As though demonstrating the latter fact to himself, Odo leaned down and pushed his cupped hand through the fine-grained powder. He lifted his hand to eye level, the ashes spilling down on either side of his palm and between his fingers. The remains of the shapeshifter fell dutifully to the ground, the biomimetic cells unable any longer to alter form, unable to flout gravity.
As Odo’s hand emptied of the ashes, he saw something out beyond the edge of the islet. Far in the distance, a tall, narrow, funnel-shaped cloud reached from the dusky sky down to the Great Link. Odo stood up, his outstretched hand dropping to his side. Though he had never seen one in person, he had viewed recordings of cyclones sweeping across the lowland plains of Bajor, and thus realized the might of their destructive force. As he understood the phenomenon, though, the meteorological conditions required for its formation simply did not exist on this world.
But even as Odo thought this, another slender spire appeared, to the left of the first one, and much closer to the islet. It did not come into existence as he would have expected, though, and as he’d assumed the first one had. Rather than swirling down from the sky, it climbed up from the surface of the Great Link, like an enormous finger reaching for the heavens.
And then another formed. And another.
Odo turned in place. In every direction, the columns reached from sea to sky, with more sprouting up as he watched. He refused for a moment to accept the reality of the situation, even as it became clear to him that these were not cyclones.
These were Founders.
Above, the tips of the columns spread beyond their slim conic shape. Before long, they had flattened out into huge diaphanous planes. The effect put Odo in mind of Laas’s form when he had returned here with the three members of the Hundred, floating down through the atmosphere on great, delicate wings.
Now the wings grew until they blanketed the sky, and then the vertical shafts connecting them with the Great Link withdrew upward, into them. Odo intuitively recognized the actions of his people. Although veiled from his view, he knew that above the planes of changeling flesh, more shifts in shape, mass, and internal pressure occurred. As the Founders climbed higher, to where the thinness of the atmosphere could no longer sustain their flight, they would alter their bodies, within and without, and do what they needed to in order to escape the planet’s gravity.
To his left, Odo suddenly heard footsteps. So taken with the Founders’ ascents had he been that he had not heard any of them shapeshift up onto the islet. He turned now to see Indurane, as a Bajoran, walking toward him. The ancient changeling stopped just a couple of paces from him, and without preamble said, “We have no direction. We have no hope.”
“How can that be?” Odo asked him. “How can this be?” He gestured with both hands toward the rising masses of changelings all around them.
“For so long,” Indurane said, “we have awaited—we have sought—the return of the Progenitor. It took millennia for us to settle on the plan of sending out the Hundred, and centuries more to implement that plan. And it worked. In the end, it worked. We saw the sign implanted in us, and we knew that the Progenitor had returned.”
Odo saw in his mind the nova hanging in the sky, pictured himself plunging his arms deep into the massive changeling remains. He thought to ask Indurane how their people could be certain of the corpse’s identity, but decided not to pose the question. Odo knew that whatever justification Indurane provided, it would not suffice to convince him. Nor, he surmised, would anything he said be sufficient to dissuade Indurane from his viewpoint.
“But why this?” Odo tried again, waving his hands once more in the general direction of the Founders pushing upward into the sky.
“Because there is no hope,” Indurane said.
Indeed, Odo could sense from Indurane, and from all those around them, the bereavement of spirit of which the old changeling spoke. But he also perceived something else. “Do you feel guilty?” he asked. “Do many of the Founders?”
“I do,” Indurane admitted. “We do. For those ill served when we sent out the Hundred. Like you. Like Laas.” He raised an arm and pointed at Odo’s feet, at the pile of ashes there. “Like this one,” he said. “And like the Progenitor Itself.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?” Odo asked. “Dividing the Great Link and sending yourselves out into the universe that you believe is so hostile to shapeshifters, all as penance for what you did, as acts of contrition for your misdeeds?”
“We are guilty,” Indurane said. “We abandoned pieces of ourselves, and in so doing, lured the Progenitor to Its death.” He paused, and then with what seemed infinite sadness, he repeated the words with which he’d begun this conversation. “We have no direction. We have no hope.”
“If you want to be whole,” Odo said, “you make your own direction, your own hope.”
“We do not,” Indurane said flatly.
Odo considered what he might say to convince Indurane otherwise, but only ended up with more questions. “Are you relocating,” he asked, “or dispersing?”
“Some may remain together in small links,” Indurane said, “but most seek isolation, even from our own kind.”
“What will you do?” Odo asked.
Indurane appeared to think for a few moments, his smooth Bajoran features expressionless and unreadable. Finally, predictably, he said, “I have no direction.”
Before Odo could respond, Indurane’s body began to shimmer, beginning at his head and moving swiftly down through his torso, waist, and legs, and then on to his feet. Then his form shot up into the sky, a huge spire emanating from the islet. Odo craned his neck and peered upward, in time to see the top of Indurane’s new shape spread outward.
“Not everyone you encounter in the universe will be your enemy,” Odo said, knowing that Indurane could still perceive his words. But then the base of the column Indurane had formed retracted upward, and was quickly lost to sight. Odo called after him anyway. “We all make our own direction,” he said.
But Indurane was gone.
Odo watched for hours as column after column climbed into the sky and formed wings, which soon enough contracted and fled higher. Eventually, though, the number dwindled, and then at last, only a single column remained. When it too had gone, Odo lowered his eyes to look out at the barren world the Founders had once called home, and which they had now abandoned.
Stepping over to the edge of the islet—which, with the changeling sea now gone, could best be described as the top of a rocky hill—Odo gazed out over the cold, empty landscape. Where the Great Link once had been, he now saw only the uneven planet surface. In some places off in the distance, Odo could see the features of a changeling world, the objects and structures fashioned by the Founders for their own satisfaction in emulating. Various natural characteristics separated those places: rolling hills off to the left; rocky, craggy terrain ahead; and cratered plains to the right.
Not that long ago, Odo reflected, he had stood here, on this islet, his mind filled with hope. Now he looked up over his shoulder at the brightly shining orb of the nova, which had so recently drawn his attention in the same way that the Omarion Nebula once had. Back then, after his return here from his trip to Deep Space 9, he’d thought the nova a harbinger of a bright future for his people, an augury of peace and joy for the Founders in the days ahead.
Odo realized now that he’d been wrong on all counts.
As he contemplated his error, he heard the sound of shifting changeling flesh below him. Looking away from the nova and down into the empty lands surrounding the former islet, Odo spotted the orange-amber flicker of a Founder changing shape. It approached the islet, rising from below, and then splashed onto the ground beside Odo. It quickly drew up into a humanoid form, and then Laas stood there in his Varalan shape.
Just as Indurane had earlier, Laas began without prefacing his remarks in any way. “What are we going to do?” he asked, a look of astonishment and confusion on his unlined face. Odo imagined the sam
e expression on his own face. But as surprised as he felt at the turn of events, he also recognized the dangers posed by the dissolution of the Great Link. To begin with, and perhaps most importantly, with its ruling force gone, the Dominion could easily descend into anarchy and chaos.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he answered Laas honestly.
“What’s going to happen to the Dominion?” Laas persisted.
I don’t know, Odo thought again, but then an answer rose in his mind. Attack Vessel 971 currently orbited the planet, and squadrons of similar starships patrolled vast areas of the surrounding space. Vorta and Jem’Hadar forces stretched throughout in impressive numbers, all controlled by the will of the Founders.
“What’s going to happen to the Dominion?” Odo repeated. “Laas, from this point on, you and I are the Dominion.”
A Note on Chronology
Readers of this miniseries will no doubt have noticed that the stories in Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were not presented chronologically. This was intentional. Just as the previously published Rising Son and The Left Hand of Destiny doubled back to earlier points in the timeline of Deep Space Nine fiction set after the TV series, so too does Worlds of DS9 shift back and forth as the series progresses, telling tales out of sequence in order to reveal events in a desired order. To borrow a phrase from a certain Emissary, the continuing saga of Deep Space Nine should not be considered linear.
However, for those interested in the chronological order of events in Worlds of DS9, here it is in Gregorian dates, using the final chapters of Unity as a benchmark.
September 29, 2376: Bajor joins the Federation.
October 1: Odo departs the Alpha Quadrant.
October 2: Jake Sisko sets out from his father’s home in Kendra Valley.
October 4: Fleet Admiral Akaar addresses the Federation Security Council.
October 8: Ezri Dax leads an away team on Minos Korva.
October 11–12: Dax and Julian Bashir on Trill.
October 14: Dax and Bashir return to Deep Space 9. Shortly thereafter, Bashir takes leave time and travels to Earth.
October 24: Sidau village on Bajor is destroyed; Bajoran Militia officer Major Cenn Desca assigned to Deep Space Nine; Commander Elias Vaughn turns 102.
October 25: Jake Sisko returns to Kendra province, married to Azeni Korena.
October 27: Bashir returns to Deep Space 9.
November 1–10: Ensign Thirishar ch’Thane, Ensign Prynn Tenmei and Commander Phillipa Matthias on Andor; Odo returns to the Dominion.
November 17–22: Quark, Lieutenant Nog and Lieutenant Ro Laren on Ferenginar; Bena, daughter of Grand Nagus Rom and Leeta, born on November 21.
December 2: On Cardassia, the True Way attempts to destabilize and discredit Alon Ghemor’s government.
December 16–27: U.S.S. Yolga travels to Ananke Alpha; Odo leads an investigation of a nova in the Gamma Quadrant.
December 31: Taran’atar attacks Kira; the Great Link dissolves.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 36