While Nyota had urgent questions to pursue concerning the vacuum flares, she felt it would be inconsiderate not to ask after her hosts’—rather, her family’s current affairs. M’Umbha was easily drawn into a discussion of her work with the elephants; Nyota supposed her obvious passion for the subject was what made her a good advocate for their interests. It seemed she had been involved in a lively dispute with a Federation Council committee insisting that the Prime Directive should prohibit any active social work or medical care among the elephants, as that would constitute interference in their natural development. M’Umbha had countered that in a case where humans had already interfered with an alien culture—as they had with elephants to devastating effect over millennia—they had an obligation to take an active role in correcting the harm they had done. She had cited a number of Starfleet missions as precedents, including the Enterprise’s interventions on Iotia and Ekos.

The mention of Professor John Gill’s twisted experiment with fascism on Ekos left Omar shaking his head. As a fellow historian, he said, he was bewildered that a once-respected scholar of Earth history had embraced such an easily discredited fringe interpretation of the so-called “efficiency” of the Nazi regime, or had believed that it could be divorced from its hateful, genocidal aspects, as if those had been a peripheral element instead of the central driver of the entire ideology. Then he laughed and, apologizing for bringing the mood down, shifted into an amusing anecdote about a Rigelian student whose glitchy translator had led her to mistake a history assignment about the Mauryan Empire for one about a “Martian Empire,” leading her to produce a thoroughly researched, highly revisionist essay on the wrong era of history altogether.

Malcolm ate in sullen silence at first, but Omar eventually drew him into a conversation about his research in interspecies medicine at Makerere University Hospital. Her older brother spoke of his ongoing studies into the symbiotic biology of the Pandronian biosphere, which he believed could point the way to new methods of organ transplantation or limb replacement. It was the first time Nyota had seen him brighten all afternoon.

Taking in the mood, M’Umbha smiled. “Well, this is lovely. What a shame Samara’s dance troupe is off-world—we could’ve had the whole family together again.”

To hide her embarrassment at failing to ask after her younger sister, Nyota took a sip of chai and said, “Well, this is just a lovely meal, Omar. I don’t think I’ve ever had nyama choma this good.”

M’Umbha dropped her fork, and a silence fell over the table. “It… it’s your mother’s recipe, dear,” Omar demurred.

Being at a loss for words was another novel experience for Nyota. “I… oh, I… I suppose that must be why it seems so right. I should have…”