Текст книги "Trill and Bajor "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: J. Kim,Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Epilogue

Sisko

All in all, it had been a merry evening. His guests started arriving just after sunset: Opaka first, followed by his friends from the station, with the first minister arriving last. Thankfully, they had mostly heeded his edict and dressed in casual civvies: Kira in a dark red dress and boots, Asarem in a long rust tunic and trousers, Vaughn in an evergreen crewneck sweater and jeans. Only Sulan had not shed the trappings of her vocation, but she seemed quite at ease in the humble purple vestments of her order, so Sisko was not disappointed by her choice.

Everyone fussed over Rebecca, of course. Predictably, the baby had quickly become overwhelmed with all the attention and the number of strange faces invading her tranquil world, needing the comfort of Kasidy’s embrace to reassure her that all was well. Eventually she grew accustomed to the extra people, and everyone got a turn holding her over the course of the evening before Kasidy finally put her down for the night.

Sisko made crawfish étoufée for dinner. He’d ordered the plump crustaceans direct from Earth two weeks ago, from a company that specialized in exporting seafood offworld; the catch had been packed in stasis straight from the traps and remained thus until ready for use. “Fresh as fresh can get,” his father assured him when he first told Sisko of the service. Dad had been right; the meal had turned out exquisitely, if Ben did say so himself. Kas and their guests certainly seemed to enjoy it.

As the night progressed into the small hours of the following day, the group adjourned to the front porch for an after-dinner aperitif. Nerys opened the package she’d brought with her, revealing a strange-looking dark green bottle. Vaughn recognized it at once; his first reaction had been to cover his eyes and shake his head with laughter. Kira explained that it was a Capellan drink called grosz,something Admiral Akaar had introduced her to a while ago. “I should warn you, it has something of a kick,” she said.

Sisko accepted the half-filled glass of clear, slightly purple liqueur she’d poured him and sniffed it, then sipped appreciatively. He paused to consider how it felt as it went down his throat, deciding as it snuck up on him that “molten latinum” was an apt description. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, trying to blink the moisture back into his eyes. Kira grinned and refilled his glass, then poured three more; Opaka and Kasidy abstained, taking tea instead.

Sisko had not expected Vaughn to be such a raconteur,though he supposed you didn’t arrive at that age in Starfleet without accumulating at least a few tales worth telling. When the commander finally wound his way to the conclusion of the story of the tribbles that had found their way onto a freighter full of the xiqai,the Orion aphrodisiac spice, Sisko thought that Opaka was going to do an injury to herself from laughing. As it was, she slid out of her low chair and lay helpless on the ground for a few minutes, gasping for breath.

The discussion eventually turned to more serious topics…which was, of course, the unstated reason he had gathered this particular group together in the first place, and why they had each accepted his invitation to join him this evening, even after the trials of the day. Had Odo not felt compelled to leave so soon after Unity Day, he too would be here. But Odo was needed elsewhere…even more than he himself realized.

Asarem, with whom Sisko had shared several private conversations during the last seven weeks, looped them in on the sudden death of Bajor’s Federation councillor, and her surprising choice of a replacement—something the rest of the planet would not learn about until later that day. Sisko remembered Krim Aldos with mixed emotions, of course, but mostly they were favorable. Though the two men had come down on opposite sides of many issues during that uneasy first year, culminating in a battle for control of the station, Krim’s convictions about what was good for Bajor had always seemed genuine. The general had both the strength of his beliefs and integrity…but it had always seemed to Sisko that Krim also possessed a keen intellect and an open mind. Sisko had no doubt these qualities would make a potent combination on the Federation Council.

Sisko knew less about Vedek Solis Tendren, who, according to Opaka, seemed likely to throw his name into the running for kai. The Vedek Assembly was finally due to convene for statements and deliberations on the matter in the coming weeks, after several false starts over the past year. Though the faithful were beginning to accept that Opaka’s return didn’t mean she would be resuming her previous role as Bajor’s spiritual leader, her living presence was a powerful reminder of what a kai could be, should striveto be.

Her eyes met his several times over the course of the evening. More than anyone else in the room, she seemed to perceive the less obvious reasons why this gathering was necessary.

Soon, as it had to, the discussion took on a more grave quality. Kira brought up Sidau, explaining to those not among her crew what had transpired out near the Badlands, and which had unfortunately shed little light on the reasons for the crime that had been committed in Hedrikspool only a day earlier.

The conversation then shifted to the Eav-oq, Bajor’s newly discovered sister species (at least in spirit) on the other side of the wormhole. Their existence carried with it strange implications for Bajor, Asarem felt, perhaps even more world-shaking than the rediscovery of the Ohalu prophecies. It was, potentially, a cause for great celebration, to learn that the Prophets had Touched others besides Bajor. But there was still the other half of that revelation, the knowledge Opaka had brought home with that of the Eav-oq, that a third such species was also out there, somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant: the mysterious and violently aggressive religious zealots known as the Ascendants. From her encounter with one of their kind during her years among the Sen Ennis, Opaka believed the Ascendants would eventually return to the region of space near the Temple, and what would follow then was anyone’s guess.

Noting the troubled tone with which Opaka expressed her concerns, Asarem volunteered the opinion that they needed to prepare for the worst, with which Kira agreed.

Vaughn suggested moving quickly to reach out to the Eav-oq, begin building a relationship and learning whatever they could about them, their history, and perhaps more about the Ascendants in the process. It was the Ascendants, after all, who millennia ago had driven the Eav-oq into hiding, a retreat that protected the wormhole and those who dwelled within it from being discovered.

“I will go,” Opaka said suddenly.

All eyes turned to her. Vaughn, in particular, seemed troubled. “Sulan…”

“This is where I see my path leading,” she explained to the group. “Toward seizing opportunities to cultivate hope. The Eav-oq are tied to the Prophets, as are the children of Bajor. That is the common ground upon which we may best lay the foundation of a relationship.”

“Ranjen,” Asarem said, addressing Opaka. “Unless I’m gravely mistaken, this task is indeed meant for you. But whatever kinship you may feel toward them, the Eav-oq are not Bajoran. The gulf between our peoples may prove wider than any of us imagine.”

“All the more reason for me to go,” Opaka answered, her eyes on Sisko. “We can combat our uncertainty only with understanding. And with faith. I will reach out to the Eav-oq, for the sake of both peoples, so that we may together perhaps see the Tapestry more clearly still.”

The discussion went on. Facts were dissected, possibilities imagined, options debated. And through it all, Sisko noted, there was the careful, deliberate skirting of the elephant in their midst: himself.

The world around them was brightening; night giving way to day. Sisko rose and excused himself. He strode out onto the grounds, finally stopping at the great tree under which he’d napped with his daughter only two weeks ago. He laid his hand against the trunk, taking comfort in the solidity of the living wood against his palm, reassured by the simplicity of its stillness. How much longer, he wondered, would he be able to enjoy such moments?

On the rise to the southeast, two dark points had appeared above the fields, slowly resolving into figures walking in his direction. Odd hour for visitors.He watched their progress for several minutes, then became aware of the presence that had followed him from the porch.

“You all right?” Kira asked.

He turned and looked at her, smiling faintly. “Just needed a moment.”

Kira smiled back. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll rejoin the others.”

“No, stay,” Sisko said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He resumed watching the approaching figures. Kira followed his gaze. “Who’s that?”

Sisko folded his arms and leaned with his left shoulder against the tree. “No idea. But it looks like we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Rebecca’s beautiful, by the way,” Kira said. “She looks just like you, too.”

“Kasidy says the same thing, but I don’t see it.”

Kira chuckled. “I think parents seldom do.”

“And she’s growing so fast, Nerys,” Sisko said. “So many of the things that daunted me when Jake was a baby don’t even faze me this time around, but I’d completely forgotten how fast they grow as people. I see her changing every day. Every day.”

“It’s too bad your father and sister couldn’t stay longer.”

Sisko nodded. “I think they would have liked to, but Judith had a career to get back to, and I think my father was eager to try some new ideas in his restaurant using Bajoran ingredients…and to put a his own twist on some Bajoran dishes.”

“Let me guess…Creole hasperat?”

“Don’t laugh. He’s convinced he’s on to something,” Sisko told her.

“Have you heard from Jake?”

“Not for a couple of weeks, which is unusual. He was sending messages every day the first week, describing his travels down the Yolja River. Then nothing. But he’s a grown man. He’ll check in when he has a chance, or when he has something he wants to tell me.”

Sisko fell silent for a moment too long, because Kira then said: “You sure you’re all right?”

He continued watching the walkers. They were still too far away to see clearly, but he thought they were carrying large backbacks. Hikers, maybe?

“I keep thinking about how close I was to missing it all,” he admitted. “Seeing my son again. My wife. Being there as my daughter came into the world, hearing her newborn voice, holding her tiny body in my arms, watching her open her eyes for the first time. And everything that’s happened since. But even when I was with the Prophets, outside the universe, outside of time, separated from everything that made me human…there was always this thread, this lifeline connecting me to the people I love.”

“And now…?”

“Now that thread is running in the other direction, and I can feel the tug. Part of me is still there, Nerys, with Them, in the Temple.”

Kira stared at him for a long moment. “You’re going back to Them, aren’t you?”

“No,” Sisko said quietly. “I’m where I belong now. Where I need to be. For my family, for myself, and for Them. This place and time, what’s happening out there…” He nodded in the general direction of sky. “…they’re important to the Prophets.”

“Benjamin,” Kira said, “why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to be ready for what’s coming, Nerys. We all do.”

“What exactly is coming?” she asked. “If you know something—”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Sisko said, turning to meet her eyes. “I don’t have any special insight into the Eav-oq, or the Ascendants, or anything else the new day may bring. All I can tell you is that the Prophets’ interest in the linear plane has sometimes led them to intercede directly, but always at a cost…and to their grief.” At Kira’s concerned frown, he added, “There’s little more I can tell you…except maybe to say that whatever comes next, how it unfolds will be up to the people gathered here, at this moment, and those whom we trust the most.”

He could tell from the way she searched his face that she had a thousand questions, and he wished he had answers he could offer that were less vague than those he’d just given. But she also seemed to accept that it was all he had, and in the end, Kira’s faith in Them, and her trust in him, were all she really needed. He just hoped neither of them were misplaced.

She smiled again. “Whatever comes, we’ll be ready,” she told him reassuringly.

No. We won’t.

“Nerys?”

Sisko and Kira both turned. Kasidy was walking toward them from the house.

“There’s a comm for you from the station,” she explained. “It’s Ro. She says it’s urgent.”

“Take it in the study,” Sisko told Kira. She nodded her thanks and marched back to the house.

Kasidy walked the rest of the way toward him and took his hand. “Everything okay?”

“You tell me,” Sisko said good-naturedly. “How was dinner?”

“A meal fit for a kai,” Kas declared. “Exquisite in preparation, presentation, and consumption. The Emissary’s cooking lights the way.”

“Kiss-up,” Sisko accused.

“Hey, they get to leave,” she said, nodding back toward their guests. “I have to live here.”

He took her in his arms. “It’s so nice to know I can rely on unbiased feedback.”

“Oh, shut up,” Kasidy said, and they kissed. Softly at first, the feather-brush tingle of lips meeting, then pressing into something deeper as the world around them seemed to recede.

He held her close, unwilling to let the moment to end, knowing it had to.

Kasidy slowly pulled away, smiling up at him. Her eyes went past him, and then widened. “Jake…?”

Sisko turned. Trudging toward them less than fifty meters away now, were the hikers. And, sure enough, one of them, he saw, was his son.

“Jake-o,” Sisko whispered.

Grinning from ear to ear, Jake jogged the rest of the way, embracing his father. His travelling companion, a young woman, Sisko now realized, slowed as she approached.

“Jake, what are you doing here?”

“Sorry I didn’t call ahead,” Jake said, disengaging from the hug so he could embrace Kasidy. “But I wanted to surprise you.” Then he noticed the small group gathered on the front porch. “Wow, uh, I didn’t think you guys would have company this early. I hope we’re not interrupting anything…”

“We were just finishing,” Sisko said with a huge smile of his own, unable to contain the joy he felt at having his son with him again.

“So what brings you back?” Kasidy asked, her eyes smiling toward Jake’s companion.

“There’s someone I wanted you to meet,” Jake turned to the young woman, took her hand, and stood with her facing them. She was Bajoran, Sisko saw, and lovely. The way she smiled, there was something familiar about her…

“Dad, Kas,” Jake began, “I’d like you to meet Azeni Korena.”

Sisko blinked. Korena?

“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she told Sisko, then turned her smile on Kasidy. “Both of you.”

“Did…did you say Korena?” Sisko asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said, his grin a light-year wide. “My wife. We just got married.”

Once the initial shock had worn off, Sisko embraced his daughter-in-law– My daughter-in-law!—bearly able to speak past the elation he felt. Kasidy was equally jubilant, and began bombarding the young couple with questions as she led them back to the house, where introductions were made, and congratulations offered. Korena seemed a little shocked to find Bajor’s First Minister and former kai among the well-wishers, but recovered quickly. As the sun crept over the horizon, the mood in the Sisko house was merry once again.

Jake followed as Kasidy led Korena inside to look in on Rebecca in the nursery, leaving Sisko to stare after them in amazement. His guests had gone from congratulating the young couple to congratulating him,Vaughn pouring another round of groszand offering a toast that Sisko barely heard.

Married,Sisko thought. To the same woman I once met in an alternate future. A future Jake doesn’t even remember.

And that meant…what? That some events were inevitable? That some things couldn’t be avoided? Was this a sign of something deeper?

Enough, Ben,he told himself. You’re a father-in-law. Don’t be a killjoy and overanalyze it. Not every event is an omen, and not all events are threaded together. Not everything dovetails back to you. Or Them.

He raised his glass with the others and sipped, deciding darkly that if groszwasn’t illegal, it should be.

Suddenly Kira had rejoined them. “Nerys,” Sisko said, beaming at her. “Jake just got back. He’s married, can you believe it?”

“Captain,” Vaughn said, addressing Kira. “Is something wrong?”

Sisko then noticed that Kira had not come out onto the porch again, but was standing in the threshold of his front door, her expression grim.

“I’m sorry to interrupt the celebration,” she said, “but I need you all to join me in the study. Right now.”

“What is it?” Sisko asked.

“Ro has new information about what happened in Hedrikspool,” Kira said. “And you all need to hear it.”

Standing in front of the familiar array of green lights that covered the back wall of Deep Space 9’s security office, Ro Laren spoke quickly from the companel screen in Sisko’s study, reviewing the chronology of Sidau’s destruction before launching into her new findings.

“…As insular Bajoran communities go, Sidau was rather unremarkable in all respects except one,”she said. “The villagers had a peculiar annual ritual: They supposedly battled a mythical elemental creature called aDal’Rok for five consecutive nights every year. I had assumed it was a lot of nonsense. What I learned from the logs of Doctor Bashir and Chief O’Brien, however, is that theDal’Rok was real. At least, it was real to the inhabitants of Sidau.”

“Only to them?” asked Asarem.

“It was evidently a psionic manifestation of their fears,”Ro explained, “brought about and repulsed by the villagers’ collective will—which was channeled by the community’s shaman, thesirah.”

“A storyteller,” Opaka said, an instant before Sisko himself recognized the Old Bajoran term. This was starting to sound familiar…

“Right,”Ro answered. “Except this one wasn’t the kind of scholar we normally associate with the term today. Apparently, at some point in the village’s early history, discord among the inhabitants threatened their demise. The details about it are vague, but what Bashir and O’Brien reported was that this led thesirah of that time to come up with theDal’Rok ritual as a way of bringing the people together by giving them the appearance of an outside threat to rally against. The fact that they were actually contending with their own fears became a secret passed down fromsirah tosirah for decades, maybe centuries.”

“I remember this now,” Sisko said, his expression darkening. He looked at Kira. “Doctor Bashir and the Chief went there while we were mediating the border dispute between the Paqu and Navot.”

Kira nodded. “I realized the same thing.”

“Lieutenant,” said Vaughn, “you said the Dal’Rokwas a psionic construct. Were these sirahtelepaths?”

“Sirahna,” Ro corrected. “And good guess, but no. That’s where the beginning of the answer to the massacre of the village comes in. According to Bashir and O’Brien, aSirah would employ an artifact to conjure and control theDal’Rok.”

“What sort of artifact?” Asarem asked.

“It was a bracelet, at the center of which was a small green stone reputed to be a fragment of an Orb.”

“An Orb fragment?”Vaughn asked, echoing Sisko’s own thoughts. All eyes turned briefly to Opaka, but the former kai said nothing, only frowned as she listened to Ro’s tale.

“I know it sounds unlikely,”Ro said. “I wasn’t even aware myself that that could happen to an Orb. And for what it’s worth, I haven’t had any luck verifying that itever happened. But it’s hard to imagine another explanation for what Bashir and O’Brien experienced. We know the Orbs aren’t made of ordinary matter. Starfleet’s best guess was always that they were energy vortices that didn’t exist entirely within our universe. If the bracelet stone really was an Orb fragment, it might explain why Sidau village was destroyed.”

“Someone learned about the bracelet, and went after it,” Vaughn said.

“And maybe got it,” Kira chimed in.

“If it isan orb fragment,” Asarem said, “is there any way to know which Orb it may have come from?”

Ro shook her head. “I’m afraid not, First Minister. I checked with the Vedek Assembly, and while it’s hard to be absolutely certain, given the unusual nature of the Orbs, there’s no obvious sign that any of them was ever damaged, assuming such a thing is even possible. The fact that the fragment is supposed to be green isn’t a clue; the Orbs have been known to change colors from time to time, though no one knows why. And the use to which thesirahna put the fragment doesn’t exactly tie it specifically to any of the abstract concepts for which the Orbs were named.”

Their appellations ran through Sisko’s mind: Prophecy and Change. Wisdom. Contemplation. Time. Memory. Destiny. Truth. Souls. Unity.Ro was right; it could be any of them.

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go after one of the actual Orbs,” Vaughn asked, “not just this bracelet?”

“The Tears have been hidden,” Kira explained. “The close call we had with the parasites led the Vedek Assembly to place them in a secret location for the time being, until new security measures can be implemented to insure their safety in the shrines.”

Asarem nodded. “Bajor is determined that they never again be compromised in any way.”

“Besides,”Ro added, “a missing Orb would be noticed immediately. The bracelet was all but unknown outside Sidau. I think the perpetrators thought that by incinerating the village and everyone in it, it would prevent or at least delay our learning about the bracelet.”

“How powerful is this artifact?” Vaughn asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”Ro said. “The Cardassians captured most of the Orbs during the Occupation as part of the overall plundering of Bajor, but either they were never able to make use of them, or they chose not to risk trying. But if someone with an agenda were to get hold of one, even this supposed ‘fragment,’ who knows what they could do?”

It was troubling thought, and Sisko now understood why Kira had elected to share it with the rest of them. Signs and omens, threads and fragments…

Sisko suddenly realized something else. “Lieutenant,” he said. “You said you found out all this only after an exhaustive search of the station’s databases.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Then how would the destroyers of Sidau have learned about it?”

Ro looked at Kira, whose face was the same grim mask as before.

“The same way,” Kira answered. “The only conclusion that fits these assumptions is that the information was obtained from Deep Space 9.” Her eyes met Sisko’s. “We have a mole.”