Star Trek(20)
Reed straightened. “Sir. I’m honored that you’re entrusting Pioneer with such an important responsibility. However . . . to be honest, sir, I’m concerned that a diplomatic assignment of such delicacy is . . . well, a little outside my wheelhouse.”
“I have confidence in you, Malcolm. You know the sector, you’ve got a good crew, and you’ve been by my or T’Pol’s side for many diplomatic missions. I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t think you were the best captain, and crew, for the job.”
Reed’s chest swelled at Archer’s praise. “Thank you, sir. We won’t let you down.”
May 15, 2164
Trykar Palace Hotel, Kefvenek, Rigel II
Dular Garos gazed out the tinted panoramic window of the hotel suite, taking in the view from the fortieth story of the massive pyramidal structure that was the Trykar Palace. The garish Kefvenek Strip below was festooned with blinding lights, a compensation for the generally dim daylight in the terraformed polar regions of the planet. Not only did Raij never rise very high above the horizon, but the fierce white sunlight that baked most of the planet’s surface was blocked here by the edges of the valley in which the city was ensconced, by the dense, high rainforest of imported Rigel III vegetation beyond, and by the near-perpetual clouds and mist in the sky above—a mist supplemented by the thousands of tall, chimney-like seed-particle launchers arrayed around the region when evaporation off the rainforest was insufficient.
Even so, a few vivid sunbeams had managed to push their way through the obstacles and shine down on the Strip, casting unexpected and no doubt unwelcome light on the sordid activities it hosted. Casting his brown eyes skyward, Garos saw extraordinary beauty . . . but it wasn’t enough to efface the sleaziness of what lay below.
But then, that’s always the way, isn’t it? As much as one aspired to heights of purity and light, the ugly business in the trenches was an unavoidable fact of the universe, and accepting it was usually necessary to get anything done.
“Spectacular, isn’t it?”
Case in point, Garos thought as he shifted his gaze to the man beside him. Vemrim Corthoc was a Zami Rigelian, and his ornate robes and the elaborate, jeweled coiffure of silver-blond hair atop his head (largely concealing the blunt points of his ears) marked him as a member of the elite First Families of Rigel IV. Any fleeting illusion that Corthoc was appreciating the same view as Garos was quickly dashed, for his proud gaze was directed toward the casinos and fleshpits below, toward the garish, flashing signs and wall displays whose shifting, multicolored lights did more to obfuscate the actions of the Strip’s patrons than to illuminate them. “Just look at all those tourists down there just waiting to be fleeced. This was a desert just a few centuries ago—now it’s a fertile, umm, plain where we can farm . . . well, harvest the riches of the galaxy.”
“By putting all those people through a thresher,” Garos replied.
Corthoc laughed in what he imagined was agreement. “Exactly! See, that’s what I was going for, a, what is it, metaphor thing about farming.”
“Yes, I gathered that.” Garos controlled his reaction, regretting that Malurian masks were such technological marvels, responsive to the subtlest cues from the faces within. The Zami mask he wore now was not much different from the mask he’d worn during his months on the Akaali homeworld before his exile: smooth, pink, and fleshy with thin arcs of hair over the eyes, but without the Akaali’s forehead grooves and with somewhat sharper tips to the ears, plus a paler, longer, golden-brown wig. It was a convenience to the maskmakers that so many humanoids defaulted to that smooth, babyish appearance (the biology alignment back home attributed it to the evolutionary pressure toward neoteny), but it was an annoyance to Garos that he so often had to don such an unflatteringly bland visage. Particularly since it increasingly reminded him of the human species and Jonathan Archer, whose interference on the Akaali world had led to Garos’s exile, and who had played a key role in foiling his Vertian stratagem last year.
“I think what Corthoc is trying to say,” came a feminine voice, “is that it represents all we have to lose should Rigel align with the Federation.”
Garos turned to Retifel Thamnos, a tall, middle-aged Zami woman with pleasantly sharp features and a mane of red-gold hair, which she wore in a less elaborate, more unruly coif than Corthoc’s while somehow making it look considerably more elegant. He smiled at her, a more sincere response than he had granted Corthoc. “Exactly the position I have come to you to advocate.” The Thamnos family had fought its way to prominence more recently than the Corthocs, building its wealth and power on the exploitation of the offworlders who had come to Rigel II over the past two centuries, and cunningly wielding that power to undermine one of the entrenched ruling families and usurp its rule of a substantial portion of Rigel IV. As such, its members had not had time to grow as decadent and inbred as the Corthoc line, thus retaining their capacity for intelligence and calculation. The Corthocs had sent Vemrim as their representative to the Malurians because it got the dullard out of their hair for a time, but Retifel had volunteered to represent the Thamnos clan because she was ambitious and politically savvy.