by K. W. Jeter
He recognized her then. He had never met the Kai Opaka in the flesh—though she seemed real enough now, standing with placid calm in the substation’s command center—but had seen photos and tapes of her, millennia ago back on DS9. Her soft voice confirmed her identity.
Slowly, Bashir stood up and turned toward her. After so much that had happened, his capacity for being surprised had been erased. But not the questions inside his head. “What is this place?”
“This?” Kai Opaka lifted her small hand and gestured toward the substation’s bulkheads, then toward the observation ports to indicate the stars beyond. “This is everything, Doctor Bashir. This is the universe, the one to which the inhabitants of the wormhole brought you—at your request, remember. The universe you remember—the universe of living things—exists, and doesn’t exist, somewhere else. You have left all that behind.”
“Are we . . . ”
She read his thought. “We are the only living things here. And everywhere. This is the universe of the dead.” She pointed to the observation ports. “Go and see for yourself, Doctor.”
He stepped toward the ports and looked out. At the stars and the worlds hidden in the darkness between them. His skin felt cold, as though the hollow in his gut was a piece of the same vacuum.
“Do you not sense it?” The Kai’s voice came from behind him. “Or rather, you do not sense it. That which was as familiar to you as your breath, so much a part of you that it could be forgotten. The sense of being surrounded by a living organism, the universe itself. That is what you miss now.”
“Yes. . . .” He nodded slowly. “That . . . that’s all gone. Everything. . . .” He turned away from the empty vision. “It was the wounding, wasn’t it? That did this. They told me . . . about the suffering, and the death. . . .”
“Of course. Are you not a doctor? Did you not know that one part of a living thing is connected to all other parts? Even the wormhole, as separate as it is, still is of that greater substance. By wounding it, by its death, the death of all was brought about. It could not be otherwise.”
He had known the answer even before she had spoken. The weight of the dead universe seemed to crush the breath from his lungs, as though he were being buried in a lightless grave.
“I know how I got here . . . ” Bashir spoke, hoping to keep the human presence of the Kai near him for a while longer. “But what about you?”
She smiled. “I am only, as you might say, a little bit in this place. Though I exist in the universe of the living, the one from which you came, my meditations long ago brought me to this one, as well. On your world, as well as Bajor, the highest wisdom is to be as mindful of death as one is of life. These are not empty words; if you were to devote yourself to the raising of one’s inner powers as I have, you would also be able to exist in both universes at once. Thus it is that the prophets see the future as clearly as the present, and the sages know that all things happen in timelessness as well as in time.” Kai Opaka stretched her palm toward him, as though in blessing. “I saw that you had come to this place, by virtue of your concern for another. What you lack in wisdom—what you have not within you yet—is equaled by that sacrifice. I could not let you suffer alone.”
A spark of hope moved inside Bashir. “Can you . . . can you take me back? To the living?”
“That is not within my abilities. But those who are more powerful than I am, those who were created of timelessness—the ones who brought you here—they can do that. And they will. You chose not to harm them, and they are grateful for that.”
He closed his eyes, feeling the weariness drain away from him. “But when . . . ”
I have already communicated with them. It is as much as done.
The Kai’s voice hadn’t spoken aloud, but inside him. As he opened his eyes, he turned toward the observation ports.
And saw the stars. And felt, resonating with his own pulse and breath, the living worlds turning beneath every sun. . . .
He looked over his shoulder and saw that Kai Opaka had gone. But he wasn’t alone.
There was only one form lying on the command center’s deck. And she was alive.
He stepped toward Kira and reached down, taking her by the arm and pulling her to her feet. She blinked in confusion, as though she were still mired in the troubled dreams into which she had fallen.
CHAPTER 17
“ARE YOU SURE that’s all you require, Commander?” The Cardassian’s face peered from the Ops screen. “I expected something rather more . . . elaborate from you.”
Sisko gave a brief nod, a simulation of courtesy. “As I’ve tried to explain to you, Gul Tahgla, it’s really a very simple matter. And while I admit a degree of embarrassment about the glitch that’s interrupted our communications with our substation, I suppose I should also be grateful that your services are available to help us out.”
Behind his chair, his chief officers stood and watched, listening to the interchange between their commander and his counterpart out in the Gamma Quadrant. A brief conference between him and the others had been enough to formulate their strategy. Now, all he had to do was get Gul Tahgla to fall for it.
“I’m not quite sure about this. . . .” Suspicion clouded Gul Tahgla’s face. He studied the panel before him, drawing a finger along the words that one of his adjutants had written down for him. “Let me see if I have this correct. The text of the message you would like me to relay to your substation is ‘That which would have been simultaneous will now be sequential.’” He glanced up. “And that’s it?”
“That’s all of it.” Sisko smiled pleasantly. “I tried to be brief; I didn’t want to put you and your crew to any more trouble than absolutely necessary.”
“It sounds rather like a—what is that amusement of words?—a riddle.” Gul Tahgla tilted his head, as though he could better puzzle out the meaning by viewing the message at a different angle. “Are you sure the ones aboard your substation—if there are any alive, of course—will understand such compression? Perhaps you would like to . . . expand on it just a bit?” He looked up, as though hoping for a clue.
“No, it’s quite adequate the way it is.” Sisko hoped it was. The wording was of his own devising, intended to be just enough to serve as a key for Kira and Bashir, so that they would be able to figure out the rest on their own. And at the same time, it had to remain impenetrable to Gul Tahgla, hiding the status of the substation. “My crew members will know what it means.”
“Commander Sisko.” The expression on Tahgla’s face had hardened, his eyes narrowing. “I must tell you that I find this artful simplicity to be most dubious. I sense not just mockery here but a very real threat. The mistrust your request evokes is grave. My officers and I will have to study this intended message, to make certain it’s harmless.”
“Now that is disappointing. I expected better of you, Gul Tahgla. Are you telling me that a Cardassian gul can’t make a decision on his own, over something as simple as this? You might want to be concerned about the damage that will be done to the reputation of yourself and all the Cardassian officer corps, when the story gets out that you were frightened by something that’s hardly more than a fragment from a children’s game. Entities across the known galaxies might speculate as to whether the warriors of the great Cardassian empire worry about their own shadows creeping up on them.” Sisko could see that his comments were hitting home, from the smoldering look that creased Gul Tahgla’s brow. “And then, there are the political repercussions to consider, when it’s determined that my message was in fact harmless to Cardassian interests—and you personally refused to honor traditional standards of conduct between nonwarring parties. I’m sure many planets with whom you have alliances could begin to wonder what your empire’s true relationship with them might be. That’s the kind of suspicion that would set back your diplomatic efforts a great deal.” Sisko shrugged. “Of course, you might not be concerned about what your superiors on the council would say about your placing them in such an awkward posit
ion . . . all over a simple little riddle . . . ”
“Very well.” Gul Tahgla’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “Your message will be transmitted to your substation unit; we will continue to repeat until such time as you are satisfied that we have made every effort to accommodate you. But I warn you, Sisko: this changes nothing. I will sweep your abandoned unit out of the sector surrounding the wormhole’s exit.” He nodded in his own mockery of civility. “Perhaps I will find the answer to your inane riddle in the pieces that are left when I’m done.”
The screen went blank, the subspace link with the Cardassian vessel broken.
Sisko looked over his shoulder at his chief officers. “He bought it.”
A fire burst the bounds of his heart, swarming upward into the chambers that had once held rational thought. That had all been torn away by the rage that both consumed and left him whole. Stronger and purer than before; that was what pain and anger had done for him. There had been weakness before in his physical body, the frail bone and flesh that held his spirit. But his own poisoned blood had been let, and now he felt himself glorified, a wrathful spirit of justice.
Hören moved through the corridors of the substation, the vibration of each step sending a jagged spear up into his shoulder. His broken arm dangled at his side, its angle twisted even sharper than at first. That was good; the crying of the nerves within kept him alert, his senses scanning at a fevered pitch across the darkness.
His other hand gripped the knife, tight enough that it had become an extension of his thought and will. Its glittering edge turned radiant inside his skull; he could picture the thin metal sinking through flesh as easily as through air itself. As though his prey were a ghost, a dead thing already. For so it had been ordained. His own voice howled wordlessly inside him, a prophecy that he carried in his fist. . . .
The gridded deck rose unevenly beneath him, and he stumbled. He found himself on his knees and one hand, his knuckles scraped raw between the knife’s handle and the floor. The darkness swam up toward his face, as though it were a pool that he could ease his burning face into and drink deep.
Part of him, the weak and diseased part, wanted to curl onto his side and find sleep, let dreams roll over him, let the darkness become an ocean swaying him in its slow tides. He could have wept in frustration, in the bitterness of knowing that the blood always returned, that he had to let more and more of it out. To sanctify himself.
“It’s her fault,” he whispered. It always had been. The fire had blossomed inside the temple; the lucky ones who had been confirmed in their holiness had lain on the blackened ground, alive just long enough to taste the sweetness of their perfected state. He should have been there with them; he would have been, if she hadn’t cheated him of that moment of grace. A timeless moment, eternal, all weakness purged. Then, perhaps they would have forgiven, and blessed him.
He pushed himself up from the deck, sitting back on his haunches. His strength began to return as he concentrated on taking one breath after another. The pain from his broken arm dulled a fraction, as though it were a partner in his great task and had recognized how much farther they had to go.
Carefully, Hören got to his feet, resting his shoulder for a moment against the bulkhead. The strength grew in him, the purifying flames leaping even higher. He raised his good arm, looked at his haggard face in the knife blade above.
Soon. That was the vow he sealed upon his heart. It was time to bring everything to an end.
He stepped away from the bulkhead, moving on his ordained course. Toward her.
She had been so angry that she had almost torn his head off. When she regained full consciousness and understood that it wasn’t a hallucination generated by fatigue, but the actual physical form of Julian Bashir standing in the substation’s command center, she pulled her arm away as he was examining the bloodsoaked dressing.
“I ordered you!” The words had snapped from Kira’s mouth. “You were absolutely forbidden to activate any unbuffered engine and cause any further damage to the wormhole—”
“You know, I really expected a more cordial welcome than this. It wasn’t easy getting here.”
Bashir had had to show her, by a visual check through the observation ports and the readouts from the monitoring instruments, that the wormhole was still in existence. “This end of it, at least.” He had tapped his finger against one of the gauges. “Until we get back on board the cargo shuttle and establish a subspace comm link with DS Nine, there’s no telling what’s going on back there.”
She studied him with equal measures of puzzlement and mistrust. “So, exactly how did you get here?”
“Those minor details will be in my report.” He smiled. “They have somewhat more to do with my area of expertise than yours, I’m afraid.” He paused, listening to the substation’s silence for a moment before turning back to her. “What about Hören? Is he still—”
Kira nodded. “He’s still out there . . . somewhere.” She gestured toward the command center’s doorway. “He could be just outside in the corridor, listening to us, for all we know.”
“And he’s still intent on killing you?”
“He’s somewhat persistent,” she said dryly. “Let’s just say I’ve had a few encounters with him. That’ll all be in my report.”
“Then, what we need to do is transfer back to the cargo shuttle—right now. Where he can’t get at either one of us.” Bashir glanced at the doorway. “We can use the augmented personnel module—it can hold two people if necessary. It’ll be tight, but then, we don’t have far to go.”
“Negative on that.” She shook her head. “You can go back to the shuttle if you want. But I’m not leaving the substation. Not until he’s taken care of.”
“Are you joking?” Bashir stared at her. “Why take the risk?” He pointed to her bandaged arm and bloodstained uniform. “You’ve already barely survived your ‘encounters’ with this maniac. In the shuttle, we could just wait him out. Or at least, we’d have time to rest and think about what we’re going to do.” He tilted his head back, realization dawning on him. “Perhaps you don’t want to leave the substation because you’ve become as obsessed as he is. Some of Hören’s madness has rubbed off on you. So, now you’re locked into this . . . this dance with him.”
“It’s not a matter of obsession.” Kira’s voice remained controlled. “I was sent out here to the Gamma Quadrant on a specific mission, to claim sovereignty over this sector surrounding the wormhole’s exit. Before the Cardassians are able to. This substation has to represent the legal basis for that claim. If Gul Tahgla gets here and discovers there’s no one aboard except some homicidal lunatic roaming the corridors with a knife, he’ll be able to lock down a claim for Cardassian sovereignty even tighter.” She pushed her disordered hair back from her brow. “There’s too much at stake—not just for the Federation but for Bajor—for me to let that happen.”
“The claim of sovereignty won’t hold up if Gul Tahgla finds nothing but corpses here, yours included.”
“All right, then.” Kira shrugged. “As I said, I’m going to stay here and take care of Hören.”
“Kill him, you mean.”
“If I have to.”
Bashir gazed up at the ceiling. The exasperation he felt over her stubbornness was made worse by his knowing that she was right.
“You’re in charge, Major.” He knew when he was beaten. “Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I intend to disobey any order you might give for me to return to the shuttle. Until we’re done here. Between the two of us, we should be able to handle Hören.”
One side of Kira’s mouth lifted in a smile. At the same time, from the corner of his eye, Bashir saw a light appear on one of the command center’s panels.
“We’ve got a transmission coming in.” He studied the words scrolling on the comm link’s readout. “It’s from Gul Tahgla’s vessel.”
He switched the link onto the overhead speaker. A monoto
ne Cardassian voice sounded.
“This message is relayed by us from the Deep Space Nine station, its point of origin. Your commander, Benjamin Sisko, wishes to advise you, verbatim quote: That which would have been simultaneous will now be sequential. End of transmission. Do you acknowledge?”
Bashir pressed another of the switches. “Receipt acknowledged.” The lights on the panel died as the comm link was broken. “What the hell do you think that was supposed to mean?”
“If Sisko wanted us to hear, it has to mean something.” Kira stood beside him. “Especially if he went to the effort of convincing Gul Tahgla to relay it to us.” She turned toward Bashir. “My guess would be that it refers to some operating mode of the substation. Think—is there any onboard function that was originally designed to operate simultaneously?”
“Well, there are the standard life-support systems . . . but those are ongoing.” He rubbed his chin. “The message seemed to indicate something that hasn’t started up yet . . . something that would have to be triggered—” His eyes widened. “The autodestruct devices! Of course—the charges are set to explode all at the same time, when the fuse codes are programmed into them, so that the combined force would be enough to tear the substation apart.”
“So if they went off in a delayed sequence instead . . . ”
“It must have been something those Redemptorists wired in, when they were working to convert the quarantine module. If O’Brien were here, he could probably explain how they did it.”
“What would the effect be?”
Bashir shrugged. “The damage would still be pretty severe. The interior of the substation would be essentially gutted, the atmospheric seals would be blown out. Structurally, it would remain intact; most of the explosive force would be directed inward, so the exterior would still be in decent enough shape.”
“Total loss of life aboard?”