Warchild

by Esther Friesner

  Cedra came in and took a perch on a second stool at the lab bench. Drumming his feet against the legs he said, "I wish I was you."

  "Do you." Dr. Bashir's face was too drawn and weary to reflect much amusement, but he tried. "And why is that?"

  "Because when I get in trouble here, everyone yells at me, especially Odo."

  "Odo doesn't yell; he freezes. Very loudly."

  "Whatever." The boy shrugged. "But if I was you, I could get away with all kinds of stuff and no one would say a word."

  "What kind of 'stuff' do you think I've gotten away with?" Now Dr. Bashir was not even trying to smile.

  "Running away."

  "I did not run away. I told you.what I was going to do and why when we were both still back on Bajor. As I recall, you not only approved of my intentions, you helped me." Bashir turned from the boy to his microscanner. "I never thought I'd have to explain myself to a child," he said bitterly, head bent over the viewer.

  The illuminated sample under the scanner suddenly went black. Bashir looked up to see Cedra with a finger cutting off the power source. "Isn't it time you explained yourself to yourself, then?" He folded his hands on the table. "How can you see what's wrong with my sister when all your ghosts get in the way?"

  "What kind of nonsense—?"

  "It's not. Everyone has them—ghosts. Every time we make a change, we make more of them. Don't you feel them holding you back, not letting you think clearly?

  How can you help but feel tired when you're carrying such a weight of them?"

  "All I know is that if you don't stop interfering with my work, your sister will suffer for it. Cedra, we don't have time here. I can't identify her illness; neither could Lieutenant Dax. I never saw anything like this in the camps."

  "Yes you did." Cedra spoke with all the authority of Selok. "But he died."

  Ghosts … Dr. Bashir closed his eyes and Belem's face appeared, smiling and happy, proudly showing off his mended foot to the other children. He heard the boy's voice, brimming with joy, thanking him for the miracle. The words of thanks faded into the rattling sound of Belem's last breath in the cold caverns.

  "Do you remember the caverns, Dr. Bashir?" Cedra asked. "I saw them when the guard carried me through. So many passageways, so many choices. If you turn right, you come to a pit, turn left and there's a wall of solid stone, take the center way and a smooth path lies before you—until the ground shakes and new pits open, new walls rise."

  "I don't underst—" Julian shook his head helplessly.

  "Don't you see?" He lunged forward and grabbed Bashir's face, his fingertips closing tightly on the doctor's ears. "You can't carry Belem's death on your soul—it isn't yours to bear. Share it with the Cardassians who destroyed his home, the Bajorans who insisted that he wasn't whole because he'd lost his family name. Share it with Brother Talissin, who took your gift of healing Belem's twisted foot and turned it into blame when he ran off. Share it with Borilak Selinn and his followers who cling to the darkness because they're too stubborn to see how their visions might change in a new light."

  Julian winced as Cedra's grip pinched his ears painfully, "Don't turn from the light too, healer," Cedra said, quiet strength filling his voice. "We can't afford to lose you."

  As Dr. Bashir gazed into Cedra's eyes, a dizzying sensation overcame him. The walls around him melted like mists at sunrise. He felt as if he were falling through vast realms of space, only to come to a jarring halt when his heels struck rock. Once again he was in Borilak Selinn's domain, perched on the lip of the stone ledge high above the cavern floor. Jalika was in his arms, her warmth shielding him, the perfume of her skin and hair enfolding him like wings.

  Suddenly she gave a little cry and slipped from his arms, her feet scrabbling at the edge of the drop, then skidding off entirely. She plunged from his embrace, her screams echoing from the vaulted roof. He grabbed for her hand, caught it, but felt himself being dragged down with her. He was slammed onto his stomach flat against the rocky shelf, one arm pulled half out of its socket by Jalika's weight, the other groping for any kind of handhold that would let him brace himself enough to haul her back to safety. He found none.

  Then he heard the other cries. He looked to left and right and saw that the ledge had stretched itself into a gallery that encircled the entire perimeter of the great cavern. Hundreds, thousands of Bajoran children clung to the slick rocky lip, sobbing and screaming for help. Acid filled his mouth; there was no way he could save them all. He did not even know if he could save the woman he loved.

  Julian …

  The air in front of him shimmered. Lieutenant Dax was there, floating above the abyss. Commander Sisko stood with her, and Major Kira, and Chief O'Brien, and even dour Odo. Their hands were cupped, a white glow shining through their fingers. Together they opened their hands, releasing the light. Five spheres of brilliance like five stars flew up to join above their heads. The whole cave was illuminated with the dazzle of a hundred bolts of lightning. Then the light dimmed, hardened into a slowly spinning image of Deep Space Nine.

  But the image was incomplete. A massive portion of the station was torn away, leaving a gaping hole that turned it from a graceful child of space into a wounded monstrosity.

  Julian, look.

  Dr. Bashir felt warmth fill his empty hand. A white light danced in his palm. The hand that held Jalika from death was also glowing. Without knowing how he knew, Julian realized that if the lights in his keeping were not brought together, if he did not send them out to complete the crippled image of the station, the children would perish.

  But if he moved to bring his hands together, Jalika would fall.

  Help us, Julian.

  The children's mouths formed the words, but the sound came from Kira, Odo, Sisko, O'Brien, Dax. The voices of the children of Bajor, pleading for rescue, came from the lips of his crewmates aboard DS9.

  Help us …

  He gave Jalika one last look. All his heart went out to her with it. Her smile forgave him. For the children, Julian … He felt her fingers release their hold on his hand even before he let her go. She plummeted into the darkness.

  Through tears, he brought his glowing hands together. A star leaped from the joining of the lights and shot across the void to the station. An explosion of radiance welcomed it home. When it faded, Dax and the others were gone; the station was whole once more.

  And then Dr. Bashir saw countless silver threads spinning out from the body of Deep Space Nine. They whipped through the murk, bridging space, each reaching out to touch a Bajoran child. The threads were thin as gossamer, stronger than twisted ropes of steel. They coiled beneath the children's feet and lifted them up, away from the ledge, safe from the gulf beneath. As the silver threads carried them higher and farther away, Julian recognized faces he had known in the camps, faces that once regarded him with dead eyes, All that had changed: the children no longer wailed with fear, and their faces shone joyfully, the faces of children whose childhood has been reborn. Juian's heart lifted. He stretched out his hands to the children, stepped toward them, onto empty air—

  —and woke with a start as his head knocked against the top of the lab bench. He was alone.

  "I could have sworn—" He shook his head, baffled, and went back to work.

  "Good, you've come! I think I've found it," Dr. Bashir said to Lieutenant Dax as she entered the infirmary.

  "You don't sound so sure of it," she said.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. "I was so tired, I wasn't even sure of my own name anymore. I actually nodded off, slept for hours, had the strangest dream—Never mind that, I'm fine now. Look in here." He moved aside so that she could use the microscanner.

  "Blood from Talis Dejana. What's so special about it?" she asked, studying the sample.

  "Can you tell when this sample was taken?"

  "Of course not. All the samples I took from her looked identical."

  "When you looked at them like this, yes." He touched the microscan
ner controls."Try it now."

  Dax pulled back involuntarily as the sudden rush of supermagnification made one of Dejana's red blood cells appear to race right at her face.

  "What do you see?" Dr. Bashir asked.

  "A red blood cell."

  "No, that's what you expect to see. Look at it more closely; really look. Don't just accept it according to your preconceptions."

  "All right, all right," Dax said with good humor. She adjusted the controls. "Hey!"

  "There." Julian was satisfied.

  "That structure inside the cell looks like—but it can't be—not in a red blood cell."

  "If it is, why can't it be?" He pressed his face close to hers and spoke with the intent delight of a true scientist on the verge of discovery: "What is it, Jadzia? Tell me what it looks like to you."

  She sat up straight and met his eyes. "A mitochondrion."

  "Yes!" he crowed, seizing her hands and pulling her from the stool to join him in an exultant circle dance. "Yes, yes, yes!"

  "But—" she gasped, her breath whirled out of her by Julian's antics. She broke away from him so that she could speak, leaving him still dancing in the middle of the floor. "But red blood cells don't have mitochondria; not human red blood cells, not Bajoran. They don't need them. They're manufactured in the bone marrow. Mitochondria are only found in cells that reproduce themselves."

  He stopped his wild reel cold and seized her shoulders. "Exactly! Therefore, if Bajoran red blood cells do not have mitochrondria but this Bajoran red blood cell appears to have a mitochondrion, what must we conclude, my dear Lieutenant Dax?"

  "That—that—" A smile of astonishment and delight illuminated her face. "That we've got our eye on the most skillful microscopic mimic in the universe."

  "At the least." Julian flung himself back to the microscanner. "I wish I had a sample of Belem's blood to confirm this, but I'm almost positive about what's going on here. Some victims of camp fever seemed to recover from the illness spontaneously. What really happened, though, is that the microorganism found something inhospitable in the host's body and made a strategic retreat. The illness became dormant—I think we'll find that the length of dormancy varies from subject to subject. It used this period of dormancy to mutate and adapt itself into a better, stronger, more effective form. Only then would it reassert its presence in the host." He laughed. "I think I'll get a monograph out of this."

  "So you're planning to stay with us long enough to have your research on the case published?" It was a serious question sheathed in the disguise of a joke.

  "Planning to stay—? Where else would I want to—?" Comprehension struck: "Ohhhhh. No, Jadzia; I don't regret a moment of my time in the camps, but I think that now I can serve the children better where I am. Perhaps Major Kira can arrange for me to have a few words with members of the council. I want to take what I saw, what I learned, and use it to convince the provisional government that disbanding the camps and resettling the children into proper homes must become their top priority." One corner of his mouth twitched in a half-smile. "Of course I'll make it sound as if the entire project will be in their own best interest."

  "You, a politician?" Dax teased.

  "And why not? I was raised in the diplomatic corps. Publishing my findings on this micromimic won't hurt either. A theory like this will be talked about, and so will I. I really would prefer it if the first council member I approach doesn't hear my name, make a face, and say, 'Dr. who?'" He assumed a mock-serious air and added, "You'd be surprised how many people don't know that I got the second highest marks at Starfleet Medical."

  "Noooooo." Dax tsked. "You know, Julian, that's a rather big theory to hang on samples from a single subject. Shouldn't you—?"

  "You're right; of course you're right. Where's Major Kira? Find her. Have her go to Bajor, to the camps. She has to gather samples from other fever victims who recovered without treatment."

  "Julian, have we time for this?"

  "No, we haven't, but it's something we must try to do. If she returns with the samples quickly, all the better, but you and I won't be twiddling our thumbs waiting for her to come back. I'm nearly certain this is our enemy's new mask. We've torn it away; now we can take this fight into the open again. Jadzia, I'm going to recommend an analogous antibody-based treatment for Dejana—"

  "—and you want me to design the antibody this time as well?" she finished for him. "I can do that, only—how do you know that this version of the virus will respond to the same sort of treatment that controlled it in its original form?"

  "I don't know that, Jadzia," Dr. Bashir said. "But it's all we have time to try."

  "Cedra, let me go," Major Kira yelled, disengaging her arm from the Bajoran boy's insistent hold. "I'm on a mission at Dr. Bashir's request. He needs data to help him find a cure for your sister."

  "No one's telling me anything," Cedra wailed. "I'm not even allowed in the infirmary anymore! I thought that once Dr. Bashir felt better, he could cure her right away! I don't know what's going on and nobody cares!"

  Kira was about to yell at Cedra a second time to let her go; then she saw the child's stricken look. The hard words caught in her throat. Instead of pushing him away, she hugged the boy tight and stroked his hair. "Dr. Bashir will find the answer, cheli," she murmured. "Don't be afraid."

  "But when will he find it?" Cedra moaned. "She's so sick!"

  "Soon, cheli, soon," Kira said soothingly. Her thoughts were less tranquil. It had better be soon. The eve of Nis Thamar falls with tomorrow's sunset. The Dessin-ka are hungry for an excuse to leave the provisional government. They're a military sect—many of their leaders feel that if the government falls, they're convinced they could rally enough support to seize power easily. The only thing stopping an outright coup is their blessed sense of honor.

  Aloud she said, "You need time to calm down. Let me take you to the shrine. It's where I always go when things seem to be getting too much for me to handle."

  Cedra did not protest as Major Kira brought him into the scented confines of the Bajoran shrine. She found him a small niche with a pillow on the floor and a curtain of tinkling crystal strands across the archway. A candle flickered before an abstract image of gold-flecked blue stone whose spiral, tapering shape led the eye upward in a dance to silent music. "Everything will be all right, you'll see," she whispered in his ear before she stole away.

  Cedra sat cross-legged on the cushion and tried to focus on the statue. Tranquillity was elusive. Troubling thoughts of Dejana intervened, growing to nightmarish proportions with each passing minute. Cedra's hands clenched and unclenched and the Bajoran child's breath came more and more rapidly.

  "Is it such a hard road you seek to travel, little one?" At the words, Cedra's eyes opened to behold a white-bearded monk standing in front of the statue.

  "How did you—?" Cedra glanced back over one shoulder. The beaded curtain that sounded a melodious alarm at the slightest movement was not even swaying.

  "Am I to tell you that the unseen door opens to greater possibilities than the door one can see?" the monk asked. "Tell me your pain, child. The distress of your soul jangles louder than a thousand crystal curtains."

  "I don't know what I'm doing here," Cedra said. "I want to be in the infirmary with my sister, but they won't let me."

  "Ah." The monk nodded sagely. His eyes were the clear frosty blue of a winter sky.

  "I can leave, if I'm in the way." Cedra started to get up, but the monk's hand gently urged him back down onto the cushion. In a rustle of robes, the monk joined the child on the floor.

  "You must learn two things, little one: First that when we walk our own ordained paths with honesty, we can never be a stumbling block in the paths of others." He fell silent.

  Cedra waited politely for the monk's other revelation. It did not come. He began to fidget until he finally demanded, "What's the second thing I need to learn?"

  The monk smiled. "Patience.".

  Cedra tried to give the monk a loo
k fit to kill, but too many tears were suddenly in his eyes. He sprang to his feet and started for the doorway. In one impossibly quick move, the monk was there before him, blocking the way.

  "I apologize. Jests have always been a weakness of mine. I think that I jested myself all the way out of the Temple to this distant outpost of our faith. So many people refuse to believe that the Prophets may also instruct us through laughter." He sighed. "Now speak with me, child. Your sister in the infirmary—how sick is she?"

  Cedra lowered his eyes. "She could die."

  The monk's hand hovered over Cedra's dark hair. "My brethren in the Temple might tell you now that all of us must die someday. They would counsel tranquillity and setting your spirit in order so that if the worst should come, your pagh would not be overly disrupted." He shook his head. "I do not give such counsel. I see a fighter under my hand. A fighter opens every door and if no way of escape is revealed he takes an ax and chops out his own."

  Cedra looked at the monk directly. "You don't like your brethren very much, do you?"

  "Likes and dislikes … we are supposed to be above them. There's a fresh jest for you! Still, no matter what I think of my brothers in the Temple, I am forced to admit that they possess certain skills I envy. Our way is not merely a way of words, little one—it is also a way of action. I have only the ability to heal spirits, but there are monks in the Temple who have merged the healing of the body with the healing of the pagh. What they can do goes far beyond the results of medical technology, even the technology of the Federation. They work miracles, child, miracles!"

  "My sister needs a miracle," Cedra said. "Can you help me? Tell me the name of the best Temple healer and I'll ask Commander Sisko to send for—"

  The monk shook his head again, emphatically. "He will send for no one, and no one will come. An agreement has been made: None from Bajor with any interest in the child some call Nekor may come here until she has been conducted to the Temple."