Williams shook her head. “With respect, Admiral, I don’t think so. It all fits too well with what I learned in the Corthoc estate.”
“And if he were more aware of the Families’ plans than he led you to believe,” T’Pol countered, “he could have constructed his deception accordingly.”
“I don’t agree, Captain,” Reed told her. “Everything fits too neatly. Val’s findings on Rigel IV. The Trade Commission’s reports about the spate of corporate blackmail attempts, not just on Rigel II but on Five and the Colonies.”
He faced his erstwhile captain squarely. “Captain T’Pol, Admiral Archer, I understand you both have good reason to mistrust Garos. Maybe too good. But I have to go by the evidence, and that tells me that what Lieutenant Williams was told is probably true, regardless of the source.”
T’Pol studied him. “You are confident of this?”
He looked within himself . . . and nodded firmly. “In my judgment it’s the right call.” He took in Williams with his gaze, then told T’Pol, “I trust my officers.”
She met his eyes approvingly. “Then I concur.”
Archer took in the exchange silently, but Reed got the sense that he saw exactly what had passed between them. “Okay, then, Captains. I’m sending Hoshi the comm protocols she needs. Now go bring our people home.”
Lyaksti, Sauria
“They shut down the bar right after the occupation,” said the Saurian female on the monitor screen. “They said the saunas were contaminated with alien germs, had them filled in. Tore apart the whole place to decontaminate it. Oh, they rebuilt it, according to state-approved plans, but it hasn’t been the same.” The speaker’s face was not in the frame, but her hands kneaded a richly textured cloth. Her voice was disguised, but her story and the calluses on her hands told Jeremy Lucas that this was Bavot, the bartender from Redik’s. Antonio Ruiz and his friends had taken Lucas there a few times before the crackdown.
“Some of the old crowd never came back,” Bavot went on. “A few . . . Naralo was arrested for protesting state policy. I . . . don’t know what became of him.”
“All these arrests,” came Ruiz’s voice. Lucas knew the young engineer had used his connections to sneak into Narpra and reconnect with his old friends—those who would speak to him—although the man he’d gone in with had remained anonymous, keeping silent and out of the imager’s view. “The curfews, the laws against assembly, the soldiers patrolling the streets. Why are the people standing for this?”
“You saw how bad it got before Maltuvis came to our aid!” She sighed. “Yes, it’s been hard, but these austerity measures are necessary while the economy recovers.”
“And do you really think Maltuvis will let up once things get better? You must see what’s going on here. You’ve been occupied. He sent the plague to give him a pretext.”
Her hands kneaded the cloth more ferociously. “They told us the aliens would claim that. That they’d say anything to hide their own culpability for all the death.”
“ ‘The aliens’? This is me you’re talking to.”
“Yes, and you shouldn’t even be here. If I’m caught with you . . .”
“Look at yourself, amiga. You’re afraid of your own leaders. Is that what—”
He had been reaching for her hands, but she yanked them away. “I’m more afraid that they might be right. You . . . you should go now.”
After the playback ended, Presider Moxat, the elderly green-bronze female who chaired the Executive Council of the Saurian Global League, blinked her enormous eyes at Lucas. “What does this prove, Doctor? Only that the Narprans accept M’Tezir’s presence there.”
“You’ve seen the other evidence,” Lucas told her. “The data we obtained from the clinic in Veranith, the samples of their treatment. I can prove that the M’Tezir have deliberately weakened the serum so that it only controls the symptoms. Sobon is already synthesizing a full-strength version that should be a permanent cure. It’s not a fraction as expensive as Maltuvis claims, and it should be easy to teach Saurian physicians how to manufacture and administer the cure for themselves. Presider, we can prove that Maltuvis has been lying to the people!”
“You can assert it,” Moxat replied in a weary tone. “Even back it up with evidence. But many will not trust evidence from offworld sources. You heard that Narpran. Even she, who has felt the bite of Maltuvis’s oppression as long as anyone outside M’Tezir itself, believes that aliens would lie to conceal their guilt.”