"If we can predict the Constrictors," Stiles muttered, "then it's only a matter of time before we can reduce the effects"

"A thousand years of time, perhaps, between those two miracles."

"But if we can just predict them, then planes can be landed, people can put on compression suits, get into reinforced buildings, put the babies and old people in antigrav chambers-you know how to build those. Why won't they listen?" "I don't know"

Stiles managed a sustaining sigh, let the lungful of oxygen flow through him and clear his head a little more. When he could relax a little more, he gazed at Zevon. "You think I can't feel what's happening to me? I know how sick I am. My muscles are deteriorating. I can feel my innards slowly dissolving.

When Orsova's customers kick me now, it doesn't heal anymore. I won't survive the Constrictor when it comes. You don't have to pretend. Even without the Constrictor I don't have that long. Orsova'll have me beaten up once too often, or I'll fall down and my heart'll collapse... I can't have more than a few more weeks."

"If I hadn't caused the Constrictor, you would be somewhere else today. Probably a lieutenant." His sharp features creasing, Zevon pressed the heels of his hands into his thighs as if the mental torture caused him some physical pressure too. Several seconds pa.s.sed before he could finally say, "Now my great mistake has killed my only friend"

Stiles gazed at him, feeling supremely wise. The inner peace would've knocked him over like phaser stun if he'd been standing. He was completely content, as if lying in a hammock under a bower of autumn leaves. Zevon's grief actually amused him, and he smiled.

"Jesus, do you do Irish tragedies too?" he chided. "Zevon of the Sorrows... Listen, clown, you gave me four extra years. My own mistake killed me that night, the night we met. I was in the hole. I died there. You crawled through the wall and gave me four years I wasn't gonna get."

Irritated by the compliment, Zevon shook his head. "You wouldn't have been here at all-"

"Yeah, well, flog yourself again. Gimme that broom over there to hit you with. If I could get up, I'd beat your a.s.s blue." "It's 'already green."

Stiles laughed, despite the fact that his midsection had cramped again. He stiffened and moaned, but then he laughed again. Zevon smiled as he stuffed a rolled lab ap.r.o.n under Stile's head. For a moment they retired into peaceable silence. Over the years, they had learned to be silent together. In fact, they seldom talked like this anymore. Seldom needed to. They knew each other so well, and what a great feeling it was to be silent, silent together.

The lab seemed quiet, but now as they sat together Stiles focused on the chitter of the computer as it doggedly worked on the last problem fed into it, the burble of chemical processors trying to separate molecules for identification of s.p.a.ceborne particles brought to them by the Pojjana Air Patrols, and the plink of the faucet in the sink dripping Plink... plink... plink .... Nice sound.

He dared to draw a longer breath, which forced him to cough convulsively. When that cleared, he wiped spittle from his beard and tried to relax.

"I was pointless back ill Starfleet," he wandered on. Why did he feel like talking? Oh, well. 'Where were a thousand of me. Ensigns by the carton. Probably most of them are officers by now. Wouldn't have happened to me... botched the mission like I did... might as well be here, distracting somebody like Orsova. I mean, if he wasn't hitting me he'd just be... hitting you." "Quiet."

"After I die, you go on without me. Don't you quit. You don't need me. Don't let Orsova slow you down. If you can predict the Constrictor within days, you can save thousands. Within hours, you can save millions. If you can get the Pojjana to listen, they can save ten million this time, maybe a half billion the next-" "Without you, I have no wish to keep working."

"You don't need me." Stiles raised his head and grasped Zevon's arm with a ferocity of strength he didn't think he still had. "I've never been anything much more than raw material anyway. Starfleet tried to whip me into something worth having, and I thought they'd succeeded, but twenty-one-year-olds never think they're young. They'll go out and hoe a row of stumps before they realize they forgot to bring seed. That was me... was it ever me."

"Eric," Zevon pointlessly admonished, but had nothing new to say about that.

"You think you can do it, right? Whether I'm here or not, you can do it, right?"

"I can improve the predictions... if this first one is accurate within days, I can learn to fine-tune it. Bring it to hours. After the first one, I'll know how. If they let me continue-"

"They'll let you. You'll convince them. Don't you stop trying, right? If you stop trying, I'll be dead for nothing. I don't mind being dead, but dead for nothing stinks."

Inexpressibly disturbed, Zevon nodded. "I promise, Eric." Scarcely were the prophetic words out than the door suddenly rattled and both men flinched they hadn't even noticed the sound of footsteps in the hall. Abruptly aware of the great serviceability of silence and how much they sacrificed if they talked too long, Stiles willed himself to a sitting position and shifted until his legs hung over the end of the cot and Zevon was sitting almost beside him. They didn't stand. That would've been taken as threatening. They'd learned that too, a long time ago, the hard way.

Orsova rolled in, a little less drunk than before, his bulky guard uniform somewhat askew and a bundle under his arm.

Desperate at the prospect of two beatings in a single day, Zevon bolted to his feet between the big Pojjana and Stiles, standing out of the way of Stiles's grasping hand. "Leave him alone! If you want me to beg, Orsova, this time I will."

But the big a.s.sistant warden skewed a glance at him, then said, "I didn't come to beat him. I came to give him clean clothes."

The astounding claim literally drove Zevon back a step, enough that Stiles could get a grip on his arm. "Why?" Stiles asked.

Orsova dumped the bundle of clothing onto Stiles's lap. "Because a deal's been made. They're coming to get you. You're going home."

"Starfleet's coming?"

"Somebody is;' Orsova confirmed without commitment. "The orders to free you come all the way from Consul Bellihorn, and he hates everybody."

At the name of the chief provincial judiciary consul, Stiles felt the air fly from his lungs. "We're. ?. we're going home?" Orsova shrugged. "Just you." "What? What about Zevon!" "He's Romulan."

Stiles used his grip on Zevon to yank himself up despite the protests of his body and rage gave him the strength to be there. "You're kidding! I'm not going without him? "Yes." "No! You're doing this on purpose!" "Stop, Eric." Zevon pulled him back.

Orsova blinked his reddened eyes, peered with something like sentimental regret at the bundle of clothing, shrugged again, and simply left the room, bothering to c.h.i.n.k the door shut behind him, as if to give them a few final minutes alone. Courtesy? Since when?

Shuddering like an old man, Stiles stood beside Zevon, and the two of them stared at the door. They couldn't look at each other. Not yet.

"He's lying," Stiles rasped. "He's tricking us for some reason... he wants something. That's got to be it, Zevon. He's telling lies. This is Red Sector. Starfleet wouldn't come in here. It's a lie."

"Perhaps something has changed," Zevon suggested reasonably. "If the sector has been declared green, how would we know it, here in prison?"

"We'd hear about it... somebody would say something. We'd hear rumors."

Slowly shaking his head, Zevon stood with his arms at his sides and common sense on him like a cloak. "No, Eric. No." "We'd hear about it ...." "No."

Barely aware of where his legs were, Stiles sank back onto the cot. The metal frame squawked under his weight and the sound nearly knocked him unconscious. His head drummed, hearing the squawk again and again. Before him, Zevon's legs seemed to be surrounded by a slowly closing tunnel.

After a moment, Zevon came to sit beside him. Together they stared at the lab, still not looking at each other. Their world, this lab, this prison, this planet, turned inside out for them both in the next ten seconds. Suddenly everything was changed, heaving as if in some kind of earthquake, and for a ridiculous moment there seemed to be a Constrictor holding them both to this cot, to this floor, to the bedrock beneath the building.

Who was coming? If the Sector had turned green, they probably would've heard about it, and there hadn't been a whisper. Not a thing had changed, not a flicker of instability-nothing.

Who was strong enough to come through Red Sector after Eric Stiles?

"It must be the amba.s.sador," Zevon said, as if reading Stiles's mind. "He must finally have found a way to bring you out."

"I don't care if G.o.d Himself is coming," Stiles uttered. The words gagged in his throat. "I don't want to go." "You must go," Zevon told him firmly.

"I don't have to go. n.o.body can make me... I won't go. Not even for Amba.s.sador Spock... no, not even for him. Everything I've done, I did so he'd be proud of me. If I go back, everything'll fall apart. If I die here, he can be proud of me. I'll be lost in the line of duty. If I'm alive, I'm headed back to disgrace. Court-martial. Home to humiliation. Zero purpose... complete uselessness. I cheated my dopey destiny for four years. Now I'm twenty-five and dying, about to be crushed in name as well as in body... and you and I... Zevon... we'll never see each other again. I don't want to go. I'm not going."

Without really turning to face him, Zevon glanced down at his side, at his own arm pressing against Stiles's, and he moved enough to clasp Stiles's hand. Still, they did not look at each other.

"You must go," Zevon told him firmly. "They can save you. The Federation will cure you. You will go."

Despite the physical abuse, the sickness, the deterioration, the pain, Stiles found himself looking fondly back upon the years of working side by side with Zevon, at first concentrating on keeping each other alive, later on the goal of deciphering the erratic Constrictor pattern. Their discoveries-that there was no pattern, but that waves did build before a Constrictor and could be measured... the possibility of predicting the disasters before they hit...

"Y'know, I didn't mind the pain or the beatings, or anything," he said. "I didn't mind the chance to stay here and do what I perceived as my duty. It's better for me to die here than go back and die humiliated. You understand, you're Romulan-it's better for my family to believe that I died in battle."

"That is often best," Zevon conditionally agreed, "but not always. Not this time."

He squeezed Stiles's hand, careful of his own strength and the possibility of actually crushing the weakened muscles and the thready bones.

Stiles gazed at their clasped hands, and sucked each breath as if it were his last.

"You're the only friend I've got," he uttered. "I'm dying and they're taking me away from my only friend" "They'll cure you. You'll live."

"I don't want to live humiliated. I want to die here. At least I died trying, instead of going back disgraced and a failure, court-martialed-" "No, Eric. You must go" "Why'.7 Why do I have to go? I'd rather die here" "You must go for the billion." "Huh?"

"You forget, as usual, that others are involved who are not looking at you or judging you." "Who?" "The billion we can save." "You son of a b.i.t.c.h... don't do this to me." "And me, Eric. You'll save me too."

For the first time, the idea of going home seemed less p.r.i.c.kly. "How?" he demanded.

In a measured tone, Zevon explained, "If you go back and they cure you, you can get word to the Romulan Empire that I am here, that I'm alive. The royal family will have no choice but to breach Red Sector and get me out. My people don't think I'm alive, or they would have come already. They can find resources to make a deflection system. Look what I'm working with-ancient trash, chips and coils and conductors, a spectrograph the age of my mother, and still we've found a way to predict. Look at those copper wires! On my ship I had more facilities in my cabin than we have here. Mathematics based on a.s.sumptions of certain things happening at the same time-think what I could do with real technology!"

Zevon paused, seemed to dream briefly, then leaned back until he could rest against the wall. He had to tip his head forward a little to avoid scuffing the points of his ears against the wall when he turned his head to glance at Stiles.

"I am still royal family, Eric. If they know I'm here, they'll get me out. They'll negotiate, they'll threaten, but they'll gain my freedom. And I will come back-I'll wring cooperation out of my people for what we've done here. The Pojjana will finally believe, when I come back with resources. I know what can be done. You must go out of Red Sector, Eric. Go out and get cured, and tell my people. And they will come. This is the greatest favor you can do, of all the good you have done here."

Stiles blinked, surprised. "Me? What'd I do? I'm barely an a.s.sistant. Don't treat me like that."

"I would never bother to patronize you," Zevon said, giving him a glare of inarguable clarity and conviction. "You are nothing like the young man in the pit. That boy, yes, he died there. But the boy in us always fades, Eric, if we're fortunate. Now you're a different man, a better man. Look at what you've learned in four years. I know technical things, but you're the one who had the breakthrough with the flux meter. You're the one who told me to check for invisible phase shifts in the infrared. I told you how ridiculous that was, but you insisted I check, and you were right. Look what you and I have done here, with tricks and dirt and screwdrivers. I explain what I'm doing, and you provide the leap of imagination that sends us to the next step. We... Romulans and Vulcans, even Klingons, we were all in s.p.a.ce before Terrans, but look at you. Look how fast your progress has been... You've caught up in a century and charged beyond us. You are the people who see things the rest of us miss. One day together, with real facilities... your people and mine, working together... some day we'll stop shooting at each other, and think what we can do then!"

Now Stiles did look at him, and did not look away. Zevon's dark umber hair had long ago lost its polished-wood gloss, his complexion its glow of youth, and his face was creased now with weariness, starvation, physical stress, and the unending worry that their time would run out, yet still his brown eyes held a glimmer of purpose and hope that had never once flagged in all these years. Zevon had been in the pit with Stiles. Together they had crawled from the lowest place a man can go, the place of worthlessness and damage, and they had made something of it. They had made a bond with each other, and they had achieved a breakthrough that could save a billion people. if things went right... just a little more right.

"If I go," Stiles murmured, "we'll never see each other again."

The words struck them both with the force of a physical blow. It was the one thing they'd never mentioned. Excuses, plat.i.tudes, hollow rea.s.surances dodged through his head. The Federation would make peace with the Romulans. There'd be a treaty. Most Favored Systems status. Mail. Visits. The curtain rising so the two of them would be able to... see each other.

No matter how the story played in his mind, the final scene was the same. None of that would happen. He and Zevon would never see each other again.

He held on to Zevon in mute torment, the light touch becoming a sustaining grip, and he didn't know what in the universe to say.

"You must go," Zevon quietly insisted, "because you must live. You must live because I have to get off this planet so I can save these people even against their will. If I leave, I will come back. If you leave... you must never come back."

The faucet dripped, the computer clicked, and with a palpable crack Eric Stiles's heart broke in half for the second time in his life. In Zevon's angular features he saw the blurred echo of the face of Amba.s.sador Spock, calling him from the distant past, beckoning one more act of Starfleet honor from the carved-out gourd of failure.

Zevon squeezed Stiles' hand again and thumped it placidly against the edge of the cot in punctuation, as if instructing a child about something which must, absolutely must, be the choice of the day. "Go home, Eric," he summoned. "Go home, and live."

Chapter Eight.

"THAT'S NOT A STARFLEET SHIP. What is this? Who in h.e.l.l's coming for me?"

Stiles wrestled back against the grip of Orsova and one of the prison guards. They had him by the elbows, and there was no breaking away. He was too weak to do more than protest with anger and suspicion in his voice.

Orsova clapped a wide hand to Stiles's chest and said, "Stand still or I'll be happy to take you back to your cell." '"Fake me back, then! Fine!" "Stand still."

There was no chance to run, even if he could. The landing field was dotted with Pojjana soldiers, their red-and-brown jackets flashing in the landing lights, their coppery faces flinching at the approach of the unwelcome craft. Alien s.p.a.cecraft hardly ever landed on the planet anymore. They just weren't welcome. This was a bizarre occasion and Stiles still didn't know what he was watching.

His head swimming with regrets, fears, and rough-edged anguish, Stiles begged the stars to put things back the way they'd been this morning, but no miracle came his way. The clanky-looking merchant trader, bulbous and utilitarian, with its exhaust hatches flapping and its hull plates chattering, continued its inartistic approach.

"If that's a Federation ship, it's second-hand," he commented. "No Federation s.p.a.ceport ever built anything like that."

Unable to wrestle Orsova or the other guard, Stiles condemned himself to watch the landing. Port fin was high... too much pitch... not squared on the strip markings... lateral thrusters going too long.

Ah, the echoes 'almost hurt, echoes of another landing, not so far from here. He'd come to this planet an outcla.s.sed hotfoot who let haste get the better of him, overwhelmed by proximity to greatness, the approval of his hero, whose face he'd seen in the back of his mind all these many, many months, urging him to rise above the mangled messes he'd made. His life had imploded, his preconceptions defoliated, his internal fort.i.tude hammered to a fine edge by circ.u.mstances he'd never antic.i.p.ated, and he'd been preparing himself for a long time to die. Now living was a lot more scary than dying of whatever was eating his muscles. Strange... he and Zevon didn't really even know what illness Stiles had. The Pojjana doctors hadn't been able to identify it. Of course, since the patient was a prisoner and an alien, they hadn't tried all that hard.

So Stiles had gotten ready, over the months, to pa.s.s away. Now he was suddenly afraid not to go. Today, once again, the universe turned on its edge for him. He stood now at the munic.i.p.al landing field, barely an echo of that reckless and slapdash boy, but he was still trembling like a kid, so fiercely that Orsova and the other guard had to hold him up. Would Amba.s.sador Spock himself step down the black ramp of the unfamiliar vessel landing out there? "I don't want to go," he muttered in his throat.

Beside him, Orsova watched the ship settle. "I'll miss you, too."

This time there was no Zevon to talk sense into him. Zevon was back in the prison. For him, nothing had changed. Except, now, he would be alone.

Terrible guilt racked Stiles's chest. All the words of sense and reason from the lab suddenly seemed to leak like cheesecloth. How could he leave Zevon like this? Here in this dump, alien and hated, alone, powerless, with another Constrictor coming mid n.o.body to Believe him about it? Before this, they'd at least always had each other.

"Who's doing this?" he demanded as the ship settled and its thrusters shut down with a wheeze. "Who're you giving me to, Orsova? This is your doing, isn't it? You weren't getting anything out of watching Zevon while you tortured me anymore, so now you're up to something else, aren't you?"

"You're going home" Orsova drably said. "I would enjoy keeping you, but you're going."

"Why?" Stiles glared at him. "Why would you let anybody shove you around? Who are you afraid of?."

"You're an alien. Your own filthy kind have come to get you. Shut your mouth and go with them." "what about Zevon?" "He's mine from now on"

Summoning his last threads of energy, Stiles raised his elbow and rammed it laterally into Orsova's round face. The big guard staggered, but never let go of Stiles' arm. Before even regaining his balance, Orsova shoved Stiles viciously sideways, into the rocky substance of the other guard, who pivoted to provide a backboard for whatever Orsova wanted to do.

Stiles tried to brace himself, but he might as well be skinned alive as drum up a vestige of physical superiority-h.e.l.l, he could barely keep standing. Orsova reeled back a thick arm like a cannon, poised to turn Stiles into mashed oats.

Refusing to close his eyes, Stiles winced and prepared for pain and flash. "Stop!"

Though he attempted to turn toward the sound, Stiles found his head reeling and comprehended that somehow Orsova had gotten a lick in there someplace. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut briefly, and fought to focus.

When he could see again, he frowned at a clutch of odd-looking aliens he didn't recognize, yellow in the face with some kind of green growth on their heads that might be their idea of hair. Their cheeks were smooth as babies' b.u.t.ts, they had no recognizable nose, and two eyes pretty far apart. Their clothing was a mishmash, obviously not uniform in any way, so this wasn't anybody's military unit, just a ship's crew from some unG.o.dly where. Sure wasn't Starfleet. Why were yellow aliens coming for him?

From the middle of the clutch came the sharp voice again. "Stop that. Get away from that man."

Abruptly-and that was the shock-Orsova flinched back, and so did the other guard.

And so did about a dozen other Pojjana soldiers who were standing within flinching distance. What?

Stiles found himself struggling to stand up all alone, without even the a.s.sistance of his daily tormenter to help.

An old man strode bonily up to him, right up until there wasn't even a foot between them. Human. Old, darn old. Over a hundred, maybe, with a full head of frost-white hair, a simple flight suit framing his narrow body. The old man flicked a medical scanner between them. Piercing blue eyes watched the instrument's indicator lights. "You Eric Stiles?" "Who wants to know?"

"I'm your new granddad, son. Grew a beard, huh? I had one of those once. Itched." The ancient man turned to the yellow aliens who flanked him and said, "Get him aboard, boys."

Stiles backed up a clumsy step as two of the yellow aliens stepped toward him. "Who are you? Where are you taking me? You're not Starfleet. There's n.o.body like them in the Federation-what do you want?"

From behind, Orsova and two other Pojjana guards shoved him forward again roughly, but the narrow old man snapped his fingers and his blue eyes flashed with confidence and barked, "Hands off him!"