by Susan Wright
“Yes?” Jayme asked, surprised to be addressed by one.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you?”
“Oh!” Jayme scrambled with her waist bag. “I was going to give this to someone.”
The Izad silently held out its hand and accepted the beaked head. Its fingers caressed the head like it knew every chiseled crevice.
Bobbie Ray raised one brow at Jayme. “Stealing the artifacts, Cadet Miranda?”
“Stealing? No!” Jayme appealed to the solemn-faced Izad. “I was going to give it back. I hope I didn’t ruin it. It was an accident. . . .”
The Izad glanced at the beaked head, then silently turned and walked away.
“I was going to return it,” Jayme told Bobbie Ray before he could say another word. “I couldn’t just leave it lying on the floor in there. I had to bring it back to give it to someone, didn’t I?”
Bobbie Ray made a show of removing his Naiskos from the table and tucking it safely back in his bag. “Sure, Jayme, sure.”
The next day, Moll Enor invited Bobbie Ray to come on the tour of the underwater ruins. Jayme almost choked when he blithely agreed.
Wiping her mouth, she said, “It’s under water, Bobbie Ray. Water, as in, we’re underneath it.”
He daintily stuck an enormous piece of meat pie into his mouth. With his mouth full, he said, “I don’t care, as long as I’m not in the water.”
Moll could tell that Jayme took perverse joy in the change in Bobbie Ray’s self-satisfied expression once the tour-bubble began to sink underwater. The forcefield held back the green sea, but you could poke your finger through and feel how warm it was. Bobbie Ray shuddered as Jayme slowly shoved her entire hand through.
“It’ll break if you keep doing that,” he nervously chided her.
“Stay on dry land if you don’t want to get wet,” she retorted.
The two bickered the entire ride to the underwater grottos, while Moll tried to listen to the narration of the geophysical conditions that led to the flooding of a third of the local ruins. Neither of them noticed anything unusual until Moll protested, “Why didn’t we go into the amphitheater?”
She craned her head to look back at one of the most spectacular ruins, which their stasis bubble had simply sailed right past. Some of the other tourists were protesting, too, until they had to be shushed in order to hear the Izad at the controls.
“There is a malfunction?” it said timidly.
Cries rose from the passengers. “Something’s wrong?” “A malfunction!” Someone let out a small scream of fright.
“Relax,” Jayme ordered Bobbie Ray, trying to remove his hands, which had clenched around her arm on hearing the news.
Meanwhile, Moll Enor got up to go to the front. “What’s wrong?” she asked the Izad.
“There is a malfunction?” it patiently repeated. Moll had found that the Izad had a common, subtle tick of allowing their voices to go up at the end of a sentence, making everything they said sound like a question. Moll attributed it to their socially subservient position.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We will go to nearest port?” the Izad offered.
“Should you surface?” Moll asked, glancing at the green arch of water held back by the stasis bubble.
The Izad merely shook its head, seemingly unworried about a stasis failure.
Moll returned to her seat, telling the others, “There’s nothing to worry about. We’re being taken to the nearest port.”
The tense whispering in the tour-bubble didn’t lighten until they surfaced at the port. Moll was pleased to see Jayme patting Bobbie Ray’s leg occasionally, acknowledging his fear at being underwater when a “malfunction” was occurring. They wouldn’t be able to get him out of the hostel after this.
But Bobbie Ray got safely out of the bubble without wetting a hair, though he seemed subdued by the scare. Their entire group was a little disconsolate as they trailed after the Izad guide. Moll wondered how they were going to get Bobbie Ray back in a bubble to return, when Jayme edged closer and whispered, “We’ll have to find some other way to get him back.”
Moll was pleased to have her thought voiced. “There’re airbuses everywhere. We should be able to arrange something for him.”
Moll Enor blamed herself afterwards for being so concerned about Bobbie Ray that her usually superb attention was distracted from what was going on. But the Izad guide was quite natural about standing aside and gesturing for them to enter one of the massive doors of the coliseum ruin.
Inside, their group merged with a larger, milling group of mixed tourists, all confused and babbling questions over one another. “What’s going on?” Moll asked, too late to stop them from entering.
Jayme immediately turned and tried to get back out, but the entryway was blocked by a double forcefield. There were two Izad at the other end, patiently funneling more tourists into the cavernous space. The press of people pushed them deeper inside, and they were unable to stop the influx. Arching overhead and cutting the harsh sun was the sustaining blue light of the forcefield, holding the ruin together.
“It’s the Izad!” a Rahm cried out, holding its hands up to stop the angry questions. A scattered group of Rahm had gathered in the center of the enormous coliseum. The Rahm were rapidly trying to join forces against the hundreds of tourists who were discovering they were trapped against their will.
“What do they want?” Jayme called out. “Why did they do this to us?”
But she was drowned out by other voices, louder and closer to the Rahm. One was deferred to by the other Rahm; he stepped onto a fallen block of stone, to say, “I am Oxitar, Senior Manager of the Regional Tourism Board.”
Cries greeted his announcement: “What’s going on?” “When can we go back to the hostel?” “My friend needs water!”
Others shushed the voices, trying to hear Oxitar. “The Izad won’t talk to us, but there have been rumors for cycles that they were unhappy with the way our world is run. We all work hard to make Rahm-Izad a pleasant place for people like yourselves to come, and we will continue to do so—”
“This isn’t a commercial!” someone yelled.
Oxitar held up his hands. “I’m sure this will be worked out soon, if you could be patient and let us deal with the Izad.” He bent and listened briefly to one of the other Rahm. “You can find water in the rear of this building. Please be courteous to those in need. I will speak to the Izad, and will return to tell you as soon as I have information.”
Oxitar jumped down from the block, agile like all the Rahm-Izad despite the age lines on his forehead and ultra-thickening of his nose-bridge. He was surrounded by Rahm as the small group moved through the tourists, sullenly parting to let them through.
“Nice vacation,” Bobbie Ray told Jayme. “Stuck in the middle of a local revolution.”
Moll didn’t like how long Jayme was gone. After the Rahm returned to say the Izad wouldn’t communicate with them, Jayme had thought for a long time, her brow furrowed. Every time Moll tried to speak to her, she shook her head. Finally, she had said she was going to try to talk to the Izad.
When Moll offered to go with her, she acted like she would have loved to say yes, but she refused. “They may feel less threatened by one person alone.”
“Threatened?” Bobbie Ray had slyly asked. He was lying back on a blanket that padded a large section of the original benching in the coliseum. “They’re the ones holding us hostage.”
Moll lost sight of Jayme—which was a difficult thing to do in those red tights with a black-and-white checked ultrashorts set. Jayme wasn’t one to dress down when she was off duty, but she was so flamboyantly personable that people usually forgave the assault on their eyes. At least Moll did.
Jayme appeared, then disappeared for long stretches of time as she went down various entryways, trying to talk to the Izad. When she finally returned, she was grinning like she’d just aced a biochemistry test.
“You
want to get out of here?” she asked.
“They’re letting us go?” Moll replied, startled at her success.
“Only the three of us, if we agree to help them,” Jayme clarified.
“Help them?” Bobbie Ray asked.
At the same time, Moll said, “You were able to get them to trust you?”
Jayme shrugged. “Enough anyway. I told them I’ve had training as a Starfleet negotiator—”
“What?” Bobbie Ray demanded.
“It’s sort of true. I’ve negotiated family fights plenty of times.” She smoothed her hair and resettled the clip. “Anyway, the Izad know they’ll have to deal with Starfleet sooner or later because of all these Federation citizens they’re holding.”
“The Federation won’t negotiate in a hostage situation,” Bobbie Ray protested, squirming into a more comfortable position on the hard bench. Moll figured he was outraged by Jayme’s utter audacity. “The Izad are wrong to keep us prisoners here”
“The Izad have never been given a chance,” Jayme insisted.
“And they know that releasing Starfleet personnel—us—will show goodwill.”
“What do they want?” Moll asked.
“They don’t like how the ruins are being treated,” Jayme said bluntly. “All the money is going to support the Rahm elite rather than being spent on maintaining the artifacts. The place is crumbling out from under them. At the very least, they need a weather satellite to keep the temperature swings to a minimum.”
“This is about a weather satellite?” Bobbie Ray blinked a few times. “You mean I’m napping on a stone because they want sunshine all the time?”
“Drop it,” Jayme ordered out of the side of her mouth. Appealing to Moll, she added, “These Izad don’t have anybody capable of negotiating with the Rahm or the Federation. Apparently their plan has been boiling for decades, until the entire Izad populace simply cracked. I’d hate to see them stomped back down when they’re finally standing up for their rights. With your help, maybe we can do something.”
Moll nodded. “I want to hear more about their grievances, and I’ll need my tricorder to tap the Federation database for precedent—”
“Hello? Excuse me,” Bobbie Ray interrupted, finally swinging his legs over the edge and sitting up. “But aren’t you forgetting something? What about the Prime Directive? We aren’t supposed to interfere in an internal matter.”
Jayme met his eyes. “If I was on a mission, I would do whatever my superiors ordered. It wouldn’t be my place to do anything else. But we’re not on a mission. I’m here as Jayme Miranda, on my own personal time, and I won’t sit by and let an injustice be done.”
Moll couldn’t have been more impressed. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
They both looked at Bobbie Ray.
“What are you looking at me for?” he asked.
“You want out of here, don’t you?” Jayme asked.
Bobbie Ray got up. “Sure. Show me the way.”
Jayme put her hand on his shoulder, ushering him toward the entryway where she had appeared. “They’ve had injuries. Some of the Rahm fought back when the Tourism Board hall was stormed.”
“You’ve had one semester of premed,” Bobbie Ray protested. “You think you’re going to act like a doctor?”
“No, you are. I’m going to be busy as a negotiator.”
Bobbie Ray stopped dead. “You can’t be serious.”
“They need another pair of hands,” Jayme retorted. “I volunteered you. It’s the least you can do, Jefferson.”
He smoothed his whiskers irritably. “Are you sure the Academy won’t get upset?”
“Positive,” Jayme assured him. “They’ll be mad if you don’t help.”
Bobbie Ray grumbled, but he actually had a good time assisting in the hospital. The Izad were so grateful for any crumb they were tossed, since they were accustomed to having to do all the work.
Besides, there was an elaborate gymnasium attached to the hospital for physical therapy—an integral part of the recuperation for agile Rahm-Izad physiology. So Bobbie Ray spent several hours a day in the gym, swinging and clambering among the unusual arrangements of bars and swings. In the early evening he would grab a nap on the roof, waking up feeling refreshed for the spectacular meals that the Izad continued to prepare.
It took a few days before he realized there were three Izad cleaning his room every morning, trapped in the habit of catering to hoards of tourists. For the first time in memory, the Rahm-Izad ruins were closed, but the Izad continued to work as hard as if there were thousands of people to pamper.
The Enterprise herself was in orbit, leading the negotiations. Cadet Enor and Cadet Miranda had managed to place themselves in a very enviable position, but Bobbie Ray still shuddered at the risk they were taking. If the Izad got irrational and decided to get rid of a few tourists to prove their point, Jayme and Moll would end up on the losing side. But they had maintained the balance, and were getting full credit for representing the Izad in these negotiations.
He followed their progress on the Federation news service, piped in live to his deluxe suite, appropriated from the now empty quarters around the hospital. The other tourists were still quarantined in huge groups in various key ruins. Even the Rahm wouldn’t risk destroying the ruins by turning off the forcefields supporting them. They had never considered the fact that the forcefields could also prevent anyone from transporting out people who were trapped inside.
Bobbie Ray had to admire the Izad’s tactical advantage. Who would have thought they were capable of such a neat coup? He chuckled to himself, stretching under the sunset. This was his favorite part of the Rahm-Izad day, sunny but not scorching.
“Better enjoy yourself while you can,” Jayme said behind him.
He lazily rolled over to watch Jayme and Enor come up the stairs to the roof, arm in arm. Something had happened in the past week. They seemed to have come to an understanding. Far be it from him to pry, but when two humanoids started spending every second together, their faces so close they were practically rubbing noses, you had to figure things were getting intimate.
“What’s the rush?” Bobbie Ray asked. “Are you planning another revolution?”
“No, but this one is over,” Jayme told him, relaxed and satisfied as he had rarely seen her. “The Izad are releasing the hostages.”
“So it’s over?” he asked, feeling oddly let down. He had liked the empty sidewalks and squares, like the ruins should be, as if they were suspended out of time. “I thought revolutions took a long time.”
“Not well-organized ones,” Moll told him.
“We still have some serious points to negotiate,” Jayme admitted. “But the bulk of the work is completed. The Izad will gain their rightful voice in ruling their own world. The ruins were Izad, you know, long before the Rahm came here. But they can live together if they cooperate.”
“So it will be a few more days?” Bobbie Ray asked.
“At least,” Moll Enor agreed.
“Good.” Bobbie Ray settled back, the towel over his eyes. But he did peek once or twice, watching Moll and Jayme standing by the balustrade, leaning against each other, as the sun went down.
“Congratulations,” Moll murmured to Jayme. “It’s because of you the Izad had a chance.”
“Not true,” Jayme denied. “They were ready for this move. We both helped, is all.”
Bobbie Ray groaned loud enough for them both to turn with irritated expressions. Then he grinned, wrinkling his nose. “It’s about time,” he told them enigmatically. Then he rolled over, covering his eyes again.
The next day, Bobbie Ray did go with Jayme to the Capitol building to witness the new combined government take over the reigns of power. Now that the agreements had been made, Jayme and Moll were pulling out of the spotlight. Moll wasn’t even going to be present—she had been called up to the Enterprise to complete some of the last details. Bobbie Ray could tell Jayme was dying of envy and would have preferred t
hat job to this merely ceremonious one.
“I’ve never been on the Enterprise,” Jayme said for what must have been the eighth time. All of their negotiations had taken place in the Capitol building, at the Izad’s request.
The inarticulate ceremony droned on below, witnessed by dozens of sulky Rahm surrounded by hundreds of the Izad clerks who did the real work. But Bobbie Ray and Jayme were far enough away from the hurried exchange of keys—to the forcefields or the computer files, Bobbie Ray wasn’t exactly sure—that he could ask, “What happened with you two?”
“Oh, so you noticed?” Jayme smiled to herself as she smoothed her bright pink shirt.
“Everyone has noticed,” he assured her.
Jayme waved him off, knowing he was exaggerating. Instead, she nudged him to look out the nearest window. They were up high enough to see down into the street where a sudden flow of cranky tourists were running through the streets or hanging on to airbuses, intent on getting their belongings and getting out before the Izad changed their minds.
Bobbie Ray thought their panic was comical, but then he had been dealing with the mild-mannered Izad for over a week. “Have I told you how much I enjoyed vacationing in a revolution?”
Jayme snorted, trying not to laugh at a stout colonist from the terraformed planet of Browder IV. He was running after an airbus, trying to get a foothold on the running board. “At least he can’t complain that the Izad haven’t fed us well,” she whispered. “Did you hear about the buffet they set up in the coliseum last night?”
Bobbie Ray was too curious to let the matter of Moll Enor slide. He had been there when Jayme began to get misty-eyed every time Enor spoke, and he had seen Jayme unfailingly nurture their relationship no matter how many obstacles Enor put in their path.
“So, what did happen with you two? Don’t tell me it’s just a wartime romance . . . the spur of danger, and all that?”
He watched her carefully, but her expression remained serene, smiling down at the chaos in the streets. “No, I think what happened is she finally had a chance to see me for who I really am, a chance to see that she could rely on me. I think we both realized we’re a good team.”