Текст книги "Cathedral "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

21

The transporter beam chilled Ezri to the bone, as though the inky emptiness of space had reached through the matter stream to steal every calorie of heat from her body. But the sensation passed almost as quickly as it had begun.

Ezri stood in a chamber lit only by several small sconces, each of which stood about two meters off the ground and a few body-lengths apart. Rough-hewn granite walls trailed off into the stygian darkness. The air was warm and stale, though it moved in a steady breeze across her skin. Strange, discordant music reverberated in the distance, at the edge of audibility. Though it sounded vaguely familiar, she couldn’t quite place it.

Ezri realized then that her environmental suit was gone, as was her phaser. She found that she now wore a nondescript, lightweight jumpsuit. She carried a hard hat in her left hand. The gravel on the cavern floor crunched beneath her heavy boots. Work clothes,she thought as she paused momentarily to examine her new wardrobe. Running a hand through her hair, she noted that it was longer, and cut differently than before she had beamed over. Donning the hard hat, she made a complete turn, investigating what she could see of her surroundings in the dim illumination.

What is this place? And where are the others?

Noticing that she still had her wrist lamps, she raised and activated them. A ribbon of brilliance cleaved the darkness, revealing a craggy, gray-hued ceiling several meters overhead. The irregular passage and its chaotic tumbles of rocks and gravel seemed somehow familiar. It also struck her as odd to find such a place within the confines of the clean, deliberate geometries of the alien artifact.

Her wrist lamp held high, Ezri took a deep breath and began walking into the darkness. She called out, first to Julian and then to Nog, her voice reverberating to infinity and back, the aural equivalent of an endless series of funhouse mirrors.

There was no response. She was alone, with no company other than the thunder of her own pulse, the rhythmic crunch of her boot heels, and the distant peals of the weird almost-music.

She was startled by a voice that suddenly spoke from behind her. “Ezri.”

Ezri spun toward the sound, stepping quickly back to give herself some maneuvering room in case the owner of the voice intended to make trouble.

To her surprise, Ezri found herself facing her mother. Who wastrouble, she reflected, almost by definition.

“You can’tbe here,” Ezri said, realizing that she had unconsciously arranged her body into a combat-crouch straight out of one of her Starfleet Academy hand-to-hand training classes. Guess I don’t need Dax for everything.

“That’s really what this is about, isn’t it?” said Yanas Tigan, a smile stretching her skin taut. A condescending smile, Ezri thought. Typical.

“Excuse me?” Ezri said, scowling.

Yanas adopted the tone of a put-upon teacher addressing a willfully obtuse student. “About your relationship with Dax.”

“When did I mention Dax to you, Mother?”

“Oh, please. If you can accept that I’m here with you all the way out in the Gamma Quadrant, then why would you be surprised that I can also hear your thoughts?”

Fair enough, Ezri decided. But this being obviously couldn’tbe her mother. It had to be some sort of manifestation of the artifact. But why would whatever intelligence guided this place select her mother as a communications channel?

The Yanas-thing smiled. “I’m sorry that Starfleet didn’t work out for you the way you thought it would. But I can’t pretend not to be glad that you’ve come back to New Sydney to help me keep the minerals flowing out of here on schedule.”

New Sydney? Sothat’s why this place seems so familiar. I’ve come back home to the pergium mines in the Sappora System.

All at once Ezri began recalling things, including what seemed to be more than one version of the last few years of her life. Conflicting recollections tumbled onto one another, overlapping like palimpsests: Brinner Finok, and the brief fling they had shared aboard the Destiny;the horrors of the Dominion War, which had taken Brinner from her; the cataclysmic arrival of Dax in her life; her deepening romantic relationship with Julian—

–and her withdrawal from Starfleet Academy, only weeks before graduation.

Her ignominious return home, with all prospects of a Starfleet career dashed by the irresistible force that was her mother.

Yanas was scowling at her, obviously still following the drift of her thoughts. “That’s not fair, Ezri. You came home because you understood where your real responsibilities lay. Unless you believe that what happened to Norvo and Janel was somehow myfault.”

Ezri suddenly felt ashamed. “Of course not, Mother.” She recalled vividly how she had agonized over the decision about dropping out of the Academy. But after the cave-in that had killed both of her brothers—and had dealt the family business a crippling blow—Ezri had made the only choice possible.

I couldn’t let her run the pergium-mining business all alone. Sheneeded me.

Yanas’s smile broadened, but it contained little warmth. “Such a dutiful daughter. I can understand why you didn’t know where you were, by the way. You always did make it a point to get down into the mines as little as possible.”

Ezri’s belly spasmed slightly, then settled down. She placed her hand on her abdomen. Where Dax had once been, she thought. She scowled at the obvious untrust-worthiness of her own memories.

Who the hell is Dax?

“Nobody now,” Yanas said casually. “I think Dax was a symbiont who died just after its host got killed during the Dominion War. But that’s not your concern anymore.”

It never was,Ezri thought, feeling desolate without quite knowing why.

“Right again. Now I need you to get back to the accounting office and catch up on the books. Those quota reports aren’t going to write themselves, you know.”

Quota reports. The idea made her insides squirm in revulsion. She wondered if becoming joined to one of those ageless Trill brain-vampires, as frightening as the notion had always struck her, could really be any worse than giving over the entirety of one’s single, finite lifetime to mining contracts, shipping manifests, and pergium futures.

I’ve been joined, all right,Ezri thought. To stacks of padds and mountains of paperwork.

She heard another pair of footsteps behind her and turned quickly toward the sound.

The man who regarded her was tall, thin, and dour-looking. Humanoid, with the brow wrinkles common to many of New Sydney’s residents. He, too, wore mining attire. She saw a steely glint in his eyes that she recognized.

And hated, without quite remembering why.

“Thadeo Bokar,” Ezri said, taking a step backward. She was beginning to remember still more.

Bokar grinned, displaying even rows of immaculate white teeth. “I’ve come to discuss your recent equipment orders, Miss Tigan. I think you’d do well to consider making a few…additional purchases.”

Ezri struggled to master a rush of anger. “Why, Bokar? To pay off the Orion Syndicate so we won’t have any more mysterious cave-ins down here?”

Bokar made an unconvincing show of sympathy. “It must have been terrible, losing both your brothers like that. So sudden and tragic. Makes you appreciate what you still have all the more. And, I would hope, eager to do whatever it takes to hold onto it.”

Ezri glanced back toward Yanas, who was glaring accusingly at her.

“What’s he saying, Ezri? Did you make some sort of deal with the Orion Syndicate? I knew we had some cash-flow problems after the Ferengi opened those mines on Timor II, but I never thought you’d stoop to…” She trailed off into silence, which was filled only by the weird quasi-music that still reverberated through the stony corridor.

Ezri looked at Yanas, an inchoate apology on her lips. But the naggingly familiar music stopped her.

Because she recognized it now, and remembered where she’d been when she’d first heard it.

It had been aboard the Sagan,during the survey of System GQ-12475’s Oort cloud. Just before the initial encounter with the alien artifact—the cathedral, or anathema, into which she had just transported. With Nog. And Julian.

And Dax.

Ezri experienced another rush of conflicting memory—and realized that she had nothing to apologize for. She hadn’t gotten the family business into bed with the Orion Syndicate. Janelhad done that.

But Janel was dead. Had beendead for years.

Misaligned in their worldlines.Sacagawea’s wind-chime voice spoke inside her head, from some spectral interior world. Untethered. Adrift/lost midworlds.

Janel isn’t dead,Ezri told herself, shaking her head as though stunned by a physical blow. Norvo isn’t dead either. Not inmy world. They’re the ones who stayed behind with Mother, and the Orion Syndicate didn’t begin leaning on them until years later.Meanwhile, Ezri had finished up at Starfleet Academy, then had shipped out on the Destiny.

Ezri had left home, and had stayed away. She had resisted the all too frequent squalls of withering maternal criticism that had kept both her brothers on such short tethers for so many years. She hadn’t allowed herself to be moved by Yanas’s levers of guilt and duty and obligation the way Norvo and Janel had.

It came to Ezri then why the cathedral had confronted her with this simulacrum of Yanas Tigan: It was an external representation of her need to separate herself from the infinitude of Ezri Tigans whose lives weren’t hers. It was her touchstone for avoiding taking a path traveled only by some phantom-Ezri in some other hypothetical reality.

This artifact-generated creature had to be the key to avoiding becoming “unmoored,” as Shar had put it, from the life she knew, washed away in a torrent of might-have-beens. She’s got to be my ticket to fixing those tangled “worldlines” Sacagawea kept talking about.

Ezri noticed then that Bokar was still talking. “There is a bright side to your little brother’s passing, though,” Bokar was saying, facing Ezri. “Some of those paintings of his are finally fetching some decent prices. It’s too bad that nobody appreciates artists while they’re still alive.”

Ezri could feel something moving within her. Shifting. Something at the core of her being was changing, awakening. She had her own life to lead, and now she was determined to take it back. Sacagawea’s translator-filtered voice rang in her mind: Misaligned in their worldlines.

She reached up and doffed her hat, tossing it to the ground. She touched her hair again, noting without surprise that it had returned to the severe, short style that she’d adopted shortly after her joining.

On the Destiny.

As a Starfleet officer.

Just before she’d been posted to DS9.

Yanas was confronting her again, as though she hadn’t heard Bokar’s cruel words about her late son. Mom never was a great one for listening, Ezri thought. Eavesdropping, perhaps, but not listening.

“So what are you planning to do?” Yanas said, clearly still attuned to Ezri’s thoughts. The older woman’s tone was harsh, obviously calculated to demoralize. To reassert control. “Will you go back to chasing those Starfleet daydreams again? You need to learn to accept life as it comes, Ezri.”

True enough,Ezri thought, recalling Nog’s dire warning about how little time remained before the “untethering” became permanent. The only question is,Which life?

“Listen to your mother, Miss Tigan,” Bokar said, his lips inclined in a contemptuous smirk.

And in that instant, Ezri made a decision. A command decision,she thought with some satisfaction. Advancing quickly on Bokar, she treated him to a pair of quick rabbit punches to the face, followed by a hard abdominal jab. The gangster’s unconscious form thumped hard against the stone floor. She was gratified to note that he was no longer smirking.

“Problem solved, Mother. At least for now. This time it’s yourturn to clean up the long-term mess.”

Ezri noticed then that a Starfleet combadge was attached to the left side of her jumpsuit. Had it been there all along, waiting for her to sever her ties to all her might-have-been lives?

She tapped the combadge. “Defiant,if you can hear me, beam me back. Now.”

Her stomach lurched. Whatever changes were going on within her mind and body seemed to be accelerating. Nausea rose within her, and she felt her knees turning to water. Abruptly, another realization came.

It’s the symbiont. I feel weak because my body needs the symbiont again.

It came to her then that she must have succeeded in “realigning her worldline.” That was the good news. The bad news was that without Dax she would probably be dead within a few short hours.

Yanas’s face was a mask of incredulity. Defiance wasn’t something she encountered very often, whether from employees or from offspring.

“You can’t just leave, Ezri. Why would you return to the life you had before? You never wanted to be joined in the first place.”

“I’m just following your own advice, Mother. Accepting life as it comes.” Or as itcame.

“But I need you here!”

“Hire a damned bookkeeper,” Ezri said, her consciousness beginning to ebb. She felt as though she were falling over a precipice into one of the open pergium shafts. A voice from her combadge spoke, perhaps in acknowledgment of her signal. But she couldn’t be sure.

Ezri saw another shape appear, as if out of nowhere, at her mother’s side. Janel smiled in Ezri’s direction. “I’ll take over from here, Zee.”

“I still hate your hair,” Ezri heard Yanas say a moment before darkness closed in around her.

The colorful tunic Moogie had given him for his Attainment Ceremony was already thoroughly soaked with sweat. Nog had already forgotten how he’d gotten here. Wherever herewas. He only knew that his pursuers had killed a lot of people. Kellin, Larkin, Vargas. Countless others. They all lay in the dust, some blown apart, others sliced to gory slivers. All Nog could think of was running, and staying ahead of their killers.

Uncle Quark’s voice sprang into his mind unbidden: Maybe you’ll grow up to be a real Ferengi after all. Not like your father.

Clutching his phaser tightly, he ignored the daggers of pain that lanced his side and kept moving as quickly as the absurd terrain permitted. Thanks to the semidarkness and the profusion of tall, irregularly shaped rock formations that seemed to cover every square meter of this Chin’toka hellhole, he couldn’t see them coming. But his sensitive hearing counted dozens of pounding footfalls, all coming toward him. Unvarying in their rhythm, their approach as inexorable as death itself.

He knew he was getting winded. He was also grimly aware that his pursuers never got tired. Sooner or later the Jem’Hadar would catch up with him, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He would have to stop, stand his ground, and fight them. Fight the most relentless, implacable, nightmarish foes he’d ever imagined.

The still-green memory of how they’d shot him during the battle for control of the Dominion’s AR-558 communications array—forcing Dr. Bashir to amputate his leg—sent a jolt of terror through his lobes and down his spine. He paused beside a large outcropping, the dusty air making him cough and wheeze as he struggled to catch his breath.

Sudden confusion struck him as he looked down at his two perfectly good, utterly normal legs. When did the Jem’Hadar shoot me in the leg?The recollection had the quality of a fading dream. He clearly remembered a time six years ago, when Captain Sisko and his Uncle Quark had briefly fallen into Jem’Hadar hands. Nog and his now-missing best friend Jake Sisko had done their best to mount a rescue. Luckily, Uncle Quark’s dignity had been the only thing seriously wounded that day.

Still, Nog couldn’t shake a strange mental image, half memory and half premonition, of wearing a Starfleet uniform. Of serving aboard starships. Of having fought alongside some of the bravest people he’d ever known, in this desolate place. Chin’toka,he somehow knew.

Before he could consider the matter further, an enormous humanoid shape flung itself toward him from behind one of the larger rocks. Without thinking, Nog leveled his phaser and fired with the ease of long practice.

Repulsed by the phaser’s blunt impact, the Jem’Hadar fell backward against the unyielding bedrock, so much dead weight. Nog wanted to look away, but discovered he couldn’t. He squinted in the shadows at the supine corpse’s pebble-textured face.

Nog recognized it. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew that he’d seen this particular Jem’Hadar’s face before, many times. He remembered that he hadn’t enjoyed the experience. It made no sense, but this sensation of quasi-memory felt more profoundly real than even his evanescent, dreamlike recollections of Starfleet.

He considered the reassuring heft of the phaser in his hand. Starfleet issue, he decided, not at all certain how he knew that fact either. Perhaps he hadbeen in Starfleet. Maybe that was why using this thing had come so naturally to him. And perhaps it also explained why he recognized this strange place, where some shadow-Nog had lost a leg in some all but forgotten Dominion War battle.

Maybe I’ve been hurt. Lost my memory.

Misaligned.

In.

The.

World.

Lines.

Sacagawea’s translator-mediated voice, like a glebbeningrainstorm made of latinum slips, came back to him. And he remembered. He was in the cathedral now. Or the anathema.

He had beamed inside the alien artifact.

He tried to reassure himself that everything he was experiencing in here was probably not objectively real. It had to be the artifact acting on his mind. Or his own mind trying to come to terms with an infinite number of alternate Nogs across an infinite number of parallel worlds.

So why do I think I’m in the Chin’toka System, of all places?

The footfalls were much closer now. His pursuers would be on top of him soon. Nog started to throw himself into motion once again, responding to Ferengi instincts honed by untold aeons of evolution.

He stopped. Maybe running wasn’t the way to fix Sacagawea’s worldlines, he thought. He heard his uncle’s voice again, pleading with him to flee, the way any sensible Ferengi would. They’re going to take your leg again. Unless you run. On your two good legs.

The Jem’Hadar footfalls continued growing louder as a new thought chilled him: Was losing his leg the only way to remained “tethered,” to borrow Sacagawea’s word, to the correct universe? Or perhaps it was the price of restoring Ezri, Dax, and Dr. Bashir to their normal condition. He was an engineer. He knew that nature was, in its own way, an excellent model of the Ferengi way of life. It always balanced the books, and it never gave anything away without eventually demanding payment. Usually with interest.

He looked down at his left leg again, and thought of his absent friends.

Then he smiled. So be it.

The sound of his own pulse nearly drowning out the rising din of the approaching Jem’Hadar, Nog planted his feet in the dust and raised his phaser toward his still-concealed pursuers.

“Sorry, Uncle,” he said out loud, his voice sounding flat in the stale, stagnant air. “It looks like my running days are over. In more ways than one.”

Another Jem’Hadar appeared from behind the same outcropping that had produced the first. A second and a third followed hard on his heels. Nog fired and fired again. Three times. Five times. Still more Jem’Hadar filed into view from behind the rocks, moving closer, contemptuous of the death Nog dispensed. Corpses fell in twisted heaps, and still more Jem’Hadar leaped over them, approaching faster than Nog could kill them. The press of hostile flesh was now only a few meters away, and every soldier in the line wore the same face.

The face of the first Jem’Hadar to fall.

Taran’atar’s face.

Nog continued firing. But they kept coming, surrounding him, every countenance overflowing with the brute savagery he’d always known lay just beneath Taran’atar’s veneer of civility.

The phaser in his hand suddenly stopped firing. Out of power. Great.

To Nog’s astonishment, the columns of Jem’Hadar abruptly halted their advance. Except for the cacophonous strains of distant music, utter silence engulfed the world.

A lone, black-clad Jem’Hadar soldier stepped forward, continuing his deliberate approach until he stood within arm’s reach. The creature towered forbiddingly over Nog, who felt his guts turn to parboiled gree worms. He concentrated on the barely audible music in an effort to master his fear. He wished fervently that Captain Sisko had agreed to sponsor his application to Starfleet Academy more than four years ago. If that had happened, then he’d know how to handle himself now.

Confused, overlapping memories assailed him. Sisko hadsponsored him. He’d made it into the Academy. He’d served in a cadet unit called Omega Squadron, under the grandson of a famous Starfleet commodore. By graduation he’d already visited and seen more strange places than he could count, from Cardassia Prime to Talos IV. Perhaps more than any other Ferengi that had ever lived.

Then Nog recognized the ethereal sounds that were drifting across the dismal landscape: He’d first heard them aboard the Sagan,just before the artifact had first appeared. Its entwining, random-numerical melodies reminded him of the physical unreality of this place and helped him to suppress his overpowering urge to flee. And its steady pulse reminded him that the clock was still ticking inevitably toward the interdimensional “untethering” that Sacagawea had described—and which he had already previewed aboard the Defianton more than one occasion.

Somehow, Nog managed to hold his ground. When he spoke, his voice shook. “All right, Taran’atar. Get on with it.”

Then, to Nog’s immense surprise, an unexpected equanimity descended upon him. Right after they’d discovered the artifact, Ezri had tried to tell him that he needed to clear the air between himself and Taran’atar. He wondered if that’s what he was about to do, consciously or not. Maybe it explained why the artifact had recreated AR-558’s killing ground.

Taran’atar took a step back, raised his bloodied kar’takin,and swung the blade into Nog’s left leg, just below the knee. Whether real or imaginary, the pain utterly convinced Nog. He collapsed to the dust, screaming.

As though disconnected from his own body, Nog watched as Taran’atar reached down and picked up the severed leg as though it were some hard-won battle trophy. The Jem’Hadar smiled enigmatically as he tucked the limb behind his back, along with his gore-spattered blade. Then he tossed a small metallic object into the dust beside Nog.

Nog saw that it was a Starfleet combadge. He picked it up. He felt light-headed, unable to speak, conscious of little besides his own blood, which was rapidly soaking the desiccated ground. With trembling fingers, he activated the little device’s homing beacon, uncertain as to whether it could reach the Defiant.Or if it was working, or if it was even real.

The world turned sideways, the way it had the time he’d unwisely tried to match Vic Fontaine’s drummer drink for drink. “I’ll be seeing you,” he thought he heard Taran’atar say in an incongruously clear tenor voice, “in all the old familiar places.”

And just before consciousness fled him, Nog realized that he could probably deal with that.

All at once, Dax became aware that something in its environment had changed. The blind and deaf creature was well acquainted with the curious tingling sensation of being disassembled and reconstituted by a transporter beam—even harrowing, rather rough beamings such as the one it had just experienced. But this current feeling of sudden change was subtly different.

Dax still enjoyed the same euphoric freedom of gentle, aqueous suspension it had been experiencing for the past day or so, ever since its abrupt removal from Ezri Tigan’s body. What was different and perplexing waswhere the symbiont now found itself floating. It made no sense, but there could be no denying the water’s distinctive salinity and mineral factors. Even the limited sensorium of a symbiont could never mistake this particular place for any other.

Mak’ala. Somehow, I have been brought home, all the way from the hinterlands of the Gamma Quadrant.

With that recognition came an ominous tingle of dread. Dax had never enjoyed spending extended periods here. The symbiont had always taken great care to prearrange as brief a recuperation interval here as possible while between hosts. Floating in the complex network of caves for too long had always brought on a curious, and admittedly irrational, feeling of vulnerability.

After returning to the pools briefly following the death of Lela, the first Dax host, the symbiont had dreamed of predators—eyeless creatures who trolled the caves until their hyperolfactory abilities guided them unerringly to some unsuspecting symbiont. Then these inescapable horrors of unhinged jaws and serrated teeth would pounce. Scores of lifetimes would end, suddenly and ignominiously, in some brute’s foul gullet—

Stop it, Dax told itself. Such things did not exist. The humanoid Trills who tended the pools had seen to that long ago.

Yet the apprehension lingered.

Dax wished there had been an opportunity to arrange a new joining before being disassociated from Ezri Tigan. But the separation had come without any warning. How long would the Symbiosis Commission take to assign a new host? Not long, Dax trusted. The Commission knew that Dax’s lifetimes of experience were too valuable to the Federation to be allowed to languish for long.

Dax wished Ezri well. It had no desire to see her come to harm because of the sudden collapse of their joining. And it appreciated all the painstaking, after-the-fact preparation Ezri had done to accommodate theirad hoc symbiosis, once it had become a necessary and unalterablefait accompli. But the encounter with the alien artifact had caused that symbiosis to fail, or had at least catalyzed its failure. That aborted joining was now part of Dax’s lengthy past, and was likely to remain so. And although it shamed Dax to admit it, being free of Ezri’s sometimes disorderly thought processes was a real relief. The portion of Dax that recalled Audrid’s love of peaceful walks in the woods exulted in this newfound freedom.

Dax reached out into its liquid environment with its limited physical senses, probing around itself with insubstantial electrolyte filaments. It perceived immediately that other symbionts were in the pool, which was as expected. Willing itself forward, Dax probed to the pool’s boundaries, sensed the limits of its rocky walls in every direction. It was a finite, though by no means cramped, space. But Dax knew that this would be the extent of its universe until its next joining. The wider, less confining worlds beyond were far more inviting.

The symbiont sensed that a narrow passage lay in its path, seeming to beckon. The notion of entering such a restrictive space raised the wise apprehension of Audrid and Lela. But the inquisitive natures of Tobin and Jadzia immediately overruled this initial cautious impulse. Dax undulated forward, eager to encounter whatever lay ahead.

Entering the constricted passage, the symbiont began picking up speed, reacquainting itself with Emony’s love of kinesthetic motion. The narrow channel soon widened again, and Dax found itself delighting in the freedom of yet another large underground pool, this one seeming to stretch into infinity. Reaching out with its limited sensorium, Dax detected other shapes floating in the distance.

But they weren’t symbionts. Tobin’s fear rose as the shapes approached, but the battle-tempered courage of Curzon and Jadzia deftly parried it.

The shapes grew larger and more complex. While they weren’t limbless symbionts, neither were they razor-toothed predators. Feeling relieved, Dax quickly ascertained that they had arms and legs, heads and torsos. They were humanoids, all of them as naked as symbionts. There were nine of them, all swimming about him, and all apparently emotionally agitated, judging from their movements. The rhythmic flailing of their limbs set up chaotic, overlapping waves throughout the pool, vibrations that reminded Dax of the celestial music produced by the Oort cloud bodies near the alien artifact. Dax probed at the faces of each of the humanoids with gentle, bioelectrical fingers.

Moving from one face to the next, Dax recognized each and every one of the humanoids. Though it knew this was impossible, Dax also knew that their identities were unmistakable.

“You’ve known about what’s coming for the past century,” Audrid said, somehow speaking directly into the symbiont’s mind. She was obviously completely unmindful of the absurdity—no, the utterimpossibility —of her presence here.

“It’s more like the past century and a quarter,” Torias said, floating beside her.

“But it still hasn’t done anything about it.” This came from Lela.

“All those years,” Torias said. “All those lifetimes. And you spent most of them assing around the galaxy.”

“Why haven’t you at leasttried to warn anyone, Dax?” Emony said, her words dripping with bitter accusation.

Dax felt genuine confusion.I don’t know what any of you are talking about.

“Perhaps you don’t.” This voice belonged to Joran Belar, a man whose sense of aesthetics had been matched only by his psychotic bloodlust. Dax had been well rid of that joining, late in the previous century.

You’re the last person I’d expect to encounter, Dax said.Here or anywhere else.

“You see what you want to see, Dax,” Joran said. “You always were a master of repressing whatever parts of yourself you’d rather not face.”

“It’s pure denial,” Ezri said, using her best counselor-to-patient tones.

“Why have you been holding back?” Tobin said.

Holding back? Holding back what?

Jadzia spoke up. “Your nightmares, Dax.”

Dax recalled the post-Lela visions of slashing jaws, and the terror and the helplessness that had always accompanied them.

And it remembered something else as well. Something that Dax hadn’t considered since Audrid’s lifetime—something it never wanted to consider. The part of Dax that was Ezri wondered, just for a moment, if its persistent apprehension regarding the pools was indeed somehow bound up with the events of that horrible day so long ago. If it bore any relationship to the tenebrous, obscene nightmare that had swallowed poor Jayvin Vod whole and had riven Audrid’s life and family for so many years…