by Неизвестный
They were all waiting for him. He knew that; there were so many things at Ops, every crucial matter that required his decision, for him to say yes or no to. He had to set policy, and deal with the complex, interwoven net of communiques and demands from the Federation and all the non-aligned worlds. While the station's enemies, those who would destroy DS9 and terminate its mission, circled around, searching for an undefended spot—some weakness that he had overlooked, that he was responsible for—that they could seize upon like earthly prey in the jaws of wolves . . .
The interior of Commander Sisko's head seemed sometimes to echo with the tumult of all the calls upon his time and attention. As the turbolift moved through the station, he closed his eyes, gathering his strength. The weight upon his shoulders had been great enough already—and now this information about Major Kira's activities on the surface of Bajor had come to light. In the DS9 chain of command, she was second only to himself; as much of the burden of administration as could be shifted from him, she had taken up. There had been enough occasions when she had demonstrated her abilities and ongoing loyalty to Deep Space Nine; yet at the same time, Sisko knew that inside herself, Kira maintained a deeper loyalty to Bajor, to the people of her own blood. As a fighter in the resistance against the Cardassian occupation, she had risked her life more than once; she would given it with little regret if she had thought it necessary. The basis of her loyalty to DS9 was that she felt Bajor's interests would be best served by the eventual success of the station's mission here, that through it Bajor could be raised to the status of a full, participating member of the Federation. That was Bajor's future, that Kira was helping to bring into reality . . .
Sisko's thoughts raced unimpeded, as though in synch with the turbolift's rushing course through the station. Only a few seconds had passed, and already his brooding had reached an inevitable point, one that he faced reluctantly.
What if Kira had changed her mind, reevaluated what she thought Bajor's future should be? Not the Federation, but something else, something that General Aur and the rest of the Severalty Front were busy conjuring up. Then her divided loyalties, to Bajor and to DS9's mission, would no longer line up quite so neatly. And if that was the case, there would be no question which would take precedence in Kira's mind and heart. There wouldn't even be two loyalties to choose between, but just one, to her homeworld and its people. And what Kira had now seen as their future.
The turbolift came to a halt, its destination reached. Eyes still closed, Sisko rubbed the ache at the corner of his brow. Kira hadn't even arrived back at the station yet; he'd have to sort this all out with her soon enough. In the meantime, though, even with that and the other problems stacking up, there was something else he needed to take care of first. Some unfinished business, between himself and someone who had slipped out of his hands like the shadows cast by another world's warming sun . . .
He stepped from the turbolift, not into the Ops deck, but into one of the station's shabbier and more dimly lit corridors. Nothing had changed since the last time he had been here.
A crackle of energy lit up the passageway, a coruscating energy field blocking his progress. The voice of the static central computer sounded from above him. "Access to this area is restricted, by orders of Security Chief Odo. Please vacate the area."
"Computer, this is Commander Sisko." From habit, he gave the rest of his identification code, though he knew the voice pattern recorded in the data banks would be sufficient.
"I'm countermanding the restriction protocols; allow temporary access for myself and no other individual at this time."
"Access granted." The energy glow, like the St. Elmo's fire that ancient sailors had encountered, blinked off and then parked back into existence behind Sisko as he walked farther into the corridor.
The door of the holosuite, the one that had been left with the CI module still in place, slid open at his touch upon the control panel. The dim corridor, and all of DS9 beyond it, vanished as he stepped inside. Once more, the sun of an eternal summer day leaked through the fingers of the hand with which he shielded his eyes. His irises adjusted, allowing him to see the individual yellow stalks wavering in the soft wind, the field rolling to the horizon's stand of trees.
His brow was dotted with sweat when he reached the cooling shade. Beneath the interlaced branches, the small white bones were still scattered where he had kicked apart the dead cat—the hallucination of a dead cat, he had to remind himself. The sensory impression of an actual physical environment was stronger here than in any other holosuite he'd experienced. It's inside my head—the disquieting awareness the cortical-induction process, the illicit technology reaching through the barrier of his skull and manipulating the brain's neurotransmitters, grew sharper. He knew that his senses weren't lying to him, tricking him into mistaking the artificial construct for reality; it was the other way around the gray matter dictating to his eyes and ears and skin they perceived.
And more than that. He turned slowly, scanning across the field. A regulation holosuite, untouched by the CI technology, was a dead thing, even when populated by the ghosts of famous ballplayers; a replicated Louisville Slugger remained inanimate wood in one's hands. Here, in this illusory place, a malign intelligence could be detected in each broken twig on the ground. Through the shifting screen of leaves, Sisko could feel the sun watching him with an unblinking gaze.
Inside . . .
Everything here, the bright daylight, the breeze that smelled of dust and pollen, the sounds of water rippling nearby—it had all been inside Jake's head, too. As well as the small white bones and the broken things that leaked red into the dirt, and the face that could almost be seen from the corners of one's eyes, smiling as it regarded the world it had made in its image. The thought of that made the blood simmer a few degrees hotter in Sisko's veins.
"Yeah? And what're you going to do about it?"
From the direction of the creek, beyond the trees' edge, came a voice he recognized.
He wished he hadn't.
Ducking beneath the lowest-hanging branches, the glade's green fringe, Sisko stepped into the sunshine again, the reflections off the narrow path of water brilliant as heated coins. He winced as the light stabbed at his eyes.
He could just make out the figure sitting on the broad, flat rock, knees hugged to the thin chest. A boy, gazing at the creek's tumbling motion with a sullen intensity.
Sisko felt his heart stumble in his chest as the boy turned and looked at him. The face, as had been the voice, was Jake's.
"What're you looking at?"
But different—the slitted eyes held a burning malice that he had never seen in his son's eyes, could never imagine seem there.
He stood a few meters away from the image. "Who are you?"
"Don't you know?" A smile twisted one side of its face. "I'm your son Jake."
"No, you're not." He had to struggle against the impulse to stride forward and knock the smirk away with a sweeping backhand. "You're nothing. A hallucination. A fiber in my brain being tugged at. That's all."
"Oh, you want to discuss metaphysics, do you?" Another voice, deeper and harder, entwined around the words. "Or is it neurophysiology? It doesn't matter. In that other world—" The squatting figure pointed toward the horizon. "Your percept system detects a certain pattern of light and shadow, sounds at your ear, even molecules of sweat upon the atmosphere . . . and you immediately say Hello, Jake, my darling boy, true offspring of my loins. Don't you?" The image's head tilted, studying him from another angle. "The same processes happen here, sensory throughput and pattern recognition, all adding up to the same thing—and you reject it." The voice became that of a young boy again. "You're breaking my heart, Dad. I feel like an orphan."
A wave of nausea rose inside Sisko, his body and mind fighting to reconcile the gap between what was perceived and what was known to be real. "This is a waste of time," he said angrily. "I came here to speak to McHogue. But you . . . you're just an illusion."
He knew what was going to happen, what he would be shown. The awareness of this world's malign intelligence grew closer around him, as though the sun's gaze had darkened in a cloudless sky.
"Come on, watch—"
Sisko closed his eyes; he could still do that. He had caught just a glimpse of the fish struggling in the image's grip, the round eyes staring, the mouth open and gasping as the fingers had tightened.
"You're no fun."
The image of the boy stood up on the rock; Sisko watched as the mess in its hand was thrown into the water, snared by the current and sluiced away. The image wiped its palm on it tattered jeans. "Just like your stupid kid. I mean, just like me."
He made no reply; there was no point.
"All right, all right, I'm going." The image shot another murderous glance at Sisko. "Sheesh." Balancing from one small stone to another, the image crossed the water and plunged into the tall, dry grasses on the other side. A notch-eared cat left off its stakeout of a field mouse's burrow and darted away, a ripple through the stalks marking its passage.
"You didn't want to see that . . . but you did. Whether you believed in it or not. The bit with the fish, I mean."
Sisko looked over his shoulder and saw McHogue then, the narrow face still touched by its mocking smile. He stood at the edge of the holosuite's glade, his black garb almost of a piece with the trees' darkening shade.
"I'll assume," said Sisko dryly, "that you're real. In some way, at least."
"That's good of you." McHogue's expression grew even more amused. "It would certainly expedite matters if you did. I'd hate to think that you believed you were standing here all alone, talking to yourself."
"Was that something you cooked up to scare me?" He pointed to the boy's image, now almost at the limit of his sight. A wavering row of parted grasses traced a path leading to a distant wooden barn. "Something to rattle me a bit?"
"Why would I want to do that?" McHogue stepped forward. "Really, Commander Sisko, we should be friends. Or let's just say that it would be in your best interests if we were. We have a great many interests in common. The ongoing welfare of Deep Space Nine, for instance."
"You should be concerned about that." Sisko studied the figure standing before him. The other man looked as real, as flesh-and-blood, as himself—though here, he knew, that proved nothing. "I could pull the plug on you in ten seconds. If I had to—or even if I just wanted to—I could jettison every holosuite aboard DS9 out one of the airlocks. You'd be the one talking to himself . . . if you existed at all."
McHogue nodded in approval. "That's a good attitude to maintain, Commander. True friendship is really only possible between equals, don't you think? A certain measure of reciprocity is needed. If you feel you have your hand on my throat, and I have mine on yours . . ." He shrugged. "Well, if we can't be friends, then at least we can respect each other." The smile grew wider. "Though actually, getting rid of the holosuites wouldn't affect me much, or my plans. It's far too late for that. Surely you don't believe that this is the only place I exist?" He gestured toward the sky and the surrounding fields. "It's comfortable enough, and it serves my purposes—or at least some of them—but I have to admit I find it a bit dull. But then I have a standard of comparison; I've traveled quite a bit in my career—I'm sure by now you've had a look at the various files on me. Whereas the boy you just met, that rather interesting variation on your own son Jake—I'm pretty sure he doesn't exist anywhere else. He was born here, so to speak. Or at least I think so."
"Why aren't you certain?" Sisko regarded the other with deep suspicion. "This world is yours. You created it."
“My dear commander—it's not as simple as that."
McHogue slowly shook his head. "The cortical-induction modules represent a very powerful technology. I know more about it than any living creature, and I've only begun to explore its possibilities. My experiences outside this realm have suited me for a life as an entrepreneur, a businessman such as our mutual acquaintance Quark—though I believe the scope of my ambitions always somewhat outstripped his. Consequently, I have no training as a scientist; I deal only with what can be accomplished with something profitably, that is. I can only speculate about how some of these things work. That boy . . . he really is your son Jake, you know; or at least part of him. The CI technology isn't just a one-way street; it observes and learns from everyone that comes into it. It creates what you might call echoes of the various users of the modified holosuites. The characteristic patterns of identity are preserved—the essences, if you will—and, in time, they acquire a certain life of their own. They become . . . different. But still with an inner truth about them; they reveal interesting qualities about their original sources." McHogue shrugged, his smile becoming that of an indulgent parent. "There's even an echo of me here, as a boy just about your own son's age. He's quite a rascal."
"I bet he is," Sisko replied grimly. He looked across the expanse of yellow grasses, then back to McHogue. "So you've already started to populate your little self-contained world. That should make it very pleasant for you—or at least not as lonely. Inasmuch as I'm going to make sure that not just my son—my real son—but no one, absolutely no one else, will be coming in here to join you in your twisted little games. If what you wanted was to be lord and master of your own pocket universe, then congratulations; you've achieved that. I hope it makes you happy." The last words were spoken with a vehemence that made his hands clench into fists at his side.
A fragment of McHogue's smile remained, but his eyes had turned steely. "As I told you, Commander, I consider myself to be a man of rather large ambitions. Now, you may be satisfied—perhaps even fulfilled—to be the great, high-and-mighty emperor of a rusting steel ball floating in the vacuum, with all your Starfleet minions carefully arrayed around you. You enjoy having millions of petty decisions to make, don't you?—it eats up so much of your time that you might otherwise spend thinking about things you don't want to. Remembering things. The problem is that you find ruling a little world so much to your liking, you tend to assume that's hat everybody wants. But that's not the case with me. I didn't come here to turn myself into the tin god of a private universe. These fantasies—" McHogue gestured again, with a wide flourish of his arm; his voice rose. "I have no use for them, except . . ." He stopped, then made a small parodic bow toward Sisko. "Except as a means of achieving my ambitions in your world, Commander. And all the ones beyond it."
"We've already seen some of your 'ambitions.'" Sisko allowed the contempt he felt to register in his own voice. "The murderers you unleashed on DS9—are there echoes of them here as well? I'm sure they must make delightful company for you."
McHogue dismissed the last remark with a wave of his hand. "Oh, they're here, all right . . . somewhere or other. Not in this bright summer that you and your son have always enjoyed so much. But someplace darker, someplace a little more suited to their limited temperaments." He feigned an expression of concern. "I hope you didn't take all that personally. Your 'epidemic,' as I believe you've been calling it—these kinds of tiny mishaps always happen with a start-up operation like this. I admit that we seem to have got things rolling with a few . . . less than desirable individuals—unstable types, really—but what can you do?" He gave an elaborate shrug. "Actually, Commander, I'm somewhat disheartened by the triviality of your complaints. If all you ever had to gripe about were a few people trying to kill you every now and then, you'd be a lucky man." The unpleasant smile showed again on McHogue's face. "Believe me, there are far worse things."
"Indeed." Sisko's expression remained unamused. "And what might those be?"
"If we're friends, Commander, then you won't
ever have to find out. But unfortunately, I'm afraid you will." McHogue glanced up at the sun. "Time's a-wastin'—not that you'd know it in a place like this. This perpetual noon you programmed does have its disadvantages."
"There's still plenty of time for you to tell me about these great plans of yours."
"You'll find out soon enough. But right now, I must be on my way." McHogue held up his hand and rolled the fingers one by one into his palm. "Good talking to you—we'll do it again, I promise. But now I have to pull the plug on you."
The smiling figure disappeared; a moment later, so did the trees that had been behind him.
Sisko turned, watching the yellow grass fade away, the creek dwindling to a mist. The distant hills became steel walls studded with the holosuite's optic transmitters.
The sun went last of all.
CHAPTER 8
"I would've thought you'd been put on major restrictions. For screwing up like that. Didn't your father get mad and stuff?"
Jake shook his head in reply to the Ferengi youth's question. "No, he was pretty cool about it." There were things he hadn't talked to Nog about—things he didn't want to talk about. On the outside, the part that other people could see, he let on that the trouble he'd gotten into, all that stuff with the holosuites and what happened there, it was all no big thing. But on the inside, he still felt kind of sick and dizzy; he had to be careful not to think about those things too much. It was easier, a lot less scary, to just hang out with Nog, here in the solid and real world of the station.
Right now, as Nog walked alongside Jake, his eyes had widened in disbelief. "My uncle would have flipped out, if it'd been me. Nobody would've even seen his vapor trail, he would've come down on me so fast."
Nog was virtually the same age as him, so they had a lot of the same problems—most of them dealing with the adults in their lives and the positions they held aboard Deep Space Nine. What with his own father being the station's commander, and Nog's uncle Quark being the undisputed number-one wheeler-dealer on the Promenade, they were both connected to a couple of DS9's leading lights. There was even some debate—and a series of arguments of varying ferocity between him and Nog, that had finally simmered down to an agreement not to talk about it anymore—as to whether his dad or Nog's uncle possessed the greater status. Benjamin Sisko wore a Starfleet uniform, while Quark was a private entrepreneur, something that Ferengi would just naturally think a lot more of.