Gemini (11 page)

“We found her wandering the halls, sir,” said Giotto, not taking his eyes from her.

“I was not ‘wandering,'I was attempting to return here. Thank you for escorting me,” she said, sarcastically.

Regent Lonal suddenly sprang to his feet. “Where are our monarchs? Why have we not been allowed to see them, nor return them to Nador? Captain, I shall complain to the highest office in the Federation!”

“Regent Lonal, please,” said Commissioner Roget with a sigh. He was holding his wife's pale hands in both of his, and it seemed that even the seemingly bottomless well of his diplomat's patience had almost been emptied. “I assure you, the princes are in the best of hands—isn't that true, Captain?”

“Their Serene Highnesses are being operated on even as we speak,” said Kirk, gently, “for injuries sustained in the attack.”

“No!” shrieked Pataal. She seemed exhausted, yet she rose from her seat as if lifted by an outside force. “I must go to them!” She started to head for the door.

“No one can leave just yet,” said Kirk, intercepting her, gripping her shoulders. “There's nothing you can do.”

“Their Highnesses are not being allowed visitors,” said Llora, in an unidentifiable tone. “The doctor is trying to save their lives.”

Pataal sobbed anew; Kirk felt her slump in his arms and had to help her back to her chair.

Spock was scanning the crowd now. He lowered his tricorder and looked at Pataal. “Dr. McCoy is an excellent physician,” he said. “Your monarchs could scarcely be in better hands.” He looked at Kirk, and raised one eyebrow, the equivalent of a shrug. Despite the situation, or perhaps because of it, Kirk almost laughed.

“But what purpose is served by our detainment?” asked Regent Lonal. He seemed to have realized that with the princes down, he called the shots for the palace. His manner was more confident, less subservient, than Kirk had ever seen it.

“It was no coincidence that the attack upon the
Enterprise
came during your princes' visit,” said Kirk, “nor that the only part of my ship to sustain significant damage was the section your princes occupied.” He looked to his science officer. “Spock?”

“Results, Captain, but not as conclusive as we would like.”

“What is he doing?” asked Counselor Hanor, her voice sounding much like the wail of a phaser going through steel.

“Coming to conclusions, Counselor,” Kirk said. “Please remain where you are. Well, Spock?”

Spock stood next to Kirk, turned to address both his captain and the audience. “The missile which felled Princes Abon and Delor followed a specific coded frequency, sent by a minute transmitter,” said Spock, lifting his tricorder to midchest height. “I have been attempting to ascertain the source of that transmission.”

“And?” asked Kirk, impatiently. The Nadorians were all watching Spock. Was one of them unduly concerned, shifting his stance to make a break? Kirk wondered. But to turn to watch them, to have given any sign that they were being monitored, would have betrayed his intent. “Have you found the source, Spock?”

“I have, Captain,” said the Vulcan. He turned, raised his right arm, and pointed at the specially constructed chair the princes had occupied.

Kirk said nothing. He didn't trust himself to speak. That guests aboard his ship, no matter their rank or social status, had been assaulted during his watch was bad enough. But for the medium of the attack to have been an item of comfort which he had personally ordered prepared for his guests …

“Proceed,” he said, his lips barely moving.

“Yes, sir,” said Spock, moving to the chair. He held the tricorder equidistant between himself and the chair for a few seconds. Then he produced a small probe from the pouch of his tricorder, knelt before the chair, and examined it, his long fingers probing the cushions and surface of the chair in a manner much like that of McCoy examining a patient.

* * *

“Blood pressure?” asked McCoy.

“Down five points, Doctor,” said Nurse Chapel.

“I thought so,” he said, shaking his head. For seeming hours he had stared into the abyss of spinal cords and connective tissue that formed the juncture of the twin princes. Under any other circumstances, he would have been happy to examine them, to learn how their systems had learned to accommodate the double load of messages from the brain, to coordinate shared physical impulses but to keep discrete impulses separate—but not like this.

What was it he had said? “I'd love to have a look at their medical chart.” And what was it Uhura sometimes said?
Be careful what you wish for … .
He snorted, derisively.

“What was that, Doctor?”

“Nothing,” said McCoy, shortly. “Physiostimulator.”

* * *

“Captain,” said Spock. It was the first sound that had been heard in the room in several minutes, save for the muffled sobbing of the Lady Pataal.

Kirk approached, and Spock held out a pair of tweezers that seemed to contain within their prongs a piece of solidified light. No, Kirk realized, as he took the tweezers, it was a small length of metal, thinner than a needle, slightly and irregularly bent from the explosion. Yet Kirk could make out on its surface small ridges and indentations, almost like—

“Circuitry?” he asked.

Spock nodded, straightening up. “A fine example of microcircuitry. A low-yield transmitter, emitting a signal every few seconds on a frequency so low that it nearly eludes detection, unless specifically sought.”

Kirk looked up, as a sudden thought struck him. “It can't explode, can it?”

“I read no potential for destruction, Captain. Whoever brought it aboard surmised, almost certainly correctly, that an explosive device, even a diminutive one, would have been detected. This is merely a transmitter.”

“Like the rats in the Black Plague,” said Kirk.

“Sir?”

“Just a carrier.” Kirk handed it back to him with an expression of disgust, as though it had been a roach. “Full analysis,” he said, despite the fact that he knew the command was unnecessary.

Spock nodded, folding a length of sterile cloth around the microtransmitter, stowing it in the pouch of his tricorder, and leaving the chamber.

“Captain,” said Regent Lonal, in the wake of Spock's departure, “there is no proof that one of our party planted that—that device. Anyone on board your ship could have done so.”

“Anyone who possessed the technical wherewithal to create such a device,” said Counselor Hanor, “which I emphatically do not.”

“Whoever planted that device wouldn't have had to know how to make it,” said Mrs. Roget, cutting off the reply Kirk was about to make, “only to know how to plant it.”

“Janine,” said her husband, his tone softly chiding.

“Well, it's true, Sylvan,” she replied. In some part of his mind Kirk marveled at the endless patience and tolerance a diplomat's spouse had to present to the world. She probably used small comments like this to let off steam, and not often in the presence of official parties like this one.

“That is true,” said Kirk. “I'm afraid you're all going to have to submit to searches before returning to Nador.” There was a low murmur of protest, but it had no teeth to it.

“Please, Captain,” said Pataal, “is there no word as to Abon and Delor?” If anyone else in the room realized she had broken palace protocol by referring to Their Serene Highnesses by their first names, no one called her on it. Given the circumstances, it seemed a small enough offense.

“Dr. McCoy will let us know,” said Kirk. “I don't dare disturb him.”

* * *

The first thing he learned in medical school, Leonard McCoy often said, was to hate the smell of blood. Not that he couldn't tolerate it, but he realized that if he had a whiff of that scent, if he had to perform physical surgery, he might already be too late.

Then he got to know the smell of cold blood, and learned how much he welcomed the smell of it warm.

“Damn nature anyway,” said McCoy, fervently.

“Doctor?” asked Nurse Chapel.

“Yes, I know nature is the reason these two boys are still alive—the fact that their systems were able to adapt to their conjoined state—but it's also the reason they were born like this in the first place.” His fingers continued to nimbly work over the exposed flesh as he spoke; he assumed Chapel was used to his seemingly aimless monologues during surgery. They seemed purposeless at their onset, but they always went somewhere. “No matter how well they've learned to adapt, despite the fact that they're the princes, and no one could comment on their condition, there's still the fact that they were born so different that to most people they're either the recipients of amazement or pity. If it weren't for their bloodline, they could have wound up in some Nadorian sideshow.” He sighed, his fury momentarily spent. Despite his rage, his hands had never so much as quivered. “Signs?” he asked, his voice rasping.

“Stable but low,” said Chapel. “The one on the left—”

“Abon. They have names, Nurse.”

“Yes, sir. Prince Abon's signs are lower than Prince Delor's. I've removed the shrapnel and sealed his wounds, that should help.”

“He was probably closest to the bulkhead when it blew,” commented McCoy. He straightened up, took a deep breath and a sip of water from the antigrav thermos, then looked intently at Chapel. “Ready?”

Her reply was no less solemn. “Yes, Doctor.”

“Make sure you have plenty of sterilite prepared,” said McCoy. “Here we go.” He bent over the tangled mass of nerves and ganglia that connected the twins, blue eyes examining them with an intensity no medical scanner could match. “Exoscalpel.” He took the device from Chapel and began to probe, gently but thoroughly. “Make sure this is being recorded,” he said, “I want to be able to prove to the Nadorian government that we had no other choice.”

* * *

“Well?” asked Kirk, for the third time in five minutes.

“As I surmised, Captain,” said Spock, looking up from the microscanner, “an uncommon, though not unique, job of microcircuitry, composed of high-quality alloys and wiring. An excellent job of craftsmanship.” He paused for a moment. “Pardon me, I should have said, ‘I presume it to have been an excellent job of craftsmanship.'”

“It's not now?”

“No, sir. Most of its circuits have been fused beyond any functional state, doubtless due to a self-destruct signal sent after the transmitter had accomplished the task it was designed for.”

“There's no way of tracing it?” asked Kirk.

“Not to the possession of any one person, no, sir. The transmitter itself is composed of an alloy whose molecules bond extremely tightly, leaving virtually no surface room for exterior elements to cling to.”

“In other words, it's very, very smooth.”

“Your words, Captain. Such a term is unscientific in the extreme.”

“And we wouldn't want that, would we?” said Kirk, his sigh nearly subsumed by the opening of the lab doors. Spock followed him, until Kirk turned left before reaching the lift.

“Aren't you coming, Captain?”

“You go ahead, Spock. Help Giotto out with the search. I need to think.” He took his time returning to the officers' lounge, taking the intraship ladders rather than the turbolift. It felt good to stretch, to do something kinetic, and besides, let the suspects stew a while longer.

He reached the officers' lounge to find the Nadorian party divided by gender, lined up upon opposite walls of the room, and looking none too happy about it. In the center of the room stood two small, hastily erected booths. Not that anything so crude as an actual hands on body search had been required of their guests, but being isolated from the rest mitigated the embarrassment of a personal search, and, Kirk had found in the past, increased the chances that a guilty party might let something slip—an anxious glance, a gesture, a nervous twitch, that might give something away to a discerning observer.

This time, however, his experience proved no match for the facts. Chief Giotto stood outside the booth Kirk assumed had been assigned to the males, holding a tricorder and speaking in low tones to Spock, who nodded as if Giotto had been discussing the temperature of the room. They were joined after a moment by Lieutenant Sinclair, who obviously been assigned the task of supervising the women's examination. He recalled that Sinclair had done well on the security portion of her rotating assignment roster.

After a moment's further consultation the trio approached Kirk, who retreated with them to the far side of the chamber. “Besides the method by which the princes were singled out for attack, our search has elicited literally nothing, Captain,” said Spock. “None of the members of the Nadorian entourage can conclusively be proven to have planted the transmitter on the princes, nor can any one of them be proven not to have planted it.”

Kirk nodded, almost absently. He had been afraid of that. He glanced briefly at Giotto, who nodded his agreement with Spock.

“Then we haven't accomplished nothing,” said Lieutenant Sinclair, smoothing back a lock of her honey-colored hair, “we've accomplished less than nothing.” Then she seemed to have caught herself, and looked up at her superior officers. “Sorry, sirs,” she murmured, quickly.

“Never be afraid to give me the facts, Lieutenant,” said Kirk, “no matter how glum they might seem.” Despite the situation, he managed a small smile. “We don't slay messengers aboard this ship.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Sinclair, a slight flush coming to her cheeks.

“Besides, Sinclair, that's not entirely true,” said Giotto. “I'm sure the captain is aware that by the exhaustive investigation he's put the suspects through, he's reestablished, in their minds, his desire to put this matter to rest, and the lengths to which he's willing to go.”