by Неизвестный
"That's possible, but it wouldn't do any good, sir. The electromagnetic fields radiating from the system's sun have gone haywire as well. Under these flux conditions, we wouldn't be able to lock on a beam long enough to effect any transfer."
He turned to one of the other crew members. "Do we still have communications with Bajor?"
"Negative, Commander. All subspace comm links with the planet have been interrupted due to the field disturbance; we're not having much luck getting through on any other band. We've been able to pick up some garbled transmissions, just enough to indicate that most of the population has hunkered down for the duration. There's bound to be pretty extensive reports of physical damage and casualties afterward. If there is an afterward, sir."
"How about from . . . the new city?" Sisko couldn't bring himself to pronounce the name Moagitty.
"Negative, sir. Indications are that all structures have been completely sealed off. Like everyone else down there, they seem to be riding it out as best they can."
He had to wonder if any of McHogue's customers would even be aware of what was happening outside. So locked in their own worlds, pursuing in the Cl-modified holosuites whatever pleasures they had traveled across the galaxy to find. Pleasures—and more. And all sealed within the walls of McHogue's centripetal universe, a pocket cosmos with no need for anything beyond. When the storms had passed, the walls might still be as unblemished and perfect as a crystalline egg.
"Very well; keep monitoring the situation. Let me know if anything changes." He turned away, just in time to observe the turbolift sliding open. A figure darted from it, looked around, then rushed up to him.
"Commander Sisko—" Kira's words came just as fast. "I have to talk to you—immediately—"
He pulled her away from the other crew members. "What are you doing here, Major?" His surprise was based on an assumption that she would still be resting in her quarters.
"I know I'm relieved of my duties, but that doesn't matter now. This is important. I think someone else has gone into the altered holosuite—"
"That's not possible. The alarm hasn't sounded."
"Who besides yourself has authorization to take the alarm circuit off-line?"
He had to consider for only a fraction of a second. "No one. No one but the chief of security—"
"That's who it is." Kira's face set grim. "Odo's gone in there."
They found him sprawled facedown on the floor of the holosuite chamber. Before even heading for the corridor with Kira, Sisko had had O'Brien cut off all power to the sector. The emergency shutdown circuits built into the holosuite had triggered the retracting of the door; the beam from the portable light in Sisko's hand had swept across the area, immediately catching the unconscious form at the center.
He handed the light to Kira and knelt down, turning Odo onto his back, then lifting him to a sitting position. "Constable—" Sisko drew a hand across Odo's face; the eyelids fluttered for a moment, then blinked and held open. "Are you all right?"
Odo's gaze looked past the commander for a few seconds, as if still focused on some vision conjured by the holosuite hidden workings. Then he nodded slowly. "I'm . . . I'm quite satisfactory. Thank you. . . ." His voice sounded hollow and distant.
"What happened?" Sisko helped him to his feet. Beside them, Kira watched, her face marked with worry. "What did you see in here, Constable?"
The look that Odo shot the commander was one of undiluted fury; he pushed the commander's arm away. "Nothing—" His voice softened as he regained control of himself. "I saw . . . nothing."
Sisko studied him for a moment longer. He decided against making any further inquiry, at least for the time being. "Perhaps you should go down to the infirmary, and have Dr. Bashir check you out—"
"That won't be necessary, Commander." Odo's voice resumed its normally brusque tone. "I know more about my own physiology than any doctor does. I can tell that I've sustained no injury." He gave a short nod to both Sisko and Kira. "I'm sorry for any anxiety I may have caused you. This was an ill-advised experiment on my part. However, there seem to have been no consequences stemming from it, either good or bad."
"Be that as it may," replied Sisko. "There are not going to be any further opportunities for such research—on anyone's part." He hit his comm badge and was put through to O'Brien. "Chief, I want the CI module pulled from this holosuite. Immediately."
"Gladly, sir."
He broke the connection and looked back to the others in the chamber. "I regret not having ordered that sooner. At this point, I don't think there's any further value to be derived from keeping a trap like this up and running."
"As you wish, Commander. I'll have the security barriers taken down as soon as O'Brien has finished with the unit." Odo stepped toward the holosuite's door. "If you'll excuse me—I have . . . work to do."
When Odo had departed, Sisko turned toward Kira. "Perhaps when you have time, Major, you could give me some details about how you knew Odo was here. But right now, I'm equally concerned about you. Dax informed me that you were close to total exhaustion."
"Believe me, Commander, I feel that way. You don't have to give any orders—I'm heading back to my bed right now."
Once he had seen the major to the door of her quarters, he decided against immediately returning to Ops. It would take only a few minutes for him to go and check on his son Jake.
The interior of his own living quarters was dark. He needed no light to walk through the familiar spaces. Outside Jake's bedroom, he pushed open the door and looked in. Jake's computer panel had been left on; even with the screen blanked, it gave enough dim radiance for Sisko to see by. Jake had fallen asleep, still dressed. His baseball bat and glove were propped up in the corner near the bed. Sisko drew back pulling the door shut.
The temptation to fall down on his own bed and try to catch a little rest was almost overwhelming. He was about to contact Ops and tell them that he would return in an hour or so, when he sensed that someone else was there with him, out in the quarters' main area.
"Who's there?" he called out, but no reply came.
Cautiously, he walked back down the short corridor. His eyes had adjusted to the point where he could make out the shapes of the furnishings . . . and the figure sitting on the sofa.
Silver metal and pinpoint gems flashed like the stars visible through the viewport, as the waiting person turned her face toward him. He recognized the Bajoran ear ornament, even before his thoughts could comprehend the rest.
"Benjamin . . ." Kai Opaka smiled at him. "Did you not think I would be here with you? At such a time as this?"
JADZIA
CHAPTER 14
In that other world, where he walked among memory and dreaming . . . even there, he had never thought of her coming to him in this way. To this place, a tiny section of Deep Space Nine, where its metal skeleton had been partially hidden beneath the touches of human life—he had always thought of the Kai only on her own world, in the temple's sheltered peace.
"Sit beside me, Benjamin." Kai Opaka gestured toward the vacant side of the couch. "We have much to talk about. And there is so little time—at least for you, at this moment."
Then I can't be dreaming, thought Sisko. That explanation for what he saw had already occurred to him: that he had fallen asleep, exhausted from overwork and all the concerns that had swarmed over him in the last few shifts, and was even now lying with his eyes closed on the couch or his own bed. But if what the Kai said was true—and why, in this world, would it not be?—then he knew it was no dream. In dreams, there was always plenty of time, or no time at all, merely eternity.
She smiled, having perceived the course of his thoughts. "You trouble yourself over matters of no consequence, Benjamin. What wisdom is there in dividing one life from another, of saying that one happens while you are sleeping and the other when you are awake, and that one is greater or lesser than its opposite? Better you should hold it to be all one life—your life, Benjamin—and one experience
of it."
The fatigue seemed to drain from his shoulders as he sat down beside her. Or what he perceived of her—this close, Sisko was able to discern another element of the truth. "But you're not really here." He couldn't keep a note of disappointment out of his voice. He reached and touched her arm, or where he saw her arm to be; his hand disappeared through the folds of her robe. "You see that, too, don't you?"
"Of course I do," chided the Kai. "Has it been so long since we've talked, that you would think I had become old and foolish? I still have eyes with which to see, and a way of knowing what is seen. Perhaps it is you that appears as a ghost to me."
A more worrying thought struck him. "Kai . . . are you dead? In the way that I would know?" He looked more closely at her image. "Is that how you've come to be here?"
"In the way that you would know . . ." She shook her head. "That moment is not yet arrived, Benjamin. My physical being is quite well, thank you. Though there is part of it—here—" She touched a few inches below the base of her throat. "A part that still grieves at having been cast so far from Bajor. That is a small death that I suffer with each dawning of light upon the place I have chosen for my labors—my answering of the Prophets' call. It hurts a great deal to be separated from the world and the people that I served for so long. But as long as that pain is there, then I know that my body and spirit are not yet set apart from each other. Someday, the empty husk will be brought back to Bajor, for its silent rest . . . but not yet."
"Then you're still there . . . out there on that moon in the Gamma Quadrant."
The Kai raised her hands, palms upward. "I'm here with you, Benjamin. Or enough of me is; this part that your eyes have enough wisdom to see, though your touch still doubts. What does distance matter? You step through the wormhole as though it were a door from one chamber to another, and light-years of distance are vanished in the blink of an eye. Did you believe the Gamma Quadrant, and all the stars and worlds it contains, to be an illusion?"
"But the wormhole is real." Sisko knew why he was trying to argue her away. It had been crushing enough to discover that the Kai wasn't physically aboard the station; if he were to accept even the least part of his perceptions as true, and then wake from a dream or brief mental lapse to find himself alone . . . that would be too much to bear. "And a vessel that goes through the wormhole," he persisted, "is real. In every world."
"Benjamin . . ." The voice of Kai Opaka's image turned even gentler. "Is it not too late, for you to worry about what is real and what is not? Even as you and I speak with each other—however we do so—that which you were so sure was an illusion, a world of illusion held within a small chamber, that false world seeks to destroy the world of the real. Destroy it, and take its place. What would be real and what would be illusion, then? All the distinctions you have so carefully made between one world and the other would have been for nothing."
"Very well." Sisko clasped his hands together before him. "I've seen enough apparitions inside the holosuites—and outside them—that turned out to be real in a way that I wasn't ready for. You, at least . . ." He smiled ruefully. "You had the courtesy to ask me to sit down." From over his shoulder, he glanced toward the living quarters' short corridor. "Perhaps I should try to speak more softly; I wouldn't want to wake my son."
"Don't worry, Benjamin." The image laid its hand on Sisko's forearm, though nothing could be felt. "He'd know he was dreaming."
He closed his eyes for a moment. "Why did you come here? Surely it wasn't just to show me that things could be real and not real at the same time."
"I came to warn you, Benjamin. Is that not what a ghost—even a ghost of the still living—should do? There are such expectations within you; it would be a pity for them to become disappointments."
That much was true; in some ways, he would have been surprised if it had been otherwise. Since the first time he had met the Kai, he had been aware of having entered a universe where things happened with the logic of dreams.
"Of what could you possibly warn me?" He studied the Kai's image beside him. "That I don't already know about?"
"You know of many things—more than when we made our acquaintance with each other, so long ago. Yet there are still aspects of your own being that remain beyond your grasp. You will need to find those things—find the truth, Benjamin—if you are to walk through the storms that have already broken."
"Storms? Do you mean what's happening on the surface of Bajor?"
The Kai nodded. "There—and elsewhere. In the worlds of falsehood and of truth. The storms have unleashed their fury, and what you have been able to see so far is but the least of that wrath. The very rocks and air of Bajor are suffering the consequences of the unholy alliances to which General Aur has bound my people . . . but there is worse to come."
He had never heard the Kai, in all the time before she had traveled through the wormhole, speak in such a manner. Her soft voice had changed into another, that of a prophet bearing fire and its scathing redemption. The gaze of the image pierced him like a weapon that brooked no resistance to the message inscribed on its shining blade.
"In the new city, the abomination that has been built upon the soil of Bajor—"
"In Moagitty," said Sisko. "That's what it has been named."
Anger moved across the Kai's face. "It has another name, an ancient one, that cannot be spoken. Just as the evil it represents is an ancient one—did you really think, Benjamin, that such things have not been encountered before, although in different guise? Though the dark gift of time, the shadowed mirror of the possibilities that your kind has brought to Bajor, is to make this manifestation of that evil stronger than it has ever been. Perhaps that is what the more foolish of your blood would call progress—that dizzying rush to potentiate and enlarge that which was already dreadful enough before."
Her words chilled him, as though an icy cloth had been drawn across the skin of his shoulders and arms. He remembered the first time he had encountered McHogue, in the bright summer world of the altered holosuite, a landscape that had once been no more than his son's daydreaming and had become a nightmare of red-soaked earth beneath the trembling leaves. Even then, he had sensed the dark radiation emanating from the smiling figure, as though from an inverse sun, a shadow that swallowed warmth and life. McHogue's dark eyes, optical black holes, had also shown in the face of the boy, the child who had knelt on the stream-washed rock, glittering knife in his grasp. And with the same smile, that looked inside whatever stood before it and found a silent brother there. A sleeping twin, that could be woken and coaxed into an annihilating life of its own. That was what had struck a blow to Sisko's heart, deeper than any blade could have reached: when he had come upon the holosuite's echo of his son Jake and had seen those dark, dead eyes looking back at him, judging and condemning . . .
"I'm sorry," he said aloud. "Perhaps you'd be right, if you believed that it would have been better if all the universe beyond had never touched Bajor. Better for your people, and for everyone else. But it's too late for that. I'd only want you to remember that some of us at least meant well. We still do."
"There is no need for any apology. How could Bajor have kept the universe outside its walls, when it is a part of that same universe? Be assured, Benjamin, that this too was foreordained. There is yet a great blessing, for the people of my blood and all others, that the conjunction of the great and the small will bring about. But at this moment, Bajor's fate and the fate of all the worlds beyond is threatened. That which is at stake is past all your present imagining; that is the burden you carry, Benjamin, and the destiny you must bring to light."
Slowly, as though that world had been placed back upon his shoulders, Sisko nodded. "What must I do, Kai Opaka?"
She raised her hand, palm outward, a few inches from his brow. "Know first, that what you have perceived of storms upon the surface of Bajor is only the external manifestation of this evil's consequences. The storms, the lashing of the soil by wind and furious rain, is but the pla
net's own cry of pain at its violation. I heard that outcry, at a place far from here—how could I not, when Bajor and I are part of one another? I heard, but did not understand how such a wound could have been inflicted. Not until my meditations brought me here again, to gaze upon that world of suffering—then I saw, and knew. This being you call McHogue—he is an ancient enemy, one who wears this man's face as a mask, the better to deceive those who see only with their eyes and not with their hearts."
The Kai's words brought back a memory, something Sisko had almost forgotten. Of what had been reported to him, of Quark's odd perception of one who by all appearances should have been recognized as his old business partner. It was somewhat humbling to realize that the Ferengi had had more insight into the truth than anyone else could have realized.
"There's another storm, isn't there?" Sisko looked deep into the eyes of the image. "That we can't see yet."
"Soon enough, and you shall. I know what had happened here aboard your station, the epidemic of murder that moved through these corridors. That was madness enough, but what is happening now in the place called Moagitty far transcends it. The storms that scourge the walls outside will seem but the mere echo of the firestorm that has been unleashed inside. If the barriers were to crack and break apart beneath that fury, the rains would not be enough to wash away the rivers of blood that have already begun to flow."
"This was my fear," said Sisko. "That McHogue would reach some kind of critical mass with his CI modules and the holosuites he'd built with them. If he unleashed as much chaos as he did here aboard DS9 with just a few altered holosuites, the possibility of an exponentially greater reaction would come into play, once he had an unlimited field of action. Now he has all of Moagitty, and everyone who has come to it."
"If only the consequences were limited to this new city and those foolish ones who have let themselves be locked inside it by their desires. But the results of that intermingling of evil and folly reach through all of Bajor—and beyond." The Kai's voice had grown stern, becoming that of a prophet foretelling the wrack of nations; now her words softened again, to those of a teacher. "The people of Bajor carry a great spiritual burden, one that has been rendered even purer and more sanctified through their suffering. Their faith—my faith, Benjamin—is a light unto other worlds, even to those who bear the darkness within their hearts. Have you not heard me speak before, as each Kai through the centuries before me has spoken, of that aspect of the universe which is not material in nature, a reality that is comprehensible only through the stilling of desire?"