         THE BETTER mAN
       HOWARD WEINSTEIN
          POCKET BOOKS
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Copyright ~ 1994 by Paramount Pictures. All
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STAR TREK is a Registered
Trademark of

  Paramount Pictures.

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     For Cindi,
who works in outer space
      (sort of)
while I just write about it . . .
     And Kenny,
   my first friend
          
            Author's Note

September 7, 1974 . . . a day that will live in
infamy? No. Just the day half my life ago that I
became a publicly known, officially professional
STAR TREK writer. It was nine days before my
twentieth birthday when the episode I'd written
("The Pirates of Orion") opened the animated
STAR TREK's second season on NBC's Saturday
morning schedule.

Twenty years ago! I can't believe it.

 Times flies . . . whether you're having fun or
not. Those of you over twenty-five have probably
already realized this temporal truth. (If you're
under twenty-five, you'll find out soon enough.
Take my word for it.) As Mel Brooks's classic
comedy character, the TwoThousand-Year-Old
Man, might say, "I don't know where the
millennium went. Hoo-boy! It was only yesterday
Murray was packing for the Crusades, and here it
is almost the year 2000."

 And soon to be STAR TREK's thirtieth
anniversary. It seems like only yesterday okay,
maybe last week that NBC canceled the original
STAR TREK

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            AUTHOR'S NOTE

for the second and final time. And then the reruns
started. And the conventions. And then the first
space shuttle was christened Enterprise.

  More conventions. And then the first movie.
And then the second and the third and the fourth.
And then STAR TREK: THE NEXT
GENERATION. And two more movies.

Then STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.

  Now, Paramount is about to launch yet another
new series, STAR TREK: VOYAGER. And the
first Next Generation big-screen movie is on its
way.

  What an incredible ride Gene Roddenberry
started for us three decades ago. When I jumped
aboard with that animated episode, I had no idea
I'd still be writing STAR TREK twenty years
later.

  But here I am with my sixth STAR TREK novel
for Pocket Books, and I'm finishing up my fourth
year writing scripts for the monthly "classic" STAR
TREK comic book for DC Comics. What's next?
Who knows.

  It's appropriate that this book should be about
a character for whom my affinity grows with each
passing year that loveable curmudgeon, Dr.
Leonard McCoy. Like McCoy, the older I get, the
crankier I get.

  In fact, I hoped to write a hardcover McCoy
story. But my DC Comics stablemate Michael Jan
Friedman beat me to the punch with his fine
novel Shadows on the Sun. (Is that any way to
treat a fellow Yankees fan, Mike?) However,
STAR TREK editor Kevin Ryan was nice enough
to buy my story anyway.

  I've always admired McCoy, who has uttered
many of STAR TREK's most memorable lines
over the years. Part of his appeal is that he's less
the obvious hero than Kirk or Spock. Not that
he's any less courageous, just that ostentatiously
heroic deeds don't come quite as naturally to him.

            AUTHOR'S NOTE

  But McCoy has always risen to the occasion,
and when he does, it's a conscious choice. As
McCoy himself might scoff, "Hero? I'm a doctor,
not a sandwich."

  No homage to the character created on paper
by Gene Roddenberry would be complete without
a few words of appreciation for the actor who has
brought him to life. For me and so many other
fans, DeForest Kelley's portrayal has been one of
STAR TREK's most consistent pleasures all these
years. His way with a line, that skeptical twitch of
an eyebrow, his voice and gestures, all help to
make writing about Bones McCoy a hell of a lot
of fun.

  Before I let you get on with your reading, a
special word of thanks to Michael Okuda and
Rick Sternbach. Their Star Trek The Next
Generation Techical Manual proved invaluable in
the creation of what has affectionately become
known as "technobabble," which this story needed
and I could not have invented without Mike and
Rick's clever and imaginative guide to the inner
workings of STAR TREK's many doohickeys and
gizmos.

Enjoy the voyage!

Howard Weinstein September, 1994

                 xi
                  
         HISTORIAN'S NOTE
This story takes place two years after
the events in STAR TREK: THE MOTION
PICTURE.
                 
THE BETTER men

             Chapter One

"BoNEs?" Jim Kirk stood in Dr. McCoy's
doorway, peering cautiously into his chief
surgeon's dimly lit cabin. "You're not going to
throw a bowl of plomeek soup at me, are you?"

 Kirk knew his friend to be a man of
wide-ranging, fast-changing moods, but he was
not normally given to seeking refuge in a dark
room. At the moment, Kirk couldn't even see
him and wouldn't have known McCoy was there
had he not heard an exasperated "Come in
already" a moment before.

 Even that not-so-encouraging invitation had
come only after Kirk had pressed the door chime
a halfdozen times. Following the third, he had
fleetingly considered giving up and walking away.
It was possible that McCoy, in fact, did not want
to be disturbed. But if you can't barge in
uninvited on a troubled friend, Kirk reasoned,
who can you barge in on?

 The captain entered, and the door obligingly
slid shut behind him. "Where the hell are you?"

          Howard Weinstein

  Dr. McCoy's favorite lounge chair sat a few feet
away, its back toward him as he squinted into the
gloom. The room's ambient lighting was so low, a
half-dozen fireflies would have made it look sunny
by comparison. As Kirk's eyes adjusted, he saw a
hand rise slowly over the chair's high back, give a
feeble wave, then sink from sight. He rounded the
chair and found McCoy slouched deeply into the
cushions, his bare feet pressed against a hassock,
a glass of iced amber drink cradled on his chest.

  "So," McCoy drawled, "it's come to this: 'How
shall I compare thee to a hormone-crazed
Vulcan?'"

  "Let me count the ways," said Kirk, finishing the
fractured paraphrase.

"Have I been that abominable?"

"As a matter of fact, you have. So what's wrong?"

  "You do get right to the point," McCoy said,
then proceeded to ignore Kirk's direct inquiry.
"Y'know, the day Spock threw that bowl of soup
at Christine Chapel will always be one of the
highlights of my life."

  Kirk's eyebrows twitched. "I suppose that says
something about your life."

  "Just when I think I've seen it all, there's
something waiting just around the bend."

  "Are you sure you haven't gone around the
bend yourself?"

  McCoy held his glass up, giving it a measuring
glance. "This is my first. Scout's honor." He sat up
a little straighter, forcing the memory into focus.
"I can still see that bowl flying out through his
cabin door, smashing into the wall. Poor Christine.
She poured her heart and soul into that vile
liquid "

"Figuratively speaking, of course."

  "Of course. Though with Christine, you never
knew. Remember how she used to look at Spock
when she thought nobody was watching?"

  Poor Christine, indeed, Kirk thought. She'd
always made such an obvious effort to appear
businesslike

           THE BETTER MAN

around Spock when on duty. But she couldn't
keep secrets from McCoy, with whom she'd
worked so closely, first as head nurse and now as
a fellow doctor. Kirk, too, had been aware of her
unrequited affection for the Vulcan first officer,
despite the fact that Spock was utterly incapable,
by constitution and custom, of returning her
feelings. Yet, as McCoy had observed, she never
gave up hoping a persistence that made that one
afternoon of excruciatingly public embarrassment
virtually inevitable.

  Spock had been uncharacteristically irritable and
snappish for days. Then came his threat to break
McCoy's neck a rather inappropriate response to
the doctor's well-meaning suggestion that Spock
might benefit from a physical exam.

  Even before that, Kirk had observed instances of
Spock's increasingly odd behavior. But he was as
entitled to privacy as the next man, and Kirk had
tried to overlook those moments when Spock
resembled nothing so much as a pressure cooker
threatening to blow its seal. However, the
infamous soup incident, recalled so fondly by
McCoy years later, was impossible to overlook.

  Innocently hoping that the way to a Vulcan's
heart was indeed through his stomach (even
though, as McCoy had observed on more than one
occasion, Spock's heart was where his liver should
be), Nurse Chapel had discovered a Vulcan
delicacy she thought Spock would find irresistable:
plomeek soup.

  Disdaining the food synthesisers, Christine had
actually cooked the soup herself boiling,
chopping, seasoning only to have her offering
hurled by a roaring Vulcan. The bowl barely
missed her head as she fled his cabin, then
smashed into the corridor wall opposite his door.
And it was all witnessed firsthand by Kirk, McCoy,
and assorted other passersby.

  In Spock's case, there'd been an explanation for
his behavior: an instinctual Vulcan mating drive
had

          Howard Weinstein

made him quite unaccountable for his own
actions. But Kirk hadn't a clue to the cause of
McCoy's current sulk. "Spock was going through
pon farr when he tossed that soup bowl, McCoy.
What's your excuse?"

 "If you mean, have I got an urge to mate with a
Vulcan, forget it."

 "Then, what is the problem?" Kirk spaced his
words evenly for emphasis and to indicate that his
patience was not infinite.

 "Problem?" McCoy repeated with an innocent
batting of his blue eyes.

"Yes problem. "

"No problem."

"The hell there isn't. If it's the new uniforms "

  "I'm a doctor, not a damned fashion consultant,"
McCoy growled. "Besides, I kinda like the new
uniforms. I just wish Starfleet would make up its
mind so I don't have to worry about getting
court-martialed for wearing the wrong thing one
morning."

  Kirk knew deliberate obtuseness when he saw it.
He also knew a friend under extreme stress.
"Okay. No problem. Then how do you explain the
incident in the lab?"

  McCoy turned a bland eye toward Kirk. "The
incident in the lab?"

The incident ire the lab . . .

  In the examining room, Dr. Chapel had just fin-
ished a routine check of sterile-field generators
when she heard the first crash from the adjacent
laboratory  the unmistakable sound of
unbreakable glassware bouncing off a wall. For a
moment, she attributed the crystalline impact to
someone's clumsy lapse of attention. A moment
later came a muttered string of curses, punctuated
with one final loud oath, then the clatter of more
falling glass.

She rushed through the doorway just in time to
see

           THE BETTER MAN

McCoy clearing a jumble of beakers, tubes, and
bottles off a lab table with an angry swipe of his
left arm. "Dr. McCoy!"

 He jumped at the sudden sound of her voice
intruding on his private tantrum, then whirled and
glared at her. "Good God! Doesn't anybody knock
anymore?!"

Chapel stared at him, quite astonished.

  "I didn't know you knew about that," McCoy
said mildly to Kirk.

  "Well, I do, including the fact that you refused
to explain your wrecking-ball routine to Christine.
And then you stood me and Scotty up for dinner
the last two nights when I planned to cleverly
and subtly interrogate you about the lab
incident and you pretended you weren't here
when we came to check on you. Should I go on?"

  "So that gives you the right to bust in here and
pry into my personal miseries?"

"You're the one who opened the door."

  "Yeah, well, I'm starting to regret that," McCoy
said tartly as he got to his feet and padded over to
the small cabinet he used as his bar. "You want a
drink?"

  "No," Kirk said, following him across the cabin.
"I want an explanation."

  "I'm fine. I'm a grump. I've been a grump ever
since you've known me. What's more, I was a
grump long before that. Now go 'way and let me
stew in peace."

  Kirk reached over and grabbed the bottle of
amber whiskey before McCoy could. Then he
poured generous drinks for both of them and
ushered the doctor back to his chair. Kirk pulled
up a second chair and set it face-to-face. "Talk to
me, Bones. I'm not leaving until you do."

"Bull. You've got a ship to run."

"Bull. I left Spock in charge, and you know what
an

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          Howard Weinstein

iron pants he can be. He could stay in that
command chair for days without my relieving him
. . . so I've got nothing pressing to pull me away."

  McCoy rolled his eyes. "There's never a damn
bowl of soup around when you need it." With a
rueful shake of his head, he puffed out a defeated
breath. "All right, dammit.If there's no other way
to get rid of you "

"There isn't. Talk."

"Is that an order?"

  If McCoy was hoping Kirk would get tired of his
verbal dodging, give up, and go away, he was
bound for disappointment. Instead, Kirk pointedly
ignored the sarcastic question and pressed on as if
conducting an evidentiary investigation. "As near
as I can recall, this started right after we got our
orders to divert to Starbase 86. Is it something
about Starbase 86?"

  "Don't be ridiculous," McCoy said with a dismis-
sive wave of one hand. "Even I'm not that
eccentric."

  "Is it Mark Rousseau?" His tone of voice made
it clear Kirk considered the question a rhetorical
toss.

  But when McCoy greeted the name of the
Federation ambassador they were to pick up at
Starbase 86 with stony silence, Kirk knew he'd
uncovered the burr under McCoy's saddle.

  "It is, isn't it?" Kirk prodded with a slight arch of
his eyebrows. "What do you have against Mark
Rousseau?"

  McCoy responded with a lengthy silence. "Do
you really want to know?" he finally said. At Kirk's
nod, he added, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"As someone once said, 'Scout's honor."'

  "All right, Jim. What do you know about Mark
Rousseau?"

  "Not much. He's about your age, used to be a
starship captain. I met him once years ago. He was
on the fast track to his admiral's braid when he
quit Starfleet and went into the Federation
diplomatic

           THE BETTER MAN

corps. As far as I know, he's considered to be a
gifted mediator "

"A natural," McCoy said.

  Kirk looked hard at his friend, trying to read
McCoy's expression and the way he'd said that
one word: natural. A jumble of sarcasm, irony,
deference . . . even envy? If Kirk was right,
McCoy had a serious case of mixed feelings about
this man. "I assume I'm safe in saying you know
each other?"

  "Since I was nine and he was eleven. Met him
on the first day of school . . ."

  . . . We'd just moved to this small town, so I was
the new kid Hardly had time to learn anybody's
name, much less make any friends. Hadn't had my
growth spurt yet either, so I was this skinny little kid
whose jeans were a little too baggy and hair a little
too short, thanks to one of Mom's famous kitchen
haircuts a nice ripe target for gettin' picked on . .
.

  "Nice haircut, kid," hooted the beefy boy with
the blemished face. He and his three friends
orbited around nine-year-old Leonard McCoy,
keeping pace with him as he trudged along the
tree-shaded sidewalk. They didn't impede his
progress, but they did form a threatening ring
from which they drawled their taunts.

  They were not particularly clever or creative.
Their teasing was rather mundane, aimed at the
underwhelming physical attributes of the scrawny
boy with the uneven thatch of hair. The bathroom
mirror had told him the unavoidable truth that
morning: He was not the fairest of them all, not in
Georgia or any other land. Why did his mother
have to cut his hair so short on the sides and back
and leave the front long enough to keep falling
limply in front of his eyes?

"Whose pants you got on? Your daddy's?"

  Leonard tried to ignore them. It was only seven-
thirty in the morning, but he already felt a trickle
of

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          Howard Weinstein

sweat down his back. Southern summers didn't
care that the calendar said September. They
lingered, as damp and persistent as the morning
mist hugging the grass and hanging over the
stream gurgling alongside the road to the
old-fashioned clay-brick schoolhouse.

 Had they been placed in an old-fashioned police
lineup, Leonard would not have been able to
identify the bullies. All he knew was that two were
skinny, two were stocky. They were all older boys,
maybe eleven, and all a head taller than him. He'd
have had to look up to see their faces, and he was
too busy watching his feet, making certain that he
didn't trip over the sidewalk squares pushed up by
the roots of the old trees stooping like drowsy old
men watching the world pass by.

 Without thinking, Leonard hugged his lunch box
tight under one arm. A moment later, he regretted
the action.

"Hey, kid, must be some special lunch you got!"

 Though it was only a momentary distraction, it
was enough to make Leonard trip and sprawl on
the rough walk. The lunch box skittered free of his
hands, coming to rest just out of reach. The lead
bully snatched it up. For the first time, Leonard
looked up at the bigger boy's face. It wasn't what
he'd expected. No scars, no cruel eyes, no sneering
mouth.

No fangs.

  Just a bland round face with freckles and sun-
bleached hair. The bully took a quick glance at the
lunch box now in his hands. It was as
unremarkable as he was, except for the corner
labeled with Leonard's name. "What do they call
you, kid Leecon? Or maybe Leonardo."

  "Leonard," said the smaller boy as he tried to
get up. One of the skinny junior bullies used his
foot to shove Leonard back onto his rump.

"Well, you're Leonardo to me," said the leader as 8

           THE BETTER MAN

he shook the lunch box next to his ear. "What'd
yo' mama give ya for lunch, Leonardo?"

  "Hey! Don't shake it!" Leonard desperately
wanted his voice to come out as a snarl, but all he
got was a quavering plea.

  The bully turned his attention to the lunch box
latch. "Must be somethin' special like baby food."
He basked in his friends' derisive laughter.

  The latch snapped open. Leonard's eyes
widened with fear, which turned out to be a
surprisingly strong motivation. "Don't open that!"
he shouted, scrambling to his feet and springing
toward the bully, reaching for the elusive lunch
box.

  But Leonard's headlong leap was aborted by
several hands that held him in place while the
leader laughed. "Why not?" he teased, lifting the
lid partway. "Well, lookit! Leonardo's got a live
frog for lunch!"

  Leonard felt his face flush hot and red with
anger and embarrassment as his four tormentors
exploded in loud laughter.

  "He's not lunch, you jerk! He's a pet!" He tried
to wriggle free, but hostile hands held him tight.
God, he'd never wanted to punch anybody as
much as he did right now! But all he could do was
watch in horror as the bully opened the lid all the
way, and the frog literally leapt at the opportunity
for freedom.

  It landed awkwardly on the grass, then bounced
straight for the stream.

"Let go of me!" Leonard wailed.

  But the bullies ignored him, as if they'd
forgotten they were holding him. They were
fascinated by the frog. "Lookit 'im jump!"

  From a well of fury Leonard McCoy didn't even
know he had, he summoned up a genuine snarl.
"Let me goooo!"

"Hey, Leonardo, that's no way "

"Calvin, you might want to let him go," said a

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          Howard Weinstein

deeper voice from behind McCoy. It was calm,
but the tone left no doubt the speaker wasn't
merely making a suggestion.

  Leonard turned to see his would-be savior. He
was a black boy with a patient expression instead
of the avenging fire McCoy had hoped to see in
his eyes. He didn't look any older than the bullies,
and he was no taller than they were. But he was
broader than even the beefy leader, and the
contours under his knit shirt made it obvious he
had already developed real muscle where the bully
had baby fat.

  Calvin's wide smirk shrank down to a wan smile.
"Hey now, Mark. Don't want no trouble."

  "Never said you did," said the savior, Mark. "So
let's get to school before we're late unless you
all're headed for the pond for a little extra
summer vacation."

  The bullies were still holding McCoy, but their
grip had relaxed as their attention turned toward
Mark and making a face-saving retreat. Leonard
finally pulled free and watched for a moment,
even though he really wanted to search for his
runaway frog.

  "What if we were?" said Calvin. "You weren't
plannin' on tellin' on us, were ye?"

Mark shrugged. "I don't care what you do."

  Calvin and his junior thugs backed away. "Okay
then, Mark, we'll see y'all in school" he laughed,
doing his best to sound superior "in a couple
weeks or so."

  The bullies left the scene of their crime,
sauntering with a studied casualness, trying to
make their exit look as voluntary as possible.
Watching them go, Leonard tensed as he felt a
hand on his shoulder.

It was just Mark. "You okay?"

McCoy shrugged. "I guess. Thanks."

"My name's Mark Rousseau."

"Leonard McCoy."

10

           THE BETTER MAN

  "Not Leonardo." The boys shook hands. "You
want some help looking for your frog, Leonard?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

  We never did find that frog. But I found a friend
. . . my f rst friend there

" and my best friend for years after that."

  Kirk frowned as McCoy paused to drain his
glass. "And then what?"

"What do you mean?"

  "That's obviously not the end of the story. The
guy saves you from bullies, you become best
friends, and forty years later the very mention of
his name makes you want to throw crockery
against the wall."

  "You're the one who thinks I want to throw
crockery ,,

"Do you love the guy or do you hate him?"

  "Yes." McCoy sighed in reaction to an
exasperated roll of Kirk's eyes. "It's not that
simple, Jim. Mark was one of those kids who was
good at everything  sports, music, school, you
name it. He had umpteen girlfriends and every
one of 'em ended up being best friends with him
even after they broke up. Everybody liked him. It
was hard not to like him . . ."

  McCoy's voice trailed off but not before
betraying his conflicting emotions toward Mark
Rousseau, the man who wasn't there but who
would be in another day or so. Before Rousseau
set foot on the Enterprise, Kirk wanted to
understand this complex relationship between his
chief surgeon Kirk's best friend and the special
ambassador coming aboard to execute some vital
mission still to be revealed to Kirk and his crew
by Rousseau himself.

  "It was hard not to like him," Kirk repeated,
"but ?"

  The pained flinch in McCoy's jaw made his
resistance obvious. It was almost as if he felt he'd
be com

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          Howard Weinstein

milting sacrilege by saying something negative
about Mark Rousseau. But he knew Kirk wouldn't
let him get away with any sidesteps at this point.
His shoulders sagged. "Have you ever known
anybody who was just too damned perfect
sometimes?"

"Other than you?"

  "Very funny. Sometimes, as hard as it was to not
like Mark, it was just as hard to be his friend. You
know how competitive kids can be. With him, it's
like there was this natural law: I'd never be better
than him at anything. And God knows I felt
inadequate enough without knowing that. I'm not
proud of this, but sometimes I just wanted him to
fall flat on his face in front of the whole town."
McCoy paused in his difficult confession. When he
finished, it was a whisper. "Sometimes I prayed for
it."

"Did it ever happen?"

"Of course not."

"And you survived your childhood envy?"

  "I survived. And we grew up." McCoy poured
himself a refill, then went on without any further
prodding from the captain. "And even though we
moved again, Mark and I stayed friends. We
hadn't seen each other for a while when I got
invited to his going-away party . . ."

  . . . It seemed like only yesterday we were wading
into that stream, lookingfor my damnedfrog And
now he was heading off to Starfleet Academy . . .

  The four cars of the bullet-shaped trolley slid
silently to a stop at the Savannah station platform.
As McCoy stepped out, his overnight bag slung
over one shoulder, he caught sight of an
onrushing bulk coming from his right. He barely
had time to brace himself when he felt Mark
Rousseau's strong arms wrap him in a bear hug.

  "Leonard! It is so great to see you. Your being
here means a lot to me."

                 12
                  
           TF1EBETTER MAN

  "How could I miss it now that you.finally
decided what to do with all that talent." With an
exaggerated gasp, McCoy slapped his hands to his
cheeks in a sarcastic imitation of distraught youth
wrestling with life's choices. "Symphony
pianist or starship captain? Oh whatever will I
do?"

  "Very funny, McCoy." Mark looked his friend up
and down. "So you're finally as tall as me, even
though you'd still get blown away by a stiff wind."

  It was true. At seventeen and nineteen, the two
young men were eye to eye, but McCoy still felt
small compared to his muscular friend.

  "So how about you, Leonard?" Mark asked as
they followed the shady walk away from the
station. "You made any decisions yet?"

"Well . . . medical school, probably."

  "Mmm. The family business," Mark said with a
knowing nod. Then he looked directly at McCoy,
eyes bright with possibilities. "Hey, you should join
Starfleet, too! We could serve on the same ship."

  McCoy gave his friend a slow, dubious glance.
"I suppose you're gonna be the captain?"

  "Naturally," Mark said with a grin. "You'll be my
chief surgeon."

  "You'll never get me into a transporter, I can
tell you that."

"Then I'll just have to court-martial you."

  They both laughed, then walked quietly for a
while. McCoy really wasn't sure what he wanted to
do. All the nights he'd lain awake, hours after
going to bed, listening to the sounds outside his
bedroom window, the clicks and chirps and croaks
he'd always found so soothing . . . And now they
were like so many voices peppering him with
choices about what to do with his life and who to
do it with and where they'd go and who they'd be.

  Choices that had to be made, sooner or later.
Choices that no one could make for him. McCoy
had

                 13
                  
          Howard Weinstein

read enough psychology to know that struggling
with seemingly momentous decisions was an
inescapable part of coming of age. But
preparation didn't make it any easier. Even Mark,
who'd always seemed so sure of himself, had
taken a year off before setting course for
Starfleet. But now that the decision had been
made, McCoy had no doubts that his friend would
sail smoothly toward inevitable success.

 "You met somebody," Mark said flatly,
interrupting McCoy's tangential thoughts. It wasn't
a question, but a statement of certain fact.

It caught McCoy off guard. "Huh?"

"You met somebody."

"What makes you so sure?"

  Mark shrugged and smiled. "You look even
more confused than usual, that's what. I'm right,
aren't I." Again, a statement, not a question.

  "Of course you're right," McCoy said with a
rueful shake of his head, glaring at Mark as he bit
off each word. "You're always right. Don't you get
tired of being so damn right all the time?" Then he
turned away, wondering if Mark had noticed the
angry edge that had crept into his voice. He
hadn't meant for that to happen . . . or had he? In
any case, Mark either hadn't picked up on it or
he'd opted to ignore it.

  "And how does this special lady feel about
beaming around the galaxy?"

"I don't know. We haven't gotten that far yet."

  There was that all-knowing Rousseau nod again.
"You will," he said cryptically.

  The comment and tone might have been
infuriatingly smug from someone else. But so
many times in the decade they'd been friends,
Mark really did seem to know, so McCoy could
neither get very mad at him nor stay mad for
long. "So, how about you?" McCoy asked in fair
turnabout.

  "I I guess I'm seeing somebody," Mark said
with uncharacteristic hesitation.

14

           THE BETTER MAN

"You guess?" McCoy teased.

  "I'm seeing somebody," he said with more
certainty, grinning sheepishly at his own
equivocation. "Erica.7'

"Is Erica as perfect as you?"

  "Actually, she really is perfect," Mark beamed.
"She'll be there tonight. You'll like her, Leonard."

  McCoy's brows lowered like stormcloudsinto a
mock threatening frown. "Oh-ho, that's why you
wanted to know if I was seein' somebody. You
wanted to be sure I wouldn't steal perfect Erica
away from you."

  With a laugh, Mark threw his arm over McCoy's
shoulders and pulled him close. "That's it. Thanks
to your lady-friend, I can relax and enjoy myself .
. ."

  "Nobody ever stole a girl from Mark Rousseau,"
McCoy said, peering into his glass as he swirled
the brandy around.

"So he went off to Starfleet " Kirk prompted.

" and I lost my best friend."

"Didn't you keep in touch?"

  "Yeah. But it wasn't the same. Didn't get to see
each other much . . . I got married, and then I
started med school. He had Erica, two perfect
kids in perfect domestic bliss, and his Starfleet
career. And then, well, it's a big galaxy. You know
how that goes."

  Kirk scratched the back of his neck, looking per-
plexed. "Then I don't get it. If you and Rousseau
were such great long-lost pals, why aren't you
thrilled at the prospect of seeing him again?"

"Let's just say we had . . . a falling out."

  Kirk blinked in disbelief. "After all that, a
'falling out' hardly begins to "

  "Jim, leave it alone. " McCoy's tone made it
clear he considered the subject closed.

Kirk raised both hands in a gesture of surrender.

                 15
                  
          Howard Weinstein

"Fine. If you feel like telling me the rest, you
know where to find me. Otherwise, consider it left
alone "

"Good."

" except for one thing."

 McCoy groaned, but Kirk continued without
comment. "Mark Rousseau's coming aboard for
this mission whether you like it or not. Is that
going to be a problem for you?"

"I'll manage."

 Kirk left, but he found himself wishing McCoy
had sounded more convincing both to Kirk and
to himself.

                 16
                  
                     -Chapter T`~,o

 [emale voiceC mPUter replied in its soothing

                 17
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "First command: science-exploration-survey ves-
sel U.S.S. Richard Feynman in 2254. Second com-
mand: experimental vessel U.S.S. Manhattan in
2255. Third command: starship U.S.S. Hood in
2256. Fourth and final command: starship U.S.S.
Lexington in 2261. Retired from active Starfleet
service in 2264."

  Few officers any command as rapidly as
Rousseau had, and even fewer skip so quickly
from smaller vessels to heavy-cruiser-class
starships. "What was Captain Rousseau's exact age
when posted to the Hood?"

"Thirty years, seven months, twelve days."

  So that's how much I beat him by, Kirk thought
with a hint of a smile. He'd always wondered but
had never bothered to check. Before Kirk came
along, Mark Rousseau had been the youngest
starship captain in Starfleet history. Kirk had
wrested that honor away from him, assuming
command of the Enterprise just after his thirtieth
birthday. Sooner or later, of course, somebody
would come along and beat Kirk's benchmark, just
as he had bested Rousseau's.

  But until then, Kirk could forgive himself for
privately indulging his justifiable pride in that
particular achievement. It was one of the few
personal vanities he allowed himself, and it meant
even more now that he'd learned something about
the kind of man Mark Rousseau was.

  "Computer, access Dr. Leonard McCoy's service
record."

  "McCoy, Leonard H., M.D.... first deep-space
assignment as Starfleet junior medical of fleer in
2253, aboard U.S.S. Republic "

  "Utah, skip that," Kirk said with a wave of his
hand. "Cross-reference service records of McCoy
and Rousseau, reporting coincident assignments."

  "Acknowledged. Concurrent service of Dr.
McCoy and Captain Rousseau aboard Starfleet
science

                 18
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

exploration-survey vessel U.S.S. Richard Feynman
in 2254."

  Kirk's eyebrows went up. "Oh? That's
interesting. What was McCoy's rank and posting?"

"Rank: lieutenant. Posting: chief medical officer."

"How long was McCoy aboard the Feynman?"

"Seven months, nine days."

  Hmm. . . not very long, Kirk thought. What's
more, this was the first he'd ever heard of that
assignment. McCoy had never mentioned it.
"Where did McCoy transfer when he left the
Feynman?"

  "Transferred to the med-evac emergency vessel
U.S.S. Coop."

"As?"

"Junior medical officer."

  Kirk frowned as he digested what he'd just
learned from the computer. It would have been
unusual  almost unheard of for a doctor with
as little deepspace experience as McCoy had when
he joined the Feynman's crew to be appointed
chief surgeon on any Starfleet ship on merit alone.
No matter how good a doctor he may have been,
such an assignment would have taken a
miracle or strenuous string pulling by the ship's
commanding officer. In this case, that commander
had been Mark Rousseau.

  Still, such interventions did happen. Starfleet
was hardly immune. So McCoy would have been
reunited with his boyhood pal, just as they'd
dreamed years earlier.

  You'd think he would have been happy about
that, Kirk mused. But the facts pointed to an
opposite outcome: a precipitous transfer off the
Feynman along with a demotion in stature, if not
rank, and the subsequent twenty-year
estrangement of old friends. It didn't take a great
detective to conclude that something serious must
have gone wrong.

  But what? Kirk had no idea, but he was
determined to find out, preferably before
Rousseau came aboard. 19

          Howard Weinstein

The singsong whistle of the intercom interrupted
the captain's inquiry, followed a moment later by
a familiar voice. "Spock to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here."

"We are on final approach to Starbase 86, sir."

"Thank you, Mr. Spock. On my way. Kirk out."

  Kirk reached for his uniform jacket and headed
for the bridge. Unfortunately, his quest for
answers to lately revealed mysteries of McCoy's
past would have to wait.

  The sleek form of the Starship Enterprise slipped
into orbit around Starbase 86, an unremarkable
space station positioned in the Alpha Kratonii
planetary system, known primarily for a string of
productive laming colonies.

  Commander Scott was already behind the
console when Kirk and Spock walked into
transporter room 3 to greet their incoming guest.

"Coordinates already set, sir," Scott said.

  Kirk looked from his engineer to his first
officer. McCoy was notably absent. "Well, are we
ready to meet the legend?"

  "We're kind o' legendary ourselves, sir," Scott
said with a sly smile.

"That we are, Scotty. Energize."

  Scott engaged the unit. The familiar hum modu-
lated up, then down, as a tall, burly man
materialized in the chamber. Before Kirk could
move toward him, the man was already down the
steps in one stride, his right arm outstretched. He
grasped Kirk's hand with a firmness that was virile
without being intimidating.

  A perfect handshake, Kirk found himself
thinking. He wondered if he'd come to regret
having McCoy tell as much as he had about
Rousseau. It would be hard to avoid measuring
the fiesh-and-blood man against the myth of
McCoy's memories. "Welcome to the Enterprise,
Ambassador Rousseau."

                 20
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

 "Thank you, Captain." Rousseau's voice carried
a resonance altogether fitting for a man of his
imposing physical stature. His precise diction
suggested an amalgam of all the accents to which
he'd been exposed as both starship commander
and diplomat, yet without a trace of the Southern
drawl McCoy had retained despite all his years
away from Georgia's red-clay soil. "It's good to see
you again."

 "I didn't think you'd remember our having met,"
Kirk said with a touch of honest surprise. "It was
quite some time ago and rather brief, as I recall."

 Rousseau smiled broadly. "Almost ten years
ago  at that Starfleet conference on that Klingon
mischief near Donatu 5. You'd just taken
command of the Enterprise, and I was just about
to retire from the Lexington. "

"You've got a good memory, Mr. Ambassador."

  "How could I not remember the fellow who
snatched away my record as the youngest captain
in Starfleet," Rousseau said with a hearty laugh
and a friendly squeeze on Kirk's shoulder.

  Kirk gestured toward his officers, who acknowl-
edged their introductions with respectful nods.
"This is my first officer, Commander Spock, and
Commander Montgomery Scott, chief engineer."

  "Gentlemen, your reputations precede you. I
don't mind telling you all I was quite jealous of
Chris Pike having Mr. Spock as his first officer
those last few years he had the Enterprise. And I
barbered some ill will toward you, Captain, when
you inherited him. I tried my damndest to steal
him away. And, Mr. Scott, I must say the
Enterprise is as impressive as I thought she'd be
from reading your tech reports on her refit."

  "You read those, sir?" Scott said, genuinely
amazed. It had always been one of Scotty's private
peeves that Captain Kirk never seemed all that
interested in the technical minutiae of the ship for
which they had such mutual affection.

                 21
                  
          Howard Weinstein

 Rousseau leaned toward Scotty, who looked
quite pleased at the compliment. "An old habit
from my Starfleet days. I almost became an
engineer myself. You should be proud of the work
you did on this old girl."

"I am, sir."

  Rousseau scanned the room, then sighed. "And
where's my old Fiend, Dr. McCoy?"

  Kirk's eyes shifted, trying to cover any visible
discomfort. "Utah, he had some business to take
care of. He'll be meeting us at the briefing room."

  "Well, then, I guess we should get right to it so
you'll know where I'm dragging you off to and
why."

  McCoy sat alone at the briefing room table,
looking up as the door slid open. Mark Rousseau
seemed to fill the doorway with his grinning face.
"Leonard!" he boomed.

  McCoy stood slowly and had barely risen from
his seat by the time Rousseau rounded the table
and wrapped him in a hug. In return, McCoy
patted Rousseau's back with noticeable
diffidence  noticeable to everyone but the
ambassador, it seemed. He looked nothing short
of pleased to see his old friend, McCoy's lack of
enthusiasm notwithstanding.

  "You look great for an old guy," Rousseau said
with a chuckle.

  "You, too," McCoy said as he disengaged from
the hug, "though you have put on a few pounds."

  Rousseau shrugged and patted his ample
midsection. "The perils of home cooking." Then he
turned to the others who had spread out around
the long table. "We're old chums, haven't seen
each other in years. But we'll have time to catch
up after we're under way. So, let's get down to
business."

  As everyone took their seats, Rousseau sat at
the main terminal and popped a data cassette into
its slot.

                 22
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

Then he leaned forward, resting his big clasped
hands on the table. "We've got a crisis to deal
with at Nova Empyrea."

  The only Enterprise of fleer react was McCoy.
His eyebrows shot up at the name of the planet.
Kirk noticed.

  "I've never heard of Nova Empyrea," the captain
said, "but apparently you have, Doctor."

  "There's no reason for any of you to know about
Nova Empyrea, Captain," Rousseau said. "No
reason for anybody here other than Dr. McCoy
and me. It was a colony we stumbled across when
I was captain of the Feynman, and Dr. McCoy was
my chief surgeon. We were exploring the
Campana Sector, the first survey ship out there."
He touched the computer keypad and the sector
star chart lit the viewscreen.

"What kind of colony?" Kirk asked.

  "A human colony," McCoy said, his tone flat.
"The founders left Earth back in the early days of
warp drive, about a hundred and fifty years before
we bumped into them."

  "They weren't exactly happy to be found by us,"
Rousseau continued. "But their star system was an
unusual binary configuration an older,
established system had captured a younger star
with planets just forming. We'd never come across
one quite like it. We couldn't pass it by."

  Rousseau touched the keypad again, and images
from the Feynman's original visit were displayed
on the viewer, showing how the combined solar
systems looked from the distant perspective of an
approaching starship.

  "Fascinating," Spock said softly. "Quite rare, and
certainly worthy of study."

  "That's what Starfleet Cosmology and
Astrophysics and the Federation Science Academy
thought. So we were ordered to negotiate for
permission to set up a

                 23
                  
          Howard Weinstein

Federation science outpost at Nova Empyrea. Our
talks went on for almost four months, which gave
us time to not only start our own astrophysical
studies, but also to learn more about this colony,
which was almost as interesting as their stars."

  "How so?" Kirk asked. "You said they weren't
exactly happy to be found."

  "They weren't just another lost colony,"
Rousseau said. "From the day their founders set
out, they meant to sever all ties with Earth. Their
goal was to establish an isolated society, sealed off
from outsiders."

  "Intentionally isolated? For what purpose?"
asked Spock.

  McCoy spoke up. "They wanted to use the most
advanced genetic management techniques to help
the human organism reach its highest possible
level of physical and intellectual quality."

  "Which is where Bones came in," Rousseau said.
"He led our investigation into the biomedical side
of the colony. Well, to make a long story short, we
managed to convince the Empyreans to allow our
outpost. It's quite extensive, actually, with a
ground base, an orbital platform, and a network of
satellites. It's been operating for the past eighteen
years, though under conditions of strict separation
from Empyrean society."

  Kirk suppressed a shudder. It had only been a
half-dozen years since the Enterprise had found the
S.S. Botany Bay, the centuries-old sleeper ship
adrift near the Mutara Sector. Their confrontation
with its commander, Khan Noonien Singh, and his
cadre of genetic supermen had nearly cost the
lives of Kirk and his crew. So, here and now, none
of them were predisposed to welcome with
anything but wary misgivings the notion of a
genetically perfected enclave.

  "We've had our own experiences with the
products of genetic engineering," Kirk said coldly.

                 24
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

 Rousseau nodded. `'1 read about your run-in
with Khan. But this was different. These were not
people bent on conquest."

"Most madmen swear to benign intentions."

  "The original Empyreans knew that, Captain,
and they didn't want to leave anything to chance.
They set up a code of laws as rigorous and well
thought out as any I've ever seen."

  "Jim," McCoy said, "God knows I'm the last
person to defend Khan or the whole damned
concept of unnatural selection. But the
Empyreans knew all about the Nazis and the
Eugenics Wars. They'd studied them. They
believed that good science coupled with staunch
morality and benign motivation might actually
accomplish something."

  Scotty didn't bother to disguise his skepticism.
"And what might that be, Doctor?"

  "Good as we are," McCoy said, "we humans are
far from perfect. From a scientific standpoint,
you've got to admit there's room for
improvement."

  Kirk gave him a measuring look. "You sound
like a convert."

  "Not on God's green earth," McCoy said with an
emphatic shake of his head. "But I've got to tell
you that colony was pretty damned impressive in
a lot of ways."

  "What we found was an enlightened, peaceful
society of outstanding cultural, scientific, and
physical achievement," the ambassador said as he
keyed the data cassette again, this time displaying
a series of images of himself, McCoy, and other
Feynman crew members on Nova Empyrea
eighteen years ago.

  From what Kirk could see of their clothing,
architecture, and artifacts of daily life, the
Empyreans favored a style best described as clean
classicism. The people themselves were strikingly
handsome but not abnormally so. Including all
human races as well as

                 25
                  
          Howard Weinstein

racial mixtures, they seemed a notch better on all
physical scales than garden-variety randomly bred
humans.

 "As you can see," Rousseau narrated, "they were
bigger, stronger, and more physically perfect than
the human norm but not homogenized in any way.
In addition, compared to random populations of
similar size, we found them to be more intelligent,
intellectually gifted, and talented in areas running
the whole gamut of human endeavors, from
athletics to the sciences to the arts."

 The ambassador scanned the faces of McCoy's
crewmates around the table. They were clearly
skeptical. "Well, I can see I'm not going to
convince you with this little presentation. You'll
see for yourselves what Dr. McCoy and I saw."

 "Maybe," Kirk said, his one word giving voice to
the resistance he shared with the rest of the senior
officers present. "You mentioned a crisis.
Specifics?"

 "The Empyreans want the astronomy outpost re-
moved."

Kirk's eyebrows rose. "After eighteen years?
Why?"

  "No reason given. The Federation Science
Academy believes there's still great value in
keeping it there. So we've asked for one last
chance to negotiate a renewal of our treaty. The
Empyrean Council was not encouraging about the
possibilities, but they've grudgingly agreed to let
us send a delegation. Because of our past
dealings, they specifically requested me and Dr.
McCoy."

  Kirk glanced reflexively toward McCoy, who
looked more than a little startled.

  "If the Empyreans don't change their minds,"
Rousseau continued, "the Enterprise is to
dismantle the outpost and remove Federation
equipment and personnel."

  McCoy blinked in confusion. "I can see why they
asked for you, Mark. I mean, you led the
negotiations. 26

           THE BETTER MAN

But why me? I'm a doctor, not a diplomat. I had
nothing to do with that treaty."

  "To be honest," Rousseau said with a shrug, "I
have no idea why they wanted you along, Bones.
But they did. So when we get there, you'll be
joining me in meeting with Council President
Elizabeth March."

  At the mention of the name Elizabeth March,
Kirk glimpsed a shadow of jumbled emotion in
McCoy's eyes. It wasn't enough to determine what
was flashing through the doctor's mind at that
moment, but more than enough to evoke
additional concern on Kirk's part. His friend had
already found Rousseau's arrival unsettling for
reasons Kirk still didn't quite understand. What
else isn't McCoy telling me, and how far should I
push him to find out?

  Kirk leaned toward the doctor. "Is this council
president someone you knew?"

  "Not really. The name just rang a bell, that's
all," McCoy said, seeming just a little too insistent
as he avoided Kirk's gaze. "She was some midlevel
science attache. Just somebody I worked with.
Competent."

  McCoy's blue eyes flickered toward Kirk for a
moment, then looked away again, fanning Kirk's
suspicions further. "That's it?"

"That's it," McCoy repeated.

  "You've got a better memory than I do, Bones,"
Rousseau said. "I don't think I remember her at
all." Then he looked around the table. "That's all
I have. Does anybody have any questions?"

  No one did. Kirk swiveled his chair and stood.
"All right, then "

  McCoy was already on his way out the door
without a word or a look back. Kirk watched him
disappear from view as he continued. "Thank you,
Mr. Ambassador. The Enterprise is at your
service."

  Rousseau smiled. "Much appreciated, Captain.
I'd love to see the bridge, if you don't mind some
kibbitzing from an old hand."

                 27
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "Not at all. Consider yourself welcome
anywhere on the ship. Mr. Spock, why don't you
escort Ambassador Rousseau to the bridge. I'd
like you to take the conn for a while. Best
speed to Nova Empyrea."

  Spock nodded. "May I ask where you will be,
Captain?"

"Utah, tending to some unfinished research."

                 28
                  
            Chapter Three

"JIM, YOU ARE one nosy sonofabitch," Dr.
McCoy growled, glaring up at Kirk from his cabin
lounge chair.

"Thanks. I try."

"That was not a compliment!"

 "I don't care," Kirk said pleasantly, helping
himself to a drink and sitting in a facing chair.
"What I do care about is you. If you're going to
hide things from me, how the devil am I going to
help you deal with this?"

"I didn't notice I was asking for help."

"Well, fortunately, I did."

  McCoy rubbed his eyes wearily, losing the bite
in his voice. "Lord protect us from starship
captains who think they're psychotherapists," he
moaned. Then he lowered his hands, peeking out
as if hoping Kirk would no longer be sitting there,
looking at him. But the captain hadn't budged an
inch.

  "Now, tell me what really happened between you
and Mark Rousseau aboard the Feynman."

                 29
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "All right," McCoy sighed. "It wasn't long after
I shipped out. I was still getting used to Starfleet
life, getting used to the idea that being a space
docwas as different from my dad's practice in
Georgia as night and day. There I was, as green as
grass, and Stardeet's sending me from one
emergency to the next . . ."

  . . . Those first few months away from Earth, I
saw more blood and butchery than I ever thought I'd
see in ten lifetimes. I still wasn 't sure who I was or
what I was doing. I still wasn't sure I shouldn't go
back home and try to make some sense of everything
I'd run away from

  When I'd go to sleep, I'd see the faces I left
behind. My wife. . . I still didn't know why our
marriage didn't work. And Joanna . . . how she
looked the last time I saw her. My little girl . . . and
I wasn 't going to be there to see her grow up.

  And then, out of the blue, I get transfer orders.
Nobody told me why, and I was too chicken to ask
questions. So there I am, hopping a Starfleet supply
ship on its way to a starbase rendezvous . . .

  Every time McCoy stepped into a transporter,
the little wise-ass voice in the back of his head
would laugh maniacally: Your atoms are about to
get scattered to the four winds. Say bye-bye, sucker
. . .

  So far, though, the little voice had been wrong.
And once more, McCoy gratefully found himself
wholely reconstituted in the transporter chamber
of the U.S.S. Feynman. Seeing the hesitation in his
step, the transporter chief waved him off the
platform.

  "You've got to move your feet, son," said the
gray-haired woman. "Nobody's going to do it for
you."

  His duffel bag slung over his shoulder, McCoy
nodded dumbly and shuffled down the steps,
hoping someone would eventually tell him why he
was here. When the doors to the corridor
suddenly slid open, he

                 30
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

looked up with a start as Mark Rousseau strode
through.

  "Welcome aboard, Leonard!" he said, clapping
McCoy on the shoulder.

  Caught thoroughly off guard, McCoy could only
blink. Then he realizedhis friend was wearing a
captain's uniform. "Mark, is this your ship?" he
finally managed to ask.

  "Damn right," Rousseau said, grinning. "And
you're my new chief surgeon."

  McCoy's eyes bugged wide and his Adam's
apple bobbed. "Ch chief surgeon?"

  Now, keep in mind I had about as much right
being a chief surgeon at that point in my career as
you do, Jim. It didn't take long for me to find out
how I got there: Mark happily admitted he'd greased
the right wheels and whistled the right tune. Hell, he
was Starfleet's pride and joy, so they couldn't
begrudge him a little favor, like having his
completely underqualified friend assigned as his chief
medical officer . . .

  "What makes you think I want to be your chief
medical officer or anybody's for that matter?!"

  McCoy had been aboard long enough to find his
cabin and his righteous indignation. Right now, he
found himself in a private corner of the Feynman's
cramped rec lounge, waving his arms angrily at his
old friend and new commanding officer.

"Cool your rockets, Leonard."

"Is that an order sir?" McCoy said sarcastically.

  "What are you so upset about? Didn't we talk
about serving together? Well, I was in a position
to make it happen."

  "So I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life
thanking you?"

  "Once would be enough, if you ever stop
snarling at me."

  McCoy shook his head. "What the hell am I
thanking you for?"

31

          Howard Weinstein

  "Well, for one thing, most doctors have to wait
years to make chief surgeon, even on a little
science ship like this one. Or aren't you interested
in career advancement?"

  "Geez, Mark," McCoy said, getting up and
pacing to the observation window, "I don't know
what I'm interested in. I don't even know if I'm
gonna stay in Starfleet." He felt a supportive hand
touch his shoulder, but he refused to turn away
from the window that overlooked the starbase
asteroid sparkling in the starlight.

  "Leonard, you can't keep looking back. You've
got to get on with your life."

  "Shouldn't that be my choice?" Bitterness
colored McCoy's voice, but he didn't care. He was
tired of wrestling with the grief and the self-pity
and just as tired of keeping it to himself. Hell, lots
of marriages flop. His wife wasn't the first to find
comfort in the arms of a man other than her
husband, and McCoy knew he was to blame for
pushing her toward that fateful step with his own
unintentional indifference.

  Arid Mark's right, damn him. I should be moving
on. But McCoy frankly had no idea if he'd ever be
strong enough to do that, decisively and finally.
And until he was, he knew he'd resent and resist
anybody  however well-meaning who tried to
help him. He knew how stupid it was to feel that
way, how much energy it wasted, but he couldn't
help how he felt.

  At last, he turned toward Rousseau. He spoke
softly. "I'm not a goddam chess piece."

  Mark frowned at his friend for a long moment,
then nodded slowly. "You're right. I probably
should've asked if you wanted to transfer here."

  "Probably?" said McCoy with a jiggle of his eye-
brows.

  Mark shrugged in surrender. "Okay. I should
have. If you want to go back to whatever
godforsaken place I

                 32
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

saved you from, just say the word. I'll look like an
idiot "

"Not that uncommon, apparently."

 " but I'll do it for you. We're not leaving
starbase for two days. Why don't you think it over
for that long?"

"Fair enough."

"You stayed?"

 McCoy nodded at Kirk, taking a sip of brandy.
"Entropy. I was there already. It's not like I had
anyplace better to go. But I never got over how I
felt, not completely."

"The resentment?"

  "Yeah. I kept thinking the Mark Rousseau I
knew before would never've done anything so
high-handed and presumptuous."

  "Maybe he really thought he was doing you a
favor."

  "He probably did," McCoy said with a shrug.
"But that's not how I saw it. We hadn't seen much
of each other since we were kids, almost ten
years. People can do an awful lot of changing
from nineteen to twentynine. And I couldn't
decide if he'd changed or if I'd never really known
him at all. After seven months of that, I finally
decided Mark was right. I did need to get on with
my life, without all the baggage I'd left behind on
Earth and without him. So I transferred off the
Feynman. "

Kirk sat quietly for a moment. "That's it?"

"That's it. Sorry there weren't any more
fireworks."

"If you say so."

"I say so."

"Good." Kirk stood up. "I'm glad you feel better."

"Who said I feel better," McCoy grumbled.

  "No need to thank me," Kirk said as he left the
cabin with a wave over his shoulder.

33

          Howard Weinstein

 The door slid shut, leaving McCoy back in his
preferred solitude. Should he have told the rest of
the story, what had really happened on Nova
Empyrea? Was it dishonest to tell only the partial
truth? He'd answered the questions Kirk had
thought to ask. Probably best to leave the unasked
ones buried as long as possible.

 After all, he had no idea what would happen
once they got to the Empyrean colony. Maybe
what happened all those years ago would remain
in the past. Maybe he had nothing to worry about.
Maybe pigs 'll Jly, he thought ruefully.

 He got up and padded barefoot to the computer
terminal at his desk. "Computer," he said as he sat
down, "access records of the U.S.S. Feynman's mis-
sion to Nova Empyrea."

"Accessed."

  McCoy rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He couldn't believe this going back there after
almost twenty years. He tried to recall the person
he'd been back then. Could he trust his own
memories? It seemed like more than a lifetime
ago, yet as close as yesterday. Despite his
knowledge of the human psyche, it still amazed
and puzzled him the way the mind could
encompass concurrent perceptions of time that
were utterly and mutually exclusive.

"Does this file have Empyrean personnel records?"

"Affirmative."

  McCoy swallowed like a diver taking a gulp of
air right before a deep plunge into unknown and
murky waters. "Okay. Let me see the file for
Elizabeth March."

  In barely a heartbeat, she was there on his
viewscreen. He knew it was a romantic cliche of
the worst kind, but the dark-haired, dark-skinned
beauty of her image took his breath away today
just as it had when he first saw her eighteen years
ago.

"Bet you never took a bad picture either," he

                 34
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

muttered to the image displayed on his monitor.
Even in this two-dimensional representation, her
pale eyes sparkled with a knowing intelligence. He
could almost see her full lips curling into a smile,
almost taste them against his.

  He remembered everything, every feeling, every
sensation. Like yesterday . . .

  But none of it happened yesterday. Almost two
decades had passed. She was the president of the
Empyrean Council now, and he didn't have the
slightest idea why he'd been summoned. Or what
she remembered. One thing was certain: He
hoped to God she didn't remember the first time
they'd met . . .

"I said, what's your name?"

  Unable to find his voice, young Dr. McCoy
stared at the woman who had just asked him a
fairly simple question. Twice.

  Her dark hair softly framed her face, just
brushing her shoulders. Her flawless skin was the
shade of medium coffee. She was as tall as he
was, and he couldn't keep himself from looking
into her sky-blue eyes. Which was just as well.
Had he looked away from those eyes, his gaze
would have wandered up and down her faultlessly
proportioned body, taut and firm beneath the
clinging knit of her clothing. Compared to the
effortless physical perfection of the Empyreans
he'd seen, he felt like a scarecrow, his uniform
hanging on his rawboned frame.

  He knew he was making a complete fool of
himself, but he couldn't help it. It was that simple.
He just couldn't help it.

  It wasn't her looks alone. She wasn't classically
pretty, if there was such a thing. Individually,
some of her features could be called imperfect.
Nose a bit too long, with a noticeable bump at the
bridge. Mouth a bit too wide. In combination,
though, they were as striking as a golden-fire
sunset.

                 35
                  
          Howard Weinstein

 But it was more than that. Though she'd barely
said more than hello, he knew without a doubt
that she had a soul, a spirit, an intellect, like no
one he'd ever met. He didn't know how he knew.
He just knew. No woman before had ever
bewitched him so completely or so instantly.

 The pathetic truth was, he'd barely looked at a
woman since he'd joined Starfleet. And it wasn't
that no one had stirred him. No, no, not at all. In
fact, there'd been quite a few ladies who might
have caught his eye, both at the Academy and in
his first few assignments away from Earth, had he
been willing to permit himself the pleasures of
their company.

 But after crawling away from the self-wrought
wreckage of his marriage, he didn't think he could
be trusted with companionship, much less
romance. What's more, he didn't think he
deserved that kind of happiness. Not after winning
his one great love, and then losing her.

 Could it be that, deep down inside, McCoy had
always felt like a fraud with his wife? Taking a
good, hard objective look at himself, he had no
idea what she could possibly have seen in him.
With what sleight of hand had he convinced her to
marry him? And if he had no clue to what that
magic had been in the first place, how in hell
could he possibly conjure it up again and again,
through all the days and weeks and years that
were to follow?

 Could that have been why he'd allowed his
career to take over his life, knowing damn well it
was exactly the wrong thing to do? Maybe the
hours spent away from home, studying and
working, were the least painful way he could
convince his wife he wasn't the man she'd thought
he was, giving her the chance to conclude on her
own that she deserved better and that she should
end their marriage sooner rather than later. Why
wait for years of bitterness to build walls that
simultaneously trapped and separated them?

                 36
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  Maybe he had never quite been able to shake
his belief in a self-fulfilling prophesy based on the
old joke about not wanting to belong to any club
that would have him as a member.

  I'm a great one for self-analysis. Too bad I can't
reach any useful conclusions.

  In any case, in the couple of years since his
marriage had ended and he'd joined Starfleet,
he'd been following the road upon which fate and
his own flaws had set him. He'd devoted himself
completely to medicine. Women were colleagues
and casual friends. He had allowed no sparks to
strike and would not unless he could be certain he
would not repeat the mistakes he'd made with his
ex-wife, not until he was ready to believe he
deserved to love and to be loved. Not until he set
eyes on Elizabeth March, the young Empyrean
science attache (he guessed her to be about
twentyfive) who had just asked him that simple
question.

  "Your name?" she prompted one more time,
slightly amused by his dumbstruck reaction.
"Come on, you can do it."

  He blinked to clear the hormonal haze around
his brain. "Utah, McCoy, ma'am. Leonard McCoy,
M.D."

  A hint of a smile played at the corners of her
mouth. "Well, it seems we're going to be working
together, Leonard McCoy, M.D. That is, if you're
up to it."

  He managed a lopsided smile and a charming
tip of his head. "I'm up to it, Dr. March."

"Good."

  And I was up to it, too, McCoy thought,
permitting himself a smile as he allowed Elizabeth
March's face to fade from his monitor screen.
Now the question was, would he be up to it
again?

                 37
                  
            Chapter Four

THE PRESIDENT OF THE Empyrean Council
sat curled in the corner of her office sofa, the
loose cushions carefully arranged in her favorite
position of relaxation, supporting her back, neck,
and legs as she balanced a small computer on her
lap.

  With a few fine lines etched at the corners of
her eyes and mouth, she looked only slightly older
than she had when she was the young scientist in
the picture viewed by McCoy on the Enterprise.
Her form-fitting jumpsuit showed that she'd
hardly gained a pound.

  The intercom on her desk across the room
chirped softly.

  "Yes?" she said distractedly, still frowning at the
mathematic equations cramming her laptop
computer screen.

  "Tamiya here. Just wanted to let you know
we've picked up the Enterprise on long-range
scanners. They'll be here within the hour."

                 38
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

"Thanks, Ibrahim."

  A knock on her open door startled her and she
looked up to see a tall man standing in her
doorway. He had flowing silver hair gathered into
a ponytail that gave him a roguish appearance,
and he held a black guitar case in one hand. As
with March, time had left few marks of passage
on his face, and his actual age was difficult to
pinpoint. Just now, his mouth was set in a taut
line of disapproval. "Elizabeth, it's not too late."

  "For what?" she asked rhetorically. On the one
hand, she knew exactly what he was harping
about; on the other, she hoped her moment of
feigned ignorance might convince him to drop the
subject.

  He dashed those hopes and stepped inside the
office. "To tell the Federation once and for all to
go away and leave us alone."

  "Clements," she said, with a reservoir of
patience she didn't think she had, "the Council
voted to let them make their case "

  " after you twisted a few arms. The vote would
have gone the other way, and it should have."

  "But it didn't. And I'm not about to change my
mind or anybody else's."

  Clements shook his head. "Letting them come
here was a mistake twenty years ago, and it's a
mistake now. You'll see."

"Your glass is always half empty."

"Skepticism is good for the breed."

  "So is music. Go give my daughter her guitar
lesson."

  He turned and left her alone. March leaned
back, closed her eyes, and massaged her thick hair
with both hands. Maybe Clements was right, but
she didn't care.

  Not that she needed any reminder, but she kept
telling herself that she had her own unspoken
reasons for wanting the Enterprise to intrude on
Empyrean solitude one more time. For Elizabeth
March, those

                 39
                  
          Howard Weinstein

reasons, which would have to remain private, tran-
scended everything else.

  Kirk leaned on the railing near Spock's science
station. "I don't know, Spock. I read McCoy's data
from twenty years ago. Objectively,
dispassionately, I suppose these Empyreans are an
improvement on us old-fashioned humans. But it
still seems... unnatural to me."

  "An understandable reaction, considering past
experiences with genetically engineered variations
on random human reproduction."

  Kirk shook his head. "Listen to me. I sound like
a small-minded Luddite resisting progress.
Humans have been using genetic management on
plants since Gregor Mendel in the eighteen
hundreds. And nobody seemed to mind much
when we started using the same techniques on
farm animals and endangered species back in the
twentieth century."

  "That is not entirely true, Captain. Though it
was eventually overcome, there was some measure
of popular resistance. A few critics some well-
meaning, others merely self-indulgent fanned
public fears."

  Kirk looked surprised. "Fears? Of what? Mutant
cows taking over the planet?"

  "Those who did not understand the benign
nature of the work were concerned about the
possible release of dangerous genetic agents into
the environment at large."

  "Seems kind of silly now," Kirk said with a smile.
"But that was about cows and corn. Somehow,
when it comes to applying the same scientific
principles to humans, I can't seem to get around
that word it's unnatural. "

  "Perhaps. But contemporary biomedical sciences
do include procedures that might have been
deemed 'unnatural' in the past. And many
techniques once

                 40
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

considered state of the art are now viewed as
quaint at best and barbaric at worst. For instance,
Dr. McCoy only rarely uses his leeches, beads, and
rattles."

  Kirk couldn't help smiling again. Who said
Vulcans don't have a sense of humor.

  "Keptin," Chekov said, "ve are entering standard
orbit, per Empyrean coordinates."

  "Thank you, Mr. Chekov," Kirk said, returning
to his seat.

  As the Enterprise completed its approach, it
passed over a metallic object glinting in the
sunlight as it circled Nova Empyrea. It was too far
away to discern details. Kirk glanced back at
Spock. "Is that the Federation observatory
platform?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

"Let's have a closer look."

  Spock called up an image from the aft scanners,
enlarged it, and displayed it on the main viewer.
The orbital facility was an ungainly structure, with
three modules mounted on a central boom and
five transceiver arrays attached at various points.

  At Kirk's nod, Spock keyed his computer. The
image of the space platform was replaced by the
standard view of the planet below. It looked quite
similar to Earth in coloration and land-to-water
ratio, though the arrangements of the land masses
were unique. Kirk knew from the U.S.S.
Feynman's mission records that the colony
occupied a medium-sized island continent in the
northern temperate zone.

  The turbolift door behind Kirk's right shoulder
slid open and Mark Rousseau came out onto the
bridge. "Ready when you are, Captain Kirk."

"Uhura, hail the colony."

"Aye, sir."

  A moment after the communications officer sig-
naled the planet, March's image appeared on the
main viewscreen. As Kirk stood for his formal
greeting, he noted that she looked very much the
same as her 41

          Howard Weinstein

twenty-year-old file photo, and there was
something undeniably magnetic about her
presence, even on the viewscreen.

  "President March, I'm Captain James Kirk, of
the U.S.S. Enterprise."

  "Welcome to Nova Empyrea, Captain." Then
she paused and directed a warm smile at
Rousseau as he stepped down from the outer
bridge ring to take up a position at Kirk's side.
"And welcome back, Mr. Ambassador. It's good to
see you after all these years."

  Kirk glanced back at Rousseau, who beamed at
March's viewscreen image.

  "All what years, Madam President? You've
hardly aged a day."

  "Why so surprised?" she vamped. "You knew we
had good genes."

  What's all this familiarity? Kirk wondered. He
was almost certain Rousseau had claimed in his
mission briefing that he didn't recall Elizabeth
March at all. Kirk made a mental note to find out
about that contradiction later.

  "President March," Kirk said, "the Federation
would like you to know how much we appreciate
your invitation to at least talk about renewing our
treaty."

  "Well, Captain, if I were you, I'd make that
appreciation conditional. The Council approved
this meeting by the slimmest of margins, and I
would be less than candid if I encouraged your
hopes for a continuation of the old agreement.
Our feelings about contacts with Outsiders have
been made quite clear, I believe."

  "They have." Kirk weighed her neutral tone
against her bluntly negative assessment of the
situation. Was she just trying to lower
expectations, or were the prospects really as bleak
as her choice of words made them sound? He
would know soon enough. "If you're ready to
receive us, our delegation can transport down at
any time."

"And who will be in this delegation, Captain?"
               42
               
           THE BETTER MAN

  "Ambassador Rousseau and Dr. McCoy, as you
requested, and my first officer and myself."

  March shook her head. "I'm sorry, Captain. The
council resolution approved a maximum of two
Federation representatives for these talks, plus a
technical team of two and only two to get
started on the preliminary work of dismantling the
science outpost. That way, there'll be a minimum
of time wasted once a final decision is made to
remove your people and equipment."

  Kirk couldn't help frowning. Obviously, the
Empyreans' xenophobic policies were unchanged.
On top of that, President March made it sound
like the Empyreans had already made up their
minds to boot the Federation off their world. Fine
and dandy, Kirk thought. Their planet, their choice.
But then why bother with the charade of
"negotiations"?

  Rousseau spoke up. "Madam President, surely
there's no harm in "

  "I'm sorry, gentlemen," March said, politely but
firmly cutting off his mild protest, "these
conditions are nonnegotiable."

  "In that case," Kirk said, "Ambassador Rousseau
and Dr. McCoy will beam down alone, say, in
thirty minutes?"

  "That would be fine, Captain Kirk. Sorry we
won't get to meet in person."

  He had a feeling she didn't mean it. "Another
time, perhaps," Kirk said with a diplomatic smile.

  "Perhaps but, under the circumstances, not
likely. March out."

  She disappeared from the viewscreen, replaced
by the standard orbital view of the planet below.
Kirk swiveled toward Spock and Rousseau
standing behind him. "Unfriendly and cordial all
at once. A consummate diplomat."

  "It's not that the Empyreans are unfriendly,
Captain," Rousseau said. "Not consciously anyway.
But

                 43
                  
          Howard Weinstein

after a century and a half, their policies on
contacts with outsiders are more like an article of
faith. It's the foundation of their whole society,
not something easily changed."

  "Yet, they made exceptions when your ship
originally encountered them," Spock said.

  Rousseau nodded. "Serendipity. We just
happened to find them at a time when they were
considering opening up their society. During the
four months we were here, there was talk of not
just tolerating the presence of outsiders, but
actively welcoming them."

  "An attitude that was apparently short-lived,"
said Spock.

  "Conservatism won out, I'm afraid. That's how
the personnel at the science outpost wound up
completely segregated from the Empyreans."

  "So what's your evaluation, Mr. Ambassador?"
Kirk asked, sounding less than hopeful himself. "Is
there any real chance they'll renew this
agreement?"

  Rousseau grinned broadly. "You know the first
thing I learned when I switched careers?
Diplomats always think there's a chance. Only a
cockeyed optimist could walk into a room, stand
between sworn enemies who would love nothing
more than leaping over the table to slit their
opponents' throats and see common ground."

                 44
                  
            Chapter Five

"Y'RE SENDIN' ME where t' do what?

  "You heard me, Mr. Scott," Kirk said as his
chief engineer stared at him. Scotty looked
genuinely offended. "The Empyreans have made
it clear they want us to be ready to remove the
science outpost at a moment's notice. But they're
only letting us send two people down to size up
the job. The logical choices  you should pardon
the expression are Mr. Spock and you."

  Scott continued staring without saying a word.
The low, rhythmic thrummm of the engine room
sounded like a heartbeat, filling the uncomfortable
verbal silence. Finally, the Scotsman shook his
head with a grimace of distaste.

  "I s'pose we're gain' to have t' deal with some o'
their genetically perfected technical types," he
said, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm in his
voice. He turned and walked toward his office,
with Kirk following.

                 45
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "Some interaction will be necessary, I assume.
But based on what we've seen so far, I wouldn't
think you'd be working hand in hand with hoards
of Empyreans. They seem to want minimal direct
contact with us."

  Scott muttered a Gaelic oath. "Well, isn't that
just like 'em, avoidin' us like we've got the plague.
Of all the ill-mannered, rude "

  "I thought you wanted to have as little to do
with them as possible."

  "I do, sir," Scott said indignantly. "I just want it
to be my idea not theirs!"

  "You still love the transporter as much as you
used to?"

  McCoy gave Ambassador Rousseau a sidelong
glance. "Does an alligator chomp in the swamp?"

  Rousseau chuckled as the two men entered the
Enterprise transporter room. "Bones, if ever there
was a fellow not cut out for a life in space, it's
you. I thought you'd retire years ago and set up a
little country practice in Georgia like your daddy."

  "What, and waste all my natural charm on one
planet?"

  They took their places on the transporter pads.
Rousseau nodded to the ensign handling the
console. "Energize."

  They materialised in the middle of a series of
formal gardens that covered the hillside leading up
to the presidential mansion. Lush geometric beds
of flowers surrounded diamond-patterned
walkways of perfect brick and slate, with
immaculately trimmed hedges guarding the
garden's perimeter. Sweet floral fragrances hung
in the soft summer air. The branches of four
towering oaks met in the center of the gardens,
forming a cool canopy over benches and a
fountain.

McCoy looked up at the wispy clouds decorating

                 46
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

the blue sky and took a deep breath. "Smells a lot
like home, Mark."

"This place is as beautiful as I remember it."

So was Elizabeth, McCoy thought.

  As they moved through the gardens and up the
gently sloping path, they caught the faint sounds
of music drifting on the current of the breeze,
barely discernable from the music of the wind
itself as it whispered through the trees. As they
got closer to the house, the music grew more
distinct: elegant arpeggios tumbling down the hill.

  McCoy and Rousseau paused in their approach,
waiting on the white gravel path just outside a
domed solarium with its doors open to the
gardens. From there, they could see inside where,
among an array of colorful plants and small
potted trees, a dark-haired young woman sat
playing classical guitar. A tall man with long silver
hair stood over her, watching and listening
critically. Though his stance made it clear he was
her teacher, not her audience, it was just as
obvious that he was enraptured by her playing.

  Bent forward, she cradled the instrument like a
lover, her fingers caressing the six strings,
magically drawing forth a melodic cascade worthy
of an orchestra. The curves of her back and arms
and legs blended with the contours of the guitar's
shimmering amber body. Her concentration was
complete.

  McCoy and Rousseau listened at the open
doorway, spellbound by her performance. Her
fingers flew and danced over the strings as her
tempo quickened. Her head bobbed in matching
rhythm, and the emotions in the melody shaped
her face as she and her music flowed toward
crescendo and climax. Then, with a flourish of
fingers, she was done.

  After a moment of silence, both she and her
teacher snapped their heads around, startled by
the sound of applause from the garden doors. The
teacher looked 47

          Howard Weinstein

annoyed by the intrusion, but the young woman
recovered her poise and bowed her head in
gracious acknowledgment as McCoy and
Rousseau entered the sunroom.

  "I see you've met my daughter," said a familiar
voice from another doorway that led to a corridor
and the rest of the mansion. They all looked up to
see Elizabeth March coming in.

"Not formally, President March," Rousseau said.

  Elizabeth approached and stood beside her
daughter. The resemblance was unmistakable the
same lustrous, dark hair and shade of skin, the
same strong features and glittering intelligence in
their eyes. "Anna, this is Ambassador Mark
Rousseau and Dr. Leonard McCoy."

  "My stealthy but appreciative audience," Anna
said with a sly smile.

  Clements scowled. "The music apparently com-
pelled them to sneak up on us."

  "We didn't sneak up on anybody," McCoy said,
scowling right back. "We were listening, and we
didn't want to disturb the performance."

  "Your presence on our planet is a disturbance
all by itself," Clements retorted.

  "And your presence is our pleasure, Anna,"
Rousseau said, deftly turning the conversation
away from political confrontation. He took hold of
her hand and gave it a courtly kiss.

"Even he never played that well," McCoy said.

  "I admit it, Doctor," Rousseau said. "You do
play magnificently, Anna. Was that a Mozart piece
transposed for guitar?"

  "Actually, Anna wrote it," the silver-haired man
huffed.

  "This is Anna's music teacher, Clements,"
Elizabeth said. "He's also our leading forensic
investigator."

"And about as much of a diplomat as I am," McCoy
48

           THE BETTER MAN

quipped. Then he looked at Clements with an
inquiring tilt of his head. "Forensic investigation?
As in criminal forensics?"

  "Some and unexplained medical cases," Clem-
ents said.

  McCoy glanced from Clements to Elizabeth.
"Genetically perfected and you've still got crimes
to investigate?"

  "We don't claim to be perfect, Doctor just bet-
ter," Clements said in a tight voice. He picked up
his guitar case and nodded curtly toward the
visitors. "I hope your stay is pleasant and brief."
With that, he turned and left through the garden
doors.

  "You're a talented composer, Anna," Rousseau
said as the girl wiped her strings with a cloth and
laid the guitar in its case like a mother putting her
baby in its cradle.

  "Thank you, Ambassador Rousseau, but I'm not
so accomplished as you might think. I wrote this
piece for a recital competition last month."

"You must've won," McCoy said.

  Anna's mouth curled into a self-mocking smile.
"I finished ninety-third out of a hundred and
twenty entrants."

  Elizabeth hugged her daughter. "She may be re-
markable by Earth standards, but here on Nova
Empyrea, she's just average." Elizabeth's remark
was neither boastful nor deprecating, just
matter-of-fact.

  "Ah, yes," Rousseau said. "A better breed of hu-
man."

  Elizabeth released her daughter and propelled
her toward the door with a gentle push. "Now, you
have studying to do and we have a treaty to
discuss, so if you'll excuse us . . ."

  Anna looked like she'd rather stay, but she
grudgingly picked up her guitar case and turned
toward McCoy and Rousseau. In that moment,
she seemed less like a perfected product of
genetic management 49

          Howard Weinstein

and more like any teenager longing to be part of
the adult world, told instead to go to her room
and do her homework.

  "Well, the president has spoken," she said with
a tinge of adolescent sarcasm. "Perhaps I'll see
you later, before you leave Empyrea."

  "We'd like that," McCoy said. "That is, if it's
okay with 'the president."'

  "If we get a chance, I'd love to play a duet,"
Rousseau said.

"Show-off," McCoy muttered.

Anna smiled. "I'd like that."

"Stop flirting, Anna," Elizabeth scolded.

  "Yes, Mother," Anna said with a world-weary
roll of her eyes.

  She left, and Elizabeth ushered both men
toward wicker furniture clustered in a corner of
the solarium. "In case you couldn't tell, she's my
pride and joy."

  "No surprise there," McCoy said. "How old Is
she?"

"She's just turning eighteen."

  McCoy did a veiled double take, thinking he
saw the vaguest flicker of apprehension in
President March's eyes. Was it something to do
with her daughter? Or just the strain of having to
deal with this science outpost business?

  He couldn't be certain, but her heart didn't
seem to be in these Empyrean efforts to terminate
the colony's limited flirtation with the Federation.
He wondered what planetary politics were behind
the Council's decision. Should he ask? Elizabeth
and Mark were making small talk, the diplomat's
way of sidling toward touchy subjects.

  Who am I to interrupt? Then again, I'm obviously
not here for my statesmanship . . .

  "Are you in favor of getting rid of this outpost?"
he blurted.

50

           THE BETTER MAN

  The question caught Elizabeth off balance.
"Utah, the Council has "

  McCoy shook his head. "I'm not talking about
the Council. I mean you, personally."

Rousseau shot him a warning look. "Leonard "

  "No, I want to know. Is there anything wrong
with asking straight out?"

"No," she said, "there isn't."

  McCoy grinned. "Good. I hate gettin' tangled
up in all the diplomatic niceties "

"No chance of that," Rousseau mumbled darkly.

  "The Council and I speak with one voice on
this, Doctor."

  That didn't sound very convincing, McCoy
thought with a frown. So much for my
experiment with the direct approach.

                  5
                  
             Chapter Six

THE FEDERATION s ground-based observatory
complex perched on the flat top of Mount
Placidus, a roundshouldered peak overlooking the
colony's main city. The observatory consisted of a
trio of domed structures, along with a microwave
transceiver array on a thirty-meter-high tower.

 Per Kirk's agreement with the Empyrean leader,
Spock and Scott beamed down to begin their
survey work, materialising in the outpost's small
lobby.

 With its gray-slab walls, indirect lighting, and
absence of sound, the observatory felt cool and
tomblike. There weren't even any plants to
brighten up the place. It scarcely seemed that
anyone had ever occupied the complex, much less
operated and inhabited it for the past eighteen
years.

 For the sake of the outpost's personnel, Scott
hoped their living quarters were more homey than
this section. "It looks deserted," he said as he
slipped his

                 52
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

equipment bag off his and set it down on the
hard, cold floor. "Didn't they know we were
comin'?"

  "That is why it's deserted," said a frosty voice
from behind them.

  They turned to see a typically tall Empyrean
man walking toward them. He was in his early
thirties, as gracefully muscled as a racehorse, and
his features seemed to be a felicitous mix of racial
characteristics.

  "I don't understand," Scott said, sizing up the
man. "Where's the observatory staffs9 We were
told there're a dozen scientists assigned here."

  "I'm Dr. Ramon Ortega," the man said. "I'm
your outpost liaison. The Federation staff has
been sent to the Isolation Center. It's standard
procedure when an Empyrean visits the
observatory part of the antifraternization statutes
that have been in effect ever since the outpost
became operational."

  "Now there's a lovely thought," Scott said, not
even trying to conceal his sarcasm.

  With vague contempt showing in his narrowed
eyes and pursed lips, Ortega looked from one
officer to the other, as if measuring their obvious
defects. He dismissed Scott with a glance and then
turned his attention toward Spock.

  "You're the first Vulcan we've ever encountered,
Commander Spock. I understand your physical
and intellectual evolution places you on a level
above the average Terran perhaps even equal to
us in many ways."

  Spock met Ortega's interest with a neutral gaze.
"I am unaware of any such empirical comparison
between Vulcans and contemporary Homo sapiens.
In any event, it would be academically irrelevant.
Terrans and Vulcans possess variant
characteristics  some inherent, some
adaptive but neither species is demonstrably
superior. In fact, I am half human and half
Vulcan."

53

          Howard Weinstein

  "Oh?" Ortega's eyebrows rose. The revelation
seemed to further pique his interest. "Composite
lineage. Planned and supervised, of course,
considering Vulcans' reputed devotion to science
and logic."

  "Actually, Dr. Ortega, my combined heredity was
neither planned nor supervised. Although my
father must have deemed his marital union to
have logical value, my human mother was guided
by feelings of affection and admiration for my
father. Her choice was predicated upon emotion,
not logic."

  Ortega's fascination abruptly diminished. "So it's
merely a case of impure lineage. Random genetic
combination?"

"So I would conclude."

  If Scott hadn't known better, he'd have sworn
that Spock was baiting the Empyrean scientist. But
Ortega didn't seem to notice.

  "How unfortunate," Ortega said disdainfully.
"Well, then, if you'll follow me, we can get
started."

  Scott and Spock lagged back a couple of strides
and the engineer leaned close to one pointed
Vulcan ear. "Looks like so-called genetic
perfection hasn't done away with the occasional
horse's ass."

  "A cogent observation, Mr. Scott, if I understand
the reference."

"That y' do, sir."

  Kirk was not at all pleased to learn that the
members of the Federation observatory staff were
being detained off-site. In fact, he was damned
annoyed. Though it was his job to be sympathetic
to what he might consider to be assorted cultural
oddities of other worlds and he'd run across
some pretty outlandish alien customs in his
travels he found the Empyreans' obsessive
separatism increasingly irritatmg.

  There was something downright infuriating
about humans, genetically perfected or otherwise,
having

                 54
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

such institutionalised against so much as laying
eyes upon other humans (or allied aliens) just
because they came from other planets. For a
culture constructed upon such elaborate scientific
foundations, he couldn't find a shred of rationality
underlying their rabid segregation.

  However, Kirk's feelings were irrelevant, and he
knew it. It wasn't his place to tell the Empyreans
what he thought of them or how to conduct their
affairs. But the least he could do and probably
the most, as well would be to liberate the
Federation group from their confinement.
Immediately after Spock's checkin report, Kirk
had Uhura establish contact with President March,
interrupting her session with Ambassador
Rousseau and Dr. McCoy.

  "It's not like they've been thrown in a dungeon,
Captain," President March said once she knew
why he'd called. "The Isolation Center is as
comfortable as their regular quarters, and they've
been following this procedure for years."

  "Well, I'd like to offer them alternate
accommodations aboard my ship until this treaty
renewal is settled one way or the other, if that's
all right with you."

  "I certainly have no objection. As I said, they're
not prisoners "

  "They're just not at liberty to move about
freely," Kirk said, his disapproval quite clear.

  "That's right, Captain," March countered. "That's
the way things are. Feel free to contact the
Isolation Center directly and make your offer. If
Dr. Skloff and any of his staff would rather spend
their downtime on the Enterprise, that's fine with
us. Is that all, Captain?"

"Yes. Thank you, President March. Kirk out."

  Kirk's face had barely faded from the
viewscreen on the president's desk when Mark
Rousseau's passion

                 55
                  
          Howard Weinstein

ate rumble of a voice filled the silence in March's
office.

  "There's got to be something I can say to
change your mind about this treaty," he implored.

  "I doubt it," President March said from across
her desk. By now, they'd moved their talks to her
private office in the mansion, where McCoy and
Rousseau sat in a pair of highbacked chairs.
Gossamer abstract sculptures of crystal and
metallic filament stood on the credenza behind
her. A rainbow of plants abloom with flowers
filled a large bay window looking out over other
gardens.

  "I can't accept that, President March. Think of
the promise we saw blossoming eighteen years
ago. Isn't it worth another effort to nurture that
hope by renewing this treaty?"

  Elizabeth sighed. "The Council apparently
doesn't think so. The Empyrean way is a separate
way. You already know that."

  McCoy shook his head, waving one hand up
toward the sky. "Isolation from all that variety of
life out there? How can that possibly benefit
Empyrea? Lord knows I don't always understand
the Vulcans and their infernal logic, but they've
got this belief: infinite diversity in infinite
combinations. And I've been roaming the galaxy
long enough to know there's a lot of good in that
idea."

  But President March was clearly unmoved.
"Someday, maybe we'll subscribe to that belief,
too. But before we do, we want to give ourselves
every opportunity to perfect what we are, to
develop every attainable advantage before we
interact with all that diverse life."

  "Then I'm afraid you've got a long road ahead
of you, President March," McCoy said. "Life forms
are inherently imperfect."

  "We don't agree. But even if that's true, there
are degrees of near perfection. We believe the
highest 56

           THE BETTER MAN

degree is worth pursuit, without the genetic and
cultural distractions that come along with
intrusions from the outside."

"So it's up to your Council, then," Rousseau said.

  Elizabeth nodded. "If you want to pursue this to
the bitter end, feel free to write up a formal
proposal, Ambassador. I'll present it for a vote."

  Rousseau nodded. "I never give up till the last
dog dies. You'll have our proposal by the end of
the day tomorrow. Is that soon enough?"

  She nodded and stood. "That'll be fine. But, as
I said, don't be surprised at the outcome."

  "Well . . . I guess that's that," McCoy said,
taking his communicator out. "We'll be in touch as
soon as Ambassador Rousseau's ready. McCoy to
Enterprise, two to beam up."

  "Utah, Doctor," Elizabeth said hastily, "would
you mind staying behind for a few minutes? I
don't want to keep the ambassador from starting
on his proposal, but there's another matter a
medical matter I'd like to discuss with you."

  McCoy shrugged. "No, I don't mind. Enterprise,
make that one to beam up; Ambassador
Rousseau. I'll be up in a little while."

  The transporter officer acknowledged McCoy's
request, then beamed Rousseau back to the ship.
Elizabeth waited until the last sparkle of
molecular disintegration had faded. Then her
businesslike expression softened, and she
approached McCoy as a woman instead of as an
official.

  He watched, more than a little confused as she
moved closer. He had no idea what she was about
to do.

  "I didn't know how it would feel to see you
again, Leonard."

"And7"

  She smiled. "It feels good." She touched his
cheek with one slender finger.

57

          Howard Weinstein

 He swallowed, trying not to respond. "Beth,
what's this all about?"

"Can't I just be happy to see you?"

 Despite his best efforts to retain some
professional reserve, he gave a boyish shrug. "I
guess."

 Impulsively, she put her arms around him and
rested her chin on his shoulder, as if putting down
a longtime burden. With conscious ambivalence,
he returned the embrace.

What the hell is going on here?

  "I really never thought we'd see each other
again. But I'm glad you're here, Leonard."

"And exactly why am I here, Beth?"

  "Beth," she repeated softly. "No one's called me
that since you left."

  As she looked directly into his eyes, he found a
mixture of worry and relief in hers. He also found
her gaze to be just as hypnotic and unsettling as it
had been eighteen years before. He struggled to
maintain a semblance of equilibrium as he felt her
warm breath against his neck.

"Why am I here?" he asked again.

  She responded by brushing her lips against his.
Then she kissed him, and he returned the passion.
When they parted, his voice came out as a husky
whisper.

  "Not that I should be lookin' gift horses in the
mouth at my age," he said, clearing his throat, "but
nobody needed me on this trip for my negotiating
skills. And, much as I'd like to believe it, I don't
think you brought me all the way here for an
illicit kiss. So . . . why am I here?"

  "Because I need you." She looked away, as if
flinching from a painful truth. When she looked
back at him again, there was urgency in her eyes.
"I need your help. Thanks to my poor judgment,
Anna's freedom Is in danger . . . maybe even her
life."

"Why? What's wrong? Is she sick?"

                 58
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

 She took a step back and a deep breath, then
squared her shoulders. "Empyrean laws absolutely
forbid . . . procreation . . . with anyone who's not
from our world."

"I know they used to "

"We never changed those laws."

"Anna's father ?"

  Elizabeth's eyes flickered closed for a moment
of what seemed like shame. Then her gaze found
his again. "He was not Empyrean."

  McCoy's eyebrows rose in surprise. For all their
enlightenment in other areas, he was well aware
of how completely the Empyreans believed in
their chosen path. But he didn't know the specifics
of the colony's legal code and could only imagine
what the consequences might be. "Does she
know?"

  Elizabeth shook her head. "No one does. I've
kept this dirty little secret all her life. But it's
about to be revealed, and I won't be able to stop
it. I'm sure to be dismissed as president. Anna
and I could both be banished from Empyrea" her
voice wavered  "even executed."

  "Can't you get in touch with her father? Is he
one of the Federation scientists? I'm sure he'd
help if he could."

  "That's what I'm hoping," she said, clenching
and unclenching her jaw, trying to keep control of
her fears. "That's why you're here, Leonard. That's
why I asked for you to come."

"Me? What can I do?" He really had no clue at
all.

  She shrugged helplessly. '`I don't know. But. . ."
Her voice shrank to a whisper. "You see . . . you
are Anna's father."

                 59
                  
            Chapter Seven

THROUGH GLASSY EYES, McCoy stared at
nothing for what seemed like several of the
longest, most excruciating hours of his life. In
truth, it wasn't more than a few seconds before he
managed to croak his first response: "Me?"

"You," she said, nodding somewhat sadly.

  Was that sadness for him? For her? Or for
Anna? As he wondered, it dawned on him that he
was part of a dilemma the scope of which he had
only just begun to comprehend.

  He groped for the seat he knew to be
somewhere behind him. Relying on more than a
little blind faith, he sat without looking and
actually managed to hit the chair.
OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod . . . He squeezed his
eyes shut as reflexive denial flooded his brain.
This is impossible it couldn't be there must be
some mistake! What if it is true? What am I
supposed to do? What've I gotten myself into?

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           THE BETTER MAN

"Beth, how could this have happened?"

  "You're a doctor," she said dryly. "Don't they
teach you that in medical school?"

  "Very funny." It wasn't at all funny. "It was a
long time ago, but I'd swear you said you were
using birth control."

"I never swore," she said, mildly insulted.

  "Maybe not, but you obviously did lie. " Lie was
a loaded word, and McCoy used it deliberately.
He wanted to see just how defensive she might be.

  "Well . . . yes," she admitted with a sheepish
shrug. "I did."

  "Good God, Beth," he moaned. "If I'd known, I
never would've "

"I knew that. That's why I lied."

He blinked in confusion.

She knelt in front of him. "What are you
thinking?"

  He took several deep breaths, trying to collect
some semblance of comprehensible cognition.
"How I've just gone from having one daughter I
knew about but hardly knew to having a second
one I never knew about at alL"He couldn't help
thinking that probably made more sense before he
said it out loud.

"I didn't know you had a child."

  "I did, before I met you from a marriage that
crashed and burned before I went into Starfleet."

"Is that why you joined Starfleet?"

  "The modern equivalent of running off to join
the French Foreign Legion, I guess. Joanna was
just a toddler when I left. After that, I pretty
much stayed out of her life for a long time."

"By choice?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

  "I figured she'd be better off without me."
Without a father who not only wasn't going to be
around to see her grow up Hell, I wasn't even
gonna be anywhere

                 61
                  
          Howard Weinstein

near the planet But additionally and firmly
believed he had no idea whatsoever about how to
be a parent.

"How did your ex-wife feel about that decision?"

 "She never tried all that hard to change my
mind," he said with a short laugh, hollowed by
bitterness. "To say I bungled my one intentional
pass at fatherhood would be one of the great
understatements of the twenty-third
century maybe the millenium." For the moment,
at least, he knew the sadness in Beth's eyes was
for him.

"Did you ever get back in touch with her?"

"My wife? Or my daughter?"

"Your daughter."

  "Funny thing about that. I bounced around
Starfleet for quite a while ship to ship, one
assignment to another, par for the course. I'd send
Joanna birthday cards and small gifts every year,
but I never let her know where I was. I didn't
want her to even have the option of getting in
touch with me. It would've been too hard "

  Elizabeth gave him a dubious look. "On her or
you?"

  He shrugged. "Probably me. Then, a few years
ago it was toward the end of my first five-year
tour of duty on the Enterprise I got a letter from
her."

"She tracked you down?"

  "Yeah, through Starfleet. It was her eighteenth
birthday, and she'd just graduated from high
school. She was on her way to college . . ."

  . . . And that seemed like enough of a milestone
for her to try and break the silence . . .

  Dr. McCoy sat in his quarters, watching the self-
assured young woman talking to him on his
desktop viewscreen. He knew he couldn't talk
back to the prerecorded message, but he wanted
to. It was the first image he'd seen of Joanna
since her tenth birthday.

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           THE BETTER MAN

  His ex-wife had offered to send photos on a
regular basis, but he'd asked her not to. Knowing
his daughter was navigating life without him was
painful enough, even if he was certain that was
best for her. But seeing pictures of her changing
and growing that would have been more than he
could bear.

  Yet, now that this unexpected letter had arrived,
he found himself filled with more pride than
regret as he saw the woman she was becoming.
She looked very much like her mother had at the
same age, but there was a balanced serenity
neither of Joanna's parents had ever possessed.
Now where the devil did that come from?

  ". . . I'm not sure what I want to be yet, Dad,"
Joanna said with a thoughtful expression. "I
thought that would scare me, that I'd be in big
trouble if I didn't have my mind made up by
college. Instead, it's only a few weeks away and
I'm excited about it. I think it'll be fun to dabble
a little bit before I make any decisions."

  On the viewscreen, Joanna scrunched her face
up as if something forgotten had just popped into
her head. It was the same expression she'd made
as a little girl, and McCoy blinked back the
dampness he felt welling up m his eyes.

  "Oh, yeah," Joanna continued, trapping the
errant afterthought. "I just wanted you to know I
thought about sending you a graduation invitation.
But I knew you wouldn't have been able to make
it, since the Enterprise was nowhere near home. So
I figured, why make you feel bad?"

  "How did you feel?" Elizabeth March asked as
she handed McCoy a drink of fruit juice.

  "Well, at first I was a little hurt. But she was
right there was no way I could've been there.
And it's not like I deserved to be included. So I
realized she'd made the right decision, not telling
me about it

                 63
                  
          Howard Weinstein

till it was too late for me to feel lousy about
missing it. And that was how I discovered that
Joanna had more diplomatic common sense than
both of her parents combined."

"Did you see her after that?"

  "Matter of fact, I did. Near the end of her
letter, she asked me to visit her at school when I
came back to Earth. She told me she'd long since
come to terms with our fractured family, and she
said she forgave me for all the times she'd wished
her father had been there to hug her. . . or scold
her. . . or laugh with her . . . or cry with her."

  He felt the sting of remembrance in his nose,
and he struggled to keep the tears from starting
up again as they'd done when he'd first watched
Joanna's letter. "Last thing she said was how she
wanted her own children to know their
grandfather."

  With a wisdom McCoy doubted he had now,
much less at the tender age of eighteen, Joanna
had offered him a second chance.

  Elizabeth's eyes were glistening too. "So, what
happened?"

  "Well, not too long after that, the Enterprise
went back to Earth for a stem-to-stern refit. I got
reassigned to shore duty, and I got up the nerve
to take her up on that invitation. It was kind of
strange at first, really getting to know each other
for the first time, but she made it easier than I
ever could have.

  "Then I left Starfleet for a couple of years, and
we got to make up for some of that lost time at
least as much as that's possible. And I do plan for
those theoretical grandkids to know their
granddaddy. I mean, she's my only daughter" he
stopped and swallowed "at least she was, until
now."

  He shook his head to clear it, averting his eyes.
If he had new responsibilities to face, here on
Nova Empyrea, he had no intention of running
from them. But there were so many questions
careening around 64

           THE BETTER MAN

his mind, and he had to ask them, no matter how
painful or uncomfortable they might make
Elizabeth.

 If he was going to be a father whatever that
might mean in this situation he had a right to
know. He looked right at her. "Beth, you were a
deputy health minister. You knew as well as
anyone the sanctions you'd face, having a child
who wasn't pure Empyrean."

She nodded. "You're right. I did."

  The more she said, the more bewildered he
became. "I don't understand. Is my genetically
nonperfected brain missing something here?"

  It was Elizabeth's turn to take a deep breath and
gather her thoughts. "When your ship first found
us, we were probably just another lost colony to
you. Am I

  "It's not like we bumped into lost colonies every
other day."

  "But finding us it didn't completely alter your
view of the universe, did it?"

  "No, I suppose not." McCoy grinned. "Although
that first night with you came pretty close."

  She gave him a look of weary tolerance, like a
mother with a frisky child. "That's not what I
meant."

"I know."

  "Do you? I'm not sure that's possible. You and
your crewmates from the Feynman were the first
living Outsiders I'd ever laid eyes on. It's one
thing to be part of a civilisation that's too
primitive to know about intelligent life on other
worlds. We knew other societies were out
there we just couldn't have anything to do with
them . . ."

  . . . until you came along. Those were strange
times for us, Leonard. A lot of young people had
doubts about Empyrea's policy of self-imposed
isolation. When our leaders let you transport down
and actually work with us . . . well, that was pretty
close to a miracle.

                 65
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  Dr. McCoy looked up from his microscope when
Elizabeth March burst into the lab. They'd been
working together for the better part of two weeks
now enough time for him to master the nervous
fluttering in his stomach and the clammy palms
that developed every time he saw her. Well, almost
enough tzme.

  In truth, they'd been too busy when they were
together for him to give much thought to romantic
feelings. Never mind the fact that I've got no idea
why in heaven's name she'd be interested in me
anyway . . .

  At this point, he didn't know how long the
U.S.S. Feynman might be staying around Nova
Empyrea, and the scientific data on the colony's
genetic management history were as copious as
they were fascinating, so he'd made a conscious
decision to focus on work. To get the most
scientific knowledge out of this encounter,
distractions had to be kept to a minimum.

  Lord knows Elizabeth March would be one hell of
a distraction . . .

  Instead, he channeled his feelings into
establishing a cordial, respectful, and thoroughly
professional relationship with her. However she
may have felt, that seemed to meet with her
approval. And they'd been working well together,
sharing their passion for science and nothing
more.

  But now, here she was, rushing toward him like
a romping puppy, nearly bowling him over as she
threw her arms around his neck, her words
tumbling out. "There's going to be a treaty!"

  He inched his face back for a better look at her
glowing smile and luminous eyes. This was a face
he didn't mind having in close proximity to his
own. "What're you talking about?"

  "Your Federation wants to set up an
astronomical observatory here, and our
government's agreed to negotiate!" As if suddenly
struck by the impropriety of what she'd done, she
blushed and released her hold

                 66
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

on McCoy. Then she stepped back, smoothed her
clothing, and averted her eyes. "I I'm sorry,
Doctor. I didn't mean to I mean, I just heard,
and I "

  He smiled, trying to be more reassuring than
awkward and probably failing miserably. "No harm
done. Glad to hear the good news. I just hope it
doesn't fall through."

  Her expression clouded. "Why would you say
something like that? Have you heard something?"

  "No, no, not at all. It's just that it would mean
quite a change in the Empyrean way of doing
things."

  "That's not impossible, you know," she huffed.
Then she cleared her throat and slipped demurely
into the seat next to his at the multiterminal
computer console where he'd been studying data
on genetic variations within the Empyrean
population. "Well, I guess we should get back to
work."

  "I guess so," he nodded, easing back into his
chair, trying to cover his nervousness. Her
reaction to the news of a potential treaty surprised
him. And now, he could kick himself for deflating
her enthusiasm. There was a palpable chill at their
console as they reached simultaneously for a data
disk and accidentally brushed hands.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

"Excuse me."

"My fault."

"No problem."

  Then, silence. They worked wordlessly for
several minutes, both making a conscious effort to
keep their eyes on their individual work stations,
without so much as a stolen glance at each other.

  Elizabeth relented first, her gaze flickering at
him from beneath her long, dark eyelashes. "Once
the treaty is signed, do you think you might stay?"

  "Hadn't really thought about it," he said, without
looking back at her.

Then, more silence. He turned slightly to get out of
67

          Howard Weinstein

his chair at the same moment as she turned
toward him. They both flinched to avoid a
collision.

  "Sorry," he said. This time, though, he looked at
her.

  As if summoned by silent signal, he leaned
closer. This time, she didn't flinch. Their lips
touched in a brief, tentative kiss.

  "Should we be doing this?" she asked a moment
later.

"I don't know. Only if we want to, I guess."

"Do we?"

  They kissed again with slightly more pressure
and longer duration. "Apparently, we do," he said.

The third kiss lasted much longer.

  "I'd never met anyone like you, Leonard,"
Elizabeth said.

"I'm hardly anybody's idea of exotic."

  "But that's exactly what you were you and
everybody from your ship. You were the answer to
the prayers of a little girl who desperately wanted
her world to change, who grew up dreaming about
embracing all the infinite possibilities out there,
beyond our 'Great Wall of China."'

  "Did you really think our relationship could
last? I never said I was going to stay here."

  "I know you didn't. But that didn't matter to me.
Lots of us believed things were about to change
for the first time since our society began here. We
saw new freedoms just around the corner, and
they were intoxicating. I thought a child born of
those changes and freedoms would be a symbol."

  "But your leaders apparently didn't share that
intoxication."

  She sighed, remembering the crushing
disappointment when the hopeful flame lighting
the way toward a different kind of future got
snuffed out. "The conservatives won. I couldn't
believe they'd let an

                 68
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

opportunity like that slip away. Such a limited
treaty . . . nothing had changed. You were gone.
And I was pregnant."

"But you decided to go ahead and have the child."

 Elizabeth nodded. "It took a lot of
soul-searching. I knew I'd have to keep her origin
a secret. Maybe it would've been easier to stop
the pregnancy. I had the time. It wasn't a child
yet, just an idea, what might have been. One
night, I was Iying awake, thinking, and that's when
I knew."

<'Knew what?"

  "Even if no one else could ever share what I
felt, Anna would still be a symbol to me, a
reminder every day of our lives that there was
always hope for change."

  McCoy's eyes narrowed. "I don't get it. You did
what you did back then, but here you are, leading
a government that's dead set against the kind of
change you say you always wanted."

  "And you're wondering what happened to that
young dreamer." She looked into his eyes and
sighed. When she spoke, her voice came out soft
and sad. "She became president . . . and found out
that dreams get lost along the way."

"Lost for good?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

  "How did you keep anybody else from finding
out the truth about Anna?"

  "It wasn't that hard. I had access to all the files,
so I just falsified the important records. I listed
the Genet~c Bank as Anna's paternal source.
That didn't raise any questions, since lots of
women use the bank for artificial insemination."
She gave a shrug of resignation, her shoulders
sagging under the weight of eighteen years of
deception. "After that, it was easy enough. All I
had to do was commit Empyrea's most serious
crime: genetic fraud."

                 69
                  
            Chapter Eight

KIRK MADE A POINT to be present in the
transporter room, along with Chekov, when the
Federation scientists beamed up in two groups of
six. The outpost's director, Dr. Linden Skloff, was
a burly man of about sixty, with an avuncular grin
and shoulders stooped from years hunched over
lab consoles. At the head of the first group, he
loped down the steps of the transporter chamber
and greeted Kirk with a robust handshake. His
five colleagues followed, arrayed respectfully
behind him.

 "Welcome aboard," Kirk said as the remaining
six scientists materialised.

 "Thanks for having us, Captain," Skloff said.
"Wondered if I'd still have my space legs after
fifteen years."

"You haven't been off Empyrea in fifteen years?"

 "That's right. Not this high up anyway. Never
any further than our little space platform. Rep,
I've done hard time," Skloff said with a twinkle.
"Not every

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           THE BETTER MAN

body in our little group's been here as long. But
I haven't minded."

 "Well, we want you to consider the Enterprise
your R-and-R stop for the next couple of days,
until you either go back to Empyrea or go home
if that treaty isn't renewed. Mr. Chekov will show
you to your guest quarters and fill you in on
shipboard facilities. Make yourselves at home. If,
however, at any time, you'd prefer to return to the
Isolation Center, just let us know and we'll be
happy to beam you down."

 Chekovgestured toward the opening door.
"Right this way."

"Dr. Skloff," Kirk said quietly.

He stopped and turned. "Captain?"

"Would you mind staying for a minute?"

"Something on your mind?"

"As a matter of fact, I've got a few questions."

"Fire away."

Kirk squinted at the older man. "Fifteen years?"

  "You seem quite amazed by that, Captain Kirk,"
Skloff chuckled. "Sometimes I'm amazed by it my-
self."

  "Haven't you found it I don't know frustrating
to be kept apart from Empyrean society?"

  Skloff mulled the question for a few moments,
giving his choice of words careful consideration.
"Not frustrating so much. More like disappointing.
I knew the setup when I came here. Kept hoping
things would ease up. Never did. The Empyreans
are a stiff-necked bunch."

"I think I'd feel like a prisoner."

  "There's some of that," Skloff admitted. "But
there's a big difference. The Federation team's all
here voluntarily. Confined to that compound, but
free to leave the planet any time a supply ship
comes."

"Sounds limited, at best," Kirk said.

  "The compound's got most of the comforts of
home. Don't get me wrong. I think the Empyreans
71

          Howard Weinstein

have a lot to offer the galaxy, and I know we have
a lot to offer them."

"But they don't see it that way."

  "Nope, they don't. But I'm just an ol' astrophysi-
cist. Never claimed to be a diplomat. Not a social
sciences fella. But this is such an unusual stellar
binary. Well, the work's been enough to keep me
happy. Still got a lot to learn." He paused for a
moment. "Anything else you wanted to know, Cap-
tain?"

  "Just one thing this Dr. Ortega. You've worked
with him?"

  Skloff made a sour face. "Yes, indeedy. He's a
bit of a well, not to be too diplomatic about
about it "

  "You just said you never claimed to be a
diplomat" Kirk said helpfully.

  "That's right. And Ortega never claimed to be a
horse's ass, but sometimes he is."

A rueful smile crossed Kirk's lips. "So I've heard."

  Without looking away from his computer
screen, Dr. Ortega waved his hand dismissively
over his shoulder. "You, Engineer, go get the "

  "The tricorder's right here," Scott said, reaching
over from the adjacent console to hand the device
to Ortega.

  Without lifting a hand to take it, the Empyrean
turned slowly, giving, Scott a frosty glare. "That's
not what I wanted, Engineer. I wanted you to
bring me my cup of tea. I left it over on the
diagnostic console."

  Scott withdrew the proffered tricorder,
clenching his teeth. "Why can't y'get your own tea,
laddie?"

  "A You are closer, and B you are not
contributing anything significant to this phase of
our analysis."

  "Not contributing anything!" Scott exploded as
he jumped to his feet. '`Of all the "

  "Here is your tea, Dr. Ortega," Spock said,
smoothly sliding the half-filled fine China cup
onto the

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           THE BETTER MAN

Empyrean's console. Then he hooked a hand
under Scott's arm. "Mr. Scott, may I confer with
you?"

  "I'll give you a conference," Scott sputtered. But
he couldn't shake free of Spock's iron grip, and he
gave up after a momentary tug. He knew he had
no choice but to follow Spock across the room,
where the Vulcan sat and pretended to enter
some data into a terminal.

  "Mr. Scott," Spock said quietly, "your reaction to
Dr. Ortega's provocations is not constructive."

  "Not constructive!" Scott hissed through
clenched teeth, barely able to contain his anger.
"Ever since we got here, he's been treatin' me like
I'm some sort a' menial servant and you like an
inferior freak o' nature sir!"

  "Your pique is quite understandable, and I too
find his attitude objectionable. However, we are
here to accomplish certain tasks "

  "So we're just supposed t' grin and bear all his
insults?"

  "In a word, Mr. Scott, yes . . . unpleasant as that
may be. We are unlikely to reverse Dr. Ortega's
fundamental prejudices in our encounters with
him. At best, we can devote our efforts to making
the duration of those encounters as mercifully
brief as possible."

  Scott noticed the brittle tone in Spock's voice.
Controlled as they were, even Vulcans were not
completely immune to irritation. "He's gettin' I'
you, too."

  "I do not know what you mean, Mr. Scott,"
Spock said with deliberate neutrality.

  "Aye, sir," Scott said. "Enough said. I'll try to
keep my temper until I can get back t' the ship
and put Dr. Ortega's face up on a shootin' gallery
target."

"A worthwhile suggestion."

  Scott couldn't help grinning. Ever since Spock's
mind-blowing journey through the vast penetralia
of the machine-being V'ger a couple of years
earlier, he

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          Howard Weinstein

had seemingly become much more at ease with
himself and with the concept of humor. Scott
doubted he'd ever live to see Spock belly-laughing
or even cracking an obvious smile, but the Vulcan
first officer no longer viewed the occasional dry
comment as an inappropriate sign of weakness or
betrayal of dreaded emotion. On the whole, it
made Spock considerably more pleasant to be
around.

  "I've found a problem requiring your attention,"
Ortega announced from across the room.

  Scott sighed, reminding himself of the promise
he'd just made to Spock and swallowing unspoken
a comment that could at best be called
discourteous. "What's that, Doctor?"

  "There are fluctuations in the plasma flow.
Sensors are detecting it here and here." He
pointed to a couple of conduits on the system
diagram glowing on his computer screen. "That
means excess strain on the power-transfer
couplings."

  "I know what it means," Scott snapped, his pa-
tience thinning.

  Spock was already calling up the pertinent data
on his computer monitor with a speed that Scott
proudly noted exceeded Ortega's genetically
enhanced abilities. "Curious," Spock murmured.
"And potentially troublesome."

  "It had better not be," said Ortega. "No delays
in the dismantling of this outpost will be
tolerated."

  "The rejection of the treaty renewal is not a
foregone conclusion," Spock said.

  Scott leaned over Spock's shoulder, then pecked
at the keypad. "This complex has a self-contained
power source."

'Of course it does," Ortega said.

  "Of course," Scott echoed sarcastically, drawing
a cautionary glance from Spock. "No integration
with anything Empyrean, no threat o'
cross-cultural contamination."

74

           THE BETTER MAN

  The chief engineer ran through a series of
technical schematics, then let out a derisive snort.
"How quaint. This whole power generation
system's built around a Sternn fusion core."

  "So? That's state of the art for a system of this
generating capacity. We've refined it over and
over."

  "State o' the art? Maybe seventy-f~ve years ago
it was. They musta stopped usin' these beasties
altogeth er in the Federation when I was just a
wee bairn."

"Stopped using them? Why?"

  "Because we found somethin' better. Apparently
. . . you haven't."

  "Well, maybe your Federation gave up on the
Sterun core more quickly than it should have."

"I doubt that, Doctor."

"This technology has served our needs quite well."

  "Aye. I'm sure it has," Scott said, his sarcasm
undisguised. So much for the conversational truce
Spock had requested.

  "It's proven technology reliable, efficient,
expandable perfectible. It isn't always necessary to
reinvent the wheel."

  As he opened his mouth to launch another
technical taunt, Scott noticed Spock's severe
look a nonverbal rebuke if ever there was one.
Solely out of respect for his senior officer, Scotty
backed down, but he couldn't resist muttering,
"Aye, stick with the square wheel y've got."

  Ortega glanced up over at him. "What was that,
Mr. Scott?"

  "Nothin', Doctor. Nothin' at all. Whatever's
wrong with this old girl, I'm sure we'll have it
taken care of in two shakes."

  Ortega pushed back from his console and stood.
"You'd better. The treaty's fate may not be a
foregone conclusion, but I wouldn't bet a wooden
nickel on renewal. All Federation equipment is to
be removed as soon that official decision is made."

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          Howard Weinstein

  "We'd better take care o'this? What about you
an' y'r staff?" Scott said, glancing toward Spock,
then glaring at the Empyrean scientist.

  "This is a Federation outpost. It's your
responsibility, not ours. Diagnose the problem,
and correct it."

  That eliminated what little was left of Scott's
peaceable resolve. "Correct it?! Look, Doctor,
you've been treatin' us like servants since we
walked in that door "

  `'Have I?" Ortega interrupted with a mildness so
disarming that it made Scott stutter to a stop in
midtirade. "I meant no disrespect. It's just that we
Empyreans are accustomed to perfection. And
while you may be an exceedingly competent
engineer, Mr. Scott, you are clearly not up to our
genetic standards through no fault of your own.
And as for you, Mr. Spock, well, genetic
hybridisation is what it is. I can hardly be expected
to ignore the obvious, now can I?"

  All Scott could do was stare, balling his fists as
his face reddened with slow-burning rage,
repeating to himself: I will not clean his
chronometer. I will not clean his chronometer. . .

  By nature or design, Ortega seemed oblivious to
Scott's change of complexion. He approached the
two Starfleet officers and patted Scott on the
shoulder. "Good. I'm glad you understand it's
nothing personal. Now, do get on with this
diagnostic work, there's a good fellow." And he
left the lab.

  Scott took a deep breath, then let it out very
slowly through gritted teeth. "Y'know I'm not one
for ribbons, medals, and parades, sir "

  Spock nodded. "But you do deserve a
commendation for admirable restraint."

  McCoy looked up at the darkening sky splashed
with scarlet, purple, and gold. "That's not a
genetically perfected sunset, is it?" he asked dryly
as he walked

                 76
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

with Elizabeth March through the gardens outside
her presidential mansion.

  "No. We don't take any credit for that." Then,
after a droll pause: "But we are genetically better
able toappreciate it."

  He knew she was kidding, but he had to wonder
how much of good taste might in fact be
genetically based. He'd been to few places that
were more beautiful than the Empyrean colony,
with its mix of architecture and landscaping that
always managed to be harmonious without also
being bland.

  This section of the gardens overflowed with
flowers of all sizes, shapes, and colors, not at all
orderly in the style of a formal garden, yet far less
random than a field of wildflowers.

"So, this is your retreat?"

  "I guess you could say that. It's my other pride
and joy ''

"After Anna."

  She nodded with a wry chuckle. "You know how
life has a way of getting away from us."

"I've had the feeling once or twice."

  Elizabeth bent over to pluck a multicolor
blossom with broad petals. She slipped the stem
through her hair and set the flower just over one
ear. "I come here, and I feel like there's
someplace I have at least some control. I've
developed f~fty-seven new hybrids."

"Genetics isn't an exact science, though."

  "That's true. Sometimes, I'm not at all sure what
I'm going to wind up with. Raising a child isn't an
exact science either, even without some
self-created sword of Damocles hanging over us.
But seeing Anna grow up . . . that made up for all
the anxiety. There were days I almost stopped
dreading her eighteenth birthday."

  They stopped and sat on a gracefully curved
park bench. "What happens at eighteen?"

                 77
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "When Empyrean children are born, they're
given a routine screening to register their genome
and certify genetic perfection."

  "Even under the most controlled reproductive
circumstances, mutations pop up. What if they're
not born genetically perfect?"

"Those with imperfections are sterilised."

  McCoy's mouth tightened with disapproval.
"Lovely."

  "You make it sound cruel. It's not, and it's not
like that happens very often," she said defensively.
"The rest are given a genetic brand that identifies
them at the cellular level as being the offspring of
an Empyrean mother and it also blocks
reproductive activity."

"Hmm . . . birth control at birth. Till what age?"

  "Eighteen. Empyreans aren't permitted to have
children until then. When they reach eighteen,
they have another scan to make sure no new
genetic defects have cropped up. If they pass, the
reproductive inhibitor is overridden."

  "I don't get it," McCoy said with a thoughtful
frown. "If Anna's not genetically pure, how did she
pass the postbirth scan?"

  "She didn't. I falsified those results, too. But
there wasn't any way to encode her cells with my
genetic brand "

  "And now she's turning eighteen and she's
facing her reproductive certification scan?"

  "Which I can't fake, and she can't pass. And
that's when she'll be revealed as a genetic illegal."
Anna closed her eyes and took a deep, calming
breath. "I haven't raised her all these years just to
have her disgraced and banished. Execution is
even a possibility, depending on the whim of the
court."

  "I didn't know genetically perfect people have
judicial whims." As soon as McCoy said it, he was
sorry. This wasn't the time for a dig at Empyrean

                 78
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

society. When Elizabeth looked at him, he saw the
hurt in her eyes and the determination.

 "When your ship left here eighteen years ago,
while I waited for Anna to be born, I made a
promise to myself and to her. I didn't want her to
face the same frustration and disappointment I
did. I wanted her world to be different. I wanted
to reach a level of power here where I could make
things different. I haven't worked this hard to get
where I am just to throw all that accomplishment
away, to throw my life away."

 Her intensity didn't surprise him, but it did
unsettle him. He was still trying to assimilate the
concept that Anna was his child. He didn't know
how much more he could handle, and he didn't
know what she might ask of him. "There's nothing
I can do about all that. What's done is done."

 "I;mnot asking you to change the past, Leonard.
I'm asking you to change the future."

"How?"

  "By taking Anna away from Nova Empyrea
aboard your ship."

  He scrambled to his feet. "Now hold on a
minute," he protested. "The Enterprise isn't my
ship! I've got a captain to answer to, not to
mention Starfleet and the Federation! And I'm in
no position to take care of a child."

  "Anna's not a child she'd be an adult if she
stayed here, and she'd be an adult if she leaves."

  "I don't care how genetically perfected she is,
Beth. She's still going to need a parent for
guidance, and I don't know if I'd be much good at
that."

  "You underestimate us. I assure you, you won't
have to 'take care' of her."

  "I don't know that I can dismiss my paternal
responsibilities all that easily. Besides, aren't
people going to wonder why Anna just up and
disappeared?" 79

          Howard Weinstein

  "No one needs to know the details. And I can
manage the aftermath. Whatever happens, it'll be
better than what's going to happen if she stays.
You'll be saving her from the indignity of a
hearing and a sentence, and you're the only one
who can do that."

  For several moments, all he could do was shake
his head in time to the rhythm of the doubts
bubbling through his thoughts. "I don't know if I
can, Beth."

  She stood and took his hand, clasping it
between hers. "I know I've just dumped a huge
weight onto your shoulders. I'm not asking for
any promises, Leonard."

"That's good, 'cause I can't give you any."

  "But you'll try," she said. It wasn't exactly a
question; it was more like a plea.

  "I'll try." He took out his communicator and
flipped it open, relieved to hear the familiar
electronic chirp. "McCoy to Enterprise one to
beam up."

                 80
                  
            Chapter Nine

WITH ITS BRICK AND STONE paths and
patios, its display coves with wood and stone
benches, and tall, sheltering trees, the statue
garden had long been Anna's favorite retreat. The
statues themselves, set in eclectic groupings
ranging from classical to abstract, had all been
crafted by Empyreans. The benches were ar-
ranged so that visitors could either look directly
at the artworks or simply sit among them.

 For Anna, no matter what her mood, the statue
garden was a place where she always felt at home.
When she wanted to be alone, it was the perfect
place to find solitude. When she needed to have
a heart-toheart confessional with a dear friend,
they could sit cross-legged on a bench, facing each
other under the outstretched tubular form that
looked to Anna like a leaping panther.

 She knew there were other nooks where lovers
met and embraced, though she had yet to come
here for a romantic rendezvous of her own. And
when she

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          Howard Weinstein

wanted to get together with a group of her best
pals to laugh or sing or argue about whatever was
on their minds, this was where they would meet.

  Perched halfway up a gently inclined hillside,
the statue garden hugged the natural contour of
the slope. Curving around the hill as it did, it was
one of the few vantage points to offer views of
both the city to the north and the seashore to the
east.

  Today, as daylight faded into a comfortably
warm evening, Anna found four of her friends at
their usual place, clustered around a small
campfire burning in an open stone hearth. There
was Paolo, with his fierce dark eyes and flashing
smile.

  And Eleni and Alexei, both fair, resembling
each other enough to pass as brother and sister.
That impression was quickly erased by the fact
that their limbs seemed to be habitually entwined,
more or less passionately depending on where
they were and whom they were with. Among
friends, they were joyfully uninhibited, and
everyone was certain they would spend the rest of
their lives together raising a boatload of willowy
towheaded children.

  And moody Ethan, with his unruly mop of
chestnut hair and a face too regal and serious for
someone not yet eighteen and his unsettling habit
of asking one question too many, no matter what
the subject. He'd always been that way, and Anna
had known him longer than any of the rest of
their group of friends, since she'd been enrolled in
the same art class with him at age six. She could
still remember him at six arguing with their
teacher about the merits of realism versus abstract
art.

  By the time Anna made her way up to the
seaside overlook, the others had already been
there long enough to begin their ritual of sharing
a bottle of wine, a couple of long loaves of bread,
and the assortment of homemade jams Paolo
made as a hobby. They were also well into the
debate of the day. Anna was not 82

           THE BETTER MAN

surprised to find the pending treaty negotiations
with the Federation to be the chosen topic.

  " I mean, the Great Empyrean Experiment
hasn't exactly crumbled since those Federation
people came here," Alexei was saying as Anna
joined them. He acknowledged her arrival with a
wave.

  Paolo, always assuming the role of host no
matter where they gathered, already had a cup of
wine and a hunk of bread ready for her. She took
them and sat on one of the blankets laid on the
grass without interrupting Alexei's continuing
statement.

  "They've been here as long as we've been alive.
Just because the old people are scared of anything
Outside, that's no reason to go back to the way
things were before."

  Eleni spoke up. "Do you really think the old
people are afraid?"

  "Don't you? Of course they are," Ethan said, his
jaw taut with resentment. "They're afraid of
anything not written in stone like the Ten
Commandments. They're afraid of anything new
and different. They prove it every day, don't they?
Aren't we just prisoners on this planet?"

  Paolo continued munching on his bread, as if
unwilling to let Ethan's intensity spoil the pleasant
evening. "Does that mean you want to leave,
Ethan7"

  "I didn't say I wanted to leave. I'd just like to
have some choices. Curiosity shouldn't be a crime,
should it?"

"It's hardly a crime."

  "I don't know about that, Paolo," Eleni said. "It
almost got me into big trouble once."

Paolo eyebrows arched. "Oh?"

  Eleni glanced around at her friends, then
looked down, signaling uncertainty. Paolo leaned
forward, pouring some more wine for her. "Come
on, Eleni. You can't tease us like that. Is this
some deep, dark secret?"

83

          Howard Weinstein

"It was."

"Even from me?" Alexei asked, looking hurt.

  Eleni nodded solemnly. "I've never told
anyone  not even you, Anna." She took a deep
breath, held it for a moment, then let it out in one
quick puff, like a reluctant bather unable to avoid
a headlong leap into the deep end of a cold pool.
"When I was twelve, I snuck into the Federation
compound."

  Eyes widened in disbelief. Eleni found everyone
staring at her.

  "You?!" Paolo hooted. "You never broke a rule
in your life!"

  Jarred by her revelation, Alexei frowned at her
like she was a stranger. "Why would you sneak in
there?"

  She shrugged. "I told you . . . I was curious.
They were from Outside, these mysterious people,
and I wanted to meet them."

"How did you get in?" Anna asked, fascinated.

  "It wasn't as hard as you think. It was drummed
into our heads that we were supposed to stay away
from there. So we did. But I made a discovery:
When nobody expects you to do something, they
don't actually try all that hard to keep you from
doing it."

  Anna leaned closer, overcome by her own
curiosity, especially now that she'd met Dr. McCoy
and Ambassador Rousseau. For as long as she
could remember, Anna had wondered what those
people in the mountaintop complex were like. It
was almost unbelievable that mousey Eleni, best
known for being inseparably attached to her
boyfriend, had done something Anna had long
fantasized about doing herself. "What happened
once you got in?"

  "Well, I wandered around the grounds a little
bit. I guess I was a little afraid of actually going
inside the buildings. Nobody knew I was there yet.
I even thought about just leaving before anybody
could catch me,"

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           THE BETTER MAN

"What happened then?"

 Eleni smiled at the memory. "Somebody caught
me."

"My God! You must've been terrified, " Anna said.

  "Not really. The man who found me was, well,
gorgeous," Eleni said with a playful waggle of her
eyebrows.

  Anna smirked. Paolo, Alexei, and Ethan pursed
their lips in disapproval, and Eleni glared at them.
"You boys are so predictably vain. Like nobody
who's not Empyrean can be gorgeous?"

  The young men exchanged glances of alliance.
Alexei seemed most threatened, so he voiced their
unified response. "Possible, maybe . . . but not
likely. "

  "Well, he was this big, bearded bear of a man,"
Eleni continued, doing what she could to
aggravate the boys' discomfort. "His name was
Jacob Simon. I fell in love with him instantly." She
turned sweetly to see Alexei squirm.

  Anna played along, trying to hide her smirk,
continuing what had become a sort of interview.
"So what did he do?"

  "He took me inside. The administrator in charge
wanted to turn me over to the government. That
was when I really got scared. I imagined all these
punishments and tortures. I begged Jacob to help
me."

  "Did he?" Anna noticed that the boys pretended
to be indifferent.

  Eleni nodded. "At the last minute. He asked
them to let me go out the way I came in and not
tell anybody I'd been there. And that's what they
finally decided to do."

  "What were they like?" Ethan asked, trying not
to sound too interested.

"Well, they were different."

"From us?"

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          Howard Weinstein

  Eleni nodded again. "And from each other.
Some were fatter, some thinner. Some weren't
very tall. A couple of the men were bald."

  "So," said Alexei, "you're saying they weren't as
perfect as we are."

  She gave him a sardonic look. "Perfection isn't
always perfect."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Figure it out."

  "Hey, hey," Paolo said, waving his hands like a
referee. "We're getting off the topic. So, did you
ever do it again?"

"No."

  "Did you ever see Mr. Bearded Bear again?"
Alexei asked, baiting her.

"No. Though I still want to."

  Alexci looked alarmed and more than a little
threatened. "You do? Why?"

  "Because they know things we don't. If they're
still here when I'm done with school if Jacob's
still here I'd jump at the chance to work with
them."

  Paolo waved his hand in a dismissive gesture at
odds with the genial expression on his face. It was
one of those times Anna didn't know what to
make of him and wondered if he was as nice as he
seemed. "Oh, Eleni," he said, "they couldn't
possibly know anything we don't know.
They're well, let's be honest  compared to us,
they're flawed. "

  Ethan's simmering anger flared. "Sometimes
you're such an idiot, Paolo. If we're so perfect, we
shouldn't be afraid of stuff that's Outside."

  Paolo's amiable grin faded, and he stood up,
looming over Ethan. "That's idiocy. There are
plenty of reasons to keep Outside out, and they've
got nothing to do with being afraid."

  Now Ethan got to his feet and they argued
face-toface, voices rising with each exchange.
"There's only one reason: fear! And it's stupid "

                 86
                  
          THE BETTER MAN
"It's not stupid to protect ourselves "

 "Isn't it stupid to duck challenges and avoid
diversity? With everything I'm learning about
science, I'd like to apply my ideas and talents to a
wider world than one little planet."

 "We've already got plenty of diversity. We don't
need the insanity and warfare and physical defects
that Outsiders pass around the galaxy like some
virus!"

"Empyrea was a good idea that's going bad "

  "You better watch who hears you say that,"
Paolo warned.

  "If you think I'm going to live my life afraid of
who might not like what I've got to say "

  "Ethan's got a point," Alexei said suddenly,
absorbing Paolo's accusing look. "Things are going
to be different when our generation starts running
this world." He stopped as abruptly as he'd started
when Paolo and Ethan both turned to stare at him
like he was several kinds of fool.

  "Unfortunately," Ethan said, "they're not going
to be any different when we're in charge. This
treaty is going to be rejected, and that'll be that."

  "I'll drink to that," Paolo said, hoisting his cup
with a mean smile.

  But Ethan shook his head in disgust and,
without another word, stalked off down the dark
path. Alexei took off after him, skipping sideways
as he turned back toward Eleni. "I can't let him go
like that. I'll see you at your house later. Okay?"

"Go," Eleni said as she stood next to Anna.

  Quite satisfied with the outcome of the
argument, Paolo knelt on the ground, packing up
the refreshments in his basket. "It would be
interesting to see who'll be right about the
future except I know it won't be Ethan. Can I
walk you two home?"

  "No, thanks, Paolo," Anna said. "We'll see you
in school tomorrow."

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          Howard Weinstein

  Eleni and Anna left him behind and headed
down the path, walking in silence for quite a
while. They stopped when they reached an
overlook and leaned on the stone wall, watching
the moonlit waves rolling onto the beach a few
hundred feet beneath them.

  "He's madly in love with you, you know," Eleni
said, without preamble.

  The flat statement caught Anna off guard. She
blinked a couple of times, trying to figure out who
and what Eleni was talking about. "Paolo?"

  "No, silly," Eleni said with a pained expression.
"Ethan."

  That didn't make any more sense to Anna.
"Ethan?"

"Ethan."

  "I don't think so, Eleni. Ethan and I have always
been best friends, but . . . no. You're wrong about
him."

  "You obviously don't notice the way he looks at
you."

  "He doesn't look at me. He doesn't look at
anybody lately, unless he's arguing with them."

  "That's exactly what I mean. He doesn't look at
you differently than he doesn't look at anybody
else."

  Anna stared at her friend. "Maybe it's hormonal,
but you're starting to make less and less sense
when you and Alexei aren't joined at the hip or
some other body part."

  "Suit yourself, Anna," Eleni said with a shrug.
"But if you haven't noticed, you're the only one."

  Anna watched a whitecap foaming in the moon-
light, tracking it from its most distant visible point
all the way to its crashing end on the sand and
rocks below. "Even if you're right, I don't know.
Ethan is just too dark. Those moods! He's always
going on about something."

  "He's always been like that. It's never stopped
you from being friends with him."

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           THE BETTER MAN

 "There's a big difference between being friends
and, well, you know." She couldn't even say the
word.

But Eleni could. "Lovers."

  Anna pretended she hadn't heard it. "I don't
know if I could stand being around all that
intensity all the time. Could you?"

  "He's passionate. It could be exciting, especially
the first few times."

  The blush warming Anna's face made it clear
she knew exactly knew what Eleni meant. And
she chose not to reply, but only partly out of
embarrassment  and partly because the notion
did have some appeal. There was another long
wave-watching silence. Then: "Eleni, you're crazy."

"Maybe."

"Come on. Let's go home."

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             Chapter Ten

'WELL? MCCOY PROMPTED. Say something
already."

  Kirk stood at his cabin window, his back toward
McCoy, who sat patiently in a soft chair. But he
could see McCoy's reflection as the doctor waited
behind him. "Like what?"

  "Hell, I don't know. Congratulate me on my
sperm motility."

  Kirk had just been told about McCoy's
revelatory visit with Elizabeth March. In all
honesty, he had no idea what to say, how to react.
He turned to face his friend with a shrug.
"Congratulations on your sperm motility. This
must've been a hell of a shock for you I know it
is for me."

  "I should've told you about this in my quarters,
not yours."

"Why? Some kind of weird protocol?"

  "No. I've got a better liquor selection. And I
could really use a drink about now." McCoy
leaned back

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           THE BETTER MAN

and rubbed his eyes. It was the end of a long and
very tiring day; he'd managed to get past wishing
it had never happened. Now he just wanted it to
be over. "I can see you're having a hard time
making sense of all this."

  "I don't know, Bones. I've had my share of
youthful flings around the galaxy."

  "I know I witnessed most of them. But this
wasn't just a youthful Ding, Jim."

  "What? You were planning to stay on Empyrea
eighteen years ago?"

  "Probably not. I don't know. Maybe. It didn't
matter. I wound up not having that choice." He
sighed and shook his head. "Who knows, maybe it
was temporary insanity. The wounds from my
marriage hadn't healed. And Beth March had
this this magnetism, this eagerness to connect
with somebody from anyplace but Nova Empyrea.
And, boy, did we ever connect."

  "That's obvious," Kirk said, not without
sympathy. "The question is, what do we do about
it?"

"We?',

  "Of course. I'm not going to let you go through
this alone."

  McCoy responded with a weak smile. "I
appreciate that, Jim."

  "First question: Do you want to stay out of this,
or do you want to help?"

"Of course I want to help!"

  Kirk raised a cautionary finger. "Fools rush in,
Bones. Think about it: You're not under any
ethical or moral obligation. Other than the
obvious and unwitting contribution, you didn't
create this . . . situation. Elizabeth March did that,
all on her own."

  "Anna's not a 'situation,' she's a child. And
there's no reason she should suffer for the sins of
the mother, not if there's something I can do to
help."

"We can do."

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          Howard Weinstein

  "We," McCoy said, accepting the correction.
"Are we going to run aground of the Prime
Directive on this?"

  "You mean, if you take Anna away on the
Enterprise?"

"Yeah."

  Kirk formulated a careful reply. "Well, you
know I believe in a . . .flexible. . . interpretation of
the Prime Directive."

  "I've noticed. So what does your flexible
interpretation tell you in this case?"

  "I think that taking Anna and keeping the
March family skeleton in the closet doesn't have
any significant effect on the natural development
of Empyrean society or culture. It's not like this is
some primitive civilisation without knowledge of
spaceflight or life on other planets."

"I take it that means I've got your blessing?"

  "If you want it if you really want to get
involved in this you've got it, Bones."

  "I am involved, Jim. How can I run off without
at least trying to help?"

"So what're you going to do?"

  "Go back down there and tell Beth I'll take
Anna with us when the ship leaves Empyrea."

  "Not that I want to throw any more monkey
wrenches into the works," Kirk said slowly, "but do
either of you know if Anna is willing to leave?"

  McCoy stared, feeling like a complete dunce.
Tossed as he'd been by the day's emotional mael-
strom, that question had never even occurred to
him. He'd been too busy searching his own soul.
But Kirk had asked a key question, and McCoy
needed to learn the answer. One thing he did
know, and it scared the hell out of him: You can't
save somebody if they won't grab the lifeline.

* * *

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 "What do you mean, you don't know?" McCoy
faced Elizabeth March, his face furrowed by an
incredulous frown.

 "Leonard, how could I know? It's never come up
over breakfast: 'Say, Anna, just supposing I
committed genetic fraud and your father was
some guy from another planet and wasn't syringe
112-B from the reproductive bank, how would you
feel about escaping from Nova Empyrea before
we get caught and both get thrown into prison,
banished, or executed?' "

 McCoy shied away from her glare as he realised
she was right. "Well, there's only way to find out.
We've got to tell her the whole story and see how
she feels."

 Elizabeth sighed. Her shoulders slouched as she
faced up to a moment she'd dreaded for eighteen
years. "So I guess you're not willing to knock her
out with a surprise sedative, beam her up, and
have her wake up when the Enterprise is several
hundred light-years from here?"

"That wouldn't be my first choice, no."

  "I didn't think so." Elizabeth closed her eyes for
a moment. "Will you be there when I tell her?"

"If you want me to."

  She reached over and clutched his hand in hers.
"Then let's get this over with."

  They found Anna alone in the dark sunroom,
playing a melancholy piece on her guitar to the
accompaniment of night sounds drifting in
through the open windows. With McCoy standing
by in silent support, Elizabeth sat with her
daughter on the wicker sofa and told her the
truth. No embellishments, no excuses.

  Maybe it simply becomes easier to say hard
things the second time around. Whatever the
reason, McCoy admired the way Elizabeth said
what she had to say without hesitation or apology.
As he listened, he

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          Howard Weinstein

realised that she had regained her balance and
drawn on admirable reserves of strength to get
through this. And he found himself increasingly
concerned with Anna's reaction.

  He watched her closely, looking for signs. He
watched her eyes, her mouth, her posture. But he
saw nothing obvious to indicate whether she was
stunned or disappointed or angry or ashamed. Or
just numbed. Was she aware of his scrutiny and
trying to hide her feelings? Considering the
magnitude of what her mother was telling her, was
it humanly possible for her to absorb that much of
a jolt and still maintain an unnatural poise?

  Empyrean or not, she was just an
eighteen-year-old kid. The foundations of her
existence were being shattered. The darkest of
worries and fears filled McCoy's head and
fluttered in his stomach. Can she handle this?

  And then Elizabeth was done. The revelations
were complete. They waited for Anna to say
something. But she sat there in silence, her
breathing calm and even. McCoy felt like asking
if she understood all of it the past and the
present, the causes and consequences of what he
and Beth had done. But he was certain she did
understand, and he felt less uncomfortable
following Elizabeth's lead. Beth knew her own
daughter. He didn't. He kept his mouth shut.

  "So," Anna finally said, still calm, "now that
you've told me all this, what am I supposed to
do?"

  "If you go away with Dr. McCoy, you won't have
to face the worst."

"Is it my choice?"

"Anna, there is no choice."

  Anna suddenly jumped up, her face flushing
with rising anger. "You had a choice! You made
it before I was born before I was conceived and
you stole my choices at the same time!"

"I'm sorry "

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           THE BETTER MAN

 But before Elizabeth could get past those two
words, Anna rushed from the room, leaving her
mother and McCoy in the void no words could
fill. The sounds of the night outside seemed
unbearably loud.

 "Well," Elizabeth eventually whispered, "that
didn't go too well."

"Can you blame her?"

 Beth rubbed her eyes. "I guess not. I kind of
hoped she'd be stronger, take it in stride."

"Would you have taken it in stride if you were
her?"

  "Enhanced emotional stability is part of the
Empyrean character," she said, avoiding the
question.

  "Give the girl a break," McCoy said as he sat
down next to her. "Don't forget, she's got my
imperfect chromosomes, too. She needs some
time."

  "Time is something we don't have a lot of. She's
going to have to accept her fate and be on that
starship of yours when it leaves."

  McCoy knew the question that Elizabeth did not
want to hear. He also knew it had to be asked.
"What if Anna doesn't agree?"

  "I don't agree at all," Ethan said flatly, "not one
bit." He and Anna sat on the carpeted floor of the
library's circular atrium that formed the open core
of the ten-story research complex. They leaned
back against the top-floor railing, ignoring the
elevator car dropping down the transparent tube
behind them. From there, they had a clear view of
the large windows that overlooked the rest of the
university campus.

  "That doesn't surprise me," Anna teased. "You
never did know anything about musical composi-
tion."

  "Then why did you ask me?" He squinted at her,
trying to see through her playful facade.

  "Maybe I just wanted to see how predictable you
are."

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          Howard Weinstein

"Oh? And how predictable am 1?"

  "Well, for one thing, I knew exactly where I'd
find you at this time of night."

  "Okay, then," he countered, "speaking of
predictabil~ty, you are never anywhere near the
library at what you call this time of night."

  "But I am tonight. So maybe I'm not as
predictable as you think."

  "You are,)' Ethan said with a dismissive wave of
his hand.

  Anna flashed a challenging half smile. "You
think you're so smart. What would I be doing if I
wasn't here?"

  "Sitting by yourself in that sunroom of yours,
playing your guitar or maybe the piano or your
cello."

  The look of surprise on her face made it
obvious he was right. "How do you know?"

"Sometimes I walk by your house . . . and listen."

"You do? I never saw you."

  "That's the general idea. I don't mean to bother
you or interrupt." He looked away, his voice
softening. "I just like to hear you play, even if I
don't know anything about musical composition."

  Anna looked at him for a lingering moment,
searching for something to help her understand
him, finding him looking back with much the same
purpose. Then she got up and walked over to the
window and watched the lights twinkling on the
paths and roads below. She waited for Ethan to
join her, hoped he would. After a few moments,
he did.

  "Ethan . . . what would you think if one of our
friends turned out to be . . . genetically illegal?"

He cocked his head. "Huh?"

"Not pure Empyrean."

  "Hmm!" His eyebrows went up as he pondered
her question, which seemed to come out of
nowhere and catch him genuinely off guard.

She watched his eyes. This one of the few times
she

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           THE BETTER MAN

could recall when Ethan did not have a ready re-
sponse, even if it was just to volley back with a
question of his own. He'd become so serious
lately  even cynical and now she saw something
quite different in those eyes: a sense of wonder
and amazement, as if she'd pointed a spotlight
into some shadowed corner of his psyche. Instead
of being upset by this unexpected illumination, he
seemed intoxicated.

"Forbidden love with an Outsider . . ."

 His sentence fragment made her frown. It was
her turn to be surprised: He sounded like a dated,
old romance novel. Quite without seeking it, she'd
uncovered a previously unknown facet of his
personality. She wasn't at all sure she liked it. It
just wasn't him. "What about it?" she prompted
with a bit more impatience than she'd intended.

 "Well, I never really thought about it . . . I
mean, living with a secret like that. Would this
pemon have known his heritage while he was
growing up?"

"Speaking hypothetically, of course "

"Of course."

 "No, she I mean, he just finds out as an adult.
Maybe at our age."

"Do you know something about somebody?"

"No!"

"Then what suddenly made you think about this?"

  She looked away from him, nibbling her lower
lip as she watched a vehicle driving slowly past the
library. "Nothing. I mean, something . . . what
Eleni told us today."

  "You mean about sneaking into the Federation
compound?"

  "If she could do it, who's to say an adult
couldn't have done it "

  "And had an affair with one of the Federation
scientists?"

Anna nodded. "It's possible. Isn't it?"

"Well, I guess so. But Eleni's innocent little adven97

          Howard Weinstein

ture happened when she was barely twelve. That's
a lot different than an adult getting pregnant by
an Outsider and having that child. An adult would
know the consequences, an adult would know she
couldn't keep that secret forever. Wouldn't she?"

  He looked directly into her eyes. This time, she
couldn't look away, though she wanted to and
tried to. Does he know? Can he tell?

  "Yes, an adult would know," she said. "But I'm
not talking about the mother. I'm talking about
the child. What would you think of him?"

  "If something like this actually happened? If
wouldn't be his fault. I certainly wouldn't hold it
against him. In fact, I'd think of him as a symbol
of all the possibilities for variety, all the choices
we don't get just because we're Empyreans locked
into this prison planet.

  Ethan's habitual contentiousness had edged
back into his voice. Anna found that comforting.
She let him go on.

  "It is possible an Empyrean could've mated with
an Outsider or could someday if it hasn't
happened already. That's exactly why the
conservatives want to close down that science
complex: to make sure it doesn't happen ever. And
you know what scares me the most?"

"What?"

  "If your little hypothetical forbidden romance
did happen and the secret came out now, that
would be the worst possible thing. It would play
right into the old geezers' hands, give 'em just the
ammunition they need to shut down negotiations
with the Federation  hell, those talks are just for
show anyway it's already a foregone
conclusion "

"Ethan, maybe it isn't."

  "And it'll be a hundred years more before any
Empyrean leader even thinks about opening
contact with Outsiders again."

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           THE BETTER MAN

 "Don't you think some of our leaders really
want that treaty renewed?"

He looked at her sadly. "No."

  Ethan stayed to continue studying. By the time
Anna left the library, it was well past midnight
and the campus streets were deserted. She walked
alone, his pessimistic words still going around and
around in her head. She tried to think of an
argument to counterbalance what he'd said, but
she couldn't.

  In all probability, he was right. If the truth of
her origin came out now, the conservative
backlash would seal the fate of the limited
Empyrean experiment. Not only would the
Federation outpost be shut down, but it would be
generations before another Empyrean government
might scare up the nerve to try anything like it
again.

Maybe it would never happen again.

  And maybe her mother was right. Maybe she
had no choice.

  When Anna got back to the presidential
mansion, she found McCoy and Elizabeth still
there, still awake. Unsure of how he should
behave toward Anna, McCoy stood by as her
mother greeted her with a prolonged hug.

"I was worried about you," Elizabeth said softly.

  "I'm sorry I ran out like that." Anna shrugged.
"I didn't know what else to do."

  "I was just making some tea for us. You want
some?"

  Anna nodded. She and McCoy followed
Elizabeth into the sunroom, where a lamp cast a
gentle halo of light in the midst of darkness. They
sat around a small table while Elizabeth filled
delicate cups with the steaming, sweetly aromatic
herbal tea.

"I never knew you were such a rebel, Mother."

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          Howard Weinstein

  Both McCoy and Elizabeth were relieved to see
Anna smiling.

"You approve of that?" Elizabeth asked.

  "As a matter of fact, I do. Maybe that's why I
ran. It's not easy finding out that your
government-issue mother used to break all the
rules."

  Elizabeth raised a dissenting hand. "Now wait a
minute. I didn't break all the rules "

"But you sure broke the biggest rule."

  "Well, I guess I did that." Then her smile faded.
"If I hadn't, I wouldn't have you. Or, at least, I'd
have a different you. So I can't say I'm sorry, but
now we're paying the price for what I did."

"I know."

  McCoy let out a breath, trying to relax. "We
knew we had to tell you the truth, but we were
worried that you wouldn't be able to handle it.
That was quite a bombshell we dropped on you."

  "I'm okay " She paused awkwardly just before
saying the word doctor. "I'm not sure what to call
you. Doctor seems kind of formal. Dad? Daddy?
Father?" She spread her hands, surrendering to
the uncertainty of the situation.

  McCoy smiled, trying to put her at ease.
"Leonard'll do just fine."

  "Besides, you two will have plenty of opportunity
to work all that out."

  "That's right," McCoy agreed. "As soon as we
get to the Enterprise, I'll call some friends back on
Earth and see what we can do about getting you
into a university."

  Anna's expression darkened. "Utah, Leonard,
Mother, there's something "

  "Wouldn't want all that genetically perfected
intellect gathering cobwebs," McCoy continued.
But there was something about the look in Anna's
eyes that made his voice trail off. "I'm sorry,
Anna, I didn't mean to jump the gun."

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           THE BETTER MAN

 "No, I'm the one who should be sorry," Anna
said. "Sometimes I just assume that people can
read my mind, which is ridiculous."

 "Ahh," McCoy kidded, "a flaw! That'll help you
fit in with us unperfected folks back on Earth."

"I'm not going back to Earth."

  McCoy and Elizabeth both stared as if they
hadn't heard what she'd said or as if they'd wished
they hadn't.

  Elizabeth spoke first. "Anna, we thought you
agreed. It's the only choice we have."

  4'No, Mother, it isn't. Empyrea is my home. I
haven't done anything wrong "

"No, I did," Elizabeth said.

  "No, you didn't. You fell in love and had a baby.
That shouldn't be wrong, no matter where my
father was from. I'm staying here, no matter what
the consequences."

  Elizabeth tried to squelch the sick feeling rising
in the pit of her stomach. "Anna, you can't "

  "Mother," Anna interrupted, "let me say what I
have to say. Maybe it's genetic, but I've got the
same feelings about our isolation that you had
when you were my age. Here we are, the best
human beings who've ever existed and what does
our government do? It keeps us bottled up like
some experimental curiosities too fragile to be let
out of the lab where we were born. I resent that!"
She swung her arm up toward the sky. "We should
be out there, helping the rest of humanity reach
its full potential the way we have."

  Elizabeth held her daughter's shoulders, gazing
directly into her eyes. "Anna, sweetie, I agree with
you. In the best of all possible worlds, you'd be
out there. But this is the real world, and we
Empyreans aren't as perfect as we'd like to think."

  "Your generation isn't. But mine wants to be
different, and we will be. You had the guts to tell
me the

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          Howard Weinstein

truth. Now I have to do the same thing for you.
There's a growing underground of young people
nothing formal, yet, though that's just a matter of
time. We're going to change this society."

  "Are you talking about some kind of
revolution?" McCoy asked, wondering if genetically
perfected humans still carried the all-too-human
penchant for violence.

  "In a way, but not what you're thinking. We're
not going to shoot our way to the future. We are
the future it's only a matter of time until we take
over Empyrea. Our weapon is patience. As we
become the leaders, we'll make those changes."

  McCoy glanced at Elizabeth, visibly impressed.
Maybe there was something to this genetic
perfection stuff. "She's got a point. Sooner or later,
her generation's going to be running the show."

  "But you won't be there to see it happen, Anna.
At best, you and I are going to be banished. At
worst, well, nobody's ever been convicted of
genetic fraud. The court could decide this is the
perfect time to make an example out of us to
send a message to every Empyrean that this crime
strikes at the heart of who and what we are. They
could be compelled to invoke the death penalty."

"Mother, nobody has to know about us."

  Elizabeth stared at her. "There's no way to fake
the reproductive bioscans."

"Maybe so, but who says I have to take them?"

"What are you saying?"

  "I'm willing to give up my reproductive rights if
that's what it takes to stay here and see this
revolution through. If I decline the scans, we'll be
able to keep our secret."

  "Is that possible?" McCoy asked, feeling more
like an outsider than ever.

  "It's possible," Elizabeth said, "but there's no
record of a healthy Empyrean doing what she's
suggest102

           THE BETTER MAN

ing. Anna's not exactly a low-profile
eighteen-yearold. If she skips the scans, people are
going to ask questions. Do we compound the old
lie with new ones?"

 "Why not?" Anna asked with chilly nonchalance.
"Why should I care about following the rules of a
system that doesn't care about me? If you're so
worried about the questions people might ask,
then I can just disappear, fake my own death. You
can wear black for a while "

"And what will you do?" Elizabeth demanded.

 McCoy could hear the desperate quiver of
hysteria edging into Elizabeth's voice as Anna's
side of the conversation took its radical dive away
from what both he and her mother considered to
be anything remotely connected with rationality.

 "I'll go into hiding. I've got friends who'd jump
at the chance to help me do something like this."

"Anna! This is crazy!"

  "Oh, as if submitting to the whims of some
ossified court is sane?"

  "Hold on," McCoy said, wading in before the
argument between mother and daughter jumped
another quantum leap beyond reasonable. "I'm a
doctor, not a sociologist or a lawyer. So I'm not
even going to try to make a case based on custom
or the Empyrean legal code. But maybe there's a
medical solution we haven't thought of."

  A glimmer of faith appeared in Elizabeth's eyes.
"Do you really think so?"

  "I don't," Anna said flatly, looking as dubious as
her mother looked hopeful.

  "Now, I'm not offering any guarantees," McCoy
said, looking from one to the other. "But, as my
Vulcan friend Mr. Spock is fond of saying, there
are always possibilities. All I'm asking for is a
little time to figure out what they might be."

                 i03
                  
           Chapter Eleven

JIM KIRK had been called many things in his life
and his Starfleet career, not all of them
complimentary. But he honestly believed that he
had never been labeled a know-it-all. Even as a
"positively grim" cadet self-described, with the
benefit of a quarter century of hard-earned
wisdom and perspective he had always tried to
maintain enough self-awareness to admit that he
could not possibly know the answer to all
questions in every discipline.

  Despite an unbendable determination to excel
in whatever he did, he'd always been secure
enough to say "I don't know" when he really
didn't. Said to the right people the ones who did
in fact know those three little words signaled his
willingness to learn from a variety of mentors
more than happy to share their own knowledge
with any open-minded pupil who came along.

  Kirk had always recalled the advice his dad gave
him as he packed to leave Iowa for his first year
at

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           THE BETTER MAN

Starfleet Academy: "Don't be afraid to be a
sponge. Soak up everything you can." No one had
ever given him better advice.

 Later on, of course, Kirk had also reamed when
not to make admissions of ignorance. Life as an
explorer presented challenges that did not always
fit neatly with textbook definitions of ethics. The
value of a well-executed bluff could be
inestimable, whether in poker or one of the many
perilous situations to which he and his ships had
been exposed.

 From the start, Kirk had seen it as an
elementary, nonthreatening fact of life: Other
people would always possess information and skills
he did not. His early acceptance of that concept
served him well once in command. Whatever his
flaws as a person and a commander, he had no
trouble at all delegating responsibilities to talented
officers as confident in their expertise as he was in
his own. In their areas of specialty, he'd never
found any reason to question Scatty, McCoy,
Uhura, or the rest of his seasoned crew.

 As for Spock, well, over the years he'd served
with Kirk, he had proven countless times that he
alone was the equivalent of a shipload of veteran
officers. Now, on the Enterprise bridge, with the
night shift on duty, he and Kirk huddled at the
science console for an informal briefing on the
problems he and Engineer Scott had found during
their examination of the Federation outpost on
Empyrea.

 After all their time together, this captain and
first officer worked with each other so effortlessly
that Spock instinctively pitched such briefings with
a balance of technical information he knew Kirk
would find neither confusingly arcane nor
insultingly simple. With a subtle deference to rank
and friendship that Kirk appreciated but never
commented upon, Spock often left it to his captain
to draw and voice the significant conclusion.

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          Howard Weinstein

  "So," Kirk said, "this glitch in the outpost power
system Is mmor?"

  "At this point, it appears to have been an
isolated malfunction, one that was easily
corrected."

  "And it was in the fusion reactor at the ground-
based facility?"

  Spock nodded. "Though the power source on
the planet additionally provides energy for the
orbital platform as well as for the satellite
network."

"Via microwave unlink?"

"That is correct, Captain."

  The corners of Kirk's mouth curled into a
mischievous smile. "Don't act so surprised, Spock,"
he teased, knowing full well that Spock hadn't
appeared the least bit surprised. "I was paying
attention to your

"I did not mean to imply otherwise."

"Is this problem going to stay isolated and minor?"

  "That is our expectation, though a final
determination depends on several factors, the
analyses of which are not yet complete. Mr.
Scott's able staffshould have useful results by
oh-seven-hundred."

  "Okay. Then let's set a meeting in the briefing
room you, me, and Scotty oh-seven-thirty.
Unless something comes up sooner than that."

"Very well, sir. I shall inform Mr. Scott."

  "And I'm going to call it a night," Kirk said,
already edging toward the turbolift. "It feels like
it's been a very long and very strange day."

  Because there was no need for Spock to remain
on the bridge during his off-duty hours, he stood
and moved to the turbolift with Kirk. "I take it
you are referring to Dr. McCoy's disclosure?"

  The doors slid open and they entered. "Deck
five," Kirk said, instructing the control computer.
As the doors shut and the pod moved smoothly
down the turbolift tube, he shot a guarded glance
toward the Vulcan. "You know about that?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "He informed me upon his return from the
planet earlier this evening."

  "Oh." Kirk sounded surprised. Though both his
best friends had mellowed over the years, their
relationship was still a prickly one, and the matter
of McCoy's late discovery about Anna March
seemed the sort of thing he might keep private. "I
would've mentioned it to you," Kirk began a little
awkwardly.

  Spock rescued him. "I, too, found Dr. McCoy's
decision to apprise me of his situation...
unexpected. He seemed quite interested in any
biomedical suggestions I might be able to
contribute to his search for a solution to his
dilemma."

  Kirk's eyebrows rose as the turbolift came to a
stop and the doors opened. They stepped out. "He
asked you for advice?"

  "Indeed," Spock said as they strolled toward
Kirk's cabin. "Another unexpected turn of events."

  "Sort of the theme of the day," Kirk said with a
tired smile. "He must be getting desperate."

"He is."

  They arrived at Kirk's door and it opened.
"Well, Spock, I guess I'll see you in the morning."

"Technically, it is already morning."

"Don't remind me."

  Before Kirk could enter, they heard the whistle
of the intercom page and the voice of Lieutenant
Lisa Putman, the young woman handling the
communications console overnight. "Bridge to Mr.
Spock."

  Kirk nodded toward the interior of his quarters
and Spock accepted the nonverbal invitation. They
both crossed to Kirk's desk, where Spock activated
the small intercom screen. "Spock here,
Lieutenant."

  "Sir, we're being hailed by Dr. Ortega, the
Empyrean liaison. He insists on speaking with you
immediately."

"What's a few more minutes without sleep," Kirk

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          Howard Weinstein

mumbled in resignation. "Pipe it down here,
Lieutenant."

"Aye, Captain."

  A moment later, the fresh-scrubbed Putman
disappeared from the desktop screen, replaced by
Ortega's angry face and peremptory voice.
"Commander Spock, I thought you and Engineer
Scott were instructed to deal with that plasma
flow fluctuation problem right away."

  Spock exchanged a glance with the captain. "We
did so, Dr. Ortega. At the time of our departure
for the Enterprise, all readings were nominal."

  `'Well, they aren't now. Rather than leave this
to chance, I did some troubleshooting myself. The
source of the problem is, quite clearly, Federation
modifications made to the facility-management
software.i'

  "Indeed," said Spock mildly. "Are you quite cer-
tain of that, Doctor?"

  "I am, Commander. If you and your engineer
would care to beam down, I'll be happy to show
you the program errors. They caused
subprocessors controlling four flow regulators to
shut down and overrode the safety backups."

  "Hmm. Most curious," Spock said in a soft voice,
mostly to Kirk. "Very well, Doctor. We shall
transport down presently and meet you at the
control center. Spock out."

The comm screen winked off.

  "If you weren't a Vulcan," Kirk said, "I'd say you
looked distinctly unenthusiastic about informing
Mr. Scott of this little bit of news."

  With typical equanimity, Spock touched the
intercom switch again. "Spock to Mr. Scott."

  A moment later, Scotty's image appeared on the
small screen. He was out of uniform, to be
expected at this time of night, but it was obvious
he hadn't yet

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           THE BETTER MAN

gone to sleep. He wore his Starfleet robe and was
seated at his desk. "Aye, sir. Scott here."

"I regret disturbing you at this hour."

"That's all right, sir. I was wide awake."

"Scatty," said Kirk, "you need your beauty sleep."

  "Maybe so, Captain, but I've got to keep on my
technical journals sometime. A wee nip o' Scotch,
a few journal articles, and I sleep like a baby."

  Kirk smiled. "Whatever works for you, Scotty.
Unfortunately, there's a problem "

  Scott's jaw tightened. "Let me guess. My good
friend Dr. Ortega called."

  "A logical deduction," Spock said. "He claims he
has discovered errors in Federation-originated
software "

  "And he's blamin' the plasma flow malfunctions
on that? Of all the bogus "

  "Mr. Scott," Kirk said quickly, preempting a
lengthy streak of Gaelic cursing, "go take a
look and try not to throttle Dr. Ortega."

  Scott exhaled a simmering breath. "Aye, sir.
Scott out."

  "Spock," Kirk said, "Scotty's pride notwithstand-
ing, could Ortega be right?"

  "It is possible, Captain," Spock said after a
moment of thought. "Federation scientists are
certainly capable of error as are the Empyreans,
local pride notwithstanding."

  As Spock left, Kirk felt considerable sympathy
for his first officer and chief engineer. It's never
easy dealing with somebody who's totally convinced
you're wrong.

  "Right here and here," Ortega announced
smugly, scrolling quickly through lines of
mathematic instructions buried in the
programming responsible for operating the
power-generation systems.

109

          Howard Weinstein

  "No way," Scott said with an emphatic shake of
his head.

  `'It's right there on the screen. You can't argue
with what's there," Ortega insisted. "Are you going
to claim those aren't blatant programming
errors?"

  "Doctor, those're mistakes a second-year
engineering student wouldna make, let alone
experienced, highly trained experts. And how
d'you explain the fact that this fusion
generator obsolete or not has been workin' just
fine for years with that kind o' software bug?"

  "Maybe they just changed the programming
recently. I really don't know, Engineer." Ortega
waved angrily toward the computer monitor.
"What I do know is that we have irrefutable
evidence of Federation incompetence. How do
you explain that?"

  With a flash of angry frustration in his eyes,
Scott seemed ready to explode. But he didn't. "I
canna explain it, but I know there's got to be
another reason f'r this."

  "When you find your phantom explanation, I'll
gladly listen to it. Until then, I want the rest of
this program combed for additional errors that
could affect these operating systems, and I want
them eliminated. We can't have malfunctions
jeopardising shutdown procedures."

  Before the boiling Scott could say anything,
Spock stepped between him and Ortega. "We shall
see to that, Doctor. Rest assured that any other
currently existing anomalies will be found and
corrected."

  With a curt nod, Ortega pushed his chair away
from the console and stood. "So far, we've been
lucky. The malfunctions have been minor. But
luck runs out. It's your job to make sure there are
no further malfunctions of any kind." Then he
turned on his heel and marched out of the control
center.

When they were alone, Spock faced Scott, though

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           THE BETTER MAN

not without a hint of sympathy in his eyes. "Mr.
Scott, your insistence on responding to Dr.
Ortega's contentiousness in like fashion is not
constructive."

  "Beggin' y'r pardon, sir, but I didna mean for it
to be bloody constructive," Scott said through
clenched teeth. "It just doesn't make any sense.
The people workin' here, well, they just wouldna
make those mistakes."

  "While I cannot sanction such an all-inclusive
statement, I do agree with it in principle."

Scott's eyes widened in surprise. "Y'do?"

  "Yes. The elementary nature of these errors
makes Dr. Ortega's assumed scenario extremely
unlikely."

"Then why didn't y' tell him that?"

  "Further dissension would have served no useful
purpose. And we do not as yet have any viable
alternatives to Dr. Ortega's conclusion, precipitate
though it may be. One fact is clear: This operating
software does contain errors. If we begin with the
contention that Federation personnel did not
make those errors through incompetence or
accident, then we must propose other hypotheses."

"Such as?"

  "A Federation scientist made the programming
errors intentionally."

"With all due respect, sir, that's ridiculous."

  "In all probability. But let us assume, for the
moment, that it is not ridiculous."

  Scott shook his head. "Why would somebody do
that on purpose?"

"Sabotage," Spock suggested.

  "Why in the name o' heaven would one o' the
Federation people sabotage their own
observatory? What would they have t' gain by
discrediting their own project?"

  "I cannot think of a logical reason, but there
may be emotional motivations to which we are not
privy."

                1 1 1
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "What about the Empyreans?" Scott said,
warming up to the exercise in detective work.
"They've got reasons if they want this observatory
shut down."

  "True. Anything that casts a negative light on
the performance and presence of this outpost
makes treaty rejection more likely."

  Scott's brow furrowed. "When y' told Ortega
we'd do what he wanted, y' said we'd look for all
currently existing program errors."

  "That is all we are able to do," Spock said
innocently. "We cannot look for errors already
corrected by someone else. Nor can we anticipate
and chronicle errors not yet made."

  "Ahh, but if future errors do crop up, we'll be
able I' prove they weren't there before, because
we'll be leavin' 'em with a clean slate?" Scatty said
with a sly smile. "You were already thinkin' that
somebody pulled off some intentional sabotage,
weren't you?"

  "That possibility had crossed my mind. We will
indeed correct all errors we find, and we will then
have an up-to-date record of operating software.
Should any other problems occur, we will know
without doubt that observatory personnel were not
responsible, because they do not currently have
access. And the perpetrator may leave telltale
evidence."

Scott nodded and smiled. "I do love a good sting."

"A 'sting,' Mr. Scott?"

"Y'know, a setup?"

  "Ahh. For purposes of entrapment of a guilty
party. A staple of the literature of crime and
detection. Then, a 'sting' it is."

  "But what if Ortega's the one responsible? He's
sure made it clear he wants this outpost gone."

  "Sentiments that do make him an obvious sus-
pect," Spock agreed. "Perhaps too obvious."

  "If he is the one who planted the program bugs,
we'll not trap him. He knows what we're coin'. He
knows we'll know if the system's tampered with
again.

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           THE BETTER MAN

And that'll put outpost personnel in the clear...
somethin' he wouldn't want t' do."

  "An eminently logical chain of deduction, Mr.
Scott, one that necessarily decreases Dr. Ortega's
suitability as a potential perpetrator."

  "Of course, that may be what he's hopin' for,"
Scott pointed out, tipping the deductive seesaw
back once again.

  "We are getting ahead of ourselves, Mr. Scott.
At this juncture, our suspicions of sabotage are
speculative."

  "Agreed, sir. So let's get to work on this, and
maybe we'll find something a little more
incriminating."

                 113
                  
           Chapter Twelve

FOR THE FIRST TIME in her life, Anna knew
insomnia firsthand. Despite her busy
existence some commonly overscheduled
combination of school, music, friends, art, dance,
and sports crowded every day or maybe because
of it, she'd always managed to fall asleep within
five minutes of crawling into bed.

  Sleeping wasn't something you thought about. It
was just something you did, as automatic as
breathing.

  Until tonight. Fighting off familiar drowsiness,
she slipped on her favorite flannel nightgown and
opened her windows a crack to let in both the
cool night air and nature's music, the sounds of
the wind in the trees and the insects and birds
calling across the woods and fields around the
mansion. She curled up on her right side, as
usual, and expected to be asleep before she knew
it.

However, sleep fluttered just out of reach, like an

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           THE BETTER MAN

evasive butterfly. After fifteen minutes of unaccus-
tomed wakefulness, she felt the mattress pressing
against her ribs, something she'd never noticed be-
fore. She had to change position, something else
that was new.

  With more than a little dismay, she discovered
that no other position felt right. She tried the
mirror image, lying on her left side instead of her
right. She tried lying on her back, then her
stomach. She tried fluffing her pillow, then tossing
it aside.

  Nothing worked. By the time an hour had
passed, Anna realized she was no longer drowsy at
all. Fully awake at an hour when she should have
been fast asleep, she found herself distracted by
outdoor noises she'd always found soothing. The
irregular rhythms of the night birds' chatters and
hoots, the staccato chirps of the crickets all the
voices of the darkness clashed like an orchestra
trying vainly to get in tune.

  She got out of bed and went to the kitchen,
taking care to be as silent as possible. She didn't
want to wake the household help or her mother.
She just wanted a snack to quiet her grumbling
stomach. Then she planned to try falling asleep
again.

  After another hour of tossing and turning, she
switched her bedside lamp on and read for an
hour, hoping the concentration would make her
sleepy.

  That didn't work either. Her mind raced in a
way she'd never experienced before, flitting from
one recollection of the day's events to another.
There were McCoy and Rousseau and her mother
and her friends. There was Ethan and Eleni. Like
scenes from a play, she repeated key snippets of
the most important conversations over and over,
then over again.

  She could understand that. The things she'd
learned that day about Dr. McCoy and her
mother, about Ethan's feelings for her had
changed forever who she thought she was and who
she might yet become. 115

          Howard Weinstein

There were momentous decisions to be made, and
the ripples from those decisions would churn not
only her life but those of loved ones and friends
as well. After this day, nothing would or could
ever be the way it had been yesterday, before the
Starship Enterprise had arrived.

  But with all those crucial concerns to occupy
her and keep her awake, why was there a song, a
popular trifle she'd heard on the music channel,
running through her head like some out-of-synch
soundtrack? Why was she thinking about and
unable to remember what she'd had for
breakfast? Why was she thinking about how many
strokes of her hairbrush it took to get out all the
tangles each morning?

Why was she thinking about trivia?

  Eventually, she gave up both trying to sleep and
controlling her thoughts. She curled up in the
overstuffed chair near her bedroom window,
opened the delicate wood blinds, and watched the
first thin line of dawn glowing on the horizon.
Then she got up, got dressed, and tiptoed into the
kitchen. There, she stopped to wrap a few of
yesterday's muffins in a cloth napkin, bundled
them into a tote bag, and left the house.

  Anna wasn't sure if her choice of paths through
the countryside was intentional or simply
unconscious. But she found herself on the hill
overlooking Ethan's family pasture. The animals
were all in the barns. The morning mist hung low,
droplets clinging to the dark green grass twinkling
in the first rays of the sun. She thought about the
childhood afternoons she and Ethan and their
friends had spent on this hill, rolling down in
summer, racing down on sleds and skis when the
snows came.

  Now she stood there alone in the quiet of dawn.
Until it was shattered by one sharp, explosive clap
of sound ringing out across the pasture. Though
she'd

                 1~6
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

only heard that sound a few times before, Anna
recognized it as a gunshot. Probably from the
target pistol Ethan had asked for as a boy and
had been using more and more often lately. He
liked to set wooden blocks up as targets on a
rotting section of old fence in the north corner of
the pasture. It was far enough away from houses
and barns that the noise didn't bother people or
animals.

  She headed that way, down the hill and across
the field, then through the old stand of trees that
bordered the pasture. Three more shots rang out,
each louder than the last, confirming that she was
getting closer.

  She found Ethan where she expected him to be,
reloading the black steel gun with its pearl handle.
"Hi," she said as she came up behind him.

  He turned, then grinned when he realized it was
Anna. "Hi. How'd you know I'd be out here?"

  "I told you you're predictable," she said with a
sly look in her eye, knowing he'd remember their
teasing from the night before. She glanced at the
top fence rail. Nothing standing on it. "Did they
fall off, or did you shoot them off?"

"I shot them."

"Getting pretty good at this."

"I guess."

  "I can understand target shooting in a range
with an energy-pulse weapon, but why do you like
shooting with that old replica? It's so noisy."

"So?"

  "Didn't those things go out of style a couple of
centuries ago?"

"Why do you play old music?"

"Is there an analogy there?"

  Ethan gave her a goofy shrug. "Maybe not. I
just think it's more of a challenge this way. The
weapon's not as exact, the conditions aren't so
perfect, like in a range."

137

          Howard Weinstein

"Sounds old-fashioned."

 He bristled, taking the observation like a
personal insult. "And what's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," she said hastily, startled by his reaction.

  "Sometimes I think we're too quick to say all the
old stuff is bad. Sometimes we're so busy rushing
to where we're going, we forget where we've
been."

  Anna came closer to him with a reassuring
smile. "I know what you mean."

  Then the closeness seemed to make them both
uncomfortable, and she backed a couple of steps
away. He finished reloading, then went to the
fence to set up five new target blocks, each about
four inches square.

  Anna stood where the dirt was scuffed, guessing
that to be Ethan's finug line. Raising her hands as
if holding the gun, she squinted toward the fence.
The targets looked awfully small from here. Ethan
watched her with amusement.

"You want to try?"

  "Me? I've never shot an old-style gun. And I was
never very good with pulse weapons either."

"That doesn't mean you can't try."

"I guess not. Okay. What do I do?"

  He placed the gun in her hands, then showed
her how to hold it in a two-handed grip, with his
own hands on top of hers. The touch of their skin
had the same distracting effect on each of them.
Glances flitted with an intentional randomness, as
if neither wanted to be caught looking at the
other's face. Ethan stuttered uncharacteristically as
he explained how to aim and pull the trigger,
warning about the recoil when the gun fired.

"You got all that?"

  She continued looking blankly at the targets, as
if she didn't hear his question.

"I said, did you get all that?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

"Umm, yeah."

He released her hands and stepped back. "Try it."

  Steadying the gun, Anna aimed and squeezed
the trigger. Despite his coaching, the blast and
kick caught her by surprise and she let out a
sharp, reflexive shriek. To nobody's surprise, the
targets survived her one-shot assault unscathed.
She and Ethan both stared at the blocks, then at
each other, and they started to laugh.

  She handed the weapon back to him more
abruptly than was necessary.

  He looked a little disappointed. "Don't you want
to try again?"

"No, thanks. You hungry?"

"Sure. What've you got?"

  She unwrapped the muffins and handed him
one. "Were you going to shoot some more?"

Ethan shrugged. "That's enough for this morning."

"Want to walk?"

"Where?"

"No place in particular."

"Okay. Just let me pack up."

  Munching down the rest of the muffin, he
gathered the remaining target blocks and put
them and his gun into an old backpack. He
rejoined her, and she gave him another muffin.
Then they walked across the pasture without
speaking, side by side close, but not too close.
They seemed determined to avoid looking directly
at each other.

  "How do you feel about loose ends?" Anna
asked after a while.

"Never liked 'em much."

"Me neither."

  "Ethan." She exhaled slowly. "I know how you
feel about me."

"You do?" he asked as if in peril.

In that one briefly eloquent question, he seemed
to

                 ~9
                  
          Howard Weinstein

Anna simultaneously relieved and afraid. It wasn't
hard to understand his ambivalence. As long as
his feelings had been a secret at least from
her he'd been free to fantasise or suffer in
private. Free to do nothing. But now that they
were bringing everything out in the open, she had
no idea what might come next and no idea what
she wanted to come next.

"I wondered if you knew," he said

  "Until yesterday, it seems like I was the only
one who didn't," she admitted. "I'm kind of thick
sometimes."

"That's true."

  She frowned at him in mock annoyance. "You
didn't have to agree so quickly."

"Who told you? Eleni?"

  "Miss Busybody," Anna said with a ironic curl of
her lips.

  "So now that you know . . ." He swallowed,
unsure of what to ask or how to ask it.

Anna saved him. "Do I feel the same way?"

"Yeah."

  She stopped walking, closed her eyes, and
tipped her head back, letting the sun warm her
face. Then she looked right into his eyes for the
first time this morning. "I never really thought
about this before."

"Never?"

  "Well, I thought about it, but not about any one
specific person."

  "Oh." He looked down. "So I guess that means
you don't feel the same way."

  She bent forward so she could look up at his
face. "I didn't say that."

"Then you do?" he asked, straightening up.

  "I didn't say that either." Exasperation edged
into her voice. "Why are men so di.icult?"

"Why are women so difficult?"

  Without warning, she started walking again. It
took him a couple of strides to catch up.

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "We really are old enough to think about a
future together, Ethan."

"So? You say that like it's a bad thing."

  "It's not bad. I just don't know if I'm ready for
it. Are you?"

  "I don't know. But thinking about it doesn't
mean we have to get married tomorrow."

  "This isn't just fantasising. I don't want to say
anything to hurt you, and I definitely don't want
to get hurt." She shut her eyes and sighed. "Why
is this so hard?"

"Why is what so hard?"

  "Thinking about love, and about having a future
with someone when I don't even know if I have a
future..." The instant she'd said those last few
words, she regretted it. She'd let slip far more
than she wanted to. Or had she?

  His eyes had taken on a glaze at the sound of
the word love coming from Anna's lips. It wasn't
until a few moments later that the rest of what
she'd said registered in his brain. His frown
combined concern and confusion. "What do you
mean?"

She waved off the question. "Never mind."

  "Never mind.?! You sound like you've got a
death sentence hanging over your head."

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"Nothing."

"Anna, you meant something "

  "It's just all this stuff with the Federation
outpost, that's all. It's just one little treaty, but it's
everything."

  They came to a fence and leaned their elbows
on the top rail. A dock of sheep grazed on the
other side, and Anna and Ethan watched them as
a welcome excuse to avoid looking at each other
again.

  "Ethan, how would you feel if you got married
and didn't have children?"

"Why wouldn't I have children?"

                 121
                  
          Howard Weinstein

"Well, say, your wife couldn't for some reason."

 After a moment, he said softly, "I kind of always
assumed I'd be a father, have a family."

 Her questioning became more insistent. "But
what if you couldn't?"

 He had to look at her now, and he did. "I guess
if I was with someone I really loved, it wouldn't
matter. Why are you asking me this? Are we
talking about you?"

"No. "

"Is there something wrong? Are you sick?"

 "No," she whispered. She rested her folded arms
flat on the fence rail, then leaned her head
forward, her eyes downcast. Should she tell him?
She felt like she had to tell someone or she'd
explode. Ethan was her best friend. And he loved
her. Maybe she even loved him. Maybe if she told
him, she'd know for certain. She took a deep
breath and exhaled slowly. "Ethan, you have to
swear you'll never tell another living soul."

"Tell 'em what?"

  "What I'm about to tell you. No matter what
happens, no matter how you feel, no matter what
happens to me. Do you promise?"

  His mouth felt like dust and his stomach went
queasy. He began to regret having those muffins.
"I promise."

  Then, with a calmness that astonished her, she
told him. Everything. Once she began, the words
came more easily than she could ever have
imagined. Ethan listened in silence, his face a
blank mask. As she spoke, she wondered what he
was thinking. Whatever it was, there was no going
back now.

  "So, those are my choices," she said as she
finished the story. "I can leave with Dr. McCoy, or
I can stay and face punishment and ruin my
mother's career . . . I can stay and go into hiding
. . . or I can stay, skip the genetic scan, and just
pretend I can't

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           THE BETTER MAN

have children for some private medical reason. So.
. ." Her voice trailed off. Essentially, she'd run out
of things to say. And she desperately wanted to
know what was going through Ethan's mind now
that he knew.

  "If you leave," he said simply, "I'm going with
you."

"Ethan, you can't do that."

"Try and stop me."

"The captain of the Enterprise may stop you."

  "Then if I can't go with you now, sooner or later
I wid leave this planet, somehow, and I'll find
you."

"Is that a threat?" she teased.

"Of course not!"

  She smiled and brushed her fingers through his
hair. "That's very sweet, Ethan. But I think you
might change your mind about that after I've been
gone awhile."

  "I don't think so." He stood quietly, looking at
her face. "What about Dr. McCoy? You said he
was going to try and find a way to get you past the
genetic scan."

  Her shoulders slumped in a disheartened shrug.
"Trying and succeeding aren't the same thing."

  "I made you a promise. Now you have to make
me one."

"What?"

  "Tell me what happens. Tell me what you
decide. I don't want to wake up one day and find
out you've just disappeared."

  She nodded. They hugged and held each other
for a long time, sealing a bond made of equal
parts hope and despair.

                 123
                  
          Chapter Thirteen

 'CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, McCoy
said. He stood in the Enterprise briefing room,
facing Elizabeth, Anna, and Kirk around the
conference table. "What I'm about to tell you was
actually Spock's idea."

  He was trying his damnedest to appear
confident and believed he was failing miserably.
He paced, not knowing what to do with his hands,
and wished his mouth wasn't so damned dry.

  "All right, Bones," Kirk said. "Stop fidgeting and
tell us what you came up with."

  "Sorry." He gripped the table edge with both
hands, giving himself something literally solid to
hold onto. "The idea is to get Anna through those
genetic scans somehow without anybody finding
out there was anything abnormal about her
conception and birth. The key is Beth's genetic
brand that's what Anna's missing, and that
would be the red flag when she's examined."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "What are you thinking, Leonard," Elizabeth
said, "that you can simulate that?"

  McCoy nodded. "That's right. It's basically our
only hope."

"But is it possible?" Kirk asked.

  "I'm not sure. First Bll need to do a thorough
genetic workup on both Anna and Beth to get a
baseline comparison. Then I'll need to see if I can
isolate Beth's genetic brand."

Kirk frowned. "And if you can? Then what?"

  "Then I've got to find a way to transfer it to
Anna or fake it."

  Elizabeth exhaled a dubious breath. "It sounds
like a long shot."

  "I never said it wasn't," McCoy snapped. He
knew he sounded defensive, even
desperate exactly the opposite of how he wanted
to sound. His tone softened. "But it could work. Is
there anybody who doesn't want to try?"

  They all looked at Anna. "Miracles do happen,"
she said.

  Then McCoy turned to Kirk. "Is it okay with
you, Jim?"

  "I've got no problem with it. Good luck, Bones."
He glanced at the mother and daughter McCoy
was trying to help. "Good luck to all of you." Then
he smiled. "If anybody can pull this off, McCoy
can."

  With purposeful professionalism, McCoy
gathered his raw data on Anna and Elizabeth as
quickly as possible, then closeted himself in his
sickbay lab for the hard work of analysis. He knew
he was racing against a clock, time being
measured by the outcome of Mark Rousseau's
treaty negotiations. Whatever the results, the
Enterprise would be leaving soon. He had that long
to come up with his miracle.

He'd hardly begun when the door of his adjacent

                 125
                  
          Howard Weinstein

office slid open and Rousseau entered from the
corridor. The doorway between the office and the
lab had been locked open and he came through it.
"You've been making yourself scarce. I haven't
seen you since I left you with Elizabeth after our
meeting yesterday."

  "I'm not open for social calls," McCoy said
curtly, barely looking up from his microscope.

  Noting the chill in McCoy's voice, Mark's
posture stiffened. "All right, then, this is business,
Bones." He held up the electronic PADD in his
hand, the treaty document displayed on its screen.
"I wanted your opinion on my treaty extension
proposal before I send it down to President
March and the Empyrean Council,"

"I'm sure it's fine."

"I'd like you to read it."

  "I really don't have time. Like I said, I'm sure
it's fine. Probably a piece of diplomatic genius."

"You don't have to be so sarcastic."

  "Sorry," McCoy said, though his tone made it
clear he wasn't all that sorry. "Since when do you
care about my opinion anyway?"

"Would I ask if I didn't?"

  "I don't know, would you? Isn't everything you
do beyond reproach? You could've been an
Empyrean."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Forget it. Now get out of here and let me work
in peace."

  Instead, Rousseau gripped the backrest of
McCoy's rolling chair and yanked it away from the
lab bench. Then he spun it around so McCoy
couldn't help facing him.

  "What the hell're you doing?" McCoy growled
as he jumped to his feet.

  "Trying to figure out when you turned into a
lunatic."

"Well, when you do, be sure and tell me."

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           THE BETTER MAN

 Rousseau shook his head. "It's like you've been
mad at me for years."

"Ahh! You noticed!"

 "Don't I at least deserve the courtesy of knowing
why you're so angry?"

"Not really."

"I thought we were friends."

"So did I," McCoy said pointedly.

 "Doesn't that entitle me to a chance to make
right whatever you think is wrong?"

 "There it is whatever Ithink is wrong! Like, if
you don't agree, it can't possibly be true."

"Give me a chance."

 McCoy gave Rousseau a hard look. That was
the closest he'd ever heard Mark come to
pleading. But he dismissed it, sat down, and rolled
back to the lab table. "Forget it, Mark. It's not
worth the trouble."

 Rousseau stood over him, hands spread in
appeal. "Since when is a friendship not worth
some trouble?"

 McCoy remained determined to ignore both the
question and the man. With an exasperated shake
of his head, Rousseau gave up, turned, and
retreated from the lab, finding Captain Kirk
standing in the office, just outside the lab door.

 The ambassador acknowledged Kirk with a
silent nod but kept going out into the corridor.
When he was gone, Kirk entered the lab.

 "Taking up surveillance as a hobby?" McCoy
asked tartly without looking up.

"I didn't want to interrupt."

"How much did you hear?"

"Enough."

"So?"

  "So, I seem to recall asking you if Rousseau's
coming aboard was going to be a problem for
you."

"And what did I say?"

  "You said you'd manage. Is that what you call
'managing'?"

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          Howard Weinstein

  McCoy leaned back in his chair. "As a matter of
fact, I do."

  "Let me give you a piece of advice, Bones.
Whatever bee you've got in your bonnet, let it go."

"Very quaint. Now can I get back to work here?"

  Arms folded across his chest, Kirk stood
squarely in the centerof the room. He had no
intention of letting McCoy's snarling scare him
away.

  McCoy rubbed his eyes and sighed. "You're
determined to torture the truth out of me, aren't
you?"

  "As a matter of fact," Kirk said, planting himself
on the edge of the table, "yes. So why don't you
just make this easy?"

  With another sigh, McCoy threw up his hands.
"Oh, all right." Then he jabbed an accusing finger
toward Kirk. "Anybody ever tell you that you can
be a damn pain in the butt?"

  "Consider it a specialty. Now, get on with it,
Bones."

  McCoy slumped back into the chair. "It
happened while Mark and I were here, aboard the
Feynman."

"That's what I figured."

  "You wanna tell this story, or should I?" McCoy
snapped.

  Kirk raised both hands in a gesture of
surrender. "Sorry. I'll shut up."

  "Fat chance. Anyway, it was near the end of
those few months we spent at Empyrea. I'd been
on the ship for a while by then. And the more I
saw of Mark, the more I wondered if this was the
guy I grew up with. Somewhere along the way, he
started turning into this self-important
glory-seeker . . ."

  . . All of a sudden, Starfleet's rules and regs
seemed to chafe him like a pair of starched
undershorts. I started to realise there'd been a
pattern to his life  quitting something he was good
at just so he could go and tackle something else.

                 i28
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  The U.S.S. Feynmancircled Nova Empyrea in a
lazy orbit. McCoy found Captain Rousseau sitting
alone in the empty rec lounge, near an
observation window, watching cloud formations
swirl near the planet's northern pole.

  "Quite a storm brewing, Leonard," Rousseau
said without turning.

  McCoy set his coffee mug down with a clunk
and slid into a chair. "Down there? Or up here?"

"I can't believe Starfleet wants us to leave."

  "Don't take it so personally. Starfleet doesn't
want us tied up in long, drawn-out negotiations,
and the Federation just wants a team of
professional diplomats in on this. What's wrong
with that?"

  "It's an insult, " Rousseau said in rumbling
outrage, glaring at McCoy. "I can do this."

"Nobody said you couldn't."

  Mark swiveled back toward the window, his
voice becoming reflective. "Maybe being a starship
captain isn't what I was meant to do. Diplomacy,
Leonard . . . going out there without Starfleet
brass looking over your shoulder. That's the way
to solve problems."

  "Mark, this is your first command, for godsakes.
You've got to expect some of that."

  "With diplomacy, it's results that count, not
some foolish adherence to a book of regulations
written by people who wouldn't know what to do
with a field command if it fell on them."

"Is that what that tall tale was all about?"

"What tall tale?"

  "What you told Starfleet to convince 'em to let
us stay here a little longer, that you're close to a
breakthrough."

"So I exaggerated a little."

"A lot."

  Rousseau abruptly swung toward McCoy and
fixed him with an intense gaze. "This is my big
chance to prove I've got what it takes to be a
diplomat."

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          Howard Weinstein

 "Shouldn't you be proving you've got what it
takes to be a starship captain? I thought you
wanted a heavy-cruiser command."

 Mark shrugged. "Maybe I do. But I can't see
myself doing that for the rest of my life. I've got to
stay one step ahead. If I get this treaty with the
Empyreans "

 The whistle of the intercom interrupted him, fol-
lowed by the lilting voice of his female first officer,
Commander Kara Choudhury. "Bridge to Captain
Rousseau."

 He reached for the tabletop comm panel. "Rous-
seau here. What is it, Commander Choudhury?"

"We're picking up a distress call, sir."

"On my way. Rousseau out."

 McCoy followed him to the bridge and listened
as Choudbury gave her report, using a starchart on
the main viewscreen to show the relative location
of the ship in trouble. "It's a small Areian
freighter, sir, at the far range of long-distance
sensors."

"Any luck establishing contact?"

  "No, sir. They just sent the message once. It's
possible they're conserving power."

  "It's also possible they broke up out there."
Rousseau checked the starchart with a frown.
"How long would it take us to get there?"

"Three days, sir."

  "Well, I can't believe there's not another ship
somewhere that's closer to their position."

  Choudhury's dusky eyes blinked in confusion.
"So we're not going to respond, sir?"

  "No, we're not, Commander. We've got
important business right here at Empyrea."

  "Well," Kirk said, trying to be nonjudgmental,
"that was a legitimate command decision. Maybe
not what I would've done, but I don't know all the
facts."

"Then here's another fact for you," said McCoy.

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           THE BETTER MAN

"The next day, Choudhury picked up the same dis-
tress call . . ."

  "I continued routine monitoring, sir," Choudhury
said, facing Captain Rousseau as they stood on
opposite sides of the command seat.

  "I gave no orders for you to do that," Rousseau
said with some annoyance.

  "Begging the captain's pardon, but you gave no
orders for me not to, sir."

  Rousseau's mouth tightened into an exasperated
line. "Same message?"

  "Aye, sir. Again, transmitted just once. And
again, we've been unable to establish contact with
them. Perhaps we should do something, sir."

  "And I suppose you have something in mind,
Commander?" asked Rousseau as he sat down.

  "Aye, sir. Since we're unable to leave Empyrea,
we could send a continuous message in that
general direction, so any ships passing that way
will know the Areian freighter is in trouble. So,
even if the freighter can't transmit its own distress
call, for whatever reason, we'll be increasing the
likelihood that someone will find them and help
them."

  "That sounds reasonable," Rousseau said. "Very
well, Commander. See to it."

  "With all due respect, Captain, sir," said McCoy
from the back of the bridge, "that's not nearly
enough."

  Without warning, Rousseau rose up from his
seat, gripped McCoy by one arm, and hauled him
into the turbolift. "Come with me, Doctor." The
doors snapped shut behind them. "Deck 7."

  McCoy felt the lift pod drop down from the
bridge deck. "Why in blazes are we gain' to deck
7?"

"We're not," Rousseau growled. "Stop lift here."

The computer instantly obeyed, and the pod
halted

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          Howard Weinstein

in its tube, somewhere in the middle of the ship.
Rousseau turned on McCoy with an icy glare. "If
you ever do that again, if you ever question my
authority on the bridge friend or no friend I'll
slap you with insubordination charges so fast it'll
make your head spin."

  "Insubordination! All I'm doing is telling the
truth!"

  "You're my chief medical officer, not my con-
science!"

"Well, somebody s gotta be your conscience "

  "You listen to me, Leonard," Rousseau hissed,
stabbing his finger into McCoy's sternum, "the
negotiations with Nova Empyrea have potentially
historic benefits. You're the one dealing with the
medical data, you know how important this could
be! I'm the only one who can complete this
mission, and neither Starfleet nor some distress
call from halfway across the galaxy is going to stop
me! Is that clear?"

  "Clear as a bell, Captain, sir," McCoy said, not
bothering to hide his disapproval.

  "Good. As long as we understand each other."
He paused. "Restart turbolift." The pod resumed
its smooth descent . . .

"So, what happened?" Kirk asked.

  "Well, we heard the Areian distress call once
more, the next day. Then that was it. Mark made
a point to tell me he'd been right, that some other
ship found 'em and took care of 'em. He pushed
on with his negotiations, and of course he got his
damn treaty. We actually left about a week later.
We happened to be passing by the area where
that distress call came from . . . and we eventually
found it."

"Found what?"

  "The freighter a drifting hulk, with four dead
crewmen. Well, I lit into Mark "

"In private this time?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

 McCoy nodded. "Respect for the uniform, if not
the man. I called him a bastard; he defended his
decision. Insisted we'd been too far away to
help that they probably would've been dead by
the time we got there anyway, even if we'd left
right away."

"Then what?"

"Then I requested an immediate transfer."

"Did he grant it?"

"Yeah . . . but that's not what I wanted him to
do."

Kirk squinted in puzzlement. "It wasn't?"

  "No. I wanted him to stop me, to admit he was
wrong, that we should've answered that distress
call. But he didn't do any of that. Apparently, he
wasn't the man I thought I knew."

  After a moment of pensive silence, Kirk stood
up. "Maybe you expected too much."

McCoy gave a Kirk a steady look. "Maybe."

"Nobody's perfect, Bones."

  "Honest to God, Jim, I'm not looking for
perfect. Just better."

  "The Empyrean way?" Kirk asked in a dubious
tone.

"I guess not."

  Considering the "crime" to which Elizabeth
March had admitted guilt genetic fraud McCoy
knew the Empyreans didn't have the answers
either. Right now, only one thing mattered to him.

  Unless he could come up with a solution, Anna
would suffer the consequences.

                 ,33
                  
          Chapter Fourteen

IT WAS NO GREAT SURPRISE that Anna
found it difficult to concentrate on her
schoolwork. At the first opportunity, she slipped
away from the campus and made her way up the
hillside path to the sculpture garden. But this
time, she wasn't looking for companionship. She
needed solitude.

  She was aware that Dr. McCoy would have his
results soon, then she would find out whether
she'd be able to continue leading the only life
she'd known, here on Empyrea, or whether she
would have to set out on a whole new path, far
from the only home she'd ever had.

  All afternoon and into the evening, she sat on
a bench overlooking the ocean shore, letting the
rhythmic march of the waves mesmerise her.
Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe she didn't need
time alone to think. In fact, she was tired of
thinking. All the thinking she'd done over the past
couple of days had

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           THE BETTER MAN

found her no answers, at least none that solved
anything.

 Not that the problem she faced was so complex.
In reality, it wasn't. It had never occurred to her
that something so simple could also be so
profoundly overwhelming. It came down to one
essential dichotomy: Depending on Dr. McCoy's
conclusions, either everything would change or
nothing would change. And the outcome was
completely out of her control.

 "There you are." It was Ethan's voice coming
from the cool shade behind her. "I've been
looking all over for you."

 She said nothing as he came over to join her in
watching the waves.

"I guess you haven't heard anything yet," he said.

 Anna shook her head. Then she told him about
McCoy's idea to generate some kind of simulated
genetic brand, intended to fool the Empyrean
scanning procedures.

 Ethan looked dubious. "Do you really think he
can do that?"

"What do you mean?"

  "Do you really think their medical science can
outsmart ours?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Why?"

  "They're not Empyrean. How advanced can they
be?"

  "Advanced enough to build starships," Anna
pointed out, trying to argue the worry out of her
voice. "We haven't done that."

  "We haven't had any reason to build starships.
We don't want to go anywhere," Ethan countered.
"If what Dr. McCoy plans to try is possible, don't
you think somebody on Empyrea would've thought
of a way to do it by now?"

  "Nobody on Empyrea ever had a reason to do
that either until now."

135

          Howard Weinstein

  "Well," he said with a shrug, "I hope you're
right. But if I were you, I wouldn't want that to be
my only hope."

"Have you thought of a backup strategy?"

  Ethan shook his head forcefully. "Not a backup.
I think we should do something bold, now, without
waiting for Dr. McCoy to pull off some medical
magic trick."

"Do something like what?"

  "Like kidnap one of the starship officers to use
as leverage "

She didn't like the sound of that at all.
"Leverage!?"

  "Yeah, force them to take not just you, but all
the young Empyreans who want to get off this
planet all of us who think we're being limited
here, everybody who wants to experience the
whole universe."

  Anna stared at him. "Are you out of your mind?
Kidnapping?"

  "We're not planning to hurt anybody. Like you
said, it's a strategy, a way to exercise some power
over our own lives."

  "What about taking power with patience, like we
talked about?"

  "Anna, we don't have time for patience! Look at
your mother now we know that she was a rebel
when she was young. She felt the same way then
as we do now."

'~So?"

  "Look what happened to her! Now she's in
charge of the establishment she wanted to get rid
of back then. The same thing's going to happen to
our generation."

"Only if we let it."

  "You may not have a choice you may be gone
or dead. Are you really ready to put your fate in
the hands of some Starfleet witch doctor?"

"He's not a witch doctor, Ethan," she said harshly,

                 136
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

losing what little patience she had left. "You don't
know what you're talking about."

  "I know I can't just stand by and watch what
they're going to do to you!"

  "We can't just take hostages and start making
demands!"

  "So you're going to go along with this medical
treatment?"

"If Dr. McCoy thinks it'll work, yes."

  He paused, staring into her eyes. When he
spoke, it was barely above a whisper. "And what
if it doesn't work? What then?"

  She managed a weary half smile. "Maybe then
you can take a hostage." Her tone made it clear
she was kidding. Or was she?

  Ethan reached out to hold her, and she allowed
him to fold her into his arms. She was too tired to
maintain their safe distance. She found it
flattering that Ethan felt strongly enough about
her to consider something so dangerous, and at
the same time, it frightened her. What else was he
capable of doing on her behalf?

  She knew none of what was happening was her
fault. Yet, she couldn't help feeling responsible in
some way. And the last thing she wanted was for
Ethan to raise trouble to a whole new level of risk
by doing something crazy.

"Just wait," she pleaded almost inaudibly.

  "Okay. But I won't wait until it's too late. I'll do
something before that."

  He said it with the quiet force of a vow, a vow
that sent a shiver of dread down her spine.

  "What th' bloody hell," Montgomery Scott
growled in response to the door chime that roused
him from a restless sleep.

Flipping the covers back, he threw his robe over his
137

          Howard Weinstein

pajamas and trudged barefoot to the door. He felt
for the lock release, and the door slid open. He
found himself squinting up at someone silhouetted
against the soft nighttime lighting in the corridor.
He wasn't too sleepy to notice the pointed ears.

"Dr. Ortega called," Spock said.

Scatty raked his fingers through his disheveled
hair.

  "Again? And at this hour?" With a curse
grumbled under his breath, he turned and
retreated to the sitting area of his cabin.
"Whatever it is, it'd better be serious."

  Spock followed and the cabin door shut behind
him. "Dr. Ortega insists that it is."

  With a derisive grunt, Scott slouched over to
the food slot for a mug of black coffee, as hot as
it came.

  "Based on our dealings with Dr. Ortega,
skepticism is not unwarranted when it comes to
his pronouncements and complaints," Spock said
as Scott took his coffee and slumped into the
nearest chair. "However, the captain has asked us
to beam down for a firsthand appraisal of the
exact nature of the problem."

  "Bloody hell. Dollars to doughnuts Ortega
wouldn't know a power coupling from a pile o' "

  "May I remind you that this could be our
opportunity to demonstrate to Dr. Ortega "

  "Y'mean, rub his genetically perfected nose in
some of that self-proclaimed superiority," Scott
said, brightening a bit. "All right. I'll meet you in
the transporter room in ten minutes unless
y'want me t' beam down like this."

  "That will not be necessary. Ten minutes." With
that, Spock left Scotty to curse by himself and to
get dressed.

  Ortega was nowhere to be found when they
materialized in the lobby of the deserted
Federation observatory. Opting for the elegance
of one well-chosen word

                 138
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

rather than the flamboyance of a scattershot string
of them, Scott muttered his favorite Gaelic
obscenity.

 Spock's left eyebrow went up. "Pardon me, Mr.
Scott?"

 "Nothin', sir. Just a comment on Dr. Ortega's
manners 'n' lineage."

 "Ahh. Related, no doubt, to his apparent
absence in the face of what he claimed to be a
critical malfunction in the suspect power system."

"No doubt. So, what do we do now, sir?"

  Spock thought for a moment. "Protocol dic-
tates "

  "Ortega can take his protocol and shove it up
the nearest "

  "Where have you been?"came a sharp voice from
a corridor off the reception area.

  "We have been on the Enterprise, " Spock said
with prosaic neutrality. "Now we are here
following your summons. We came as rapidly as
we could."

  "Well, in the time it took you to get here, the
whole power system could've blown. You now
have that much less time to avert a disaster."

  "With all due respect," Scott said, forcing out
those words of preamble, "I doubt the situation's
that critical."

  "Fortunately, Engineer, it's not your job to
appraise the situation, just to fix it. If you fail, you
and your Federation will be held responsible."

"Now, look here, Doctor " Scott began.

  But before he could continue escalating the
argument with Ortega, Spock interrupted.
"Doctor, if you would show us what you observed,
we shall endeavor to expedite analysis and repair."

  Abandoning all pretence at politeness, Ortega
turned and marched down the corridor, expecting
the two Starfleet officers to follow. Spock did so
right away. Scott hung back long enough for an
exasperated shake of his head, then went along
grudgingly.

139

          Howard Weinstein

  They reached the control room and Ortega took
them directly to the bank of systems monitors.

  "You see," Ortega said in a tone of voice that
made it clear he didn't think they would see unless
he pointed things out to them.

  "What I see," Scott said, eliminating all
remaining shreds of diplomacy, "is some
genetically perfected exaggeration. All we need I'
do is reduce plasma pressure at the flow
regulators. There's no need I' claim the sky's
fallin'."

  Before Ortega could fire back, an alarm siren
whooped and a strip of red-alert lights circling the
ceiling started flashing. Spock, seated at the main
console, tapped several commands into the
keypad. "The sky may just have fallen, Mr. Scott."

  With a dissuasive scoff, Scotty shouldered
Ortega out of the way, glanced at the monitor
readouts, then punched up a system schematic.

  "One malfunction on top of another," Ortega
said, "and this time, they're not minor. Look at
this: Fully a quarter of the modulator network has
collapsed, and it's not just due to programming
errors." With angry jabs, he keyed an adjacent
computer terminal to display a listing of reactor
core components. "Four phase converters have
failed. And now there's radiation leaking in there,
Engineer."

  "I know what's leakin', Doctor." Scott scanned
the diagrams on his monitor, which showed yellow
points flashing at five locations deep within the
power plant's innards. "At least the bloody
containment field's holdin'."

  "For now," Ortega said. "If that leakage isn't
halted "

"Keep y'r pants on. We'll stop it."

"If the containment field fails "

  Scott gave the Empyrean a dismissive glare.
"And whattre the odds o' that happenin'?"

                 140
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

"What were the odds of this happening,
Engineer?" "However unlikely," Spock said, "we
cannot dismiss that possibility, Mr. Scott."

  "It's a lot more likely than either of you seem to
think," Ortega snarled, "thanks to substandard,
faulty Federation programming and substandard
components built by substandard humans."

  That was more than Scott could take. "Substan-
dard? Substandard?" Without regard to rank or
manners, he elbowed Spock aside and hammered
at the keypad with the fingers of both hands. It's
either that or hammer Ortega, he thought. "I'll
give y' substandard."

  Within moments, Scott had called up
construction plans for the Federation complex
dating back nearly twenty years. Seconds later, he
had isolated the plans for the power plant's
reactor core itself.

  "Mr. Scott," said Spock, "exactly what are you
doing?"

  "Makin' a point, sir." His anger at a boil, he
glared at Ortega. "The entire electroplasma
system, everything you just branded as
'substandard,' the guts responsible for this
malfunction "

  Ortega glared right back. "What about it, Engi-
neer?"

  Scott jabbed a finger at the spec notes displayed
alongside the architectural and engineering
blueprints displayed on the largest monitor screen.
"It's Empyrean designed and built."

  That flat statement even caught Spock by
surprise, betrayed by his elevated eyebrows. "Are
you quite certain of that, Mr. Scott?"

  "Aye, sir. That I am. I did some extra research
before I went to sleep. I was gain' to tell you in
the mornin'. But now seems as good a time as
any."

  "Wait a minute," Ortega said in a confused
mumble. The maddening certainty in his posture
wavered

                 141
                  
          Howard Weinstein

as his eyes darted from Scott's satisfied smirk to
the computer displays and back again, then from
one to the other yet again. "That's impossible."

  "The whole system is built around a duophase
network," Scott said, authority ringing in his voice.
"The Federation switched to triphase systems a
good fifty years ago, long before this place was
ever built. Maybe this wouldna've happened,
Doctor, if your system wasn't so out of date that
it never even heardof triphase circuitry."

  This time, the truth on the monitor riveted
Ortega's attention and his head shook almost
imperceptibly. "I can't believe this," he whispered.

  So much for genetic perfection. Scott wanted to
say it out loud but contented himself with merely
thinking it. "Accordin' to Nova Empyrea's own
records, you didn't trust Federation equipment
when this place went up, so y'r people insisted on
supplyin' Empyrean components f'r key systems.
I'll bet you didn't know that until now, Doctor."

  Ortega was so shaken, his mouth moved without
making a sound for a second or two of imperfect
hesitation. "No . . . I I didn't. I was a kid when
this place was built."

  "Well, you're not a kid now, Doctor. You're a
grown man "

  "And grown men admit when they're wrong,"
Ortega said softly. "These reactor core
components are in use all over the planet, in
satellites, not one of them has ever failed."

  Scott put a fatherly hand on Ortega's shoulder.
"Well, laddie . . . nobody's perfect."

  "Dr. Ortega," Spock said, "the physical failure of
core components may be attributable to factors
other than substandard design and construction."

  The befuddled Empyrean blinked rapidly as he
tried to concentrate on what Spock was saying.
"What do you mean, Commander?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

 "You yourself certified last night's diagnostic re-
sults. Yet newly occurring program errors are
present. This malfunction is clearly independent of
the earlier problem and cannot be blamed upon
Federation observatory personnel."

"So what are you saying?"

  "We submit that someone else is responsible for
what amounts to infliction of methodical damage
on observatory operating systems."

  Ortega stared for a long moment. It was bad
enough that a system manufactured here on his
world seemed to have failed for unexplained
reasons. And now  "Are you accusing Empyreans
of sabotage?"

  "We're not accusin' anyone of anything, Doctor,"
Scott said. "In fact, it might be a good idea f'r
everyone to stop makin' unproved allegations."

  Spock nodded. "We are suggesting that a wider
investigation would seem to be in order."

  President March sat at the back of the
auditorium as Clements led the symphony
orchestra through the final portion of rehearsal.
The neoclassical piece they played was bold and
brawny, with full and energetic participation of
brass and strings. But Clements commanded the
lectern with a minimum of motion, the antithesis
of the popular notion of the theatrical,
arm-waving conductor of musical legend. Instead,
his hands moved only at the wrist in precise
tempo, with only an occasional larger motion from
the elbow to point to the extreme sides of the
orchestra.

  Elizabeth marveled at the control it must have
taken to limit his movements so exactly. She'd
watched Clements conduct for years and often
wondered how he kept himself one step removed,
avoided getting caught up in the passion of the
music. Did he really feel it? Did he enjoy it? Or
was it a technical exercise for him, not all that
different from solving crimes?

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          Howard Weinstein

  At the final note, he allowed himself a down
stroke with a small flourish in its execution. Then
he turned, as if he'd known Elizabeth had been
sitting out there in the darkened "heater.

  How does he do that? She stood and walked up
the aisle.

  "It's a rare honor," he said, "having the president
attend a rehearsal."

  "It's a rare treat, listening to one of your works
in progress."

"You need me for something?"

"Yes."

  He dismissed the musicians, then came down
the steps at the side of the stage.

  "I've just been talking to Captain Kirk," she said
as they sat in the front row.

"Oh? About what?"

  March briefed him on the situation at the
observatory, presenting the facts of the
increasingly complicated case of documented
malfunctions and possible sabotage as Kirk had
explained them to her, with Ortega's grudging
concurrence. Then she brought her austere chief
investigator back to her office for a resumption of
the conference with the Enterprise.

  "I still can't believe an Empyrean would do
something like this," Elizabeth said.

  "I mean no disrespect," said Kirk, "but is it
possible for an Empyrean to conduct an effective
investigation of this matter?"

  "You mean because of my announced opinions
favoring the end of any Federation presence here,"
Clements said. It was a statement rather than a
question, made with steely dispassion.

  "You're not exactly impartial," Kirk said. "I don't
know that anyone on Empyrea could be."

  "My impartiality or lack of it is personal,
Captain. My investigation is professional. As a
starship captain, I'm sure you've been faced with
one or two

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           THE BETTER MAN

occasions requiring you to put personal feelings
aside in order to do your job."

  "One or two," Kirk said with a slight smile. "I
see your point."

  "If it's any assurance, I won't be working in
secret, Captain Kirk. You'll be kept apprised. And
I'll need to interview Dr. Skloff and members of
his staff. Maybe they can shed some light. Is that
all right with you?"

"No problem at all, Mr. Clements."

"Good. Then I'll be in touch. Clements out."

  Moments after Kirk's conversation with the
Empyreans ended, McCoy called from sickbay.

"Jim, can you get down here?"

  The desolate rasp of McCoy's voice over the
bridge intercom portended doom. That was Kirk's
instant reaction: It's something bad, but what?

"Sure, Bones. What is it?"

  "I I'd rather tell you in person. I'd like you to
be here when I present my test results to
Elizabeth."

"Shouldn't that be private?"

"I need you here, okay?"

"Okay. I'm on my way."

  By the time Kirk arrived, Elizabeth March had
already transported up from the planet and was
standing in the sickbay office, her face taut with
apprehension. Obviously, McCoy hadn't told her
anything yet. The doctor himself looked drawn
and exhausted, the bags under his eyes bigger and
darker than Kirk had ever seen them. Kirk feared
the worst: McCoy hadn't come up with the
medical miracle Anna needed.

  "Bones asked me to be here," Kirk explained. "Is
that all right with you, President March?"

  She nodded numbly. Then they both turned to
McCoy.

"Out with it, Bones," Kirk said..

  "Well . . . it looks like I can do it," he said in a
strangely flat voice.

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          Howard Weinstein

  Doubling back on the negative expectations
foreshadowed by the look on his face and the
sound of his voice, McCoy's unexpectedly positive
words took a couple of extra seconds to sink in.
Kirk stared at him. "You can?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"Then what's with the hangdog face?"

  "Something else. I'll get to it." He paused for a
deep breath. "There's actually a way to replicate
the maternal genetic brand. And I'll be able to
give Anna a hormonal treatment that'll mimic the
reproductive inhibitor effect long enough to fool
the Empyrean doctors."

  Kirk broke into a grin and clapped McCoy on
the shoulder. "That's great!"

  But McCoy held up a restraining hand. "There's
a problem."

"What?" Elizabeth asked.

  "The genetic brand shows up in every cell in
your body. It's supposed to scan that way in
Anna's body, too. My best guess, it'll take weeks
to infuse naturally into all of Anna's cells."

  "If Anna has to undergo the genetic scan before
the brand's completely infused, will the scanners
notice the deficiency?" asked Kirk.

  "They could," McCoy said. "I don't want to take
that chance."

  Hope drained from Elizabeth's face. "Your
ship's not going to be here that long."

  "Bones, is it possible to start the treatment and
then let it continue after we leave?"

  "It's possible, but there's no guarantee it'll work.
If I'm monitoring, there might be something I
could do."

  "Leonard," said Elizabeth, "is there some way to
speed up the infusion process?"

  "There may be. It would involve introducing a
modified carrier construct, which is normally used
to

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           THE BETTER MAN

increase production of blood cells or spread
replacement genes into cells damaged by radiation
or disease."

  The medical jargon put Kirk out of his depth,
so he asked the one question he could think of.
"What's the risk to Anna?"

  McCoy went from glum to grim. "Fifty-fifty
chance the treatment could kill Anna. The natural
biostasis mechanisms that regulate cellular
reproduction could be kicked out of whack,
inducing runaway cellular propagation "

"Like cancer?" said Kirk.

  "Pretty much. It could also destroy her immune
system or cause dysfunction of vital organs."

  Elizabeth shook her head vigorously. "No.
That's not an acceptable risk. I'd rather have
Anna leave Empyrea and never see her again, I'd
rather face whatever punishment our courts want
to throw at me than live the rest of my life
knowing she died trying this."

  Kirk looked at McCoy's sad eyes, knowing the
doctor felt like he'd failed. "Bones, you did the
best you could."

"Too bad that wasn't good enough."

  "It's not your fault, Leonard," Elizabeth said.
She turned toward the door. "I guess I'd better
beam down and tell Anna that our choices have
been narrowed considerably."

"Wait," McCoy said. "There's something else."

  Kirk recalled the cryptic summons McCoy had
used to call him down from the bridge. Was he
about to explain it?

  "My genetic tests revealed something I didn't
expect." McCoy stopped and looked accusingly at
Elizabeth, searching past the fear in her eyes. "Ac-
cording to what I found, I'm not Anna's father."

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           Chapter Fifteen

KIRK COULDN T HELP STARING, but he
didn t know whether to stare at McCoy or
Elizabeth. "What're you talking about?"

  "Just what I said. We're not a genetic match."
His glance flicked back to Beth, who seemed
more subdued than surprised. "If I did the next
test, I'd find out that Anna's father is actually
Mark Rousseau, wouldn't I?"

  She hung her head, unable to look McCoy in
the eye. Kirk couldn't tell if her response was
driven by shame, disappointment, or a
combination of both

"I guess so," she said quietly.

  "You guess soy!" McCoy exploded. "What do you
mean you guess so? Don't tell me there were
others!"

  "No!" she shouted back. "At the risk of
sounding like an immodest Empyrean, I doubt
very much that many Outsiders could ever meet
the standards set by our own men. I just
happened to meet two exceptional

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Terranswhen I was rebellious enough to take
advantage of the opportunities."

"Did you know I wasn't Anna's father?"

  "No. In fact, I avoided finding out. I never really
wanted to know. I saw something of each of you
in her. I'm very proud of her," Elizabeth said
fiercely.

  McCoy's anger subsided. "I can understand that
pride, even if I've got no genetic part in it."

  "If you weren't sure which one was Anna's
father," said Kirk, "why did you decide to tell
Bones?"

  "I knew Mark Rousseau had a family. I thought
Leonard didn't. It seemed like this would be
simpler if I picked the one who was less
encumbered."

  "That sounds rather calculating," Kirk said, not
bothering to be diplomatic about the chill in his
voice. He didn't like it when someone took
advantage of a friend.

  "Maybe so," Elizabeth shot back. "But my
daughter's life is hanging in the balance. And I
had another reason for picking Leonard. I had
more faith in his coming to the rescue."

  "Well," McCoy said, "somebody's gonna have to
tell Mark."

Beth bit her lip. "I don't know if I can face him."

  "I'll tell him if you want," said McCoy. "It's just
one more thing added to all the stuffwe've gotta
settle between us. Besides, you've got a daughter
down there who needs you. Go tell her, and help
her do the right thing."

  Elizabeth squinted at him. "What is the right
thing?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"We can still take her back to Earth," Kirk said.

  "Thanks, Captain," Elizabeth said. "I hope that'll
be her choice, because I don't see any other. I'll
call you after Anna and I talk it over."

Elizabeth left, with Kirk just behind her. He
paused

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          Howard Weinstein

in the doorway to look back at McCoy, who had
slumped down into his desk chair.

"Bones, are you okay?"

  "I should be relieved. Who wants to be a new
daddy at my age?"

  "You don't look relieved. Maybe you were
starting to think of helping Anna as a way of
making up for the life you never had with
Joanna?"

  McCoy glared up at Kirk. "If I want two-bit
psychoanalysis, I can talk to myself in the mirror.
Now get the hell out of here."

  Funny how the truth sometimes becomes a moving
target, Elizabeth thought as she found her way to
the Enterprise arboretum. She was relieved to find
no one else there. Before she could face Anna
with this latest amended truth, she needed to face
herself and her past.

  She sat on the soft thick grass, under the
protective boughs of a whitewood tree with golden
leaves. She'd never seen a tree like this before
and wondered idly what planet it came from. But
that bit of botanical curiosity only served as
momentary diversion from the question
overwhelming her: How did I get into this mess?

  Not that she needed anyone else to tell her the
answer. She knew and remembered, perhaps all
too well . . .

  With all the impatience of youth and love in her
stride, Elizabeth March hurried up the hillside
path, hurried through the long shadows of tall
trees, ignoring the fiery sunset out over the water.
The picnic basket holding tonight's dinner didn't
weigh all that much, but she resented it anyway,
sure that it was slowing her down. Besides, if she
abandoned it by the trailside, what would they
eat? She'd promised him a picnic he'd never
forget.

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           THE BETTER MAN

  She smiled to herself, knowing she could fulfill
that promise without any food at all. But her
invitation had implied a meal.

She couldn't wait to be with him.

  She reached the sculpture garden and saw him
across the patio. His back was to her as he stood
at the stone perimeter wall, his slender form
silhouetted against the darkening sky, looking out
toward the sea. Then he sensed her presence,
turned, and smiled, and she rushed to him. They
fell into each other's embrace and kissed, then
just held tight.

"Leonard," she finally said, "you look different."

  "I do?" He swallowed self-consciously as she
examined him.

  She nodded, her eyes narrowed as she tried to
figure out what it was. "Your hair."

"I combed it."

  "That's it. I'm used to it falling across your face,
not all slicked back."

"I just thought, for a special occasion like this "

  "Never mind." She raked her fingers through it,
and it wasn't slicked back any more.

  With a grin he couldn't suppress, he led her to
the blanket he'd already spread out near the wall,
with his own basket of bread and wine and fruit.
"You hungry?" he asked, lighting the lantern
standing on the wall.

"If you are."

"I'm starving"

"You're skinny enough as it is, Leonard. Let's
eat."

  President March sighed as she lay back on the
cool grass, staring up through the branches and
leaves, wishing there was a real sun staring back
from a real blue sky. Then she closed her eyes,
hoping in vain for some relief from the tension
gripping her neck.

  Could that picnic dinner really have been
eighteen years ago? The memories and sensations
were still so

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          Howard Weinstein

sharp. She could smell the fresh-baked bread, feel
the cool evening air, taste the wine, taste McCoy's
lips as they kissed . . .

 Not that it mattered, but there was still plenty
of food left. McCoy and Beth lay side by side on
the blanket, his arm draped over her, her back
spooned against him. Holding his hand in hers,
she pressed it against the silky smoothness of her
neck. Then she guided it down, using his fingers
to open the buttons of her blouse. She slid his
hand inside and stretched his fingers upon her
warm skin.

 He snuggled closer and brushed a kiss across
the nape of her neck. Then she turned over on
her back and smiled up at him, entwining her legs
with his. With her hand behind his head, she
pulled him down, her lips parting as they kissed
again.

 "Should we go back to my place or yours?" he
whispered.

 "Your place? It's a starship. Wouldn't your ship-
mates wonder about a strange woman bedding
down with you for the night?"

"Okay. Your place then," he said.

"Why go any place?"

They shared another slow, soft, moist kiss.

"Because I want to make love to you," he said.

"And I want you to."

 There was a lingering moment of distressed
silence as he realized what she was suggesting.
"Here?"

"We're alone."

"We're also outside."

  "You're from the South. It's warm there. Didn't
you ever make love outdoors?"

  He propped himself up on one elbow. "Well. ..
once," he said without great enthusiasm.

"You didn't like it?"

  "Well, we were. . . interrupted." He paused, con-
cerned that continuing on this conversational track

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           THE BETTER MAN
would irreparably shred the mood they'd been build

ing.

"What do you mean? Interrupted by what?"

 Because she asked, it would have been impolite
not to answer. "Bees," he said.

 Her eyes laughed, even though she tried not to.
"Bees?"

"Bees."

"That must have been embarrassing."

"Not to mention painful."

 There was another prolonged span of awkward
silence. "I can see how an experience like that
might affect your opinion of, uhh, open-air amour."
Beth stroked his ear with a featherlight touch of
one finger "Do you think there's anything I could
say to change your mind?"

"Mmm . . . you could try."

 "Okay." She thought for a second. "Well, there
are no bees up here, not at this time of night."

``NnOy~t~hing else that stings?,,

"Bites?"

"Other than me?" she asked innocently

"Other than you."

"I don't think so."

"Snakes?"

"Never seen one around here."

 He paused for a moment of deliberation. Then
with a straight face, he asked, "Predatory birds?"

Beth giggled. That made him smile.

  "Not that I'm aware of," she said, rubbing her
cheek against his, letting him take in her scent

  "Well, in that case . . ." He unfastened the last
few buttons of her blouse, then slipped one strong
hand under the light, cool cloth. He felt the
warmth radiating from her, felt her heart beating
against his touch. "I place myself in your capable
hands."

"Not yet." She sighed. "But I'll take care of that in
a

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          Howard Weinstein

minute or two." Then she shivered, and it wasn't
because she was cold . . .

  Elizabeth still remembered how they'd
surrendered to each other that evening, how they
had melted together and thrilled each other
beneath a moonlit sky and a canopy of rustling
leaves. And she believed she would always
remember. Just as she would always remember
what happened later: how they'd skipped the tram
and walked hand in hand to her street, because
that would give them more time together. And
how they'd talked about whether he would stay
with her that night.

  She'd wanted to talk about whether he might
stay here for good, remaining when his ship was
ready to go. But she found herself unaccountably
afraid to think that far ahead, and she didn't
know if he was ready for a decision like that. She
didn't want to push him. There'd be time for them
to think about a future together later.

  On this one night, neither wanted to separate.
Their passion had made that clear. But McCoy
had that southern blood running through his
heart, and he simply could not ignore the chivalry
that came as naturally to him as breathing. So
she'd allowed him to convince her it would be
much more romantic to say goodnight, to part and
savor the love they'd shared, then greet each
other again in the freshness of the morning.

"I don't want you to leave," she'd said.

"And I don't want to. That's why we should."

  She'd given him a dubious grin. "Is this some
perverse southern Gothic lovers' torture?"

  She'd watched him beam up, then walked the
remaining block to her apartment, though it felt
like she was floating.

  How different things might have been if she had
followed her impulses and insisted that McCoy
stay

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with her. What happened next might not have
happened at all . . .

"Elizabeth."

 Even as the voice called softly to her, it was
unmistakably Mark Rousseau's voice. It came
from the patio alongside her house, and she
followed it, though she could still hear McCoy's
farewell echoing in her mind.

 Rousseau, the young starship captain, enfolded
her in his powerful arms, and she felt a flutter of
guilt in the pit of her stomach. She hadn't planned
to fall in love with two Starfleet officers. Hell, she
hadn't planned or expected to fall in love with
one.

The two men were so different.

  Of course, they were unlike Empyrean men a
distinction that had made them instantly
appealing, much to her astonishment. The
generations of genetic tweaking here on Nova
Empyrea had produced a population of males
without the imperfections of other humans.
Despite the obvious assets of the men she'd
known, none had lit any kind of burning, lasting
desire in her. The word that accurately summed
up her reactions to Empyrean men was . . . tepid.

  Elizabeth had felt that way for some time, but
her dissatisfactions had remained amorphous until
she'd met the visitors from the Federation. In a
flash, she knew: By comparison, Empyrean men
were domestic, commonplace, almost tedious, in
their genetic perfection.

  Leonard McCoy and Mark Rousseau were
anything but perfect. They were wild, exotic,
unpredictable creatures. They had flaws and rough
edges. She found them irresistible.

  As much as they were unlike Empyrean men,
they were equally unlike each other. Elizabeth
didn't know much about the forces and events that
had shaped these two men. But she knew McCoy
as a thoughtful scientist, a nurturing lover,
self-effacing, sensitive, 155

          Howard Weinstein

and sardonic all at once. For all his self-doubts, he
had a core of natural stability and decency that
made him strong enough to be gentle. More than
anyone she'd ever known, he made her feel safe
and wanted. And he made her laugh.

 Mark Rousseau, the bold leader and explorer,
was by contrast a personified force of nature, a
commanding tempest of dreams and drives, fueled
by an impatience with the status quo and a
gambler's ham hazard affinity for taking risks that
would intimidate most others. As a package,
Rousseau might have been insufferable without
his endearing conviction that the best reason for
embarking on any great adventure was to bring
others along on the journey.

 Leonard was a warm hearth. Mark was a roaring
blaze.

She loved them both.

  But right now, Leonard wasn't here. And Mark
was. She invited him in, knowing where they'd end
up, where all their trysts had ended up since the
second time they'd been together. She couldn't
help wondering if there was something wrong with
what she was doing, alternating between lovers.

  She also couldn't help doing it. A century and a
half of genetic management techniques may have
made Empyreans stronger and smarter, but the
primal imperatives deep within the human soul
had remained unaltered. Chemistry is chemistry.
I'm living proof of that.

  Admittedly, at times, Elizabeth felt sneaky.
Neither lover knew about the other. Neither one
had asked, and she hadn't volunteered. If one or
the other did ask, she would try desperately not to
hurt either of them. But she would have to be
honest and tell the full and complete truth,
including her belief that Mark's heart inevitably
belonged to his ship and to his ambitions.

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           THE BETTER MAN

 But McCoy . . . There was a chance small but
present that he might give his heart to her and
stay.

 As Mark Rousseau literally swept her off her
feet and carried her up to her bedroom, she
doubted with silent irony that all the genetic
enhancement in the universe would ever clear up
the conflicts and confusion that accompanied love.

 Love had gotten her into this predicament. She
had no idea what might get her out.

 President March opened her eyes again, then
sat up. There was no avoiding what had to come
next. It was time to call her daughter and bring
her to the Enterprise.

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           Chapter Sixteen

EEIZABETH WASN T THE ONLY ONE with
stunning truth to tell.

  After Kirk left him alone in sickbay, McCoy
summoned Mark Rousseau. Then he told the
unsuspecting ambassador the whole story, ending
with the verdict of surprise fatherhood. Rendering
Mark speechless gave McCoy a small measure of
grim satisfaction.

  "After all those years," McCoy said as he poured
them a couple of brandies, "I thought there was
one time when I finally got the girl and you
didn't."

  "Looks like we both got her," Mark said, finding
his voice. It could've been a quip, but it didn't
come out that way. He was too shell-shocked for
humor.

  McCoy found himself taking mirthless
satisfaction in seeing Mark Rousseau
overwhelmed, and he decided to use the sharp
needle. "Yeah, but you're the one who got her
pregnant."

                 ,58
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  "Don't get so high an' holy with me, McCoy. It
could Just as easily have been you."

  "Maybe so, but I wasn't the newlywed. When we
came to Empyrea, you'd barely been married,
what, two years? Didn't that wedding vow mean
anything at all to you?"

  "Of course it did," Rousseau growled, clenching
his fists as if contemplating using them on McCoy.
"You don't know what I was going through."

"Then why don't you tell me?" McCoy taunted.

  "Go to hell, McCoy." Rousseau slumped back in
his chair, covering his face with both hands. "I was
scared to death I'd be a lousy husband."

"Why? You were a star at everything else."

  "Everything else came easily. Marriage didn't.
You should know that," Mark said, stinging back.
"Erica and I got married, and I suddenly realized
I had no clue what to do."

  McCoy stared in disbelief. "Are you kidding?
The heartthrob of the South?"

  "This time, it meant something. Do you
remember how many times Erica put off our
wedding?"

  "A half dozen that I knew about. She didn't
know if she wanted to spend her life married to
somebody who was gonna be gallivanting across
the galaxy."

  "Do you know why she finally went through with
it?"

McCoy shook his head.

  "I got down on my knees and begged," Rousseau
said simply. "And I promised I wouldn't stay in
Starfleet more than a few years."

  "So that's why you were so desperate to show
what a great diplomat you could be. But that still
doesn't explain you and Elizabeth."

  Rousseau sighed. "By the time our ship found
Nova Empyrea, Christopher had been born. I was
terrified of being a father "

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          Howard Weinstein

"Something else you weren't prepared for?"

"Were you?"

  "Nobody is. It's a wonder all kids don't turn out
to be messes and monsters."

  Rousseau managed a concurring smile. "I was
also terrified of what I was missing, being away
from home while he was a baby."

  "So your solution was to warp across the galaxy
and have an interstellar affair?"

  "My God, Bones! You were there. You know
what Elizabeth was like the magnetism! And not
just her all those Empyrean women. I never
claimed to be infallible!"

  "Oh, no?" said McCoy sarcastically. "You sure
acted like it."

  "Maybe that's just how you saw me. Sorry I had
to disappoint you."

"What about Anna? Are you going to disappoint

  "Anna's not my responsibility," Rousseau said,
his tone blunt.

"You're her father, for heaven's sakes!"

  "A quirk of biology, and Elizabeth's choice."
Mark stood up as if to leave. "Whether Anna
stays, undergoes your treatment, or leaves with
the Enterprise, that's not my concern."

"The hell it isn't!"

  Rousseau shook a finger in McCoy's face. "I'm
here for one purpose: to get that treaty extension."

  Without warning, McCoy launched a
roundhouse punch that connected squarely with
the side of Rousseau's face, dropping one
extremely surprised ambassador to the floor, flat
on his back. He blinked back startled tears while
McCoy Sexed his right hand gingerly and winced
in pain.

"Serves you right," Rousseau said.

  "I'm a doctor it's my hand. Whatever I broke,
I can fix. And whatever it was, it was worth it! I've

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wanted to deck you for years, you arrogant, self-
impressed, self-cantered sonofabitch." Standing
over Rousseau, McCoy let all his pent-up fury
pour out. "When we were kids, I thought you were
the greatest thing since sliced bread. I envied you,
I worshipped you, I wanted to be you! And I wish
to God I knew what happened to you!"

  Mark propped himself on one elbow, rubbing
his bruised cheekbone with the other hand.
"Maybe nothing happened to me. Maybe you just
saw the parts of me you needed to see. I'm sorry
I disappointed you. Idols don't ask to be idols,
and they don't ask to be born with feet of clay.
That's just the way things are."

  With that, Rousseau got unsteadily to his feet.
McCoy's angry glare softened to sorrow. He
looked at Mark and shook his head. "Go get your
damned treaty while I try to figure out a way to
save your daughter's life."

  The wedge that time and distance had plainly
driven between him and McCoy bothered
Rousseau more than he was willing or able to
admit. After a futile hour spent trying to fine-tune
his draft treaty extension, McCoy's contemptuous
diatribe still echo oed in his mind. It still stung far
more than any fist hitting him in the face.

  Rousseau knew that he had always possessed an
effortless charm, no matter what the company
around him. He took no credit for it. It was
simply a gift, and he'd learned to rely upon it
early in life. Probably a gift I've long since taken for
granted. Somewhere along the way, he now
realised with dismay, it had become easier to
choose his words with diplomatic care when
dealing with strangers than with friends.

  Professional instincts had replaced personal
ones. As he made his way to the Enterprise's
arboretum for a little solitude, he was unsettled by
one further realisation: He had more confidence
in his ability to

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Howard Weinstein

achieve the treaty renewal than to patch things up
with McCoy.

  The door to the arboretum slid open. The
moment he entered, he heard the sweet jangle of
guitar strings coming from the midst of the trees
and shrubs. Someone was playing an elegant but
simple folk melody with a lively verse and a
melancholy refrain. He followed the
crushed-gravel path that seemed to lead to the
source of the music.

  In a central green bounded by willow trees, he
found Uhura sitting on a bench, playing by
herself. He paused under cover of the leafy
canopy, unsure whether his presence would be
considered welcome or an intrusion. Without
stopping her song, Uhura looked up, smiled, and
nodded for him to join her. With a return smile,
he sat at the end of her bench. When she finished,
he applauded.

"Sixteenth-century English?" he ventured.

"That's right. I'm impressed."

  "Well, I was very interested in all kinds of music
when I was young," he said modestly. "Even
thought of it as a career for a while there. Then I
found some other roads to explore."

  She held out the guitar, her gesture inviting him
to take it.

He hesitated. "Are you sure?"

"I'm offering."

  "Not everyone is so willing to have their instru-
ments manhandled by strangers."

  "No fellow musician is a stranger," she said,
giving it to him. Then she laughed. "As for the
manhandling, well, I know where I can get a
phaser on short notice."

  With his thumb, he strummed at tuneless
random for a few moments, as if acclimating
himself to the feel of his fingertips on the strings,
the distance between them, and the effort
required to press them firmly to the fingerboard.
When he seemed satisfied, he began a tentative
pick with the individual fingers of i62

           THE BETTER MAN

his right hand, though the notes he played still
lacked the cohesion of a musical piece.

 After a minute of that, both hands fully at home
on Uhura's guitar, he merged effortlessly into the
fastflowing river of notes that were the hallmark
of upbeat jazz. Then, almost imperceptibly, he
added a strong, driving bass line that Uhura found
irresistible. She couldn't help drumming along in
time on the top of her guitar case.

 Rousseau's melody bounced along its joyous
way, then tumbled to a close. And it was Uhura's
turn to applaud in lusty appreciation.

"That was wonderful, Mr. Ambassador!"

  "Please, just call me Mark," he said, handing the
guitar back to her.

  "Unless I miss my guess, you're a big fan of
old-time twenty-first-century jazz, with some
African rhythm fused in for good measure."

"You've got a great ear, Commander."

  "Call me Uhura, everyone else does. And you're
quite a jazz guitarist."

  He ducked his head sheepishly. "Not so good. I
never really took guitar-playing seriously. I seem
to pick up one of these every ten years or so."

Uhura's eyebrows arched. "You're kidding."

  He shrugged. "Nope. I was a brass
man probably for the bombast period, then
woodwinds and keyboards."

  "It sounds like diplomacy's gain is music's loss,
Mark."

  "Coming from you, I take that as a high compl;-
ment. I understand you've always been the source
of the Enterprise's most beautiful music."

  "Oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. I just try to
make sure my shipmates remember that music
bath charms," Uhura said with a sly half smile. She
began quietly playing another simple folk tune. "I
hear you and Dr. McCoy had a little tiff earlier
today."

163

          Toward Weinstein

 His eyebrows arched in surprise. "I didn't realize
news traveled that fast in a ship this big."

 "Big ship, small family," she said, then added
mystically, "Besides, I am the communications offi-
cer. Anything you'd care to talk about?"

 "Music bath charms, indeed," he said wryly.
"Ahh it's not a burden I'd want to dump on you."

"No burden."

  He turned his hands palms up in a gesture of
philosophical acceptance. "These things happen.
Friends drift apart."

"Is that really what this was about?"

  "I'm not sure. Maybe it's also about how well
people really know each other versus how well
they think they know each other."

  Uhura's lashes batted up, revealing dark eyes
and a searching gaze. "So who's guilty of
misjudgment?"

  "Probably both of us. Now he knows I'm not the
man he thought I was."

"And what do you know?"

  "That McCoy's probably a better man than I
ever was or ever will be."

"Did you tell him that?"

  Rousseau let out a short, ironic laugh. "That's a
burden I lived with for a long time, people
thinking the world of me. I'd never lay that on
someone else. Better to be underestimated, don't
you think, Commander?"

"Mmm, I don't know about that."

  "Oh, sure it is. Then you aren't likely to
disappoint people, and it's that much easier to
amaze them. Let's face it: You were much more
impressed with my guitar technique after I told
you I'd never played before."

  "Maybe. So, now you've lowered Dr. McCoy
expectations."

  "You can say that again. I think he's got higher
expectations of one-celled organisms than he does
of me."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "Then you may never have a better chance to
show him he's wrong.'

  Mark sighed with resigned sadness. "I'm not so
sure he is wrong. If you knew exactly what we
argued about "

  She gave him a sideways glance veiled by her
lashes for an extra trace of mystery. "Who's to say
I don't?"

  The rhetorical question caught him off balance.
"Do you?" he asked with genuine uncertainty.

"I know enough. After all, I am "

  " the communications officer," he finished with
a grin. Then he stood and inclined his head in a
gracious bow. "Thanks for the company, Com-
mander."

"Anytime."

  "You know, I came in here wanting to be alone.
I'm glad I wasn't."

"Same here."

  As he left the arboretum, Rousseau knew there
were some people he should find and some things
he should say. But he couldn't help wondering if
he had the courage and he wasn't sure he
wanted to find out.

                 165
                  
          Chapter Seventeen

Captain's log, Stardate 7596.1.

 Dr. McCoy continues his efforts at refining a
genetic treatment for Anna March. Meanwhile,
the Empyrean investigation into problems with
the observatory reactor continues. Following last
night's emergency, First Officer Spock and Chief
Engineer Scott have stabilized the reactor core's
condition. Now, we wait to see if other
malfunctions develop.

WITH UNCHARACTERISTIC HESITANCE,
Mark Rousseau entered the Enterprise observation
lounge and approached Anna and Elizabeth
March. They were seated in a semicircular booth
behind a screen of ornamental shrubs, their voices
subdued as they spoke quietly near the windows.

  "Mind if I join you?" he asked without his
customary ebullience.

  Elizabeth offered a diffident shrug as her reply.
Neither affirmative nor negative. Rousseau
accepted

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           THE BETTER MAN

that as the most encouraging greeting he could
expect, considering the circumstances. He sat on
the outer edge of the curved seat as Anna filled a
third glass from the pitcher of sparkling orange
beverage she and her mother were sharing.

Rousseau took it gratefully. "Thanks, Anna."

  "You're welcome..." Her voice trailed into an
awkward pause. "I hadn't even figured out what to
call Dr. McCoy. Then I find out he's not my
father, you are, and I don't know what to call you
either."

  "Just Mark will do." He took a sip of his drink
to wet his dry mouth.

  Elizabeth noticed the discolored swelling under
his eye. "Where'd you get that?"

  He managed a wan smile. "McCoy's bedside
manner. . . his way of persuading me to alter my
perspective." Before he could continue his
confessional, he needed a deep, stabilising breath.

"Is that why you're here?" Elizabeth asked.

  He nodded. "Not that I have a lot of parental
rights here not that I deserve them but, for
what it's worth, Anna, I don't want you risking
your life on this medical treatment either. You've
got a place with my family back on Earth, and you
always will." He made a conscious effort to
brighten his expression. "You know, you'd fit right
in with my other kids. My son's a couple of years
older, and my daughter's going to be eighteen
next year."

  Anna looked him straight in the eye. "Mark, I
don't want to disrupt your family. The last thing
you need is some mystery child barging in."

"Anna, it wouldn't be like that at all."

  "Well, that's how I'd feel. Your kids and your
wife might feel the same way."

"Then we could keep your identity a secret."

  "You mean lie?" The corners of Anna's mouth
twisted with disapproval.

"Not really. Just say you're the child of an old 167

          Howard Weinstein

friend coming to Earth to continue your studies.
That's not a lie."

"Selective truth then."

  Elizabeth appreciated what it took for Mark to
come here and reach out, and she was annoyed
with her daughter's prickly response. "Anna, this
isn't easy for any of us. Mark's only got your best
interests at heart, and we "

  "My best interests," Anna cut in. "Meanwhile,
everybody but me is making my choices and deci-
sions."

"I thought we agreed "

  " You all agreed, Mother. Nobody gave me a
chance to disagree." Anna stood and slid out of the
booth. "Well, I've made up my mind. I'm not
going to have to disrupt the Rousseau family,
because I'm not leaving Empyrea."

"Anna!"

  "Mother, I'm an adult. My life is my
responsibility. The decision is mine and Dr.
McCoy's. If he thinks there's any reasonable
chance this medical treatment will let me pass the
scans and live my normal life here where I belong,
then I'm going to take that chance."

  Elizabeth jumped to her feet, determined not to
go along with what she considered to be lunacy.
"Anna, you can't be serious "

  Now it was Mark who interrupted, placing a
firm hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. "Let's see what
McCoy says."

  She whirled. "I don't care what Leonard says!
I'm not allowing Anna to risk her life like that!"

  "Is it a risk? Sure, it is," McCoy admitted, facing
Anna and her mother and father in his sickbay
office. "The question is, is it an acceptable risk.
Now, I've managed to fine-tune the accelerated
genetic-branding procedure a bit."

"Before," Elizabeth said critically, "you said there 168

           THE BETTER MAN

was a fifty-fifty possibility she could die during the
procedure."

  "Well, now it's more like sixty-forty in favor of
successful treatment."

  Beth glared at him. "You're not making that up,
are you?"

  "I'm a doctor," he growled, "not a goddamn
odds maker. I'm giving you my best opinion."

  And then Anna faced the parents who cared so
deeply about her fate and the physician who
would hold that fate in his hands if she convinced
them to sanction her choice. She spoke up in a
voice filled with quiet passion. "Mother, I know
you want the best for me. You all do. But I want
to live my life, not somebody else's life. And my
life is here, where I can fight for this world to be
what it should be, what you wanted it to be when
you were my age, Mother."

  Elizabeth felt tears coming to her eyes, the sting
of emotion rising in her throat. She looked into
her daughter's face, hoping Anna wouldn't notice.
She was determined not to cry. It would have
been easier to look away from Anna, but she
couldn't, not now. Not when Anna stood before
her, asking for what amounted to a benediction.

  Asking with a clear-eyed courage that
compelled respect.

  Asking her mother to go along with her
choice a choice that Elizabeth knew might be
suicidal.

  Anna was not demanding. She issued no ultima-
tums, made no threats.

"Let me make the choice you got to make,
Mother."

  Elizabeth exhaled slowly, looking from McCoy
to Rousseau, then, finally, to her daughter.
"You've earned the right to make your own
choice, Anna. I can't stop you . . . and I shouldn't.
Mark?"

He replied with a gesture of silent surrender.

  Then Elizabeth turned to McCoy. "The decision
is Anna's and yours, Leonard."

169

          Howard Weinstein

  They all faced Anna again, her posture
signalingher certainty. "Let's do it."

  With a solemn nod, McCoy touched the
intercom. "McCoy to Chapel. Those preparations
for Anna's treatment "

  "Already done, Doctor. Ready to begin any time
you are."

"Thanks. McCoy out."

  Anna, Elizabeth, and Mark all looked at him in
wordless surprise. He shrugged.

  "I just had a feeling, that's all. I know
determination when I see it."

  As McCoy reviewed the medical data and
procedures in final preparation for his treatment
of Anna, he couldn't help feeling a foreboding
chill. Was he really so certain of those odds he'd
quoted to Elizabeth?

"Are you okay, Bones?"

  The voice Kirk's voice echoed as if in a vast
cavern. It sounded so far off, so incorporeal, that
McCoy didn't even blink in response. Not until it
spoke again did he swivel his desk chair slowly,
consciously reestablishing reality in his sickbay
office.

"I said, are you okay?"

  "Huh? Yeah. . . yeah, I'm okay." Then McCoy
turned gruffly defensive. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"No reason. Are you sure you're ready for this?"

  "Of course I am. If you're trying to bolster my
confidence, you're doing a lousy job, Jim."

"Sorry. I'm just concerned about you, that's all."

"Why?"

  "Because you've been on an emotional roller
coaster for the past week, and I can see what
Anna's safety means to you."

  McCoy stood up. "Look, Jim, she's a patient; of
course I care about her safety. I wouldn't be doing
this procedure if I didn't think the risks were
manageable.

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           THE BETTER MAN

And she's not my daughter, so I'm not carrying
that baggage into the treatment room."

"Are you sure about that?"

  "No, goddammit, I'm not. Anything else you'd
like to ask to unnerve me?"

  Kirk put a steadying hand on McCoy's shoulder.
"I've got faith in you, Bones. We all do."

  McCoy's blue eyes gave Kirk a level gaze.
"What if you're all wrong? What if I'm wrong?"

  "You're giving Anna the chance she wants. No
matter what happens, that's not wrong."

  "Tell me that again when it's all over," McCoy
said softly.

"All readings stable, Dr. McCoy," Dr. Chapel said.
McCoy already knew that; they were right up
there on the biofunction monitor above Anna as
she lay on the bed in the sickbay operating
"heater. He also knew Chapel's telling him was
her way of reassuring him. And he appreciated it.

  He acknowledged with a nod. Anna was already
unconscious, hooked up to the life-support
apparatus covering her torso like medical armor.
What they would be doing to her was not surgery,
technically speaking. But they would be
introducing a foreign substance into Anna, one
that would be carried into every cell of her body.
McCoy and Chapel were all too aware of the
possibilities for life-threatening disaster. McCoy
wanted Anna on full standby life sum port from
the moment treatment began. That way, if
anything did go wrong, there'd be no time wasted
in implementation of emergency countermeasures.

  McCoy licked his lips. His mouth didn't always
feel so dry before an operation. Why now?"Got
the serum, Dr. Chapel?"

  She held up a vial of purple liquid. "Serum
ready, Doctor."

                 17
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "All right then. Let's get this show on the road.
Begin infusion."

  Chapel tipped the vial nozzle down, then
inserted it into a hypospray. She showed it to
McCoy. He nodded again. With smooth skill
honed during her nursing days, Chapel placed the
hypo against Anna's neck. McCoy heard the
familiar hissing sound as she squeezed the trigger,
injecting the serum until the vial was emptied.
Then they both stepped back and glanced at the
biomonitor.

  There was no initial reaction, and McCoy let out
a relieved breath. "Well, so far, so good."

  "I'll stay here with her, Doctor," Chapel said. "If
you want to go out and tell President March and
Ambassador Rousseau that everything's all right .
. ."

  "Thanks, Christine." First, he reached for a small
towel and wiped away the beads of perspiration
that had popped out on his forehead. Then he
went out to his office.

  Rousseau and Elizabeth jumped reflexively to
their feet the moment he came in. Kirk was with
them, too.

  "Relax," McCoy said, managing a smile for their
benefit. "Everything's fine. I really don't expect any
complications."

  Elizabeth didn't look assured. "It's the complica-
tions you don't expect that worry me, Leonard."

  "Look, Beth," McCoy said, diplomatically letting
the comment pass, "it's going to be a couple of
days till we know if the treatment's taking. I'd
suggest going on back home; you'll be a lot more
comfortable there. And Mark, why don't you go
work on that draft proposal of yours. I'll give you
both progress reports every hour."

They showed no signs of leaving.

  "President March," Kirk said, trying to help, "we
can have you beamed back up to the Enterprise at
any time if you feel the need."

                 i72
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  "There's really no reason for everybody to be
underfoot," McCoy said.

  "I don't feel much like going home alone,"
Elizabeth said.

  "And there's no way I'm going to be able to
concentrate on work," said Mark.

  Elizabeth turned to Rousseau. "Would you like
to know more about Anna? Because I'd love for
you to know her like I do. I can tell you all about
what she was like growing up."

  Mark smiled. "I'd like that. You've got pictures,
I suppose?"

  Elizabeth couldn't help smiling back. "She's my
only child. Have I got pictures! It would take a
whole cargo shuttle to haul 'em up here."

  McCoy stepped between them, putting his arms
around their shoulders. "That sounds like a good
idea, you two beamin' down together. I promise
I'll keep you posted."

  "Leonard," Elizabeth said, "I'd like you to come,
too."

  The invitation caught McCoy off guard. "I I'd
like to," he stammered, then glanced back toward
the operating room, where Chapel stood in the
open doorway. "But I'm not sure I should leave."

  Elizabeth cocked an eyebrow. "You said
everything was fine."

  "Doctor," Chapel said, "I won't leave Anna's
side while you're gone."

  "If we need you, Bones," said Kirk with a grin,
"we know where to find you."

  "Because I was never absolutely sure which of
you was Anna's father," Elizabeth said, "I kind of
always thought of you both as her father. Now
that I do know, I'd still like for both of you to
know about her. Come on, Leonard."

"Well . . . okay." McCoy slipped out of his lab
coat

                 173
                  
          Howard Weinstein

as Kirk handed him his uniform jacket. Before he
left, McCoy wagged a finger at Chapel. "Any sign
of trouble anything at all you get me up here.
Instantly. "

"Understood, Doctor."

  He watched from out of sight, from the shadows
behind a massive tree trunk, as McCoy, Rousseau,
and Elizabeth beamed down together,
materialising in the gardens near the presidential
mansion. The sun had already dipped below the
roof of the house, and it was cool and dark
beneath the big trees.

  He gripped the energy-pulse weapon tightly and
took careful aim. A bright blast from the weapon
took the three of them from behind, and all fell to
the ground unconscious.

  Ethan emerged from the shadows, a tight-lipped
smile briefly crossing his face. The time for talk
had passed, as he had told Anna it would.

Now it was time for action.

                 ~74
                  
          Chapter Eighteen

ELIZABETH REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS
FIRST, feeling the cool dampness of the slate
path against her cheek. She rolled onto her side,
then sat up too quickly. She fought the swirling
vertigo spinning inside her head and had to brace
herself with one hand to keep from keeling over.

  Steadied in that position, she made a concerted
effort to take stock of her situation and organise
her thoughts, an effort complicated considerably
by the fog filling her head. First, the present: She
knew who she was. She knew where she was: She
could tell by the familiar trees that she was sitting
in the garden grove near the presidential mansion.
She knew it was eve-ning: There was a chill in the
air, the sun was down, the path lights had come
on.

  Next, the immediate past: How had she come to
be here? Where had she come from?
Recollections: fragmented, oddly distant the
starship. Enterprise.

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          Howard Weinstein

Anna. Sickbay. McCoy and Rousseau. Now I'm
getting somewhere . . .

Beaming down. To here. Then what?

  She looked around. There was Mark Rousseau,
a meter away, moaning, rolling over, looking up at
her with unfocused vision. And McCoy

  Clarity blew back into her mind like a cold wind
through a door suddenly thrown open. Where the
hell is McCoy? The silent shout of panic rattled in
her mind. Maybe he had crawled off. Still not sure
she could stand without falling, she tried to get up
and succeeded, eyes searching frantically around.
There was no sign of him, no sign of where he
might have gone.

  She went over to Rousseau, squatted next to
him, and touched his face. "Mark! Mark, are you
all right?"

  Propping himself on one elbow, he shook his
head to clear it. "I think so."

  His speech wasn't quite slurred, but his
enunciation lacked its accustomed crispness.
Whatever hit them had obviously affected him
more than Elizabeth.

He squinted at her. "Wha' happened?"

  "I don't know. Somebody ambushed us. McCoy's
gone.',

  "How long?" Rousseau got to his knees,
resisting the wave of nausea rippling through his
gut. "Got to look for him."

  She gripped his arm. "We're in no shape. We've
got to get our police on it."

"We have to call the Enl:erprise."

  "Can you stand up?" When his only response
was a blank blinking of his eyes, she shouted the
question at him again. "Mark, can you stand up?"

  He winced at the loudness of her voice. "Yes."
Then he actually made the attempt. He staggered,
then forced himself to stand without swaying. His
speech had regained its edge. "Not as gracefully as
I'm accustomed to, but I think I can get as far as
your

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           THE BETTER MAN

mansion." He held out a hand, as much to help
her up as to steady himself.

"Okay. Let's go.'>

  As soon as she was able, President March sum-
moned an Empyrean investigation team to the site
of McCoy's disappearance. Then, with more than
a little trepidation, she and Rousseau contacted
the Enterprise.

  "I can have a search party down there in five
minutes," Kirk said from the starship's bridge after
assuring President March that Anna's condition
remained stable.

  "No, you can't, Captain," President March told
him. "Our laws forbid it."

  Kirk's jaw tightened as he squelched the reflex-
ive impulse of an angry response. "Considering the
circumstances, I'd think you might make an excep-
tion."

  "I know Dr. McCoy may ultimately be
responsible for whether my daughter gets through
this treatment safely, Captain, but I'm not above
the law. And I resent the implication that we
Empyreans are incapable of conducting a proper
search."

  "Elizabeth," Mark Rousseau said as soothingly as
possible, "I'm sure Captain Kirk meant no such
thing."

  "Of course not," Kirk said, making a hasty jump
into the diplomatic opening the ambassador had
provided. "I just thought our tricorders might be
helpful in scanning for clues."

  Elizabeth accepted the tacit invitation to reduce
the tension a bit. "We do have our own scanning
devices, Captain. But if you'd care to beam a few
tricorders down, I'll offer them to our forensics
team."

"We'll do that," Kirk said.

  "And we'll give you updates every half hour or
sooner if we find something."

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          Howard Weinstein

  "I'd appreciate that," Kirk said formally. "Enter-
prise out."

  Kirk pounded a frustrated fist on the arm of his
chair the moment the comm channel was closed.
"Dammit." He swiveled to face Chekov at Spock's
science station.

  Chekov knew that look in Kirk's eyes; the
captain had no intention of sitting by passively
when one of his crew was in trouble. "Keptin, ve
could initiate a sensor scan of the area vhere Dr.
McCoy disappeared."

"Would the Empyreans be able to detect it?"

  "Vith our sensors at full strength, they could.
Their technology is not that far behind ours,
considering how long they have been isolated."

"What about less than full strength?"

  Chekov punched the numbers into his computer.
A moment later, he had the calculation he sought.
"It is possible to reduce scanner power levels and
to reconfigure sensor frequencies so they blend
into natural background radiation patterns "

  "To a point where they'd be undetectable by
planetary sensors?"

"Aye, Keptin."

  "At that low level, would we still be able to pick
up McCoy's life form readings if he was wandering
around the woods down there?"

  "Vandering the voods or someplace else
relatively unobstructed, I believe so, sir. But our
ability to scan below the planet surface "

"Like in a cave?"

"Aye, sir. That ve probably could not do."

  Kirk nodded distractedly. "Well, precipitating a
diplomatic incident by violating Empyrean
sovereignty isn't likely to be helpful at this
point "

  Chekov looked disappointed. "Then ve do
nothing, sir?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

 "I didn't say that, Mr. Chekov. I said I don't
want to cause an interplanetary incident yet. But
I'll be damned if the Empyreans think I'm about
to stand by and do nothing when McCoy's missing,
maybe hurt. Initiate low-intensity sensor sweeps of
the area around the mansion, and make sure they
don't catch

us."

"Aye, sir."

  I'm blind, McCoy thought the moment he
snapped back to consciousness. He knew his
eyelids were open, but he only saw darkness. Then
he felt the binding around his face. Just
blindfolded . . .

  Where the hell I? he wondered, struggling to
orient himself, both mentally and physically. At
least I'm alive. Beyond that, he knew he was lying
on his back, his hands resting on his chest, bound
tightly by bands around his wrists. He tried to
move his feet; they were shackled, too.

  He felt a sensation of motion headfirst. He
heard footsteps coming from the direction of his
own feet. So he knew whoever was with him was
pushing him along from that end, probably on
some sort of antigrav cargo sled. The feet sounded
like they were scuffmg against dirt and hard
ground rather than pavement. Outdoors?

  McCoy listened and concentrated. There was no
wind, no warmth of sun against his skin and
clothing. Could be a calm night.

  But he heard no sounds typical of nocturnal
nature  no birds calling from treetops, no leaves
rustling, no insects humming or chirping. And the
air didn't feel or smell like outdoors. He inhaled
deeply and sensed the clammy, musty odor of
damp rock. Must be in a cave or a tunnel.

  McCoy realised he was strangely unruffled,
considering his predicament. The moments spent
concen

                 179
                  
          Howard Weinstein

bating on rational analysis helped distract him
from dwelling on just how dire his straits might
be.

  He licked his lips. He was a little surprised that
he wasn't gagged, and he wondered why. Whoever
captured him seemed to have planned ahead
sufficiently to ensure that an ungagged mouth was
not merely an oversight. Wherever he was, if
McCoy was being given the opportunity to shout,
in all likelihood there wasn't anyone around to
hear him.

  Instead, he wriggled sideways slightly and at-
tempted to swing his legs over the edge of
whatever he was Iying on. He felt forward motion
stop.

"Going for a stroll, Dr. McCoy?"

  The voice was male and with a timbre that
identified the speaker as young. Maybe eighteen
years old, McCoy guessed. Not unkind or
intimidating, but definitely controlled. This kid
seemed comfortable with what he was doing. "I
was thinking about it, yeah."

  "You might have some trouble with those ankle
shackles."

  "You wouldn't happen to know somebody with
a key."

"As a matter of fact, I do."

"You?"

"Yes."

"You have me at a disadvantage, son," McCoy
said.

  "Actually, I have you at several disadvantages,
Doctor."

  "Well, I was referrin' to the fact that you know
my name and I don't know yours."

"No harm there, I guess. It's Ethan."

"Where're we headed, Ethan?"

"You'll know when we get there."

  "They got here without incident," said Clements,
standing in the now-floodlit garden with Mark
Rous

                 180
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

seauand President March. He glanced at the
readout on his scanner, a handheld device similar
in size to a Starfleet tricorder. "That much we
know. The Enterprise confirmed no problems in
transport."

  A dozen other Empyrean forensic investigators
were busy scouring the gardens, the paths, and the
surrounding woods and lawns, looking for any
shreds of evidence that might help them figure out
what happened to McCoy.

  Elizabeth nodded. "And I'm sure all three of us
arrived here. We didn't have a chance to say
anything before we were stunned. But I was in the
middle, and I could tell out of the corners of my
eyes that Mark and Leonard were both where they
were supposed to be."

  "The residual ionized radiation footprints of the
transporter materialisations confirm that, with
ninety-nine percent certainty. They're what they
should have been after three people beamed down
here using Federation equipment," Clements said.
"Now, you're sure it was just a second or two after
you materialised that you were stunned?"

  Rousseau and Elizabeth exchanged a glance of
agreement. "As sure as we can be," Rousseau said.
"It was certainly no more than that."

  Clements grunted. "Well, it's pretty clear that
someone was waiting for you, waiting to stun you
with an Empyrean energy-pulse weapon. Two of
you were left unharmed. It seems likely that Dr.
McCoy was taken as a hostage."

  "A hostage!" Elizabeth shook her head, both
baffled and horrified. "This is impossible. This just
doesn't happen here!"

  "Maybe it didn't before," Mark said grimly, "but
it looks like it does now. Mr. Clements, have you
had any luck tracking where they went after they
grabbed McCoy?"

Clements regarded Rousseau with the disdain of a
                 181
                  
          Howard Weinstein

professional lecturing an amateur. "Luck, Mr. Am-
bassador? Luck doesn't enter into the
investigation. And you used the word they,
implying more than one perpetrator involved in
this incident."

"You don't think it was more than one person?"

  "It's not my job to draw conclusions
unsupported by evidence. And so far, the lack of
contrary evidence does in fact lead to the
likelihood that one person did this in my
opinion."

"What makes you say that?" Mark asked.

  "The more people involved, the greater the
probability of making a mistake that would leave
some damaging hints behind. As of now, we have
yet to find any such hints."

  Mark Rousseau exhaled a frustrated breath.
"One person. Why would one person want to
kidnap McCoy?"

"Leverage, Doctor."

  McCoy snorted, a gentle scoff. "I think you're
overestimating my value, Ethan." He was still
blindfolded cargo, riding along on the sled.
Ethan's was still the only voice he'd heard as well
as the source of the only set of footsteps. It
seemed pretty certain that it was just the two of
them on this journey to wherever.

  It wasn't long before they reached their
destination. McCoy felt the sled stop, and Ethan
removed the blindfold. McCoy sat up and saw that
they were in a cavern about twenty feet high and
thirty around. It was clearly an intended
destination, previously made ready for their
arrival.

  McCoy glanced around and noticed
pole-mounted lamps casting a pale yellow glow, a
freestanding heater taking the chill off the damp
air, four cots set up, some containers of survival
supplies and packaged food, and a couple of camp
food warmers ready for cooking. In addition, there
were at least twenty large shipping 182

           THE BETTER MAN

crates piled up along two walls. Those were
sealed, and McCoy had no idea what was in them.

 McCoy sized Ethan up visually for the first time.
Sturdy, good-looking kid. He's definitely got some
purpose in mind . . . something that means a lot to
him. But is it selfish? Or idealistic? "All the
comforts of home?"

 Ethan shrugged. "Some people believe physical
suffering enhances the purity of revolution. I'm
not one of them."

"So, you're a revolutionary, are you?"

  "Potentially, in a manner of speaking," he said,
hedging as he removed a tarp' revealing
sophisticated field communication equipment.

  "If you don't mind my asking, how do I fit into
your revolution?" McCoy asked as Ethan bent
over and loosened the connecting chains on his
ankle and wrist shackles but didn't remove them.

  "You don't, exactly. I've decided some things are
more important than revolution in the societal
sense."

  McCoy tested his circumscribed freedom. The
extra give allowed limited use of his hands and
would probably make it possible for him to shuffle
along, though not fast enough to let him attack or
escape "Personal things?"

"You could say that.'

  "Ahh. Then my guess would be, this has
something to do with Anna March."

Ethan looked up abruptly. "Anna? Why Anna?"

"You tell me, Ethan. You're her age. You're
smart."

"We're all smart on Empyrea."

  "I hope you're smart enough to know taking me
as a hostage isn't going to get you what you want,
whatever that is."

  Ethan gave him a hollow smile. "That's open to
interpretation, Doctor." Then he turned away to
start heating up two containers of stew.

183

          Howard Weinstein

 "This isn't open to interpretation, son. Starfleet
doesn't bargain for hostages, no matter who.
That's the rule, and Captain Kirk's going to follow
it."

"Rules can be broken. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat."

  A few moments later, the food warmer beeped,
indicating the stew had reached the desired
temperature. Ethan opened the door, took out the
containers, opened their tops, and handed one to
his prisoner along with a spoon.

  McCoy took it gratefully. He was a lot more
hungry than he'd admitted. "Not bad for field
rations," he said as he swallowed his first
mouthful.

"Thanks."

  "They're going to be looking for me, y'know,"
McCoy said.

"Well, they're going to be frustrated, then."

"I'm not talking about Empyrean search parties."

  "Neither am I, Doctor," Ethan said with polite
confidence.

  "The Enterprise can scan this whole planet,
inside and out."

  "I know that. I also know these caverns are
inside geologic formations that are going to cause
so many ghost images they're not going to know
what they're looking at, much less be able to find
out where you are."

  McCoy frowned. He was annoyed that the kid
was so damned blase, but he refused to give Ethan
the satisfaction of knowing that. "You think you've
got it all covered, don't you?"

  "I do have it all covered. The only way they'll
find you is if I want them to."

  "Hmm. Okay. Let's just say, for argument's sake,
that's true. What're you doing all this for?"

  Ethan poured two cups of water from a canteen.
"You were right."

"About what?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "This is about Anna. I want the Enterprise to
give safe passage to Anna, me, and any other
young Empyreans who want to leave our planet."

  "I hate to rain on your parade, son, but Anna
doesn't want to leave. She's undergoing treatment
on the Enterprise right now. She insisted on it "

  Ethan waved a dismissive hand. "I know all
about your treatment. That's not going to give her
the life she wants. It's just a way of making her
continue to live a lie her mother's lie. Plus, I
don't think your treatment's going to work. I just
hope and pray it doesn't kill her."

  That McCoy took as an insult. "Since when are
you a doctor, kid?"

"I'm not. But I'm Empyrean."

  McCoy rolled his eyes. He was getting damned
tired of that superior local attitude and fervently
wished for a divine dose of comeuppance for the
whole damned colony. In a softer corner of his
heart, he also hoped Ethan would live long
enough to learn his lesson and to put it to good
use after all this was over.

  "It's not just me," Ethan went on. "There's a
whole movement growing here, a lot of young
people who aren't going to stand for another
generation of this isolation. We've got something
to prove to the galaxy and just as much to offer."

  "I thought you had plans for changing things
peacefully by growing into leadership."

  "We did, but some of us don't think that's going
to work. And I'm tired of waiting. We've made
other plans." He gestured toward the unmarked
supply boxes. "Those crates contain weapons."

  "You're gonna start a civil war?" McCoy's
eyebrows arched in surprise.

  "Sometimes violence is the only way to bring
change.

"That's not the Empyrean way."

"It wasn't, but maybe it should be."

                 185
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "Back on Earth, humanity's been spending the
last three hundred years trying to do away with
that attitude," McCoy said with a derisive snort of
disapproval. "If you're that anxious to throw away
all that progress, then you Empyreans aren't as
genetically perfected as you think."

  Ethan spooned some stew into his mouth,
chewing thoughtfully. "Well, resorting to violence
was a choice I was never happy about. Now I've
got another one."

  "So, instead of a shooting revolution, you think
I'm your ticket to political asylum."

"That's right."

  "That's wrong It'll never happen, Ethan. And the
longer you hold me here, the worse it's going to
be for you when they find us."

Ethan remained unfazed. "We'll see, Doctor."

  "Why are you doing this?" McCoy asked again,
extra intensity in his lowered voice, his eyes
narrowed.

"I told you."

  "Bull. This isn't about politics or asylum or even
getting off this planet. That's not what's driving
you."

"Okay. Then you tell me, Dr. McCoy. What is?"

"Love," McCoy said flatly.

  The flicker in Ethan's gaze was minute. Had
McCoy not been looking for it, it would have
passed unnoticed.

  "You love Anna," he continued, "and you think
this is the only way to save her."

Ethan looked away for the first time.

  Ha! McCoy thought as a triumphant grin lit his
face. Now I'm getting somewhere! "I knew it."

  Ethan yanked a weapon out of a holster hidden
under his jacket. Not a modern energy-pulse
weapon, but his old-style revolver, dead-aimed at
a point between McCoy's eyes. "If I were you,
Doctor, I don't think I'd be laughing."

But McCoy didn't Dinch. "I'm not laughing at
you,

                 186
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

son. Well, maybe I am, but not only at you. I'm
laughing at you, me, and every other male ever
driven to acts of temporary insanity by love."

  Finally sensing some doubt in this kid, McCoy
decided to raise the stakes in their verbal joust.
Perhaps not the wisest course of action,
considering the gun in Ethan's hand, but a risk
he'd already decided he'd have to confront sooner
or later. "Y'know, hostage taking only works if
you're ready to go the distance."

  "And kill you?" Ethan said with chilling
composure and no hesitation at all.

  "That's right," McCoy said, determined to main-
tain his own studied casualness. "Are you willing
to do that?"

  Ethan's return gaze was solid ice. "I know the
answer, Doctor. For your sake, let's hope you
don't have to find out."

                 187
                  
          Chapter Nineteen

RAMON ORTEGA stepped out of his steaming
shower and towered himself off, watching his
reflection in the fogged mirror. Was it boastful to
see his own image and fancy himself a Greek god
stepping out of the mists of time? He chuckled to
himself; perhaps that was a bit much.

  By any human standards, he did have an ideal
physique: proportions perfect, limbs lithe and
sculpted, muscles taut and rippling, though
without any bulging excesses. His face was
handsome and flawless, yet with dimples that lent
a boyish quality to his smile.

  The simple truth was, these physical
characteristics were nothing special here on his
world, not compared to the rest of the Empyrean
population. They were just him He'd never really
given his looks much thought, nor his intellect,
not until these Outsiders intruded, with all their
comparisons and raw sensitivi

                 188
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

ties and chips on their shoulders, especially this
Scott fellow.

"Ray, are you out of the shower?"

 It was his wife's melodious voice calling from
the hallway.

"Yes, Kat," he said.

 The door opened and she came barefoot into
the bathroom, greeting him with a light kiss on
the lips. Beneath her fluffy robe, Katrina was as
physically perfect as he was, as brilliant a
neurosurgeon as he was a physicist and engineer.
In other words, well within the norm for Empyrea.
He wondered what the Federation people would
think of her. Would they dislike her as much as
they seemed to dislike him just because of who
and what he was? He sighed. Probably.

"You're going to be late," she said.

"I'm never late."

"You're working with the Outsiders again today?"

 He nodded and wrapped the towel around his
waist. "If nothing else goes wrong, this should be
the last day."

"Finally shutting down the reactor core?"

He answered with a distracted nod.

 "Good," Katrina said. "When all this is over
with, maybe you'll sleep better than you did last
night."

Ortega winced. "I didn't keep you up, did I?"

  "You know me. I can sleep through anything.
But I was aware that you seemed to be tossing
and turning an awful lot."

"That pretty much describes last night. Sorry, Kat."

  "You were still rehashing that equipment failure,
were you?"

He nodded sheepishly.

"Ray, that wasn't your fault."

  "I know. But it wasn't their fault either, and
there I was blaming them. Blaming Federation
workmanship . . ." His voice trailed off and he
shook his head, 189

          Howard Weinstein

the recollection bringing a fresh blush to his
cheeks. "It was very embarrassing finding out
we're behind the times on something we thought
we were so good at. I was mortified, and I doubt
I endeared myself to those two starship officers+"

"You don't talk much about them."

"What's to talk about?" he shrugged.

"Do you like them?"

 "That's a strange question, Kat. I don't have to
like them."

"Do they like you?"

"I don't think so."

  "Hmmm. I like you." She hugged him from
behind as he stood before the mirror and brushed
his thick, dark hair. "Why wouldn't they?"

  "I honestly don't know. But they seem to have
their reasons. They're very insecure. It's as if they
constantly have to prove themselves or prove that
Empyreans aren't superior to random-gene
humans."

  "But they're not Empyrean; that's not their fault
either."

"I know that, but they don't seem to."

  She slipped out of her pink robe, hung it on a
hook, and stepped into the shower chamber. She
turned on the hot water and adjusted the nozzle
to deliver a mist spray. "I wonder why they have
so much trouble accepting themselves for what
they are, the way we accept ourselves?"

  "I don't know, Kat. Maybe it's easier to accept
yourself when you don't have quite so many flaws
to overlook."

  "I wonder how I'd react if the situation were
reversed, if I were an Outsider who came here
and had to be compared to us?"

"Probably the same way they're reacting."

"Defensively?"

"Yeah."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  She turned the water pressure up and began
humming. As Ramon listened, he tried something
he'd never done before in his life: seeing himself
as an Outsider would see him. It was a difficult
perspective to imagine, as difficult as it was to
imagine that an Empyrean could have done such
cleverly malicious damage to the observatory's
power systems. He'd been sworn to secrecy while
the investigation went on, so he couldn't tell
Katrina how much that unsettling possibility had
contributed to his sleepless night.

  Confusion was not an emotion Ramon Ortega
had encountered often in his life. Yet, here he
was, pondering: If Clements's investigators did
find a colonist responsible for the troubles with
the observatory's computers, then his faith in
Empyrean technology would at least be somewhat
restored, but his faith in the integrity of his people
would be shaken badly. If, on the other hand, the
suspicions of sabotage were ruled groundless, then
Ortega would have to swallow the painful concept
of the fallibility of Empyrean technological
know-how.

  Either way, Empyrea would be disgraced. In all
honesty, he did not know which outcome would be
worse.

  Jim Kirk swiveled his seat to face the bridge
science station. "Mr. Chekov?"

  The Russian looked up slowly, as if he'd rather
avoid meeting the captain's gaze directly. He knew
what Kirk was going to ask. "Sorry, sir. Still
nothing on Dr. McCoy."

  Kirk's mouth tightened into a frustrated line.
"Can we increase sensor power and still sneak past
Empyrean scanners?"

  Chekov sighed. "There is no vay to be certain,
sir. Ve do not know the exact capabilities of the
Empyrean scanner system. Ve can only estimate.
If ve go beyond

                 191
                  
          Howard Weinstein

the power levels ve are already at, ve vill risk
losing our margin of error "

  "McCoy may not have a margin of error," Kirk
said with quiet intensity. "I think it's time we took
that risk, the Empyreans be damned."

  At the communications console, Uhura turned
abruptly toward Kirk. "Captain, we're being hailed
from the planet."

  Sulu brightened. "Maybe the Empyreans have
found Dr. McCoy."

  "The signal is not on any official channel,"
Uhura said.

Kirk nodded. "Then let's find out who it is."

  "Enterprise, come in please," said a young man's
swaggering voice from the bridge speakers.

  Kirk stood in the center of the bridge. "This is
the Enterprise. Identify yourself."

"I'll speak only to Captain Kirk."

"You are speaking to Captain Kirk,"

"This is the Empyrean Liberation Front."

  With a skeptical hitch of one eyebrow, Kirk
glanced around at his bridge officers, who seemed
equally mystified. He noted that Uhura was
already working quickly on her analysis of the
incoming signal. "What the devil is the Empyrean
Liberation Front?"

  "You don't need to know anything about us,
Captain. All you need to know is that we have
your Dr. McCoy."

"If you expect me to simply . . . believe you "

  Ethan sat at the communications nook in his
cavern hideaway, pointing an Empyrean stun gun
at McCoy's chest as he sat five feet away. They
both listened to Kirk's voice, each interpreting in
his own way.

  " you're going to be disappointed. If you've got
McCoy, let me talk to him."

"We can accommodate that request. Stand by, 192

           THE BETTER MAN

Captain." Ethan cut off the channel and looked
seriously at McCoy. "You can tell him you're
okay. If you try to tell him anything about your
location or me, I'll stun you."

  McCoy shrugged. "I never argue with a loaded
weapon, well almost never."

  "Then we understand each other." Ethan opened
the channel again. "Here he is, Captain. Go
ahead, Doctor."

"Jim "

"Bones?''

"Yeah. He told me to tell you I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"Give or take.''

  "Where are you? What's this Empyrean
Liberation Front?"

  Finger on the trigger, Ethan tipped his weapon
toward McCoy's chest.

  "Utah, I'm afraid those questions are off-limits,
Jim."

  "Shut up, Doctor," Ethan ordered. "Now,
Captain, listen closely "

  "No, you listen," said Kirk sharply. "Starfieet
does not bargain for hostages. You release Dr.
McCoy immediately, then we'll talk."

  "Don't insult our intelligence, Captain. If I
release Dr. McCoy, you won't give me the time of
day."

  "If you don't release him," Kirk countered, "we'll
find you and 'liberate' him ourselves with conse-
quences you're not going to like."

  "Save your threats, Captain. We've taken ample
and effective measures to make sure you can't
find us. I'm sure you've been trying, and I'm sure
you've had no success."

  Chekov's head snapped up from the science
console, anger flashing in his eyes. Kirk
suppressed a

                 193
                  
          Howard Weinstein

smile. We don't like our intelligence insulted, either.
If there was a way to get to this arrogant SOB, his
crew would find it.

  "Confident, aren't you," Kirk said casually. "All
right, just for argument's sake, what do you want in
exchange for McCoy?"

  The answer was instantaneous and not at all what
Kirk had expected. "Political asylum aboard your
ship and safe transport away from Nova Empyrea
for any Empyrean citizens who want to leave."

  "That's impossible. We're not in the business of
violating local laws."

  "Take our proposal to President March, Captain.
You may find that laws can be changed."

"Call us when you're ready to surrender. Kirk out."

"I hate to say I told you so," McCoy said. "But I

  A distracted frown furrowed Ethan's forehead. "I
didn't expect immediate compliance, Doctor. But I
can tell you this: There are some very frustrated
officers on the Enterprise bridge right now."

"What makes you so sure?"

  "Because I know that their sensors can't get
through this rock with any accuracy, and I know
how effectively my signal source was disguised."

  "Maybe so," McCoy said without a shred of dis-
tress. "But you don t know Commander Uhura and
Commander Chekov. Our people may not be
genetically enhanced, but we've got experience you
can't even imagine. They don't give up on problems
until they solve 'em."

  Kirk stared at Uhura. "Commander, you've got to
have a clue at least."

  "Sorry, Captain." She shook her head. "That
signal was so scrambled, it could have come from
anywhere on the planet."

                 194
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  "If it was scrambled, then there's got to be a way
to unscramble it."

"I agree, sir. But it's going to take some time."

  "Then you and Mr. Chekov had better get
started. I want a full analysis of that signal. And
the next time this Empyrean Liberation Front
contacts us, we better. be ready to track them
down."

  Ortega made it to the science complex a few
minutes early and was waiting in the lobby when
Scott and Spock transported down from the
Enterprise. In the control center, he observed as
they went through the computer simulation of the
shutdown routine one more time. They didn't ask
for his participation, and he didn't volunteer, all of
which seemed to suit both sides. His role would be
supervisory.

  They had apparently taken to heart Ortega's
initial policy pronouncement that this was a
Federation installation, so Federation personnel
were to be responsible for its maintenance, repair,
and removal. The discovery that it was an
Empyrean-built system that had broken down
hadn't changed anything. In fact, Ortega believed
Mr. Scott to be revering in the role of sailor,
rescuing the Empyreans from their own misguided
conceit.

  I think if I tried to help, Ortega thought, Scott
would tackle me and sit on me to keep me out of it.

  As for Spock, well, he was another matter. Once
Ortega had met the Enterprise science officer, he
thought it would be useful to learn all he could
about Vulcans. After all, no one on Nova
Empyrea had ever met a Vulcan face-to-face.
First, he'd found and reviewed all the information
on Vulcans in Empyrean data banks. When he was
done with that, he'd then requested and been
given updated files from the Enterprise library
computer.

  The genetic superiority of Empyreans over
Earth humans seemed of no consequence to
Commander

                 195
                  
          Howard Weinstein

Spock. Nor did Ortega's initial negative appraisal
of Spock's mixed lineage. Ortega respected
Spock's apparently imperturbable nature, not to
mention his ability to focus on the task at hand
without the prickly emotionalism Scott insisted on
displaying from time to time.

  To Ortega, the excitable engineer's
behavioroften bore significant resemblance to birds
and animals that puffed up their feathers and fur
in order to frighten off would-be rivals for territory
and mates. All in all, rather primitive and
pointless, because Scott was neither bird nor beast,
and he and Ortega were most certainly not rivals.

  This morning, Scott seemed mercifully disinter-
ested in such displays of purported dominance.
Ortega took that as an indication that the
Enterprise engineer was as anxious to get this job
over with as Ortega himself was to see the two
Starfleet officers back on their ship for good.

  Still, for all their flaws, there was much Ortega
found admirable about them. Spock possessed a
keen intellect coupled with a breadth of knowledge
that Ortega had to admit was as impressive as that
of many Empyreans. And Scott, for all his
volatility, was plainly gifted as an engineer, with as
sure a touch and as much instinctive analytical
skill as Ortega had ever seen.

  "Well, that's it, Mr. Spock," Scott said,
"everything reads normal. We're ready to start
shutdown procedures."

  "Very well, Mr. Scott. You may do so at your
discretion."

  "Initiating now, sir. Let's hope whoever's been
toyin' with us isn't lullin' us into a false sense o'
security "

  Without warning, Scott's sentence was cut short
by the flashing red lights and piercing siren of the
emer

                 196
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

gency alert system. The engineer swore under his
breath. "What in the name o' "

  Spock had immediately slipped into the seat
before an adjacent monitor station. Ortega stood
just behind them, eyes darting from one monitor
screen to another.

  "Hmm," said Spock, scanning the data readouts
faster than the human eye could follow. "The
phase converters are no longer responding to
input commands."

  "Switching over t' manual override," Scott said
tersely, keying the backup systems. He waited a
moment for a response.

  "Manual overrides inoperative," the computer
announced in a stilted voice, its metallic lack of
concern at odds with the situation.

  Scott flashed a concerned glance over at Spock,
"Sir, we've got to reestablish some kind o' control
over those converters."

  "Agreed. If we do not, the transfer coils will
overload."

  Scott felt a presence over his shoulder but
didn't need to turn. "Stop hoverin' back there,
laddie In case y' hadn't noticed, we could use a
wee bit o' help here."

  Instantly, Ortega swung a leg over the back of
the empty chair between the two starship officers
and sat at the newly activated terminal.

                 197
                  
           Chapter Twenty

Captain's log, supplemental.

 Awaiting word from Mr. Scott and Mr. Spock
on the shutdown of the observatory's
troublesome reactor core. We have had no
further communication with the mysterious
Empyrean Liberation Front. We still do not know
if they will agree to release Dr. McCoy, and we
have as yet been unable to locate the source of
their original signal.

"CA~rA~N, I'M SORRY." President March sat
at her office desk, looking bewildered. Clements,
her chief investigator, stood beside her, watching
the grim faces of Kirk and Ambassador Rousseau
on March's communications viewer. "We've never
heard of any Empyrean Liberation Front.
Clements, do you know anything about any
subversive group that might be responsible for
this?"

"Not as such," he said blandly.

From the-Enterprise command chair, Kirk tried to

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           THE BETTER MAN

read Clements's lack of expression. "Not as such?"
he repeated. "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "There's been no history of clandestine political
opposition in all the time this colony has existed."

  "There is a first time for everything," Chekov
muttered from Spock's science console, not loudly
enough to be heard off the bridge.

  Kirk cast a brief, sympathetic glance toward his
Russian security chief, then turned his attention
back to the image of the Empyreans on the main
viewscreen. "That doesn't sound like an
unconditional denial to me, Mr. Clements."

  "I can categorically state that we were unaware
of any dissident group calling itself the Empyrean
Liberation Front prior to your telling us about it,
Captain Kirk."

  Kirk nodded, mulling the Empyrean
investigator's extremely careful choice of words. "I
see. Now that you are aware of it, what do you
intend to do about it?"

  "We'll do what we would in response to any
threat, internal or external: investigate. And if we
can confirm its existence, formulate a strategy for
dealing with it."

  "That's all we can do, Captain," Elizabeth March
added. "We're well aware that Earth has a long
history of this sort of thing. But if you knew us
well, you would understand how out of character
it would be for Empyreans to form this sort of
underground group no matter what their beliefs
or disagreements with government policies."

  "That's true, Captain," Rousseau interjected.
"They may be less than enthusiastic about
welcoming Outsiders, but they've always made
room among themselves for open discussion of
dissenting opinions. Or at least, they used to."

  "Maybe some Empyreans decided discussion
wasn't enough," Kirk said. "If their opinions
weren't

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          Howard Weinstein

affecting policy, they may have decided that more
radical action was their only choice."

  "Captain," March said, "you keep referring to
this liberation front as a group."

"What else would it be?"

"It could be one unhappy individual," she said.

  Kirk's eyebrows arched in disbelief. "A one-man
wrecking crew?"

  "Captain Kirk," said Clements, "there's nothing
this 'liberation front' has claimed to have done
that could not have been done by one Empyrean."

  "Then a whole government of Empyreans should
have no trouble tracking him down," Kirk said.
Though Clements's expression remained neutral,
there was a brief flare of irritation in his eyes.
Kirk noted it with pleasure: Good. That barb hit a
nerve.

  "Elizabeth," Clements said stiffly, "there are
several leads I should pursue immediately."

"Go ahead."

  With a curt nod toward Kirk and Rousseau,
Clements headed for the door.

  "Well, then," Kirk said to March, "I'd appreciate
regular progress reports. And we will of course let
you know if we hear from them or him again.
If that's all "

  "Utah, Captain," Elizabeth said, lowering her
voice, "if I could have a moment."

  Clements paused imperceptibly in the doorway,
then continued on as the door slid shut behind
him.

  Even though she knew she was alone in the
office, March waited a cautious extra few seconds
before speaking in a confidential tone. "How is
Anna?"

  "There's been no change in her condition, Presi-
dent March. No problems as far as I know."

  The tension in her posture relaxed ever so
slightly. "Thank you." Then she sighed. "I'd still
feel a lot better about this if Leonard was there. I
never should have had him and Mark come down
here."

200

           THE BETTER MAN

  "Elizabeth," Rousseau said, "you're not to blame
for what happened. You said it yourself: There's
been no history of any kind of terrorism on
Empyrea. There was no reason for any of us to
think it would start now."

  "Maybe there was a reason, and I just didn't see
it. Maybe I've become so out of touch with my
own people . . ."

  "Even the best leader can't know everything, "
said Rousseau.

  But she barely heard him. "Maybe popular
sentiment about this treaty renewal is a lot more
explosive than I thought. What if just by letting
you make your proposal, I set off the trigger?"

  "You didn't. But even if you did, it's not over
yet. And one crazy Empyrean or a whole gang of
them  well, they're not going to win without a
fight."

  "A fight? Mark, I don't even know which side
I'm on anymore."

  Rousseau stepped in front of Kirk, dominating
the image on Elizabeth's viewer. "Then I'll tell
you. You're fighting for your daughter's life and
for fairness and for justice. And that's all anyone
can do."

Elizabeth shook her head. "What about Leonard?"

  Rousseau managed a smile. "Whoever's got him,
I'm sure McCoy's doing some fighting of his
own in his own way."

  "There is no Empyrean Liberation Front, is
there?" McCoy sipped the last of a mug of tasty
broth, then glared at Ethan over the cup's rim.
"Other than you, I mean."

  "Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean
it's not there," Ethan said with forced bravado.

"How'd you like to bet on that?"

  Ethan's brow furrowed as his resolve seemed to
weaken. "What makes you so sure?"

"Well, the name, for one thing."

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          Howard Weinstein

 "The name?" Now the young man seemed down-
r~ght insulted. "What's wrong with the name?"

"Empyrean Liberation Front?"

  "So? There've been lots of freedom fighters in
Earth history who've used 'liberation front' in the
names of their group.

``so~p',er~od-L-period-F-period?~'

  "You still don't get it." This wasn't the first time
McCoy had seen someone so bright overlook
something so obvious. And he knew it wouldn't be
the last if he got out of this situation alive.

"Get what?"

"The acronym ELF spells elf?"

  Ethan stared, then blinked, then the corners of
his mouth curled into a small, involuntary smile.
"Oh."

"Not as imposing as you might've wanted, hmm?"

"No. I guess not."

  "So, did you just make it up on the spot when
you called the Enterprise?"

  "Kind of. I guess I've been concentrating on the
details of the overall plan. That was one detail I
forgot about."

  "Are you sure that's the only one, son?" McCoy
asked kindly, hoping to take advantage of this mo-
ment of unexpected humor. The effort backfired.

  "As a matter of fact, I am, Doctor," Ethan said,
the brass returning to his voice. "Just because we
don't have a proper political name doesn't mean
there's no group behind all this. These weapons,
this base, this isn't my personal fantasy."

  "I didn't mean that it was," McCoy said, trying
to placate Ethan. Too late. "I'm just wondering if
you've gone off on your own crusade."

  "There's a lot of discontent on the planet. You
and anyone else who underestimates that are
going to pay a heavy price."

McCoy shook his head, marveling at Ethan.
"When

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this first started, I thought you had to have some
doubts about what you're doing."

"And now?"

  "Now I'm not so sure about that," McCoy said,
chuckling.

"What's so funny?"

  "I was just thinking about how much easier life
is when you're young."

  Ethan gave him a look of severe reproach.
"There's nothing easy about being young, Doctor.
If you think there is, then you've got a lousy
memory."

  "No, I don't, son. Now, you don't have to tell
me if this fits you, but when I was young, I knew
all the answers. Or, at least, I knew the answers
were Iying around, waiting to be found if I looked
hard enough for 'em. Then, the older I got, the
fewer answers and the more questions I had.
Eventually, you've got all questions and no
answers. And that's what's easy about being
young."

  Elizabeth March gasped as she turned and saw
Clements standing unexpectedly in her office
doorway. "Clements! I thought you were going
to "

  " pursue leads," he said, completing her
sentence. "I did." He held up a small
scanner-recorder and keyed its playback mode. He
listened dispassionately, watching her face.

  Elizabeth's eyes widened in surprise as she
heard her own voice, the whole conversation she'd
just had with Captain Kirk and Ambassador
Rousseau, the conversation she'd believed to be
private. When it was over, her surprise darkened
into anger. "How dare you eavesdrop on my
personal communications!"

  "I had suspicions. It was my job to check them
out."

  "Suspicions! You violated the sanctity of the
office of the president "

                 203
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  " and the president has apparently violated
Empyrean law."

  " What law?" she challenged, a challenge that
knocked him off balance at least for a moment.

  "I'm not sure yet," he said with careful
emphasis. "But I do intend to find out. It appears
Anna is undergoing some kind of medical
treatment aboard the Enterprise. You could tell me
about it "

"There's nothing to tell."

  " or I could conduct a much wider, much more
public investigation."

  "Since when is it your job to undermine the
presidency?"

  Clements slipped the recording device into his
pocket. "I could ask you the same thing."

  "Clements, it's not like you to do something like
this on your own initiative."

  "You're rights Elizabeth. It's not. I was
approached by other leaders who are dead set
against this treaty renewal "

  "And I'm sure they told you to ruin me, no
matter what it took."

  He shook his head. "No. Just to investigate your
apparent favor toward the Federation. And I must
admit, I haven't come up with much to explain
your policy. There's a clear majority against any
further involvement with these Outsiders. But you
seem intent on resisting that majority."

  "Majorities can be wrong, Clements'" she said
dryly, regaining a measure of sound footing. "My
only intent is to see that opposition opinions get
a fair review. As for you, resorting to spying on
me, I thought you were more clever than that."

  "So did I," he said with a hint of a smile. "And
I wouldn't call it spying. That has such. . . negative
connotations. Consider it justifiable surveillance."

Her anger Bared again. "Justifiable? To whom?"

"To other members of the government. I don't
work

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           THE BETTER MAN

for you personally. I work for the executive
branch. And right now, you'd have a hard time
finding a lot of allies in your own cabinet."

  "I'm not the first president to believe in an
unpopular policy, and I won't be the last."

  "That's true. But so is this: When I find out
what's really going on and I will you may not
be president much longer."

  Her jaw muscles grew taut. "Go ahead.
Investigate all you like. But don't expect any
cooperation from me. And don't be surprised
when I try to have you removed from your post."

  Clements's lips stretched into a tight, cold smile.
"I was beginning to wonder if you had any fight
left in you, Elizabeth."

"I do."

  With a respectful nod, he left her of lice. She
slipped back into her desk chair. And then she
started to tremble.

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         Chapter Twenty-one

IN HIS Enterprise command chair, Captain Kirk
sat at the virtual heart of ship and crew. Despite
the activity and the familiar blend of bridge
sounds around him, he found himself mesmerised
by the viewscreen image of the planet continuing
its deceptively tranquil rotation.

  For most of the millennia that humans and
other intelligent beings had been observing the
cosmos, planetary and stellar motions had been
accepted as models of stability. So regular, so
imperturbable the foundations of calendars and
cultures wherever sentient life evolved.

  Such immutability had given primitive people
something to believe in as they wrestled with the
mysteries of a universe beyond their
comprehension as well as the more commonplace
dangers inherent in the daily struggle for survival.
No matter what animals had tried to eat them
that day, what hostile tribes

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           THE BETTER MAN

had attacked, no matter how much or how little
food they'd found or harvested, the sun, moon,
and stars maintained their cycles. The
constellations came and went with nights, days,
and seasons. Something to believe in.

 Over time, of course, modern science had devel-
oped. Questions were asked, theories arose, and
instruments were invented to test new ideas. Bit
by bit, examined from new and ever-broadening
perspectives, those universal constants had been
revealed instead as pieces of some great, roiling
celestial kaleidoscope. Anything but constant.

In truth, the only real constant was change.

  So much for cosmic stability, Kirk thought. As he
worried about Spock and Scotty at the science
outpost, McCoy held hostage, and Anna March
down in sickbay, he couldn't help wondering how
much easier it must have been to deal with the
earthly trials of life when people still believed in
that clockwork universe and its protective, secure
structure.

  "Captain," Uhura said, interrupting his musing,
"the Empyrean Liberation Front is signaling us."

  Kirk snapped upright in his seat and glanced to-
ward Chekov at the science console.

  "This time, ve will locate them, Keptin," Chekov
said with steely determination.

  "I'll keep them talking as long as I can. Uhura,
open the channel."

  "Captain Kirk," Ethan's voice said from the
speakers, "this is the Empyrean Liberation Front.
We've been monitoring your communications with
the Empyrean government."

"Oh?"

  "Surprised, Captain? You shouldn't be. I told
you we were a force to be reckoned with. We're
aware that you've been discussing us with them.
And we can assure you, the government has no
better chance of 207

          Howard Weinstein

finding us than you do. So, if you're on them to
retrieve Dr. McCoy for you, you're going to be
disappointed."

"If you made this call just so you can gloat "

 "We're not gloating, Captain. Just advising. And
reminding you that we've got a guest you would
like returned."

"A 'guest'?"

  "We think it's a less provocative word than
hostage, less menacing. We want to be absolutely
clear about this: It's not our intention to hurt Dr.
McCoy or anyone else."

"How comforting. Then let him go."

  "We'd be happy to as soon as you and the
Empyrean government agree to our demands,
which are really not excessive at all."

  "Excess is in the eye of the beholder," Kirk said
flatly. "Let me be absolutely clear: Any demands,
no matter how innocuous, are excessive as long as
you're holding a Starfleet officer against his will."

  "We're sorry you feel that way, Captain Kirk.
We hope you'll change your mind. Time is on our
side. Liberation Front out."

  Kirk glanced at Uhura, who signaled that the
channel had indeed been cut off from the
Empyrean end. Then he rose from his chair and
moved to the railing near the science station.
"Well, Mr. Chekov? Was he on long enough to get
a fix?"

  "Still analysing, sir." Chekov's hand skipped
across his keypad, adding to and sifting the data
reports scrolling across his monitor screen. Then
the screen wiped itself blank, replacing the
numbers with a grid. As Chekov watched his
handiwork with satisfaction, a three-dimensional
depiction of the Empyrean globe appeared,
rotating to the west. The computer rapidly
selected a grid square, tinted it green, and
enlarged it. Kirk looked on with deepening
interest as locator circles appeared, then blinked
as the computer homed 208

           THE BETTER MAN

in on a desolate section of mountains halfway
across the continent from the colony's capital.

 Chekov turned with a clenched fist and a tight
smile. "Got him, Keptin."

"The source of the communications signal?"

"Aye, sir."

"Are you sure?"

 "Ninety-seven percent certainty. Initiating
focused sensor scan of that location now." Then,
as Chekov studied the scanners' findings, he began
to frown. "Damn."

"What is it?"

  "Ve have located them, but ve cannot beam Dr.
McCoy out or beam a rescue party in."

  "Why not?" Kirk stepped up through the gap in
the railing and leaned over Chekov's shoulder for
a closer look.

  "They are two to three hundred meters below
the planet surface. A network of caverns. The
combination of mineral deposits vould disrupt
transporter integrity. Ve could not guarantee safe
beam up."

  Kirk made a sour face. "Then we'll just have to
beam a rescue team down to the planet surface
and go in there and get him."

  "Sir," Chekov said, "there is something to be
said for stealth."

"Is that an option, Commander?"

  "Aye, sir. There may be a vay to reconfigure our
transporter to punch through the geological
interference."

"How?"

  "Boosting power to the phase transition coils,
tightening the resolution of the main imaging
scanners "

  Kirk's eyes narrowed. "You can do that without
Scotty?"

  "Keptin," Chekov said, looking mildly insulted,
"I have learned a few things from him."

"All right, Mr. Chekov. See what you can do," Kirk
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          Howard Weinstein

said with a wry half smile. Then the smile faded.
"But just in case, get a heavily armed rescue party
of twenty ready to beam down and go in their
front door."

  "Aye, sir," Chekov said as he leapt up from his
seat and rushed into the turbolift.

  Ramon Ortega slammed his open hand down
on the console. "Dammit!"

  The noise drew the immediate attention of both
Scott and Spock still working feverishly at their
own terminals in the observatory's main control
center.

  Scott came over as Ortega slumped back in his
chair. "What is it, laddie?"

  Ortega made a defeated gesture toward his
monitor screen, displaying large yellow letters:
REMOTE OPERATIONS CONTROL SYS
rEMS DISENGAGED. Scott stared in disbelief.
"Mr. Spock, y' better come over here," he said in
a voice hollowed by horror.

  But Spock was already there. "Fascinating," he
murmured.

  Scotty spun toward him. "Sir, it's not
fascinatin'  it's a disaster! The control-logic
circuits've failed  these consoles're useless!
Without 'em, we've got no way I' access all those
malfunctioning systems inside the containment
module."

  "Indirectly, no, we do not," Spock said, his
accustomed Vulcan detachment unshaken.

  Scott couldn't believe what he thought he was
hearing. "Are y' daft, man? Nobody c'n go in
there! The plasma conduits're down. The pulse
injectors've got to be fused open by now!"

  "Commander Spock," said Ortega, "the radiation
levels inside the containment module would be
lethal in a very short time."

"I do not plan a lengthy sojourn."

  "Sir," Scott said with an emphatic shake of his
head, "you canna go in there."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "With protective equipment available from the
Enterprise, some limited exposure is possible and
survivable." He glanced from Ortega to Scott.
They were both looking at him like his
control-logic circuits had malfunctioned. He spoke
quickly and precisely. "Gentlemen, we have little
choice. We are facing a situation involving
random yet sequential system sabotage. For all we
know, the person or persons responsible for this
have also disabled the containment field "

  Ortega was a step ahead. "If that containment
field disintegrates, this radiation could kill
thousands of Empyreans."

  "That is why the time for debate is past. Unless
either of you has a more efficacious solution to
this problem "

"We've got to contact the captain," Scotty insisted.

  "Agreed," Spock said as they moved to the
communications console. "But quickly, Mr. Scott."

  When he heard Spock's compressed briefing,
Kirk found the situation and the science officer's
conclusion equally bleak.

  "Scatty?" He hoped his chief engineer would
offer a second opinion he liked better. But none
was forthcoming.

  "I'm afraid Mr. Spock is right, sir. There's no
other way."

  "Let me get this straight," Kirk said, eyes wide
with skepticism. "Systems are going down like
dominoes "

  "And in no particular order," Scott reminded
him.

  " and there's enough radiation collected inside
that containment structure to wipe out half the
capital if it escapes, and somebody's got to go in
there?"

"Aye, sir," Scott said with a solemn nod. "And
even

                 211
                  
          Howard Weinstein

our best radiation suit's only gain' I' provide
shortterm protection."

  "How short-term?" The more he heard, the
more disenchanted Kirk became about a situation
for which he'd had little enthusiasm to start with.

  "We canna be sure, sir. With the remote systems
down, we don't know exactly what's gain' on in
there."

"And how long will this damage control take?"

"Also unknown at this time, Captain," Spock said.

  "We won't know that either until we get in
there," Scott added.

  "We?" Kirk frowned. "Does that mean two of
you have to go in there together?"

  "No, sir," Scott said. "One of us should be able
I' handle the job. And I'm volunteering."

  That drew a sharp look from Spock. "Captain,
with all due respect to Mr. Scott's superior
instinctive abilities as an engineer, I as a Vulcan
will be better able to tolerate exposure to
radiation levels of this intensity."

  "Captain, the haggle is already in the fire, and
Mr. Spock'll be, too," Scott protested. "The ship's
first officer canna "

  "Mr. Scott, colorful metaphors notwithstanding,"
Spock said, cutting him off, "there is a more
compelling justification for me to be the one who
works inside the contaiment core. Should my
attempt be unsuccessful, your greater knowledge
of such systems and your gift for engineering
improvisation render you less initially expendable."

  "He's right, Scotty. If he gets cooked in there,
you're the best man to come up with a last-second
alternative."

"Last second is right," Scott said grimly.

"I assume you've already got a plan?"

"We do, sir," Spock said.

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "And you'll be beamed out and directly into
decontamination when you're done?"

  "That may not be possible, Captain. The
radiation may interfere with the transporter's
molecular reintegration "

  "Nothin' I canna compensate for, sir," Scott cut
in with a glare of admonishment at Spock. "When
he's done, I'll get him out o' there. I've got a
couple of ideas to make sure o' that."

  Kirk's lips thinned into a concerned line, and he
exhaled slowly. He hated putting Spock or any
other officer at risk for a mess caused by a
combination of the Empyreans' own overweening
conceit and some as-yet-unknown saboteur.

  "Captain," Spock prodded, "we must proceed ex-
peditiously."

  "All right. Get what you need from the ship.
And contact me before you go in there, Spock.
That's an order."

"Dr. Chapel!"

  The voice of Lieutenant Liftig, the male nurse
attending Anna March, boomed from the adjacent
ward into McCoy's office. Christine Chapel's head
jerked upright, and she realized she'd dozed off at
the desk while she'd been studying Anna's charts.

How long had she been out? She had no idea.

  Ever since McCoy's disappearance, Chapel had
been virtually living in sickbay, staying awake
around the clock as best she could to monitor
Anna's condition, getting by on naps in a spare
diagnostic bed. If anything happened to Anna in
McCoy's absence, Chapel knew she would never
be able to forgive herself, even if McCoy could.

  She rushed into the wardroom and knew even
before she saw the diagnostic monitor over the
bed that something had gone terribly wrong. Liftig
hov

                 213
                  
          Howard Weinstein

ered over the thoracic life-support apparatus
covering Anna.

  "Renal failure," he mumbled, brushing a lock of
dark hair off his forehead. "Compensating."

  "Oh, my God," Chapel whispered. "Organ
dysfunction is the first sign the treatment's going
wrong."

"What should we do, Doctor?"

  "Run a renal diagnostic, assess damage, make
sure there's no other possible cause."

  Liftig nodded and reached for the diagnostic
tricorder. "Right away."

  Chapel felt a cold sweat breaking. Beyond the
battery of tests, she didn't know what to do for
Anna. Maybe it wasn't the treatment, maybe
Anna's kidney failure was caused by something
else, maybe the damage was minimal and
reversible.

Maybe it was time for a miracle.

  "A clever adaptation, Mr. Scott," Spock said
with genuine appreciation. He watched the chief
engineer plug a communications module the size
of a deck of cards into an auxiliary input in the
utility pouch of Spock's silver-grey protective suit.
"You say this subspace transceiver has a power
output two hundred forty-seven times that of the
standard communicator?"

"Give or take."

"Will that not overload the location transponder?"

  "I've beefed up the transponder circuits and put
in four redundant backups. Even with that, the
little beastie'll only work for a couple o' hours
before it burns out," said Scott as he turned it on.
"But you're not gain' t' be in there for longer than
that. And while it's workin', it'll act as a homing
beacon that should be able t' cut through the
ambient radiation and keep the transporter locked
onto you."

"Most ingenious."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  Scott's staff had beamed down all the necessary
equipment. As Ramon Ortega watched Spock
prepare for the dangerous work awaiting him
inside the containment structure, he found himself
fighting off the nagging thought that perhaps he
had misjudged these two Federation officers.

  Scott secured Spock's helmet seal, then leaned
over a computer console to confirm that the
sensor telemetry from Spock's protective suit was
registering properly, both here and up on the
orbiting Enterprise. Satisfied that the transmission
link was functional, the engineer gave a nod. "Y're
ready t' go, Mr. Spock."

  "Thank you, Mr. Scott," Spock said, his voice
filtering through the suit's communications gear.

  Scott flipped open his communicator. "Scott t'
Enterprise. "

"Kirk here," came the reply. "Go ahead, Scotty."

  "Captain, we're about t' start the damage
control procedure."

  "All right." Kirk let out a deep breath. "Good
luck. Spock, be careful in there."

"That is always my intention, Captain."

"Kirk out."

  With that, Spock entered the isolation chamber
that provided a safe buffer between the control
room and the containment structure. The bulky
door slid shut behind him, the environmental
insulation seals hissing into place. He stood at the
master panel that manually operated the doors
and safety systems. When it flashed a green light,
he pressed the button that unlocked the inner
door. It opened, and he strode through. The door
slid shut behind him, and Spock was gone.

  While Nurse Liftig continue running diagnostic
tests, Chapel retreated to the office and activated

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          Howard Weinstein

the desktop intercom screen. "Chapel to Captain
Kirk."

  A moment later, Kirk's image appeared on the
viewer. "What is it, Doctor?"

  "I don't suppose we're any closer to finding Dr.
McCoy, sir?"

"We're a little closer. Why?"

"Anna March has just suffered renal failure."

  Kirk stiffened. "Because of that genetic branding
treatment?"

  "I'm not sure yet, Captain. But I think so. And
if it is, then this could be the first in a series of
organ failures."

"Can you do anything for her?"

  Chapel shook her head in frustration. "I don't
know, Captain. I can try but I could also make
things worse. I've reviewed Dr. McCoy's notes.
Nobody's done this before. Even he wasn't sure
about how to treat all the possible complications."

  "He picked a fine time to improvise," Kirk said
with intentional sympathy.

"If there's any way to get Dr. McCoy back "

  " now would be a good time," said Kirk,
finishing their mutual thought. "I know. Do what
you can down there, Christine. So will we. Kirk
out.

  Chapel swallowed past the lump in her throat.
What she could do wasn't much.

  On the bridge, Kirk swiveled toward the
communications station. "Uhura, try to raise this
liberation front."

  Uhura's nod acknowledged the gravity of the
situation. "Aye, sir."

  Then Kirk stood and moved to the railing near
the science console, to which Chekov had
returned to continue his efforts at transporter
reconfiguration. "Getting anywhere, Mr. Chekov?"

The look on Chekov's face made it clear he desper-
216

           THE BETTER MAN

ately wanted to answer in the affirmative, but
he couldn't. He shook his head. "Ve're closer
but still not there, sir."

  "Then we're out of options. Mr. Chekov,
report to the transporter room with your rescue
team. Stand by to beam down on my order."

Chekov stood and nodded. "Aye, sir."

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         Chapter Twenty-two

CooL AND GREEN, the eerie glow of the
emergency illumination deep inside the Sternn
fusion core was at ironic odds with the
ever-more-threatening explosive potential
collecting all around Spock. Radiation levels
continued to rise inside what had become a virtual
runaway reactor.

  With a tricorder in one hand and a magnetic
tool in the other, he stood before a set of access
panels that opened three meters long and two
meters high. The guts of the power plant's
computerised brain and heart lay exposed, a mass
of circuitry and power conduits out of which he
had to make some sense before it was too late.
Some indicator lights blinked ominously, while
others were dark.

  "Whoever perpetrated this sabotage was quite
thorough," he said out loud, knowing he was being
constantly monitored by Scott on the Enterprise
and Ortega in the observatory control center.
They could

                 218
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

listen, even offer advice, but they were otherwise
helpless spectators.

  "Is there any pattern to the malfunctions?"
Ortega asked, hunched in front of his useless
console.

  "None that I am able to discern," said Spock
with all his usual objective detachment. "That,
unfortunately, makes it difficult to anticipate how
the sequence will progress, which in turn reduces
the probability of getting ahead of the failure
curve and interrupting it."

  "Mr. Spock," Scott said from the computer
terminal in the transporter room, "I think I've got
a way to buy y' some extra time."

  Spock glanced at his tricorder, then gingerly in-
serted his magnetic stylus into a subprocessor
node. "I am open to suggestions, Mr. Scott."

  "She's gain' t' blow if we don't vent some o' that
energy buildup, and I think we c'n do it by
diverting some o' the power overload to the
orbital platform and the satellite network."

  "In essence, utilising those pieces of equipment
as safety valves."

"Aye, sir."

  "An intriguing notion," Spock said, "but the
resulting overloads will damage or destroy them as
well."

  "That's probably true," Ortega said, "but explo-
sions of small facilities in high orbit pose much
less danger to the planet than a disaster here at
the reactor core. And if sacrificing the orbital
equipment might give you a better chance to shut
this reactor down, then I'm all for it."

"Me, too," Scott said.

  "Then I concur as well," Spock said. "Let us
hope the appropriate operating system has not yet
failed." He took a moment to scan the innards of
the controlcomputer module, locating the circuitry
he needed. With surgical precision, he wielded his
instrument. "I 219

          Howard Weinstein

am pleased to report that it remains functional. I
am going to activate the emitter arrays . . . now."

  Ortega chewed his lip as he switched his
computer to a channel monitoring the links
between the power core on the ground and the
satellites and orbital station. Both showed sudden
jumps in energy reception. The external sensors
directed at the Sternn core showed a
corresponding drop. "It's working," he said, his
clenched fist happily punching the air. "Emitter
arrays and reception transceivers all functioning
properly."

  "Thank you, gentlemen," Spock said. "I shall en-
deavor to make the best use of the additional time
we have gained."

  There was no need to say it, but all three of
them knew that probably would not amount to
much at all.

  When McCoy heard Jim Kirk's voice over
Ethan's communications system, he had two
simultaneous reactions: elation and foreboding.

  Though he knew he was in no immediate
danger, captivity was not his favorite place to be.
If the Enterprise was calling Ethan rather than
waiting for the "Empyrean Liberation Front" to
make the next move, maybe McCoy's crewmates
were ready to launch a rescue. Maybe Kirk had
finally reached the limits of his patience.

  Or maybe something had gone terribly wrong
with Anna's treatment regimen and they
desperately needed McCoy to save her life. Why
am I such a damn pessimist? Please, God, not that.
I can stick around her a little longer . . .

  "So, you're ready to accept our conditions, Cap-
tain," Ethan said, making sure there wasn't the
slightest hint of subservience in his voice. He held
his old-fashioned gun pointed at McCoy's chest,
implying that McCoy was not being invited to
participate in this conversation.

                 220
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  "No, as a matter of fact, we're not. Despite your
best efforts, we have figured out where you are."

"You're bluffing, Captain."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

  "If you knew where we were, you'd have beamed
a rescue party down by now. Taken advantage of
the element of surprise."

  "How do you know we haven't beamed a rescue
party down? Maybe this little chat is nothing but
a distraction."

  "Nice try, Captain. One, your transporter can't
get directly through the mineral deposits between
here and the surface, and two, I've been
monitoring the area and there's been no
transporter activity."

"Are you ready to stake your life on that?"

"That's what this is all about."

  There was a pause. Then Kirk said, "What about
the life of another young Empyrean?"

  Those were the words McCoy dreaded hearing.
He no longer cared about the gun aimed at his
heart, and he spoke up before Ethan could react
or reply. "Jim, is it Anna?"

  "Shut up, Doctor!" Ethan jumped up and took a
menacing step toward his prisoner. They were ten
feet apart when his finger cocked the hammer of
his revolver.

McCoy ignored the threat. "Jim, answer me!"

  "She's suffering from multiple organ failure,
Bones. Chapel's doing what she "

  With a savage chop of his free hand, Ethan cut
the comm channel off and glared at McCoy.
"Damn you! I told you to shut up!"

  From the moment the signal was interrupted,
Uhura tried repeatedly to reestablish contact with
the Liberation Front comm station. "They're just
not responding, Captain," she finally said.

Kirk nodded. He no longer cared about the

                 221
                  
          Howard Weinstein

Empyrean's diplomatic sensibilities or the fuzzy
limits of Federation regulations. He cared about
McCoy and Anna. As for precipitating an
interplanetary incident, there seemed no time like
the present. He pressed the intercom button on
the arm of his command seat. "Kirk to transporter
room. Mr. Chekov?"

"Aye, sir."

  "Take that rescue party down there. Stay alert;
we don't know how many people they've got, and
we don't know how they're armed. Phasers out, on
heavy stun."

  "Aye, Keptin. Ve vill find Dr. McCoy and ve vill
bring him back."

  Clad in fatigues, Chekov led his security team of
twenty down to the Empyrean desert, near the en-
trance to the network of caves where McCoy's
captors were known to be hiding. Just as the
geological formations in the subterranean rock
interfered with attempts to transport beneath the
surface, so they also made subsurface tricorder
readings erratic.

  Chekov frowned at the scanner in his hand, then
looked up to address the rescue squad gathered
around him. "As ve expected, ve are detecting life
forms in these caverns. But ve cannot tell how
many, and ve cannot tell exactly vhere they are.
Ve vill split into four teams of five each and go
down the four main tunnel branches. The further
underground ve get, the better our tricorders
should operate." I hope he said to himself.

  "Phasers on heavy stun," he continued. "Ve must
assume that the members of this Empyrean
Liberation Front are armed and dangerous.
Remember, our primary mission is the rescue and
protection of Dr. McCoy. Ve are not looking for
a fight. Ve do not know if ve have surprise on our
side, so be prepared to fire first if that is
necessary to secure our objective. Any questions?"

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           THE BETTER MAN

There weren't any.

"All right, then. Let's go."

  "Ethan," McCoy snarled, "don't you understand?
Anna's dying "

"Why should I believe you "

" and I'm the only one who can save her!"

  "Why should I believe your?" Ethan's shout
echoed sharply off the cave walls.

  McCoy took a deep breath, deliberately calming
his own fury. The stakes were rising. Emotions
were frayed. He was still shackled at the wrists
and ankles Ethan was finally showing the strain as
he realized that the situation he had so carefully
created might be spiraling out of his control. And,
last but certainly not least in order of importance,
Ethan was the one with the loaded gun. McCoy
was going to have to proceed very, very carefully.

  "Saving Anna's life is the most important thing
to you, isn't it, son? That's the reason you
launched this whole circus in the first place."
McCoy kept his voice soft, but he was not asking
questions. He was almost certain he knew the
answers. But he needed to hear them from Ethan
if he was going to get anywhere with this
seat-of-the-pants attempt to get out of here and
back to the Enterprise before it was too late.

  Ethan swallowed hard. "They can't just beam
you up, you know."

"I think you're right about that."

  "Then maybe I'm also right about Anna. Maybe
your Captain Kirk's lying about that too."

  "Ethan, he's not lying. This is not some kind of
trick."

"How do I know that?"

  "All right, dammit!" McCoy knew he was losing
his temper and wanted to kick himself for it, but
he couldn't help it. "So what if it turns out to be a
damn

                 223
                  
          Howard Weinstein

trick? What's the worst that happens? This 'libera-
tion front' thing ends, and you find out that
Anna's going to be fine. But if you're wrong and
it's not a trick, Anna's not going to be around to
hear your apology."

  For the first time since this ordeal had begun,
McCoy saw fear in Ethan's eyes. Not fear of death
or injury, but fear of doing the wrong thing. Fear
of the burden of guilt. McCoy pounced.

  "Are you prepared to live the rest of your life,
however long that might be, knowing you kept me
from saving Anna's life?"

  Ethan bit his lip. But he still could not bring
himself to answer or move.

  "Well, hell, if you're not letting me go, then I'm
leaving," McCoy said, not bothering to hide his
disgust. With a glance at the gun still pointed his
way, he turned and shuffled toward the cavern
entrance and tried to control the nervous
chattering of his teeth.

"You'll never find your way to the surface."

  "Then take me up there," said McCoy without
looking back. "If I get lost and Anna dies, how're
you going to feel?"

"Doctor, stop right there."

  McCoy shuffled on. The entry was just a few
feet away.

  "If I shoot you with this, you won't be stunned.
You'll be dead."

"I know what a gun can do, son."

"Then don't force me "

  "You kill me, you'll also be killing Anna. I don't
think you can do that."

  "Dr. McCoy," Ethan said, desperation in his
voice, "stop!"

  McCoy forced his feet to move another painful
step. Then he heard the metallic click release of
a trigger 224

           THE BETTER MAN

being pulled. His heart stumbled for a beat, he
heard the deafening thunder of the gun, he braced
for a bullet tearing into his flesh

   then heard the twang of a ricochet off the
rock facade overhead and saw the bullet burrow
itself into the silt of the cavern floor.

  His heart started again. He resumed his
shuffling toward the opening that would lead him
out of here. Then he felt something hard, heavy,
and sharp hit him between his shoulder blades. He
sucked in his breath reflexively before he could
process the physical fact that it wasn't a bullet.
The object landed at his feet and he looked down.
It was small, no bigger than his thumb. It was the
electronic key that worked the locks on his
shackles.

  "How did you know I wouldn't shoot you?"
Ethan asked as McCoy freed himself.

  McCoy looked up with a wan smile, wondering
if any color had returned to his face. "I didn't."

"Neither did I," Ethan said sheepishly.

  "Oh. Well, let's just say I hoped genetically per-
fected people have better things to do than shoot
demented doctors in the back. Now get me up to
the surface as fast as you can."

  Ethan rushed past. "Come on, there's a short-
cut."

  On the Enterprise bridge, Uhura turned in her
chair. "Captain!" She had a huge, relieved smile on
her face. "It's Chekov. They've found Dr. McCoy.
He's fine, and they're beaming up now."

  "Good," Kirk said, unable to suppress his own
grin. "Call sickbay. Tell Dr. Chapel the cavalry's
on its way."

"Aye, sir."

"Oh, Commander."

Uhura glanced back toward Kirk. "Yes, sir?"
              225
              
          Howard Weinstein

  "Did Chekov say how many of these
Empyrean Liberators were holding Dr. McCoy?"
"One, sir." Kirk's eyes widened. "One?" Uhura
nodded. "One." "Well," said Kirk, wondering
about the single individual who had managed to
wreak so much havoc, "I'll be damned."

                 226
                  
        Chapter Twenty-three

ESCORTED BY CHEKOV and a pair of dusty
security guards, McCoy and Ethan beamed aboard
the Enterprise before the rest of the search team.
Kirk, Elizabeth March, and Mark Rousseau were
waiting to meet them in the transporter room. But
McCoy had no sooner materialised than he was
off the platform and out the door at a full run.
"No time for small talk" was all he said, his voice
trailing behind him.

  "Don't worry," Kirk said to the others as they
hurried toward sickbay. "If anybody can pull her
through, McCoy can."

  Elizabeth glared at Ethan. "How could you do
this?"

  "I did what I thought was best for Anna," he
said in a sullen tone, "and for all of us who don't
agree with the isolation we're forced to live
under."

  "Ethan, you may not believe this, but I don't
like this isolation policy any better than you do."

                 227
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "How can I believe it? You're in charge of the
government that enforces that policy."

"That's what this treaty renewal is all about."

  "A renewal you might have doomed with all this
nonsense," Rousseau rumbled at Ethan.
"Liberation fronts, kidnapping . . . What the hell
were you thinking?"

  Kirk found himself almost feeling sorry for
Ethan. Almost. Though the kid seemed to be
facing hostility from all sides, he managed to
maintain his dignity  no small accomplishment,
under the circumstances. Kirk admired that kind
of composure under fire, though not enough to
pardon what Ethan had done in the first place. If
only the kid had not taken the old admonition to
stick to your guns quite so literally.

  Out in space, orbiting at twenty-eight thousand
kilometers above the surface of Nova Empyrea,
one of the string of satellites linked to the
Federation observatory exploded. Remaining on
watch in the transporter room, Scott saw the burst
of sparkling metallic shards on the wall-mounted
viewscreen.

  Canary in the mine shaft, he thought. This first
satellite to fall victim to the power overload
streaming out of the planet-based reactor was just
a harbinger of greater calamity if Spock's
damage-control work did not succeed and soon.

  As he stood by, awaiting word from Spock,
Scotty desperately wanted to pace. But he didn't
dare take his eyes off the monitors feeding him
data on Spock's radiation exposure level and on
the critical condition of the Sternn reactor itself.

  Some people grew more patient with age. Not
Montgomery Scott. The older he got, the crankier
he got. If I'm not careful, I'll be turnip' into McCoy,
he'd thought on more than one recent occasion.
But nothing tested his forbearance more than a
wait like this,

                 228
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

marking time until a near certain catastrophe,
unable to intervene.

 If anybody could save young Anna March, it
would be Dr. McCoy. And if anyone could stave
off disaster at the Empyrean observatory, it was
Spock. Over the years, Scotty had seen each of
them confound the most dire of expectations with
remarkable frequency. Though it wasn't something
he'd ever said out loud, he privately considered
them both to be members in good standing of the
Enterprise miracle workers' club, that select group
of officers like himself upon whom Kirk relied
with total confidence.

 But it was the nature of miracles that they
didn't happen every day. Sometimes, they didn't
happen when they were needed the most.

 Scotty checked the scanner displays, which gave
only grim news. The reactor's runaway power
output had not abated, and Spock was nearing the
limits of safe exposure to the deadly atmosphere
inside the containment module. Then, with no
warning, something new showed up on the
monitors: The stream of dangerous surplus power
they'd been diverting up to the satellites and
station in orbit took a precipitous drop, right
down to nothing.

 But before Scott could figure out what this
development meant, he heard Ramon Ortega's
voice coming over the communications link to the
main observatory complex, a channel they'd kept
open during the emergency.

 "The emitter array just went off-line here,"
Ortega said.

 Scott let out a deflating breath. "So much f'r our
safety valve."

 McCoy stepped back from Anna's sickbay bed,
watching her chest rise and fall in steady but
shallow rhythm. He listened to the pulse of the
respirator 229

          Howard Weinstein

assisting her breathing as she lay unconscious,
caught in that medical nether world between life
and death. Then he looked at Christine Chapel
standing next to him, her face pale, her shoulders
slumped in a posture of weary defeat. They were
alone in the treatment "heater.

  "Well, that's that," he said, trying not to sound
as disconsolate as she looked. "We've done what
we could. The rest is up to Anna and the good
Lord, if there is one."

  "Are you sure there's nothing we overlooked?"
she asked.

  "Of course I'm sure," said McCoy with a glower
and a sharp tone he immediately regretted. He
rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, Christine. I didn't mean to
snap. It's been a long day." Then he glanced at the
glowing digital chronometer on the bioscan
display. "Make that a long two days. I did not get
what you'd call a lot of rest in that cave."

"I know."

  McCoy squinted at her as he took her arm and
led her over to a couple of chairs along the wall.
"What am I saying? I hear you didn't get much
sleep either while I was gone. That wasn't very
smart."

  She forced a thin smile as they sat down. "I
learned from you."

  "Yeah, well, if anybody should know I'm not
always the best role model," he said ruefully, "it's
you. Look, I should've been here when you
needed me. I'm sorry."

  "I'm the one who convinced you to leave the
ship. I shou!d've done a better job monitoring
Anna's condit~on.

"Now who in the hell told you that?"

  She looked across the room toward Anna.
"Nobody had to tell me."

  He glared at her, and she tried to lower her
gaze. But he tipped her head back up with his
hand beneath her 230

           THE BETTER MAN

chin, and there was no avoiding the intensity in his
eyes or in his raspy whisper. "You listen to me,
Doctor. I'm the one who concocted this crazy
treatment for Anna, and I'm the one who told
everybody I knew what I was doing. I'm the one
who didn't take the time to brief you on every
aspect of what might happen. I'm the one who
thought I'd be right back. So if anybody's to blame
for her being at death's door, it's

,,

me.

  "But I was responsible for her while you were
gone."

  "And you did every blasted thing you could for
her. I couldn't have done any more. We knew this
was risky. If Anna dies, part of me is going to hate
myself till the day I die. But part of me is going to
know the risk was accepted with informed consent,
and we did the best we could."

  Christine shook her head, seeking some
reassurance from a man whose medical experience
vastly outweighed her own a man she'd always
admired despite, or maybe because of, his very
human frailties. "How can you not wonder if there
was something else we should have done,
something we didn't think off"

McCoy's blue eyes didn't flinch. "You can't."

  Those who knew Vulcans well were aware that
they were much more complex than their stoic
demeanors might indicate. In times long past, they
had been warriors, driven by passions as fierce as
any beings in the galaxy. To this day, for all the
millennia they had devoted to cultivating logic and
controlling emotions, the heart of that ancient
warrior still beat in every Vulcan. The passions of
old had merely been redirected, not banked. It
was not in a Vulcan's proud nature to surrender.

  But neither was it in the Vulcan intellect to
struggle in futility against objectively
insurmountable obstacles. These days, in the war
between stubborn emotion

                 231
                  
          Howard Weinstein

and implacable logic, a hard-won philosophical
middle ground made it possible for Vulcans to live
at peace with themselves.

  A human might think in such terms as these:
Fight like the devil, but have the dignity to know
when the fight is lost.

  Spock knew. Time was up. His radiation
readings told him he had reached the end of his
margin of safety here inside the vandalised
reactor. He had failed to shut down the furnace
that was still churning out of control. Whether by
sinister intent or by sheer luck, the mysterious
saboteur had drawn Spock into an escalating game
that had appeared to have rules but, in the end,
did not.

  Spock would never admit to humans not even
to his best friends that the strictly logical
approach favored by Vulcans had limits. But there
were rare occasions when he had to make that
admission to himself. This was such an occasion.
Logic habitually led him to approach problems as
puzzles to be analyzed and solved intellectually.
This saboteur had succeeded in making him
believe he was just a short step away from
unraveling the pattern of planned malfunctions.

  He recalled an ironic, idiomatic human phrase
that aptly described what he had actually been
doing: pursuing the wild goose.

Time was up. And yet

  "Mr. Spock." It was Scott's voice ringing inside
his helmet. "I've got to get you out o' there."

"No. Wait."

"What do you mean wait? You're past the point "

"I must make one last attempt."

"T' do what?"

  Perhaps there was still time for a belated leap of
illogical improvisation. "To do what the saboteur
never believed we would try to do: to remove the
fuel pod."

232

           THE BETTER MAN

  "Aye," Scott said conditionally, "that'll pull the
plug all right, but "

  "That's impossible, Commander Spock!" It was
Ortega, bursting into the conversation from his
console in the observatory control room. "The
radiation has to be at its worst in that part of the
containment module. The fuel pod is not designed
to be removed while it's powered up. Even if you
could get to the tank, the electromagnetic
containment fields inside it would kill you once
you opened it. And even if you survived that, the
pod matrix is too big and too heavy for one man
to carry."

  "I do not intend to carry it, Dr. Ortega. And if
my idea is feasible, it will not be necessary to
open the tank and suffer exposure to the
containment fields."

  "Then, beggin' y'r pardon, Mr. Spock," Scott de-
manded, "what the hell are you plannin' I' do?"

  "I will place your transporter location
transponder on the fuel pod structure and you will
beam the pod containing the fuel pellets
themselves out into space."

  "I don't know how all that radiation'll affect the
transporter, sir," Scott said. "And without that
transponder on you, I may not be able t' beam
you out."

  "I will remain close to the fuel pod tank during
the transport procedure. The ambient radiation
levels should drop by a considerable percentage
immediately upon removal of the fuel pod "

  "But there's no guarantee it'll drop enough for
the transporter to get through all the radiation
that's still gain' I' be there," Scott argued.

  "Besides which," Ortega said, "we may never get
to that point. As I understand your transporter
system, it converts solid matter into a
subatomically debonded matter stream, then
transmits that stream within an annular
confinement beam."

"That is correct, Doctor," said Spock.

  "Well, the fuel pellets inside the pod are going
to be destabilised during transport," Ortega said.
"Their

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          Howard Weinstein

volatility is what makes them work as a fuel to
begin with. Destabilization could be enough to
start an explosive chain reaction. And if that
happens, whether it's here or aboard your ship,
it's going to be a disaster."

  "Mr. Scott," Spock said with virtually no hesita-
tion, "if you compress the passage interval through
the transporter's pattern buffer and increase
power to the energising and phase transition coils,
that should speed the sequence as well as
strengthen the integrity of the matter stream. The
risk of chain reaction detonation should be
minimal."

  Alone in the transporter room, Scott nodded,
lost in a moment of purely technical
consideration. "Aye. I think y're right." Then he
stopped abruptly and shook his head to clear it.
"Mr. Spock, we're talking' about a hot potato that
could destroy this ship! We canna do this without
the captain's orders "

  "Mr. Scott, there is no time for debate," Spock
said. "I am in command of this mission."

  "If this doesna work," Scott said, "there may be
nothin' left to court-martial."

  "That is a risk we must take. The responsibility
is mine alone, and the facts are incontrovertible:
I cannot sustain much more exposure here. And
this is the only means by which we may be able to
shut down the reactor before it will most certainly
explode. You will consider this a direct order.
Reprogram the transporter control sequence as we
discussed. I am moving toward the fuel pod tank
now. Are you maintaining a tracking lock?"

"Mr. Spock!" Scott protested.

  'Maintain tracking lock," Spock commanded in
a tone that brooked no dissent.

  "Aye, sir," Scott said unhappily.
"Reprogramming . . . tracking lock maintained . .
."

* * *

                 234
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  The lights on the Enterprise bridge suddenly
flickered, then resumed their usual brightness.

  Kirk straightened in his seat. "What the devil
was that?"

  Sulu glanced at the indicators on his helm
console. "A power drain off the main engine
circuits, Captain."

`'Source?"

  "It's the transporter system, sir," said Chekov
from the science console.

  "What the hell is Scotty doing?" Kirk wondered
aloud. He punched the intercom button on his
armrest. "Kirk to transporter room." He waited a
moment, but there was no reply. "Kirk to
transporter room. Mr. Scott, are you down there?"

  "Aye," Scott mumbled to himself. "I'm here. But
I may not be after all this is done with."

  He knew his diversion of emergency power to
the transporter would register on the bridge. But
he did not activate the intercom. At risk of
insubordination, he'd decided to let Kirk's call go
unanswered. There was no time for explanations
now and no going back. He could not afford to
split his attention from the job he'd agreed to do.

  With an unwavering gaze, Scott watched the
monitor array on the transporter console and
waited for word from Spock. He felt beads of
sweat popping out on his brow, but his hands were
steady, poised.

  Spock found the heavily plated alloy door that
sealed the chamber containing the fuel pod. He
keyed the mechanism, and the door slid up and
out of the way. The air crackled around him as he
took the location transponder from his radiation
suit and fastened it to the vertical oblong tank
that held the pod.

                 235
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "Spock to Mr. Scott. The transponder has been
attached. Lock on and energise."

  With one hand, Scott activated the transporter.
With the other, he manually modulated the extra
power surging through the unit. Precise as it was,
he didn't trust the computer to handle this. He
would have to rely on his own intuition. "Come
on, come on," he urged in a whisper, like an
encouraging parent. "Grab onto that thing down
there . . ."

  Spock stood one meter away from the
containment tank, aiming his tricorder up to
where he knew the reactor's fuel pellet receptacle
was mounted. If the transporter was going to
work, it should have locked on within a second or
two. But the tricorder told him that the pod
remained inside the tank, secure in its bracket.
Something had gone wrong.

"Mr. Scott, did you energize?"

  "Aye, sir!" came the agitated reply. "There's too
much interference f'r a positive lock. The circuit's
rejecting the automated sequence "

  "Override the safety protocol, recalibrate, and
reenergise."

  "What d'you think I'm doing here taking a bag-
pipe break? If the imaging scanners don't hold
their resolution, we won't get that fuel pod out o'
there. All we'll do is destabilise it, and it'll
detonate right next to you." Scott lapsed into
silence for a few seconds, then grunted. "There.
She's holdin', but I don't know f'r how long.
Reenergizin' now!"

  He activated the transporter once again. As he
did, he, Spock, and Ortega each monitored from
his own vantage point. The difference was, they
were only observers. It was Scotty's hands that
were busy juggling fate.

  As each man held his breath, their synchronised
instruments told them the transporter had found
its

                 236
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

target, and they recorded the start of the orderly
molecular disintegration of the fuel pod. No one
was certain what would happen next.

  From an engineering standpoint, Scott knew
what was supposed happen. He also knew that
there was nothing more he could do about it. This
would either work, or it wouldn't. It would happen
within the span of less than five seconds. And a
few milliseconds in the middle of the
autosequence would determine whether they
succeeded or died.

  The lights dimmed as the transporter's
energising and phase transition coils pulled three
times their normal requirement of power from the
Enterprise's mighty warp-drive engines. In less time
than it took to blink, the matter stream swirled
through the pattern buffer and the ship did not
explode. Yet.

  The targeting scanners had already been set for
maximum range and dispersion. The transporter's
emitter array did its job: The molecules that had
once formed the displaced fuel pod rematerialized
as a sparkling plasma cloud forty thousand
kilometers out in space.

Finally, Scott allowed himself to breath.

"Well done, Mr. Scott," said Spock.

  Scott's answer came only after a moment of
dazed relief. "Thank you, Mr. Spock." Then his
eyes widened. Spock! My god! If argot about Spock!
His hands were already flying across the
transporter console, keying the next cycle. "Mr.
Spock! I'll have y' out o' there in a jiffy. Stand
by energising."

  The transporter hummed to life. Scott knew the
sounds better than he knew his own heartbeat,
and this did not sound right. Then the device went
through the electronic equivalent of a stumble,
tapped more deeply into the starship's power
reserves, and restarted the beam-up cycle.

  With his teeth gritted, Scott willed the
transporter to cut through the still disruptive
radiation trapped in 237

          Howard Weinstein

the reactor's containment structure. He watched
as Spock finally began to materialise the flickering
chamber. Two seconds later, the first officer was
whole.

  He remained on the platform, his helmet still in
place. "Initiate decontamination, Mr. Scott."

  "Aye, sir." Scott touched the control pad and
the decontamination force field filled the
transporter chamber with a strobing greenish
glow. The engineer kept his eye on the sensor
display reporting on Spock's condition. Several
seconds later, the procedure completed, normal
illumination resumed. "Biosensors say you're
clean, Mr. Spock. Residual radiation within
acceptable range. Oflf t' sickbay with you then."

  "That will not be necessary," Spock said as he
came down the steps.

  He found Scott blocking his way, hands on hips.
"Regulations, sir, Vulcan first officer or not."

  Spock yielded with a compliant nod.
"Understood, Mr. Scott." He moved toward the
door and noticed Scotty was following.

"Just makin' sure y' get there, sir."

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         Chapter Twenty-four

 You RE FINE, MR. SPOCK, Christine Chapel
said as she turned off the little bioscanner in her
hand. The readouts on the monitor display
confirmed that he had suffered no ill effects from
his radiation exposure.

  "That is what I told Mr. Scott," Spock said as he
swung his legs over the side of the diagnostic bed.

  "It never hurts to make sure," Scotty said. "I
didn't want you t' wake up glowin' in the dark."

  "Thanks to Dr. Chapel's thorough medical
scrutiny," Spock said with an arched eyebrow, "we
may rest assured that will not happen."

  The door to the examining room slid open and
Ramon Ortega entered with a self-effacing nod.
"Gentlemen."

  Scott's eyebrows rose. "Dr. Ortega! You're the
last person I'd expect to see on the Enterprise."

  "I, uhh, I was concerned about Commander
Spock's condition."

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          Howard Weinstein

  "His condition is excellent," Chapel said. "Now,
if you'll all excuse me, I've got some other work
to do."

  "Thank you for your assistance, Doctor," Spock
said.

  Chapel smiled as she left. "You're welcome, Mr.
Spock."

  The door shut behind her, leaving Ortega alone
with Scott and Spock. The Empyrean was
noticeably subdued, without so much as a residual
hint of the haughty arrogance with which he had
initially treated them just a few short days ago. In
fact, he seemed positively humble. "I'm glad to
hear you're uninjured, Commander."

  "Your concern is appreciated, Dr. Ortega,"
Spock said. "In what condition is the observatory?"

  "We've begun decontamination procedures,
cleaning things up."

  Scotty looked sharply at him. "You have? With
Empyrean staff? I thought this was "

  "I know what I said at our first meeting, Mr.
Scott. Obviously, a lot has changed since then. We
Empyreans do see to our responsibilities."

"Did I ever say you didn't?"

  "As a matter of fact, Mr. Scott," Spock said,
"you did imply "

  To avoid any incipient embarrassment of Scott,
Ortega intervened with a hasty touch of
diplomacy. "Who hasn't occasionally said things
we might prefer we hadn't." Then he took a deep
breath, as if preparing for a plunge into terra
incognita. "Forgetting about the politics and the
philosophical debates, our colony owes you both
a huge debt of gratitude. Once we all realized the
magnitude of the problems at that reactor and
the apparent cause you could have decided it
was our problem and just walked away."

  "We could've," said Scotty, "but we couldn't have.
That's just not the way we do things, Doctor."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  "I know that now. You put your lives on the line
for us, for people who didn't exactly welcome you
with open arms. I just wanted you to know that
your acts of courage did not go unnoticed."

  "That didn't sound much like an apology," Scott
said with a challenging tone of belligerence.

  "Apology?" Ortega asked with a guileless blink
of his eyes.

  "Mr. Scott " Spock began, trying to head off
any renewed conflict.

  But Scotty ignored the interruption, facing
Ortega squarely. "Aye, Doctor, an apology. Or
don't you think you owe us one?"

"For what?"

  Scotty stared in disbelief. "For what? For judgin'
us as inferior from the moment you decided we
didn't fit the Empyrean mold."

  "But you are inferior, genetically speaking,"
Ortega said, straight-faced. Then, before Scott
could come up with a retort, he added, "Though
apparently not as inferior as we thought."

  Ortega didn't flinch from Scott's- disapproving
glare, meeting it with an earnest expression, one
that slowly blended into a sly smile. "That was a
joke, Mr. Scott."

  "I didn't know y' had a sense o' humor," Scott
replied with his own trace of a smile.

"There's a lot we don't know about each other."

"Maybe it's time t' change all that."

Ortega nodded. "Maybe it is."

  Scott made no effort to hide his surprise at
Ortega's admission. "Well! Now, that's more like
it, laddie. Have y' got somethin' in mind?"

  Ortega shrugged with genuine uncertainty. "I'm
really not sure yet. It's not easy having everything
you believe in turned upside down in a matter of
a couple of days."

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          Howard Weinstein

  Just then, the door from the corridor opened,
and Captain Kirk walked in. "Dr. Ortega, I hope
you're pulling the pieces together down there."

  "We are, Captain. But we wouldn't have had a
chance without your two officers here. I want to
make sure you know they really did go far beyond
the call of duty."

  "I do now," Kirk said pointedly with reproachful
looks at Spock and Scott.

  Ortega took the hint. "Well, I can see you've got
things to discuss. And I'd better get back to our
cleanup work at the observatory."

  "Still plannin't'get it ready for dismantling?"
asked Scott.

  "That may not be the Council's choice," Ortega
said with mixed feelings. Then he left.

  With a quizzical look on his face, Kirk watched
Ortega go. "I wonder what he meant by that? That
he wants the outpost to stay or that he's afraid
we'll stay?"

  "That is difficult to say, Captain," Spock said,
"though it is apparent that our efforts during the
crisis have given Dr. Ortega and other
Empyreans food for thought."

  "Speaking of those efforts" Kirk turned to face
his officers and folded his arms across his chest
"you might've destroyed this ship with that
transporter stunt."

  "But we did not, Captain," Spock said with inno-
cent eyes.

  "It might've been . . . nice. . . if you'd have con-
sulted your commanding officer before making a
decision with such potentially . . . explosive . . .
repercussions," Kirk said with exaggerated
politesse.

  "In fairness," Spock said, "Mr. Scott wanted to
do just that "

"I did not," Scott blurted with immediate regrets.

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           THE BETTER MAN

He'd simply hoped to bolster Spock. Instead, he
sparked the captain's ire.

Kirk flashed him an angry look. "You didnW"

 "Well, I I didn't mean I didn't, sir," Scott said,
all flustered now and very much aware that he
dug a deeper hole with every word. "I meant I
thought I mean, I didn't think . . ." His voice
trailed off, and he sighed as he gave up trying to
explain.

 Appreciating Scott's attempt to support him,
Spock mounted a verbal rescue of the floundering
engineer. "Captain, what Mr. Scott meant to
say "

"Ahh," Kirk said tartly, "a translation."

  " was this, I believe: We were entrusted with
an assignment. We were privy to all the relevant
engineering facts, and in our best professional
judgment, we ascertained that the time required
to brief you  prior to making the only possible
decision would have seriously jeopardised our
chances for successfully undertaking the only
possible solution."

  Kirk turned, adopting a prosecutorial tone.
"And is that what you meant to say, Mr. Scott?"

  "Uhh . . ." Scott swallowed. Then he opted for
an oblique plea for the commander's mercy. "It
was on the tip of my tongue, sir?"

  The captain pursed his lips, glancing from one
to the other. "All's well that ends well? Is that the
conclusion I'm supposed to draw?"

  Scott spread his hands in a deferrential gesture.
"If y' wouldn't mind, sir."

  "All right, no court-martial this time," Kirk
scolded with a wag of his finger. "But next time .
. ." He shook his head and couldn't help grinning.

  Kirk watched them leave sickbay, then turned
and went into the treatment ward where he found
McCoy just inside the door. Across the dimly lit
room, Anna lay motionless on her bed, still on
full life support. Her mother sat at her bedside,
holding her hand.

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          Howard Weinstein

"Any change?" Kirk whispered.

McCoy shook his head. "No better, no worse."

"Well, that's something."

  McCoy turned with a baleful eye that made it
obvious he didn't appreciate Kirk's attempt to
comfort him. Kirk hooked McCoy's arm with his
own and pulled him into the adjacent dispensary.

  "How long're you planning to beat yourself up?"
said Kirk after the door shut behind them.

"Isn't that between me and myself?"

"Not as long as I'm your commanding officer "

  McCoy stiffened. "Oh, your wish is my
command, Captain, sir, " he cut in with a heavy
touch of sarcasm.

  "You didn't let me finish. I was about to say,
not as long as I'm your commanding officer and
your friend."

  With a grand tip of his hand, McCoy invited
Kirk to go on.

  "Dammit, Bones, you've done everything you
could."

  McCoy slumped into a chair. "I know. So why
do I feel so damn good about it?"

  "Because you're an idiot?" Kirk offered with a
gentle smile.

  "Bingo." McCoy stretched and rubbed the back
of his neck with both hands.

  Kirk felt frustrated by his inability to soothe his
friend's pain. McCoy's right, I'm no psychiatrist.
With a shake of his head, he started to leave, then
paused in the open doorway and turned back.
"Bones."

McCoy looked up. "Hmm?"

  "You couldn't be doing more for her if she were
your own flesh and blood."

  "I could be sitting in there, holding her other
hand."

"You're right. You could be. So why aren't you?"

  "Elizabeth wanted to be alone with her.
Mother's prerogative."

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           THE BETTER MAN

  Kirk nodded in sympathy, knowing how much it
must have hurt McCoy to accede to Elizabeth's re-
quest for privacy and, by doing so, to be reminded
of the special bond between parent and child.
That was a bond McCoy had run away from with
his own daughter and a bond he now knew wasn't
his to share with Anna.

  Kirk was cognizant of the fact that everything
Elizabeth had done she'd done for the health and
security of her child. He just wished she'd been
able to do it without handing McCoy an emotional
battering he didn't deserve.

"How come Mark Rousseau's not here with
them?"

  Lost in his own thoughts and regrets, McCoy
glanced up at Kirk. "Hmm? Oh. He went to find
young Ethan, the one-man liberation front."

  Ethanstood leaning against the cool glass of the
observation window in the otherwise empty
lounge, looking out past the starship's graceful
engine nacelles, looking down at his planet. He'd
never been in space before this. He'd seen
pictures of Empyrea from orbit. He'd understood
intellectually the concept of seeing his world from
the all-encompassing perspective of space. But
now that he was here, standing on the Enterprise,
he knew that photographic images and
accompanying words of wisdom were simply
incapable of preparing anyone for the visceral
reality of seeing the globe in its entirety, just
hanging there in space.

  It looked so fragile. The life-nurturing layer of
atmosphere hugging the planet seemed so thin, so
insubstantial, like he could blow it away with a
puffof breath.

  He had read centuries-old accounts of how early
astronauts had reacted to their first views of
Earth, how their attitudes about coexistence and
conflict had been profoundly altered by the
startling sight of a

                 245
                  
          Howard Weinstein

world their own world without artificial borders
and boundaries.

  "It makes a big difference," said a rumbling
voice behind him.

  Caught off guard, Ethan turned so abruptly he
almost lost his balance. He hadn't even heard the
door hiss open, and here was Mark Rousseau
coming toward him. "What does?"

"Seeing the world from the outside looking in."

  Ethan nodded, then turned back to the window.
"Is it that way for everybody, the first time in
space?"

  "I think so. It was for me." Rousseau joined him
at the window.

"How many different planets have you been to?"

  Rousseau frowned for a moment. "I really don't
know. I've lost count."

"Guess."

"A hundred, more or less?"

  Ethan whistled in amazement. "I can't even
imagine that. That world out there, it's the only
one I know."

  "You seemed pretty determined to leave it be-
hind."

"I guess I was."

"Is that still what you want?"

  Ethan hesitated. "I don't know. I don't know
what I want."

"Maybe you just wanted the choice."

  "Do I deserve a choice after what I did?" he
wondered with a penitent shake of his head.
"Anna means more to me than anything . . . and
she could die because I kept Dr. McCoy from
being here when she needed him."

  "You didn't do that knowingly and not for long.
Besides, we all do things we regret, especially
when we're young." An ironic smile came to
Rousseau's face. "And some of us, when we're not
so young. If 246

           THE BETTER MAN

we're lucky, we get a chance to redeem ourselves
later on."

  Eventually, exhaustion overcomes stress. Sleep,
however restless, overtakes adrenaline or whatever
other natural or unnatural stimulant might be
pushing the body and mind beyond the limits of
endurance. It was late on the Enterprise, with
dimmed illumination in corridors and common
areas.

  Mark Rousseau had finally fallen asleep
propped up in bed with the PADD displaying the
umpteenth draft of his final final treaty renewal
proposal still held against his chest.

  Ethanhad accepted McCoy's invitation to
remain on board until they knew more about
Anna's condition, and he slept fitfully in guest
quarters.

  In his cabin filled with artifacts from home,
Spock rested in the amber glow of an incense
lamp, with an eerie Vulcan wind-chime nocturne
playing softly.

  Scatty slept with a technical journal still glowing
on his bedside viewscreen.

  Perhaps most surprising of all, considering the
weight of responsibility he carried, even Captain
Kirk slept soundly. Years ago, early in his first
command, he'd fought an often losing battle with
insomnia. It had taken some time, but he'd
eventually learned how to put the day's concerns
out of his mind at bedtime. It was just one in a
long list of survival skills they did not teach at
Starfieet Academy.

  Down in sickbay, McCoy had insisted that
Elizabeth March retire to a quiet cabin with a real
bed. He knew she'd have to face the Empyrean
Council tomorrow for the final debate and vote
on what to do about the Federation treaty. But
she'd refused to leave Anna, so McCoy had an
overstuffed reclining chair placed at Anna's
bedside.

  That done, he'd managed to talk Beth into
accepting a mild sedative. McCoy sat with her for
a while

                 247
                  
          Howard Weinstein

and they'd chatted, mostly about how relieved she
was that Scotty and Spock had succeeded in
averting disaster at the observatory power plant.
But, tired as he was, McCoy's grasp of psychology
was still keen enough to know what she was
avoiding talking about: Anna. After a while, Beth
had grown drowsy, and she too fell asleep, still
holding her daughter's hand.

 The only one who wasn't asleep when he should
have been was McCoy himself. Not that he hadn't
tried. He'd gone so far as getting into pajamas and
coaxing a mug of warm milk from the food
synthesizer. He'd actually crawled under the covers
with the lights out and the hypnotic sounds of
rolling surf whispering from his cabin speakers. He
wanted to sleep. He needed to sleep.

 But he couldn't. Some demons just wouldn't be
banished by warm milk, not even for a catnap. So
he threw on a comfortable Starfleet sweat-quit and
prowled the deserted corridors for a while. With
forced nonchalance, he stopped in the arboretum
for a stroll through the greenery, then at the
observation lounge for a nightcap. He even visited
Engineering in hopes of finding Scotty as wide
awake as he was and maybe willing to sit down
over a deck of cards for a bit.

 But Scotty wasn't there. He's got the good sense
to be fast asleep, McCoy thought, which is what I
should be . . .

 He left Engineering, stood in the quiet corridor,
and resisted the tug pulling him toward one
inevitable destination.

 Elizabeth March's eyes blinked and she awoke,
all her senses and faculties instantly sharp. She
wondered what time it was, located the
chronometer on the bioscan monitor, and realized
it was still the middle of the night.

She'd expected to wake up with a sore neck or
back

                 248
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

from sleeping in something other than a bed.
Surprisingly, she felt all right. The chair had been
much more comfortable than she thought it would
be. She smiled when she noticed that someone
had draped a light blanket over her during the
night. Probably McCoy.

  And she was pleased to find Anna's hand still
clasped in her own. She wondered how that could
be possible. I must've moved sometime. This must
be one of those maternal miracles even we mothers
don't understand.

  But her fingers did feel cramped. She flexed
them slightly, careful not to break contact with
Anna's hand. As long as she felt Anna's skin next
to hers, and it was warm, she could keep her faith
alive.

  Then she felt something new, something unex-
pected. For an instant, Beth wondered if she was
still asleep and just dreaming.

  Anna's fingers moved, straightening from their
comatose curl.

  Elizabeth's eyes grew wide, and they welled with
hopeful tears. She stood and looked at her
daughter's serene face. But she saw no sign of
consciousness there.

  Maybe it's just a reflex, Elizabeth thought, trying
to reign in her hopes before they could soar too
high.

  Anna's fingers moved again with more strength.
Elizabeth squeezed her daughter's hand. Anna
squeezed back!

  Then her eyes fluttered open, focusing slowly.
Her lips parted and her voice came out as a
sleepy whisper, like a child waking from a long
nap the answer to Elizabeth's prayers: "Hi,
Mother."

  Elizabeth leaned close and kissed Anna's
forehead. "Hi, baby," she whispered back.

  In the open doorway at the far end of the
darkened ward, McCoy watched from the
shadows, resisting the lump in his throat. He saw
no reason to intrude just

                 249
                  
          Howard Weinstein

yet. He would casually stroll in after a few
minutes, claiming it had been time for a routine
check on Anna. Nobody needed to know he'd
been keeping his own vigil for the past few
hours. Wiping away a tear before it could roll
very far down his cheek, he retreated unseen.

                 250
                  
         Chapter Twenty-five

Captain's log, Stardate 7598.5.

 Dr. McCoy reports that Anna March has
recovered completely. More importantly, his
risky treatment has apparently produced the
desired result: The maternal genetic brand
simulated and introduced into Anna's system
has infused into all body cells. It remains to be
seen whether she'll be able to pass the
Empyrean medical tests yet to be administered.

THE HAPPY NEWS about Anna's medical
condition enabled President March to devote her
full attention to the impending vote on the
Federation treaty renewal. When the hundred
members of the Empyrean Council arrived at
their offices first thing that morning, they each
found a copy of Ambassador Rousseau's final
draft proposal waiting for them.

 They would have the entire morning to huddle
with staff assistants, engaged in private review and
preparation. That afternoon, the Council would
be conven

                 251
                  
          Howard Weinstein

ing in public session for last comments, brief
debate, and the conclusive ballot.

 Word of the day's momentous agenda spread
via the early vidcom news broadcasts. Barely past
sunrise, Empyrean citizens had already begun
lining up outside the columned council hall for the
few hundred seats available to spectators.

 At the window of the president's office, atop the
five-story council building, Mark Rousseau
watched the queue of people snaking down the
marble steps and along the tree-shaded boulevard.
"Whichever way this goes, they want to witness
history."

McCoy stood alongside him. "Who wouldn't?"

  "If you get your way, Empyrea will never be the
same." It was Clements, speaking from the open
door as he entered the office. He knew March
had invited McCoy and the ambassador to be
present at the public session, insisting they should
be available to answer questions. But he looked
distinctly displeased at finding them here
beforehand.

  "Either way, it'll never be the same," Elizabeth
said as she misted the flowering plants overflowing
their hanging baskets in another window alcove.
"Sooner or later, people change whether we want
them to or not. And so do societies." She returned
to her desk and poured three cups of tea from the
Asian-patterned ceramic pot on a simple silver
tray.

  "I've concluded my investigation on the power
plant sabotage," Clements said with a disapproving
glance toward McCoy and Rousseau.

  "That's what I figured," Elizabeth said, serving
steaming cups to McCoy and Rousseau as they sat
on a floral sofa near the windows. "Don't mind
them, Clements. They're as entitled to hear your
report as I am. In fact, I'll tell you what the
results were: inconclusive."

  Clements looked mildly surprised. "Are you
guessing?"

                 252
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

  "Not really," she said, sitting at her desk. "You
don't look like a man who's found what he was
looking for."

  Clements poured himself a cup of tea and sat
opposite her. "I think we can rule out involvement
by the Federation people."

"Thanks a bunch," McCoy muttered.

  "Which means," Elizabeth said with a
philosophical shrug, "it was one of us."

  And that, she knew, was why life on her world
could never go back to the way it was prior to this
whole crisis. If the Council chose to renew the
Federation treaty, with its stringent limits on
actual interaction with Outsiders, that would be a
tacit signal to the whole of Empyrean society. She
was certain that steps toward greater openness
would inevitably follow and accelerate toward
unobstructed freedom of interplanetary encounter.

  But even if the Council rejected the treaty,
ordering the departure of the Federation outpost,
the colonists would live with the knowledge that
one of their own had intentionally damaged the
observatory, putting fellow Empyreans in grave
danger and shattering the colonial covenants by
which they had lived for more than a century and
a half. One unknown individual  or a few had
committed a blatantly criminal act.

  Of course, so have I, Elizabeth admitted to
herself. But her violations had directly endangered
no lives other than Anna's and her own. Whoever
had sabotaged the reactor had demonstrated
wanton disregard for hundreds of thousands of
lives. If one Empyrean was capable of that, then
others might be, too. We'll never be as secure as we
were before . . .

  In one way, Elizabeth couldn't help feeling it
was for the best that Clements had not been able
to track and trap the person or persons
responsible for the near disaster at the reactor.
The crime committed was so unsettling that any
trial would have been a perilous

                 253
                  
          Howard Weinstein

one, with repercussions potentially more divisive
and dangerous than the original sin.

  In other ways, though, she regretted the
investigation's failure. In her mind, the biggest
unanswered question was not who did it, but why
was it done. Was the sabotage really intended
merely to scuttle the treaty renewal?

  Or, she wondered, was that too simple a motiva-
tion?

  Maybe the culprits were actually in favor of the
treaty. Maybe they'd been trying to sound the
alarm and wake up a generation of complacent
Empyreans who'd come to believe so blindly in
their ultimate superiority that they not only knew
all the answers, but no longer even needed to
hear the questions.

  Are we really the best of all possible humans? Is
that what they wanted us to ask ourselves? How
many Empyreans are asking those questions?And is
anybody brave enough for honest answers?

  Elizabeth honestly didn't know. And that answer
was simply not good enough, not if she hoped to
find a way to lead her colony through this
turbulent passage.

  "Yes," Clements sighed, "I'm sure it was one of
us." Then he shot a sidelong glance toward
Rousseau and McCoy. "Which means it's very
unlikely we'll ever discover who it was." He
couldn't resist this one last taunt, however
perverse it might be to trumpet a knack for
disruptive criminal behavior.

  Clements told President March he'd deliver his
full written report the next day, then left. As
Elizabeth gathered her notes for the council
session, McCoy took out his communicator.

"McCoy to Enterprise."

"Enterprise," Uhura answered.

"Can you find Scotty for me, Uhura?"

"Sure thing, Doctor."

  A moment later, he heard that familiar burr.
"Aye, McCoy. Scott here. What's up?"

254

           THE BETTER MAN

  "Scatty, just thought I'd let you know Clements
has closed his investigation into the reactor
sabotage."

"And what'd he come up with?"

  "Nothing much beyond the obvious: that it
must've been an Empyrean."

  "What a surprise. So, what's the prognosis on
that council vote?"

  McCoy frowned. "Well, we're not dead ducks
yet. But from the scuttlebutt in the so-called
corridors of power, it doesn't look too good."

"Sorry t' hear that."

  "Yeah. Well, you never know. There're an awful
lot of confused people down here."

"Aye. So when're you off t' the big meeting?"

"Now. Tell Jim we'll check in when it's all over."

  "We'll be watchin' the news broadcast. Good
luck to you, McCoy. Scott out."

  Standing in the center of the observatory control
room, Ramon Ortega was just signing a work
review for a waiting technician when he heard a
now-familiar jangling hum behind him. Turning to
see the stout form of Engineer Scott materialising,
he shooed the technician away and hurried over.

  "Engineer! Nobody told me you were cleared to
transport down."

  Scott shrugged. "That's because I wasn't. But I
needed t' talk to you, laddie."

"About what?"

  "When you came up to the Enterprise, you
sounded like you were coin' some soul-searching."

Ortega face revealed his discomfort. "So?"

"Well, I was wonderin' what you found."

"A lot of confusion."

  Scott smiled in sympathy. "Well, if it makes you
feel any better, lad, I'm sure you're not the only
one. What do you want to happen?"

"You mean, about the treaty renewal? I really
don't

                 255
                  
          Howard Weinstein

know, Mr. Scott. I'm just glad I don't have to vote
on it."

 "Aye, but you're gain' have to live with that
vote," Scott pointed out. Then he led Ortega
toward a computer terminal. "C'mon over here,
Doctor."

Ortega followed without resistance. "What for?"

 "Y'know, there's a whole universe out there you
haven't experienced. How does that make you
feel?"

"Frustrated, I guess."

  "That's what I thought. D'you really want t'
ignore it all? Or would you rather know why we
stopped usin' that Sternn reactor and how our
transporter works?" Then he handed a data
cartridge to Ortega.

  "What's this?" Ortega asked as he held the
cartridge in his palm.

  Scatty nodded toward the computer. "Just take
a look, that's all."

  Ortega inserted the cartridge, and a Starfleet
technical journal appeared on the monitor screen.
He swiveled toward Scott with a questioning look,
but Scott grasped the seat and turned him right
back around to face the screen. "Read, laddie."

  As Scott watched over Ortega's shoulder, the
Empyrean skimmed the journal with increasing
speed and interest, like a hungry man devouring
a menu of delights he's only been able to dream
of previously.

  After a while, Scotty leaned close to Ortega's
ear. "It's all out there," he purred, "just waitin' f'r
you."

  Ortega's fingers dug into the armrests of his
chair. "So what am I supposed to do?"

  "Make y'r voice heard. Y've got to have some
clout here."

"I I guess I do."

"Then use it. Y' may never get another chance."

  For a long moment, Ortega just sat, as if
paralyzed by the churning indecision in the pit of
his stomach. Then, without warning, he popped
up, shoving the 256

           THE BETTER MAN

chair back so abruptly that he almost took Scott's
leg out from under him. "Let's go."

"T' where?"

  "The council hall." He was already rushing
toward the exit. Scott halfjogged to keep up. "I'm
going to make a statement if it's not too late. I
want you to be there."

  Scott stopped for calculated effect. "Am I
allowed? Or is that against y'r rules?"

  "Someone I just met a few days ago taught me
it's not so terrible to bend a rule occasionally."

  "It's an art, laddie," Scott cautioned. "Not f'r
everyone."

  "Empyreans are fast learners. I'll take my
chances. But we'd better hurry."

  Scott flipped open his communicator. "I c'n take
care o' that if y' don't mind makin' a grand
unscheduled entrance."

  "Another new experience, Mr. Scott," Ortega
said with a wry grin. "Let's give it a try."

  Scott nodded. "Scott t' Enterprise. Transporter
room "

  Tinted sunlight streamed down into the airy
Empyrean council chamber through pastel
skylights. With light wood trim, lots of windows,
and minimal ceremonial frippery, it wasn't at all
like some of the other more ostentatious
legislative assemblies McCoy had seen in his
travels.

  Instead, it was an oddly pleasant setting for
what he considered the often excruciating exercise
of representative government. He suppressed a
shudder at the fleeting recognition of how
ill-equipped he would be to serve in such public
office. He just didn't have the patience for the
seemingly endless verbal jousting and jaw flapping
that accompanied so much of governmental
business. Though he couldn't recall who'd said 257

          Howard Weinstein

it, he'd always found wisdom in the old adage
about the untidiness of democracy: There are two
things you should never watch being made:
sausages and laws.

Good thing I'm a doctor, not a democrat, he
thought.

 As for their presence at this council session, he
and Ambassador Rousseau had turned out to be
just so much window dressing. Not a single
question had been directed their way, as if the
Empyreans had deemed them unworthy of being
addressed and unlikely to contribute anything
useful to the debate, which the council members
seemed content to conduct rather informally
among themselves.

 From their seats in the spectator gallery above
and behind the president's podium, McCoy and
Rousseau watched as Elizabeth March hammered
the rostrum with her gavel. The murmuring of a
hundred voices subsided and the councilors, who
were up and about, knotted in sometimes heated
discussions with other members, returned to their
desks.

 - "Fellow members," she announced, "if there are
no objections and no further comments, I call for
a vote on the issue at hand."

  As she spoke, McCoy heard a familiar sound
behind him. He turned to see Scotty and Ortega
nearly materialised, the transporter sparkle fading
around them.

  "I've got an objection," Ortega called out, his
voice echoing down from the gallery. "And I've
got a comment or at least a statement."

  "As most of you know," March said, "Dr. Ramon
Ortega has served ably as liaison to the
Federation observatory for the last five years and
just worked closely with a team from the Starship
Enterprise to avert recent disaster. I think his
opinion may be relevant to the decision we're
facing." The president gestured toward the
assembly with outstretched hands. "Does anyone
mind if Dr. Ortega makes a statement?"

258

           THE BETTER MAN

  There were no objections, and March looked up
at Ortega. "You can speak from there, or you can
come down here, Doctor."

  "Here is fine, President March. I don't want to
take up a lot of your time. So I'll get right to my
point."

  On the bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk and his
officers had already been watching the direct
broadcast from the Empyrean council chamber
with considerable interest, interest that intensified
when Scotty and Ortega appeared rather
unexpectedly on the main viewscreen.

  With a long-suffering sigh, Kirk made a mental
note to have another little chat with Scotty about
the preferability of informing the captain prior to
taking otherwise unauthorised excursions, then
shifted his attention back to the council
proceedings.

  "I was just a boy when the Federation ship first
found us," Ortega said. He spoke softly, as if
unaccustomed to addressing large gatherings. Still,
the council members listened in respectful silence.
"But I was old enough to grasp the importance of
the event. My parents were against that treaty. So
were my grandparents. And so was I, maybe
because they were. It's hard for young people not
to be influenced by the opinions of their elders.

  "As I got older, I kept believing what I'd been
taught to believe: that we should distrust
Outsiders and that this colony of ours would
flourish best in isolation . . . like an exotic flower
grown in some hothouse, away from all the other
flowers, free from unpredictability and corruption.

  "I thought a lot about how human history
seemed to be so much of two steps forward and
one back . . . how Nova Empyrea would be
different, a society that would do away with all
the chaos keeping human beings from reaching
their full potential, a place

                 259
                  
          Howard Weinstein

where humanity would advance by design instead
of by accident.

  "To me, that observatory on the hilltop was a
threat to everything I believed in." Ortega paused
for a breath, licked his lips, and steeled himself
for the hard part of what he had to say. "But part
of me was curious about the Outsiders who
worked there and where they came from. Did they
know things I didn't know, things I shouldknow?
As you all know, that sort of curiosity was not
encouraged, so I kept it to myself. And by the
time I grew up, I'd pretty much forgotten I'd ever
wondered about those things.

  "When members of this council first considered
shutting down the Federation observatory, I was
all for it. In five years of dealing with the
Outsiders, my opinions hadn't changed at all. I
didn't know them, and I didn't really want to."

  He took a deep breath, then plunged ahead.
"And then the events of the past few days
happened. And I've learned that I and we don't
have all the answers. There's a whole universe out
there we haven't experienced in four generations.
There's a universe of knowledge we should have.
We and our human cousins in the Federation
share the same roots. We both have strengths and
weaknesses, but I know we'd both be stronger in
combination, because we each have a lot to offer
the other.

  "We have a chance to make that combination a
reality, and I think we should jump at that chance
now . . . before it's too late. I'm asking you to
renew this treaty and expand it before we
Empyreans have been isolated so long that we
become cosmic curiosities perfect, useless
flowers, unable to compete and survive outside
our own little hothouse."

  He was done and unsure what to do next. He
began to blush as he realised how intently the
council members had been listening. "Thank you,"
he mumbled and hastily sat down.

260

           THE BETTER MAN

  Scotty leaned over with a smile. "That was what
I hoped y'd say," he whispered.

  Even though the hall remained hushed,
President March banged her gavel anyway. "Well,
if there are no other comments or statements, I
call for a vote on the proposition yea or nay on
renewing the treaty between the Federation and
Nova Empyrea. You may enter your votes now."

  McCoy and Scotty watched as some council
members reached immediately for the ballot
buttons on their desks. Others sat back, the
expressions on their faces revealing the difficulty
of the choice they had to make.

  Up at her podium, March checked the
electronic tabulation monitor set into the
speaker's lectern. There were three columns; until
the vote was completed, only the total number
cast would be counted. The yea-versus-nay tally
would remain secret, even from the president,
until all members had committed themselves.

  The same numbers that Elizabeth saw were
simultaneously displayed on two large screens in
the council chamber and in the corner of the
broadcast image being viewed in virtually every
Empyrean household as well as on the Enterprise.

  Kirk noticed that the votes registered in
irregular bunches, as those council members who
were most certain cast their votes quickly, without
much additional contemplation. He wondered how
these first votes broke down. Were the most
decisive council members for or against the
treaty?

  Even as the number cast rose toward the
hundred mark, one or two votes got subtracted
from the total rather than added. As Kirk
understood the rules, until the process was
officially closed, members had the option of
withdrawing previous votes and changing their
minds.

                 261
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  After twenty minutes, the tally had reached
seventy, then seventy-three, then seventy-five, -six,
-eight, -nine, eighty. Then, like a meandering
stream turning into a waterfall, the remaining
twenty votes cascaded in. When the hundredth
vote was locked in, President March banged her
gavel for attention.

  "All votes are in. Is the Council ready for the
final tabulation?" She looked around the chamber.
No one raised a hand or a voice. "All right. This
vote is closed." She brought the gavel down again,
and all heads turned toward the display screens,
which Hashed the totals:

            YEA 51 NAY 49

  With a satisfied smile, President March banged
the gavel one last time and announced for the
record: "The proposition carries. The Empyrean
Council votes to renew the treaty with the United
Federation of Planets."

                 262
                  
              Epilogue

THINGS SURE HAVE CHANGED around
here, Kirk thought as he hurried to the
transporter room. Just a few short days ago, upon
arrival of the Enterprise, Elizabeth March had
informed him in no uncertain terms that only
extremely limited numbers of additional
Starfleet/Federation visitors would be welcome on
Nova Empyrea at any one time and not very
welcome at that.

 And now, scarcely an hour after the treaty
renewal's narrow victory in the Empyrean
Council, March had personally called the
Enterprise to invite him, Spock, and Scott to join
McCoy and Ambassador Rousseau for the
informal initiating of the agreement.

 They beamed down to the gardens outside the
presidential mansion. A wicker table and a pair of
chairs had been set up on the central slate patio
along with a serving cart complete with crystal
goblets and a bottle of wine. When they arrived,
they found McCoy

                 263
                  
          Howard Weinstein

to be the only one there, enjoying the flowers and
the comfortably warm afternoon.

  Kirk was glad to see his friend looking so
relaxed after all he'd endured over the past couple
of weeks. "Bones, where are President March and
Ambassador Rousseau?"

  "Still going over a few details. Maybe patting
themselves on the back or, more likely, pinching
themselves. I don't know about them, but I still
can't believe this all turned out so well."

"How's Anna?"

  McCoy flashed a grin. "She's great, Jim. And I'm
sure she's gonnapass that genetic scan with Hying
colors."

  '~She may not have to." It was Mark
Rousseau's booming voice coming from behind
them.

  Kirk and his officers turned to see the
ambassador approaching with Elizabeth and Anna
in tow.

"What do you mean?" McCoy asked.

  "Well, we've come to some new agreements,"
Rousseau said with a broad smile, bubbling with
satisfaction. "I think we're going to see some
long-standing restrictions falling by the wayside."

  Kirk's eyebrows went up in pleasant surprise.
"Oh? Well, that's certainly encouraging."

  "Yes, we're witnessing the birth of some real co-
operation between us and the Empyreans, and I
think we'll see this process culminating with Em-
pyrean membership in the Federation."

  "Now, Mark," Elizabeth scolded, "you're getting
a little bit ahead of yourself. But we have made a
real, solid start. All that's happened and getting
the Council to agree to a renewal, well, it was like
knocking down a wall and seeing some sunshine
from the other side. The first agreement, beyond
the old treaty, is all ready to implement."

"And what's that?" asked Kirk. 264

           THE BETTER MAN

  "An exchange program for technical and
scientific professionals and students," Rousseau
said.

  "And Anna is going to be with the first group,"
Elizabeth said proudly.

  Anna was obviously as excited as her parents.
"I'm going to go back to Earth for at least a year
of school and travel, and I'll be taking some time
to visit my father's family and get to know them a
little."

  McCoy looked stunned as he forced a feeble
smile. "Well . . . that's . . . that's great."

  With one glance, Kirk could see the pain of
disappointment etched in the lines around
McCoy's eyes. Despite his misgivings when
Elizabeth first told him that he was Anna's father,
McCoy had fully embraced the idea of belated
fatherhood his declarations to the contrary
notwithstanding. The fierceness with which he had
fought to help Anna had been ample proof of
that. Kirk didn't have to be a certified psychiatrist
to see how left out McCoy felt now and how
determined he was not to rain on anybody else's
parade.

  "So," McCoy went on, "your first time away from
the al' homeworld. Well, that's gonna be quite a
trip."

  Anna came up to him and crooked her arm
through his. "Yes, it will, but it won't be complete
unless I also get to spend some time with you on
the Enterprise. I want to get to know my 'other'
father, too" she looked quickly toward Kirk "if
that's all right, Captain."

"I think that could be arranged."

  Elizabeth waved two copies of the agreement,
printed on bound ceremonial parchment. "Then
let's get these signed."

  She and Rousseau sat at the table and picked
up their pens. As they signed quickly, Elizabeth
pointed over at the serving cart. "Somebody take
care of that wine. What's an official occasion
without a toast?"

                 265
                  
          Howard Weinstein

  "I'll be bartender," McCoy volunteered, filling
the goblets for everyone present and passing them
around.

  President March lifted her glass. "Thomas
Jefferson once said, 'One generation cannot bind
another.' So" she looked at her daughter with a
glowing smile "to the future, unbound."

The goblets clinked together, and everybody
drank.

  Kirk turned to Rousseau. "Congratulations, Mr.
Ambassador. I didn't think this was going to be
one of your great successes."

  "Frankly, Captain, neither did I. And I don't
know if it would have been without everything you
and your officers did, particularly your last-minute
bit of virtuoso persuasion, Mr. Scott. I don't know
how you got Dr. Ortega to make that statement,
but you could have quite a future in diplomacy."

  McCoy immediately choked on a mouthful of
wine. Scotty flashed him a dirty look. Kirk fought
back an incredulous smirk, while Spock simply
cocked one eyebrow.

  Then, conspicuously ignoring his shipmates'
reactions, Scotty turned toward Rousseau with a
gracious nod. "Thank you, sir. But I think I'll stick
with the portfolio I've got."

"Thank goodness," McCoy mumbled.

  "Mr. Ambassador," Kirk said, "the Enterprise is
ready to depart Empyrea whenever you are."

  "Actually, Captain, I'm going to be staying here
so we can get started on the next stage of talks.
I've already exchanged messages with the
Federation. They're putting together a complete
negotiating team to join me, and another ship'll be
here in about two weeks."

  "Well, in that case, the best of luck to you. And
to you, President March."

Elizabeth shook Kirk's hand. "Thank you for all

                 266
                  
           THE BETTER MAN

your help, Captain, and your patience. The
Enterprise and her crew will always be welcome
here."

"It was our pleasure."

  Kirk, Spock, and Scotty moved off to allow
McCoy to say his own emotional farewells. First,
he clasped Mark Rousseau's hand, then hugged
both Elizabeth and Anna. As far as Kirk could
tell, no words were spoken. After all that had
happened since the Enterprise came to Nova
Empyrea, there were too many things to say and
yet, no need to actually say them.

  McCoy caught up with his comrades and they
walked through the garden for a bit. Kirk cast a
dubious glance at each of them.

"Something on your mind, Jim?" McCoy asked.

  "As a matter of fact, there is. This was not
exactly a textbook mission, gentlemen."

  Spock responded with an innocent bat of his
eyelashes. "How so, Captain?"

  "How so? McCoy gets kidnapped by a one-man
liberation front . . . you, Spock, risk the safety of
the Enterprise without so much as a hint to me . .
. Scotty beams down, without authorisation, to
twist an arm and barge into a closed council
session. . ." Kirk's voice trailed off and he shook
his head in exasperation. "All in all, some of the
most unorthodox diplomacy I've ever seen."

  "Aye, sir," Scott said. Then he paused. "But it
worked. "

  "That's right, Jim," McCoy agreed, "and you
can't argue with success."

  "Would you care to bet on that?" said Kirk, still
shaking his head. "In the future, gentlemen, I'd
prefer a little more discretion and a little less
unbridled valor."

Spock nodded formally. "As you wish, Captain."

"Aye, sir," Scotty added.

"Whatever you say, Jim," McCoy said. 267

          Howard Weinstein

  Kirk stopped, turned, and faced them. Heads
bowed in contrition, they were the very
embodiment of penitence. With a skeptical
twinkle in his eye, Kirk suppressed the smile
trying to bend the corners of his mouth. "Riiight,"
he growled. Then he flipped open his
communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Four to beam
up . . ."

                 268
                  
          About the Author

Among his nine books, Howard Weinstein has
written five other STAR TREK novels: The
Covenant of the Crown and Deep Domain,
featuring the original crew of the Starship
Enterprise; and three STAR TREK: THE NEXT
GENERATION stories: Power Hungry, Exiles, and
Perchance to Dream.

  Many fans of "Classic" STAR TREK have also
enjoyed Howard's stories in comic book form. He
has been the regular writer of DC Comics'
monthly illustrated STAR TREK adventures since
early 1991, starting with Issue 17.

  DC Comics recently published Tests of Courage,
a trade paperback collection of Howard's special
sixpart story featuring Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy,
and Captain Sulu's first mission in command of
the U.S.S. Excelsior (available in bookstores and
comic shops everywhere).

  Still a cranky New Yorker at heart, Howard
now lives in Maryland with his wife, Susan, and
their short but faithful canine companion, Mail
Order Annie.

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