Following Stilpa's orders, I make no attempt to conceal my presence on Romulus. I travel to the harborfront by aerotram rather than transporter. Anyone who cares to look will see me disembark, guide a baggage servo along an underground walkway, and register at a large, lavish hotel that's filled with tourists ready to celebrate the annual Planetfall festival. Your contact is in place, Stilpa said. Later this afternoon I'll be in touch with him or her. From that point on I'm to follow a detailed plan that will culminate, supposedly, in a meeting with Spock himself.
"Do you know exactly where Spock is now?" I'd asked at the meeting, my tone casual.
"Why, still roaming the warrens of the Krocton, of course," Stilpa had replied with scorn. "Evidently he enjoys the company to be found there."
The great arcologies of Romulus stand upon layers of infrastructure that date back to our ancestors' first Planetfall, for which the festival is named. Most of them have Krocton segments--centuries-old districts underlaid by buried strata of cavelike utility tunnels and service corridors. The deepest layers were originally the street-level preserves of the kroctona'hai, structural engineers and metalworkers who cannibalized the first Vulcan generation ships to build space-age settlements literally from the ground up. In subsequent centuries, as cities expanded skyward and the Empire expanded outward, the Krocton layers offered lodging and work space, first to shopkeepers and artisans and later to immigrants from the colony worlds. Today they shelter all types of social misfits--kherec addicts, petty criminals, religious fanatics, political dissidents--and a few remnants of the old families, such as Senator Pardek's, who see no reason to leave their ancestors' first home. Municipal assemblies occupy themselves with endless discussions about how to eliminate the undesirables, but evidently lack both the will and the wherewithal to take any action.
From the vantage point of my hotel room, it's hard even to imagine the existence of a Krocton. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlook a placid landscape of waterfalls and formal gardens. Beyond the park, through a light mist of rain, I can see the continuation of the waterfront skyline. One of those soaring trapezoidal towers houses the offices of Proconsul Neral, one of the four people--five, if I count myself, which I prefer not to do--who are conspiring to deliver Ambassador Spock into the hands of the Tal Shiar.
Sighing, I turn away from the window. "Time," I say to the console.
"Five hours past the median," says a pleasant male voice.
"Pedestrian itinerary from present location."
"Destination?"
"The Velvet Mantle."
"Specify theater or tavern."
"Tavern."
The voice responds with coordinates and directions to a location on the fringes of the Krocton. "Output?" it inquires, as if doubtful of my ability to retain information.
"Negative." I've been away a long time, but if I can pilot a starship across galactic quadrants I ought to be able to navigate the city's cul-de-sacs and dead ends without the aid of a printed map. I could easily transport, of course, but--as a Terran friend once put it--I want to feel the ground under my feet.
* * *
By the time I reach the Velvet Mantle, however, my feet, like my overcloak, are thoroughly soaked: the early spring mist has suddenly become a late winter downpour. I order a mulled wine and settle into a cozy alcove in direct line of sight of the tavern's entrance.
"You ought to have taken a tram, Lady," says the proprietor as he serves me my drink. "Winter storms aren't quite over yet."
"I'd forgotten how fast they blow up. I've come from away, you see. I haven't been home in years."
"Ahh. From away." Curious, and willing to make conversation with a stranger during a slow hour. "Whereabouts, then?"
"The Orion Congeries. Ferenginar, most recently. On business."
"Government business?" Curious still, but also a little worried. Eyes straying from my face to my rank insignia.
"Trade negotiations," I say, hoping to reassure him that I'm no threat to him or his establishment. "The Ferengi are brokering a new miala genome from Rigel. We wanted to get our bid in first, for the sake of the Remish farmers."
A sudden eye-crinkling smile: "Why, my sister farms on Remus! Her granaries hold nought but dust and husks just now, but a season or two of healthy miala crops and she'll prosper, so she will." The smile becomes a frown. "Little ugly flap-eared buggers come 'round, did they? The genome is ours?"
"Oh, yes," I say with a confidence that I don't entirely feel. "I was called home before the talks ended, but my staff will close the bargain." They had better, or they will surely answer to me.
"Then take another cup of wine, Lady. In my sister's name, and with the blessing of my own house."
"You honor me," I reply, inclining my head. Courtesy requires that I accept his offer, but I'll have to make this second cup my last. I'm going to need all my wits about me when my mysterious contact makes an appearance.
* * *
Half an hour later the wine has cooled to room temperature, and the proprietor has given up asking whether I want it refreshed. Every time the tavern door opens, I look up; and every time I'm disappointed, for no one approaches me. Then, just as I'm debating whether to brave the rainstorm or arrange for transport back to Stilpa's office, I hear the proprietor greet a customer effusively. A booming voice returns the greeting, then adds a few friendly vulgarities in a Remish patois. Seconds later, without waiting for permission, the voice's owner--short, slight, and somewhat greyer than I remember him--sits down next to me.
"Why, Ambassador," says Taris Venn, grinning broadly. "I'd no idea this was your local too. Charming little place, isn't it? Full of character. And characters," he adds, glancing towards the proprietor's cubbyhole.
"Taris," I say, unable to manage anything more.
He gives me a sly conspiratorial grin. "I daresay you didn't expect to see me."
You're the very last person I expected to see. "I thought you were prosecuting tax-evasion cases for the Justice ministry."
"Off and on. Stilpa seconds me to undertake freelance assignments from time to time, and the ministry doesn't dare object. As it happens, though, I volunteered for this one. I thought he might have told you."
"He said an agent was in place, nothing else."
"He likes keeping secrets. Webs within webs, everything on a need-to-know basis. Paranoiac, some might say. What's that swill you're drinking?"
"Mulled wine," I say, still staring at him. "I was cold when I came in here. Taris, why in the name of the two worlds are you mixed up in this?" Knowing the answer, fearing it all the same.
"Black whisky," he calls out to the proprietor. "Two glasses, and bring the flask." Then, in a low voice: "I'm surprised you'd even ask such a thing, Aerlyn. For the same reason you are. Honor demands it."
"You sound exactly like Stilpa."
"No need to be unkind, my dear. We all do what we must, and you better than anyone should understand my obligations. Ah, thank you, D'Mel." Venn looks up and smiles as the flask and glasses appear. "We'll serve ourselves." He waits until the proprietor is out of earshot, then turns towards me again, his smile gone. "Family answers for family," he says, quoting an old aphorism. "Or, as I am sometimes forced to remind opposing counsel in the tax courts, 'In the debtor's absence, the creditor shall obtain satisfaction from the debtor's house.' Chapter seventy-four of the Pandects of the Empire. An appropriate metaphor in the circumstances, don't you think?" He fills the two glasses, hands one to me, and then lifts his own: "Lidiya Tilendi," he says, holding my gaze. "Honor to her name."
I touch my glass to his. "Lidiya," I repeat softly. Any hope I might have had of persuading Venn to sabotage Stilpa's plan is gone forever. Plainly, he intends to exact restitution from the family--the only living child--of one who has wronged him and his house. And no Romulan, not even I, would dare question his method or his right; for the debt he speaks of is owed to him in blood.
* * *
We Romulans settle our disputes expeditiously and then move on. Or so I had once assured a Terran who befriended me; in the end, though, like so many other things I said and heard in those days, it turned out to be considerably less than the truth.
Nearly a century ago Lidiya Tilendi, ambassador to the United Federation of Planets, sister to Venn's father, and my own dear friend and mentor, had met clandestinely with Sarek of Vulcan. Acting on the instructions of a small circle of Romulan intellectuals and progressive legislators, she had argued eloquently for a new age of harmony and reconciliation. In her talks with Sarek she had described--and, as her writings showed, eventually come to believe in--a bright future wherein Vulcan and Romulus, rejoined after millennia of separation, would give and take the best of both worlds: Reason and Passion integrated and whole, ready to lay claim to a glorious destiny.
But while Tilendi the ambassador spoke of peace and reunion, Tilendi the commander-general was thinking more practically. If one of the by-products of the unification of two sundered worlds turned out to be an alliance between the Romulan Star Empire--with its rebellious colonies, its unstable economy, its precarious pact with the volatile Klingons--and the immensely rich, powerful, and well-armed United Federation of Planets ... well, one mustn't question the beneficence of Fate. And if Fate also provided a useful object lesson in the form of a love match between a daughter of Romulus and a son of Vulcan, then one would be the worst kind of fool not to encourage and abet such a match, for that was surely where the future lay.
Tilendi had expressed none of that to Sarek, of course. And his opinion of her peace initiative was not made clear until some time after I had left Earth.
The political upheaval and civil unrest that had begun with my repatriation to Romulus and that ultimately changed the face of the Empire was not mirrored in the Federation. True, angry editorials were published on the major Federation news nets, and questions were asked in the Council assembly. But the two men who between them had devastated my life went uncensured.
Ra-ghoratrei, the Federation's minister of external affairs, who ought to have been condemned by his own government for allowing a political prisoner to be sent back to a world that imposed capital sanctions, had instead convinced his superiors, and possibly himself, that I'd left Earth of my own free will. His role in drafting the Treaty of Algeron--or at least the part of it that was made public--was acknowledged and even praised, though not by Starfleet. That particular rift between government and military would never heal, for Starfleet Command was certain that his machinations had deprived the Federation of the ultimate in "defensive" weaponry. But that was not enough to tarnish his popularity. Ra-ghoratrei's subsequent political achievements are, sadly, a matter of record.
Ambassador Sarek, for his part, remained silent. Perhaps he hoped that his secret talks with Tilendi might never come to light; if so, he should have known better. The Romulan Empire was outraged and more than a little embarrassed when Stilpa's uncle, the egregious Kaslim Dro, revealed that the Vulcan ambassador to the Federation had been conspiring with Tilendi and pro-unification partisans. The imperial praetor demanded satisfaction (but of the verbal sort only, for he had no wish to undermine the Treaty of Algeron), and revealed the whole story. Sarek listened impassively to the accusations. When pressed by the beleaguered Federation Council for a response, he put an end to any chance of peace between the two powers. Having apparently mislaid his famous diplomatic skills, he dismissed Tilendi as a well-meaning but naive idealist duped by her own people. He repudiated his connection with her in a few scathing words: A noble effort in the cause of peace, doomed to failure by Romulan treachery.
At the time, of course, I'd hardly been aware of what was happening in the Federation, the Empire, or anywhere else outside the confines of my own mind. The pain of separation from Spock and the breaking of the fragile bond that had formed between us was excruciating, the more so because I could confide in no one. Where I found the strength to hide that pain from Tal, from Nanclus, even from my mother, was and is a mystery to me; but hide it I did, clinging to the fraying threads of my hard-won Vulcan discipline. I hid it through a tenday of interrogation and debriefing. I hid it when I stood before the Senate, calm and expressionless as any Vulcan, and heard the elders pronounce my fate. I hid it over the next few days, as I sat in the courtyard of my parents' home under the summer sun, calmly making my farewells to family and friends. Everyone agreed bravely that although my new command--part punishment, part warning, part political convenience--would take me halfway to the Delta Quadrant, it offered unique opportunities for service to the Empire. And though the colony world called Hellguard had been the undoing of numerous Fleet commanders before me, I should nevertheless look at it as my chance to excel, to redeem my reputation and secure my family's honor. Through all of this I was able to maintain outward control in the presence of others--so well, in fact, that when Nanclus's assistant, Legate Pardek, flushed and sweating in the midday sun, brought the news of Tilendi's ritual suicide, I scarcely raised an eyebrow.
* * *
The whisky flask is empty. Venn, mistrusting the evidence of his own eyes, upends it over his glass, with no result. The proprietor, who has been watching us hopefully for the last while, hurries over: "Another flask, perhaps? Or a meal? It's very near the dinner-hour."
"No, D'Mel," says Venn, "we're expected elsewhere this evening, and we must be on our way. We'll be back, though. You're staying open late tonight, of course?"
"As always, my friend, as always," D'Mel answers, beaming at both of us in turn. "I'm just putting the soup on now, and Senya is making the bread. It'll be ready after, nice and hot."
"And we'll be ready for it." Venn reaches into his pocket, withdraws a credit chit--which, from its color, is of an impressively large denomination--and presses it into D'Mel's hand. D'Mel makes a dignified bow and retreats to his cubbyhole. The whole transaction has the look of a long-practiced ritual.
As if reading my thoughts, Venn says with a shrug: "He's not faring very well. Unfashionable segment, not much custom. I do what I can for him."
"He's one of them, isn't he? He said the meal would be ready 'after.' He knows about the meeting, and he thinks I must be your newest convert to the cause."
"Very observant of you, Ambassador."
"I don't understand you, Taris. One minute you're vowing vengeance on them for a debt of honor, and the next you're dispensing largesse."
"My quarrel is with one man only. Those who follow him are not my enemies. In fact, I sometimes think--" He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Never mind. The rain seems to have stopped, so I suggest we move on. It won't do for us to be late tonight. We need to establish your credibility from the very beginning."
* * *
Our journey is a short one: we're headed for an old underground station not more than a kilometer from the Velvet Mantle. Venn talks incessantly about the unificationists as we walk along the wet streets. He seems energized, whether by the whisky he's drunk or by the catharsis of disclosing his intentions to me I can't tell.
"It wasn't as difficult as you might think to penetrate their little cabal," he says. "Stilpa's people provided me with one or two leads. I made a few remarks in the right places, asked a few questions in the taverns and hiring-halls. Eventually I met someone who introduced me to someone else, and soon I had entry to a cell. Everyone knows me as the unfortunate kinsman of a martyr to the cause. So I fed them some tarradiddle about wanting to honor Lidiya's memory, carry on the work she started, that sort of thing. They let me come to meetings, began to trust me a little. I kept Stilpa apprised of what was going on, what the dissidents were thinking and planning. He was willing to bide his time until they committed some open act of insurrection. But when he found out that Spock had accepted Pardek's invitation to come to Romulus, he decided to change his strategy. Has he given you the details of his plan?"
"No. He says I'll be told what I need to know when I need to know it. I suppose you are in his confidence?"
"Not to any great extent."
"I wish I knew what he has in mind. What can he possibly want with me?"
"You have credentials and credibility, a rare combination nowadays. He probably thinks no one else would suit his purpose so well."
"I hope you don't intend that as a compliment."
"Now, Aerlyn," Venn says, in the manner of an older brother instructing a younger sister in social protocol. "You're going to have to perk up a little. Put on a front. Remember that you have important information about the Tal Shiar's plans, and you're eager to impart it. You'll be questioned closely about your motives and gawked at into the bargain, for they won't have seen the like of you before. Pardek is their grandest acquisition thus far, and you bear no resemblance to him."
"For which I thank the gods of Remus."
"As do we all, my dear. Here, down these stairs." He points towards a black hole. "Watch your step. I'll go first."
"We ought to have transported from the tavern," I say, wrinkling my nose at a smell that grows steadily worse the farther we descend. The station, through which a fleet of decrepit maglevs runs during the day, serving immigrants and others who work outside the arcology and can't afford the tram, is barely maintained.
"Not possible," says Venn over his shoulder. "That's reserved for the powerful and privileged, and we don't want to suggest that you fit into that category. I promise you our friends will be impressed when you make your entrance in the customary way."
The customary way turns out to be even more unpleasant than I suspected. Beneath the station lies a second level of dilapidated platforms and maglev glidetracks, obviously unused for the last five centuries or so and accessible only by a series of riserless metal steps. We plod along on the ancient trackbed for several hundred meters, up to our ankles in muck and filthy water. I'm thankful that Venn's palm-beam is our only light; there are many things in the tunnel that I don't want to see too clearly.
"These boots are brand new," I mutter, holding up the hem of my cloak with one hand and covering my nose and mouth with the other. "Or were. Now they're bound straight for the cycler. I knew the unificationists had gone to ground, but this is ridiculous."
"Good to see you haven't lost your sense of humor. Well, here we are." Venn stops before a service door set into a wall streaked with efflorescence. "Ready for your performance?"
I close my eyes briefly and draw in a deep breath to slow my racing heart. I regret it immediately, for the stench is overwhelming. "Ready," I gasp. Feel nothing. Reveal nothing ...
Venn taps a code into a battered keypad that hangs from the wall. The door slides open.
Bright yellow light from old-fashioned incandescent fixtures, nearly blinding after the darkness of the tunnel. A large, clean room that might once have been a control center for the maglev system, though the old computers and tracking screens are long gone. Sweet fresh air from the street, brought in and vented out through makeshift ductwork. Here is a secure base from which a complicated enterprise can be managed, now as then.
Perhaps ten people are seated around a large table. They look up curiously from their padds and printouts as the door closes behind us. In an instant that feels like an hour, I scan their faces, searching, hoping, fearing: then I sigh inaudibly in mingled relief and dismay, for none of them is Spock.
© 1999, 2000 Kathleen Dailey. All rights reserved.