Текст книги "Trill and Bajor "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: J. Kim,Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

4

Julian Bashir was gratified that Ezri had relented and allowed him to accompany her on what otherwise would have been a solitary voyage to Trill. After having seen her obvious emotional distress back in the Minos Korvan parasite nest, he felt it prudent to keep an eye on her. Besides that, he simply wanted to spend some time alone with her, though he worried that he might have pushed a bit too hard in his efforts at persuasion.

Seated beside her in the copilot’s seat, he watched Ezri as she flew the runabout and occasionally monitored its instruments. She spent most of her time looking silently through the transparent aluminum windows at the ever-changing star field, her gaze directed straight ahead.

Ezri had been uncharacteristically quiet and standoffish ever since the Rio Grandehad gone to warp nearly an hour earlier. A glance at the instrument panel told him that she was pushing the runabout’s engines nearly to their limit. At this pace, we’ll reach Trill in about three standard days,he thought after performing a quick mental calculation.

It was easy to guess that much of her current mood stemmed from the parasite crisis and the fallout it was continuing to generate back on Trill. Or perhaps my twisting her arm until she agreed to bring me along has something to do with it.Either way, he knew that if she didn’t unburden herself about it soon, the next three days would pass very slowly indeed.

Whatever Ezri might think of his counseling abilities, he knew when it was prudent to back off. And whenever stimulating conversation wasn’t an option, there was always the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Excusing himself, he quietly rose from his seat, fetched a few items from the pockets of his field jacket, then continued past the runabout’s dual transporter pad on his way to the aft compartment. The sliding hatch hissed shut behind him, and he was alone.

Smiling to himself, he held up the small ceramic shard that Ezri had found in the parasite nest on Minos Korva. He studied the palm-size fragment carefully, turning it over and over in his hands as he wondered how and why it had come to be where it was.

Taking a seat before the computer console on the runabout’s starboard side, he said, “Computer, show me the xenoanthropology database.”

Dax heaved a relieved sigh a few moments after Julian left the cockpit. While she had to admit it was nice having the man she loved at her side during difficult times, she was less than eager to share this burden with him. She knew he couldn’t be terribly surprised by her reticence. She was a Trill, after all, and he was already well acquainted with her people’s penchant for keeping secrets, thanks to his role in discovering the Symbiosis Commission’s systematic suppression of the fact that nearly half of her world’s humanoid population were suitable for joining with the symbionts, not the one-tenth of one percent that was still the common belief.

Maybe it’s that very secrecy that’s at the root of all of our current troubles,she thought.

Putting aside her glum musings, she decided to take advantage of this solitary time in the cockpit to try to get a handle on the situation back on the Trill homeworld. Her hands moved with deliberation across the instrument panel, activating the runabout’s subspace transceiver. She quickly keyed a personal subspace reception code within the Trill Defense Ministry.

A flashing amber light on the companel signaled that her subspace signal wasn’t getting through. Carefully, she repeated the signal initiation procedure, trying once again to establish contact with Taulin Cyl’s office.

Again, nothing. Muttering one of Curzon’s preferred Klingon curses under her breath, Dax made two more fruitless attempts. After the fifth try got her through to the Defense Ministry’s general reception area—netting her a two-minute conversation with a junior information officer, who then transferred her to an even more junior-looking adjutant or assistant instead of to the evidently extremely busy General Cyl—she decided that she was getting precisely nowhere. Cyl evidently had his hands full, no doubt at least in part because of the Trill Senate’s upcoming public hearings into the parasite affair.

Rising from her chair, she walked straight back to the Rio Grande’s aft compartment. When the hatch hissed open before her, she found Julian staring into the display at the computer station, studying a quickly scrolling text with an intensity that made her wonder if he even remembered that he was aboard a space vessel flying at many multiples of light speed—or that the rest of the universe even existed.

Or thatI exist,she thought, smiling to herself. But wasn’t that single-mindedness, that all-encompassing enthusiasm for knowledge one of the qualities that drew her to him?

“Hi, Julian,” she said gently as she walked up behind his chair and placed a hand on its back. She was beginning to feel guilty about having driven him into solitude, though he hadn’t seemed to mind much at the time. “Lieutenant Dax to Doctor Bashir,” she added several beats after he failed to respond to her.

It took him another moment or two to react to her presence. When he paused the display and turned to face her, she wondered if he was going to ask if they had arrived at Trill yet.

Instead he smiled up at her and took her hand. His hands always felt warmer than any Trill’s, and the sensation was almost electric. “Sorry. I thought I’d get started on a little research.”

She gently squeezed his hand and returned his smile, and then he went back to his task. For Julian, doing “a little quick research” was often like having “a short conversation” with Morn while drinking at Quark’s—in other words, it would most likely become an all-encompassing, completely attention-devouring endeavor. Over his shoulder, she could see odd images and snippets of text from the database he was so quickly scrolling through. Her brow furrowed briefly in puzzlement.

“When did you become so interested in exoarchaeology?”

Julian paused the display once more on a vaguely familiar-looking image. “Right after you made that rather odd discovery on Minos Korva.”

She suddenly remembered that she hadn’t given a thought to the ceramic shard since just after she’d picked it up from the cave floor. A momentary panic gripped her; she withdrew her hand from his and patted her uniform jacket in a futile search for the item.

Then she looked back at Julian, who was grinning and holding up the small pottery fragment. He gently placed it into her hand.

Her face reddened as she accepted it. She felt foolish for having forgotten that she’d given it to him. “Thanks for taking charge of this, Julian.”

“I was more than happy to. You seemed to have a lot of other things on your mind at the time.”

Dax decided to head off that particular conversational thread by discussing the artifact. “So, has your research told you anything important about this thing so far?”

“It’s hard to say. The first thing I determined was that it’s about twelve thousand years old. It didn’t appear to be Bajoran, so I thought it was doubtful that Shakaar left it in those caves. There’s absolutely no possibility that the piece is native to Minos Korva, and it seems rather unlikely that any of the other humanoid hosts taken by the parasites would have carried any such thing prior to their being attacked. So I started to wonder if the fragment might have had some significance to the parasites themselves. Then my tricorder detected this.” He keyed a new image onto his screen, which Dax recognized as a layered molecular scan, presumably of the fragment, with its different constituent materials broken out by color. The dark outer glaze was represented in reds and purples; the inner ceramics by a bright blue.

In between was a small patch of green lines. A glyph?

Julian isolated the image and enlarged it. It looked like no language Ezri had ever seen before.

“From this, I’ve been able to determine that this object came from the planet Kurl.”

“Kurl. That’s the site of a long-dead civilization, isn’t it?”

Julian nodded. “It is. What little we know of it is mostly by way of artifacts like that one, but our best guess has been that the Kurlan civilization was at least tens of thousands of years old before it died out, five thousand years ago. And the planet is located hundreds of light-years from Minos Korva, well outside Federation territory. However this fragment ended up in that cave, it’s gotten itself quite a long way from home.”

Dax smiled, understanding his fascination. “Sounds like quite a mystery.”

“A very nearly irresistible one.” Julian returned her smile with a mischievous grin. “In fact, I can think of only one other thing I’d rather do to pass the time until we reach Trill.”

As much as she enjoyed their infrequent intimate time together, Dax had to admit that not even Emony had ever whiled away three entire days doing that.

“Down, boy,” she said with a grin as she examined the ancient and gracefully curved shard closely. Despite its great age, the fragment retained a smooth glaze. She wondered how anyone, even someone with a mind as brilliant as Julian’s, could satisfactorily explain the thing. “I know how much you love puzzles, Julian. But I’m afraid you don’t have very much to go on here.”

He shrugged. “Neither did the Trill paleontologists who worked out the carnivorous habits of the extinct Eomreker.All they had to guide them was a fossilized rear claw and a single incisor tooth. But I’m quite a determined fellow, and I have three whole days to tease out some answers.”

She looked once again into his brown, knowledge-hungry eyes and marveled at how easily he could transform himself from bantering adolescent to determined problem solver. It struck her then that it was at times like this that he was most attractive.

“I just had a thought,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it gently. “We dohave three days. There’s no need to wear yourself out.” She grinned. “Studying, I mean.”

Later, Dax watched Julian as he dozed beside her on the narrow bunk. His breathing made a gentle, repetitive susurrus, and his olive-tinted features looked slack and childlike.

Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the gray curvature of the ceiling molding, wishing she could feel half as relaxed as Julian obviously did.

After another few minutes, she rose quietly, gathering the pieces of her uniform as she withdrew from the sleeping compartment. Except for her boots, she was dressed by the time she reached the cockpit. All the instruments showed nominal; the Rio Granderemained on its heading for Trill, which now lay somewhat less than three days away. Leaning back in the pilot’s seat, she suddenly realized that she was clutching the ceramic fragment tightly in her left hand; she had evidently grabbed it instead of her boots.

She set the fragment down on the panel and activated the communications system, hoping to reach General Cyl. Her luck was no better this time than on her first attempt shortly after leaving Minos Korva.

Rather than continue figuratively beating her head against the bulkhead, she entered another series of commands into the companel. A few moments later the rounded, stylized symbol of one of Trill’s civilian newsnets appeared on her screen.

Her eyes widened involuntarily as watched the lead stories unfold. No wonder Cyl’s not answering.

Stardate 53776.1

Trill’s sun looked strangely orange and oblate as it dipped low on the horizon, its rays blazing an ocher and vermilion trail across the distant white slopes of Bes Manev, the planet’s tallest mountain. The impending sunset cast lengthening shadows over the foothills even as it illuminated Manev Bay’s deep purple waters. The Rio Grandearced past the bay and approached the capital city’s dock district, descending toward the broad blocks of wide, shining reflecting pools and graceful copper towers that comprised the government sector. In the distance loomed the ancient sprawl of the Old City’s core. From the pilot’s seat, Dax took in the scene that was unfolding on the Trill capital’s broad boulevards.

Never before in any of her lives could Dax recall having seen the city of Leran Manev in the grip of such palpable tension. Restive crowds milled behind barricades, held back by serried ranks of black-armored police. Behind the barriers, slogan-festooned placards waved. On the way to the landing concourse, Dax caught a glimpse of a sign that read SYMBIOSIS EQUALS DEATH, then another emblazoned with the words JOINING FOR ALL. A third said, more ambiguously, TIME FOR TRUTH.

She shook her head sadly. What a mess of contradictions. Welcome to the homeworld, Ezri.She felt a surge of gratitude that Ezri Tigan had actually grown up far from here, on the New Sydney colony. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it was unfair; to the best of her knowledge, none of Trill’s cities had ever experienced such sharp political divisions at any point during Ezri’s lifetime. And she had to concede that the stories she had read on Trill’s newsnets might have overstated the possibility of real social unrest.

“That’s quite a gathering out there,” Julian said dryly as Dax landed the runabout in one of the wide spots that was specially marked for official Federation visitors. A few moments later she was standing beside him on the landing pad, in the lengthening shadow of the immense Senate Tower.

Dax spied a pair of figures approaching briskly from the building’s glass entryway portico.

“General Cyl,” Dax said to the tall, white-haired man on the left as she and Julian closed the remaining distance between them. “Mister Gard,” she said to the younger man beside him, nodding in greeting. Gazing at Gard, she hoped she’d managed to conceal her surprise at being received by the man who had actually carried out the assassination of Bajor’s first minister. Perhaps the newsnet rumblings of Gard’s forthcoming presidential pardon really was the done deal that some seemed to believe it was.

As perfunctory greetings were exchanged, Gard smiled disarmingly, though his dark, neatly trimmed goatee gave him an almost roguish aspect. “Please, Lieutenant, call me Hiziki. And that goes for you as well, Doctor.”

Julian looked toward the broad boulevard that lay perhaps a hundred meters past the landing area. Beyond a handful of parked skimmers, hovercars, and small air trams, the milling crowds were clearly visible.

“It looks like a lot of people are becoming rather exercised over current events,” he said dryly, apparently addressing no one in particular.

Eyeing the crowd with evident apprehension, Gard said nothing. Cyl nodded gravely. “The Senate’s public inquest is already under way,” the general said, meeting Dax’s gaze. “Needless to say, there’s been a great deal of popular interest.”

“A lot of people across the planet are anxious to learn the truth about the parasites,” Gard said. “It may be that secrecy is no longer an option.” He sounded almost relieved at the prospect of setting aside Trill’s long history of surreptitiousness; Dax wondered how many of his numerous lifetimes Gard had devoted to maintaining it.

Ushering the group toward the Senate Tower’s broad, balustraded entrance, Cyl shook his head. “It’s a pity we weren’t able to keep the hearings entirely closed to the public. We could have decided later how much to reveal, and when to reveal it. But I suppose that wouldn’t have been realistic.”

Gard glanced briefly back at the crowd before returning his gaze to Dax. “At any rate, the Senate is particularly eager to hear yourtestimony, Lieutenant.”

No pressure,she thought, hoping that the unalloyed truth about the parasites would serve to calm the restless crowds rather than inflame them further. Though she was well acquainted with her people’s penchant for secrecy, she also knew that Trills, like all Federation members, were proud of their free and open society. She had to believe that her people would never throw away the latter because of an habitual attachment to the former.

“When does the Senate want Lieutenant Dax to testify?” Julian asked the general.

Cyl directed his reply to Dax, almost as though Julian weren’t there. “Immediately, if that’s all right with you. I’ll be at your side throughout your testimony, just in case security considerations make it necessary to recommend that you answer any of the Senate’s questions in a special closed-door session later.”

Dax felt her stomach flutter slightly. She wasn’t surprised at Cyl’s evident reticence about what her upcoming testimony might make public. But she hadn’t expected to have to leap into the thick of things so soon after landing on Trill.

“So, are you ready, Lieutenant?” Cyl asked, his dark eyebrows raised.

“I suppose so,” she said at length, hoping she didn’t sound quite as apprehensive as she felt.

“Lead on, then,” Julian said.

Gard stopped at the gleaming transparisteel door, which was flanked by a pair of alert-looking, dark-garbed police officers. Turning to Julian, he raised a hand in a polite but firm gesture that clearly said “halt.”

“If you don’t mind, Doctor, we would prefer that you don’t accompany us into the Senate Chambers themselves.”

Julian looked astonished. “Excuse me?”

“You’re welcome to walk around inside the building, of course,” Cyl added. “Or tour the city. But the Senate has requested that no non-Trills be present at the inquest.”

Dax saw that Julian looked peeved, his pride clearly wounded. Smiling, she said, “I did try to talk you out of coming along, Julian, remember?”

“Yes, you did at that,” he said quietly, then put on a smile of his own a few seconds later. It was clear to Dax that her reminder hadn’t helped matters.

He nodded to her. “I suppose I could go for a walk. I’ll catch up with you in a few hours.”

“Julian…” she said, trailing off as he walked away in stony silence. It was clear that he wasn’t at all happy about being excluded from her mission. And that neither Cyl nor Gard wanted him to come along. Dammit.

“This way, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, making a follow megesture toward the Senate Tower’s doors. For a moment, Dax was tempted to put up a fight on Julian’s behalf.

But I’m here to help calm things down. Not to contribute more problems.With a sigh, she went where she was bid.

Secretive bastards,Bashir thought as he stalked away.

He was a little surprised at how quickly his initial feeling of pique evaporated as he made his way through the crowd that ringed the broad boulevards around the Senate Tower. Of course, he was well aware that he tended to be distracted fairly easily by interesting surroundings.

Political dissension was rare in recent Federation history, and as he passed through gaps in the placard-carrying crowd he found himself wondering about the substance of it. There were easily a thousand people lining the portion of the main thoroughfare visible to him, and a few minutes’ study revealed that the only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they were unjoined Trill humanoids. It was a surprisingly diverse group, containing faces of every hue, from Ezri’s pale tones to Captain Sisko’s deep, burnished brown. Bashir’s keen eye even discerned a handful of people whose faces were distinguished by graceful, upward-

arching brow ridges instead of the facial spots more commonly associated with Trill humanoids.

He realized immediately that he shouldn’t have been surprised in the least; after all, most of the Trills he had encountered until now belonged to a tiny minority of the populace.

The joined.

Judging from the signs carried by the largest clusters of people, at least three clear political viewpoints were discernible. One faction was demanding accountability from the Trill government regarding the parasite crisis; they carried signs suggesting that the genetic relationship between the parasites and the symbionts was quickly becoming common knowledge. Another group’s placards vehemently denounced the entire institution of joining, offering the parasites as proof that the symbionts were in fact mind-controlling alien life-forms bent on the conquest and domination of Trill. A third group—which apparently equated symbiosis not only with upward social mobility, but also with a sort of immortality—demanded joining for all healthy Trill humanoids who requested it.

The sentiments of the joining-for-all contingent—which was comprised of adults of both genders and every age group from teens to the elderly—struck a chord of sympathy within Bashir’s breast. What would it be like to be denied something that so many of one’s peers regard as so important?

He walked south, approaching Leran Manev’s graceful sprawl of reflecting pools. As the crowds receded behind him, he considered the demands of the third group of demonstrators, and recalled what the Trill Symbiosis Commissioner Dr. Renhol had said about the issue during one of Bashir’s visits to Trill five years earlier. Renhol had begged him and Benjamin Sisko not to reveal their discovery that some fifty percent of Trill’s humanoid populace could, in fact, qualify for symbiosis; she had argued that complete social chaos would erupt were the truth to emerge. Because the symbiont population had never been large enough to accommodate such a huge demand, the Symbiosis Commission had perpetuated the lie that only a tiny fraction of the humanoid population could join successfully.

Passing the reflecting pools and moving toward what the map on his tricorder identified as the periphery of the government quarter, Bashir wondered if the Trill people had finally begun honestly challenging the restrictions to symbiosis. If so, would Dr. Renhol’s dire prediction actually come to pass?

He tried to push those concerns aside as he made his way into what was clearly a far different sector of the city. Rather than creating a skyline of vertical spires, the buildings were low and broad, few exceeding four stories in height. Narrow, decorative watercourses threaded between streets and buildings, crossed at intervals by bridges of wood or metal. Bashir wondered if the purpose of the clearly artificial waterways was to stimulate comforting thoughts of Mak’ala, the underground, aqueous caverns where the Trill symbionts bred.

Turning his attention to the storefronts, office structures, and apartment complexes, it struck Bashir that virtually every structure within sight was a landmark, a touchstone to some bygone age or other. An ancient rococo library that resembled a medieval Terran cathedral made entirely of glass and translucent crystal beckoned to him with uncountable racks of data rings and old-style hard-copy books. An old-fashioned, meticulously hand-painted sign in the main gallery window touted a forthcoming personal appearance by a noted Trill author of an apparently highly regarded new work of serial biography. The book concerned a figure from Trill history whose lives spanned the period of warfare before the planet’s political unification to the uncertain years after first contact with Vulcan. The walls were bedecked in swirling, colorful portraits, apparently actual wood-framed canvas paintings mounted on easels rather than free-floating holograms; the images, some of them old and cracked, showed a wide range of visual interpretations of the biography’s evidently controversial subject, some heroic, others monstrous.

Bashir wandered on, eagerly drinking in the sights. Museum-piece retail storefronts were being carefully shuttered by their proprietors, while the operators of cafés and sidewalk restaurants appeared to be preparing for a busy evening. Bashir paused momentarily to people-watch near a construction site where an elaborately designed edifice was being erected; he was immediately taken by the confident bearing of the young woman—the architect, Bashir presumed—who was directing a crew of workers. While the young woman carried herself without a hint of trepidation, she also moved as though she was acutely aware of anything that might conceivably endanger her. Only someone with an extremely long view of life could control her body with such surgical precision, while at the same time making it look so casual.

She’s either a very old soul, or she’s joined.As he resumed walking, he wondered how many other lives echoed and reverberated inside her symbiont. Who but the most ardent anti-symbiont partisan could resist the siren song of such instantly installed, modular wisdom, which was in some ways so like his own genengineered abilities? How many clear advantages did those former lives confer upon their hosts—advantages that might be forever unavailable to the vast majority of the people now carrying signs outside the Senate Tower?

He walked on through the streets of the living Trill museum, troubled in spite of himself by what he had just seen. Though he certainly considered himself worldly enough to understand that Federation member worlds sometimes fell short of the UFP’s social ideals—the planet Ardana’s segregation of its intellectual and labor classes during the previous century sprang immediately to mind—he was still idealistic enough to be disturbed by it.

Trying to put such thoughts out of his mind, Bashir walked on for several more blocks, noting that the buildings he was encountering seemed increasingly ornate and baroque. A quick scan with his tricorder revealed that all of the structures around him were far older than any of the buildings in the government sector, though none betrayed any obvious signs of neglect or disrepair. A few dated back more than a millennium, a fact that would have been apparent only to a true expert in Trill architecture—or to the discerning eye of a Starfleet tricorder. Clearly, entire sections of Leran Manev had become gallery displays of cultural history. It was a vibrant, though chronologically arranged, metropolis.

Of course,he thought. Joined Trill symbionts have serial lives that can go on for centuries.It made perfect sense that the Trill people would have a tendency to revere memories, whether personal or architectural, and take great care to preserve as many of their cultural manifestations as possible.

The notion of Trill memories brought to the fore some poignant recollections of his own. Finding a vacant public information terminal, he tapped in an inquiry and determined that the source of his musings was in this very city. Within walking distance, even.

A small melancholy smile crossed his lips as he realized just how close he had come to the place he had avoided for nearly two years now.

Jirin Tambor entered the grand, crystalline foyer of the Najana Library and eyed the display of the new serial biography of General Tem.

The sight of Grala Tem’s smirking visage set off yet another wave of chest pain. The joined newsheads on the nets seemed united in their praise of the old butcher. But Tambor always had to wonder if Tem could have risen to such prominence without standing on the shoulders of his symbiont’s previous lives. What if he’d been among the faceless ranks of unjoined cannon fodder who had fought and died for him?

How hard could it have been to achieve apparent greatness with a built-in advantage like that?

Tambor suddenly became aware of the head librarian, who stood scowling at him, arms akimbo. Though she was young, her eyes were old. Joined eyes, he concluded. He realized with no small amount of embarrassment that she had been trying to get his attention for some time.

“I said, are you here to deliver the rest of the General Tem display for the art gallery?”

His chest hurting, Tambor nodded, abashed. “It’s on the hover-truck outside.”

“Fine, then,” she said impatiently. “Bring it on down to the basement. The staff will unpack and assemble it tomorrow. And no antigravs inside the building.”

“All right,” Tambor said. Though he didn’t relish carting his heavy cargo without the benefit of antigravs, he was thankful for once for the obsessive need to keep anachronistic technology out of their old landmark buildings. Because of that need, Tambor now had permission to place a large, sealed crate into the Najana Library’s basement. He was confident that no one would notice that he was still in the basement along with it until after the library closed. By the time anybody did, it would be far too late.

The pain in Tambor’s chest receded slightly. Soon, very soon, the joined would all begin to pay.

Dax found the quiet of the place almost deafening. Until this evening, she had made a point of avoiding this place. Memories could be treasured, after all, without having to dwell on them.

The sun had long vanished behind the ranks of low, ancient rooftops that dotted the edge of Manev Bay. Nearby, orderly rows of crystalline obelisks cast lengthy shadows over a lawn that stretched for kilometers. As with all cemeteries on Trill, the grave markers were a riot of color, even in the darkness. Illuminated subtly from within by remote-mediated photonics, each marker instantly told a story about the status of every interred person. The unjoined, who comprised the vast majority of the dead, were denoted by a simple, dignified yellow. The joined dead whose experiences were no longer being carried by a joined successor host—a fate that Dax knew awaited every joined Trill humanoid eventually—glowed a deep, mournful green.

The smallest group, representing only a tiny percentage of the forest of small spires, glowed a hopeful purple, the color of Trill’s ever-regenerating oceans, the ultimate source of all life. These were the graves of once-joined humanoids whose symbionts currently lived on in other hosts, hosts who sustained their predecessors’ memories in much the same way that Trill’s oceans nurtured the planet’s biosphere. As Vic might say, these are the best seats in the house,Dax thought wryly, uncomfortable in the presence of so much stark, immutable death. Maybe it’s not exactlyMak’relle Dur, but I suppose it’s a pretty reasonable facsimile.

A slender shadow, taller than any of the spires, fell across a grave marker bearing a name that was barely discernible in the waning light: