"That's Starfleet issue, isn't it?" Kathryn asked as he examined it by the firelight. His fingers found the etched insignia, and he felt the star in its middle. "Sure is."

"Old insignia. How old do you think it is?" Her fingers strayed around his, feeling the imprint.

"Hard saying. It's at least before me. I've seen this on early buildings on Trebus that were built by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers."

She took another bite of risotto and smiled. "Now, if Neelix where here, I'd be eating roasted leola root."

"I don't see Neelix climbing mountains."

"You underestimate him, Chakotay."

He stopped and thought for a few minutes, enjoying his risotto. "You're right. But I am grateful he's not here."

She smiled demurely at her food.

"And it seems equally likely that Tuvok's not going to be calling us in the next few minutes."

Her smile grew. "Do you know where Tuvok is now? Right now?"

"No idea."

"He's teaching a class for Starfleet Academy. Sponsored by the Vulcan Ambassador himself."

"No!" he exclaimed, and choked on his food. "He's teaching Care and Feeding of, " and she finished with him, "Your Humans in Starfleet."

"Exactly. He and Vorik were asked to teach it for this semester. Vorik tried to get out of it, but his new wife insisted that they stay and he teach the class."

"He's a good engineer. Is he a good teacher?"

"I can't answer that. The class is being held off-campus at the Vulcan Compound in Alameda."

"Vorik got married? Does B'Elanna know?"

"She's the one who told me about it."

"Residual bond from Sekkora?"

"I doubt it. She was invited to the wedding. Amadora is human."

In the firelight, she could see his eyebrow rise. "Too many years around humans, I guess."

"Perhaps. They attended the Academy together. When we got back, she contacted him. For a Vulcan, it seemed rather whirlwind, but T'Pel assures me that the union is highly satisfactory for Vorik and his family."

"And Tuvok? He wanted to teach Vulcan Human Relations?"

"I doubt it, but his superior officer insisted that he accept a planet-based position for the next two years."

"You insisted?"

"Not me, T'Pel." She sipped a cup of steaming coffee and sighed with extreme happiness. "He's recovered well from his illness, and he's been assigned to write the tactical report of the trip to the Delta Quadrant. T'Pel expects him to remain near the Voyager archives for another two years, then return to Vulcan."

"What have you been doing, Kathryn? Since the debriefing ended?"

"What?" she said with an ironic laugh. "Don't you follow the media?"

"Not at all."

She relaxed into her cup again, and set down her empty plate. "I've been told I owed desk duty to Starfleet for seven years straight in deep space."

"Desk duty? You?"

"Me. If it had been a real job, I might have enjoyed it." The fire in front of her dimmed the heavens of their brightness, but a few shining stars overcame the ambient light. "I missed being out there, after a while. But mostly Starfleet filled my days with idiotic interviews with reporters who only knew ten or twelve questions. I could have made a holographic image of myself and it's unlikely most of them would have ever noticed.

"One of them wants to write the definitive history of our 'Trek to the Delta Quadrant', that's his working title. If he weren't so insufferably rude and presumptuous, I wouldn't have done to him what I did."

A certain cold, familiar shiver chilled Chakotay on the back of his neck. "What did you do?"

"I told him to call Neelix."

They laughed together until the tears ran from their eyes.

"So, what else have you been doing?"

She tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. "I've been trying to have something akin to a normal life, but I've lost track of what's normal, I think. I want to get back out there, away from desks and politics and stupid landlords who hate my dog."

"Another dog?"

"Second one, really. Amber was just too crazy to live in town; she's with my mother now. The new one, Babette, is too sedate, but she doesn't tear up the carpeting, which makes the landlord happy."

"Not a good match, then."

"Not really. If I get my deep space assignment, she'll be happy somewhere here on earth. Maybe I can pawn her off on Admiral East... speaking of her, you owe me."

"Why?"

"Perhaps that little item called departure date for the Decker slipped your mind last month?" Chakotay carefully did not respond, and she continued lightly. "She was mollified by Martok's request that you remain on Qo'NoS during the peace talks with Cardassia during the stand-off over the destruction of their ship, but I heard all about it." She patted his knee. "You owe me."

"I'll pay, gladly. Who took the Decker out?"

"Your first officer, Dumas. Since the Decker's gone for another six-month tour, you'll probably find you've lost her for good. And that's the other reason I tracked you down."

"Other than big, grey and ugly?"

"Yes, other than big, grey and ugly." She drank the last dregs of her cup, and poured herself another. "What do you want to do next, Chakotay? Another ship?"

He considered it slowly, sipping his own cooling tea. "I don't know anymore."

They sat silently together, watching the sparks rise to the stars.

"It's hard for me, Kathryn," he admitted, speaking quickly to get the bottled words out. "I spent seven years in the Delta Quadrant to come home, but I can't find home anymore."

She shifted, turning to look at him. "In some ways," she said, "I understand that. Earth was home, but the past two years, I've felt unrooted. Homeless. More than I ever felt on Voyager."

He considered her words. "Unrooted. That's not a bad word for it."

"It hasn't helped that my best friend has managed to avoid seeing me for most of it."

He bowed his head at her gentle rebuke. "If I had seen you, Kathryn, you would have known..."

"Known what?" she asked sadly.

"Everything. I never could keep a secret from you for long."

"And what was it that I should not know?"

"What I've been doing for the past two years. What I've been thinking."

"Why is that?"

"It's... I..." he stopped to start again. "You know why I left Starfleet."

"I know."

"It's wrapped up in that. After seven years serving with you, in Starfleet, I returned and found that the reasons I left hadn't changed. There were still Maquis in prison, there were still planets that were being destroyed, my planet was destroyed, and all I could see was the Federation's hand in it."

She took his hand.

He grasped it lightly. "I didn't want to be in Starfleet anymore. After serving under you," and his grasp tightened momentarily, "I was afraid that you would not understand... that you thought I was betraying you by leaving Starfleet again."

Her sigh was quiet.

"I had reasons to stay, for a while. It was a means to an end. I was sure that I could get the Federation to do the right thing concerning Trebus if I stayed in, but I lost there, too."

"The plans to hydrate the planet? You didn't like that?"

"I didn't like it, but I was willing to vote for it. It's the attempt to terraform the northern continent. That was what I would not vote to approve. In the end, they manipulated the children and other survivors to agree to the proposal." He pulled his hand out of hers and wiped the tears from his face. "My family's grave is there. To blow up the slag just to make dirt..." He looked up at the stars. "Maybe my father would have liked it. Maybe he would think that trying to rehabilitate the Trebus is a good thing. I don't know anymore."

"Then there was the Maquis," she said straightly, looking into his face.

"The Maquis." He waited and again the words poured out. "It was my obsession to get them out. No one else seemed to care, I thought. The Admiral told me about the war with the Klingons and the Cardassians..."

"She did? When?"

He thought and answered, "One night when we were having dinner together. It was the night after we agreed to try to destroy the transwarp gateway, and she... you... made your secondary plans."

"You had dinner with her?"

"Many times. She wanted Seven to join us, but Seven refused. She was extremely... uncomfortable with the Admiral."

"I certainly understand that." Kathryn shook her head. "Seven and the Admiral were like two cats in a room. Seven had some things the Admiral wanted, and Seven wouldn't give."

"What were they?"

"Seven herself. There was a lot of love there, for Seven, that the Admiral never had the chance to express." She paused, and shivered slightly. "I never took the opportunity to express."

"It's hard to think that you and she are the same person."

Kathryn's head pulled back, and her eyes glowed in the firelight. "We're not. I can't believe that whatever happened between the time... I mean the time from when she came to when we got home...I hate talking about time travel. It hurts."

He grinned at her maliciously. "I know. Talking to her, about her, what she did to us all by bringing us back now. It's complicated."

"In some ways yes, it was. But when I got home, when we got home, I took a good look at myself and said that whatever she was, I would not become that woman."

'Which is why you're not Admiral Janeway?"

"There's not much likelihood of me being Admiral Janeway for a while. I've turned them down twice now, I don't expect it will be offered again."

"You turned them down?"

"You don't keep up with the media, do you? Yes, I've turned them down. The first time it was leaked to the news gates that I would be promoted in a big brass ceremony the next day. Pips to be presented by Nechayev herself. Too bad I turned it down after it was announced, it made several people look pretty stupid."

"And the second?"

"Last week. It's one of the reasons I came to find you."

"Why?"

"Because I want to get back out there. Admirals sit at desks in San Francisco. Sometimes they get to go to PU, or McKinley Station. But admirals don't go into deep space."

What she said was true. If they went into space, it was because they went to war.

"I've heard of a position in the Gamma Quadrant."

"Gamma Quadrant?"

"Yes. It's about 30 light years from the Gamma end of the Bajoran wormhole. It's a small confederation of planets and systems, only fourteen so far, but they've contacted Starfleet about a treaty with the Federation." She stretched out her arms. "There's not enough room in this quadrant for me and Starfleet to comfortably co-exist. They want me to be a happy little admiral who tells wondrous stories of how we brought Federation values to the Delta Quadrant and succeeded in the paving the way for future exploration. I want to tell them to blow it out their ..." a crackle and crash in the fire captured their attention. She poked uselessly at the fire with the pickax. "The Finchk Confederation has asked for a treaty and some help. Seems the Nacaussicans or some other Alpha Quadrant pirates have made their way over there and are wreaking havoc on their trade. They want us to come."

He understood her desire. It was incredibly tempting - far from Starfleet, opportunities for first contacts, a friendly support system.

"What do they want?"

"They have an old - I mean old, Chakotay - station that they think the pirates are using for a base."

"How old?"

"Nobody's guessing, but records about it go back more than a millennium. It was a trade station, and then used for some governmental projects, and about fifty years ago, it was abandoned. The technology on it, however, is still ahead of ours in many ways. There appear to be transwarp engines aboard."

"A station or a ship?"

"They're not installed. The holographic images we've received show them sitting in a cargo bay."

He could feel her excitement, and to some degree, felt it himself. "What about this station?"

"They'll give it to us if we get rid of the pirates."

"What about the Dominion?"

"The Dominion, when asked if they had an opinion about us making a treaty with the Confederation, which is easily 100 light years away from their planet, did not respond." She tilted her head, shaking it slightly. So many more died here than in the Delta Quadrant, but their deaths were so much less real to her.

"So, we get rid of the pirates, we get an antique space station."

"We'll take five ships, Intrepid and Valiant class."

"You want one of the ships?"

"No, I don't."

"You want the fleet?"

She sipped her coffee. "I want the station. Admiral Jade is heading up the project; I've spoken with her about it. She's agreeable to let me have the station, once it's captured. However, several other admirals," and here the word took on the tones of a profanity, "don't want me to leave. I'm too good at public relations. If something were to happen to me, they'd lose a great deal of good press. So I was told that I would not be considered for the position. Another officer with only four fewer first contacts was going to be offered the position."

He counted on his fingers. "The Ventu. The Sky People." He began to list the disputed first contacts that he had made.

She batted at his hands playfully. "Let's not start that again."

"I haven't been offered the position, Kathryn."

She looked at him with dark eyes, not a piercing or accusing glare, or even assessing. It was simple acceptance. "If you want it, Chakotay, it's yours."

"Mine?" He jumped up. "Mine? Is it yours to offer?"

"Do you want it?"

"Just how deep is that ravine, anyway?" Kolopak asked.

"It's only about 100 meters up."

"But how far back? Is there a big gap at the top that I couldn't cross over and then come down?"

"It's nasty back there. Lots of boulders, sheer face on some of it. No one goes back too far," Kanicha said around her banana.

"What about up top? What's the divide between the two sides?"

Margarita looked at Kanicha, who shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. We always cut through the mountain at the Eye, come out on the Dos side."

"Dos side?"

"The side facing Dos Anpotol. That's the trail I told you we could take if we backtracked."

Kolopak sipped his coffee, and motioned Hector to him. "Can you belay me?"

Hector stiffened. "Of course I can."

Kolopak looked up, surprised at the irritation in Hector's voice. "No, I did not doubt your strength to do so. I did not know if you knew how to do so."

"I know how." Hector's voice was still clipped, but Kolopak looked at the clouds over his shoulder.

"We've got an hour at the most. Kanicha, what do you think? Do we wait?"

Kanicha looked around, assessing the environment. "My father would take them up the other way. Climbing in the mist is dangerous. I would go. We're talking about an hour's climb at most. It's really not that high, and there's that ledge," she pointed to a small outcropping. "We can head for there. If we're not at the height we need to find the pump, then we can rest there or wait for the mist to clear out."

"A mighty slim ledge. Does it look sturdy enough for the two of you?" Margarita sounded dubious, but Hector came to stand beside her.

"That mountain is pure granite and marble. It would support us all if we needed it to." Hector put his hand on her shoulder.

She smiled gratefully at him for the reassurance. Kolopak looked at the equipment Hector had brought and laid at her feet, wishing he felt as reassured.

Kanicha was right. Strength wise, he wasn't at his best. Five days at this altitude, and he was just now beginning to feel adjusted to it. The strength in his legs and arms was slowly returning, and it seemed unwise to make the climb. Better to stay down and direct Hector and Kanicha, while Margarita and he belayed the younger members of the crew.

No. Letting Kanicha, for all her bragging, climb that face was wrong. She was determined, but Kolopak had no faith in her abilities. She was strong, she was used to this mountain, but she was too young. He doubted that this climb was the work of an hour. Maybe for the professional climbers she and her father brought up, they knew what they were doing. But he knew that the few times he had rock climbed at home were no match for this face before him.

Margarita watched his face, wondering what his thoughts were. Margarita had far more confidence in Kanicha; she knew her cousin, Kanicha's father, and how he had trained Kanicha and herself, for that matter. This face was tough, there was no doubt. But the equipment was fine, even better than she had used on her own expeditions in the Andes. Each piece was labeled with the Starfleet insignia, and a few of the pieces she had heard of or read about in the news gates, but was inexperienced in using. These self-sealing stem bolts, the latest in bolt technology, seemed to be too good to be true.

"Is this set one of Starfleet's test equipment, or what they already use?" Kolopak said humorously, pulling up the harness to examine it closely.

"Their best. This is standard starship issue." Hector pointed to the code on the side of the box. "That code there means it's been in use for the last five years. No specific warnings about the equipment were included, which means that it's safe for use under specified conditions."

"Are these standard conditions?" Kolopak asked quickly.

"We're not even close to the specified limits of the equipment." Hector smiled suddenly. "You're as safe as you are good."

Kanicha pulled on the harness, and tightened a buckle against her groin. "Let's go."

Kolopak pulled back. "No. Let's wait. The afternoon clearing will be soon enough. If I have to, I'll sleep on the top tonight, and come back down for the pump."

Kanicha turned cold eyes on him. "You're not going up there by yourself, Kolopak. That's a hard climb; you don't have the experience or the knowledge to do that climb by yourself. We can climb together; I'll help you with the mechanics of the climb. You need me to get up there."

He wanted to deny it. The desperation of the situation made him face the truth. Without someone's help, he could not do this. Turning to Hector, he silently pleaded for some help to dissuade her from it.

"Kolopak, she's the most experienced climber of all of us. The only way this is going to work is if she goes. It has to be both of you."

Kolopak felt the first mists settling around them. "When the mists break, Kanicha and I will go up." He dropped the harness into the box, and walked away.

She found his shirt on the far side of a rock where he had obviously thrown it, and his boots carefully stuffed with his socks to keep intruding snakes from sneaking in. His pants were hanging from a branch above them. Margarita tracked him to the nearby hot spring, and tried not to laugh as she saw his face. His eyes were closed, but the tightness and the outright anger that he had not expressed earlier were there to see.

His chest was virtually hairless, and she noticed that his body was very muscled. Not in the vain way that she had seen on some models or bodybuilders, but working muscles. Arms, stretched out along the rock that he leaned back against, the biceps and triceps didn't have the grotesque bulges, just the sleek line that she knew meant hard work, not iron weights, had crafted them.

"Margarita, this is hosja." He said it without opening his eyes. "It's sheer hosja to think that she should be climbing that cliff, with or without me."

"She thinks it's crazy that you think you have to go. She thinks she can climb it herself, and using the communication badges, she can have you tell her if she's hot or cold."

He opened his eyes and looked at her with a puzzled life to one eyebrow. "Hot or cold?"

"Close or far."

He closed his eyes again, and settled against the rock. "Hector doesn't like it either."

"No, I'm afraid that Hector's problems have less to do with Kanicha and more to do with me."

"Tell me." His eyes opened as he encouraged her.

She sighed and dipped her hand into the steaming water. "Maybe he thinks I should do the climb. Maybe he thinks you and I are spending too much time together. Maybe he had hopes for this trip that aren't going to come true."

He did not disagree. Hector's irritation at finding them in close conversation at dawn was only the latest of small signs that he was disturbed. "He hasn't said anything."

"No, he hasn't. In fact, he's never been less than the perfect partner on this trip. But I've known him all his life. I know the signs."

"Do you still think Kanicha and Hector would be good together? Could you direct him her way?"

"No," she said slowly. "They wouldn't make a good pair. I thought, maybe, that they might, it seemed so perfect."

"The thwarted conclusion to your relationship with Marcos."

She smiled a little ruefully. "Something like that. But my mother always said that you would know the right person to spend your life with when you are a better you when they're with you."

"Give me a minute to figure that one out."

"It means, very simply, some people bring out the best in you. Marry one of those."

"Much more concise." He laughed. "I like it. It makes sense, doesn't it?"

"It does. It explains a lot good matches and a lot of bad ones."

Kolopak thought about his own family, his grandparents, devoted to each other after more than 50 years, and his parents, pushing along companionably together, if a little dispassionately.

"Take Chakotay, for example. Our grandfather loves the land. I guess I got it from him, that attraction, that dedication to tending it and keeping it. Chakotay's mother, on the other hand, thinks that a flowerpot on her veranda in Mexico City is more than sufficient. When Chakotay met K'Lura," she stopped at his amazed look. "Yes, Chakotay is married to a Klingon. Didn't you know?"

"No one mentioned it." Kolopak closed his mouth. "I'm sorry, you were saying?"

"When Chakotay met K'Lura, it was the first time he had gotten back to that basic quality that he had inherited from our grandfather. She's an agronomist, too. Suddenly, he was completely different."

"Really?"

"You met the Chakotay we have all known for years. He's arrogant, obnoxious, suspicious, cruel and downright mean. K'Lura is devious, underhanded, sly, vicious, temperamental. Together, they are entirely different. She's an incredible strategic planner; she can find ways to accomplish goals that are completely unbelievable. She's worked on virtually every planet that's been terraformed in the past forty years. Chakotay has developed this ability to correlate data in his head - feed him facts and he'll make predictions. He's accurately predicted seventeen of the last twenty rebellions or wars in Federation or Klingon territories in the last twenty-five years."

Kolopak thought about the predication Chakotay made concerning his own planet, but set it aside. "And these changes are because they're together."

"No question. They spent a year apart while she was working on a planet on the far side of the Klingon Empire, and he was posted to Earth, no way that he could go with her. My understanding is that she personally was responsible for twelve duels, all of which she won, while she was there. Chakotay managed to offend every possible senior officer that moved within ten feet of him. The galaxy rejoiced when they were reunited."

They laughed together. "My grandparents aren't quite that extreme. Grandmother is very silly; she can barely get herself to the tribal meetings unless Grandfather is there with her. Grandfather, on the other hand, is a busybody who micromanages every other person in the village when Grandmother's not around. Together, they're compassionate and loving, and it spills out all over their community. When there's trouble, every one always calls Lilly and Torbet. When she goes to see my aunt, everyone in the village hides to get away from Grandfather. When he goes to the mountains for his annual hunt, it takes three women from the village to get her where she needs to be."

Margarita smiled. "You understand then."

"I do. My parents aren't that way at all. I don't think they've lived together more than four months in the last two years. Father has been working to get clean wells for seven new villages; Mother's been involved in some spaceport politics. Neither of them seems bothered by the separation." Kolopak sunk down further into the water. "That's not the kind of marriage I want."

"I would think not. They probably didn't want it either, when they first married." Margarita swirled water with her hand. "Marcos and Liberica were like that."

"Liberica is Hector's mother?"

"Yes. She's from a prominent coffee family in Columbia. Her father owned a newly developed strain of coffee plants, and old Juan wanted it. So he introduced Marcos to Liberica, and made sure that Marcos understood that this wife would bring a dowry of fifty of the plants they wanted for the grove. Liberica, on the other hand, wanted the status of being a coffee grove owner, just like her parents had. I've no doubt that she was ready to seduce him before she even saw him, and I'm willing to bet that he already had the wedding ring in his pocket when he was introduced to her at the annual Coffee Ball. They were married within a month, and pregnant a month later." Her face tightened as she told the story. "Liberica was angry because Marcos never had any intention of moving to Columbia. At that point in time, Juan and Marcos had no money - every penny was put back into the grove. Marcos was furious because she wouldn't make any effort to make the grove succeed. After Hector was born, Liberica went back to her father's house. She left Hector in Maria's hands." Noting his confused look, she added, "That's Marcos' mother."

"Where were you?"

"I was at agriculture school in Texas, about a million light-years from everything that was happening here. My mother told me that Marcos got married, and I thought it would be better for me to stay away. So during that summer I went to Cresius with K'Lura for an internship and decided that I would specialize in mountain agronomy." She resumed her idle paddling. "I came back after I had my degree, Hector was four or five at the time."

"You were still in love?"

"Yes, that's as good a way to explain it as any. But as bad as Liberica was, I wasn't much better for Marcos. I knew he brought out the worst of me - I was stubborn and foolish whenever I had to deal with him on anything but a personal level. We argued about the monkeys. We argued about the overstory development. We fought about fertilization techniques. You name it, we fought over it."

"And made up in bed?" he asked gently.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I just left. Sometimes he left. Eventually, I was offered a position in Bogotá, working for the Coffee Institute. He was furious. He threw things. He practically threw me. I left and hadn't come back for five years, until the problems in the grove got too bad. He needed someone with my expertise, I needed to come home."

"You needed to come home?"

She smiled lightly. "My mother had a baby two weeks ago."

"She did? Congratulations!" Kolopak tried to revise mentally the age that he had put on Margarita, but it still didn't add up.

"You're trying to figure it out. Don't worry," she smiled brightly. "So did everyone else in the village. My mother married three years ago. Her husband is fifteen years younger than she is - he's the same age as I am! - and they decided that they wanted a child. So now I have little Potixel to bounce on my knees. Not that he likes it, but I figure I've got time for him to learn to enjoy it."

"A Mayan name?" he asked.

"Of course. My stepfather is Mayan, my mother is half Mayan."

He pulled up out of the water again, leaning against the far side of the pool. "Your father was Ladino?"

"My father is Mayan." She stressed the verb. "My father and Chakotay's father are brothers, but you couldn't imagine two more different men. Testotol, Chakotay's father, was a brilliant man. He held the chair for archeology at the Universidad. His wife, Chechelo, she was so much fun. I loved visiting them, talking to them. Until Chakotay met K'Lura, we thought Chakotay was a changeling, but he has the family dimples, there's no denying it. My father, on the other hand, is a itpetlal."

The word didn't mean anything to him.

"He's a wanderer. My mother, very young and not very wise, thought she could keep him if she got pregnant, but it turned out that she was the fourth woman who had the same dream. I've got at least six brothers and maybe four sisters, and probably more."

"You mean he goes around getting women pregnant and abandoning them?" He looked appalled, and was embarrassed to know that his face showed it.

Oddly, she looked pleased at his bluntness. "In the fewest possible words, yes, that is exactly what my father does. He lives in the mountains, here, or on Dos Anpotol, and comes to the villages for a little comfort. I finally felt it was safe to start having feelings for men once I got off the mountain - I never was really sure who was my half-brother."

"That's horrible, Margarita. Horrible." He moved across the pool and took her hand in his. "You must have a difficult time trusting men."

Now it was her turn to blush. "Well," she hesitated, and then nodded. "Marcos was stable. He wasn't going to run off, at least, I didn't think he was going to, but he did get Liberica less than a month after I left for my professional schooling. I learned the hard way that men aren't very reliable. I have my boys, the llamas. I had as much of Marcos as I wanted. Even after his divorce, I still never would have married him. I didn't trust him."

"How long ago was that?"

"Ten years. We fought about the monkeys then. His divorce from Liberica was finalized and the monkeys showed up about a month later."

He listened to what she said carefully. "Liberica and Marcos got divorced and the monkeys arrived?"

She was obviously not paying too much attention to his question, but he persisted. "Why did they get divorced?"

She shifted her eyes, smirking a little. "Liberica's father allowed her to move back home, but he ruled his home with an iron hand. Liberica could be the separated wife, she could still claim partial ownership of the Diaz coffee grove, she got all the status she wanted, but no divorce. About six months after he died, once his estate was distributed, she turned up pregnant. We knew it wasn't Marcos' baby, and he filed for divorce."

Kolopak sat very still in the warm water. "What happened then?"

"She married Wang Jing, her daughter's father. He's a chemist for the Coffee Institute in Bogotá." She put her dry hand over her mouth, trying to shield her satisfied mien. "In the process, she managed to lose virtually everything she wanted. She has only a small income from the grove here. Her brother inherited the family groves. Her sister got a big share of the estate. She got a house with no income to support it. Wang and Inez, their daughter, live there with her now."

"You say she wanted the status as a coffee grove owner?"

"It's all she has talked about for years now. She says she's thinking about buying a grove."

"She says? You know her?"

"I live near her. I live in Bogotá too. Her husband and I both work for the Coffee Institute. That's what caused the fight between Marcos and myself. I was offered the position as an itinerant agronomist. No more academic nonsense about publishing or teaching. I could work directly on the farms with the owners. I had some background in coffee, growing up by the grove. I wanted that job, Marcos had a fit, and I left."

"You didn't see him for five years?"

"Not really. I was in town for my mother's wedding and saw him across the market, but we didn't speak."

"Did anything happen to the grove then?"

She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, did anything happen to the grove when you visited?"

"No, nothing I know of. It was three years ago."

Kolopak chewed his lower lip. "Get out of here, Margarita, while I get dressed. I need to talk to Kanicha and Hector."

She didn't move, smiling lazily at him. "I've seen men before, Kokopak."

"I've seen women before, too, Margarita. Get out of here."

She laughed as she turned around, but she didn't rise. "I'm comfortable," she teased.

At least she wasn't facing him. He quickly jumped from the pool and dressed carefully, looking for errant animals before donning each piece of clothing. "Tell me something, Margarita," he said as he pulled on his boots. "Since Hector was born, how many times have you been back to the Café Montigua?"

"I don't know. Dozens, I suppose."

"Did Liberica know about you? You and Marcos?"

"I don't think so. I always thought that if she did, either she wouldn't care or we'd have a cat fight that would be epic in proportion."

He pulled lightly on his ear. "Ten years ago, the monkeys came. What other sabotage have you seen since then?"

Her face fell quickly, losing the charming smile instantly. "Eight years ago, we had an attempt to destroy the grove."

They walked side by side through the misty forest, she sometimes grabbing at tree branches that blocked their way, he sometimes balancing her as she climbed up over a rocky trail. "I was in town, talking to Marcos about some fertilization techniques I had just learned. I wanted to try them on a small part of the grove; some trees that were poorly producing and he intended to cull anyway. I asked him for a year. He wasn't very interested in the project, but he let me do it anyway. I brought my llamas with me." She paused a very long time, and wiped a small tear from her face.

"Tell me about it. Was it Groucho?"

"No, it was Groucho and Caffey's father, Chico. I had to bring him, I was breeding him to a female and I let them graze the undergrowth in the grove while I was working. At night, the llamas would stay up in the grove. I'd come home to Marcos' house. One night, a man was brought into the village, screaming about the killer llamas up in the grove. He had a pretty severe bite on his hand and more on his arms. He said he was a hiker who got lost off the Pan American Trail and the llama attacked him. I knew better, but I went up to look anyway. Chico and Frances, the female, were fine. The next morning, the hiker was gone, and we went up to the grove, thinking he'd gone up there to find his backpack or something. When we got there, we found Chico and Frances. Their necks had been slit open."

Kolopak nearly stumbled as she told the outcome of the story. "A few days later, we were looking at some of the trees and discovered that they had been girdled. The bark had been stripped from the trunk at the base of the trees, below the understory. It was a deliberate attempt to destroy those trees."

"Did it work? Did the trees survive?"

"No, they didn't. What was interesting was that those were the trees that Liberica had brought to the grove when she married. It was only those trees that were attacked. Fortunately, we were able to save some cuttings from the trees and graft them onto the rootstock from the trees that were failing. They never produced much, but we were able to root some new trees to replace the vandalized ones. We also spread the new trees out through the grove. It was amazing, though. By spreading that pollen through the grove, we saw a twenty percent increase in the harvest the first year they bloomed. Unless you know what to look for, you can't tell if a tree is arabica or Bogatan."

"Bogatan is the name of the coffee trees she brought with her?"

"Yes." She studied him carefully. "What are you thinking?"

"Did you tell Marcos you needed to spread out those trees before that happened?"

"Yes I did. I thought it would increase the harvest, and it did."

He considered her again. "Monkeys. Girdling. What happened next?"

"Just before I left Marcos, we saw some major overstory destruction. I still don't know how they did it, but about thirty percent of our overstory - the shade trees - was cleaned out. I don't know how they did it. I do know how they did it, but I don't know how they pulled it off. They must have been up there at least six or seven days, culling all those trees. They just cut them down with phaser saws and let them lie on the ground."

She shook her head. "It could have been a disaster. It took weeks to get the grove cleaned up, to try to think how we might restore some of the overstory."

"What happened?"

"Dos Anpotol happened. He erupted just enough, scattered ash everywhere. The crop was ruined anyway by the ash and the subsequent weather. No one made any profit that year, and some Federation assistance kicked in. The Coffee Institute was established then by the Guatemalan coffee grove owners, but it was expanded to include any grove owner from Central or South America." She snorted. "I was right, we needed to reduce the overstory, and the following year was our greatest harvest ever. Marcos said it was the ash from the volcano."

He stopped beneath a coniferous tree, leaning against its rough bark. "Margarita, three years ago, the selenium poisoning began."

"I know that you think so. You have good, credible evidence for it." She stopped beside him.

"You don't understand, Margarita. Every event of sabotage took place when you came back to Café Montigua."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that someone knew what you were doing, and planned their sabotage according to your visits to the village."

"That's conjecture. You're saying that every time I visited home, another act of sabotage took place."

"I'm no lawyer," he rebuked her. "I saw your face when you talked about that llama. I don't believe you did any of those things. But I do think we'll find another act of sabotage when we get back into town. Since you've been here for so long, I think it will be a big one."

"No," she denied.

"Yes," he replied somberly. "Who knew what you and Marcos have talked about? Who knew your recommendations for the grove?"

"Anyone in the village. We would sit in the café and argue. Half the town would side with him, the other half with me. I think we were the village entertainment."

"Specifics. Who knew the specifics?"

She rubbed her forehead, and said, "The grove managers. They were given my specific recommendations in writing to either agree with or to disagree."

"Who are they? The grove managers?"

"The grove is too big for one man to supervise anymore. After the last expansion, Marcos hired four men, each of them manage one quadrant. Esteban has even named his trees."

"Esteban. Who else?"

"I don't know any more. They rarely last more than a year, anyway. Marcos complains all the time that he trains them and then they go work for somebody else."

"Your recommendations, then. Who else sees them?"

"Usually they're filed with the Coffee Institute, just for future reference. If the owner takes the advice, we'll go back and evaluate it, see if it was good, what were the results."

"But the monkeys came before the Institute was established."

"That's true. But most of my recommendations are still available from the Universidad. I had to publish all the time to maintain my tenure. Marcos' grove was my doctoral thesis. Any one could have read it and known what I recommended to him to do for the next twenty years."

"Spirits!" he whispered. "What else have you recommended?"

Her eyes grew very large. "I recommended a contained fire to reduce some of the understory. It was an experimental process at that time that was later tried in Costa Rica and determined to be useless, if harmless to the trees."

"Does the Coffee Institute have a copy of your doctoral thesis?"

"Of course. I submitted it to them as part of my credentials."

"Would the contained fire be started now?"

"In the dry season? Of course not. Part of the point of the experiment was that it had to be done in the rainy season to control the burn and release certain chemicals into the air."

"We have to get back down there, as quickly as we can." Kolopak looked around at their campsite. In the midst he could hear Hector or Kanicha banging around with pots, probably preparing the noon meal.

"No one will do anything yet, I've got three witnesses that can say I've been with them the entire time."

"You may be right. I hope you're right." He hesitated. "Don't talk to Hector or Kanicha about this. I want to get some information about some of the circumstances without putting any ideas in their heads. Your reputation is on the line here."

The lunch was somber. Margarita toyed with her beans and rice; Kanicha didn't want to eat lest she need to stop during their climb later in the afternoon. Hector watched Kolopak and Margarita with perplexity, but he did not try to break into their thoughts.

"I've examined all the equipment. Everything is brand new, never used. I made up a rack for each of us, and I drew this map of the cliff. I think we can use this route." Kanicha handed Kolopak a piece of paper with a rather fine rendition of the cliff and her route. "I can see us belaying here, and here," she pointed to the spots on the map. "From here, I'm rather blind about the incline. I think we'll be able to scramble it, it looks soft enough, but I'm packing extra cams just in case."

Kolopak was mostly familiar with using cams, little machines to create good handholds during freeclimbing, from his few climbing experiences on Trebus. "I'm also packing some of those bolts, and there's this nifty little phaser gun that you hold up to the rock and fire. It creates a hole for a bolt to be inserted. Those self-sealing stem bolts work with it. It should cut down the climb significantly." Kanicha took a small bite of rice.

As expected, the mists began to break up shortly after noon. Kanicha had donned a skintight pink rock-climbing outfit, probably a little garish on another face, but surrounded by the orchids and other plants with exotic blooms, she glowed with the flowery color. Kolopak surprised everyone by pulling a worn pair of climbing shoes out of his pack, and tightly tied them on. The harness came next, then the equipment rack with the various tools Kanicha thought they would need to make the climb. She thought she understood where he was going, but in the hours since he had first seen the flash, his mind had been distracted. He was worried he had lost the points of reference he needed to get to that spot. He dusted his hand with chalk, still fretting.

"Watch for the white and black orchids, Kokopal. There's only one ledge with a fall of them on the wall. I'll try to keep you going in the right direction."

"No, you belay Kanicha. I'll find it. You don't take your eyes off her," Kolopak admonished Margarita needlessly, and then pulled Kanicha into his arms. He kissed her on each cheek. "For luck."

She kissed each of his cheeks in turn. "For luck." She turned to the first boulder. "On belay?" she asked Margarita.

"Belay on," was the reply.

"Climbing," she said, and with a deep breath, jumped up onto the first boulder.

Kolopak and Hector echoed them. The first five meters were simple to climb. The boulders at the bottom of the ravine gave them a quick start before Kanicha pulled out her Starfleet hammer and inserted her first bolt.

At the bottom of the ravine, Hector played out Kolopak's rope slowly, keeping the tension high as the older man made his climb. Several times he stopped and evaluated his next move, discussing it with Kanicha, trying to orient himself to the ledge. Of his first five cam insertions, only one brought down a rash of dirty wet rock.

Hector began to realize that this climb wasn't merely dangerous, it was life threatening. The mist that had condensed on the rock was a hazard that they had not considered.

The rock-climbing team reached their first planned rest about half an hour later than they expected. Only a quarter of the distance from the flash, Hector wondered if they would even reach the next planned rest before the evening mist began to roll in.

"Belay off, Hector. We're resting."

"Belay off, Kolopak." Hector anchored the rope at his station, and looked up, able to see only the bottoms of their shoes.

Margarita was worried about Kolopak. He was visibly tiring, and at this speed, she worried that his strength would fail. The double urgency to get them up and down quickly could not compromise their safety, but she wished they would hurry up.

The pair of them was having an animated conversation, something with waving hands and a few pointed gestures. "Kolopak to Margarita."

The voice from the badge on her chest startled her. While they had all dutifully worn the combadges since receiving them, she had never used hers at all on this expedition.

"Margarita here."

"I need to go right on this wall about three meters. There's a small ledge with some purple flowers. Do you see it?"

"Why?" Her frustration must have been evident for Hector certainly heard it for his head whipped around to look at her.

"I see some kind of tricorder over there."

"A tricorder?"

"Yes, one of those little handheld computers you used down in the grove."

"Is it Starfleet?"

"I can't tell from here. But I think it's important."

It might be, but couldn't we get it on the way down? she thought, but did not speak it. She trusted Kolopak.

"Can Kanicha get it?"

"Not without crossing lines. We'd rather not do that."

It wasn't a bad safety hazard, but one that could delay if the ropes tangled. "All right," she said, straightening the belay rope she held for Kanicha. "How long?"

"Three meters, maybe less. I'll have to move down a bit, too. It's just below my feet. Give me some slack, Hector."

Kolopak was setting himself up for a difficult climb. Going down wasn't the problem, going sideways wasn't really a problem, just a little difficult to do both. No, his difficulty was that Kanicha would not be helping him.

She saw him swing out suddenly, a good two meters of slack allowing him to act as if he was rappelling across the mountain. He landed gracefully on the face near where he wanted, and he quickly inserted a piton. One more swing brought him to a small ledge where a profusion of purple orchids hung off it like a fountain. "Oh, the smell!" he said, and everyone could hear the pleasure in his voice. Bending down, he picked up the tricorder and waved it above his head.

Everyone one else applauded his successful effort, but he turned back to the cliff face and carefully put his prize into the small backpack. His back to the belayers, hidden by rock from Kanicha, he stood there a long moment, then bent down, seeming to do something with his hands.

Hector looked at Margarita apologetically. "I guess he couldn't wait till he got to the top."

She smiled at his sheepish tone. "When you gotta go, you gotta go, Hector." She tightened the belay slightly. "I'm glad he found a private spot for it. He's really a very modest man."

Hector looked at her with an assessing eye. "You're right, I hadn't put it together like that."

Kolopak had his pack back on, situated to his liking, and looked up at the climb above him. "Kanicha, you won't believe this climb here."

"What? Why?"

"It's almost perfect. There're lots of handholds, foot holds. The grade is probably about seventy degrees, there are three or four ledges that would be big enough to stand on."

The area Kolopak was looking at was hidden from view from the two on the ground. If it was really a good climb, they wouldn't need the belaying as much, but Kanicha wanted to evaluate it herself.

Kanicha looked down at Margarita below. If she followed him, the lines might get crossed, but a sweeter, easier climb might make the difference between a successful attempt to make it to the top, and having to go back down and trying again. She understood some sort of urgency about the llama's food, but she was confident that the humans would have enough to eat. It was her cloud forest, after all. She knew where to get good food up here as well as Margarita might know the best restaurants in Bogotá.

She pulled away from the wall and looked at his route. In order not to cross his line, she needed to go above him at least a meter, and that face looked too smooth to make a good climb. Above her was an outcropping ledge, a good meter or more that she would have to climb over to then move to Kolopak's position.

She tried to gauge the sun, but the mountain blocked her view, which meant the only thing she could really tell was it was afternoon. What time did the sun set anyway, at this time of year? Kanicha couldn't remember. Not that it mattered, she scolded herself. That bank of clouds would be moving in soon enough.

"Kanicha, is there a problem?" Margarita asked on the combadge.

Yes, there was, but Kanicha was not going to admit it. She swallowed and replied in a controlled voice, "I'm at the buffet."

"You're what?" Hector asked.

"At the buffet. It's a climbing term that means I'm assessing my routes and options. Hold on a minute."

"I think you mean 'stand by', Kanicha," Hector rebuked her.

Kanicha looked up, but she really wasn't thinking too much about the climb. Margarita and Kolopak had had a very private conversation earlier. She could hear their voices at the hot spring pool while she assessed the equipment and the cliff, but not what they said for most of the morning. Then suddenly Kolopak and Margarita couldn't wait to get them up the ravine and get on the road back down. Their sudden urgency made her wonder exactly what they had said.

"No time for daydreaming, Chica," Hector admonished, and she pulled her thoughts back to the climb.

"Margarita, I'm going up over that outcropping directly above my head. Watch me. Once I'm over it, I'll pan over to him."

That outcropping was supposed to be their next rest break, and while Margarita had great confidence that Kanicha thought she knew what she was doing, Margarita devoutly prayed that her skill was up to the task.

Kanicha inserted four pitons in the wall directly below the outcropping. It might have been overkill, but she trusted her instincts. "Kolopak, are you ok?"

"I'm fine. How long will you be?"

"Twenty or thirty minutes, I think. Maybe sooner, if my next piton goes in so well."

"I'll wait then." He didn't really have room to sit, but then, his legs weren't very tired. His arms had been pulling him up, work they were not used to doing. A rest would be good right now.

"Climbing." The rock-climber's shorthand messages were much easier to understand with the comm-link badges.

She inched her way along a crack, hugging rock with brute strength. The next piton would require her belay to hold her up while she inserted it. "Margarita, get ready. I'll be flying for a few minutes."