Duty, Honor, Redemption

by Novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre

  We will softly and silently vanish away—

  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”

  He and Madison left the podium.

  After the presentation, Spock had heard one normally dignified elder scientist say, laughing, “If they get bored with science they can go straight into stand-up comedy,” to which her colleague, who was not quite so amused, replied, “Well, maybe. But the jokes are pretty esoteric, don’t you think?”

  Spock had made a point of attending their question-and-answer session later that day, and during the week-long seminar became fairly well acquainted with them. He had more in common with Madison, whose intellect was firmly based in rationality, than with the high-strung March, whose brilliance balanced on a fine edge of intensity. But Spock had found their company stimulating; he would be pleased to encounter the two young humans again, on Spacelab.

  “Spock?” Kirk said.

  Spock returned from his reminiscences. “Yes, Admiral?”

  “I said, were they your students?”

  “Indeed not, Admiral. They are pioneers in the field of sub-elementary particle physics. I am honored to have been a student of theirs.”

  Del March glared at the computer terminal. No way was he going to be able to transfer Boojum Hunt. Every portable byte of memory was already packed full of essential Genesis data, and the team still would have to let some go when they blanked the built-in memory cells.

  He had a hard copy of the program, of course, a printout, but it would take a couple of hours for the optical-scan to read it back in, and it always made mistakes. Boojum was a real pain to debug. Well, no help for it.

  He was glad they would not lose the program entirely. Boojum was the best piece of software he and Vance had ever written. It was an adventure game; yet it paralleled their real-world work of the last few years. Vance referred to it as “the extended metaphor” but agreed that “Boojum Hunt” was a lot more commercial.

  Then Del got an idea. When the storm troopers arrived tomorrow, they would be looking for something. It would be a shame to disappoint them.

  Vance came over and put his hand on Del’s shoulder.

  “Might’s well get it over with, don’t you think?”

  Del grinned. “No, Vance, listen—don’t you think it’s about time Mad Rabbit got going again?”

  Vance gave him a quizzical look, then began to laugh. He had a great laugh. Del did not have to explain his plan; Vance understood it completely.

  Carol returned to the lab. Most of the really sensitive data had already been moved. Only the mechanism of Genesis itself remained. They had another whole day to finish collecting personal gear and to be sure they had erased all clues to their whereabouts.

  “I could use a good joke about now,” Carol said. She sounded both tired and irritable.

  Among other things, she’s probably sick of hassling with Dave about Starfleet, Del thought. He really had it in for them—now he had good reason, but it was hardly his newest theme.

  “Vance and I just decided to leave something for the troops,” Del said. “The latest Mad Rabbit.”

  “What in heaven’s name is a mad rabbit?”

  “Do you believe it, Vance, she never heard of us.” Del feigned insult. “Carol, we were famous.”

  “What do you mean, ‘were’? You’re pretty famous now.”

  “We were famous in Port Orchard, Del,” Vance said mildly. “That isn’t exactly big time.”

  “Port Orchard?” Carol said.

  “See?”

  “What’s Mad Rabbit!”

  “I’m Mad,” Vance said, “and he’s Rabbit.”

  “As in March Hare. We started a minor revival of Lewis Carroll all by ourselves.”

  Carol flung up her hands in resignation. “Del, I guess you’ll let me in on the secret when you get good and ready, right?”

  Del started to explain. “We used to have a company, when we were kids. It still exists; we just haven’t done anything with it since—before grad school, I guess, huh, Vance?”

  “Reality is a lot more interesting,” Vance said. He pulled a chair around and got Carol to sit down.

  Del grinned. “If you call quark chemistry reality.”

  Vance took heed of Carol’s impatience, and, as usual, brought Del back on track. “We used to write computer-game software,” he said. “Our company was called Mad Rabbit Productions. It did pretty well. In Port Orchard, we were ‘local kids make good’ for a while.” He started to rub the tension-taut muscles of Carol’s neck and shoulders.

  “I had no idea,” Carol said. She flinched as Vance found a particularly sore spot, then began to relax.

  “The thing is,” Del said, “where the game sold best was to starbases.”

  “The more isolated the better,” Vance added. “They don’t have much else to do.”

  “Not unlike Spacelab,” Del said.

  But it was true. Spacelab was quite possibly the Federation’s least exciting entertainment spot. There wasn’t much to do but work. After concentrating on the same subject eighteen hours a day seven days a week for close to a year, Del had been getting perilously close to burnout. He had begun having bizarre and wistful dreams about going out to low dives, getting stoned to the brainstem on endorphin-rock and beer, and picking a fight with the first person to look at him sidewise.

  He thought he had outgrown that kind of thing a couple of years before.

  When he told Vance about one of his nightmares, his friend and partner suggested they revive their old business. It was perfectly possible, on Spacelab, to get drunk or stoned or both, and Vance was not anxious to have to start dragging Del out of brawls again.

  “We wrote Boojum just to play it,” Del said. “But why not leave it for Reliant—”

  Carol giggled. “What a great idea. It seems a shame for them to come all this way for nothing.”

  They all laughed.

  The last couple of days had actually been rather exciting. Everyone had managed to convince each other that the Starfleet orders were some ridiculous, awful mistake, and that as soon as they could get through to somebody in the Federation Assembly, or in the Federation Science Network, everything would be straightened out. Some overzealous petty-tyrant Starfleet officer would get called on the carpet, maybe even cashiered out of the service, and that would be that. All they needed to do was keep Genesis and the data out of the hands of Reliant’s captain until he got bored with looking for it and went away, or until they could recruit civilian scientific support and aid.

  Looked at that way, it became a big game of hide-and-seek. It was a change in routine, with a tiny potential for danger, just scary enough to be fun.

  “I’ll put it in the Monster,” Del said.

  “Oh, I see,” Carol said smiling. “This whole thing is a ploy for you guys to get room to play in the main machine.”

  “You got it,” Vance said.

  They all laughed again. They had been working forty-eight hours straight. Del felt punchy with exhaustion and marvelously silly.

  Carol patted Vance’s hand and stood up. “Thank you,” she said. “That feels a lot better.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “You looked like you needed it.”

  Zinaida entered the lab.

  Over the past year, Del had got used to working with her, but he never had managed to get over a sharp thrill of attraction and desire whenever he saw her. Deltans affected humans that way. The stimulus was general rather than individual. Del understood it intellectually. Getting the message through to his body was another thing.

  No Deltan would ever permit her- or himself to become physically involved with a human being. The idea was ethically inconceivable, for no human could tolerate the intensity of the intimacy.

  Dreaming never hurt anyone, though, and sometimes Del dreamed about Zinaida Chitirih-Ra-Payjh; in his dreams he could pretend that he was different, that he could provide whatever she asked and survive whatever she offered.

  The D
eltans, Zinaida and Jedda both, were unfailingly cordial to the humans on the station; they comported themselves with an aloofness and propriety more characteristic of Vulcans than of the uninhibited sensualists Deltans were said to be. They seldom touched each other in public, and never anyone else. They kept a protective wall of detachment between themselves and their vulnerable co-workers, most of whom were acutely curious to know what it was they did in private, but who knew better than to ask.

  Zinaida greeted them and turned on the subspace communicator. Ever since the call from Reliant, one or another of the scientists tried to contact the Federation every hour or so. Except for Carol’s half-completed transmission to James Kirk, no one had met with any success.

  This time it was just the same. Zinaida shrugged, turned off the communicator, and joined her teammates by the computer.

  “Genesis is about ready,” she said to Carol. “David and Jedda thought you would want to be there.”

  Her eyebrows were as delicate and expressive as bird wings, and her lashes were long and thick. Her eyes were large, a clear aquamarine blue flecked with bright silver, the most beautiful eyes Del had ever seen.

  “Thanks, Zinaida,” Carol said. “We’ll get it out of here—then I guess all we can do is wait.” She left the lab.

  Del knew she still hoped Reliant might be called off: if it was, they would not have to purge the computer memories. Once that was done, getting everything back on-line would be a major undertaking. The last thing they planned to do before fleeing was to let the liquid hydrogen tanks—the bubble baths—purge themselves into space. The equipment only worked when it was supercooled; at room temperature, it deteriorated rapidly. Rebuilding would take a lot of time.

  Jan, the steward, came in a moment after Carol left.

  “Yoshi wants to know what anybody wants him to bring in the way of food.”

  Yoshi, the cook, had put off his leave till the rest of the station personnel returned from holiday. He was convinced the scientists would kill themselves with food poisoning or malnutrition if they were left completely to their own devices.

  “He really shouldn’t have to worry about it,” Del said.

  Jan shrugged cheerfully. “Well, you know Yoshi.”

  “How about sashimi?”

  “Yech,” said Vance.

  “I think he had in mind croissants and fruit and coffee.”

  “Jan, why did he put you to the trouble of asking, if he’d already decided?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so you have the illusion of being in charge of your own fate. Do you know when we’re going? Or how long we’ll be?”

  “No to both questions. We may be gone for a while. Maybe you ought to tell him we suggested pemmican.”

  “Hell, no,” Jan said. “If I do, he’ll figure out a way to make some, and it sounds even worse than sashimi.”

  After Jan left, Del poured himself a cup of coffee, wandered down to his office, and checked to be sure he had got all his lab notes. The top of his desk was clear for the first time since he came to Spacelab. The office felt bare and deserted, as if he were moving out permanently. The framed piece of calligraphy on the wall was the only thing left: he saw no need to put it away, and it seemed silly to take it. He read it over for the first time in quite a while:

  Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again

  The five unmistakable marks

  By which you may know, wheresoever you go,

  The warranted genuine Snarks.

  Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,

  Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:

  Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,

  With a flavor of Will-o-the-Wisp.

  Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree

  That it carries too far, when I say

  That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,

  And dines on the following day.

  The third is its slowness in taking a jest.

  Should you happen to venture on one,

  It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:

  And it always looks grave at a pun.

  The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,

  Which it constantly carries about,

  And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes—

  A sentiment open to doubt.

  The fifth is ambition. It next will be right

  To describe each particular batch:

  Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,

  From those that have whiskers, and scratch.

  For although common Snarks do no manner of harm,

  Yet I feel it my duty to say

  Some are Boojums—

  —Lewis Carroll

  “The Hunting of the Snark”

  Del sat on the corner of his desk and sipped his coffee. Exhaustion was beginning to catch up with him, dissolving the fine thrill of defiance into doubt.

  Vance came in and straddled a chair, folding his arms across its back. Del waited, but his partner did not say anything. He reached for Del’s cup. Del handed it to him and Vance drank some of the coffee. He had always had a lot more endurance than Del, but even he was beginning to look tired.

  “I can’t figure out what to take.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Del said. “A toothbrush and a lot of books?”

  Vance smiled, but without much conviction. He drank some more of Del’s coffee, grimaced, and handed back the cup. “How many times has that stuff boiled?”

  “Sorry. I forgot to turn down the heat.”

  Vance suddenly frowned and looked around the room. “Little brother…” he said.

  Del started. Vance had not called him that since high school.

  “Little brother, this is all bullshit, you know.”

  “I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

  “If the military decides to take Genesis, they will, and there’s not a damned thing we’ll be able to do about it.”

  “There’s got to be! You’re beginning to sound like Dave.”

  “For all our Lewis Carroll recitations, for all our doing our amateur comedian number at seminars—hell, even for all the fun we’ve had—we’ve been hiding out from the implications of our work. This has been inevitable since the minute we figured out how to break up quarks en masse without a cyclotron.”

  “What are you saying we ought to do? Just turn everything over to Reliant when it gets here?”

  “No! Gods, Del, no.”

  “Sorry,” Del said sincerely. He knew Vance better than that. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry.”

  “I mean the exact opposite. Only…I don’t really know what I mean by meaning the exact opposite. Except, we can’t let them have it. No matter what.”

  All of a sudden the lights started flashing on and off, on and off, and a siren howled. Vance jumped to his feet.

  “What the hell—!”

  “That’s the emergency alarm!” Del said.

  They sprinted out of Del’s office.

  Something must have happened when they tried to move Genesis, Del thought.

  Vance, with his longer stride, was ten meters ahead of him by the time they reached the main lab. He ran into the room—

  Two strangers stepped out of hiding and held phasers on him. He stopped and raised his hands but kept on walking forward, drawing their attention farther into the lab and away from the corridor. Del ducked into a doorway and pressed himself against the shadows, taking the chance his friend had given him.

  “What the hell is going on?” he heard Vance say. “Who are you people?”

  “We’ve come for Genesis.”

  Damn, Del thought. We spent the last two days running around in a fit of paranoia about the military, and not one of us thought to wonder if they were telling the truth about arriving in three days.

  He opened the door behind him, slipped into the dark room, and locked the door. He felt his way to the communication
s console and keyed it on.

  “Hi, Del,” David said cheerfully. “Can you wait a minute? We’re just about to move.”

  “No!” Del whispered urgently. “Dave, keep your voice down. They’re here! They’ve got Vance and Zinaida.”

  “What?”

  “They lied to us! They’re here already. Get Genesis out, fast.”

  He heard a strange noise in the corridor, searched his mind for what the sound could be, and identified it: a tricorder.

  “Dave, dammit, they’re tracking me! Get Genesis out, and get out yourselves before they find you, too!”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue! Look, they’re not gonna hurt us. What can they do? Maybe dump us in a brig someplace. Somebody’s got to be loose to tell the Federation what’s going on. To get us out if they try to keep us incommunicado. Go!”

  “Okay.”

  Del slammed off the intercom and accessed the main computer. He had to wipe the memories before he got caught. The tricorder hummed louder.

  The computer came on-line.

  “Ok,” it said.

  “Liquid hydrogen tanks, purge protocol,” Del said softly.

  The door rattled.

  “We know you’re in there! Come out at once!”

  “That’s a safeguarded routine,” the computer said.