“It’s Herek.”
“Your husband.”
Sorati nodded. “Our marriage has been troubled these last few years. In truth, had my appointment to the Federation Council gone through last month, it likely would have ended us, and I was prepared to accept that. We had grown apart, and I knew Herek would not have wanted to leave Bajor. Nor would it have been fair to ask him to accept years of separation. But when the nomination failed…” Sorati seemed to grope for the right words. “…we rediscovered one another. It felt like we were being given another chance. Our love is renewed, and I find I am unwilling to jeopardize it now for my career. I am truly sorry to disappoint you, First Minister, and I remain honored to have been your first choice for such an important post.”
Asarem mustered a smile. “You need never apologize for loving your husband, Teru,” she said finally. “My loss, after all, is Herek’s gain, and I’m content to be the one defeated in such a contest. I rejoice for your happiness, and I wish you both well.”
Tears formed in Sorati’s eyes. “Thank you, First Minister.”
Asarem closed the connection and sat back. Raising her voice, she called out “Theno!” and then looked across the table to see Ledahn frowning at her. “What?” she asked.
“You didn’t try very hard to change her mind,” he noted.
Theno appeared at the door leading into the anteroom. “First Minister, there is a comm system.”
“Just bring me the list of all Bajoran diplomats with at least five years of offworld experience.”
“Yes, First Minister.”
“In fact,” Ledahn went on, “you didn’t try at all.”
“What should I have done?” Asarem said. “Asked her to put her world ahead of her family?”
“Yes,” Ledahn said pragmatically.
Asarem shook her head. “That sounds easy in theory, but I know better. I don’t want to argue about this, Muri. Sorati is out of the picture. Let’s move on.”
“Move on to whom?” Ledahn asked as Theno returned carrying a padd, which he proceeded to hand over to Asarem. “You and I both know all the names on that list. None of them have the qualities Sorati had, the qualities you told me were essential for Bajor’s Federation councillor. Let’s not deceive ourselves.”
Asarem ignored him and began scrolling through the padd.
Into the silence, Theno said, “Second Minister, may I ask you a question?”
Rubbing the ridges of his nose, Ledahn said, “Sure, Theno, what is it?”
“I’ve recently been informed that Cardassian voles have become an asset to the environment. Why are they not a protected species?”
Ledahn blinked, looked at Asarem, who continued to ignore them as she scrutinized the padd, and then turned back to Theno.
“Well, after all, they’re voles.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Theno said.
“Thank you, Theno, that will be all,” Asarem snapped. As her aide inclined his head and withdrew, Asarem tossed the padd aside in disgust. “You’re right,” she told Ledahn. “None of these are satisfactory. Any one of them is qualified for the job, but there isn’t one that makes me confident they’ll be the kind of voice I think Bajor needs to have.”
Ledahn considered the matter. “You found Sorati by deciding to look outside the diplomatic arena,” he reminded her. “Isn’t there anyone else you know in the legislative or judiciary branches, or even outside the government, with the qualities and qualifications you’re looking for?”
“Colonel Enand Adassa,” Asarem said without hesitation. “He’s the commander of Militia forces on Prophet’s Landing. He’s sharp and has a good grasp of politics. He’s even considered running for governor of the colony. Or he did, before he decided to join Starfleet.”
“It isn’t too late to persuade him to change his mind,” Ledahn pointed out.
Asarem shook her head, reconsidering. “No. As much good as I think he would do for us on the Federation Council, it’s just as important that we have some of our best people in Starfleet.”
Ledahn nodded. “All right. Anyone else?”
“Opaka Sulan.”
He frowned. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not? She has the charisma, the intelligence, the integrity, and the strength of character—”
“She’s needed here, First Minister,” Ledahn said. “The Vedek Assembly has lost a lot of trust among the people over the years. Opaka’s return is being seen as a breath of fresh air. I understand there are many who still hope she’ll run for kai again. She can do the most good staying close to Bajor.”
Asarem sighed. “You’re right. Our options are dwindling, though. Prophets, I can’t believe I didn’t try harder to find more candidates like Sorati the first time around.”
“You couldn’t have known,” said Ledahn. “Once it became clear the Chamber of Ministers wasn’t going to see things your way with Sorati, there wasn’t much point in looking for others like her. You did what the situation required: You met them halfway.”
“And because I didn’t anticipate things ever going my way,” Asarem said bitterly, “I’ll have to settle again, won’t I?”
Ledahn didn’t answer. Instead, she heard the sound of a throat clearing. The ministers turned in the direction of the noise.
“If I may be so bold, Ministers,” Theno said from the doorway, “I have a suggestion….”
“Are you still here?” Asarem asked. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Sadly, First Minister, that is precisely the reason I accepted this position.”
Asarem laughed in spite of herself and slapped the conference table with both hands. “Very well. I’ll make a deal with you, Theno: If you have a way to salvage this mess, you can have my job.”
“I could never hope to run our world as you do, First Minister.”
Asarem’s eyes narrowed as she considered all the possible interpretations of Theno’s reply. “Do you have someone to suggest, or don’t you?”
“Your former husband.”
Ledahn’s mouth dropped open.
Asarem stared at her aide. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said quietly.
Ledahn was nearly out his seat. “Uh, you may not have that luxury, First Minister….”
Asarem held up a finger. “Stop right there—”
“I’m just saying—”
“Not another word!”
“If you’ll just calm down and think about it for a moment—”
“The answer is no.” Asarem pointed at her aide. “Get out, Theno. Get out, or by the Prophets, I’m going to kill you.”
Unfazed, her aide walked calmly toward the door leading to the anteroom. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Ministers,” Theno drawled. “I’m quite confident that between the two of you, you’ll find someone passable.” He closed the door behind him without a backward glance.
Fuming, Asarem turned back to Ledahn. “Now, as for you…”
“He has every quality you said you wanted Bajor’s Federation councillor to have,” Ledahn said, speaking rapidly. “And unless something has changed in the last seven years, he’s available. If not him, who?”
Shaking her head, she rose from the conference table and retreated behind the imaginary safety of her desk. “Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m going to—”
“First Minister, it’s either this, or we hand the decision back to the Chamber of Ministers.”
“Then let them have it!” Asarem shouted.
Ledahn stood his ground. “We both know you don’t mean that.”
Asarem sat down heavily and rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I can’t believe you support this idea, you of all people.”
“That should tell you how seriously I take it.”
“He made it very clear when he left public service that he wanted to be left alone.”
“You weren’t first minister then,” Ledahn said. “Now you are, and your job isn’t to give
people what they want. It’s to provide them with what they need, and to let the right people know when they are needed. I understand your reasons for not pushing the matter with Sorati, but Aldos was always willing to put Bajor before his personal feelings.”
“Yes, and all it cost us was our marriage.”
“That’s not for me to say. My job is to advise you on the course of action that serves our people best,” Ledahn said, refusing to let the conversation be derailed. “And you know this would serve Bajor best.”
Asarem said nothing.
“At the very least, you have to ask him, First Minister. I’ll remain with you while you contact him, if that’s what you want.”
Asarem closed her eyes, seeing the springball ricocheting wildly. She tried to anticipate where it would fly next, knowing that she was in real danger of losing control of it, even missing it completely.
“No,” she said, opening her eyes. “Thank you, Muri, but this is one I’ll need to handle alone. And I’ll have to do it in person.”
14
Solis
Mirroring Vedek Solis’s mood, the clouds over Ashalla broke, letting the afternoon sun warm the domes and towers and tiled rooftops of the coastal city, so different from his native Ilvia, a sprawling inland community built along the slope of a great mountain. Although this wasn’t his first visit to Ashalla, he had never before seen it from his current vantage point, the meditation balcony near the top of the Shikina Monastery. Standing with his right hand pressed flat against one of the four-sided columns that encircled the balcony and supported its roof, Solis looked out at Ashalla and beyond it, to all of Bajor, his pagh swelling with hope.
For all the turmoil of the last half-century, Solis Tendren believed that Bajor was once again on the cusp of a great change. As the wars to unite Bajor thirty thousand years ago had changed the course of their civilization. As the discovery of the first Tears had opened up his people’s own self-awareness. As their first tentative steps toward new worlds had altered their perception of the universe. As the Cardassians, and the coming of the Emissary, and the Ohalu prophecies had brought changes…so now was another transformation coming. He needn’t gaze into a Tear to know this. He felt it in his pagh, and in the stone against his hand, and in the breeze that came in from the sea.
Bajor is never still, he thought, enjoying the wind in his thinning hair. Life moves, and Bajor with it.
It was that understanding that had driven him to come to the Shikina Monastery today. He hoped to insure that, whatever came next, Bajor’s path would be lit by the one who had always seemed to see the Prophets most clearly.
Solis heard the shuffle of soft sandals behind him. He turned to welcome she whom he had come to meet with. Opaka Sulan emerged from within the monastery and stepped lightly around the little pool in the center of the balcony. Solis had heard a rumor that the water was merely a hologram disguising a long stair that spiraled deep into the hill on which the monastery was built. Supposedly it had been created secretly during the Occupation to hide the last of the Tears from the Cardassians. If so, visitors to the balcony did well to avoid venturing too close to the pool.
“Vedek Solis, I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” Opaka said at once, taking both his hands in hers. “I was delayed in Janir, where the Oralian temple is being constructed.”
As always, Solis found Opaka’s smile infectious, and he reflected it. “The work goes well, then?” he asked.
Opaka nodded, releasing his hands. “It is far enough along that services may be held within, as of this very day. That’s why I was delayed. The Oralian guide, Cleric Ekosha, invited me to join the first gathering of the Cardassian followers of Oralius on Bajor. I could not resist the opportunity. It was a most moving experience. So like, yet unlike, our own devotion to the Prophets.”
“Which is closer to the truth, I wonder?” Solis asked.
Opaka’s smile widened…and was that a hint of mischief in her eyes? “Why, Tendren, they are of course equally true,” she said, “and equally false.”
“Because if one world’s religion is true, all must be?” Solis challenged good-naturedly.
“No, though I believe there is some merit to that argument,” Opaka said, lowering herself to the stone bench situated opposite the doorway. She gestured for Solis to join her. “It is because any religion is about attempting to comprehend the universe beyond what we, as merely parts it, can perceive. But though the faithful may scratch the surface of Truth, I believe we each see only a fragment of a much larger and more complex totality. Different religions may see different fragments, none of them wrong, but none of them entirely right either.”
“But together…” Solis said.
“Together they may begin to form a mosaic,” Opaka said. “Or a Tapestry. Just as our lives form the tapestry that is Bajor. Just as our experiences form the tapestry that is each of us.”
Solis nodded. Nothing of what she said surprised him, of course. But it was good to listen, to hear her express her thoughts with such enthusiasm, such sincerity and serenity. It made him that much more certain about what he was going to say next. “You know why I asked to see you.”
Opaka sighed. “I suspect I do.”
“I know I am not the first to ask,” Solis went on, “but I feel compelled to add my voice to the others. Will you be kai for us again?”
Her smile grew smaller, but did not quite disappear. “No, Tendren, I will not,” Opaka said.
Solis was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. Still, he was not yet ready to give up, either. “The Vedek Assembly never recovered from your loss, Sulan. It fell into discord, politics, corruption…. Bareil Antos might have kept us from that decay, but once he was gone too, Winn Adami seemed to feed upon it. We lost our way, and we need desperately to find it again, now more than ever, with so much change in the wind. Ohalu, the Avatar, the Eav-oq…” He faltered, overwhelmed. “Can nothing persuade you?” he asked.
“It is not a matter of persuasion,” Opaka said gently. “I know of the damage Winn did. My pagh ached to learn of it. And yes, recent discoveries are hastening the evolution of our understanding of the Prophets, perhaps with alarming speed. My faith, however, is enduring, and I will continue to walk the path on which They have set my feet, as we all do. But I have come to understand that my path does not lead back to the Apex Chair of the Vedek Assembly.”
“Bajor needs you, Sulan,” Solis said softly.
“Bajor has me,” Opaka assured him. “But perhaps merely not in the way that it imagines it should.”
Solis searched for other words that might sway her, but she was no longer looking at him. Her gaze had turned to take in the rest of the balcony, as if noticing it for the first time.
“Did you know,” she said at length, “I first met the Emissary in this very place?”
Solis shook his head, but he was intrigued, “What was it like?”
“Troubling,” Opaka admitted. “He was in so much pain. So much. He was lost, and did not know who he was.”
“And you showed him,” Solis surmised. “You led him to know his purpose.”
Opaka waved his characterization of her aside. “I merely opened a door. He walked through it on his own.” She turned back to Solis, looking at him carefully. “That is what a true kai does, Tendren. He does not lead. He does not wield power. He does not decide for others what the will of the Prophets requires of them. He merely helps them to find their own way, and to not fear the journey.”
“That is why it should be you,” Solis said. When Opaka gave no further reply, he asked, “If you will not become kai again…what, then, should we do?”
“What the Prophets teach us to do, when faced with doubt,” Opaka said, as if the answer were obvious. “Look for solutions from within.”
Solis blinked.
She smiled at him again, and then patted his arm. “Come, join me in my chambers. Let us take tea.” She was on her feet and moving before Solis could reply. He rose from the
bench and had to rush to catch up to her as she went inside, moving swiftly down the winding steps and through the cool yellow stone halls of the monastery.
“You’re saying…you’re saying I should seek the Apex Chair?” Solis asked.
“I don’t believe I said anything of the kind,” Opaka protested. “But if you were to ask me if I know of one to assume the mantle of kai, I would have to answer honestly that I can think of no other besides yourself who would care so deeply for the spiritual life of our people. I have heard you gave the matter thought before.”
Solis spread his hands as they descended another curve of stairs. “Only to challenge Vedek Yevir. But once you returned, even he abandoned any thought of becoming kai.”
“Vedek Yevir turned away from becoming kai because he discovered his true path,” Opaka said. “Not because of me. He has a long road ahead of him, and he has at last taken the first true step on it.”
“Nevertheless,” Solis said as they turned a corner and continued down a another long corridor, “my original motives for seeking the Apex Chair—”
“Are irrelevant,” Opaka said firmly. “There is only one motive to becoming kai that matters: the desire to help our people. As a vedek of Ilvia, you have guided and comforted a great flock for years. As an Ohalavar, you have advocated the exploration of faith and welcomed new ideas. And you fought for Kira Nerys before the Vedek Assembly, to have her Attainder lifted.”
“I failed in that last endeavor,” Solis pointed out. “It was you who helped Yevir to see the injustice he committed in Attainting Kira.”
“But you spoke from your pagh,” Opaka said. “I know, because I read the transcript of your speech. What does your pagh tell you now?”
Solis smiled. “That there is much good I can yet do for our people.”
“Then do not hesitate to follow that path wherever it leads,” Opaka told him, just as they reached the door to her chambers. “Just as I will.”
Opaka opened the door and entered first, took three steps inside, and slowly came to a stop, turning to look all around her in amazement. An instant later, Solis saw why.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Two Page 33