by K. W. Jeter
A small light appeared, that didn’t come from the lantern. “Perhaps . . . ”
“It would be wrong to expect someone like Deyreth, as virtuous as he is, to adapt his ways to changing conditions, to the new opportunities that even I have been slow to recognize. The new rulers of this station, these representatives of the Federation—they’re different from the Cardassians, aren’t they? In many ways.”
Arten nodded. “That’s what I was trying to tell Deyreth and the others.”
“Ah. So, what Deyreth came here to report to me—the remarks you are said to have made, expressing some admiration for this Chief Engineer O’Brien who supervises your work—those things are all true? You did say them?”
He hesitated, his pulse lodged high in his throat.
“Come, come; you can speak openly with me.” Hören lowered his head, to bring his gaze level with Arten’s. “As I have tried to teach you: the simplest, the least among us, can be of the most value. You see things differently from Deyreth; that is to be expected. But you dared to speak to him the truth you perceived in your heart—that is commendable.”
A stone seemed to dissolve inside Arten’s chest. An influx of breath dizzied him. “It is true.” How much easier to say that, than to carry the weight of shame through these dark corridors! His words tumbled forth now. “The chief engineer—and the ones above him—they know what we are; they have no reason to treat us as well as they have. But they are different, they’re—”
Hören laid his hand on Arten’s forearm. “There is no need to explain. I understand.” He drew back, his gaze turning inward. “I understand . . . everything. . . .”
No need to say any more. Arten closed his eyes, feeling the knots of his spine loosen. Everything would be fine now. Now, they would all—Deyreth and the others—they would all see how different things were here.
In darkness, buried in the station’s hidden recesses, the voice of blood and fire spoke, in a slow whisper. “I understand . . . just what needs to be done. . . .”
“Well, this certainly looks comfortable.” Gri Rafod looked over the edge of the basin. His reflection wavered up from the depths of the polished brass. “That is, comfortable for some people.”
Odo found the Cardassian’s presence no less irk some, and the attempts at banter no more clever, than before. “It serves its purpose.” He didn’t look up, but continued sorting through the arrest reports on his data padd. He’d retreated to his private quarters, from the outer security office. With the door sealed, the glare and noise of the Promenade beyond were shut away. “It doesn’t need to do any more than that.”
“I suppose not.” Rafod stretched his legs out from the chair, looking bored and impatient. “Is it going to be much longer? Before it . . . happens?”
He glanced up. “My actions are bound by the agreement between your superiors and Commander Sisko.” He kept his voice level, to avoid giving Rafod the pleasure of knowing how irritated he’d become. “But my statements are not. You see fit to invade my privacy for no good reason—fine. I obey my orders. But I would like to point out to you that what ‘happens,’ as you put it, is simply a matter of my physiology. I must periodically revert to and remain in a liquid state; it’s as simple as that. It’s not a sideshow act for your amusement.”
“Yes, yes; of course. Whatever you say.” Gri Rafod looked around at the cluttered walls. “Though it’s rather a pity . . . ”
Odo sighed wearily. “What is?”
“That it’s not a sideshow act. I imagine it would be rather a good one. Perhaps you should talk to your friend Quark, see what he could set up for you.”
More loudly than he’d intended to, Odo dropped the data padd into his desk drawer and slammed it shut. The display device’s security codes were unbreakable, but on general principle he didn’t want the Cardassian handling it while he waited here.
He stood up and came round to the front of the desk. “If it will make you any happier—or perhaps more pleasant to be with—you should know that the time is at last here. Your unseemly interest in other creatures’ biological functions will be satisfied.” He stepped into the basin. “For a while, at least.”
Rafod ignored the dig. “Rather like getting into a bathtub, isn’t it?” He leaned forward to watch.
“I had thought that might be a novelty for you and your people. Now, my suspicions have been confirmed.”
“Very amusing.” The Cardassian smiled sourly. He nodded. “Yes, very much like an old-fashioned bathtub . . . though, of course, without any plumbing attached.”
Odo rested his hands on the basin’s edge. “I hope you’ve brought something with which to amuse yourself for the next couple of hours. As fascinating as our conversations have been, I will have neither the capability nor the inclination to indulge in them.”
“I anticipated that.” Rafod unfastened one of his uniform’s pockets and extracted a folded pouch and a small implement of hand-carved wood. “Speaking of Quark . . . he sold me all this, at what I’m sure was an extortionate price.”
The sharp scent of the pouch’s contents caught at Odo’s nostrils. “That’s tobacco.”
“Yes. Quark told me it’d come all the way from Earth. Seems to have rather a mild narcotic effect. Pleasant, but not soporific.”
“I would prefer that you not indulge while you are here in my quarters.”
Rafod busily fussed with the paraphernalia of lighter and tamping tool. “Yes, well, we’ll talk about that when you get back. To your proper form, that is.” He started filling the pipe with the shredded organic matter.
There was nothing Odo could do about it now. Or that he wanted to; if Rafod was preoccupied with this new toy, it would help to keep him from noticing anything going amiss, right beneath his scaly nose. “Then, if you’ll excuse me . . . ”
The Cardassian had managed to get the pipe lit. He leaned back in the chair, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It strikes me that you’re well advised to keep your doors so tightly locked here. With the number of enemies that a chief of security garners aboard a station such as this, or even just those bent on mischief and petty vandalism . . . ” Rafod suppressed a cough, then nodded. “If someone like that managed to get in here, while you were in your, ah, defenseless liquid state . . . ” He shook his head. “Someone could dump just anything into the receptacle there with you. Trash, old scrap metal . . . ” He smiled around the pipe. “Ashes, perhaps.”
Odo had been on the verge of letting himself sink into the basin, letting the individual atoms of his existence loosen from the constraints of solid matter. He stopped and drew himself erect.
“If someone were to do that, it would be very foolish of someone.” Odo leaned over the basin’s edge and through the tobacco fumes. “Let me tell you a little story, Gri Rafod. First, you have to understand that while I’m in my liquid state, I may be defenseless, but I’m not unconscious; in that sense, this periodic claim that my nature makes upon me is not exactly similar to the sleep that most other creatures require. I am awake, and aware of everything that happens around me.
“Now, here’s the story: once, someone did come in here, and he did just as you said; he tossed something into the basin while I was in my liquid state. And I was very, very annoyed by that.”
Rafod looked uneasy, as though realizing that he had pushed the shapeshifter too far.
“And when I came back from my little rest, I tracked that someone down. And do you know what I did to him?”
The Cardassian shook his head.
“Without his seeing, I turned myself into a morsel of food upon his plate, something so small that he would gulp it down without even chewing—the way I’ve seen you and your people eat. And then, once I was inside him, I stopped being quite so small, and I reached up through his throat, all the way into his head, and pushed his eyeballs out from the inside.” Odo wished he had mastered forming an unpleasant smile; it would have been perfect now. “It must have been quite an unsettling experience. I unde
rstand that even after having artificial optics grafted into his sockets, this someone remains under heavy sedation in a psychiatric ward on his home planet.”
Rafod took the pipe from his mouth. “You never did any such thing. It would be against the law.”
“You’re right,” said Odo. “I didn’t do that because I just now thought of it. But I would love to do it sometime.” He moved back to the center of the basin. “Do we understand each other now, Gri Rafod? Good. Enjoy yourself.”
After he had become liquid, with his level below the rim of the basin, he formed a light-sensitive patch and rudimentary lens at his surface. Just enough to watch the Cardassian security officer, without him noticing. Rafod scowled and muttered something to himself as he poked at the smoldering contents of his pipe, but he made no move away from his chair.
Good, thought Odo. The fool suspects nothing. He let the primitive eye dissolve and set himself to the tasks before him.
The temptation to remain a simple liquid was strong—the time when that change would become necessary was close at hand, and he could feel the ease it would bring to every particle of his being. But he could put it off a while longer, despite what he had told Rafod. There would be just enough time to do what was needed.
At the bottom of the basin, he emitted a discharge of ions sufficient to trigger the microelectronic switch the clever O’Brien had finished installing. The metallic membrane covering the basin’s floor contracted slightly, revealing the tiny slits around the edge. Even if Gri Rafod had closely examined the basin, he wouldn’t have been able to detect the openings.
Distilled water, colored with a slight gold tint to match that of Odo’s liquid state, seeped into the basin. He carefully adjusted his own specific gravity, so that the water floated above him as he let his matter slowly drain into the receptacle chamber hidden below his quarters. The exchange had been carefully timed, so that not even the slightest ripple showed at the surface of the basin.
When the last of his atoms had flowed through the drainage tube, Odo solidified a finger and reached up to press the switch at the top of the receptacle. The membrane expanded again, sealing the basin. O’Brien’s “hydraulic system” had worked perfectly.
In a corridor of the access level beneath the Promenade and the security office, Odo glanced around to make sure no one had spotted him. Having slipped away from Gri Rafod’s constant surveillance, he would just as soon continue about his business in secret. He gave himself the face and uniform of an engineering crew member, and hurried toward the drydock sector.
A few minutes later, Chief Engineer O’Brien stepped into a storage locker and found a reel of single-filament comm line out of place. He smiled, picked up the reel, and carried it out to where the Cardassian research vessel was being worked on.
Odo appreciated the personal touch, that O’Brien had kept all their confidential arrangements to himself.
The next thing he knew, O’Brien had dropped the reel onto the hard metal flooring. The impact jarred Odo’s thoughts from their tracks.
“Sorry,” whispered O’Brien as he bent down to scoop up the reel. “I guess my hands are still a little, uh, numb from those restraints. . . .”
Odo supposed that he and O’Brien were even now. Or at least, he hoped they were.
In the vessel’s engine compartment, after O’Brien and the rest of the work crew had left, a length of comm line slid, snakelike, off the reel and twined itself into the other wires and cables running along the bulkheads. Unnoticed beneath the bored gaze of the Cardassian guards, the line vanished into the heart of the ship and its secrets.
When Arten had retraced his way to the torn access shaft, he saw a glimmer of light, no bigger than the palm of his hand, playing against the fire-scorched metal. He looked over his shoulder, down the length of the narrow spaces through which he had just crawled, and saw the source of the glow. In the distance, the flexible panel that concealed the hiding place of Hören Rygis had caught one of its corners on a sharp-edged scrap peeled away from the bulkhead. Just enough to let the faint glow from the portable lantern leak out. Just enough to give away the hiding place to any nonbeliever who might come snooping through this sector.
He inched back toward the hiding place, even more carefully and quietly than before. After the revelation that Hören had come to see things his way, that the Starfleet officers aboard the DS9 station could be honorable and accommodating, it would be a shame to endanger that new level of understanding by his own carelessness. To have Hören discovered by the security chief before the time was right for him to step forward, or to have Hören himself find the gap in the hiding place’s camouflage . . . either would be tragic. As comforting as Hören had sounded when talking to him, Arten had still been aware that the flashing force of the great man’s wrath lay just beneath the surface. As he came within arm’s reach of the panel and the chink of telltale light, he thought of how much was at stake. Not just his own relationship with Hören and the others but the whole future of the Redemptorist movement. Perhaps this was the turning point, a change of heart in the man who represented the essence of their faith. If Hören could see a non-Bajoran as someone worthy of respect, perhaps even friendship . . . then, the day might not be far off when all the Redemptorists might step into that greater light, reconciled with the Bajorans who followed the teachings of the Kai Opaka. It could happen . . . and, in his own simple way, Arten might have helped bring it about.
He reached for the corner of the panel, to set it as it should have been left. As he did so, he heard the voice.
Hören’s voice—not the low, soothing one with which he had spoken to Arten. But the old one, the voice of fire and blood, the voice that lashed both apostates and the strangers who had come from beyond the stars. A voice of dire prophecy that could make a planet tremble, riven to its dark, molten core . . .
Arten realized what was happening. On the blank chips that he had brought, Hören had already begun recording another broadcast, which like the others before it, would be smuggled down to the surface of Bajor and scattered to the waiting ears of the faithful. Those who also believed in the sanctity of fire and blood.
He felt his heart tremble inside his chest. It would have been too much to expect all the change to happen in a matter of moments. There was still much left to be done. . . .
It dismayed him to hear that voice speak of the Bajorans whose deaths would be required to purify their sullied world. Heretics, collaborators, traitors . . . all those who by word or deed had offended the righteous.
The list seemed to get longer with each recording. Hören repeated one of the names, and then again, slowly, as though he were already savoring the satisfaction that he would receive from that particular assassination.
“ . . . she with the blood of the faithful upon her hands . . . Kira Nerys . . . she knows not, how soon justice will embrace her . . . and crush the life from her foul body . . . ”
Arten’s heart fell—into a darkness greater than that which surrounded him.
“Kira . . . ”
He set the corner of the panel into position, turned, and hurried away from the hiding place.
CHAPTER 4
THE PROOF WAS on the computer screen. Everything he had suspected, felt deep in his bones . . . every time Gul Tahgla or any of the other Cardassians had opened a mouth to speak, as though for creatures such as they, the simple ritual of greeting was only the prelude to another scheming lie. . . .
“Is there any point that requires elaboration, Commander?” On the other side of the desk, Security Chief Odo stood waiting.
“No—” Sisko shook his head. “It’s all pretty much as I thought it would be.” He sat forward in the chair, his chin propped against his fist. The bleak feeling that the ancients of Earth might have termed melancholia had overtaken him for a moment, as he had read through Odo’s report on the Cardassians’ so-called research vessel. They lie to us, he thought, and in turn we send a spy into their midst. It demonstrated how d
eception led to deception, turnabout and turn again, a snake with its own tail grasped in its jaws.
He found it even less cheering to ponder that the cycle of deception had only just started. His own lies—or, if he felt inclined to be charitable with himself, the concealing of the truth—would go on. He’d already decided as much. All that remained was to order his security chief to stay silent about what he’d discovered.
“This report”—Sisko reached out and tapped the computer screen—“is to be placed under total access restriction. For the time being, no one is to see it but me. Understood?”
“As you wish, Commander.”
“ ‘No one’ includes my first officer, Major Kira, on down—got it? And I’ll have a word with Chief Engineer O’Brien myself. I don’t want it even talked about that you entered the Cardassian vessel.”
Odo drew himself to his humanoid form’s full height. “You can rely upon my discretion, Commander.” His tone indicated that his professional pride had been nicked.
“Yes, of course; I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” With a few taps on the keyboard, Sisko blanked the screen, sending the report to a local memory node rather than to the station’s main data banks. “I merely wished to stress the gravity of the situation.”
“I understand.” Odo seemed mollified—though, as always, it was hard to tell. “That’s why I took the initiative of ordering the disembarkation procedures for the Cardassian vessel to be put on indefinite hold. The exit crews have been so instructed.”
“What—” Sisko sat bolt upright. “That’s not within your authority!”
“But, Commander—” Odo had been taken aback by the other’s reaction. “I thought it the prudent thing to do, given the fact that the installation of the impulse buffers has been completed; the vessel has already been transferred from the engineering bay to one of the docking pylons. Its scheduled departure time was within the next hour—”