Stardate 2260.365
It had been several tense months on the colony since the attack but Dagny tried not to worry, mostly because in her scant twenty years of life, life had generally proven to be nothing but tension and uncertainty in some form or fashion. Between the pace of working in the clinic in the afternoons and adjusting to life with a new baby, she didn't have much time to dwell on it during her waking life anyway.
It was late afternoon and she was ambling through Tunnel 4 on her way to the specialty dispensary to collect Safi's formula. Last month, the clinic's replicator had been requisitioned as vital to the food and energy supply, which had made life a frustrating maze of bureaucracy for the clinic. They did their best to get by without specially replicated medical supplies, but Safi couldn't go long without replicated Vulcan breastmilk. Breastfeeding was now much easier than it had been at first, but all the vitamins in the world wouldn't make Dagny produce the nutrients Safi needed for a well-rounded diet and so, three times a week, she was forced to trudge to the dispensary and argue with whomever happened to be on duty that yes, she really had a prescription for breastmilk.
Today's was a small errand, but it marked a big milestone for Dagny. It was the first time she'd deliberately gone more than about ten meters away from her daughter since she'd been born more than two months ago. Normally she took Safi with her or Voris went by himself, but it had been evening by the time Dagny had gotten a free moment and Safi had been fast asleep in the crook of Voris' arm as he'd been updating the clinic's daily logs. Safi was going through a fussy stage and there was absolutely no reason to wake a sleeping baby, so she'd sucked it up and left Safi in Voris' care.
The tunnels were more packed than usual, but she supposed usual was a relative term. So few people had permanent work to keep them occupied these days, so most of them had taken to loitering in the tunnels. When they'd first arrived, more than three quarters of the colonists worked in support of the mining operations. Following the quarantine, most of those had become agricultural laborers, but following the destruction of the crops two months ago, the vast majority of the colony's populace had become unemployed overnight.
The new council was struggling to create jobs, but the majority of them were pointless make-work tasks performed in exchange for the colony's newly minted ration coupons. The clinic even had ten new part-time orderlies, and though they were nice and eager to work, they had no medical knowledge and the floor could only be swept so often. The colony had hastily erected six more greenhouses in the old tunnels but according to Voris' estimates, current demand was still on schedule to outpace projected supply within three months. No cuts to the rations had been announced yet, but they were expected any day now.
Many of the colonists were already looking ahead to how they would feed their families in the coming months. The council had severely limited travel up to surface—the Andorian community had been relocated to a newly dug tunnel near the Gorn settlement, which had ruffled more than a few feathers—but dodging the security patrols and sneaking up to the surface had become Bergeron colony's most popular pastime. Most people went up to the surface to tend to private gardens hidden away in the forest or hunt native animals to supplement their dinner tables. They probably did other things too, but she preferred not to even guess what they were.
All of this instability was generating a lot of patients for the clinic. They were the busiest they'd ever been, surpassing even their first chaotic weeks on the colony, only now instead of routine mining injuries, people arrived with bloody noses, busted lips, swollen knuckles, and the occasional knife wound. People were restless, bored, and afraid, and this new collective psychology was transforming Bergeron colony in ways Dagny didn't like.
The council's decision to strictly ration food and other essential items via a complex coupon system that no one really understood had caused a black market to spring up almost immediately. Just last night, Voris had been awoken to treat two young human men who had been badly beaten while attempting to buy a homemade phaser. They'd been brought in by two of the colony's new peace officers, provided with medical treatment, and carted off to join the colony's rapidly expanding jail population.
There were too many worrying trends, but Dagny didn't want to think about them this evening. It was the eve of the Federation New Year, it was getting late, and she was eager to get home to her baby and her… Voris. She'd spent the past week getting creative with cooking, trying to stretch their meals without shaving off too many calories, all so she would have enough ration coupons left over to make her mother's New Year's good luck stew.
She breezed through the front exit of Tunnel 4 and back onto the loop and upon passing two of the newly erected greenhouses tucked in behind a housing block, was startled to discover guards patrolling the perimeter. She must have looked like an idiot, literally stopping in her tracks to stare at them with mouth agape when one of them caught her gaze.
"Move along," he said tersely, waving at her with the baton in his hand.
All she could do was give a dumb nod of her head and comply, but the whole scene made her uncomfortable. Was it that the council had preemptively decided the greenhouses needed protection, or was there some legitimate reason they'd been posted there? Neither the thought of an authoritarian government nor a desperate and frightened citizenry gave her the warm fuzzies.
About a hundred meters off the main loop, she turned right into Tunnel 3 and was dismayed to find the line for the dispensary was backed up almost to the tunnel's entrance. There were about thirty or so people ahead of her, and often the people tasked with operating the replicators were inexperienced and slow. This was going to take at least an hour, if not more. If she weren't completely out of formula, she would just try again tomorrow. She checked the time, wondering if Zernon's stand would still be open to pick up the ingredients she needed for her stew.
She started to weigh her options. The dispensary was open all hours and she could come back later, but just as she was debating leaving the line, it shifted upward and two women walked away wearing surly faces.
"Yeah, he's gone too," muttered a man in front of her.
"Just him or the whole family?" a heavyset man asked.
She knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but it was hard not to listen in, not only because their conversation was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but also because there was little else for her to do while she faced the drudgery of shuffling through a queue.
"Took his whole family. Little ones and all."
"What an idiot. They have scanners, you know and besides, where could they go?"
"I know. I told them it was insane, but he kept saying he didn't like the look of things here."
The original speaker cast a sidelong glance at her and nodded, "Good evening, Miss Dagny."
"Yes, you too," she replied through a thin-lipped smile. She had no idea who they were, but she was sure she'd probably treated them in the clinic at some point.
"You're pretty pale," added the heavyset man. "You feeling ok?"
"Yeah, it's just been a long day and I'm looking forward to getting home."
"Where's that baby of yours?"
"She's at home with her father."
"Shame, she's such a cute little thing."
Dagny examined their faces more closely, wondering why she had no idea who they were. Were they that busy in the clinic these days, or was her mind really just that fried from worry and sleep deprivation?
"Don't tell me you're getting any ideas about leaving?" asked the heavyset man.
Her heart started to thump in her chest. Of course she and Voris planned to get off Cestus III at the first available opportunity, but the way he'd asked the question made it seem like high treason. "No, we- we're staying here."
"That's a relief," he laughed. "Don't think the colony could afford to lose its doctors and anyway, isn't that baby of yours only a few weeks old? Doubt she'd make it out there."
Dagny crossed her arms, now thoroughly confused and a little bit scared and annoyed that someone would suggest under any circumstances that Safi wouldn't "make it." And somehow people were finding a way to leave the colony even despite the quarantine? "I'm sorry, what?"
"Sal Rogers packed up his family and snuck off in the night. They've got to be at least the fifth group to leave this month."
"Where would they sneak off to?"
"I imagine some people are heading off to the abandoned Federation colony. I guess other people might try to live off the land."
"But why? If there's another attack- I mean, the people who attacked us had phasers and if they have warp engines and phasers, they have to have scanners too. They're not going to be able to hide from anyone."
Before either of them could answer, shouting broke out at the head of the line over synthetic butter. A peace officer wearing black armbands walked briskly in that direction, prompting the smaller man to say, "I suppose they'd rather take their chance with an unknown attacker than the people they know at Bergeron colony."
"It was the Gorn who attacked us," the heavyset man said darkly. "No question about it."
"Then why hasn't the council confirmed that?" Dagny asked, trying to keep an eye on the front of the line.
"They don't want to start a panic and rumor has it, they're trying to work out some kind of deal with the Federation for protection. The Federation might not approve of some of our more undesirable residents, but there's no way they're going to let those lizard bastards have all this dilithium. I hope when they do come they wipe every single one of them-"
"Jeff, that's probably enough," the heavyset man interrupted, not taking his eyes off Dagny. "You're scaring Miss Dagny."
Dagny was barely listening over the sound of blood rushing through her ears. It wasn't her first time dealing with casual racism while living in the colony, but to hear someone so casually imply the Gorn should be "wiped out" shocked her beyond belief. She knew should say something, but with all the victims of recent scuffles and fights she'd seen end up in the clinic in recent weeks, she suddenly felt afraid.
"Anyway, it's scary times we're living in. Scarier than any this colony's ever seen anyway. You stay safe and take care of that little one."
Dagny wrapped her arms tighter around her body and bit her lower lip. The two men went back to gossiping about other colonists and complaining about the council and soon the people standing in front of them joined in and it took everything she had to avoid listening. It was New Year's Eve—all she wanted was a quiet night at home with her daughter and her… Voris.
The line moved more quickly than she'd initially thought it might and about forty minutes later, she was handing a PADD to a surly looking man who looked vaguely familiar.
"Synthetic Vulcan breastmilk?" he asked, a definite tone of skepticism polluting his voice.
"Um, yes. Twelve bottles."
"What's it for?"
Was he really serious? "Um, to feed a baby?"
"What's wrong with those?" he asked, nodding in the direction of Dagny's chest.
Her face grew white hot, but remembering the confrontation from earlier about the synthetic butter that had resulted in a woman getting hauled off to spend the night in jail, she managed to temper her response, even if just barely.
"My daughter is half Vulcan and needs certain nutrients that she can't get from me," she explained through gritted teeth, suddenly ashamed that she was having to explain to a strange man that she was an inadequate mother.
"How old is your daughter?" he asked, leaning his elbows on the counter.
"A little more than two months old, but why does that matter? I have a prescription written right here."
"Two months? Isn't that old enough to start eating regular food?"
"No!" Dagny shouted.
"You might want to watch yourself," he growled. "Or that baby of yours might be going hungry while you sleep your bad mood off in a cell."
It was impossible to hide the fact that she was shaking violently and torn between wanting to ring this smug man's neck and bursting into tears. Either he sensed he'd crossed a line or he was done having his fun at her expense, so he straightened his back and said, "This prescription says twelve bottles. I can give you six."
"That's only half."
"Wow, some good school you must have gone to, to have figured that out so quickly. I can give you six."
"So when am I supposed to come pick up the rest of them?" she retorted, her voice dangerously low. She was so angry she didn't notice the people in line behind her who were irritated with the hold up.
"Two days from now."
"Twelve bottles is how much I need to make it through the next two days, not six."
"What's wrong with you, Kerry? Give her the twelve bottles," snapped a female voice from somewhere inside the dispensary. "She has a prescription."
"Yes, but Anja said we needed to-"
"Yes, my aunt said we needed to start managing people's expectations, but she didn't say we had gotten into the business of starving little babies." Morna, Aisla's sister, appeared from around the corner carrying her daughter Lula on her hip. "Hand me your prescription love and I'll get it filled for you."
Morna started to bicker with the rude, burly man, but eventually Dagny left with the twelve bottles she'd come for. She wasn't certain she would be so lucky next time, however, so she made a mental note to ask Aisla when her sister worked in the dispensary and try to visit during those hours.
She wandered back to the main tunnel in a daze, now more aware than ever just how much had changed on the colony in the past two months. There was more graffiti on the walls and more trash in the tunnels, which was surprising, given that so many people were now employed in maintenance and janitorial functions. She saw several people eyeing the refrigerated bag under her arm containing Safi's bottles and she tucked it closer to her body and walked faster.
As she approached the clinic, she remembered she was supposed to stop by Zernon's food stand and collect groceries for the week. Rather than drop the bottles off at home and then have to leave again, she kept walking past the clinic. When she arrived at Zernon's she was in for a major shock.
Three men were carefully packing up the empty boxes that had once contained many apples and potatoes and gespar and fruits and vegetables from all over the Federation. Zernon was leaning against the tunnel wall with his arms crossed, a defiant look in his eyes.
"Zernon?"
"Oh Dagny! I'm sorry you've come to witness my loss."
"I actually came to get a few potatoes, carrots, and onions."
"All out of everything, I'm afraid."
"But I saw you just this morning. I asked you-"
"I know. You asked me to reserve you a basket. I still have your list," he groaned, holding up his PADD. "But they came and took it. They took everything. I'm being shut down."
"What do you mean?"
"All independent food trade has been ended, effective immediately."
"B-but where am I supposed to get food?" she stammered.
"From the same place everyone will be getting it from now on—the central pantry. They retrofitted the old tunnel next to the auditorium into a central food storage and there's some new system for who can draw food and when."
"I haven't heard anything about this," she blurted. "When did this start."
"Oh, about two hours ago? I was only just informed. They've taken everything." He uttered a despondent sigh that turned into a soft squeal.
"I'm so sorry Zernon," she said, feeling genuinely sympathetic toward her friend but also concerned about getting groceries.
"It's not your fault."
"No," she agreed. "But I'm still sorry. I'm also sorry that I can't stay. I guess I need to get down to this new pantry and get my groceries."
"Oh, according to the order I was given, the hours are from 0900 to 1300. They aren't open right now and even if they were, people in the main tunnel draw food on day five."
"But that's three days from now. I have all these ration coupons I need to use and they're only good through tomorrow."
Zernon gave her a sympathetic look. "It's my turn to be sorry."
Dagny was on the brink of tears. "I- I don't have enough groceries to feed-"
He stood and motioned her away from the men who were dismembering his food stand. "I know this is very frightening, but I can't stand to see you upset. Wait right here."
She did as he asked, mostly because she was too numb to process this new information and she was too occupied with trying to make an inventory of every item of food in the preserver and how she could possibly stretch it out over the next three days. Several people stopped to watch Zernon's food stand disappear and each made their own comments about it, and it was all Dagny could to do keep from breaking down.
About ten minutes later, Zernon reappeared and ushered her even further away from the work crew and onlookers. Faster and more casually than she would have believed possible, he tucked two small potatoes and a large carrot into the bag with Safi's bottles and immediately shushed her when she tried to protest and thank him. "Just get home and have a happy New Year," he said quietly.
When she finally made it back to the clinic, it was nearly 2000 hours and she found it dark and deserted. They did their best to keep people from spending the night in the convalescent ward these days because getting the extra rations to feed them had become quite difficult. Dagny could only imagine how much worse it would get in the near future.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, she momentarily forgot all her cares when she discovered Voris sitting on the bed next to Safi, speaking in Vulcan and pointing to different parts on her body. He touched his finger to her big toe and said, "toe, gof," then moved his finger to the top of her foot and said, "foot, ash'ya." He then moved on to "ankle, mal-nik" and "knee, mal-nef" before he seemed to sense Dagny's presence in the doorway.
"Don't you think she's a little young to be learning the parts of the body?" Dagny chuckled.
"She is the child of a healer," he replied seriously. "And I so rarely know what to discuss with her."
"Just because you're a healer doesn't mean she'll want to be one."
"I am aware."
"It's hard to not get the sense that you're strongly encouraging her to take that path. She's only two months old—she still has a few years before she needs to start making some career decisions."
"It would be illogical to force her to choose a profession she was poorly suited to, but it is perfectly reasonable that I might cultivate an inherent interest in it by exposing her to the field at an early age."
"How did she do while I was gone?"
"She was distressed by your departure, but I managed to calm her and since then, she's been quite pleased with making gurgling sounds."
"That's good." And it was. She hadn't thought to be away from her baby so long and she wouldn't be able to hold Safi's hand every moment of every day for the rest of her life and yet… she hated that her baby could forget her so easily. Dagny knew she was being ridiculous, but hadn't Safi missed her at all? She entered the kitchen, set her bag on the counter, and opened the preserver door. There seemed to be less food than she remembered.
"You have returned quite later than I anticipated," he said, picking up Safi and tucking her into the crook of his arm.
"Uh, yes, there was a long line at the dispensary."
Safi began to struggle against Voris' hold on her and whimper. Despite what Voris said about her being too young to know whether or not she had heightened empathic abilities, Dagny didn't doubt it. Whenever she was the least bit sad, worried, angry, or scared, Safi knew it, and it wasn't just Dagny she was capable of reading. It was often difficult to have her downstairs in the clinic during busy times because the tension of a lot of patients in pain clearly aggravated her.
When Safi started to cry, Dagny took her from Voris' arm and held her close to her chest. Rather than interrupt the moment between mother and daughter, Voris began unpacking the bag. He held up the potatoes and carrot and asked, "Were these the only groceries you were able to obtain?"
She couldn't hold it in any longer—the tears flowed like rain. The harder she cried, the harder Safi cried and almost immediately, Voris was by her side offering to meld with her. She didn't even bother answering him with words: she buried her face in his chest and sobbed until the gentle touch of his hands on her face and the joy of mental transference began to calm her. She rambled about the events of the past two hours, sometimes aloud and sometimes not, and when she was done, he broke their mind meld and asked if she was calm enough to speak.
Sometimes she got angry at how placid and emotionless he could be. She'd just told him they weren't going to get any more food for three days and about how awfully she'd been treated at the dispensary, and he was acting like she'd just told him she stubbed her toe. Yet she didn't know what she would do if he wasn't the cool and collected person that he was. She needed him around not just for her own sanity, but for Safi's as well.
"I'm scared, Voris."
"It is a concerning situation," he replied. "We are fortunate Zernon was so generous."
"He said something about these belonging to you, I think," Dagny hiccupped, nodding to the potatoes and carrot on the counter. "But I didn't really understand what he meant."
"It is not important, what matters is Safi has sufficient food. You and I will find a way to manage until it is our day to visit the pantry."
Dagny dried her eyes and she and Voris worked together to fashion an odd meal out of the carrot, one of the potatoes, a green apple, and the last bit of plomeek broth from that morning's breakfast. Voris fed Safi half of one of the bottles while they ate and the sight of him artfully balance a baby in one arm while daintily spearing small bites of roasted potato with a fork to feed himself was a heartwarming thing to watch.
Safi was only two months old, but she was growing up at a rate much faster than Dagny remembered babies growing. She was cooing and smiling and could even hold her head up if supported in a sitting position. Safi was fast becoming her own little person and it made her mother's heart swell with about a million different emotions every time she thought about it.
They prepared for bed immediately following their hodgepodge dinner, but Safi seized the opportunity and decided she was wide awake and wanted nothing to do with being deposited into a crib for the night. She was sleeping longer these days, but her schedule was extremely irregular, thanks in large part to Voris being woken many nights to tend to emergency patients.
The only thing that would calm Safi on this particular night was to be held and walked around the room, so that was what Dagny did for several hours. When the clock struck midnight, she grinned to herself and began whispering the words to Auld Lang Syne in Safi's ear. It was a new year on Bergeron colony, but what it held in store remained to be seen. No matter what, she was very thankful for her child and her… Voris.
Stardate 2261.30
Voris moved purposefully through the tunnels, nodding calmly to the few people he passed but paying close attention to the peace officers as he walked. He had been careful to wipe all traces of mud from his boots and all the dirt from under his fingernails. There was no reason for anyone to suspect he'd been on the surface, unless of course he'd been followed, in which case, the mud and dirt would not matter much.
Some of the root vegetables he'd planted three months ago were finally beginning to mature. The sweet potatoes and onions would require at least another month, but he had enough carrots and golden potatoes in his medical bag to make at least two full meals for himself and Dagny, but he had not wanted to overfill it and possibly draw attention to himself. Voris was rather new to the world of circumventing patrols and black market trading, but just because he was renowned for being honest did not mean he intended to be taken advantage of.
He had begun making his plans the night after Samantha Bergeron had died. In the early days following the attack, people still freely went up to the surface and nearly half the colony had attended her funeral. It likely would have been far more too, had people not been so afraid of another attack. Sam was buried next to her wife, a woman Voris had never met named Lucy Coronado. Voris had been the last to leave the funeral and he supposed most people had just assumed he needed to grieve privately or perhaps supposed he was particularly attached to Samantha Bergeron.
Both were true, but they were not the only reasons he'd remained by her grave well past nightfall. He had traded Zernon two bottles of Romulan ale for several packs of seeds and potato berries and tubers. He'd used them to turn approximately one quarter of the cemetery into a semi-cultivated garden. He was unsure if it was disrespectful to the dead to grow food over their corpses, but he meant no offense. It was only logical. They were dead and he was trying to avoid sharing a similar fate in the immediate future.
The cemetery was an ideal spot. Most of the colonists who were attempting to grow gardens such as his had elected to go many kilometers beyond the colony for fear of being caught by the peace officers or having their crops discovered by thieves. The cemetery was close enough for him to monitor every few weeks and was hiding in plain sight.
It was also well camouflaged. When he'd first sown the seeds into ground, he removed many of the weeds to allow the root vegetables space to grow, but as he could not tend it regularly and no maintenance crews came to the surface to tend the graves, it had grown quite wild throughout late spring and into summer. The tops of the carrots and potatoes blended in well with the native plant life and as he'd just discovered, no one appeared to be aware there was food mixed in among the graves.
He checked the time on his PADD and noticing it was now 0550 hours and there was no one in sight, he turned into Jester Blakely's tavern and found Mr. Blakely sweeping the floor behind the bar. "A bit early for a drink, isn't it doc?" he asked, yawning and propping himself up on his broom.
Voris surveyed the room and once he was satisfied it was empty, approached the bar. "According to my records, you never returned for a follow up appointment for your umbilical hernia."
Mr. Blakely began to reverberate with a slow, steady laugh. "So you're making a house call now? What's it been? A year?"
"As you were released from the clinic on 2260.141 and it is now 2261.30, the basic arithmetic informs me it has been 254 days, or approximately eight and a half months."
"Better late than never," he sighed, forcing his eyes open and returning to his morning chores. "I actually feel pretty great. Business is terrible and I'm on the Bergeron diet like everyone else, but my health isn't much to complain about."
"I have an ulterior motive for visiting you," Voris declared.
"I was starting to get that feeling," Mr. Blakely replied slyly. "Never thought I'd see a proper Vulcan in my bar, and let's face it: 6 o'clock in the morning is a little early to be drinking even for the most dedicated alcoholic. What do you need and what are you offering?"
"I have simply come to inquire what food you might have available."
"That depends on what you're willing to trade for it."
"This is a tavern, and based on my understanding of the local economy, I believe alcohol might be well received."
"Depends on the alcohol. What do you got?"
"What are you willing to accept?"
"It's pretty desperate here but I still have standards. If you came here to offer vanilla extract or mouthwash, you can save it. You have some kind of homebrew or something professional?"
"It was distilled locally."
"Distilled?" His eyes lit up. "You come bearing gifts of liquor?"
"Not a gift. A trade."
"Until I know what it is, I can't tell you what I can offer."
"Unless you can give me some indication of what you can offer, I see no reason to continue our conversation." Voris turned on his heel but Mr. Blakely stopped him.
"Never figured you'd be one to drive such a hard bargain, doc, but I respect the position you're in because I'm in it myself."
Both men stared at each other. "What do you have available?" Voris asked again.
Mr. Blakely rubbed his chin. "I've got about ten kilos of Klingon gagh. Not the best stuff, mind you, but the Klingons say it's edible."
"I do not consume animal flesh."
The old man's eyes narrowed. After several more minutes of détente and haggling, Voris left Jester Blakely's establishment with a kilogram of assorted nuts, two heads of lettuce, six tomatoes, six sweet potatoes, two jars of peanut butter, two jars of jam, and a large Tellarite gourd in exchange for the Andorian ale Shurnel had given him. Apparently it was a popular drink and becoming quite difficult to come by.
He carried his groceries in one of the large emergency medical kits normally stationed at the entrances to the larger tunnels, but it still bulged slightly along the sides and looked rather awkward. When he was stopped by a peace officer just thirty meters from the clinic and asked what he was doing with the medical kit in the early hours of the morning, Voris calmly explained he had been performing an inventory on each of the deployed kits and was returning non-serviceable supplies to the clinic.
It was a lie in every sense of the word, but he had the benefit of being Vulcan and the colony's respected physician on his side and the peace officer was a boy, probably no older than nineteen or twenty. Lying was illogical, but the threat of hunger made people do unusual things. Rations had already been reduced by twenty percent—and would likely be reduced again within the next month—and it was growing more difficult to obtain ration coupons every week.
When he entered the clinic, he was surprised to find Dagny awake and speaking with Anja, Aisla's aunt, who was a senior member of the council in the wake of Samantha Bergeron's death. Dagny was bouncing Safi on her hip and looked intensely relieved by his presence. "There you are! Where have you been?"
He nodded to the large medical bag hanging from his shoulder and told the same lie about exchanging old supplies in the tunnel's medical kits.
"It's a little early for that, don't you think?" Anja asked, slowly studying Voris from head to toe. He had the vague sense he was being interrogated, which might have been worrisome for anyone besides a Vulcan. Orions pheromones were often cited as being among the best pseudo-truth serums known to science, but Vulcans were largely immune to them.
"The clinic opens at 0630 and stays quite busy throughout the day," Voris explained. "I was merely trying to make the most efficient use of my time."
Her eyes narrowed but she said nothing further on the matter of him roaming the tunnels before daybreak. "As I was telling Dagny, we have a bit of a problem."
"Anything I may assist with?" Voris asked, gently sliding the medical bag under the computer station.
"What do you know about growing crops?" For a fleeting moment, he wondered if she knew about his private cemetery garden, but a lifetime of logical training reminded him to admit nothing.
"As a boy, I kept a garden. I was an average horticulturalist, I believe."
"Did you ever get blight?"
"Most certainly. I would be surprised to encounter a gardener who did not."
Anja held out several cabbage leaves, which Voris took. They appeared almost burned and moldy. "What do you make of this?" she asked.
"I'm a doctor, not a botanist."
"Out of everyone on this colony, you easily have the most training in the biosciences. I need you to figure out what's on these leaves and find a way to kill it."
Voris held it up to the light for closer inspection. "It appears to be some kind of fungus, though I won't know for certain until I ran some tests. Even then-"
She held up a hand to cut him off. "This is a matter of life and death, Dr. Voris. This has already spread through most of Greenhouse 1 and was found in Greenhouse 2 yesterday afternoon. We've been trying to keep this quiet, but too many people work in the greenhouses. People are already starting to panic and if we could show that we have a solution to this problem right away, I think that would calm people down."
"The clinic opens in five minutes."
"Not today, it doesn't," Anja said, a note of apology in her voice. "The council has decided to close the clinic to give you time to research this blight. Just temporarily."
"What?" Dagny blurted. "We have a full schedule today, plus any emergency that might pop up."
"The clinic will be open for emergency patients, but I'm afraid your appointments and regular walk-ins are cancelled."
"Anja, you can't really think-" Dagny began.
"I don't know what to think," Anja interrupted. "But I do know managing the food supply is the most important thing right now—more important than routine back aches and upset tummies."
As little as Voris liked having his clinic shut down, he found himself forced to agree with her. To be fair, his specialty was interspecies medicine, he had just never imagined that interspecies would be defined so broadly as to include lettuce.
"We are here to serve," Voris said. "I will require additional samples of the affected produce and will likely need other supplies."
"Anything you need, I'll see that you get it."
"Live long and prosper," Voris said, making the sign of the ta'al.
Anja nodded gravely. "Yes, may we all live long and prosper, if only for just a few more weeks."
Once the door was closed behind her, Dagny gave him a shocked and ugly look. "You're just going to let her close down the clinic?"
"What choice do I have?" he replied. "And she is correct. It is only temporary and the colony's food supply is scant enough without this additional threat."
He picked up the medical kit and headed for the stairs. Safi began crying, leading Voris to deduce Dagny was upset. Once safely inside their quarters, Voris looked to Dagny and said, "Please close the door."
She did as he asked while he opened the medical kit with the food he'd bartered and grown.
"What's going on with you?" she asked, turning back to him. "I woke up and you weren't here and- where did you get all of that?"
He was hesitant to divulge his secret garden to her. Only two nights ago, they'd treated a man who'd been shot returning from tending to his illegal garden plot. Yes, he was certain knowledge of his secret in the cemetery would only worry her. "I traded for it."
"Traded what?"
"Alcoholic beverages I received as payment for medical services."
"There's almost enough food here for us for a week."
"I know."
"But we actually have enough food-"
"We have enough food for the next four days, but we cannot be certain that will always be the case. These items will last in the preserver until we need them."
She shifted Safi on her hip and rubbed her face with her free hand. "How much longer do we have of this quarantine?"
"Tomorrow will be six months."
"What are we going to do?"
"I do not know, but right now, I plan to go downstairs to the clinic and play doctor to the colony's cabbage. Perhaps you might join me? I believe it will be educational for both of us."
Dagny rolled her eyes and gave a small laugh. "None of this is funny, you know."
"No," he agreed. "So why do you laugh?"
"To keep from crying," she responded, giving Safi a gentle hug and reaching for his hand. Voris accepted the touch of her fingers, allowing the gentle sensation of ozh'esta to trickle through his hand and forearm.
Dagny still seemed to have no concept that this was an intimate gesture performed between mates, but he saw no reason to correct the record. It brought her comfort and truth be told, it brought him comfort too.