The soft-spoken Arcturian hesitated. “She can be very private too. We’re used to living and working communally; even though we now reside in separate dorm rooms, we tend to congregate together between classes. But Portia has been prone to wander off by herself at times, increasingly of late. When we ask where she’s been, she tells us to mind our own business.” He chuckled. “I suspect she might be experimenting with sexuality. It’s not something we normally contend with, but our whole purpose here is to expand our horizons, and she’s the most daring of us. But I don’t know who she might be doing it with. You’d have to ask her.”

The captain leaned forward. “Do you remember if she ‘wandered off’ two nights ago?”

Horatio stiffened. “I’d really rather not confirm that, Captain.”

“Shall I make it an order, Cadet?”

He sighed and spoke reluctantly. “Yes. She was absent for some time.”

Finally the time came to speak to Portia, and this time, sh’Deslar saw no need to be circumspect. Indeed, she asked Kirk to join her in the room; as commandant of cadets, he should be on hand for whatever was to come next.

The security officer got right to the point. “Where were you two nights ago, Cadet Portia?”

The cadet stared back angrily. Kirk was struck by how physically similar she, Horatio, and most of the others were, yet there was no mistaking the intensity in her eyes or the raptorlike alertness in her body language. “I was by myself. Walking along the shore.”

“Can anyone corroborate that?”

Portia bristled. “Why should they need to? Isn’t my word good enough?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

Portia grimaced. “I mean that no one can corroborate it. I go out there to be alone. Get away from everyone looking at me like I’m about to snap and kill someone.”

Sh’Deslar’s antennae darted forward at her choice of words. She activated a data slate and pushed it over. Portia glanced down at the video file it played. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“Don’t you recognize the person in that file?”

“It looks like me. I’m walking across campus. So what? I do a lot of that.”

“This was taken by a surveillance imager at the edge of the Academy campus two nights ago—the night you claim to have been down by the shore. It shows you leaving campus in the other direction—toward Presidio Heights.”

“Impossible. I wasn’t there.”

“You just said that was you.”

“I said it looks like me. Most of us look like me.”

“The bandolier pattern matches yours.”

“Must be a trick of the light.”

“It isn’t. Image analysis confirms it. What’s more, gait analysis shows it to be consistent with your movements.”

Portia leaned forward and spoke insistently. “It wasn’t me. Your computers are wrong.”