Department of Temporal Investigations: Time Lock (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) by Christopher L. Bennett

Author:Christopher L. Bennett [Bennett, Christopher L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek
Published: 2016-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

IV

Vault time: 1700 UTC, July 6

External time: 1816 UTC, July 29

Gronim City, Denobula

The office staff had organized a birthday party for Dulmur, gathering in the dining hall that occupied the pavilion one level up from the bottom of the stepwell, overlooking the central fountain. They had made a game attempt to be festive, but it was difficult when Lucsly, the director, and the others were still trapped within the Vault. Only sixty-eight minutes had passed from their perspective so far, but the psychological effect on their colleagues outside was that of a prolonged siege, and Dulmur wondered more with each passing day if the inventors of the time lock had really considered the toll it would take on the Department as a whole.

Still, an assistant director had his team to think of, so Dulmur had made a game attempt to be upbeat and sociable. It wasn’t easy, though, since most of the people here were still fairly new acquaintances. Ranjea and Garcia were the two he knew best, but they were still in the field, trekking out to the Gum Nebula to search for leads on Daiyar and her raiders. All his other close colleagues and friends were back on Earth—or on Eris.

The saving grace of the evening had been Doctor Cymmen. Dulmur hadn’t expected to see the Science Ministry liaison at his party, but she had insisted she wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Cymmen had been one of the high points of this strenuous month, one of the most reasonable and accommodating bureaucrats he’d ever dealt with (speaking as a bureaucrat himself). Not that she was a pushover; Cymmen had her own firm opinions and goals and could not be easily swayed from them. But she was willing to listen and to compromise, and on those occasions when she’d convinced Dulmur to back down or change his mind, it had never felt to him like a loss. In some cases, her recommendations had improved the efficiency of the office and eased its dealings with the Denobulan government.

Cymmen was a lively conversationalist as well, with the fondness for storytelling that was common among Denobulans. She had spent much of the evening regaling Dulmur with tales about the births of her younger siblings and her own two daughters (one per husband), as well as tales of the various weddings within her extended family, and she had managed to extract some of Dulmur’s more embarrassing birthday and wedding stories from him. She’d even gotten him to talk about his ex-wife Megumi, and her kind acceptance had made him feel more at peace with his memories of Meg than he had in years.

“You’ve talked about births and weddings, but not birthdays,” Dulmur said to her at last. “Aren’t those something Denobulans celebrate?”

“Well, more a birth season than birthdays per se,” the pleasant-featured doctor replied. “Since we have a mating season timed with the monsoons, the births usually tend to be clustered within a specific part of the year as well. It takes

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