Star Trek™:

Corps of Engineers

Turn the Page by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore

Troubleshooting by Robert Greenberger

The Light by Jeff D. Jacques

The Art of the Comeback by Glenn Greenberg

Signs from Heaven by Phaedra M. Weldon

Ghost by Ilsa J. Bick

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4975-8

ISBN-10: 1-4165-4975-7

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Beside a dead person is a living ghost.

—Chinese Proverb

The underworld, and the woman without a child; the earth which never has enough water, and the fire which never says, Enough.

—Proverbs 30:16

PROLOGUE

She is hot, so hot; the oppressive heat smothering her body; its sticky fingers tugging her flesh into thick molten runnels…

…can’t be…

…and she hopes she’s fallen asleep; that this is all a dream because she’s oiled her skin and spread her aching body to bake on a blanket on a beach somewhere—and maybe so because there’s a hollow roar in her ears, an ebb and flow. And she thinks of a time, long ago, when her uncle pressed a conch with nacreous lips and a briny salt smell to her ear and said: That’s the sound of the Earth before you were born.

But then there’s the smell. Not salty. Wrong. Nauseating as rotten eggs and it hurts to breathe. Every inhalation scorches her throat, and she is so thirsty. Her tongue is swollen and huge. She has to wake up, she has to…

…wake up…

…because maybe her dream has taken her to Vulcan, the Womb of Fire, a barren black landscape of pillow lava, punctuated by steam geysers hot enough to boil the flesh from bone…

…wake up…

…and the darkness has given way to a ruddy glow because she’s still human, only the color is wrong; it’s amber; it’s…

…open your eyes…

Her lids ease open. Her brain is wooly. Her vision swims.

Focusing is an act of will, maybe the last she’ll ever know, and this frightens her even more than she is already because now she remembers and a fist of dread squeezes her heart and she lets loose a long moan of despair. “No no no…”

She is naked, spread-eagled, and restrained by a force field on a modified biobed. Her skin glistens; her slick hair is matted to her skull. The air is sour with her fear. The room is very bright. Light globes stud the high rock cavern deep within this uninhabited planetoid—a place forgotten by its builders. A reflective polarity shield directly overhead captures the minute fluctuations in the bed’s quantum field generators. That accounts for the roar in her ears because the bed is active and now she picks up a slight increase in the generators’ hum.

An instant later, her skin prickles, and she gasps and then gives a hoarse, agonized cry as a bolt of white-hot pain shudders up and down her limbs. There’s the stink of ozone and singed hair.

“Please.” Something rips deep in her chest because there’s a bubbly taste of rust and then she’s panicking because she’s choking. Her eyes bulge; she bucks against the force field and then coughs a sludge-spray of what passes for her blood now, golden and thick and inhuman. “Please…st-stop…please…”

A click. Then his voice from the observation booth: “You know I can’t do that. It’s too late to go back, anyway.”

“I-I’m not…not t-talking about go-going back.” The prickling along her belly is shifting, concentrating itself over her womb. “Ju-just…you could stop…you could…just kill me, please, just…just kill…”

“Not right now.” His voice isn’t cruel. He’s not insane. If he were, maybe this would be easier to forgive. “There’s more work to do. Just…there, I think that has it.”

She can feel her skin rippling and now she strains against the force field to lift her chin, not wanting to see, knowing she must.

Her abdomen is moving, undulating. Her skin balloons then tents as something tries to push its way out. A hand, fingers spread wide, and then a thin stalk of wrist as if she’s sprouting a third arm that’s lengthening, unspooling…

She wails, a high long rope of sound that rebounds and echoes and doubles until there is nothing but her screams and this thing struggling to be born. “Nooooo! Nooooo…!”

“Stop that,” he says. “You’re giving me a headache.”

And an instant later, she feels that familiar stabbing pin-prickle as the cells of her face break apart and then realign—and her voice, the last thing that is truly hers, cuts out.

Mute, strangling on her horror, she stares at the shifting reflection over the biobed of a woman, with a third vestigial arm and a spider’s jointed leg sprouting from her belly.

A thing trying to scream with a mouth that’s no longer there.

CHAPTER 1

She was beat after a night of the kid doing the rumba on her bladder; the runabout smelled of too many people crammed into a too-small space. Scotty was just getting warm, telling Bart Faulwell the one about the Jenolen—“though it was Franklin who came up with the notion of locking the system in a continuous diagnostic”—and all Lense wanted was to crawl into a nice ice-box somewhere far, far away and catch sixty winks.

That, and maybe her job back.

Hunh. Lense let go of a long, slow sigh. That is so not going to happen.

Eight months pregnant and she was gonzo. Hasta la

vista, babee, and turn off the lights on your way out, sweetheart, that’s a love. Starfleet regs were very specific about the billets that would allow an officer to raise a newborn child, and Sabre-class vessels weren’t on the list. She could keep the kid or keep the job, but not both.

Hell, Gold hadn’t even waited until she was gone-gone. And she had trusted him. That little heart-to-heart, his damn therapy, all that talk about family: You’re not alone. You’re part of a family here. Gold had known just how to manipulate her. And yet…

And yet, for a time, Lense had actually been happy. Not merely content. Happy. Part of the family, a little. That had meant a lot. After Saad, Lense hadn’t been sure she’d ever be happy again.

A lump pushed in her throat as she thought about that last hour onboard, when Gold steered her into the mess hall, crammed with the da Vinci’s crew: a surprise going-away party before she left for Starbase 375 with Faulwell and Scotty.

The sight of all those people absolutely floored her and she’d gotten teary, embarrassing herself, but she’d just been so bowled over between her anxiety for Faulwell and then surprise that she hadn’t really seen the party for what it was.

She was gone. This was good-bye.

Actually, there was more to it than that. Ironically, just as she was leaving, she also got a promotion. Gold did it himself, removing the hollow pip and replacing it with a full one to match the other two. Commander Elizabeth Lense.

And she couldn’t delude herself about it any longer now that Faulwell didn’t need her full attention. A sly sideways glance at Faulwell—wan, twenty kilos lighter, hollow-eyed—and she knew that whatever healing happened now was out of her hands. Faulwell had come a millimeter away from death before she—and, okay, Sarjenka, She of the Amazing Fame, Gold’s new Golden Girl—beat it back.

But there were wounds of the body and those of the soul. Lense suspected Faulwell’s healing was a long time coming.

The baby twisted and flipped. She was absolutely certain that if she pulled up her tunic, her stomach would look like two Vulcan sehlats fighting in a gunny sack. One thing was for sure: The kid was as completely pissed off about having to take the slow boat as she was.

Well, don’t beat me up; it’s your fault, you little squirt.

Under any other circumstance, she’d have been happy to beam down to Earth, except she couldn’t. The baby’s father, Saad, had been unique, his cells antigenically neutral. While this made him the perfect candidate for Idit Kahayn’s experiments, this also had allowed her system to adapt well to the fetus, something that couldn’t always be counted on with an interspecies pregnancy.

Yet the baby’s mixed antigenic status and the sheer amount of its unique DNA circulating in her blood meant that, theoretically, the transporter’s pattern buffers would have difficulty resolving the two matter streams. Julian Bashir had confirmed her suspicions: use the transporter, and the fetus’s transporter pattern might easily “bleed” into Lense’s own, killing them both. She’d risked it a couple of times earlier on, but once she got into the final trimester, she couldn’t chance it.

So now after this good long ride on a runabout as Scotty held forth, she couldn’t even hope for a quick escape once they came into the Sol system. They had to go through the entire nonsense of landing…

So what now? The da Vinci was no longer home, not with The Amazing Sarjenka loitering about and she’d be damned if she was going to let that Kewpie doll deliver her kid.

Actually, she had been tempted not to go ahead with the pregnancy. Did she really need a child to complicate her life even more?

Then she kept remembering what Julian said: But above all, be…happy. Because this is rare, and very precious. It’s like something out of the ashes. Maybe you won’t want it in the end. But maybe you will, because it’s a gift of things past and a possible future. It’s a gift.

She was appalled when her eyes stung with sudden tears.

For crying out loud, stop this. One disaster at a time, okay? Just what I need, a hormonally induced crying jag…

She told herself to relax. The little snot had been pretty active most of the night, deciding that a little after two A.M. was a great time to roust Mom for a game of belly ball. Lense had tolerated it for about ten minutes and then, groaning, she’d thrown in the towel, called for lights and then lay propped on pillows, her hands lightly on her belly, watching the kid’s bum skim the underside of her skin. There’d been a moment when he—okay, it was habit; she just thought of the little squirt as a boy—pushed and her skin tented with the outline of the heel one little foot.

It was hard to be angry after that. Damn it.

They were Earth-bound: Scotty finally back to Starfleet Command after joining in the hunt for Rod Portlyn and the mission to Ardana; Faulwell for R&R after being impaled by an Ardanan trap; and she to…well, because she had to.

So now what? Working the kinks in her neck, she blew a frizzle of hair from her eyes. While she had to choose a new assignment that fit Starfleet regs, her record and reputation meant she could have her pick of the ones that did. Julian had nudged her, gently, about considering DS9. She’d been tempted. Yes, they were close friends; after what they’d gone through together, maybe more than that. But best not to push it. Not. Right. Now.

One step by one step…

So, Earth. The kid in a month or so (depending; due dates were tough with interspecies pregnancies). Figure out what the hell to do next. Maybe get assigned to a Galaxy-class vessel? Not wild about that. She could use the support a starship offered, but she really felt a holodeck was no way for a kid to learn about a sun and sky, what grass felt like underfoot, how the sea churned in a storm.

All right, so maybe Earth? She couldn’t see herself leaving Starfleet. That was her only family, really; a stab at one anyway. Or…

“And then Franklin,” Scotty said, “know what he said?”

“I can’t imagine.” Faulwell’s drawn features pulled into an expression Lense read as half-catatonia, half-interest. Not terribly surprising: Nothing like a little near-death experience to take the wind out of your sails.

Faulwell’s hand absently drifted to a spot over his abdomen, a little left of center where Lense knew the spike had first pierced then skewered Faulwell to the cavern wall. “What did he say?” Faulwell asked.

Scotty either didn’t notice Faulwell’s fatigue, or chose to ignore it. Or maybe he’d decided that his mission en route was, in Scotty-speak, to buck up the lad and lass. “He said, ‘Scott, ya idchit, you’re worried about how old you’re gonna be before they haul your ass out of the pattern buffer? Didcha fergit the laws a physics?’”

The kid picked that instant for a really swift kick to the bladder—and Lense flinched, put a hand to her bulging belly, and let out a little “hah” of surprise before she remembered that she really didn’t need any more attention than she’d gotten already.

“Here now, lass.” All concern now, Scotty leaned forward. His teeth showed in a wide smile and his eyes were—yes—twinkling. This was something Lense would’ve thought physiologically impossible except she’d caught that look in just about everyone’s eyes right around her fifth month, when she really started to show.

That, and absolute strangers seemed to think that she was their private Buddha, giving her belly a little pat-pat. (And the outright gawking from species for whom a pregnancy like hers was worth a quick picture…gah.) One of the few good things Lense would admit to saying about Sarjenka was that the little twit actually respected her privacy and her pregnancy.

Scotty threw her a quick wink. “Acting up now? Showing you who’s boss?”

“Mmmm.” It was something she’d never quite gotten used to, how people seemed to, well, change around her. What was it about a pregnant woman that made normally level-headed people go a little gooey? She scooted back in her seat, both to resettle her weight (hoping like hell she could float the kid off her bladder) and move out of range just in case Scotty was seized with the same impulse to rub her tummy for good luck. “You’d think the little parasite would have more respect.”

Laughing, Scotty slapped his thigh. “You think things are bad now, just wait until he’s bawling his lungs out at all hours, wanting something to eat and only his mum will do. Then you’ll know who’s really in charge.”

“Gee, Scotty, I can’t wait.” She felt her belly gather and bunch as the kid balled and then flexed and did a back flip. She managed a grin. “I guess it’s a good thing they’re cute.”

And later, as the runabout rolled and began its approach decel, Scotty asked, “So, lass, I hear your mother’s gonna be on hand to meet you. Quite a woman, that.”

“Ah.” Lense swallowed, as much to forestall further conversation as concentrate on keeping her breakfast where it belonged. Funny how being pregnant changed a lot of things. Decels used to be a snap. Not that they were falling like a stone, but the blur of stars smudging into atmosphere was nauseating. “Didn’t know you knew her.”

“Och, everyone ever had anythin’ to do with the Tholians has heard of Jennifer Almieri.” To Faulwell: “The Peckman, the Nobel, and the Voltak.” Ticking the prizes off on his fingers. “Maybe two, three more.”

“Yeah?” Across the aisle, Faulwell pulled out of his slouch, sudden interest lighting his wan features. “Your mom is Jennifer Almieri? You never said anything about that.”

Yeah, because she’d never said anything about her family, period.

“She and I aren’t exactly close.” An understatement. Like the reply message she’d received when she sent word ahead that she was returning to Earth: Message received. Will be on hand but must leave in forty-eight. Probably to flit back to whatever dig she had going. Typical Jennifer.

“Really?” Scotty’s eyebrows crawled for his hairline. “When was the last time you two saw each other?”

Lense debated a half second. The kid bunched, like he was waiting, too.

She looked Scott square in the eye. “About fifteen years.”

That pretty much killed the conversation the rest of the way down.

Making their way toward the waiting area at the shuttle dock in San Francisco, Lense halfheartedly searched for Jennifer. Never occurred to her that they might not recognize each other. One thing Jennifer Almieri was not: vain. Give her the same dusty pair of jeans, work boots, and plaid shirt, and Jennifer was set.

“Is she here?” Faulwell asked. He didn’t seem to be looking for anyone.

“Mmm-mmm,” she murmured. Odd. She’d assumed Anthony Mark would be on hand, but a quick glance around didn’t reveal a single blond-haired, blue-eyed Adonis in sight.

On the other hand, a knot of Starfleet personnel standing along the wall to the extreme left did snag her attention. From their uniforms, she counted two security guards; a doe-eyed, slight man in blue she pegged as a Betazoid, and three humans, two men and a woman.

The woman and one of the men were older. The woman was handsome, mid-fifties, with bronze hair. Seemed familiar.

The older man had blond hair now going white and sun-weathered skin. He was lanky, maybe two meters and change. Good-looking.

The younger one leapt out at her right away: lantern jaw, a ski-slope of a nose, a brow wrinkled as he scanned faces…she dredged up the name: Gordon Plath. Two years ahead of her at Starfleet Medical Academy. Nice enough guy.

Plath spotted her just about the time she recognized him because his knit brows smoothed. He turned to say something to the others. The Betazoid glanced her way, dropped his eyes to a padd he carried in his left hand, then murmured something to Plath.

Okay, that was weird. A pin of disquiet pricked her chest, and her endocrine system obliged with a squirt of adrenaline. (A second later, the kid knotted. It was like having an onboard computer double-checking her systems: Was that a surge of epinephrine? Thump! Roger that.) And what was with the security detail?

Instinctively, she slowed and then stumbled as Faulwell, following close behind, plowed into her. Faulwell’s hand flashed to grab her right arm and steady her. “Whoa,” he said. “Sorry. I wasn’t…” Then he saw her face. “What is it?”

Before she could respond, Plath, the Betazoid, and the others formed a wedge, with the security personnel cleaving a path through the clot of disembarking passengers from a tourist shuttle. As the security people got closer, Lense saw the insignia on their uniforms—an old-fashioned spyglass bisecting a Starfleet arrowhead.

What the hell is SCIS doing here?

Lense had to fight an impulse to cringe back. Even the kid had stopped moving.

Out of nowhere, Scotty appeared on her left. “Something wrong?” he asked Faulwell, who still had Lense’s arm.

Before Faulwell could answer, Plath was there. “Dr. Lense.” His tone was serious, and his blue-gray eyes grave. “I’m Captain Plath, Deputy Commander, Starfleet Medical, and this is Counselor Duren.”

“I remember you, Captain,” Lense said, automatically taking the hand he proffered. Plath’s grip was strong but brief. Duren didn’t offer his hand. Lense flicked a glance to the security personnel hovering several meters behind Plath and then to the last two, the older man and woman. Now that she saw them close up, she was sure she knew the woman…. She looked up at Plath. “What’s going on?”

“We’d like to discuss this somewhere else, if you don’t mind,” Plath said.

“Discuss what?” A pointed glance at the man and woman. “Do I know you?”

The woman’s eyes were moss-brown and serious. “It’s been a long time, Lizzie. More than, what, twenty years?”

Lizzie…No one called her that except family, but this woman wasn’t…The name came to her then. “You’re Dr. Darly. You work with my mo—with Jennifer.”

“On the Tholian Drura Sextus Dig, yes—and it’s Livilla, please,” Darly said in a throaty alto. Her eyes skipped to Lense’s stomach and then back. “Let’s see, the last time I saw you, you had just turned, what, fifteen? Sixteen? Do you remember?…No? Well, I expect you had other things on your mind. I’ll bet you don’t remember Dr. Strong either, do you?” She gestured toward the older man who, Lense saw now, was very good-looking, with muscular shoulders and a torso that tapered to narrow hips.

“Preston.” His grip was forceful, his hands thick and work-roughened. He exuded an aura of unabashed sexuality, an insinuating and seductive charm.

“I…I’m sorry.” Lense was blushing, she knew; she could feel the heat crawling up her neck. And she was totally bewildered now. “I don’t understand. Where is Jennifer?”

Plath gave a tight smile. “We wanted to be sure to meet you first. We just…” He glanced at the Betazoid.

Duren took up the slack. “We should go somewhere private, Doctor.”

“To talk about what?” Then, a sudden premonition. “Oh my God, nothing’s happened to Ju—Dr. Bashir? On DS9?”

“DS9?” Confusion clouded Plath’s features for an instant. “No, nothing like that. We just thought it best…”

“Thought best about what?” She shot a pointed glance at the security personnel. “Am I in trouble for something?” She felt Faulwell and Scotty move in to flank her, and she was—oddly—grateful.

“No, no, hold on.” Visibly flustered, Plath held up both hands, palms out. “Hold on, it’s not what you think.”

Scotty puffed out his chest. “Then what are a couple of special agents—”

“I’m not a special agent—”

“All the more reason why we should be asking what anyone from Starfleet Criminal Investigative Service would be wanting with one of ours.”

“I…” Plath’s gaze bounced from Scotty to the counselor, who only shrugged. Sighing, Plath dropped his hands. “I’m sorry, Dr. Lense. I’d hoped we could discuss this somewhere private.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Plath,” Lense said. “Just say it.”

But it was Darly who answered.

“Oh, Lizzie, dear,” she said, gently. “Your mother is dead.”

CHAPTER 2

“It’s not that I’m unsympathetic, Brett.” Jo Stern knit her fingers together and tried for a placating smile. “It’s simply a question of expertise and jurisdiction.”

“Oh, your ass, my diction, Stern,” Ryan said. Par for the course: Over the five years of their acquaintance, Brett Ryan of the United Earth Police never had liked the idea of Starfleet playing in the same sandbox. If he weren’t such a natural investigator, Stern would’ve tried to get him booted long ago. But Ryan was like a Sartusian pit bull, and the simple truth was Jo Stern liked him. He was smart, tough, and not afraid of getting in anyone’s face. Even on a comscreen, Ryan was imposing: a rugged, broad-shouldered man with a scruff of hair that was equal parts brown and gray; a thin seam of scar bisecting his left eyebrow before jagging down his cheek. “This stinks of Starfleet cover-up.”

Stern opened her mouth to reply, but then a voice to her left cut in with a thick, Georgia-homeboy sotto voce, “He’s got that right.”

Oh, shut up, Mac. Stern merely threw Admiral Leonard McCoy an irritable glare, and the old man put on a “who me?” expression, then rolled his eyes.

Ryan continued, “I don’t care if Almieri was on a Starfleet grant. She wasn’t active duty, and that means you don’t have jurisdiction. She—a civilian, I remind you—died in what I will also remind you is a crowded city. Who the hell knows what she was carrying? If you don’t think I know a cover-up—”

“Put a sock in it, Brett.” The simple fact that everything he said was true was beside the point. In fact, why her superiors were demanding that she get the UEP to release the body to Starfleet at all begged the question. Of course, Almieri would’ve been autopsied. The law was clear: Any unexpected, unattended, unexplained death demanded an autopsy. But Almieri was a civilian. Her autopsy would normally fall under the jurisdiction of civilian law enforcement, as would any investigation. In this case, however—and for no good reason that Stern could think of—the word from on high was clear: Starfleet was to take custody of the body by whatever means necessary. Since brown stuff rolled downhill, the job landed in Stern’s lap.

Stern smelled a definite rat—and she was curious. The fact that she didn’t know much about the dig either nagged at her like a toothache.

“Jennifer Almieri was a consultant. She was in charge of an archaeological dig on a restricted planet that…no, Brett, zip it; you know I can’t discuss it.”

“Fine.” Sighing, Ryan scrubbed his face with his hands. “So we’ll get a copy of your report…dot-dot-dot?”

“Just as soon as we’re done,” Stern said, moving to disconnect. “Now if you’ll instruct your people to beam the body to our morgue, I can give them the coord—”

“I know the damned coordinates,” Ryan said. He hesitated an instant. “Look, Jo…I, uh, I talked to my lieutenant and…You’re secure on your end, right?”

Now she was mystified. She heard a squeal of leather as McCoy pushed out of his habitual slump. “Always are. What’s going on, Brett?”

“Well,” Ryan said, and hunched closer to his screen, “it’s about Sharihana…”

When they’d disconnected a short time later, Stern looked over at McCoy. “Well?”

McCoy puckered his lips, pruning his already exceedingly wrinkled features. And he needed a trim; wispy snow-white bangs grazed his eyebrows and gave him a look closer to a wizened bouvier. “Give me a fast ship, and I’ll put her in harm’s way.”

“I know you didn’t think of that one.”

“No, John Paul Jones. I just thought it was apt. Either that one, or damn the torpedoes. Thing is, you either come out looking pretty good, or pretty bad. Speaking as a superior officer, that is.”

“Thanks for the insight.” Sighing, Stern pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know, this cloak and dagger, internecine crap between agencies is for the birds. It was easier when people were shooting at us.”

“Yes, it was. But you’ve done well here, Jo, better than almost anyone I’ve seen come through. If Ryan thinks there’s a problem with Dr. Sharihana…”

“Oh, come on, Mac. A Dominion spy? A covert operative? For whom? And why can’t the UEP get someone else, someone like…” She stirred the air with her hands.

“Who?”

“For pity’s sake, I don’t know who…anyone.”

“I think he told you: He wants this on the sly, and there’s no better way to do that than to put one of our people right alongside. Assign a special agent.”

“Oh, right. I’m supposed to suggest this gracefully, like I got qualified forensic pathologists coming out of…” Her comm picked that moment to shrill. Stern stabbed it. “What?” Listened. Thought: Oh, boy; I need this like a case of fleas.

“You want company?” McCoy asked when she’d clicked off. “The added weight can’t hurt.”

Stern shook her head. “Better me. With you…too many pips.”

“Well, now, I don’t think you’ve ever been on the receiving side of you.”

“Thanks a lot. Patients used to compliment me on my bedside manner.”

“Yeah, it’s just too bad that nowadays none of them do much talking.”

“That’s pretty bad, Mac.” She bit her cheek to keep from laughing. “About as good as the one with a lot of patients just dying to see me.”

“You said it, I didn’t. Picking up some bad habits.”

“Because I’ve been hanging around you way too long. I knew it was a mistake to come back.”

“That’s true. Anyway, look on it this way, Jo: Never rains but it pours.”

“I know you didn’t think that one up.” Scraping back her chair, she stood, and tugged on her tunic. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

With an effort, McCoy hoisted himself to a stand, tottered a bit, and then steadied. “Oh, me neither, darlin’. Me neither.”

CHAPTER 3

There were only three of them in the conference room down the hall from Admiral Stern’s office: Stern, the Betazoid counselor who’d introduced himself as Han Duren, and Lense. Still, the room felt crowded. Lense decided that was because of Stern.

Stern wasn’t a bully. She was…energetic. Commanding. And for a woman who’d served as chief medical officer on the Enterprise-C back in the day, Admiral Josephine Stern looked pretty good for a woman pushing ninety. Medium height, a shock of steel-gray hair scraped back from her angular features in a short no-nonsense ponytail, a pair of quick and astonishingly bright blue eyes that gave Lense the feeling of being completely and thoroughly scanned.

“Look,” Lense said, a tremor in her voice. Not of grief: She hadn’t wept a tear for Jennifer. Why should she? She barely knew the woman. “There is no regulation against my being present for an autopsy.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Lense.” Stern’s eyes drilled Lense. “It’s damned irregular, and I’m not going to allow it.”

“And why the hell not?” The kid gave a little flutter, and Lense put a hand over her abdomen. “If you’re worried about the effect…”

“I wouldn’t insult you like that,” Stern said. “Pregnancy’s not a disease. I’m thinking of you more as a…” She considered, then said, finally, “Family member. I don’t have children, but if I did, I’m not sure I’d want them watching my corpse being examined. You’re going to be a mom. You’d want that?”

“I…I…that’s neither here nor there.”

“Excuse me, but it is.”

Lense’s jaw was so tense her temples ached. And she didn’t like the way that…counselor was staring as if she were some fascinating new species of beetle. Trying to read her thoughts? She glared at the man and put oomph behind her next thought: Well, take this, buster; butt out!

Stern was saying something, and Lense snapped back to attention. “Sorry, would you mind repeating?”

“I asked when was the last time you’d talked to your mother?”

“Uh…” Lense floundered. “Quite a while ago. She was at her dig…ah, on Drura Sextus and…” She sighed. “I haven’t talked to her, directly, in about ten years.”

“Ah-huh. And seen her…?”

“Fifteen.”

“That’s a long time.”

“It’s…private.”

Stern broke a short silence. “Okay. I can’t stop you, but let me tell you something, all right? You haven’t seen your mother yet. I have. It’s not very pretty. Identification’s going to be hard enough on you as it is.”

“Are you saying you don’t know it’s her?”

“DNA’s definitive. Just a formality.”

“So, okay, I’m a doctor. It’s not like I haven’t seen dead people before.”

“Yes, but how many of those were your mother?” Stern asked softly.

Lense said nothing.

Duren spoke up. “Perhaps turning Jennifer into a specimen to be examined rather than a woman to be grieved is the only way Dr. Lense knows to deal with the trauma.”

“Thanks, but I’m right here.” Honestly, if there were two things she’d grown weary of, one was counselors, and the other was therapy—something even Gold saw through back on Sherman’s Planet. “How I handle my feelings is my business, Counselor, not yours.”

To her surprise, Stern showed a bit of a smile. “I think she’s got you there, Counselor. All right, Dr. Lense, you want in? You’re in. Your mother’s body was beamed in from Washington, D.C., a little while ago. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get started. I’ll be doing the autopsy myself.”

And it was then that the slightest alarm tingled at the back of Lense’s brain. Stern was senior; hell, she was the CMO. It would be like…well, like expecting a starship captain to peel potatoes. An autopsy was fairly routine.

Something more going on here…but what?

Duren said, “I’ll be happy to attend, Doctor.”

“Hunh?” Lense looked up, startled. “No, thanks, I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I want him there,” Stern said and when Lense opened her mouth to object, the older woman silenced her with a glare. “You may not think you need him there, but you’re not the only one in your skin, Doctor. You’ve got Junior in there, so I want Counselor Duren present. Just in case.”

“In case what? For God’s sake, I’m a doctor…”

“As you’ve already reminded me. But that wasn’t a request, Commander.” Stern let the ensuing silence spin out a bit then nodded. “Right. Let’s get to it.”

The autopsy room was in the basement and tiled in slick, teal green. The room was large—perhaps twenty by twenty meters—and accommodated three autopsy tables, all made of a shiny steel alloy.

A diener was checking the equipment, noiselessly moving between consoles. He was an attractive man with blue eyes and a honey-blond beard; probably a medical student. He caught her looking, and smiled—and was that sympathy in his eyes?

I’m fine. She gave a tight grin, looked away. Just fine.

She wasn’t, though. It was the smell that got to her: the odor of disinfectant that couldn’t quite cover up the sickly sweet reek of death and corruption.

As she donned the purple surgical uniform, she worked at keeping her features neutral, clinical, controlled.

Thinking: The last time I did anything like this, Idit Kahayn was dying and I didn’t have a fancy-shmancy uniform that projected a sterile field and a holographic scanner to save me from having to carve open a corpse like a roast. I had blades that cut and needles that pricked and there was a lot of blood.

Jennifer Almieri’s body lay on the middle table, hidden from view by a polarized blackout force field. Stern stepped up, motioned for Lense to take up a position opposite. “You ready for this?”

“Sure.” Lense felt Duren standing behind and a little off to her left, but she didn’t look around. The other thing she noticed: The baby hadn’t moved in a good hour.

Probably scared stiff.

A flick of Stern’s wrist, and the polarized force field cleared.

The stink slammed Lense with the forcefulness of a physical blow. And what she saw…

Don’t lose it, don’t lose it…

Rigor had come and gone. The corpse’s body was hideously distended; the skin of the torso—where it wasn’t slipping loose of its moorings along the hands, feet, and arms—was marbled in a tracery of green and black, the superficial vessels engorged with decaying, deoxygenated blood. At one point, the body must’ve lain on its right side because smears of charcoal black stained the right armpit, right breast and the pelvis to the umbilicus, a change accelerated by livor mortis, blood that had collected in dependent portions of the body, pulled there by gravity.

Jennifer’s face was black with rot. Her wide-open eyes were opaque, bulging, already liquefying. Her purple-black tongue protruded between hideously swollen, liverish lips. Her breasts were blackish-green balloons, and thick, viscous trails of blue-black purge fluid sludged from her nostrils and ears.

Her hair—a lush chestnut mane she’d wound round her head in a thick braid—lay in a puddled tangle of gore around her skull, like a cap she’d pushed back from her forehead. The skin of her scalp had sloughed free, revealing a pale glimmer of white bone.

There was more bone at Jennifer’s wrists and fingers, her ankles. The tips of her toes were rotted, gangrenous; the white bone standing up like wicks from black candles.

Jennifer Almieri looked as if she were melting.

“Doctor?” Stern’s voice cut knifelike through the sudden roar in Lense’s ears. Then, when she didn’t answer: “Elizabeth, I think you need to leave.”

“No,” Lense said hoarsely. In retrospect, she wouldn’t be able to remember whether she’d said that in denial of the visual evidence, or in response. “Why…why was she left so long? How could someone not know…”

“Your mother was due today for an early morning lecture at the Academy,” Stern said, softly. “The last person to speak with her was the professor who’d arranged for the lecture and she called him eleven days ago, a day after she arrived planetside. When she didn’t show, he called, then finally convinced a building super to bypass her privacy shield and get into her apartment. That was at one o’clock this afternoon, and the body’s been in a stasis field since the D.C. medical examiner’s office responded.”

“But she looks as if she’s been dead for weeks. Not ten days, or even twelve.”

“I know, Elizabeth,” Stern said, not unkindly. “And that’s the problem.”

CHAPTER 4

The steam from his shower had dissipated and the air was getting chill. Naked, Faulwell shivered, his skin prickling with gooseflesh. Still, he made no move to wrap a towel around his body or duck into the silent room he’d taken at the Academy’s VOQ. It occurred to him that he ought to have been thrilled to have a room all to himself; snagging a vacancy at the Visiting Officers Quarters was a coup. But he wasn’t. The room was meant for two.

Except Anthony Mark hadn’t shown.

Faulwell scrubbed condensation away from a three-quarters length mirror above the vanity. His face appeared out of the mist, like something from a dream.

A month after Stratos, and he was still thin. His ribs showed. He’d never been a muscular man; people thought him bookish and quaint, a little bit of a dreamer. Even a romantic. They were probably right. How many men wrote letters by hand—with fine paper and good ink, an antique pen—and how many of those wrote to a lover they hadn’t seen in, what, almost a year?

So who were you writing for, huh? For yourself? Because that’s what it’s been, you know: a one-sided conversation that you’ve been carrying on with a man you barely know.

And yet he’d brought the damn box. Squared it on Anthony’s side of the bed where it remained, unopened, like an accusation.

Faulwell’s eyes slowly roved over the hollows and angles of his body’s terrain, lingering over a scimitar slash of scar tissue a little left of his navel. He traced its curve, the reflection of an apostrophe, with the ink-stained index finger of his right hand.

And Sarjenka had wondered why he kept the scar. Looking back on it now, that was the one moment in the entire time of his relationship with Lense—if you could call an acquaintance any kind of relationship at all—that Faulwell knew that she understood exactly why. She hadn’t said much of anything about her time marooned on that planet in another universe. But Lense understood. Sarjenka had fretted, but he and Lense had locked gazes, and then Lense had given a small nod, a slight smile.

Not every scar was visible. Memories cut as deeply as any knife.

He let loose a long sigh. Jolen…all right, there was attraction there, yes. No doubt about it. But nothing serious.

His mind drifted to Lense. So self-sufficient, self-contained, force-field-at-max, although he couldn’t rid the image of her face when that doctor—Plath?—dropped that little bombshell about Jennifer. She’d looked stunned, almost lost. Even now, he had half a mind to throw on some clothes and track her down.

Still naked, he padded out to the bedroom. He dropped to the bed—what would’ve been Anthony’s side—and ran his hand over the box of letters he’d so carefully arranged there. The box was made of very expensive, darkly scarlet bloodwood. When his fingers flicked open the bronze clasp and then lifted the lid, he caught a faintly spicy aroma—a little bit of cinnamon, a little nutmeg. Beautiful stationery.

But the letter he teased out wasn’t written on the same stationery; the paper was embossed with a Starfleet logo, for heaven’s sake; and the penmanship wasn’t florid, and the ink wasn’t dear either.

But the words were.

I have to talk to you.

I have to show you everything.

I have to know if you love him.

Or me.

Oh God. A single tear trickled down his left cheek. God, I’ve ruined it; I’ve been so damned stupid.

He didn’t hear the sigh of the door, didn’t know anyone was there until someone gently called his name: “Bart.”

Faulwell gasped. His heart lurched in his chest. Then he stood, slowly. He was naked, holding Anthony’s letter, crying—and he didn’t care.

Anthony said nothing, but his blue eyes were grave, and the room’s dim light caught the golden shimmer of his hair.

It was Faulwell who spoke first.

“You.” His voice was husky with emotion. “I love you.”

CHAPTER 5

After the autopsy, in an adjacent clean room, Stern was passing her hands through a sonic decon unit. “So far, the available evidence is that death was secondary to a massive cerebral hemorrhage with subsequent intracerebral bleeding following rupture of a large saccular aneurysm at the cerebellar-pontine angle. Your mother would’ve been rendered unconscious within seconds and dead within minutes.” A pause. “She had a stroke, Dr. Lense, pure and simple.”

“No, not so pure and not so simple.” Lense was washing her hands for the third time, methodically scrubbing and wringing her hands under water hot enough to steam. Despite the decay, she had immediately recognized Jennifer.

Still, Stern had gone by the book, taking DNA for identification purposes via snip-chips, single nucleotide polymorphisms; she’d explained to Duren: “You don’t have to sequence the entire genome to match an ID. We just do a standard panel same as all law enforcement, say, a hundred-thousand sites scattered around the genome.”

Drying her hands, Lense gazed through a square of glass set at eye level in the door. In the autopsy suite, the diener was closing, his movements precise, economical.

She turned away. “A stroke doesn’t make sense. A saccular aneurysm would’ve been picked up on a routine physical.”

“Assuming she ever went to the doctor. This is a woman you haven’t seen in years. So how do you know?”

“There are bound to be records somewhere.”

“Of course there are, and they’ve been accessed.”

“And?”

“And your mother wasn’t overly fond of doctors. She hadn’t seen one for almost fifteen years.”

Just about the time I went to the Academy for my medical training. The timing was either supremely ironic, or Jennifer consciously avoided physicians after her only daughter went off to become one. Knowing how frosty things were between them, Lense was willing to put her money on the latter.

Aloud, Lense said, “She might have had a stroke. I can accept that. But a stroke might have been the end result of something else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, but nothing explains that degree of decomposition, not in just ten or eleven days.”

“How would you explain it?” Duren, the counselor, had said little during the autopsy. Privately, Lense gave him points for not bolting.

“I don’t. Maybe something infectious, something that accelerated apoptosis…programmed cell death,” she translated in response to Duren’s puzzled expression. “People used to call it cell suicide. A dying cell releases various chemical signals that then transmit the message to self-destruct to other cells in the immediate area. Then, rather than having a lot of dead cell junk floating around the body, specialized cells—phagocytes—engulf the debris. Effectively eat the remains.”

Duren frowned. “That doesn’t sound very adaptive.”

She was grateful to stick to something clinical, something she knew a lot about. “Believe me, you need it. If you have unrestrained cell growth, you get cancers. If certain cells don’t die off, then you affect development, like what happens with a fetus.” She saw Duren’s eyes flick to her swollen abdomen and back, and she said, “With my baby, for example—or any fetus—apoptosis is required for, say, fingers or toes to develop. Something has to trigger certain cells to die off, or else the tissues remain fused.”

“So what you’re saying is that something else might have killed enough cells to accelerate post-mortem decomposition?” Stern thought a moment then shrugged. “Could be. We’ll run the standard battery of tests, look for an infectious agent, but a test is only as good as the measures it’s designed to examine. Unless whatever this is left some kind of footprint…”

“You should quarantine her ship,” Lense interrupted. “And someone needs to examine Strong and Darly, maybe even quarantine them.”

“Already way ahead of you,” Stern said, dryly. “The ship’s in dry dock and we’ve posted a guard. As for Darly and Strong, they’ve already been notified that they have to stay on grounds and need to be periodically examined. I’ll send word to Drura Sextus, see if anyone else on the team’s ill. But Darly and Strong have been on the planet for the same length of time; they traveled in the same ship with your mother and they’re right as rain.”

“What about Jennifer’s apartment in…in…?” Lense felt a sudden stab of mingled embarrassment and shame when she realized that she didn’t know Jennifer’s address. “Has it been checked out?”

“Standard sweep.”

“And?”

“Nothing. No sign of forced entry; nothing out of place; no sign of a struggle; no one in or out via private transport and the apartment’s privacy shield was in place. Nothing.” At Lense’s expression: “Look…sure, there’s a chance something’ll be missed. It’s like any clinical test; you can’t test for what you don’t know about, and you don’t test everything. You don’t do that for a patient, and it’s no different in investigative work. We need something to go on to know where to start looking. There’s nothing.”

“So there’s nothing to stop me from going.”

There was a slight hiss and then the diener entered on a soft whisper of boots, said a quiet “Excuse me” to Stern before handing her a padd.

Lense continued, “Maybe I’ll spot or notice something that was missed. Different pair of eyes.”

“Well, you’re her daughter,” Stern said, an eye on the padd. She gestured her assent to the diener who nodded to Lense before slipping from the room. “Unless there’s some advanced directive she left about who had access to her things…you’ve every right. But I’m not sure how you’d know if anything’s amiss.”

Lense heard the unspoken implication: You’re hardly in a position to have known her well. “Can you think of any reason why I shouldn’t?”

“Well, I could point out that you’re pregnant, and if this is some sort of insidious infection…”

“You wouldn’t have let me into the autopsy if you thought that.”

“There was a sterile field.”

“Which you dropped for the autopsy. And you haven’t quarantined Darly and Strong.”

Stern grunted. “We can play this game of gotcha all day.” A pause, then: “We can only look for what we can think of looking for, Elizabeth. That’s all we can do. We’re only human.”

For some reason, Lense looked at Duren and thought: Only some of us.

Later, across the Academy campus, in the Xenoarchaeology and Antiquities Department, Lense confronted Preston Strong.

“Jennifer’s apartment?” Strong laced his fingers across his flat abdomen—a six-pack under there, Lense imagined; Strong obviously took care of himself. “Of course, I know it but…”

“But what?” Lense had been on-edge as soon as she’d set foot into the archaeologist’s cramped, tumbledown office. (Jennifer’s was just down the hall. Something else she’d have to go through. But the apartment was what mattered now.) She and Strong sat so close their knees almost touched. Their proximity made her jumpy, something that communicated itself to the kid, who’d evidently mistaken her bladder for a timpani. “Is there a problem?”

Strong’s eyebrows met in a frown. “No, no. It’s just…well, I expected you’d want to rest a bit before…”

“I’m fine.” She pulled out a padd and thumbed it to life. “If you’ll just give me the address…” She broke off when his fingers gently slid around her left wrist.

“You shouldn’t go alone.” His voice was low, confidential. “I’ll go with you. In fact, I insist.”

“I’m fine.” She gave her wrist a little tug, but he didn’t relinquish his hold and for a minute, she had the wild thought that he wasn’t going to let go at all. With sudden urgency: “I should go.” And then she stood, much too quickly as it turned out because a wave of dizziness grabbed her by the throat, and she staggered, almost falling.

“Elizabeth?” He took her by the shoulders, drew her close enough that their faces were just centimeters apart. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m…” Lense blinked away stars. “I’m fine. It’s just…I just haven’t eaten anything since…”

His voice, seductive: “You’ll wear yourself out. You’re just like your mother that way; you’ve got to take better care of yourself. Think of the baby.”

“No.” She pulled herself straighter. “I’m fine. And you need to back off, Dr. Strong. Right. Now.”

He blinked. “Of course,” he said, relinquishing his grasp at once and saying nothing as she slid away. He gave a sheepish, lopsided grin. “Sorry. You…you look a lot like…”

“You don’t have to explain anything,” Lense said quickly. She wondered, a half-second later, if that were true. “If you’ll just give me the address and transporter coordinates.”

A faint, ironic smile played on Strong’s lips. “I wouldn’t have the coordinates. But I do have the address. Here…” Waving away Lense’s offer of her padd, he pulled out a piece of letterhead stationery and began to scribble. “I never use those. They are so…impersonal.” Folding the paper into neat thirds, he slipped it into an ivory parchment envelope and then sealed it, moistening the glue with his tongue, his eyes on Lense. He proffered the now-sealed envelope between his index and second fingers, like a dealer doling out a card. “Anything else?”

“Yeah.” Lense held the envelope at its edges. The flap was still moist from Strong’s saliva. “Which way to my mom’s office?”

A few seconds later, hurrying down the hall, she felt his eyes burning a hole in her back.

Jennifer’s office was on the ground floor at the end of a long corridor faced with offices on the left and a courtyard, lush with purple climbing bougainvillea, on her right. A bar of buttery light thrown on the wall opposite Jennifer’s office made her slow. Someone in there…She rounded the jamb, and the person seated at the computer glanced up.

“Lizzie.” Surprise in Livilla Darly’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

Isn’t that my line? “I stopped by Dr. Strong’s office…to get Jennifer’s address. What are you doing here?” Then, moving quickly now, she came around to stand behind Darly. She frowned at the wintry landscape, chockablock with mountainous ice formations. “That’s Drura Sextus.”

“Yes, indeed.” Darly sighed. “Someone needs to catalog the artifacts we netted on this latest expedition and organize the logs. Your mother always saw to it first thing. You wouldn’t believe the number of artifacts we…your mother uncovered. Of course, the Klingons would be happy to retake the planet, I’m sure. Thank heavens for treaties.”

“Really? I’d have thought that dig tapped out long ago. I mean, it’s been how long? Ten years?”

“Fifteen. The thing about the dig…it’s a little like Rome or Jerusalem, or the Hebitian burial tombs on Cardassia. They’re all examples of archaeological palimpsests, ruins on top of ruins on top of even more ancient structures. And just like the Hebitian burial vaults, the structures on Drura Sextus extend for kilometers up, down, all around…We were all due back in about six weeks. I guess it’ll be just Strong and I now.”

“You don’t sound thrilled about that.”

“You don’t know much about academe, do you? Professional rivalries run deep. Preston began to believe…well, that your mother would’ve been happy to cut us both out of any further publications.”

Now that sounded like the Jennifer that Lense remembered: ambitious, a little ruthless. “What about you?”

Darly shrugged. “We were colleagues.”

“Meaning you were rivals.”

“Of course—but in case you have doubts, I wouldn’t kill for recognition.”

“Are you intimating that Strong would?”

“Inefficient considering that I’m still here.”

“But you’re the one going through the files—and isn’t that a little weird? Aren’t those private files?”

As Lense had been speaking, Darly’s face set and now she said, very quietly, “Lizzie, dear, if you’re going to sling around accusations or play amateur sleuth, do your homework. If you had, you’d understand that all expedition files can be accessed with a common key. Hell, if you want—” Darly scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it toward Lense. “Here’s the password to access your mother’s files. Mine, too, while you’re at it. Sorry, correspondence is private; not automatically copied or stored in the system but…knock yourself out.”

“Thanks, I just might. Of course, I won’t be able to tell if you’ve erased anything.”

Darly gave her a withering look. “Don’t be an ass, Lizzie. I’m no fan of crime holos, but even an arcane archaeologist understands that nothing’s ever really gone from a computer. Give a forensic specialist enough time, and she’ll come up with something.”

“So why not access Jennifer’s files from your office?” Lense asked stubbornly.

“I just told you. It’s easier to cross-reference correspondence that only she would’ve initiated at her workstation, and I can’t know what that is until I lay eyes on it—and that’s because your mother wasn’t the most generous person when it came to sharing hypotheses from the available data. And because this is the reality, Lizzie: Your mother is dead. Tragic but true. We were colleagues, not friends. The work has to go on, and I’ve spent almost two decades of my life living in your mother’s shadow principally because hers was the quicker mind. I don’t begrudge her that; she was a master, and I’ve not exactly suffered. Neither has Strong. But she’s gone, and I’m here now. Yet if you think I’m ambitious enough to somehow arrange for your mother’s premature demise, think again.”

As Darly had talked, Lense had felt her skin tighten around her mouth, her eyes. “I’m curious. Just exactly who’s going to be named lead investigator?”

Darly hunched one shoulder, let it fall. “I know I want the job. I suspect Strong does, too. Or the department chair may have other ideas that she’ll present to the grant committee. They’ll be looking for someone as skilled as your mother. Jennifer Almieri understood survival in academe: publish or perish. So for her? Cutting a few throats?” Darly gave Lense a wintry smile. “All in a day’s work.”

CHAPTER 6

Their lovemaking had been passionate and satisfying, and now Faulwell and Anthony lay side by side, hands clasped, sweat wicking away from their bodies in the slowly lengthening shadows as the day slipped toward dusk.

Faulwell stared at the ceiling. He was keenly aware of Anthony’s body lying next to his, could feel his heat. He’d memorized Anthony’s body with his fingers, his mouth, his eyes, lingering over its tiny imperfections in a way he hadn’t before: a slash of white scar on the hump of his right elbow; a dimple coin of scar tissue on his left knee; a thin ribbon that unfurled the length of his pelvis below his navel. These had fascinated him, and he couldn’t tell if this sudden interest mirrored the inventory he’d taken of his own wounds just an hour earlier.

So was he really seeing Anthony more clearly? Seeing himself?

He was…uneasy. Was that a fair statement? His forehead wrinkled in thought. Yes, he thought it was. The easy camaraderie he’d enjoyed with Jolen was missing. At first, in the urgency of their lovemaking, he’d dismissed this. He’d simply needed. But now…

Did I only imagine how close I grew to Jolen because it was the safe thing to do? Because I knew the da Vinci would leave and there was no risk?

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He was so caught up in his own thoughts that it took Faulwell a second to place the voice. Faulwell felt the bed dip and rise then dip again as Anthony turned onto his left side, facing Faulwell.

“I don’t know.” Sounded feeble. He tried again. “There doesn’t have to be anything wrong. I’m just…tired and what happened with Elizabeth—”

“I know you’re not worrying about Elizabeth.”

Faulwell said nothing. A second later, his skin flinched as Anthony’s fingers skimmed the scar to the left of his navel. “Is it about this?” Anthony asked. When Faulwell didn’t respond, Anthony added, “Why did you decide to keep it?”

“Because…it’s a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.” This struck him as stupid; Anthony had a few scars of his own, and besides lovers talked about these kinds of things. “I mean…almost dying. It was, well, kind of weird. And I don’t remember much.”

“Tell me.”

So Faulwell talked. He rolled onto his back and talked to a ceiling that grew blacker as the day waned; he talked about Stratos; the harmonics Fabian had responded to in the paintings; that first spike; and then that awful instant when Faulwell heard that whizzing sound and saw Fabian in the way…. As he talked, his right hand lightly traced his scar back and forth, up and down.

“When I woke up, I thought I was going to die. I thought this was it, and I sure as hell wasn’t anywhere near ready to go. Maybe that’s why I made a promise to myself, or maybe it was a bargain with some kind of god, I don’t know.”

“And what was that promise?”

Now he did look at Anthony. “That I would do what you asked at the wedding,” Faulwell said. “For us to get married.”

A silence. Then Anthony said, “Is that why you’ve kept the scar? To remind yourself?” A pause and then Faulwell could hear the smile he couldn’t see because of the gathering dusk. “I can understand that,” Anthony said. “I’ve got my own little reminders. And?”

“And…” Why did it have to be this hard? Faulwell hesitated and then Anthony filled the gap for him.

“You’re not sure.” There was no malice or disappointment in Anthony’s voice. Maybe that would come later. “You’ve had a chance to rethink your promise, and you’re not sure. Because of Jolen?”

“Yes. Well…maybe. Or maybe I’m bothered by all the things I’ve told you.”

Anthony laughed. “You haven’t told me a lot of things.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the night table where he’d put the box, not bothering to read the contents in their eagerness to make love. “You’ve written hundreds, thousands of words that I’ve never seen. Even if I read them, they don’t substitute for intimacy.”

For some reason, Faulwell felt offended. “Then what exactly have we been doing? I didn’t notice you complaining an hour ago.”

Anthony’s tone took on a hard, almost brutal edge. “Oh, don’t be stupid. We’ve been sleeping together. We’ve had sex, while you’ve spun castles in the air. Maybe that’s all we’ve been doing.” He rolled away, calling for lights and then, as Faulwell blinked in the sudden glare, Anthony said, “This is about him, isn’t it? Jolen?”

“I…no, this is about us…me…”

“You’re lying.” Anthony was already tugging on his clothes. “Don’t kid yourself that you’re doing me any favors either.”

“Wait a minute.” Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Faulwell fumbled for his own clothes, cursed when he realized that they were still in a heap on the bathroom floor, and settled for yanking the top sheet free of the mattress. “You were the one who brought up marriage,” he said, cinching the sheet around his waist.

“Yeah, and I drank a lot and then I kissed that doctor of yours, Elizabeth—and I enjoyed it and…”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear that.”

Anthony shouted over him. “But it didn’t mean that I wanted her! Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s cute. I like her, and I’m sure she’d be good in bed. But I prefer men.”

“Gee, thanks. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Oh, shut up.” Now fully clothed, Anthony turned and erased the distance between them in four strides. He came so quickly, his face so contorted with rage and hurt, that Faulwell took an instinctive step back, half-raised an arm to defend himself.

Something in Anthony’s face seemed to break. “You really think I’d hurt you? You idiot, you…”

And then, before he could react, Anthony took Faulwell’s face in both hands and gave him a fierce, passionate, furious kiss. Faulwell flinched back then surrendered to the embrace so that when Anthony finally pulled away, Faulwell was nearly breathless.

“I love you,” Anthony said, his voice ragged, his blue eyes bright with tears. “Maybe this whole thing has been a big lie, a nice little fairytale of a romance. But this is reality, Bart, not a pretty picture or something you can conjure on a page, and this is about whatever future we’re going to have. And you know something?” Anthony ran his thumb over Faulwell’s lips, and then took a step back. “I’ve had enough of stories and lies. You’ve kept me at arm’s length with those letters. I’ve been something you can dream about and then tuck away. But real life is messy, Bart. So what I’m asking is this. Are you prepared for us? Are you ready to hear something that isn’t fantasy but the truth?”

He heard the desire behind Anthony’s question; knew that all he’d have to do was say that, yes, he was ready—and then maybe this chasm opening between them would close. But he hesitated.

And Anthony saw it. The light in his eyes—hope?—faded. Anthony’s face set into something approaching granite, and he turned away.

But not before Faulwell saw the hurt.

“Anthony,” he said. “Wait.”

“No.” Then, at the threshold, Anthony looked back over his shoulder. “But you know what, Bart? You’re not the only one with secrets.”

The door sighed shut.

CHAPTER 7

It was nearly nine local time and the sun was just slipping below the western horizon to her right when Lense pushed out of the commuter transport station on Washington Circle. It was like walking into a blast furnace. The air was stifling but too humid for her to sweat much; its sticky fingers dragged along her skin. Down the hill directly before her, she could just see the northern face of the Lincoln Memorial, its marble columns washed hot apricot by the sunset.

Welcome to August in Washington, D.C.

Turn to the right, a dispassionate computer voice murmured in her left ear. Right meant west, and when she’d made the turn, her PGS soothed, Proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest for point-two-six kilometers.

Lense did what her Personal Guidance System instructed. Strong’s directions indicated that Jennifer’s apartment lay west off R Street in Old Georgetown and near Dumbarton Oaks, which meant she had to walk into the sun, squinting because of the glare. As she crossed over the bridge at Pennsylvania where the walk fed into M Street, a sudden flare to her right caught her eye. She stopped, eyeing the white-yellow plume of a suborbital shuttle arcing first west and then east. A moment later, the vessel’s rumbling roar caught up. She turned, following the shuttle’s trajectory.

As the shuttle passed out of sight, her gaze skipped down and then over the faces of two or three other knots of people—probably tourists, judging from the sheer number of baseball caps with various D.C. logos and the adult-to-kid ratio—who’d similarly paused to gawk. Her eyes briefly touched on a man—athletic-looking, bearded, in jeans and a light colored shirt open at the throat, maybe a few years older than she—who quickly pretended that he hadn’t been staring, though his eyes soon drifted back and his lips curled into a tentative half-smile.

She abruptly turned aside. A guy had to be pretty desperate to be making eyes at a woman with a blimp in her belly.

In a few seconds, he passed her and when she looked again, he was striding down M and then turned into a café. Somewhere cool, she imagined, where he’d sip something icy and enjoy a nice meal.

The kid suddenly twisted as if seconding that rest and food were terrific ideas.

Well, okay, she could just go back to the Academy. What did it all matter? Jennifer Almieri was dead. And she really didn’t feel…anything. Certainly not grief.

Her PGS nagged: You are off-course. Please execute a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and head due west on M.

Sighing, Lense did what the computer said. The thing was worse than the kid.

Jennifer’s apartment was on the third floor of a renovated Victorian brownstone of ancient vintage. After eyeing her identification, the super led the way in silence, keyed in the master code to lower Jennifer’s privacy shield, and unlock the door. Then he gave her the code and left.

She’d never been here. This was a Jennifer and a life she didn’t know.

The apartment had that empty feel. The air was musty and laced with the aroma of tomatoes and basil and spoiled meat.

The hush made her nervy. Her footsteps sounded too loud, like old-fashioned pistol shots, on the hardwood floors. Fishing about in one pocket of her maternity uniform—a blue parachute; every month, pull the ripcord—she came up with a canister of silicone for emergency use with burn patients. She applied the spray to either hand, waited for the polymer to dry, then flexed her fingers. Like wearing gloves. Just in case.

The entrance hall opened to a large, elliptical room and an expanse of bay window that faced Dumbarton Gardens directly north. The room was chockablock with bookshelves crammed to capacity, several musical instruments—a Vulcan harp, a Bajoran bella-clavion—and artifacts everywhere: Hebitian lizardlike creatures of jeweled jevonite, a number of Vulcan gods and pictograms, a dizzying array of artifacts she did not recognize, as well as an extensive collection of Tholian multihued crystal-lattices.

A pristine kitchen was down the left corridor leading off this main room. The interior was spotless, the countertops clean, every dish in its place in the cupboards she palmed open. On the table were red and white roses in a vase: She bent, sniffed. The flowers were fragrant, the water clear.

She checked the ice-box next: an assortment of fresh vegetables—lettuce, celery, sliced Tyrolian purple carrots in a small container of water, half a tomato on a small plate—and fruit, including Kefarian apples, notoriously difficult to store for longer than three, maybe four days at the outside. She inspected the creamy yellow skin of one for bruises. There were none.

Wait a minute…

Her ship docks twelve days ago. She checks in at the Academy. What then? She’s a free agent. No one sees her, but she’s clearly going in and out. Fresh vegetables and fruit, cooking smells…something’s wrong.

Her gaze wandered the counters again, coming to rest on a butcher’s block bristling with knives.

The tomato. Those carrots. Innocuous anywhere else…only someone like me would know she didn’t do fresh food. She’d bark at a replicator on those rare occasions when she remembered to eat.

She found a razor-sharp knife, with a nearly invisible rust rime between tang and pryolene handle. Wished she’d brought a tricorder. Idiot. But when she ran her thumb over the rime, the flecks were the color of old copper.

Huh.

Jennifer’s bedroom, at the far end of the other corridor, was bad. Getting there was awful, but in a different way. Here, the stink of rot was eye-wateringly strong, something the air repurification systems hadn’t totally eradicated. On either side of the hall were old-fashioned photographs.

Walking the hall was a trip through a time warp, the pictures becoming older as she went. A tingle of surprise that she was there: graduation day at the Academy now eight years past. Her hair was a boyish crew cut, what she thought looked military, and she grimaced. Her eyes rested on the image of a slimmer, more optimistic-looking Julian Bashir two rows behind and a little to the right.

No more of her. The rest were Jennifer’s various digs, and not just Drura Sextus on the fringes of Klingon space—the first and so far only Tholian site discovered on a Class-M planet, leading to the still-hotly contested theory that Tholians had seeded the Alpha Quadrant millennia ago when many of its planets were older, their suns much hotter. Livilla Darly—looking very much the same then as now—was in many of the pictures as was Preston Strong.

Jennifer had been, yes, as beautiful as she remembered: that river of chestnut arranged in that queenly coil; a long, slim neck that gave way to ample breasts; brown-black eyes that were a tiny bit feline and added mystery. (Lense was her father’s daughter: a moppet of curls, a snub nose and a chin a tad too strong.)

One thing she noticed: Strong’s hand resting on Jennifer’s left shoulder. Something between them? Strong was good-looking, sensual. A bit of a rogue.

By the time she stepped into Jennifer’s room, she was convinced that Strong and Jennifer had been lovers.

And So. Bloody. What.

The bedroom was a horror.

The king-size bed was unmade, the sheets purplish and stiff with purge fluids. And Jennifer had lost bowel and bladder control as she died.

Lense was shaking. She’d done enough forensics work in her time to know that crews tore things up, leaving the clean-up to families. Steeling herself, she pointedly avoided looking at the bed and instead inspected the virtual collage of photographs peppering the walls.

Her stomach iced. Her eyes shifted to the next and then the one after that and then one more. She turned a slow circle, scanning each photograph in turn.

She should’ve expected this. There was only one obsession upon which Jennifer would fixate. That it still hurt made Lense want to break something.

The same person, from infancy through childhood and on into adolescence: The infant’s—and then the young boy’s—eyes were feline, glittery, deeply black, full of mischief. He also shared his mother’s hair, that long neck. His broad shoulders tapered in a V and muscular legs. Captain of the swim team…yes, four gold medals festooning his bare chest…then a fencer, and of course a star pupil, champion debater…

Unable to bear any more, she turned away. Her chest was tight, hands fisted. Holding herself together.

I refuse to get trapped here again, I absolutely refuse.

But the pain was the same.

Jennifer’s dresser drawers held neatly arranged T-shirts, jeans, work clothes. She felt embarrassed as she quickly inventoried Jennifer’s underwear and was relieved that nothing was anything but…well, functional.

Nothing much on the dresser: a jewelry box that contained a collection of earrings, two or three necklaces…and her wedding band: platinum with tiny diamonds and Marlburnian rubies. The one she stopped wearing when Lense was sixteen and…

She clapped the lid shut.

What else? Three scented candles, a single bottle of perfume that looked as if it had barely been touched.

She tweezed up the bottle between thumb and forefinger, uncapped the atomizer, sniffed. She must’ve been getting used to the smell of rot because she could detect an odor.

Huh.

Flowers in the kitchen, food in the ice-box, scented candles in the bedroom and perfume…Jennifer wasn’t exactly the roses and perfume type. True, there was only the one bottle, barely touched. (A wry thought: probably the same bottle she’d given Jennifer as a Mother’s Day gift twenty years ago.)

Her eye fell on a silver-handled hairbrush. She hefted it. Heavy. Long strands of Jennifer’s chestnut hair. Her fingers itched to pluck a few. Hesitated.

Don’t be dumb.

Stern said Jennifer had died of a stroke ten days or so ago, give or take. Period. The autopsy said so, too. Lense would’ve said so.

Face it: You want this to be something more. You want intrigue or mystery, some reason why your mother died because otherwise your entire history with her becomes utterly pointless.

Another voice, a ghost of the first: But the flowers, the perfume…

As it happened, she’d turned toward the bed and stared at the floor looking but not seeing…and then she did see something yellow, bright. She hunkered down awkwardly because of her belly, rooted for it.

A pencil.

Groaning, she hoisted her bulk to her feet. Jennifer had been an obsessive note taker, and that hadn’t changed, judging by the bits of paper bristling from books stacked on the nightstand: a volume of Shakespeare, a romance novel (taking notes on, what, positions?), another photo album.

A Bible. Very old, gold gilt tooled into cracked black leather, gold leaf. A scrap of paper as a place mark.

Lense allowed herself a small, puzzled smile. Jennifer was not religious. Never had been. But Lense had been a doctor long enough to know that some people sensed when death was imminent. And even for the ones who believed there was always that moment of doubt. Fear she could read in their eyes.

An entirely plausible scenario: Jennifer’s in bed. She’s reading, taking notes, but she’s uneasy. Anxious. Flips through a Bible, maybe reads a passage or two, then replaces the tome—and strokes out. The pencil drops from her suddenly slack fingers and rolls beneath the bedside table.

And then she dies. Cut and dried, really.

So, yes, maybe she and Strong had been lovers; maybe they’d slept together the night before, the day before, the hour before. That wasn’t a crime. There was nothing to suggest he’d been here.

But the flowers, the perfume… And what he’d said: You’re so much like her.

Riiiiight. She and Jennifer had nothing in common but half a genome.

In the main room again: Jennifer’s computer told her to get lost because she didn’t have the right password. She racked her brain, tried a couple, then sat back, frustrated.

There’s got to be some way of figuring out what Jennifer was up to: where she went, who she saw.

She stood, making a slow circuit of the room, glancing idly out the bay windows, gliding past…then stopping, her pulse suddenly tripping in her throat.

“Lights out.” An instant later, the room was plunged into darkness. Slowly, carefully, she eased back until she could just glimpse the sidewalk across the street and…

Oh, hell. She held herself very still.

Caught in the grainy penumbra of yellow light puddling from a streetlamp was a man. And he was looking up, studying the apartment. Trying to estimate his height from her vantage point was difficult, but she thought that he might be tall. Broad-shouldered, but it was hard to see…. She eased closer to the window.

As if sensing that, the man’s attitude abruptly changed. Pulling back, he pivoted right and began walking—not too fast, but not slowly either—avoiding the light cast by streetlamps.

For a half second, she contemplated trying to follow. Then a mental picture: she, belly and all, waddling just as fast as she could…

Riiiight.

She watched his retreating figure. At the corner of 30th and R, he doglegged right, quickly passing in and out the light on 30th. A brief glimpse of khaki shirt rolled to the elbows, blue jeans…was that a cap?

And then he was gone.

That galvanized her. She’d come prepared and now pulled polypropylene bags from her uniform pockets.

To the kitchen and the knife with the odd rust-colored rime: she dropped and then sealed it in the bag.

You’re being melodramatic. Hurrying down the hall back to Jennifer’s bedroom.

But that didn’t stop her from bagging the brush.

Or taking the photo album.

CHAPTER 8

“You want wha…? What…what time is it?” Throbbing head in hand, Faulwell teetered on the edge of the bed. The room was in semi-darkness, and even that was too damned bright.

Six hours before, he’d dressed, debated about going after Anthony, left his room intending to do just that—and then detoured into the Officer’s Club because, well, what the hell. He wasn’t a drinking type but had somewhat romanticized notions of what someone did when his heart was broken: cry in his beer, go on a bender, drink himself blind, get pissed…Yes, all clichés, but he was a bookish kind of guy.

The first bourbon—real bourbon, not this synthehol crap—burned a fiery finger all the way down then exploded in his stomach like a photon torpedo. The second still hurt, but by the fourth, he thought he’d gotten the hang of it. Somewhere between his seventh and eighth, he’d started to cry and that’s when the bartender started with the coffee.

Now he had a hangover that was melting his eyeballs; sudden tilts of vertigo if he moved too quickly; his mouth tasted like something furry had peed, crapped, and then died about a week ago in there; and his stomach had crawled up somewhere just south of his throat.

“It’s only ten your time,” Lense came back, impatience dripping from her voice. “Around one here.”

“One…where…what…”

“I’m in Washington at Jennifer’s place and…”

She said something else but Faulwell sort of phased out and then back in, said, “Did…did you just say killed…?”

Exasperated Lense noises. “I don’t know. It’s just…strange. I was going to run a couple tests back at the Academy, but I don’t want Stern to know what I’m doing, not yet. There’s only one place where I might get the information I want without too many people getting wind of it before I’m ready.”

“Ready for…?”

“Don’t know yet. Anyway, I need you for Jennifer’s computer.”

Had she mentioned that already? “For what?”

There was a silence on the other end, and then Lense said, “Are you with anyone? Is Anthony…?”

“No, no,” Faulwell said, sitting up too quickly. The room spun, and he slid a little sideways until his shoulder met the headboard. Just rest here awhile… “I’m fine.” He hiccupped, felt the bourbon fumes burn his nose. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Not convinced. “So…will you do it?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Great.” She waited while he fumbled for a stylus, then rattled off transporter coordinates and an address, then said, “And here’s the code to get into her apartment and for the privacy shield. Put it back up when you leave.”

“Uh,” he said, in a sudden burst of clarity, “is this legal?”

“Of course it is.”

So, okay, why couldn’t Stern know? He thought about asking, decided he really didn’t want to know the answer, gathered his fraying wits long enough to muster: “So…uh…what am I looking for? Something suspicious?”

That just broke him up. He collapsed in a fit of spluttery giggles and stopped only because he worried his head would fall off.

Another silence from Lense. Then: “Are you drunk?”

“No.” Faulwell puffed out his chest so he was only half-slouching against the headboard. “Of course not.”

A beat. “Okay. Call me soonest.” She clicked off.

“Sure,” Faulwell said to dead air. His bladder cramped, and his stomach lurched. He thought he might need to pee or puke—or both. “You bet.”

But first…he staggered to the bathroom to spend a little quality time with a porcelain god.

CHAPTER 9

So she was following Darly’s advice. She was knocking herself out.

She quickly discovered that sifting through all Jennifer’s work would take weeks, if not months. The task was compounded by the fact that she didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was looking for.

Pushing back from Jennifer’s workstation in her Academy office, Lense arched her back, wincing at a sudden twinge at the base of her spine. She’d grabbed a quick sandwich after transporting back from Washington, but she was tired and feeling wobbly. Coffee might do it, but then the kid would end up tripping the light fantastic all night.

Discouraged and brain-sore, she checked the time.

Not due back for another three hours, and then he’ll have to read the message, run the tests to make sure…

Too much time. She yawned. She ought to sleep.

Her eye fell on Jennifer’s photo album, the one she’d filched from the apartment. Hers now, she guessed. She’d resisted leafing through it, but now she scooped it up and turned to the first leaf. Might help pass the time and then…

“Oh my God.” And then again, almost mildly, “My God.”

Her father. Young, handsome, astride a mountaintop. Rucksack on his back, a big grin for the camera. A lean man with that snub nose and wide mouth he’d bequeathed to her daughter. Fifty years ago by the date stamp, and judging by that rainbow arc of rings slashing an azure sky, this must’ve been Casperia Prime, where her parents had honeymooned.

More pictures: her parents on various digs; her father porpoising from a mountain lake in a foamy spray; Jennifer—visibly pregnant—grinning, flexing her muscles, posing like a weightlifter before a sign-post and the words, Summit—5 km…

And then one of Jennifer, smiling, propped up on pillows, her hair in disarray. Cradling a newborn in a fleecy pink blanket.

Me. Lense put a trembling hand to her lips. That must be me.

She’s fallen asleep over her books again, and Jennifer’s come to shake her awake: Lizzie, Lizzie, time to get up time for school. Only when she turns to look, the flesh melts from Jennifer’s fingers, and her eyes are black sockets dripping blood…Wake up, Lizzie, wake up…

“Huh!” Lense came awake with a gasp.

“Easy, easy.” It was the counselor, Duren. He straightened, put both his hands up in apology. “I’m sorry. I came by your quarters, and when you weren’t in, thought maybe you’d be here.”

“Um.” Lense’s mouth was gummy with sleep, but her heart still knocked against her ribs. Her neck and shoulders ached from slumping over Jennifer’s desk. Clearing her throat, she scrubbed away sleep from her eyes. “So, uh, what did you want?” Not very gracious, but hey…

“I came by to see how you were doing. Finding you wasn’t that difficult. The Academy transporter log indicated you beamed back at about midnight, local time. As for where, this seemed a logical place.”

That, she supposed, was true. “Well, thanks, but I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Duren gestured at the album on the desk, half-covered by her crossed arms where she’d laid her head to sleep. “Photographs?”

“Uh, yes. Not very interesting.” She pointedly closed the album then thought: Idiot, he’s a telepath.

Duren smiled gently. “Please try to relax, Elizabeth. I rarely go where I’m not wanted.”

She grinned in spite of herself. “Isn’t that a little like begging forgiveness after that fact?”

He laughed. “Yes. But I don’t need to be a telepath to sense your uneasiness. Hard enough to tolerate the therapist who can’t read your mind.” Before she could reply, he tilted his head at the album. “May I?”

She was surprised when she handed over the album. Leafing slowly, his fingers skimming the pages, he said, without looking up, “I do know, in case you’re wondering. Not telepathy, by the way. As a counselor, I have access to all active duty personnel profiles.” When she didn’t respond, he looked up. “I wanted us to get past this. I know it’s on your mind and you’ll always wonder if I’m probing.”

“So…you’ve seen my personnel profile.”

“Yes,” Duren said, “and I’ve seen Jonathan’s.”

Damn him, she’d been ready, yet a lump still bunched in her throat. She said nothing.

Duren returned his attention to the photographs, scanning, then turning a page…and then, as he was about to turn another page in the album, he stopped. A crinkle appeared between his brows, and then he opened his mouth to speak, paused. Finally said, “You’re not your brother, you know. You might be twins, but…”

She didn’t understand how, but she knew that was not what he’d been about to say. Something in the photographs… “I’m aware of that. Besides, we’re fraternal, not identical. I can’t be…couldn’t ever be Jonathan.”

No matter how hard I tried—or how much Jennifer wanted me to.

“But you don’t believe it. And you hold yourself responsible. I don’t need telepathy for that either.”

Lense gave a brittle, bitter laugh. “Are you going to try to tell me that I’m not responsible? Wait your turn in line. There are about a million therapists ahead of you.

“My brother is dead,” she said, flatly, “and I killed him.”

CHAPTER 10

“Computer, replay entry four-seven-nine-nine-Alpha-David.”

The computer clicked and sputtered and did a reasonable imitation of what sounded like Bajoran cicadas: a high, whiny, undulating ribbon of sound interrupted by tiny, chirpy hiccups.

“Stop playback.” Faulwell blew out, disgusted. No better luck with Jennifer Almieri’s computer than he’d had with Anthony. This, combined with the remnants of a monstrous hangover for which he refused to take any medication for no good reason other than pig-headed masochism, contributed to an overwhelming few minutes of self-pity. For crying out loud, he’d been skewered, tacked like a bug, nearly died, and the universe was still laughing behind his back.

Frustrated, he prowled Almieri’s library. He was in a funk; his head throbbed in time with his steps. (Double the misery, double the fun.)

Almieri’s encryption code was multidimensional, the way one might explain the shape of a three-dimensional object by noting its displacement coordinates along three axes. Only he was damned if he could figure out how all the codes meshed together.

For that matter, how the hell had he gotten himself involved in all this…this…? He waved a hand at the tumble of books and artifacts, punctuating the thought. All right, he was sorry; rotten luck to come home only to be told that your mom had died. But this whole thing Lense had going, thinking that maybe someone had helped her mom’s death along, that was crazy. This was Lense’s problem, not his. Yeah, okay, she saved his life, but that was her job.

Wow. He sure sounded bitter.

Oh, poor me, my lover got his knickers in a twist just because I, well, wandered…

How was that for self-pity?

This was not like him: raging, drinking, feeling sorry for himself. He was generally a nice guy. People liked him. Most people talked to him—except Lense, but she didn’t talk much to anyone, except Gold, and only then when he ordered her to.

“So why me?” His voice was very loud, and the silence mocked him.

The setting probably contributed to his downbeat assessment of life, the universe, and everything: the fixed stares of stone figures, Antarean scent-globes, and the impervious beauty of some of the most spectacular Tholian crystal-lattices he’d ever seen. A different Faulwell, say the romantic who wrote those letters or the crewmate who’d pushed Fabian out of the way of that damned spike without once thinking if, just maybe, that wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do—that Faulwell would’ve been awed.

He was in Jennifer Almieri’s apartment, closeted with the trophies and artifacts of the woman who spearheaded the discovery of the first Tholian ruins ever uncovered on a Class-M planet. These were the specimens she’d kept back for herself, the best of her collection, all of them spectacular in their way and none more so than the one mounted by her computer: an undulating serpentine crystal, delicate as a Julia fractal pattern iterated millions of times.

It figured that the Tholians had been masters at fractal iterations; Faulwell shuddered at the recollection of the da Vinci facing off against a Tholian fleet when they were salvaging the old Defiant, and that web they wove.

Thinking of the lattice’s beauty—and how much he would’ve liked to share this with Anthony—he ran a meditative finger along the lattice’s surface.

What happened next was unexpected, to say the least.

The lattice flushed a pale apricot precisely where his finger touched. At the same time, the air filled with a pure, clear tone.

Startled, he jerked his hand away. The tone faded.

Okay, that was weird. He’d read about these crystals, and he didn’t recall that they made sounds.

Frowning, he fingered the crystal again. This time, the crystal shaded to a queer purple and the tone was discordant, almost confused. A chirpy question mark.

Confused—like the way he felt. And that rapid chitter…

He thought back to Fabian: how that parasite allowed Fabian to hear harmonic frequencies on Stratos the others couldn’t.

“Don’t tell me. It can’t be that easy,” he said. His headache was forgotten. His eyes took in Almieri’s musical instruments. The lady had liked music. “The code can’t be a fractal melody. Contour code and interval code adjusted for time signature. It really can’t.”

But…

CHAPTER 11

“All right,” Stern said, peering first at Lense and then Faulwell. She looked cross and nursed what looked to Lense more like an old-fashioned beer stein than a coffee mug, minus the little whatchamacallit cap-thingy. “Now tell me what’s so important you had to drag me out of bed at five A.M.”

Oh boy, here we go. She glanced at Faulwell, who finally looked human after Lense had forced him to take something. But she wasn’t happy. A key bit of what she’d hoped to present still hadn’t surfaced.

Julian, where the hell are you?

“It’s about what we found in Jennifer’s apartment,” Lense began. She sketched it out—the fresh flowers, the unspoiled food—and finished with: “And the thing is…this knife.” Lense placed the butcher knife in its baggy on Stern’s desk. “I analyzed that rust-colored residue. That’s blood. Human blood as it turns out. Want to know whose it is?”

Stern waited a beat. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense; I’m all atingle.”

Lense pushed past the jibe. “Preston Strong. The snip-chips match those in the Academy database. Strong was in Jennifer’s apartment. Ten to one, they were…involved.” (Talking about Jennifer having a love affair made her feel a little ooky, like a teenager grossed out by her parents having sex.) “Clearly, Strong was there.”

Stern stared at her a moment. “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out. “But having a love affair—if they did—isn’t a crime. Blood on a knife isn’t evidence of a crime. For all you know, they had a single meal together and he gave himself a boo-boo. That could’ve happened a long time ago. Did you happen to do an age determination analysis?”

Lense’s cheeks flamed. “I…uh…” She took a deep breath. “No, I didn’t even think about it.”

“I won’t take that as evidence of how well you listened to my lectures. I suppose you also didn’t consider that your mother, whom you haven’t seen in a very long time, might’ve developed some interests—say, in gourmet cooking—that she hadn’t shared with you. Unless you’ve got something more, Commander, you’re wasting my time.”

“But…the flowers, the water in the vase, and that perfume…Jennifer never used perfume.”

“Oh, please. I have African violets that would be thrilled if I glanced at them occasionally, but they’re not dying. And you don’t seriously expect me to comment on the perfume, do you? I can’t tell you the number of gifts I’ve gotten over the years that end up as doorstops. So?” Looking from one to the other. “That’s it?”

Lense had a crazy moment where she wanted to blurt out: Well, there was this guy standing outside Jennifer’s apartment and you know he looked a little bit like Strong…

“Well, there are some irregularities in the apartment’s transporter logs. Faulwell had to break an encryption code to retrieve them.”

Faulwell picked up the thread. “They show that Dr. Almieri beamed in twelve days ago, the date she was supposed to arrive. But she also beamed out once more—four days before her body was discovered.”

That got Stern’s attention. “That’s impossible. The autopsy places Dr. Almieri’s death at ten days ago. You made a mistake.”

“I don’t think so. I double-checked, ran a diagnostic, and the computer’s right on the money. Thing is, the destination coordinates weren’t recorded. Just the logs. What’s even odder is that she rematerialized within minutes.”

Lense said, “The time is weird, too. Around three A.M. Most people are asleep then, not beaming wherever.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t gotten to bed until after three; didn’t seem relevant.

And speaking of which: Where was Duren?

Stern said, “So you’re saying she was beamed out then back in within a few minutes?”

“It’s like someone snatched her for a brief instant then put her right back. So, at least as far as the computer is concerned, Jennifer was alive four days ago—and somebody had to know the code for her privacy shield because it was up when they found the body.” When Stern didn’t answer, she said, exasperated, “Don’t you see? If they were involved, Strong would have the code.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t know about you, Commander, but I’m not in the habit of handing out my codes to a pretty face.” Stern turned to Faulwell before Lense could respond. “Here’s what bugs me: an encrypted computer lockout to protect transporter logs? Logs just tell you when and for how long. Virtually useless. Was there anything else?”

Lense jumped in. “The rest was wiped.”

“Wiped?” Stern repeated.

“Yeah…uh, yes,” Faulwell said—and, bless him, he didn’t glance her way. “Wiped.”

Lense said, “Whoever wiped the computer probably didn’t know about the logs. But I’ll bet you money it was Strong.”

“They don’t make money anymore,” Stern muttered. She stared into her coffee mug as if searching for an answer then looked up. “All right, I’ll bring a team to your mother’s apartment. Depending on what we turn up, then we’ll see about Strong…Don’t.” Stern silenced Lense with a look. “Don’t push me, Commander. I’m impressed, but I’m not that impressed. Before I haul anyone in, we get something more substantive.”

It was the best she could hope for. “Okay, so when do we leave?” As Stern opened her mouth, Lense said, “You owe me. You’re looking again because I found something, not you guys.”

“I remind you that we guys are on active duty. You’re on maternity leave.” A thin smile played on Stern’s lips. “I think we can scrounge up another tricorder somewhere.”

Faulwell pulled Lense aside as Stern set off to gather her team and equipment. “You going to tell me why you lied?” he said. His voice barely registered as more than a whisper. “Yeah, the files were wiped, but what about the ghost files?”

“I didn’t lie,” Lense said, stubbornly. “I just didn’t mention them.”

Faulwell exhaled an exasperated laugh. “A sin of omission…”

“Isn’t necessarily omission if we don’t know what they mean. Can you think of a logical reason why Jennifer would use encryption and create a ghost file of every transport’s pattern buffer comparison points?”

“So maybe we know that whoever beamed in is the same person who beamed out? Okay, that might be something. But why not tell Stern?”

“Because they make Jennifer looks nuts. I mean, transporter logs and pattern buffer comparison points, who would ever…” She trailed off then experienced a sudden mental flash, like the brain equivalent of a flare grenade. “Unless…the comparison points are different somehow. Maybe that was the only message Jennifer could think of to leave because she knew that kind of information would be overlooked. You just said it: logs like that are useless. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Unless the patterns aren’t exactly the same.”

“The freshest concentrations of skin oils and sloughed epidermis are on the hairbrush,” the tech said, tapping on a tricorder, “and the perfume bottle. Elasticity changes in skin cells indicate a probable window of about seventy-two to ninety-six hours.”

They were standing in Jennifer’s bedroom: Lense, the tech, Faulwell, Stern. Another tech worked the rest of the apartment. “Four days,” Lense said, feeling vindicated. “Not ten. Four.”

Stern’s face was a cipher. But the tech nodded. “Except here’s the kicker: There are two sets of prints on the bottle. One set—palm, all five fingers—is definitely Almieri’s. The other…I don’t know. We got what looks like a partial thumb and index finger around the neck of the bottle, like someone pinched it up.” He demonstrated, grasping the neck of the bottle between his own dermal-screened fingers. “The patterns are weird, like…denticles.”

“Which are?” Faulwell said.

“Scales.” Stern tapped her own tricorder. “But that perfume’s manufactured on Gil’Tarkna by an amphibious species with dermal denticles.”

“Oh,” Lense said, oddly disappointed. Damn, thought that’d be something.

“Bingo.” The tech gestured toward the scented candle on the dresser. “Carbon deposition indicates that the candle was also lit about four days ago.”

Now we’re cooking… Holding up a tricorder, Lense pointed to the night table. “I got something here. Double-check me on the cellular elasticity of these skin cells on the books and the pencil. You see that?”

Both the tech and Stern scanned. Then Stern frowned. “That’s weird. The cells here date as progressively older. Those on the pencil are oldest of all.”

“So?” Faulwell asked. He’d been hanging at the periphery. “Elizabeth found it under the nightstand. Probably been sitting there for a while.”

Before Stern could respond, a shout from the other tech came from the kitchen. “Hey! You guys better get in here.”

They trooped into the kitchen. “What you got?” Stern asked.

“Iron.” The second tech, a redhead named Coburn, waved her tricorder over the kitchen table then turned to the wall immediately behind, her tricorder inscribing a wide, sweeping arc. “More here: iron, albumin, fibrinogen, prekallikreins, Factor seven…”

“Blood,” Lense said.

“Beaucoup.” Coburn readjusted her tricorder, and then it started making a low hum.

A very faint greenish-blue penumbra shimmered into view, widening and brightening first as discontinuous flecks and short stripes like hyphens.

Then Stern said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Blue-green stellate splashes on the wall at eye level, with smears and thin tongues of luminescence that pooled along the baseboard and kitchen floor. Higher, above the splashes, a jagged series of fine, drippy arcs cascading in an erratic tracery along the wall for three-quarters of its length, the arcs farthest from the table diminishing in height and length.

Because the pump was failing.

Coburn turned off the hum, and the luminiscent splashes faded. But they’d all seen enough. “Arterial spray,” Lense said. She looked at Stern. “Someone died here.”

“Yeah, and I know who.” Stern was grim. She held up her tricorder. “Preston Strong.”

CHAPTER 12

“That can’t be,” Lense said. “If this is Strong’s, then…”

“Who’s that guy at the Academy?” Stern looked over at Coburn, who checked her tricorder then nodded. “Double-checked and confirmed. Snip-typing doesn’t lie. And I just got off the horn with the Academy communications officer. As far as anyone knows, Strong’s not on-campus.”

It seemed superfluous to point out that they needed to find Strong—or whoever he was. Then Lense thought of something. “Holy cow. SNPs only measure a limited number of polymorphisms, right?”

“So?”

“So that means you don’t go through the whole genome at a pop. You don’t need to for ID purposes. But what if whoever’s masquerading as Strong knew that and so made sure that only the relevant portions of DNA that would be tested matched what would be seen if the real Strong had given the sample?”

“I’m lost,” Faulwell said.

Stern said, “SNP typing—single nucleotide polymorphism typing—looks at predetermined portions within the genome. That’s constant across law enforcement, Starfleet, or any other agencies requiring DNA for ID purposes. Otherwise, the process just gets too cumbersome and then there are the privacy issues. The kicker is if you wanted to masquerade as someone else and you knew that only specific portions of the genome had to match, you might beat the typing, but it’d be tough. You’d almost have to be wearing a second skin. It’s what we do to deep-cover agents who infiltrate the Romulan Empire or whatever.”

Faulwell frowned. “I thought red blood cells didn’t contain DNA.”

“Mature erythrocytes don’t,” Stern said. “But other cells in blood do. That’s what we test when we do blood. The thing is—” she looked at Lense—“how do we get a sample from Strong now without tipping our hand? Presuming we find him, that is.”

The baby chose that minute to roll over and thump her liver—funny how Lense just hadn’t been as focused on the baby’s every scrunch and squiggle, not with so much else claiming her attention—and, absently, Lense put a hand at the angle of her hip. Something crackled in her maternity top, and she frowned. Wondered: Wha…?

Then she remembered.

She fished out the monogrammed envelope—the one Strong had licked. “We’re in business.”

The entire group clustered in a lab a floor down from Stern’s office. They all stared at a wall-mounted screen that held two split-screen images of DNA, with sets of numbers assigned to segments of varying lengths.

Faulwell threw up his hands. “Somebody explain this to me, please? What am I looking at?”

“A very good imposter, if you ask me,” Stern said, and then tipped her head at Lense. “That was pretty darned slick, thinking of saliva for DNA. Wouldn’t have caught this any other way.”

Lense acknowledged the compliment with a nod of her own. Turning to Faulwell, she said, “In a nutshell: We looked at the entire genome for complementarity. Perfect matches ought to line up and light up. But here, here…down here,” she pointed, “there are some very long gaps in the DNA we extracted from epithelial cells in Strong’s saliva.”

Coburn chimed in. “The more we’ve sequenced and hybridized—matched up and compared with what we’ve got on file, and the samples we’ve got from the kitchen—the more gaps we find. It’s as if whoever copied the DNA did so just enough to fool standard identification techniques.”

“Okay,” Faulwell said. “So what’s in the gaps?”

Stern grunted. “Dunno. Novel nucleotides, maybe enantiomorphs…It’s like we got this sack of marbles, but we only know that about a tenth are blue because that’s the only color we can test for. You take out all the blue marbles, you get left with this.” She waves a hand at the screens. “Junk. Meaningful probably, but junk we can’t quantify. But one thing’s for sure. Strong isn’t Strong anymore.”

Coburn said, “It gets better. Almieri’s autopsy samples? When we hybridized the entire genomes, we found gaps. Not as long but proximate to the telomeric caps.”

Faulwell rolled his eyes. “Hello. Linguist here. What?”

Lense was surprised that she had a smile left. “Telomeres are regions of highly repetitive DNA capping every chromosome. They protect against degradation, making it impossible for DNA to be copied all the way to the end of every strand.”

“I didn’t know that. I always thought when DNA got copied, everything was duplicated.”

“Nope,” Stern said. “It’s as if the Celestial Committee for the Design of the Human Genome figured out that every biological system makes mistakes: snips out too much here, takes too much there. Telomeres are one of nature’s failsafes.”

Coburn said, “We compared the autopsy samples to the hair follicles Dr. Lense found on Almieri’s hairbrush. There, these gaps don’t appear at all.”

“I get it,” Faulwell said. “That means Almieri’s DNA was also altered but over a very specific period, right?” When Coburn nodded, he said, “Can you tell when?”

Stern shrugged. “Impossible to say with any certainty. We found skin cells on that Vulcan harp; they match the DNA from her hair follicles, and we know when she got the harp because she logged it in. Academy policy with gifts. So we know that the samples from the harp predate those on the hairbrush. But here’s the kicker: the hairbrush? The DNA’s less than two weeks old.”

“Meaning that her DNA was altered between the time she returned from Drura Sextus and when she died,” Lense said. With everything that had happened, she knew: Jennifer had been murdered.

And she had a hunch as to when and how. That fleeting transport in and out: There had to be something there she could get her fingernails under.

Now, if only Julian would confirm.

Aloud, she said, “What about Darly’s samples?”

“Ah.” Coburn cleared her throat. “I was getting to that. Darly’s samples are missing.”

“What?” Stern’s tone had gone deadly. “You do mean they were misplaced.”

“No, ma’am. I mean they were taken.”

“And you were going to get to this—?” Stern’s combadge chose that minute to beep.

“T’Var to Stern.”

Stern banged open a channel—hard enough to leave a bruise, Lense figured. “This better be good news, Chief.”

“Alas, I regret that we have been unable to locate Dr. Preston Strong anywhere on the Academy grounds. Livilla Darly is also unaccounted for.”

Stern cursed. “Tell me you’re getting together an entry team. I feel like kicking in a couple doors.”

“As we speak. We will be ready for transport to Dr. Strong’s residence momentarily. Did you wish to attend?”

“You’re damned right.” She gave Lense a fierce look. “This time, you don’t get to come.”

“But…”

“No buts.” Stern was already marching for the door. “We clear it first, then you can come. Because like it or not, Commander, you’ve got a little passenger onboard I’m not taking any chances with.”

As it happened, Stern’s caution was unnecessary.

When Stern and T’Var’s security team bypassed Strong’s privacy shield and broke into the locked apartment, they did not find Preston Strong. Or Livilla Darly.

They found, instead, Han Duren. The counselor had been strangled.

CHAPTER 13

“Phasic degradation: There’s absolutely no doubt. It’s small, though, so small you’d normally overlook it.” A pause. “Elizabeth, stop pacing. I’m getting dizzy.”

“I can’t help it, I’m anxious. And you took your sweet time. Where were you, Julian? No, never mind.” She waved the question away. “Doesn’t matter. But you see it, right? I’m not imagining things?”

“No, but…how did you think of it?”

“It was the only thing that made sense.” Lense’s skin prickled as she recalled Duren’s ravaged, blood-engorged face in the morgue: those bulging eyes with their whites starred with blood-red petechial hemorrhages, his features contorted in his final agony. The garrote was so fine and filamentous the wire had sawed through flesh, severing arteries and cutting through Duren’s trachea and esophagus. There was blood everywhere, and the cut was so deep that Lense could see the dull gleam of tendon and bone. The poor man had been nearly decapitated.

She blinked away from the image. “Stern’s team found evidence of a particle phase shift indicative of transporter activity but no log of a transport in or out.”

“So?”

“Well, that’s when it hit me—those ghost files Jennifer encrypted of pattern buffer comparison points gave me the idea of looking at Jennifer’s DNA, and that’s when I found it. I just wanted to make sure I’m not seeing things.”

“You’re not. Your mother’s DNA shows an infinitesimally small degree of phasic degradation in regions proximate to these telomeric caps. Whether or not it was caused by a transporter malfunction, I can’t tell. Somehow I think not. Now we both know that if these caps get too short or the chromosomes become uncapped altogether, the cells die, or the chromosome ends may fuse.”

“Which leads to the same thing: The cell dies. A lot of them die, and then it’s like setting off a self-destruct cascade.”

Then Bashir made a face. “But, Elizabeth, you’re talking huge regions of a genome. Oh, I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. I’d like to know how it could be done, or why.”

“How does a targeted bioweapon hit you? No, hear me out. Telomeric caps are long because they degrade over time as part of normal cell senescence.”

“All right, I see where you’re headed. Speed up aging enough, and the cell will die. Multiple a hundred million times, and the organism dies.” Bashir thought about that a moment. “What about those portions of…?”

“Junk?” Lense shook her head. “I don’t know. Stern was thinking novel nucleotides.”

“Or maybe not nucleotides at all. Maybe something totally alien that we’ve never encountered, yet somehow essential that works alongside or with our DNA.” Bashir made a face. “But we’re arguing in a vacuum. There’s no evidence these odd sequences would ever be expressed. Plus, this begs the question of why, if these sequences are transporter-related, they’re not uniformly expressed in all individuals. None of us have keeled over, though it’s true that I’ve not run a complete DNA analysis on every single individual, myself included. Unless, of course, we’re talking about a single transporter on a single vessel that’s malfunctioned.”

“Yes, but maybe it’s not a malfunction. Maybe it was meant to happen. Engineered that way.”

“What, you mean deliberate insertion? I’d like to see the genius who could pull that off. It would take a Daystrom, Sitar of Vulcan, and Einstein combined.”

“Just because we can’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

“Granted. But where does that leave us?”

Lense threw up her hands. “Gee, I don’t know, Julian; it’s a mystery.”

“Elizabeth.”

“Sorry.”

“Already forgotten. But…I need to ask you a delicate question.”

“Shoot.”

“Why me? Certainly, yes, a second set of eyes are always good but you are more than capable of solving this on your own. You’ve got Starfleet’s best resources at your disposal, and from what you’ve described, I would think the admiral would be inclined to consider any suggestion. Why not share this with her?”

“I…I don’t trust Stern, not completely. Why would top brass have been involved with Jennifer to begin with? Yes, Stern now has a legitimate reason to be involved, but she didn’t before.”

“Unless she was asked. Even an admiral has to take orders. But, Elizabeth,” Bashir said, gently, “are you suggesting conspiracy? That she’s part of some wider cover-up? She’s been nothing but helpful when the evidence warranted.”

“She got the autopsy wrong.”

“No, she got it right. She just didn’t take the investigation any further. She had no reason to. I deal with law enforcement all the time, something you don’t have to do. If I went chasing after every allegation of foul play, I’d never get anything accomplished. In the absence of other explanations, sometimes…people just die, Elizabeth. All the time.”

“That’s what Stern said.” Lense crossed her arms over her chest. “She was wrong.”

But she thought: Unless she was supposed to sit back and wait to see how much I could piece together on my own—so then she could get rid of it. What happened to Darly’s labs, for example?

“There’s more I haven’t shared with Stern. Jennifer’s photographs.” She explained about the album. “The thing is Duren had seen these same photographs right before he was killed. He touched them, and he lingered over one set in particular. There were about twelve. One set wasn’t taken on Drura Sextus, not that I can tell. Somewhere else: a cave, it looks like, or maybe just a high rocky gorge. There’s a waterfall.”

“So?”

“So it’s different. All the other photos in this album…they’re personal. You had to see them to know what I mean, but take my word for it. This particular photo showed this gorge and then Preston Strong and Jennifer. No one else, and the stardate’s relatively recent, only five years old. There was something there that Duren picked up, some psychic trace that made him hesitate.”

“And the other set of photos?”

“Might be Drura, I don’t know. There’s some sort of structure; it reminded me of, I don’t know…the support beams of a building, only I think the beams are the building. There’s some sort of script on them. Now Jennifer had a lot of Tholian artifacts. Some have these same odd characters.”

Bashir’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “Really? I was under the impression the Tholians didn’t have a written language.”

“Evidently not.” She explained about the crystal-lattice Faulwell had touched. “Bart thinks the characters represent a previously unknown Tholian alphabet that relies on tones. No other crystal-lattices recorded so far make sounds. Anyway, those are the images Duren lingered over: that gorge, and that structure. You had to be there. But I think Duren confronted Strong, and Strong killed him.”

“Confront him about what?”

“If I knew, we could all go home. Here’s another thing: Darly’s missing and she was looking through Jennifer’s computer, going through all the expedition records to catalogue this most recent find. That’s what she said. But when I checked later on that evening—” This morning… “She was looking at records going back between two to five years. I think she was looking for something in particular: these photos, the ones in the album. They’re not in Jennifer’s lab computer or the Academy database.”

“Where are the photos now?”

“With Bart.”

“Oh, you want the hapless Dr. Faulwell to disappear, too?”

Lense laughed. She hadn’t done so for a while, and it felt good. Come to think of it, it felt good to talk to Julian.

You could tell him about Jonathan. Of all people, Julian would understand.

She didn’t.

After a short silence, Bashir asked, “So how’s the baby?”

“Asleep,” Lense said, laying a hand on her swollen abdomen. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been so wrapped up in this, I’ve stopped paying attention.”

“It must mean you’re having a good time,” Bashir quipped, and then his face fell. “Oh God, how thoughtless. Elizabeth, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I understand what you meant. You’re—”

The only man—only person—I really trust now. Yeah, so if I trust him so much, why won’t I tell him about this other hunch of mine? Because he’d tell me I’m out of my mind? Or that I’m bucking for a court-martial?

“You’re one of the only friends I’ve got who will listen,” she finished smoothly. “Anyway, we better get to work, try and crack that junk in Jennifer’s and Strong’s DNA. This has got to stay between us for now, okay? When I think we’ve got something, then I’ll take it to Stern, I promise.” She moved to disconnect. “You with me?”

“Always,” Bashir said.

They clicked off—and then Lense hurried off to play her hunch.

And, in her office, after she’d clicked off from listening in on their conversation…so did Stern.

CHAPTER 14

Faulwell labored over the photos. He was post-hangover and sober, and he was lonely. So maybe that was why he was willing to put so much effort into chasing Lense’s ghosts.

Poor Lense. First she lost her lover—boy, can I relate—then she comes back to Earth and finds out that her only living relative probably had been murdered.

We’re two peas in a pod. Then he discarded that thought as uncharitable. He did not go out of his way to avoid intimacy. He was just…having some commitment issues.

Lense had asked him to focus on a particular set of photographs, those involving Jennifer standing before some sort of structure, both with and without Preston Strong. Depending on how you looked at the thing, the structure reminded him a bit of P8 Blue, the insectoid Nasat back on the da Vinci.

Hmmm.

“Computer, display all known sentient races capable of interstellar travel with”—he fumbled for the right words; couldn’t very well say bug-oid—“insectile, Mantidea-like, or arachnid features.”

The computer spit out a list. Faulwell scanned it; the computer had included Andorians because of their antennae, a species Faulwell rejected immediately, and Nasats, but while it reminded him of Pattie, it wasn’t a perfect match.

Ah-hah.

Well, now that the picture was right there, it was obvious. He returned to perusing one particular shot of the ruins. He leaned in, squinting. Were those…? “Computer, increase magnification, sector two-eight.”

The computer did.

Faulwell blinked. Well, hello.

Definitely Tholian. Like Cardassian architecture, with its ridges and dark spaces, Tholian architecture mimicked the species’ particular physiognomy. (An interesting trend, now that Faulwell thought about it. Might be worth a paper. He’d have to talk to Carol Abramowitz about it when he got back to the da Vinci.)

But this structure, unlike any others Faulwell had seen thus far, displayed the same glyphs matching the tonal script with which Almieri had encrypted her computer. So all he had to do was decipher what the glyphs said.

Thank heavens for Almieri’s encryption code; at least I have a sort of Rosetta Stone for comparison. And there’s this one word that repeats several times over, seems very important, almost central to the thrust of the inscription; I wonder what…

A soft chime sounded.

A visitor? Who would know that he was…? Oh my God. His pulse picked up. Maybe this was Anthony come back…

Nothing else mattered.

Faulwell crossed to the door then took a deep breath.

For God’s sake, don’t blow it.

“Enter,” he said.

CHAPTER 15

Scotty screwed up his face so much his moustache nearly disappeared beneath his nose. “Sounds like a hell of a stretch, and I’m pretty sure Admiral Stern’s gonna see it that way, too. You’ll be lucky if she only straps a photon torpedo to your backside and launches you into near orbit.”

“She won’t if I’m right. Besides, it’s the one thing we haven’t checked.” Lense watched with some impatience as SpaceDock grew larger in the shuttle’s forward portal by what seemed to her to be minute degrees.

Scotty tut-tutted. “I still don’t understand why you just didn’t come out with it. Stern may be, well…”

“Stern?”

“She’s tough. Had to be, what with all she went through on the Enterprise-C. Personally, I think it still eats at her something fierce, her taking Leonard up on transferring back to the Academy, getting the Forensics Division up and running. She was close to Captain Garrett, knew all about her troubles.” He sighed. “It was harder back then, what families faced. Both of you trying to make a go of it, but usually on different ships. No way to run a marriage, and harder to raise a family. But then—” Scotty’s face softened—“I guess you know a thing or two about that.”

For a weird moment, Lense felt an insane urge to cry. She blinked a few times, was grateful that no tear slid down her cheek to betray her. “I’m okay.”

“For now. You’ll know what you want when the time comes.”

Wanna bet? But Lense bit back her reply. How the hell had they gotten on her? Antsy, she shifted in her seat. She’d changed to civvies and the fit bugged her. “Jeez, Scotty, you can’t afford better seats?”

“Be nice. Just think of it as my way of discouraging company. And speaking of discouraging”—He craned his head around to take in the shuttle’s third passenger—“you’ve been a wee bit on the quiet side. Something stuck in your gullet?”

Looking a bit confused, Bart Faulwell blinked back from whatever reverie in which he’d been lost. He stared at Scotty for an instant, and Lense could swear she heard the gears turning, like a computer parsing a command: Processing, processing…

Then Faulwell said, “I’m fine. Just a little tired. I’ve been up for most of the last day and a half.” Then he turned to Lense. “Tell me again why we can’t tell Admiral Stern about this.”

Lense wrestled back the urge to scream. They’d already been through this. “Because she’s high up, that’s why. She got pulled to take over Jennifer’s case, and there has to be a reason. Some sort of cover-up, I dunno.”

“Cover up of what?”

Lense gawped. “Hello, Earth to Faulwell, have we been working on the same thing? We found a particle phase shift in Strong’s apartment where Duren was killed, indicating transporter activity. That’s twice there’s been a dead body, and evidence of transporter use.”

“Makes a crazy kind of sense,” Scotty said. “But why, if I may be so bold as to ask, are we rushing where angels fear to tread?”

“Well, first of all, I’m not an angel…”

“You understand how tempting that is?”

“Ha. Ha.” Lense gave Scotty a withering look. “And it’s the one place we haven’t looked. Might be something there.”

“Might be. Or might be just him, waiting for us.”

“Doubt it. The ship’s under guard and quarantined. And that”—She gave Scotty her most winning smile—” is where you come in. Just get us in there.”

Scotty shook his head. “Not a chance, no way are you going anywhere. I’ve got an idea or two about the guards—locking onto and then beaming them out, putting their patterns into storage onboard this shuttle—that should work for a short-term jury-rig. But you stay here. Faulwell and me, we’ll beam in…and no, don’t even open your piehole at me, Commander. You’re not so old you couldn’t do with being taken over my knee.”

Lense reddened. “I’m not a kid. I’m an officer.”

“And you’re a pregnant officer to boot, with a baby that won’t take kindly to transport.” Scotty patted her knee. “You just sit tight. Wait for me to let you in the front door, like the lady I know you are.”

And Faulwell said, “Are we talking about the same person?”

Hunh. Lense fumed. Her eyes clicked to the ship’s chronometer then to the unrevealing view of a SpaceDock bay. Scotty and Faulwell had been gone nearly twenty minutes.

Getting to be too long, Lense decided. Leaning over a console, she double-checked the state of the two hapless security guards currently held within the pattern buffer. Her job—should she choose to accept it; yeah, like she had a choice—was to babysit the guards. Scotty never had specified how long.

Plus, Faulwell…She wrinkled her nose. Something going on with him.

So get your butt in gear.

As if to emphasize the point, the baby kicked.

“Yeah, yeah, I get the message.” But as she rooted for a phaser, her combadge beeped.

“Scott to Lense.”

She tapped open a channel. “It’s about time. Are you ready? Did you find anything?”

Scotty sounded cheery. “Maybe you’d like to see for yourself, Lizzie, my girl.”

“Oh, you are so maddening. I’m on my way.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

Of all the asinine…Maybe I’d like to see for myself…

Lense hurried as fast as she could waddle. For the first time in awhile, she wasn’t ambivalent about having shed her uniform. Waddling quickly down a corridor, passing other jostling passengers streaming from shuttle bays, she didn’t really look out of place. When she turned down the corridor leading to Jennifer’s ship, no one gave her a second look. (Well, not much: A pregnant woman was bound to elicit some stares, especially from species for whom such a pregnancy was, well, weird.)

There was something bothering her, though. She wasn’t sure what it was. Something about the way Scotty had sounded.

And Lizzie?

As she expected, the gangway to Jennifer’s ship was clear and the hatch had been resecured. Smart: Anyone passing along this umbilicus would never suspect a breach. She palmed the entry panel; the mechanism purred, and Lense was pushing through even before the hatch had completely opened. “So what—”

She never did finish.

Not when you considered the phaser.

CHAPTER 16

Several seconds passed, long enough for Lense to hear the whisper of the hatch closing, the locking mechanism engaging; plenty of time for her gaze to skip from the phaser to two bodies crumpled along a far bulkhead, perhaps ten meters away. She didn’t see phaser burns on their clothes or temples, but she couldn’t tell at this distance if Scotty and Faulwell were alive either.

She locked gazes with, yes…Preston Strong. She could smell him: a musky tang edged with something quite different now. The scent was like…anger. That’s what popped into Lense’s mind. The scent was rage.

She said, “You going to tell me what this is all about? I know you killed Duren, and I know you’re not Preston Strong. Strong’s dead, killed in Jennifer’s apartment. My guess is he was waiting for Jennifer and then you came in, killed him, and took his place. They were lovers, weren’t they?”

“Interesting hypotheses. Some are right; some are wrong.”

“Which are which?”

“Alas, you will never know. My job is to make sure whatever you think you know doesn’t go any further.”

“What about Scotty and Bart?”

“Their misfortune. None of you will care. Scattered atoms don’t think much.”

“You really like transporters. I’ll bet you inserted something into Jennifer that way. I’ll bet you stored a separate pattern somehow and then melded the two matter-energy streams that night you beamed her out then back in.”

And she suddenly understood something else, too. If she hadn’t discovered those chromosomal abnormalities, or hadn’t noticed the fresh flowers or the fruit, the ghost logs would’ve invited her to compare Jennifer’s patterns from two separate transport sites.

And the last place she transported from. So she knew she was in danger and she was trying to leave a message…but why not go to the authorities?

She said, “Why did you kill her? Why Duren?”

“I couldn’t let either destroy a lifetime of work.”

“We go away, too, and you really think people won’t investigate Drura Sextus? You’re dreaming.”

Strong’s laughter was hard, cruel, and a bit triumphant. “Let them. They won’t find anything.”

I knew it… “That place…the one with the waterfall. It’s underground, isn’t it?” She’d scored a hit; a muscle jumped in Strong’s cheek. “What are you?”

Strong said, very quietly, “Isn’t the real question: What was Jennifer?”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“I’ll do better than that.” The point of the phaser wagged aft beyond the ship’s science and engineering stations. “Into the transporter, please.”

“No. You can only kill me once.”

“Not true.” The phaser tracked down to her abdomen. “I can kill the baby first.”

She was surprised by how quickly that decided it. She wouldn’t let anything happen to the baby, but complying with what Strong wanted—and clearly, he aimed to beam her out in the widest possible scatter—was tantamount to a death sentence to both her and her child. Saad’s child.

“All right.” She put her hands up, easing back from the point of the phaser. “Just don’t shoot. Not yet. We can talk about this. If there’s something medically wrong, if that’s what was going on with Jennifer…”

She was babbling, she knew, but her innermost thoughts focused on the baby: Your mother loves you; but I’ve got to try, so whatever happens next…

Strong was circling, moving to crowd behind, and this would be her last chance because she’d never have another. She turned with Strong, never relinquishing his gaze—that’s right, look at my eyes, keep looking—and as she took a step back and then another, Strong kept pace, the distance between them never changing.

Then she shifted her weight, stumbled as her feet tangled, then swayed as her center of gravity pulled her left, made her clutch at a bulkhead. Strong wasn’t ready, and now he’d overcompensated; he was closer than before

What I do, I do for you, baby; this is for you.

Moving faster than she ever imagined a pregnant woman could, Lense grabbed the bulkhead with her left hand, cantilevered her body, then snapped her right leg toward Strong. Her boot caught him in the stomach, and the man let out a huff of air in surprise and sudden pain. He doubled, and then Lense charged. She smacked against his chest, plowing into the center of his mass, her momentum and bulk sending them both crashing to the deck. Strong grunted as he smacked against metal; his head struck with a sickening thud, and his body went limp for a moment just as she heard the clack of the phaser spinning away.

Now, while he’s down, get the phaser, get the phaser!

Rolling, she pushed off, lunging for the weapon. But she was ungainly, still too slow; she’d only gotten this far because surprise was on her side. She heard Strong behind her, felt him rearing up, and she twisted, tried to aim a kick for his face—

Then, a crushing pressure encircled her throat, squeezing off her air. An image flashed in her mind: Duren, his head slipping from his shoulders, his neck nearly sawn in two.

No, no!

Panicking, Lense bucked, her fingers scrambling for her neck. Something there, muscular as an arm…

Whatever gripped her propelled her to the bulkhead. She put up her hands, too late. Her face smashed against metal; there was a crunch like eggshells as her nose shattered. Pain exploded in her face. She hit so hard and with so much force that she went limp, nearly lost consciousness. Blood spurted from her ruined nose, and the brackish taste of warm rust filled her mouth where she’d bitten her tongue.

Then just as quickly, she was jerked back, flailing, still unable to breathe. Her pulse pounded in her temples; black ate at the edges of her vision.

And then, just as abruptly, the pressure around her throat lessened, enough for her to haul in a wheezy, tortured breath. The air hacked her ravaged throat, and she coughed, spraying blood, her lungs on fire.

But now she could see. Now she knew.

Blood dribbled from Strong’s mouth. Except the liquid was golden, like honey, and what held her…

No…my God, what is he…?

Preston Strong had no rope, and he didn’t have a third arm or hand.

But he had grown a tentacle.

“I could kill you.” Strong was still crouching, breathing hard. She’d torn his shirt; she saw where her nails had scored his chest. What passed for his blood oozed in golden ribbons, and more sludged along his chin, dripping like molasses to the deck. His hair was wild, his eyes gleaming with fury. The tentacle around her neck—muscular as a man’s forearm and tough as thick leather—tightened until Lense gagged. “It would be so much easier to just kill you and be done with it. But then there’d be a body, and I can’t take that chance. Now get up.”

He rose, scooping up the phaser as he did. He didn’t need it. The tentacle—perhaps six meters long—jerked her to her feet then half-dragged her to the platform.

Her face throbbed; her chest was on fire; but her mind scrabbled to absorb what she was seeing.

Like a Founder, he’s a metamorph…

She tripped her way up the platform and then the tentacle held her in place as Strong crossed to the transporter controls. The console beeped as he initiated the transport program and only then, a precious few seconds before beam-out, did the tentacle withdraw, slithering back toward Strong, as if being reeled onto a spool, and melding into his flesh.

“Wh—why?” Blood clogged her throat. “Wh—what are…”

Too late.

“What do you mean, there’s a force field?” Fury crackled in Stern’s voice and then she was moving, pushing past Faulwell and another security guard. She joined T’Var at the mouth of the umbilical leading to Jennifer Almieri’s shuttle. “There can’t be! Someone would have to override SpaceDock computer protocols and that would set off an alarm and…”

“Nonetheless, there is a force field now.” The Vulcan’s face belied no emotion as he punched in an authorization code. A hum as a panel slid to one side, and then a secondary system’s control console whirred into place.

“Admiral!” A security guard, his face slick with sweat, staring at a tricorder. “I’m reading transporter initiation!”

“Can we override?” Stern snapped. The security guard jerked his head in a quick negative.

“Come on, come on.” Faulwell’s fists bunched in frustration. “You’ve got to hurry!”

The Vulcan’s fingers flew over the controls. “Believe me when I say, Dr. Faulwell: You do not need to remind me.”

She felt it, the same tingling over her skin that she’d felt countless times before; a flattening of perception in that tiny nanosecond before dematerialization.

Elizabeth Lense had only known true despair twice before: almost eight months ago when she was snatched from Saad—and the other, in a past she’d thought buried and lost.

Then, just as her world broke apart, she saw Bart Faulwell stir—and change—and…

Help! Her mouth moved, but her brain slowed as she dissolved in the matter stream…help…

…but before her eyes…

…me…

…Bart changed from a he…

…no, can’t be…

…to a she.

And then…

CHAPTER 17

Darkness. Cold. A sense of movement and then pressure. Someone calling…

Am I…?

And then the baby thumped.

“Uh.” Lense eased open her eyes to find Stern, looking thunderous, on her left, Scotty crowding in on her right. Swallowing was torture, and her mouth tasted bad: dead blood and raw meat. “Wha…”

“Easy, lass.” Scotty put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re in Medical. They had to keep you in stasis for a time. Three days, give or take.”

“The ba—by…”

“Still kicking. That youngster’s a fighter. No harm done, so far as we know.”

“St—stro—nngg…”

“Dead, we think,” Stern put in. “Judging from the residual energy signature in the shuttle, he was phasered to subatomic particles. We sure as hell didn’t do it. We only just managed to…”

She broke off, looking up at the sound of footsteps coming from Lense’s right—footsteps—and then Faulwell elbowed in beside Scotty. “Hey, they said…” His voice trailed off as he saw her face. “Elizabeth, what’s…?”

It’s not Bart! Lense struggled up, the sudden movement making the room spin. “N—no.” She coughed. “No…not Ba…”

“Relax, Commander. That’s Faulwell,” Stern said, her voice knifing through Lense’s panic. “He’s the one who alerted us, after he came to. He was attacked in his quarters.”

“Yeah, and my data got wiped,” Faulwell said. “Everything’s gone.”

“And if you’re wondering how we knew to come to Almieri’s ship, we didn’t have a clue,” Stern said. “I only figured it out after Starfleet Security Central contacted me wanting to know why I’d authorized a priority tap on your private communications. I hadn’t. Someone who looked like me had. Probably the same thing that masqueraded as Faulwell.”

Lense was bewildered. “Then…ho—how…?”

Stern grunted. “How come you’re alive? We think it saved you. Near as we can figure, it killed Strong, reversed the matter stream, but then held you in the pattern buffer. A precaution maybe, so whatever had been done to you could be…stalled until we figured out a fix. And then it just transported itself out, likely to a cloaked ship.” She folded her arms across her chest. “But whatever it was, it’s gone.”

Lense relaxed, fractionally. But there were a million questions crowding into her mind, something that Stern must’ve read because she said: “Here’s what we think, near as can be determined. There must’ve been a sequestered data stream married to the transporter pattern buffer. When you were beamed out, that data stream merged with your pattern. The data stream contained, essentially, those anomalous codes we’d…you’d found in Almieri’s body.”

Oh, no. Her eyes widened. “Is…it…did…?”

“Yes.” Stern touched her arm. “It was in you. Scotty couldn’t resolve it once the streams married.”

Then I’m going to die. Lense couldn’t breathe. Why did they bring me out of stasis? It’s only a matter of time. Hell, time might be the trigger…

Stern was talking again: “It can’t hurt you, Commander. It’s been rendered inert. You can thank your baby for that. It seems that the fetus’s DNA mounted some sort of response and effectively neutralized whatever this stuff is. The doctors say that the sequences have been excised from your DNA and chewed up. That kid’s an efficient little bugger; just wish there was some for us to study.”

Lense tried to form the words: “Sh—shape…”

“Shapeshifters,” Faulwell said. “We know, Elizabeth. My data may have been wiped, but they can’t get at what’s up here.” He tapped his temple. “That’s what the script on those ruins was about.”

The Tholian descriptions were quite precise, Faulwell explained. While they mentioned these shapeshifters’ many abilities, they did not describe the shapeshifters’ need to revert to a gelatinous or liquid form.

“So they’re not Founders,” Faulwell concluded. “Then who?”

Scotty grunted. “I can tell ya. I’ll bet they’re the Chameloids. Drura Sextus is in Klingon space, and so is Rura Penthe.”

Faulwell considered this. “It fits. The Tholian descriptions make it sound as if these shapeshifters were a genetically enhanced species so rare as to be practically mythical. The only record in the Starfleet database references Stardate 9521.6, the date when Dr. McCoy and Captain Kirk were sentenced to the Klingon penal planetoid, Rura Penthe, and they met one.”

“A charming vixen named Martia—and no one’s seen hide nor hair of one since, good riddance. Leonard thought that maybe the Chameloid might be native. They had one form—big hairy brute, he was, and remarkably well-adapted to cold.”

“Well, there’s precedent for considering that the Chameloids’ abilities might be linked to temperature; there are any number of shape-memory polymers responsive to temperature. But there’s been no opportunity to study one.” Then Faulwell scowled. “Here’s what I don’t get: It left me alive. It had to know I’d at least remember something.”

“Lad, whatever attacked you left you alive on purpose. It was warning us, maybe—as much as maybe it dared.”

Stern nodded. “Maybe the same with Elizabeth then: It didn’t like what was happening to his or her people, or maybe how they’re being used, if they are.”

Lense cleared her throat: “Th—then why not…come right out…and sa—say so?”

No one had an answer for that.

About the rest, they could only speculate.

Almieri’s original expedition might have run into one or perhaps more Chameloids some twenty years ago. Or maybe they’d stumbled onto the process for manufacturing them; no one was sure. The Tholians specified that the Chameloids were genetically engineered, though the Tholians never specified who had done the work. While Tholians were masters at energy manipulation, genetic-enhancement wasn’t in their playbook.

Stern said, “Here’s one for you. I tried raising Drura Sextus, got no response. I got a starship diverted to investigate. The place is a ghost town. If there was anything at the Drura Sextus site, it’s gone now—and has been for a while. Meaning that whatever’s going on is happening somewhere else. Jennifer Almieri and the others haven’t been going to Drura Sextus for a real long time. And yet Almieri’s grant kept getting renewed and her destinations approved over and over again.”

Faulwell asked. “Who’d front a phantom operation?”

“Well, now that’s a damn good question, isn’t it? Just ask yourself: Who stands to gain if you can make a shapeshifter?”

Silence.

Then Scotty said, “Somehow I think that’s a dangerous question.”

“Yeah,” Stern said. “Like maybe the answer can get you killed.”

They had one more shot: the material the Chameloid left when Strong licked that envelope. But it had degraded into vermicelli.

And they never did find Livilla Darly.

That didn’t surprise Lense. Because before she was whisked away in that transporter beam, she’d caught just a glimpse of bronze hair.

She knew.

EPILOGUE

One week later:

A harpsichord softly playing: Wanda Landowska weaving strands of a Bach fugue into an ever more complex melody. The kid liked the music, too; he was jammin’.

She was sorting through piles of Jennifer’s papers. There was a lot of detritus here, what remained of a life about which Lense knew very little. It was also late, but the transporter’s privacy block was on. Though…

That guy standing outside the first time I was here…Strong?

Felt wrong. He could’ve killed her then. Then who…?

The shrill of Almieri’s comm made her jump; then she remembered that she’d left word as to where she’d be. So she wasn’t surprised when Julian Bashir’s face shimmered into focus.

“Still hard at it?” He cocked his head and squinted. “Is it my imagination, or is your nose seated on your left cheek now?”

Her hand went to her nose which, she knew, was planted exactly where it ought to be. And her shiners were gone, too. “Don’t be a creep. And I’m almost done with the papers. I’ve still got all the artifacts and Jennifer’s personal things…” She made a vague gesture. “What’s up? You get anywhere?”

Bashir grunted. “Now you’re being witty, right? It’s going to take us a long time to crack this, but we can do it. One thing, though: I’ve figured out the mechanism. One of the components appears to be a mitochondrial poison. Without mitochondria, the cell has no fuel, and without fuel, it rapidly dies. Normal decomposition would’ve been sped up tenfold and that accounts for Almieri’s advanced state of decomposition.”

He paused so dramatically that Lense said, “You want a drum roll?”

(Actually, she was impressed.)

Bashir made a face. “Spoilsport. Oh, and the trigger, I think I figured that one out as well.” Another dramatic pause. “Smell.”

“You’re kidding.” That was Lense’s immediate reaction, but her mind skipped to that lone bottle of…“Perfume,” she blurted.

“Precisely, or any volatile that can cross lipid membranes into each and every cell. Once begun, the chain is an escalating cascade. Inevitable.”

“So Jennifer was murdered.” Saying it out loud made it real.

“Perhaps because she’d discovered whatever genetic manipulation was being done was finally too much of a horror, and she was eliminated.”

Or maybe she got cold feet. Uncharitable, but Lense thought that might be true, too. “We’ll never really know.”

“Maybe not today. We’ve still got work ahead of us, though…but…”

“What?”

“I think this has to stay between you and me, Elizabeth. It’s one thing to have that Tholian script, but it’s another for us to have what might be a new kind of weapon, even if we don’t know how to use it yet. Wipe your data, my friend.”

Could she do that? She hesitated, and he said, “You have to promise me, Elizabeth. It won’t be gone. I’ll have it, but I’m safe. No one knows about me. Plus, you’ve got the baby to think of.”

She nodded and then she lied: “Okay.”

Bashir said, “So I can’t talk you into rearing your child on DS9?”

She was still tempted. “Well, you’ll never believe it, but Stern’s offered me a position at the Forensics Division. It seems that she likes my unorthodox way of handling things. I tried to tell her I used to be by the book until I joined up with S.C.E. I don’t think she bought it.”

“Mmmm. I don’t either. Where will you be stationed? At Headquarters?”

“No. There’s an opening right here in D.C. Baby’s not due for another month, so…” She shrugged. “Stern said that the lead UEP guy, someone named Brett Ryan, she said we’d probably kill each other.”

Bashir grinned. “Sounds like your cup of tea.”

Then, as they said good-bye: “Just do me a favor, Elizabeth.”

“Name it.”

“First of all, stay in touch. Second, be smart, my dear. Be safe.”

“That’s three things.”

“What’s an extra favor between friends?” His smile seemed a little…wistful. “I might ask a lot more of you sometime, Elizabeth, or you of me. For now, I don’t think I can stand to lose one more person I’ve come to care about.”

She wanted to reach through the viewscreen and hold his hand. Or maybe she just wanted to be held.

Then the baby kicked for her attention.

One step by one step…

So instead, she only said, “Me neither.”

Bart Faulwell had delayed leaving long enough. But, no Anthony. And Faulwell was needed back on the da Vinci. The U.S.S. Elgin was departing the following morning, with Bart as a passenger, and would rendezvous with the da Vinci in four days.

He was packing—throwing things into his bag, not caring, trying not to think—when the computer announced that he had a visitor.

He tensed as he opened the door. Being stunned was something he didn’t require as a steady diet. But it was a porter, with a delivery.

He stared at the packet—slim, more like an envelope—for almost five minutes before he thumbed open the flap. And then the bottom fell out of his preconceptions.

The photograph had been taken in summer; there was a pool in the background, people in swim suits or no suits at all.

The boy was in trunks and he was young, perhaps no more than six or seven, but he had the same blue eyes; a cascade of corn-yellow ringlets; a pair of sensuous lips with a cupid’s bow.

And if there’d been any doubt, Anthony was there, one hand draped over the boy’s shoulder, his pose casual.

And though he couldn’t see it, Faulwell knew there was that slash of scar on Anthony’s belly.

And Anthony’s words: You’re not the only one with secrets.

Bart Faulwell’s eyes were closed, but the tears came just the same.

The bed was stripped; the air stank of disinfectant. Lense had avoided the nightstand until now, preferring to pack clothes, sift through Jennifer’s few pieces of jewelry. Lense thought she might keep the wedding ring but…it felt wrong. Like she was stealing something from a stranger.

She sat on the bare mattress, the book of Shakespeare in her lap. She ran her fingers along the volume, and then she noticed a tiny sliver of paper. The only bookmark.

When she opened the book, two photographs spilled out. She bent to retrieve them, but her eye fell on the passages Jennifer had underlined and she froze.

Clown: Good madonna, why mournest thou?

Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death.

Clown: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

Twelfth Night: a play about mistaken identities, about a missing twin brother, and a woman masquerading as a man.

Lense could barely breathe. Coincidence? Then she bent to retrieve the photographs—and knew there were no coincidences.

One was of Jennifer with two babies, one in either arm. The photo was old, Jennifer youthful.

And Lense knew exactly how old she’d been. Exactly.

The second was of a young man caught in profile against a background of tumbledown ruins, but she recognized their delicate spidery quality. And she instantly knew that the man was the same person in all the photographs peppering Jennifer’s wall—only grown much, much older than sixteen when time had, supposedly, stopped.

Heart pounding, Lense turned the photographs over. Only one was dated; only one needed to be: the one of the ruins and the man.

November 4, 2374. Lense’s birthday, but only three years ago.

And beneath, in a shaky penciled scrawl: Elizabeth—John, 1144.

That’s when Jennifer must’ve dropped the pencil. But she counted on her daughter to see the inscription and to understand.

Because she knew she was dying, didn’t have long to live, so she left me a message.

But what did it mean? She’d been born on the fourth…

Then she got it: Not forty-four. Two fours. Two people. Twins. Like the transporter logs and those ghost files…

Her eye fell on the Bible.

John 1144…

She found it in the Gospel According to John: chapter eleven, verse forty-four…the story of Lazarus:

And presently he that had been dead came forth.

Lense’s lips were numb.

“My brother,” she said, finally, faintly. “Jonathan.”

And at long, long last, Elizabeth Lense wept—for her mother.

His gaze is riveted on the biobed as it has been every day this last month. This one woman, this latest specimen, she’s lasted so long. And his control over her form is becoming better all the time.

He feels her come up behind. “Is she dead?”

“Yes,” Darly replies. “It was good that you sent us as a team. I think that Strong…absorbed the template’s affection for Almieri. He killed Strong, yes, but left too many loose ends, and I had to destroy him. He was…out of control. I couldn’t let them take him alive, and I made sure there was no trace left.”

All lies: She’d engineered most of what had happened, and she’d had to masquerade as so many templates along the way: Darly, of course (the one she prefers, actually; so versatile); that assistant…a diener? Then Strong, so Lizzie would spot him from that window; and Stern. Faulwell. So many.

That Lizzie, though: What an interesting template. She wouldn’t mind copying her. A pity Darly couldn’t save her.

She decides that she will not mention Lizzie. He doesn’t have to know. She doesn’t know if the news would upset him. Perhaps not. He is very odd, for a template.

Instead, she stares through the observation booth and down at the Darly template: the form she now possesses and has come to think of as herself. But the template, the original Darly, the one strapped to the biobed doesn’t much look like herself anymore. All to the better, because if they can make more of them…

We can’t breed ourselves, and there are so few of us left. Helping him learn to make us is the first step on our road to freedom. Then: These templates who fancy themselves our masters are in for quite a surprise.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” he asks. He adjusts a control, and now the Darly template writhes, shimmers—and sprouts wings. “Isn’t it just what we’ve dreamed of?”

“Yes, it is, Jonathan,” Darly says, lightly. “Yes, it is.”

And then she casts her eyes over the cavern and that waterfall, so very beautiful, and she thinks: Genesis, indeed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ILSA J. BICK is the author of such prizewinning stories as “A Ribbon for Rosie” in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II, “Shadows, in the Dark” in Strange New Worlds IV, and “The Quality of Wetness” in Writers of the Future Volume XVI. Her SCIFICTION mystery, “The Key,” was given an honorable mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Her first published novel, Star Trek: The Lost Era: Well of Souls, cracked the 2003 Barnes & Noble bestseller list, and she is the author of the S.C.E. eBooks Lost Time and Wounds as well as stories that have appeared on/in SCIFICTION, Challenging Destiny, Talebones, Beyond the Last Star, Star Trek: Voyager: Distant Shores, and Star Trek: New Frontier: No Limits, among many others. She’s also the author of many short stories and novels in the BattleTech/MechWarrior Dark Age universe, both in print and on BattleCorps.com. Her latest MWDA book, Dragon Rising, came out in February 2007. Ilsa is currently at work on an original novel, Satan’s Skin. Think Stephen King hooks up with Dan Brown and does Kabbalah, and you’ve got the idea. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two children, and two cats. Sometimes, she even cooks for them.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR