The Long Mirage

by David R. George III

  Kira’s mouth dropped open. In the chamber, at the rear of the stage, a still image of Altek appeared on a large view­screen the vedek hadn’t even seen. What is the kai doing? Kira thought.

  “Like Akorem Laan more than a decade ago,” Pralon went on, “Altek Dans soared out of the Celestial Temple and out of Bajor’s past. Unlike our great poet, Mister Altek—Doctor Altek—has apparently come from much further back in history, and he is here to stay.”

  The kai continued to talk, but Kira only half heard what she said. As far as the vedek knew, up until yesterday, Altek wanted to live on Bajor, but as an everyday citizen. He wished to continue assimilating to the present and to seek a place among the current generation of his people. He hoped to determine his purpose—or the Prophets’ purpose for him—but he had already begun to think about acquiring a modern education and resuming the practice of medicine. Whatever he did, though, he did not want to be an object of curiosity, a man out of the past who did not belong. With regard to his travel in time, he sought anonymity.

  Did Altek know the kai intended to do this? Or did she blindside him by revealing his identity to all of Bajor? It seemed unthinkable to Kira. She had known Pralon Onala for a long time and had followed her career for an even longer period, back to Pralon’s days heading the Ministry of Religious Artifacts. Kira could not imagine her disregarding the rights of an individual to satisfy a political purpose.

  Did she somehow change Altek’s mind? Did she pressure him into changing his mind? Again, Kira could not feature the current kai taking such actions. The vedek rejected the ideas, but she still wondered how and why Altek had chosen to allow himself to be put in the public eye. Pralon concluded her remarks about him by speaking of his humble desires, although any hope he had for privacy had just been undermined.

  “As Doctor Altek set his sights on making his way back to Bajor,” the kai said, “attention turned once more to the Celestial Temple. Three days ago, a small vessel unexpectedly appeared from within it. This time, Kira Nerys did return.”

  A startled hum rose in the Assembly. Behind the kai, an image of Kira—taken at the Vanadwan Monastery before her disappearance in the Celestial Temple—replaced that of Altek Dans. Somebody in the audience clapped, and then so did several others. The applause built slowly, then rose in volume. A number of people stood up, and then so did others. In the front row, Yevir kept his seat until those on either side of him had risen to their feet. Kira wondered what the vedek thought of her return.

  Once the ovation finally ended and the audience sat back down, Pralon said, “Vedek Kira has been examined and found to be in good health. I have spoken with her, and she is in good spirits. She tells me that she looks forward to going back to her life as a vedek at the Vanadwan Monastery, but before she does, she will speak to the Bajoran people.”

  As Pralon provided details about Kira’s address the next day, the vedek thought about what exactly she would say. While she had no anxiety about public speaking—she had often talked to large groups of people, both when she’d served aboard DS9 and during her time in the clergy—she had never before had the population of an entire planet as an audience. The act of doing so did not concern her, but she had yet to figure out what she would say. She had no interest in talking about herself, but that was basically what the kai had asked of her. While Kira understood the power inherent in the tale of her extended excursion in the Celestial Temple, she did not know how to frame it in a way that would satisfy the kai’s needs—especially given the vedek’s sporadic memories of her time in the Prophets’ realm.

  As the kai completed her remarks in the Great Assembly, Kira thought about Altek Dans. Despite the kiss they had shared aboard the transport and the emotional resonance it had stoked within her, she could not yet contemplate the idea of them as romantic partners; she had not come to terms with the bizarre nature of their relationship—from its setting in history, to the confused nature of her identity during their courtship, to their disjointed perspectives on just how long ago they had been together. But she did ponder his story, as a man displaced from a world he knew to one only vaguely familiar. She wondered again why he had changed his mind about maintaining his privacy, and she decided that she would ask him.

  Kira also would have to discuss the content of her speech with the kai. The vedek hoped that she could limit what she had to say, and that, sooner rather than later, she could contact the people in her life on Bajor. More than anything at that moment, she simply wanted to pick up where she’d left off at the Vanadwan Monastery; it seemed to her that, with the controversy about the falsework gripping the population, her work as a vedek would be needed more than ever. Kira did not look forward to giving her speech, but she hoped that Pralon was right that it would bring a measure of calm to Bajor.

  iii

  * * *

  Quark approached the cockpit, making sure to walk loudly so that he wouldn’t startle Laren. She looked up when he entered. “Hello, Quark.”

  “I can relieve you now,” he said, working hard to keep his tone neutral. He didn’t want the disappointment and hurt he felt audible in his voice, though he knew that he’d made his emotions clear.

  “We can both watch the helm,” Laren offered. Since he’d left her in the passenger cabin the previous night, they’d taken turns monitoring the ship’s functions.

  “That’s not necessary,” Quark said.

  “I know it’s not necessary,” Laren said. “But I’d like to stay here.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good,” Laren said. “I’m glad.”

  “When you want to be relieved,” Quark told her, “just let me know.” He moved back into the passenger cabin, headed aft for his bunk. He figured he would retrieve his padd and have a look at the Ferengi Futures Exchange. He had never really had the capital to invest heavily in the FFE, but business at both of his establishments had been solid lately, even brisk. If he could recover his lost funds from Mayereen Viray, it might just be time to—

  “Quark.” Laren almost barked his name. He thought about just continuing on into the sleeping quarters, but he heard her get up from the console. He stopped and turned, and she appeared in the doorway. “You can’t keep ignoring me.”

  “I don’t know,” Quark said. “I’d say you’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring me.”

  Laren raised her hands and let them drop against her thighs. “That’s not true,” she said. “I’m here now with you. You came to me for help the other day, and even if I was skeptical at first that I could do anything, I did listen to what you had to say, and I checked with the JAG office, and also with my friend at the Geopolis spaceport.”

  Quark said nothing.

  “Let’s not do this, Quark,” Laren went on, her manner earnest. “We’ve known each other for so long, and we’ve had so many enjoyable times together.”

  Quark still didn’t react—at least not visibly. He could not help but recall some of those times. He relished those memories, but it also made him sad that they would not make any more of them together.

  “Do you remember when we went out to the Ovarani Valley to tour the vineyards?” Laren asked. “When I had a little too much wine, but when we went hiking, it was you who fell in the creek.” Laren took a step forward into the passenger cabin, a smile lighting up her face. “I thought you might have ‘slipped’ intentionally, just to have an excuse to take off your clothes.”

  Even though Quark still said nothing, that three-day trip with Laren remained not only fresh in his recollection, but vivid. It had been during their time on Bajor after the loss of the old station, maybe halfway through the construction of the new starbase. Business had been surprisingly good at his bar in Aljuli, Laren’s crew had settled into a routine at Bajoran Space Central, and there had been time for them to get away together.

  “Or how about when I had that mission on Gavaria, and I met you afterward on Ferenginar?�
�� Laren asked. “It rained the entire time we were there—wait. It didn’t rain, it . . . it choritzed and sneedered.” Laren seemed pleased with herself in using two of the one hundred seventy-eight words the Ferengi had for rain. “Why does it suddenly seem that we spent our relationship with one or the other of us getting wet?” She chuckled, clearly trying to draw him out.

  Quark stayed silent, but he pictured that holiday they’d taken on Ferenginar, not long after Iliana Ghemor and the Ascendant fleet had attempted to wipe out Bajor. It had rained—choritzed and sneedered and pradooshed and ­horrocked—for their whole stay, but he had barely noticed. He couldn’t recall ever having a better visit with his ­family—Rom and Leeta and Bena, Moogie and Zek, even his cousin Gaila—but showing Laren around Ferenginar had been the high point of the trip.

  When Quark said nothing, Laren moved across the cabin to face him. “You know a time that I especially remember? It was after . . . after the dedication.” Quark knew that she referred to the ceremony at which the Federation president had been assassinated. He’d staked out Laren’s quarters until she’d arrived late that night. “You paid me a visit. We talked a bit, and then we just sat together on the sofa. You held me, and I fell asleep in your arms for a short while. It was the only peace I had that day, and you provided it.”

  Quark still didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could say. Everything Laren mentioned only underscored how good their time with each other had been, and how deeply she’d hurt him.

  “I know you agree with me,” she said, obviously misreading his silence for accord.

  “Agree with you?” Quark said. “About what? That we had some fine times together? Okay, but when was the last time like that we shared? You mentioned the night after the dedication ceremony—which wasn’t exactly what I’d call a date—but even that was almost half a year ago.”

  “What about last night?” Laren asked. “Before you walked out on me. We were playing fizzbin and having a wonderful time.”

  Quark scoffed. “I don’t think you can peddle that interpretation of this trip even to yourself,” he said. “I’ll admit I was glad that you showed up at the dock to join me, but I know you’re not aboard for me.”

  “I do want to help,” Laren said.

  “Okay,” Quark said. He felt physically cornered, and so he walked past her, toward the front of the passenger cabin. “Okay, I believe you want to help. But you’re not aboard this ship just for me.” Laren started to protest, but Quark held up his hand to stop her. “Don’t,” he said. “You’re mainly here because you’re running from something. I’m not completely sure what, but I can tell.”

  Laren smiled with one side of her mouth and shook her head, as though in disbelief. “It is almost disconcerting how well you know me,” she said. “You’re right: I am running—not far and not for long, but yes, I needed to get away from Deep Space Nine for a little while.” She crossed to the small table where the two of them had just the night before sat together, laughed, and delighted in each other’s company. She sat down and appeared to gather her thoughts. “I know I hurt you last night,” she said quietly, as though proceeding cautiously. “But you and I never talked about a long-term commitment.”

  Quark laughed, without humor. “What do you call a decade together?”

  Laren opened her mouth to respond, but it took a moment before she said anything. “There have been long periods where we’ve gone without seeing each other.” She stopped and inhaled deeply, then breathed out slowly. “You’re right. Ten years is ten years, and even if we never actually discussed commitment—”

  “But we did,” Quark interrupted. He walked over and sat down across from Laren. “We talked about leaving . . . how neither of us belonged on Deep Space Nine, how we both felt like outsiders in the place we lived. We talked about how Bajor joining the Federation would be the right time to move on, and how we would do so together. What is that if not talk of commitment?”

  “We didn’t leave, though.”

  “Not because we didn’t want to be together,” Quark said. “Because my simpleton brother granted me ambassador status and the Enterprise captain championed you in Starfleet. So we stayed on the station . . . together.”

  “Quark, I . . .” Abruptly, Laren stood up. “Why don’t you take the watch?” she said. “I need some time to think.” She didn’t wait for him to respond, but headed into the sleeping compartment.

  Incredibly, Laren had looked flummoxed, as though she credited every point that Quark had made, and that she realized the failure of her own arguments. He didn’t quite know what to think. He wasn’t used to being so completely right—particularly in matters of the heart.

  iv

  * * *

  Ro lay in her bunk, in the dark, listening to the thrum of the ship’s warp engine. She could feel the vibration of the drive translating up through the deck, but more than anything, she felt numb. How could I be so blind?

  Except that she hadn’t been blind. That would have been preferable to the reality: she had been selfish. She had resisted doing the right thing because it had been easier to do nothing than to face Quark and tell him the truth.

  And because of that, I hurt him. Ro would have hurt him anyway, had she revealed her feelings for Dans in a timely fashion, but instead, she’d strung Quark along, prolonging and compounding his emotional pain. She hadn’t been quite so disappointed in herself in a long time.

  On top of that, she realized that she had done to Quark precisely what had just been done to her. Ro and Quark had been in a relationship when she’d developed feelings for Dans, and she and Dans had been in a relationship when he’d developed feelings for Kira. The parallel seemed not just ironic, but karmic.

  Except that’s not really fair to Dans, is it? she asked herself. He’d previously been involved with Kira, and as best Ro could tell, neither Dans nor Kira had ever ended their relationship; it had been ended for them when the Prophets had sent each of them trekking through time. And Dans and I only started seeing each other a month and a half ago, she thought. Quark and I were together for almost ten years.

  Ro felt ashamed of her behavior. She would try to make it up to Quark, though she didn’t know what she could possibly do to mitigate how she had treated him with such disregard. More than that, she would need to engage in serious self-examination. She was no longer a child living beneath the bootheels of the Cardassians, no longer an angry young woman rebelling against everything the universe sent her way, no longer an inexperienced Starfleet officer disobeying the orders of senior officers who actually did know better than she did. Her life had almost reached the half-century mark, and while she took pride in many of her accomplishments, she could not tolerate the way she had treated Quark. She expected more of herself.

  v

  * * *

  Nog finished a third complete circuit of the casino floor and returned to its large main entrance. He looked around for Candlewood but didn’t see him. He hoped that his friend had met with more luck on his reconnaissance than Nog had on his. Part of the problem stemmed from their lack of solid data about Vic’s situation. They needed information, and they needed it quickly. It had already been two days since they had entered Bashir 62 through Felix Knightly’s programmatic back door, leaving them just five days before the code automatically reinitialized itself. Nog imagined he could hear each second tick off the clock.

  The previous night, after leaving Cool Papa Owens, Nog and Candlewood had located the Silver Lode Hotel and Casino on their map of Las Vegas. That morning, they made their way there on foot, where they first explored and then surveilled the exteriors of the buildings. They took note of the arrivals and departures of several Eldorado automobiles, which were driven to and from a fenced-off, guarded section of the parking lot directly behind the hotel tower. None of the vehicles they saw bore the identification number Nog had noted on the Eldorado in which Vic had been spirited away
.

  After studying the outside of the Silver Lode complex, they had explored inside the hotel, from the lobby up to its penultimate floor. Both the elevators and the stairwells required keys to access the top story. Nog could easily have picked the locks, but he worried about breaching a secured location only to be caught, or even to once again take weapons fire.

  Nog waited near the main entrance of the Silver Lode casino, beside a full-size exhibit of Ancient West transportation. A linked pair of open wagons, constructed of thick black metal and mounted on rails, carried mounds of glossy gray ore, presumably galena or acanthite or some other silver-bearing mineral. Nog had seen similar depictions of manual excavating throughout the casino, in large framed photographs on the walls, in smaller pictures and illustrations on slot machines and wheels of fortune, in miniatures hanging from the ceiling. Other displays contained rudimentary mining accoutrements: pickaxes and mattocks, shovels, helmets with headlamps, ventilation fans. In several places, wooden frames, comprising vertical posts and crowning horizontal crossbars, stood over walkways like skeletal tunnels.

  Nog regarded the mine cars, as he had the other relics in the casino, with a sense of frustration. The objects and photographs held historical and perhaps even artistic interest, but they also represented something distinctly antagonistic. In some ways, Nog understood the setting of Earth’s twentieth-century Las Vegas very well; the unrelenting materialism it embodied felt more like home than many modern-day worlds. But Vic’s holoprogram no longer operated like entertainment; it functioned like a challenge, a game for which Nog did not understand the rules. That made it difficult for him to formulate a winning strategy, and yet he had to win; Vic’s existence hung in the balance.

  From around a row of slot machines, Candlewood appeared. Nog could tell from the expression on his face that he had found nothing of value to them in the casino, but the operations chief asked the question anyway. “Did you learn anything?”