gave Stiles a cramp in the middle of his gut. All four guards and a sergeant came thundering out and leveled firearms at them.

"Our sidearms are completely drained," Spock stated in pa.s.sably fluent Pojjana to the sergeant who came to face them down. "We wish to speak to the planetary authorities."

"You are aliens," the sergeant said with malice, and confiscated their phasers instantly, drained or not. "This is Red Sector. We're supposed to be left alone."

Beside Stiles, the amba.s.sador struggled to stand despite the fact that everyone could see his leg was bleeding. Spock faced the sergeant at eye level.

"Things change, Officer," he said. "I am Amba.s.sador Spock of the United Federation of Planets, former emissary to the Pojjana a.s.sembly. This is-" "Don't tell them," Stiles whispered.

Spock instantly revised. "This is the commander of the transport ship you nearly brought down. We destroyed the emitter in self-defense. We have no aggressive intentions. We have a proposal for the provincial exarch." "We have no exarch anymore. That position was eradicated." "Who is in charge?" "The provost of the works."

Spock tipped his head. "That is the supreme authority on the planet?" "That's right." "Please take us to this person."

The sergeant shook his head. His helmet reflected light from the clearing sky. "You'll be incarcerated in the provincial prison until you come to trial for invasion."

"We must be allowed to see the senior authority. This is a matter of interstellar importance."

"I'll put you where I want to put you" the sergeant said. "Then I'll wait to be asked what happened? Stiles beat down a shudder. "Nothing really changes."

"We cannot wait," Spock told the sergeant. "If you withhold us, you will be blunting advancement of a critical mission. Do you wish your name to be prominent when the provost discovers that he was not informed?"

The sergeant stood with an unreadable expression for a few silent seconds, then gestured them toward the scout's ramp and the four other guards waiting to funnel them inside.

"Clear them for energy signals," the sergeant ordered to his men, and one of them came forward.

The guard lowered his firearm, whipped out some kind of scanner, and ran it over Stiles from ears to toes, then over Spock, front, back, and both sides.

"No active energy or signals of any kind," the guard confirmed. "No readings"

"He told you we were unarmed" Stiles complained, knowing that he wouldn't have believed it either.

The sergeant stepped aside and leveled his own weapon. "Go in."

Obviously there wasn't much more to be done here. Stiles's jaw ached to speak up, spit who he was and insist on some kind of instant retribution, but a thousand warnings clogged his throat. He was in command of the ship, not the mission. ff they found out who he was, would they take offense or insult? Stuff him back in a cell and start auctioning beatings again?

Stiles started toward the scout, pausing only when the amba.s.sador took a step on his injured leg and crumpled to one knee. The sergeant stepped forward to a.s.sist. Stiles met the uniformed guard with a fierce shoulder b.u.t.t to the chest.

"Back off" he snapped, and took the amba.s.sador's arm himself.

None of the other guards made any attempt to touch them further. Stiles escorted the amba.s.sador into the scout and to the first of only three pa.s.senger seats. They were in custody.

Stiles straightened and maneuvered to take the next seat. As he raised his eyes to scan the interior of the scout while the guards came aboard, he found himself no longer seated but rather standing ramrod straight and stating at a mounted photograph in a gilded frame on the port bulkhead.

After a wicked choke, he blurted, "Who in salvation is that!"

The sergeant, just coming aboard, glared at him as if he and the amba.s.sador were complete idiots. 'That's our provost of the works. He saved half the planet from the Constrictor. He developed a way to predict the waves. He sponsored engineering schools and guided architectural renovations all over the planet. Don't you even know who you came to see? We owe him our lives."

The idling engines of the scout roared in his ears as Stiles stood riveted to the carpet. His voice gravelly, he managed, "I owe him a couple things too .... "

Spock surveyed the picture briefly, seeing that something more than a portrait of a guy beside a tiger oak desk was going on here. "Mr. Stiles? Do you have something to say?"

Confused, demolished, Stiles blinked at him, at the sergeant and finally again at the picture.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. I know how we can get in. Tell the 'Provost'... that Eric Stiles is back."

Chapter Twenty-one.

"STILES. ERIC STILES. You didn't die. They cured you somehow." "Orsova. Somehow, it figures."

In one withering instant, all of Eric Stiles's fears and visceral reactions bonded into a single living form. There, behind an enormous orange-and-black desk carved out of that wood that reminded Stiles of tiger oak, except even stronger, backdropped by polished paneling and a dozen plaques and awards, there sat the drunken mess that had represented misery to him for four years.

Orsova was less slovenly than before, indeed had lost weight, though he still carried the wide shoulders and stocky build that came naturally to so many native Pojjana. His black hair was now shot with gold their idea of getting older-and he no longer wore the uniform of the prison hierarchy but the tweedy suit of a Pojjana planetary official. Stiles had only seen that uniform twice before in person. A long time ago.

Orsova sat behind his huge desk, which had hardly any work upon it, and scoured Stiles with the look of a man who was being shown both the past and the future in one picture.

How could events turn this way? How could a devious slob like that become somebody with a t.i.tle? "G.o.d in a box," Stiles chafed, "what am I seeing?'

His words barely scratched from his throat. As he stood staring, he thought perhaps that only Amba.s.sador Spock, standing with some effort at his side, had heard him at all.

He felt Spock's peripheral glance. But the amba.s.sador never said a thing to him about his reaction to the person they were both standing before. This was crazy. This was a dream.

Spock stepped forward, favoring his b.l.o.o.d.y leg, to draw the provost's attention away from Stiles and onto himself.

"Provost, I am Amba.s.sador Spock of the United Federation of Planets. Fifteen years ago I was the emissary to your government. We are here to negotiate the greening of Red Sector. Circ.u.mstances have caused the Romulans to need Federation a.s.sistance. On an Interstellar Temporary Pa.s.s, we have come here to make an offer. The sector can be reopened, allowing for trade, a.s.sistance, technological exchange, and limited diplomatic relations without requiting membership. We can help the Pojjana in many ways-agricultural efficiency, technological-" "We don't want help."

Orsova stood up behind his big desk, and there was something prophetic and distant about him. The desk sprawled like an emblem-tiger oak. That was something Zevon had talked about a long time ago. The memory sparked to life. "What do you want?" Orsova asked.

"We wish to negotiate for custody of the Romulan prisoner named Zevon."

Please let him still be alive, please let him still be alive, please-Orsova said nothing about Zevon, clearly determined not to give anything away. Instead, he simply asked, "Why do you want one of our prisoners?" "d.a.m.n you," Stiles grumbled. Spock looked at him.

In frustration and contempt Stiles wagged a hand at Orsova. "what am I-chopped cabbage? He d.a.m.ned well knows Zevon's not just 'one of their prisoners' to me! Is he alive or not, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

At Stiles' single step forward, two of the Four guards launched forward from the sides of the office, blocking his way to Orsova. The guard closest to him drove the b.u.t.t of his rifle into Stiles' stomach, and he was driven down.

Spock grasped the guard's arm, avoiding the weapon, and pushed him back in such a way that somehow the movement wasn't threatening. As Stiles gasped at the amba.s.sador's feet, battling crying lungs and a bruised rib, Spock spoke again to Orsova.

"If the Pojjana strike a deal with the Federation, the Bal Quonott and all others in the sector will be pressured to deal with you on favorable terms. That would give the Pojjana substance beyond just your planet. Indeed, you would be a power to be reckoned with in the entire sector. Certainly that offers some value."

Orsova's round bronze face tilted a little like a ball rolling. Maybe he was trying to think. Looked like it hurt.

Stiles's legs were watery as he waited. He had to force himself to stand still, not flinch or shift around, to bury the cloying nervousness, cloak the haunt of old terrors.

"You'll be held," Orsova ultimately decided, "as part of the foreign ship that invaded our planetary s.p.a.ce. You'll be held as hostages until the rest of your ship up there surrenders. The ship is mine now, property of the Pojjana people. The crew will be turned over to your government after a healthy fine is paid for destruction of property, violating our s.p.a.ce... and any other things I think of."

This was Orsova's playing ground. That showed clearly, as he stood up behind his big fancy desk, made of the wood Zevon had long ago discovered did not compress during Constrictors. He came around the bright orange piece of furniture, touching it only lightly along the edge. At the comer of the desk he paused, only steps from Stiles. His eyes burned into Stiles' eyes. "Except you," he said. "I'll keep you for the memories." Cued by some secret signal or habit, two of the four armed guards in the room came forward as Orsova moved out from his desk and paused again at Stiles' side. The guards were close enough to threaten against any attempts to attack the provost, so Stiles was careful to remain perfectly still. Being frozen into place by past horrors helped some.

Orsova's eyes drew tight. "It was an insult to me when they took you away. I promised the planet I would get you back. I kept your cell waiting. Didn't even clean it. Part of the promise."

With eyes flat and still as a doll's, Orsova motioned to the guards. "Take them away."

"Orsova."

"You brought me back already? Why? I stopped the Federation people. Their ship ran away."

"Their ship did not leave the solar system. I have been monitoring. They're hiding somewhere. I have discovered why they came here."

At these words from the Voice, Orsova paused and frowned. He had been sure the Federation ship had run away. He had the Federation's Vulcan amba.s.sador and Eric Stiles where no one would find them, and the Federation ship had run off. But this person, this ghost who spoke to him in unexplained terms, with impossible knowledge, said otherwise.

"I have changed my plans. I must have these people alive. The doctors, and Zevon." "And Stiles?" "Do what you wish with him."

"Why do you want doctors? why don't you just kill them? We've killed plenty of others-"

"The have found a way to do the impossible, cure the incurable. I must know how. You must capture them and bring them to me."

Trying to make sense of a puzzle when he had only half the pieces, Orsova paced the small chamber of the humming craft as the planet of his birth rotated outside one of the little holes.

"I have something here," the Voice began again, "that will make the Pojjana supreme in Red Sector Even the Bal Quonott will shrink before you."

Suspicious of such a brash statement, Orsova narrowed his eyes. "what will make s.p.a.ceships bow before our planes?"

"You will have more than planes if you do as I tell you. Look in the s.p.a.ce chest."

s.p.a.ce chest... this bra.s.s case? It had a lock, but the lid opened for him anyway. He looked inside. There was only one thing in there. "A bottle?" "A medical vial." "Poison?" "Something similar"

Orsova straightened sharply. "Is this biological war? You want me to put a plague on my own people? I won't!" "No." "I have no one else to poison." "You have Zevon."

At this, Orsova paused and grimaced. "Why should I poison Zevon? who are you to want it?"

"You'll never know me. All these years, and I am still a stranger. You were a jail guard. You became a.s.sistant warden, but you would never have grown beyond that but for the day I spoke to you and told you to believe that Zevon could predict the Constrictor. Now, Zevon's usefulness is coming to an end here. Give this to Zevon before he is enticed away, and the galaxy moves forward by a leap."

"Away?" Orsova reacted. "Why should he go away? He hates his own people. We're his people now! He says it every day." "He is royal family. They need him. He may go." "He'll never leave. No one could get him to leave now" "The Federation and the Romulans both have reasons to make him want to go. If he leaves, you lose your power and I lose my chance to have what I want. The vial will end the Romulan threat and make the Pojjana strongest, because it will stop Zevon from leaving." "Because he'll be dead? What... what do... if I kill Zevon for you, what comes to me?"

"This will force the collapse of the Romulan Empire. When it falls, you will get Romulan ships." "Warwings? You'll give me those?" "And birds-of-prey, and at least one full-sized converted heavy cruiser... for the sector governor, so he will become accustomed to flying in s.p.a.ce." "Sector governor..."

He discovered a series of small cracks-or were they openings? seams?-in the panels ....

"You will get a Romulan fleet, enough ships to control the Bal Quonott and make the Pojjana the power in this sector. Rather than cowering before the Federation, the Romulans, or any other aliens, you will be the winner." "Winner..." "Stop... trying... to see me! "

The cabin vibrated with the voice's sudden rage. Whoever this ghostly person was, he would not be discovered.

Orsova felt his curiosity wane and let it go. Some things, he didn't have to know. "Zevon's alien," he protested. "How do you know this will kill him? Are you an alien too? Are you a human?" "No."

"Are you Romulan, Voice? Is that who you are all these years?" "No." "Are you-" "Zevon will be contaminated. Then the Federation won't have any reason to stay in Red Sector, and Zevon will have no reason to leave. Either way, I will honor my agreement with you."

Standing in the middle of the cabin, Orsova gazed at the reflection of himself. An older man, no longer as fat as the prison guard had been, a glowing copper complexion on his cheekbones and streaks of dignified gold in his black hair. This was the leader of a planet, perhaps the leader of a whole sector of s.p.a.ce? Dominion over the Bal Quonott, who had lorded their s.p.a.cefaring capability over the Pojjana since before he was born?

Liking what he saw, he squared Iris shoulders and imagined a fur cape. The voice remained silent until he decided to ask a question.