Star Trek Read Free Page B

attention back from the vista of aqueducts and canals stretching to the horizon and focusing on his friend at the other end of the narrow oval table. “And given up the chance to be Tev’s personal adjunct on Bundinal?”
    Stevens growled at the linguist with what was evidently his best impression of an angry Klingon.
    â€œYou have the inflection wrong,” Bart pointed out mildly. “Unless, of course, you didn’t mean to call me a muffin, in which case you have the wrong word entirely.”
    Stevens sighed heavily and scowled at the view.
    The two friends had met for lunch at an open-air bistro perched on the brow of a hill overlooking the township of Brohtz. Though its cheerfully faux rustic decor was clearly aimed at the tourist trade, the Bundinalli librarian Bart was working with had assured him the food was excellent, faithfully representing the regional cuisine.
    From this vantage point they could see no less than four canals and three aqueducts. A major hub was a few hundred kilometers west of Brohtz. There was a haze from the water vapor above the elevated aqueducts; as Bart understood it, the humidifying effects of evaporation were nearly as important as irrigation to the ecology. With the sun over their shoulders, they could see hundreds of tiny rainbows hanging in the mist.
    Even if the food didn’t live up to expectations, Bart reflected, the view was worth the trek up the hill.
    Actually, he’d enjoyed the uphill walk past antiquated homes that exactly mirrored one another across cobbled streets. He’d spent hours combing through centuries-old civic records in the dusty bowels of the town archive. Library research, especially when it involved sifting through folios penned when the Romans were invading Britain, was always enthralling—the first few weeks. After that, it became a chore.
    Bart knew his search through the local archives of the Bundinalli was right on the cusp of transmogrifying from adventure to drudgery. Frequent breaks, like this native lunch with Stevens, were helping him stave off the inevitable.
    It was equally clear his friend and cabinmate Fabian had needed a break as well.
    The task of coordinating the various specialists trying to figure out the Bundinalli aqueduct system had fallen to Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev, second in command of the da Vinci ’s own S.C.E. team. Though the job Bart had heard described at the planning session had been that of facilitator, the Tellarite had—in typically Tellarite fashion—understood his role to be micromanager of all aspects of the endeavor.
    Realizing this would be a big job, even for him, Tev’s first official act had been to co-opt Stevens, who would otherwise have been idle, as his personal assistant. For the last dozen days the tactical systems specialist had been bouncing from one Bundinalli township to the next, personally following up on instructions Tev had already broadcast in meticulous detail.
    Tev’s specificity was in direct contrast to the vagaries of Bundinalli. The language, and the way the natives seemed to organize thought, guaranteed Bart stretched his intuitive translation skills as he tried to decipher—or even find—the original routing instructions for Bundinal’s ancient aqueduct system.
    Eons ago, generations of ecological mismanagement had turned seventy percent of Bundinal’s arable land into a dust bowl. The Bundinalli were facing planetwide famine. Extinction was a real possibility.
    However, it wasn’t a possibility they were willing to accept. At about the time humans first began experimenting with bronze, the Bundinalli were constructing a network of interdependent aqueducts and canals to irrigate their planet. Their job was made simpler—just—by the fact they inhabited only two continents, both on the same side of the globe and both extending from the poles almost to the equator. Still, it was a prodigious task.
    What