Текст книги "Trill and Bajor "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: J. Kim,Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

9

“Of courseI’ve questioned it,” Dax said. “Even if my symbiont hadn’t lived through nine hosts, two of us have been Starfleet officers, and one of us was a Federation diplomat. It’s inevitable that we’d have a wider view of things than most. That we’d question the status quo more.” She was sitting behind the controls of the Rio Grande,one hand guiding the vessel on a swift suborbital trajectory over the Ganses Peninsula toward the Caves of Mak’ala. Her other hand, the one that still sported an angry red phaser burn, absent-mindedly played with the fragment from the Kurlan naiskos.The pain in her hand was tolerable, though she wished she’d taken a moment to treat it with a dermal regenerator before beaming the runabout’s medical equipment down to Julian.

“So what makes you different from the protesters?” Cyl asked, sitting next to her. He appeared more relaxed than he had back in Talris’s office. But Dax knew he was a military general, and therefore a soldier. She surmised that he was really as tense as she was, if not more so.

“Questioning and exploring aren’t quite the same as anarchy and outright defiance of authority,” she said, a touch of defensiveness rising within her. She was reminded briefly of Curzon’s wry observation that anarchy is better than no government at all.

Cyl nodded, his mouth forming a small smile. “So it’s a matter of degree, not necessarily a question of the goal. And you would never defy the authority of accepted morality by say…reassociation?”

Dax’s eyes narrowed as her mind flashed back to the brief time that Jadzia Dax had met Torias Dax’s previous wife, Nilani Kahn, whose symbiont was then hosted in the body of Dr. Lenara Kahn. Dax had been willing to break the taboo forbidding reassociation between joined Trills who had been intimate with one another during previous lives. Kahn, however, decided ultimately not to pursue their renewed relationship.

“Point taken,” Dax said after a moment of reflection. “But it sounds to me that you’re either finding reasons to excuse the actions of these neo-Purists, or you’re painting anyone who disobeys the rules with the same broad brush you’d use on the radical fringe.”

Cyl’s smile widened. “I’m doing neither, Ezri. Or maybe both. This is a confusing time for Trill, and no matter what comes in the next days and weeks, we are allgoing to have to reexamine our values and beliefs. Our traditions and laws may be open to change, and we’ll be forced to decide if our society shouldchange, or if we should remain anchored to the past. Evolution itself is about change, after all. Do we allow our society to evolve? And if we examine the mistakes and secrets of our past, how will that affect the evolution of our future?”

Dax checked the course of the runabout on the instrument panel, then looked back over at Cyl. “You’re certainly not Audrid’s little girl Neema any longer. You’ve become quite the warrior-philosopher.”

“The accumulated experiences of six hosts tend to do that sort of thing to a person,” Cyl said. “Not that I need to tell you,Para.”

The word hit Dax harder than she thought it might have in any other context. “Para” had been Neema’s childhood name for her mother, Audrid Dax, lifetimes ago. Now Dax was a part of a twenty-seven-year-old Starfleet officer, and Cyl existed as a fifty-something-year-old military general. The familial bond they had once shared remained strong in Dax’s memory, but the physicality of their current hosts made such recollections feel strange and confusing. Such mnemonic turmoil no doubt accounted, at least in part, for the Trill people’s cultural taboo against reassociation.

Dax looked at the Kurlan fragment she was holding and turned it over in her hands. “I don’t regret it, you know. Reassociation, I mean. I don’t regret what happened with Lenara Kahn. Just as I don’t regret my decision to reconnect with my friends on Deep Space 9, or getting reacquainted with you.”

“Maybe not yet,” Cyl said, a wry grin appearing on his face even as his eyes grew sadder and older. “Give it time. I can be quite the tyrant.”

Dax returned the grin. So could Neema.

She looked up at Cyl. “Do you suppose that a part of the taboo against reassociation is to keep the joined from sharing too much of the past? I mean, it seems as though that concept is against everything we’re taught about revering memory and history. Did we decide somewhere along the line that reassociation could spark some kind of…atavistic racial recollection of early Trill?” She held up the Kurlan object so that Cyl could see it clearly. “Or of some horrible truth we’ve kept buried deep in our past?”

“Why don’t you ask Audrid?” Cyl said. “True, the Cyl symbiont is older than Dax, but Audrid was the head of the Symbiosis Commission for over fifteen years.” He hesitated, then looked away. “But then, Audrid always excelled at keeping secrets.”

Dax and Cyl had danced around that subject time and time again. How Jayvin Vod, Neema’s father and Audrid’s husband, had been taken over by one of the parasites, in the icy interior of a rogue comet. How Jayvin had been allowed to die because of the irreversible psychic damage the Vod symbiont had suffered. How, in order to keep the existence of the parasites quiet, Audrid had lied to her children about the actual circumstances of Jayvin Vod’s death, thereby estranging Neema from her for years. How Audrid had eventually told Neema the complete truth about her father’s death, including the facts about the parasite, a creature supposedly stricken from Trill’s earliest historical records, buried and forgotten.

More than a hundred years and a lifetime later, the pain of Audrid’s betrayal of her daughter’s trust evidently remained an open wound for Taulin Cyl.

Dax reached out and took Cyl’s hand, squeezing it. He looked at her, his eyes uncharacteristically soft and imploring. “I’m sorry, Neema,” Dax said, her voice taking on Audrid’s measured cadence. “I would give anything to change what happened that day.”

“And that is the difference between us and the powers that we serve,” Cyl said, nodding. “We should not reassociate. We should not remember the bad. We should cover up our sins. That is what the governing body of Trill wants.” He chuckled slightly. “Perhaps neither of us is really very different from the people who are crying out for radical change.”

Dax offered him a grim smile. “There’s that broad brush again. Not everyone crying out for change wants what the neo-Purists want. The neo-Purists aren’t agitating for equal access to symbiosis. Sure, they want to eradicate the boundaries between the joined and the unjoined—but they’re trying to eliminate the joined in order to do that.”

Dax again raised the naiskosfragment. “What do you think the truth really is behind the neo-Purists’ revelations about the parasites? About Kurl?”

Cyl sighed as he took the ceramic shard from Dax and inspected it. “My people have found similar Kurlan artifacts in some of the other parasite lairs we’ve investigated. At first, we thought they might constitute some kind of message, or function as calling cards. But we decided that neither idea made sense. The parasites never expected their lairs to be invaded. Why would they leave messages there for outsiders? Now I suspect they hung on to them as artifacts of memory. Perhaps they revere their history as much as we do ours.”

Cyl handed the shard back, and Dax shuddered involuntarily in response. It was bad enough to have to accept that the symbionts and the parasites shared genetic characteristics. But today’s revelations also suggested that the two species might have deep cultural commonalities as well. Dax was profoundly disturbed by the notion that the Trill might share any behavioral traits whatsoever with such lethal, implacably hostile creatures as the parasites.

She blinked, and in the nanosecond of darkness saw Jayvin Vod deep inside that icy comet, his speech jangled and incoherent and enraged, his eyes cold and murderous. He was no longer her lifetimes-ago husband, but was “the taker of the gist.” Though the creature had worn Jayvin’s form, it was intent on destroying all that was Jayvin Vod. And all that was Trill.

And then her eyes were open again, and she focused on the naiskosfragment in her palm. She squeezed it in her fist and impulsively threw it against the aft bulkhead. It shattered as though shot from a cannon, clattering to the deck in countless tiny shards.

“Feel better now?” Cyl asked after a lengthy silence, one eyebrow raised.

“For now,” Dax said, nodding. A blush of color rose to her cheeks as she realized how silly she must look. A sudden, insistent beeping from the instrument panel seized her attention. Embarrassed by her inattention, she quickly turned to check the cockpit readouts. Then she began guiding the runabout into a rapid controlled descent. Through the front windows, she could see dawn glimmering against the distant white-topped crags of the vast Ayai’leh-hirh mountain range.

“We’re only a few dozen klicks from the caves,” she said, forcing her words into a businesslike cadence.

Cyl settled back in his seat. “So, we’ve managed to voyage nearly halfway around the planet without oncediscussing the problems in your relationship with the doctor.”

Dax shot him a look that was equal parts surprise and annoyance. “What? I don’t think—I don’t—We aren’t having any problems.”

“Oh.” Cyl stared straight ahead at the rapidly approaching countryside. Its luxuriant carpet of greens and browns was punctuated by jagged gray volcanic buttes, leftovers of the ancient geological processes that had also carved Mak’ala’s network of subterranean caverns.

“What is thatsupposed to—” Dax was interrupted by a beeping from the console and several flashing lights. “I’m detecting weapons fire at the caves.”

Moments later, the cliffside entrance to the Caves of Mak’ala hove into view through the front windows. Several hundred people had gathered outside. Unpowered hover vehicles lay overturned on the rough ground—one was afire, belching clouds of thick, black smoke—and phaser fire came both from the military troops lined up behind barricades near the caves and from the protesting crowd.

“Why haven’t we gotten any distress calls?” Cyl asked, leaning forward.

Dax punched several buttons on the panel. “Incoming transmissions are being jammed from outside. Looks like the Guardians couldn’t raise anyone over any of the comm channels.”

Cyl breathed a quiet curse. “Can you set the ship’s phasers on stun, as you suggested back at the Senate Tower?”

Dax nodded. “Yes, but the wider the dispersal, the less effect it will have on the crowd. A runabout’s phasers aren’t exactly built for crowd control. It might knock them down for a few minutes, but not for much longer than that. And I can’t guarantee that some of your guards won’t get caught in the beam.”

“Do it,” Cyl said. “In the meantime, we’ve got to call in some reinforcements.” He tapped on the console, evidently well versed in Starfleet communications protocols.

“I don’t know if this message will get through either,” Dax said, nodding. “But it’s worth a try.”

As Dax gingerly maneuvered the Rio Grandea few meters over the heads of the crowd, she saw many of the people below look up, some pointing. She quickly entered several commands into the instrument panel, then swiped her hand over the phaser controls.

Moments later, the phasers had created a wide swath in the crowd as hundreds of people fell to the ground, unconscious.

Let’s hope that’s the worst violence we’re going to see here today,Dax thought as she sought out a safe landing space.

Brushing his long, dark hair back from his high, spotted forehead, Ranul Keru emerged from one of the heavily fortified cave entrances just in time to see a Danube-class Starfleet runabout turn its phasers on one of the most unruly portions of the protesting crowd. He was momentarily appalled, until he observed that no one had been burned or vaporized; the vessel’s weapons had been fired at low power—just enough to stun.

Moments later, the runabout landed near the caves’ main entrance, as guards moved aside. Keru joined the captain of the guard as he waited for the runabout’s occupants to emerge. The craft’s hatch moved outward, and two figures stepped onto the rocky ground. One was a diminutive woman in her twenties; she was dressed in a Starfleet uniform, and her dark hair was cut short. The other was older, an iron-haired man wearing a Trill military uniform. Keru recognized him at once.

“General Cyl, I’m Captain Doyos,” the leader of the guard said. “We’ve been calling for backup for an hour now, since things began getting ugly. More protesters have arrived since then, and some of those brought vehicles and weapons.”

“Someone’s been jamming your communications. Probably neo-Purist agents who have even more dirty tricks up their sleeves,” Cyl said. “We didn’t know.” He turned to the woman. “Ezri, I will leave the historical research in your capable hands. I need to strategize with my people out here to keep the caves protected.”

“All right, General,” the woman said.

As the general and the captain began conversing, the woman turned to Keru and presented her hand. “I’m from Starfleet, and I’ve come to ask for the help of the Guardians.”

Keru smiled warmly and shook her much-smaller hand. A jolt of recognition struck him as their flesh came into contact, filling a portion of his mind with new awareness. A name.

“Dax. You’re hosting the Dax symbiont.”

Scowling slightly, Dax withdrew her hand. “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you Guardians doing that.”

Keru had to shake himself out of the euphoria of indirect symbiont telepathy. “Forgive me. I haven’t been doing this quite as long as some of the other Guardians here. It takes some getting used to.” Joining the Order had not only made permanent Keru’s desire not to enter a traditional symbiotic joining, it had also opened up within him a privileged channel of communication with the intelligent, sluglike creatures; he supposed it was probably as much a consequence of the Order’s assiduous training regime as it was of prolonged exposure to the unique environment of Mak’ala’s underground pools, which some said directly tapped the vital living heart of the planet itself. Though every fully initiated Guardian shared this rapport with the symbionts at least to some extent, no humanoid host seemed fully able to understand it. This wordless concord, evolved over the forgotten eons the unjoined Guardians had spent caring for the helpless symbionts, was arguably in some ways even more intimate than Trill symbiosis itself.

“You’ve got me at a disadvantage, Mister…” Dax said, trailing off as she eyed him with apparent suspicion.

For a moment, he stroked his capacious mustache, a nervous habit that seemed to grow worse the longer he lived in the caverns. “Keru,” he said. “Ranul Keru. Lieutenant commander, U.S.S. Enterprise.”

“You’re Starfleet?” Dax said with a smile.

“I’m on extended leave.” Keru explained. “I had some…personal things to work through.” He’d stayed on the Enterprisefor some time after Sean’s death three years ago, but found little joy in stellar cartography anymore. The entire ship had become too painful a reminder of all he had lost.

Keru saw no need to share any of that with Dax, however, especially given the present circumstances.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Dax told him. “You might make things go easier. If you don’t mind, I’d like you with me when I speak to whoever’s in charge here.”

“I’ll be happy to provide any help I can, especially if it’ll help rein in the madness out there.” He swept his arm to the side, ushering her toward the cave entrance.

As she descended the winding stone stairs alongside Keru, Dax reflected that it had been five years since her last visit to the winding catacombs of Mak’ala. No, notmy visit,the part of her symbiosis that was Ezri Tigan reminded her. Despite the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of the dark, rough-hewn rock faces, the high, igneous stone ceilings and dripping stalactites, and the bubbling, geothermally heated pools of mineral-rich water, she knew that all her memories of this place had come from Jadzia Dax and previous hosts.

The thing that struck her most viscerally was the tomblike darkness of so much of the place, which was lit only in the most strategic and necessary places, mainly along the stone stairways and near the frothy gray symbiont breeding pools. The blackness that enclosed the rest of the vast underground spaces felt oppressive and tomblike. Ben Sisko had angrily confronted her shortly after Ezri had become joined to Dax, telling her she could always retreat to this place to live out a challenge-free existence should life in Starfleet prove too difficult for her.

But it was clear to her now that the oppressive nature of Mak’ala, along with the obvious stolid toughness of the Guardians to whom Keru had introduced her—they were single-mindedly dedicated people who seemed to spare no effort in the constant monitoring and testing of the nutrient and mineral content of the symbiont breeding pools—demonstrated that this was no place for the weak. As Keru conducted her to a small natural dais near one of the larger pools, she reflected that it must take a special sort of person indeed to devote his entire life to the care of the symbionts, while at the same time being forever denied the benefits of joining.

When was the last time any of these people went outside and got any sun?she wondered as Keru briefly excused himself to summon his order’s leaders. While waiting for her guide to return, Dax watched as a pair of younger Guardians received a patient lesson in acidity adjustment from an old woman who knelt beside the nearest pool, dipping sampling tubes into the gently lapping gray waves. Several unjoined symbionts breached then, momentarily sending crackling latticeworks of energy across the rippling surface before disappearing once again down below. The old woman smiled in evident satisfaction, as though the symbionts had just spoken directly to her, peer to peer.

It occurred to Dax that maybe they had. Maybe the Guardians enjoyed a relationship with the symbionts that the joined could never understand. As far as she knew, no joined person had ever served as a Guardian. Perhaps after communing with the symbionts as the Guardians did, one lost all desire or capacity for joining. Perhaps selecting one path—either joining or the Order of the Guardians—forever rendered the other inaccessible.

Her reveries were interrupted by the return of Keru, who accompanied six pale, dour-faced, robed men and women ranging in age from late middle age to elderly, whom Keru introduced generically as the Order’s senior leadership. They seemed preoccupied and unwilling to spend much time in conversation, as Timor had been five years earlier. Just as she had feared, the Guardian leaders were hesitant to answer direct questions about the early history of Trill joinings, the parasites, or the lost joined Trill colony that the neo-Purists claimed had once existed on Kurl. Her explanations about the unrest that was flaring up across the planet and the government cover-up allegations recently broadcast by the neo-Purists didn’t seem to move them.

What are they so determined to hide?she wondered. Well aware of how ingrained Trill secrecy was, she had to consider the possibility that they might not even know the secrets they seemed so determined to protect.

Ranul Keru, with the assistance of a young male Guardian who introduced himself as Rantic Lan, took up the pleading on her behalf, conferring with the senior Guardians on one of the cave plateaus out of Dax’s earshot. The other Guardians kept a wary eye on her from a distance, as if afraid she might suddenly jump into one of the pools.

I wonder what Timor told them?she thought. He had been the one who had allowed Jadzia to enter the pools five years ago, after she had learned the truth about the Dax symbiont’s temporary joining to Joran more than a century earlier. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Timor among the Guardians gathered here today. Had he been fired or transferred for aiding Jadzia?

Several silent minutes later, Keru and the senior Guardians approached her. The eldest of them, a woman whose face and spots were almost indistinguishably pallid from lack of sunlight, approached Dax closely.

“What you have told us is troubling, Ezri Dax,” she said. “Troubling not just because of the unrest it causes our people now, but also because it incites a distrust between Trill humanoids and symbionts. Our memories, our history, our truth…these are the foundations of our society, and of joining itself.”

The old woman paused, looking uncomfortable, then continued. “But we cannot help you. We cannot concern ourselves with anything other than caring for the symbionts.”

“Do I really have to point out that it’ll be impossible for you to keep doing that—caring for the symbionts, I mean—if this place gets overrun by neo-Purist radicals?” Dax said dryly.

Dax noticed that Rantic Lan’s expression was downcast and defeated. Keru walked away from his superiors, coming to a stop facing the nearest pool, his back turned. Damn. Even he’s given up.

Then, as the six Guardian leaders began to disperse to their various tasks, the normally placid back-and-

forth wave action of the pool suddenly became tumultuous. Three, then four symbionts breached the pool’s gray surface simultaneously, followed immediately by a dozen more. The senior Guardians stopped in their tracks, transfixed. Jagged forks of lightninglike discharges sprouted, connecting each of the symbionts to one another. And to Keru.

The big man turned to face Dax again. “It seems my superiors have just been overruled. I think your questions are going to be answered.”

Dax’s heart leaped into her throat. “What do I have to do?”

A beatific smile spread across Keru’s lips. “Just swim to the very bottom of the pools. Where nobody’s ever gone before.”

Fifteen minutes later, Keru stood by the side of the pool, checking the seals on Dax’s environmental suit, retrieved from her runabout. He knew the suits were rated for marine operations and considerable pressures, but he had never been involved in putting those claims to the test. “You know this might not work, right?”

“I have to try,” she replied.

“That sounds like something my partner used to say just before doing brave but foolish things. Be careful,” Keru said. Before his death during a Borg attack, Sean had been utterly fearless, whether facing holodeck pirates, scary alien cuisine, cloaked Romulan weapons, or the Borg.

Dax smiled back at him. “Speaking of which, if I don’t make it back, you’ll give Julian my message. Right?”

Keru felt a lump forming in his throat and his eyes misted involuntarily. “You’ll come back…. Just watch the time. As you make your descent, you’ll be racing against your air supply and the rising water pressure—not to mention whatever besides the symbionts might be living down there in the deepest pools.”

Dax took a deep breath, then waded knee-deep into the grayish murk of the pool. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Hurry back. I’ll be waiting.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Since you’ve got a Starfleet background, I suggest you get out there with Cyl and make sure these caves are well defended for my triumphant return.” She gestured to the phalanx of Guardians that ringed one side of the pool, watching her intently. “And try to make sure none of the protesters out there get hurt too badly.”

“Yes, sir,”Keru said with a grim smile. Then he watched Dax move deliberately toward the center of the pool.