Star Trek: Brinkmanship (6 page)

And that, perhaps, might be the key to finding common ground again with the Venetans, Crusher thought. That must have been why the Federation had seemed an attractive option in the first place: a diverse community of many cultures, living (mostly) successfully together, much like the Venetans’ own arrangement. Perhaps the very liveliness of the Federation’s diversity had seemed attractive too: the fractious debates and heated quarrels that sometimes characterized the council. Perhaps it had reminded these ancient people of their own childhood.

We’ve been beaten back and battered for so long now,
Crusher thought.
War after war, the Andorian secession . . . We should try to remember what’s good about us, about our way of life, even when we’re at low ebb. Because if we don’t care any longer, why should anyone else?

Beside her, Ilka gave a little tilt of the head that set her long earrings jangling. “We’ll see,” she said. “I’ll have a better idea once I’ve heard Rusht speak.” She clicked her tongue again. “
Tsch!
I wish they would use titles as well as names! It feels so
wrong
simply calling her ‘Rusht.’ So ill-mannered! Titles make everything so much clearer.”

Crusher and Ilka were waiting with the rest of the diplomatic teams for the Venetan negotiators. Arriving by transporter in Guwine, the Venetan capital, the members of the mission found themselves in the atrium of a sunlit honey-stone building that their guide called the Hall of Assembly. Taken quickly via
curving corridors to what Crusher guessed was the center of the building, they were brought up one level to a pleasant chamber that was clearly a meeting room of some kind, although the organization of the space had been causing some confusion to the members of the various delegations. Two large tables, each shaped like a huge letter C, were hooked around each other, and while there were many chairs in the room, none of them had been arranged at the tables, and no places had been designated for the diplomats and their aides.

Their guide seemed baffled when Detrek asked where they should sit.

“Sit wherever you like,” she replied, which caused a great confusion of activity among the junior aides of the three parties, as they tried to organize places for their superiors and themselves. The situation was not helped by the fact that Venetans were constantly coming into the room in twos and threes, picking up chairs as they entered and putting them down again wherever it suited them.

“Are you not concerned with the seating arrangements, Ilka?” Crusher asked her colleague. She and Ilka, on walking into the room and observing the chaos, had immediately gone over to a large bay window where refreshments were laid out, helping themselves to drinks and watching rather than participating in the mêlée. They’d sort themselves out in the end, Crusher thought (although poor Jean-Luc, trying to impose some calm and order on the proceedings, was clearly hating every second of this undignified scrum).

“I’m sure my colleagues will determine an arrangement that suits them best,” Ilka said cheerfully. “I shall be happy to oblige them.”

Crusher nodded toward a junior Ferengi diplomat, who was engaged in a very lively dispute with one of the Cardassians over ownership of a chair. “Your associate doesn’t seem to share your indifference.”

“Sub-Dealer Prott,” Ilka said sharply, “needs to understand who exactly is in charge of this mission and to take direction accordingly. Nevertheless”—she demurely sipped her drink—“if he wants to wear himself out before discussions have even started, he is quite welcome to do so. And I am content to observe, thereby learning more about the dispositions of my allies and the Venetans than Prott will learn in a lifetime. Ah!” She smiled. “I believe the matter of the chair will shortly be resolved.”

Crusher laughed. Glinn Dygan—tall, solid, broad, and exactly
not
the kind of person one argued with—was, on Picard’s instruction, moving ominously toward Prott and the Cardassian. Soon the chair was placed behind Detrek, with the Cardassian junior sitting firmly upon it and Prott sent in search of another.

Crusher turned to look out the window. Although they were only one floor up, this building seemed to be the tallest in the capital and consequently gave her a good view out across Guwine. Long avenues curved around the city, with short spirals of smaller roads branching out. Low buildings and little gardens were gathered haphazardly around these roads such that it
was difficult to see where the greenery ended and the buildings started, as if nature and culture were indistinguishable. It gave the whole settlement a serene, pastoral quality. Crusher saw children playing in a large green space across the nearest avenue, and wondered whether “park” was the right word, implying as it did some sort of barrier between it and the rest of the city. She wondered what life must be like for Venetan children, surrounded by so many wise and ancient elders. She smiled. Perhaps not too different from René, growing up on the
Enterprise.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Ilka said.

“Reminds me of Paris,” Crusher said absently, refilling her glass with a pale yellow sparkling liquid that tasted pleasantly like elderflower. Ilka, accepting a refill, sipped and wrinkled her nose.

“Not a patch on your champagne, Doctor,” she said with a dismissive sniff.

The chatter in the room from all the Venetans now present was very noisy. They made an interesting sight. Four of their species were easily distinguishable either by their heights (varying from petite to imposing) or by the soft fur upon the bodies of two of them. Everything else was simply a matter of counting fingers. They mixed together freely and, having taken their seats, seemed amused if rather perplexed by what their visitors were doing. Crusher, wondering who they all were, realized that they must simply be ordinary people interested in seeing firsthand the visitors from other worlds.

Looking around the room, something on the far wall caught her eye. She tapped Ilka on the arm and pointed. “Recording devices,” she said. “These aren’t closed proceedings, are they?”

“The Venetans have a completely open society,” Ilka said. “Closed proceedings would make no sense to them. First to the room gets a seat; everyone else can watch live.” Ilka nodded across the room to where Picard, his frown deepening with each moment, was in whispered conversation with a very unhappy-looking Detrek. “Shall you inform Captain Picard, or shall I?”

“I’ll pick my moment, thanks.”

“Then in the meantime,” Ilka said very softly, “may I ask whether your government has yet taken advantage of the offer from the Venetans to inspect Outpost V-4?”

Crusher, circling the remains of her drink around the base of her glass, considered the question and the potential reasons for asking.
Remember that she’s an ally—but she’s not Federation. You don’t have to tell her everything.

“I understand that the offer is being seriously considered.” Crusher smiled at her new friend over the rim of her glass. “I’m just the doctor, Ilka. They don’t tell me half of what’s going on.”

“Beverly, I don’t believe that for one moment!”

Their amiable fencing halted when a set of large double doors at the far end of the chamber swung open. Even the Venetans went quiet as Rusht swept into the room.

Rusht was on the very imposing end of the Venetan
height spectrum, nearly two meters tall. Crusher checked immediately for high heels but couldn’t see below the hem of Rusht’s long pale-green gown. Nor was her hair adding any extra height: it was pulled back sharply from her brow to give the effect of a dark peaked cap. In fact, Rusht’s whole style was unornamented to the point of severe, as if dressing up was something that took attention away from more serious business, something that children might do. Ilka murmured under her breath and reached up to touch one of her earrings in an almost nervous gesture. Not for the first time in her career, Crusher was grateful for the low-pressure anonymity of a uniform.

Another Venetan, smaller and covered with beautiful gold fur with darker stripes along her arms and temples, followed Rusht into the room. Rusht’s aide, perhaps? Did the Venetans have aides? How was this going to work? But Crusher’s attempts to guess how this already bewildering meeting would play out stopped when the third figure entered the room and her startling beauty nearly took Crusher’s breath away. This tall, glowing woman, fluid in movement and yet clearly very strong, was surely a Tzenkethi.

Crusher exhaled slowly. She had never seen one in person before. The aesthetic effect was remarkable, and the inclusion of a Tzenkethi in the Venetan diplomatic team sent about as strong a signal as possible about the strengthening ties between their world and the bigger, more powerful empire at their border. The Venetans really were angry.

What’s behind that?
Crusher wondered.
Why such depth of feeling? We were careless, perhaps, but we were also preoccupied. We were at war, for heaven’s sake! Surely our lack of attention was understandable. So why was the snub felt so deeply?

“Well, Beverly,” murmured Ilka, “I believe we are outclassed—visually, at least.”

Rusht and her companion spoke quietly to the Tzenkethi for a few moments. The Tzenkethi moved to one end of the table and, with infinite grace, rearranged her body so that she was comfortably seated on the floor. Her face was a mask, unreadable. Rusht took a seat near her at the end of the same curved table. Her colleague sat beside her.

“I am Rusht,” she said simply. Her voice was low, but it carried. She gestured to her companion. “This is Vitig. We’ve decided that we’ll be the ones to speak to you.” She looked around the room at the confusion of delegates, sighed, and said, “Sit wherever you like. We should begin.”

The chaos among the delegates, which had subsided when Rusht entered the room, did not pick up again. The members of the three delegations, much subdued, quickly organized themselves around three points across the two tables, with Jeyn and Picard diagonally opposite Rusht and Vitig, and Detrek and the Cardassians along the curve to their right. Dygan, sitting behind Detrek, was making an effort not to look anxious and instead ready and eager to respond to any request his government’s representative made
of him. The Ferengi took their place to the left of the Federation representatives, around from the Venetans on their table. Ilka put down her glass and went to join her delegation. As she moved away, she murmured to Crusher, “First point to Rusht.”

But Crusher wasn’t too sure. Yes, on the surface it seemed that with one well-judged entrance and a few well-judged words, Rusht had managed to take control of the proceedings, but something about her demeanor suggested that she found the behavior of her guests rather wearying. She seemed . . . 
tired
by their antics. Much like Jean-Luc, in fact, Crusher reflected. Still, it was true that whatever Rusht’s intention, the delegates from the Khitomer Accords were now on the defensive.

Crusher picked up a chair and put it down behind Jeyn and Picard, and found herself beside a cheerful Venetan who offered her his bag of sweets. At his insistence she took a couple, putting one in her pocket for later. Rolling the other slowly around her mouth (it had an almost peppery flavor—surprising, but not unpleasant), she leaned back so that she had a good view of the opposing parties—or, rather, a good view of the Tzenkethi behind Rusht.

In fact, everyone who wasn’t a Venetan was goggling at the Tzenkethi, or pretending not to. Rusht said, “I should introduce a good friend of the convention, Alizome Vik Tov-A.”

An approving murmur rose up from around the room as the Venetans welcomed their guest. Crusher flipped mentally back through the briefing documents
she had read en route and tried to decipher the mysterious code of the Tzenkethi naming system.

Alizome Vik Tov-A . . .
Alizome was a personal name. Tov was a status marker, indicating her importance as part of the governing echelon, the ruling class. Vik, as Crusher understood it, was a functional designation, indicating her specific purpose within that echelon. It meant Alizome was a speaker, permitted to conduct negotiations on behalf of her Autarch and speak in his voice. Was she sanctioned to do that today, Crusher wondered, or was she here simply to observe and then report back to her masters? As for A, well, the genetic grading spoke for itself. Altogether, if intelligence on Tzenkethi naming conventions was accurate, Alizome Vik Tov-A was a very prestigious member of Tzenkethi society. This person might even have the ear of the elusive and mysterious Autarch himself.

Ambassador Jeyn, taking the lead for the allies in their negotiations, got the nod from Ilka and Detrek. Jeyn stood up and smiled across the table at Rusht. The Venetans, politely, went (mostly) quiet. Crusher relaxed. Jeyn was as much a veteran of this kind of occasion as Jean-Luc.

“On behalf of my own government,” Jeyn said, “and on behalf of my two colleagues, I’d like to thank you formally for your welcome today, Rusht—”

A raised palm from Rusht stopped Jeyn in mid-flow. “You are mistaken,” Rusht said.

Jeyn, who had simply been warming up, blinked at her in surprise. “I’m sorry?”

“You are mistaken. I have offered no welcome. It would be better for all of us if you were not inaccurate. This has caused difficulties between our governments in the past and brought us to the unfortunate situation in which we find ourselves now.”

There was a short, charged, and extremely embarrassed silence. Then the Venetans began to murmur to each other. There was no glee or schadenfreude in them, but Crusher rapidly got the impression that they agreed with what Rusht had said. Again, it was not that a point had been scored but that something necessary and accurate had been said. Across the room, Alizome glowed gently and turned an impassive golden eye upon Ambassador Jeyn.

Jeyn was completely at a loss as to what to say in response to such blunt hostility. Not so Detrek, however, who, eyes flashing, leaned forward and said, “This is outrageous! You invite us to your world simply to
insult
us—?”