Original Sin

by David R. George III

  “No, there’s no reason that you should,” Asarem said. “I just thought that you might have met her at some point. Until recently, she was a member of my security detail.”

  “I suppose I might have seen her,” Sisko said with a shrug.

  “It doesn’t really matter whether you have or not,” Asarem said. “I’m bringing her up because I think she could be of use to you.”

  “Of use?” Sisko asked. “Do you think that Kasidy and I need personal security protection?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m suggesting,” Asarem said. “Agent Tey is relatively young, particularly for the positions she’s held, but she has been highly trained and has a distinguished record. Her skills and experience include criminal profiling.”

  Yates seemed to take particular note of the last detail. “Do you think she can figure out who did this?”

  The first minister knew that she needed to step lightly. She did not want the Emissary and his wife to doubt the efforts already being made to find their daughter. “I’ve been told that Major Orisin is excellent at his job, so I have no reason to doubt his capabilities,” Asarem said, choosing her words judiciously. She did not wish to say anything untrue, but at the same time, she genuinely believed that Jasmine Tey could prove a vital asset in locating Rebecca Sisko. But the first minister had built a solid relationship with Overgeneral Manos and the Bajoran Militia, and she had no interest in jeopardizing that by forcing them to add a civilian to their investigation. If Sisko and Yates requested Tey’s assistance, though, Manos would likely allow it; such an appeal would also likely insulate Asarem from any political consequences.

  “If you don’t doubt Major Orisin’s abilities,” Yates asked, “then why are you recommending someone else?”

  “I don’t think that’s what the first minister is saying,” Sisko told his wife.

  “No, it’s not,” Asarem agreed. “I’m not advocating replacing Major Orisin, or anybody else, for that matter.” The first minister leaned forward, wanting to emphasize what she would say next. “But I’ve known Agent Tey for five years. She has an exceptional record: degrees in criminal justice and forensic psychology, training in law enforcement, not to mention a skill set that includes hand-to-hand combat and the use of numerous small arms.”

  “You make her sound like a one-woman security force,” Sisko noted. Asarem appreciated the observation since, if they could rescue Rebecca, the Emissary and his wife would probably seek some form of everyday protection for their family. The first minister believed that, if offered the opportunity and if she accepted it, Tey could provide that and more for Sisko, Yates, and their daughter.

  “I have tremendous regard for Jasmine Tey, both as a security officer and as a person,” Asarem said. “She has training and experience, but perhaps just as important, she possesses a dogged determination and an acute insight into criminal behavior.” She paused, again wanting to underscore the words that would follow. “She would be a tremendous resource in the efforts to find your daughter.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yates said. “If this Agent Tey would be so helpful, why don’t you just assign her to the search?”

  “When Agent Tey resigned from my security detail, she also stepped away from her professional life,” Asarem explained. “She’s now a civilian. I have no authority over her. But she hasn’t yet taken another position, though I believe that she is looking for an opportunity offworld. For the moment, she’s still on Bajor.”

  Sisko looked at his wife. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I . . . I’m not sure.” Yates gazed over at Asarem and then back to her husband. The first minister understood the body language.

  “Why don’t I give the two of you privacy so you can discuss it?” Asarem said, standing up. “Take your time. I need to check on another issue with my assistant.” Without waiting for either Sisko or Yates to reply, she strode across the room and through the door, into the outer office. Enkar looked up from her own desk.

  “Is there something you need, Minister?”

  “No, thank you, Sirsy,” Asarem said, then thought better of it. “Actually, have we received the Agriculture Ministry’s report on the soil reclamation project in Zhentu Province?”

  “It came in late last night, ma’am,” Enkar said. She leaned to her right and nimbly tapped in an access code on one of the drawers in her desk. It responded by popping open, and Enkar pulled out a padd, which she held out to the first minister. “I’ve already uploaded and indexed it for you.”

  “Thank you, Sirsy.” Asarem took the proffered padd and spent a few moments reviewing its contents. She saw that the soil reclamators recently sent to the northernmost climes of Zhentu had so far had little success in decontaminating the lands there. It discouraged Asarem that, more than a decade past the end of the Occupation, some of the physical damage the Cardassians had done to Bajor remained. Of course, the scars covering the deepest wounds from those times would endure for generations.

  When Asarem looked up from the padd, Enkar said, “I should also tell you that Minister Belwan has already arrived for your meeting.”

  Asarem checked the clock on the wall across from Enkar’s desk. “He’s early,” she said. “Again.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and this time, he brought Prylar Novor with him,” Enkar said. “Theno has shown them to your conference room, and he’s . . . keeping them entertained.”

  Asarem smiled. Another of her aides, Altrine Theno relished such assignments. With an arch sense of humor, he delighted in laying bare the foibles of those in high places. It amazed the first minister that one official or another hadn’t demanded that she dismiss him; frankly, for as long as he’d been a member of her staff, it surprised her that she hadn’t chosen to fire him. “If time in a conference room with Theno, and an audience in Prylar Novor, doesn’t teach Minister Belwan not to show up early for our meetings, nothing will.”

  “I believe you’re right, ma’am,” Enkar said, matching the first minister’s smile with her own.

  Just then, the door to Asarem’s office skimmed open. The Emissary and his wife stood there. Yates appeared sharper than she had earlier, more present. “First Minister,” she said, “based on your recommendation, we’d like to enlist the aid of Agent Tey.”

  “Excellent,” Asarem said. “I’ll set up a meeting at once.” The first minister truly believed that Jasmine Tey would help find Rebecca Sisko. Asarem could only hope that her former protector would agree to join the investigation—and that it wasn’t already too late to save the life of the young girl.

  And to prevent lasting psychological and emotional damage.

  • • •

  Hyperspanner in hand, Radovan stepped back from the wall and examined his handiwork. It looked like a disaster. The back panel of the replicator and two of the access plates above the materialization shelf had all been removed and set aside, revealing a bewildering welter of technological elements. The control panel for the device had been loosened from its mounts and hung aslant, providing access to an array of isolinear chips and pressure-sensitive pads. Twists of fiber-optic cables spilled down like convoluted waterfalls, descending from the replicator and then climbing back up to connect, reroute, and bypass various components.

  Radovan had begun the work the previous evening, after he’d sent Winser away and served the girl dinner. When he initially brought her the meal, she refused to eat, but he professed not to care. He left the tray on his night table, locked the bedroom door again, and went back out into the living area, where he started modifying the replicator.

  Later that night, when he checked on the girl, he saw that she’d eaten most of the dinner he’d prepared for her. She’d also fallen asleep on the floor. Beside her lay the child’s padd he’d given her, and when he activated it, he saw that she’d drawn several pictures. One clearly depicted the girl with her parents in front of their house, while another showed the three of them with a second man and woman—probably her half brother and his
wife.

  The third picture drew Radovan’s particular interest. It featured a background of trees, with the girl on one side and a much larger figure on the other. Radovan recognized himself. All of the other people in the drawings had brown skin and all but the brother’s wife had flat-bridged noses, while his image had been colored with pink flesh and rhinal ridges. In the picture, the girl and Radovan faced each other, but she had sketched a pale yellow circle around herself.

  What was she trying to depict? he asked himself. A force field? That didn’t seem quite right. Did she intend to set herself apart, to assume a special status because of her identity as the Avatar? Even with the girl’s place in the beliefs of the Ohalavaru, he didn’t think such ideas occupied the mind of a three-and-a-half-year-old.

  Radovan set the padd aside and picked the girl up from the floor. She stirred but did not waken. He tucked her into bed without bothering to change her out of her clothes. Then he locked her in and returned to the living area, where he resumed his modifications to the replicator. She called out once, around midnight, and he carried her to the ’fresher. He helped her there, then changed her into her pajamas and put her back to bed. Afterward, Radovan worked on the replicator late into the night, and then continued early that morning. His determination that he needed to take the Avatar out of the city sooner rather than later pushed him to complete the alterations as quickly as possible.

  As he stood examining the results of his efforts, Radovan realized that he couldn’t be sure of the reliability of illicit blueprints. He’d acquired the plans on the black market, from an Yridian information merchant. They’d looked reasonable to him when he’d first inspected them, but his technological education had come in a related but different area. If he’d been deceived about the modifications, he would be hard-pressed to make his way safely out of the city anytime soon—at least in the way he’d envisioned.

  There’s no way to find out but to try, Radovan told himself. Hearing his mother’s oft-used saying ramble through his mind surprised him. She had reiterated those words again and again throughout his life, haranguing him into doing what she thought best. She’d been wrong so many times, but he had to admit that she’d also often enough been right.

  Radovan went to the closet in the short hall just outside his bedroom. He got down on his knees, grabbed up the several pair of shoes he owned, and tossed them into the hall. He then reached into the far corner, to where he kept a heavy, fireproof safe. He kept important documents there: the registration of his birth, his school transcripts, his training documents. The official report on the accident that killed Jendo, he thought, recalling how traumatizing it had been to learn of his older brother’s death at an ore-processing plant on Dytallix B. He kept his mother’s will in there as well—not that she had left him much of anything, and not that he had any reason to hold on to it any longer.

  Radovan wrapped his arms around the safe and tried to haul it out of the corner. Already heavy and unwieldy, it did not slide easily across the carpeting on the floor of the closet. Radovan opened the hinged top of the safe, propped it in place, then gripped the top of the near side and jerked the safe toward him. By degrees, he moved it out of his way.

  Beneath where the safe had been, Radovan pinched the corner of the carpeting between his thumb and forefinger. He peeled it back to reveal a wood floor below. He pulled a gravity knife from his back pocket, flipped it to its open position, and slid the blade between the floorboards, which he levered upward. After setting the short lengths of wood aside, he closed his knife and slipped it back into his pocket, then reached in and rummaged around the concealed compartment. His hand came back carrying a transparent bag filled with a scanner and a slew of isolinear chips.

  Back in the living area of his flat, Radovan spilled the contents of the bag out onto the dining table. He read the coded tags he’d attached to the isolinear chips and selected the one he wanted. Peeking past the control panel, he singled out the slot he had earlier emptied. He pressed the isolinear chip into the opening until it locked in place. Then he studied the control panel, tapped in the appropriate command sequence, and took a step backward to watch the replicator.

  Radovan held his breath, concerned that nothing would happen, but almost immediately, he heard a familiar hum. On the replicator shelf, a haze of glittering white light appeared in a long, narrow shape. When the glow faded, Radovan reached for the object left behind.

  A roll of thick gray material about half a meter wide, it looked right. Radovan unfurled it on the table, then activated the scanner and analyzed what he had just replicated. Still half expecting to be disappointed, he satisfied himself that the readings actually confirmed the nature of the material—a commodity not typically reproducible by a home replicator.

  Radovan fabricated several more rolls of the gray material, then switched out that isolinear chip for another, and then another, and then still more. He replicated various pieces of equipment—technological and otherwise—a collection of chemicals, a small, basic medkit, and multiple sets of ampoules. As each object materialized, he scanned it to ensure its authenticity.

  Once he finished replicating what he needed, Radovan moved the equipment and chemicals into the recess beneath the floor, along with the scanner and the proscribed isolinear chips. He then replaced the floorboards, put the carpeting back down, and shoved the safe back into the corner. He felt energized by his efforts, eager to carry on with his plan. He still hadn’t deciphered the relevant prophecies in The Book of Ohalu—he hadn’t even determined which passages referred to him—but he had confidence that he would know what to do when the time came. Based on what had happened with the Ohalavaru and the Emissary on Endalla, and on Radovan’s dreams based on those events, he had some vague notion of the shape his deeds would take. Despite lacking certainty, he felt good about his decision to take further action. He had initially planned to keep the girl in his flat until he figured out the next step in his path, but because of Winser’s attention, he didn’t dare wait.

  To continue with his preparations, Radovan would need to retrieve his large antigrav trunk—one of the few items he’d inherited from his mother. He kept it in his storage locker in the basement of his building. He didn’t really want to leave the girl alone in his flat, but he would keep the bedroom door locked and he wouldn’t be long.

  Before leaving his flat and heading downstairs, Radovan pulled out his dual-shafted key. He quietly unlocked the bedroom door and pushed it open so that he could check on the girl. He saw that she remained asleep in a jumble of sheets and blankets.

  As Radovan closed the door and relocked it, his mind wandered again to his mother’s antigrav trunk. He wondered what she would have thought about one of her own possessions being so intimately involved with the fate of the Avatar. And what would she have made of his participation? Would she have been proud of his contribution to Bajor?

  Radovan didn’t know, and he told himself that he didn’t care. It only mattered that he traverse his path and do what he was meant to do. He turned from the bedroom door and walked back into the living area. He would go downstairs, bring up his antigrav trunk, and prepare it for the journey ahead. He paced to the front door and opened it—

  Winser Ellevet stood just outside, one hand raised, about to knock. When she saw him, her face brightened. “You’re better,” she said. She stood half a dozen or more centimeters shorter than he, though she probably weighed almost as much. Though she had short hair, two clumps of her drab, brown locks tumbled across her forehead and over her eyes.

  As Radovan stammered that he still hadn’t fully recovered from his illness, Winser bustled inside and past him. He visualized physically stopping her: grabbing her by her upper arms and casting her out of his flat, but he understood that he could not do that. Committing a violent act against Winser risked raising her suspicions, and worse, having her contact law enforcement.

  Radovan closed the front door and turned to see Winser standing by his dining table,
staring at the modified replicator. “What is this?” she said. He looked at the kludge of mismatched circuitry and components, but then his gaze fell to the surface of the table. There, the medkit he’d replicated lay open, its contents—a hypospray and a medical scanner—sitting beside it. The ampoules, which he intended to load into the kit’s empty storage compartment, also sat scattered about the table. He’d left all of it out in case he needed to use the drugs on the girl.

  Winser followed the direction of his eyes. She took one of the ampoules and held it up, though she did not look at it closely. “Are you making your own medicine?” she asked. She glanced back at the modified replicator. “Is that what all this is? Bypassing the safeties so you can render your own medication?”

  Radovan suddenly imagined throwing Winser not out the front door, but into a wall. He quickly beat that thought back and forced a sheepish smile onto his face. He looked down, as though abashed. “You . . . you won’t tell anybody, will you?” He crossed to the table, took the ampoule from her fingers, and placed it in the medkit. “It’s just that I was very sick, and I hate doctors.” As he spoke, he gathered up the other ampoules and packed them into the kit, along with the hypo and scanner.

  “Of course you hate doctors, Tavus,” Winser said. She reached out and put her hand on his arm. Radovan forced himself not to flinch away from the intimate gesture. “After everything you went through with your mother, I can understand wanting to keep your distance from the medical profession, just to avoid the emotional associations.”

  My mother? Radovan thought, startled. Emotional associations? He’d never told her anything about his mother’s illness . . . unless— The night she came here. He’d drunk with her. He knew that the alcohol had taken its toll on him, but he hadn’t realized how much. He barely remembered anything from that encounter, other than his massive headache and deep embarrassment.

  “You know I won’t tell anybody, Tavus,” Winser said. She squeezed his arm. “But you have to be careful with something like this.” She pointed to the medkit, which he held in one hand. “The laws prohibiting anyone other than medical professionals from replicating drugs exist for good reason. Self-medicating can be dangerous.”