favor him. This would not, could not, go on indefinitely. Sooner or later, his crew was going to figure out what was going on. They would figure it out and—
And what? Morgan was in charge of the ship. What if they wanted to return to Xenex, and Morgan—as would invariably be the case—decided that she didn’t think that was such a good idea?
Now the events that he had set into motion by contacting Soleta were growing in urgency and importance. He had laid out a plan to expunge Morgan from the ship once and for all, but he was counting on a woman who had turned into a renegade Romulan spy to be his salvation. Suddenly what had seemed a fairly reliable strategy appeared full of holes, and he wondered whether he had pushed his famed luck beyond the breaking point. He was counting on a great deal of things to go right in relation to a situation where almost nothing had gone right.
“This must be very hard on you.”
Calhoun had been leaning against an outcropping of rock when the female voice spoke silkily from behind him. He turned and saw the image of his wife smiling at him.
“If you really think that I’m going to lead you to my people, you are badly mistaken,” he informed her.
“If you really think we care in the slightest about your people, it is you who are badly mistaken,” the false Shelby replied. “This is an egomaniac’s dream, Calhoun. It’s about you. It’s all about you.”
“Get out of my wife’s face,” said Calhoun, “or we have nothing else to talk about.”
She shrugged in what seemed a very human manner. “If it will expedite matters,” she said, and there was a slight shimmer along her body. Seconds later, the D’myurj was standing in front of him, and he (Calhoun took it to be a “he”) inclined his head slightly. “Is this preferable?”
It was still difficult for Calhoun to make out precisely what the D’myurj looked like. He was suffused with a glowing blue light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and his body was translucent, constantly shifting and shimmering. But at least he didn’t look like Shelby anymore, so that was a plus.
“What’s the purpose of this game?” said Calhoun. He tried not to let the exhaustion he was feeling be apparent to the D’myurj. “You know where I am. You could just beam me out. My people would never know what happened to me. They’d assume I was killed.”
“And your legend would live on.”
“What the hell do you care about my legend?”
It was hard to get any sense of the D’myurj’s facial expressions, but his voice projected carefully maintained sadness. “How little you understand us, Calhoun. Of course we care about your legend. We care about everything. There are vast aspects to this that you cannot comprehend. How can I explain the full picture to you when you can’t even see the frame?”
“Why not give it a try?” said Calhoun.
The D’myurj regarded him with interest. “You know… in many ways, you remind me of Selar. She had that same look of determination on her face, right before she blew herself to oblivion.”
“You were there.”
“Oh yes. I was there on AF1963 when she set her phaser to self-destruct and annihilated our entire operation.”
“The purpose of which was to create clone bodies for you creatures to inhabit, so you could infiltrate all aspects of Federation life. Am I right?”
“That is one small part of it, yes. I believe I will keep the rest of it to myself.”
Calhoun turned away from him and picked a random direction in which to walk. A moment later, the D’myurj was floating in front of him, pacing him effortlessly. “Calhoun, it’s important that you understand—”
“You keep saying that, but not explaining why.”
“Because you have placed yourself squarely into the middle of all this, and people have died because of it. It’s more a matter of respect than anything else.”
Calhoun laughed bitterly at that. “Really. Respect.”
“Yes. Why, what else?”
“I’m thinking it’s more an attempt to try and wear me down psychologically.”
“Think what you wish.”
“I usually do.”
The sun was fast approaching the horizon, and Calhoun was relieved because the heat was truly beginning to wear on him. He was looking forward to a bit of time in the shadow. He wasn’t deluding himself into thinking that he would be able to hide from the D’myurj at this point, but at least he could get some rest in the