by Неизвестный
O'Brien reviewed the assignment again. "Well, it would help if I knew where Rom and Nog and all the other Ferengi staff from Quark's are, so I can rule them out as the sensors find them."
"Very well. I'll have Odo put someone on it. But I think it's a good bet that if Quark is on the station, he won't be on the Promenade. You'd be safe ruling out any Ferengi contacts you make there. At least, at first."
"Understood, sir."
"Carry on, Chief." Sisko touched his communicator. "Sisko to Worf. One to beam out."
O'Brien watched as his captain dissolved into light, and then the Defiant suddenly felt as if she were twice the size of any other Starship he had ever been aboard.
But at least with no one around to tell him other-wise, O'Brien could finally get out of the chair.
He headed over to his familiar engineering station, settling into his own chair with a relieved sigh. He was home. "Computer," he said, "transfer command func-tions to the engineering station."
"Command functions transferred," the computer promptly acknowledged.
O'Brien took a few minutes to enter the standard biological assay parameters that would have to be implemented to search for Ferengi life-forms, then announced, "Activating sensor sweep," as if somehow the bridge was staffed by a full crew. He touched his finger to the 'initiate programmed sequence' control, and the display screen above his station changed its subspace-frequency-response graph to show that the scanning had begun.
"So that's it." He looked over at Arla.
The young Bajoran officer looked back at him. "Ten hours?"
O'Brien understood what she meant. "I'm afraid so."
"Afraid isn't the word for it. I mean, automatic sta-tion keeping, automatic sensor sweep. What are we doing here, Chief?"
O'Brien got up from his chair to walk over to the empty science station. He preferred to be on his feet anyway, rather than sit around waiting for things to happen. "Well, the one thing you have to expect in space is that nothing will ever go the way you expect it will. So, today we're the Defiant's insurance and her last-ditch backup system."
As if restless also, Arla swung her tall form around in her chair to watch the Chief cross the bridge. "I want to run a Starbase, not pilot a Starship."
As if his hands had minds of their own, O'Brien leaned down to the science workstation and entered the commands that would start a level-four diagnostic running in the science subsystems. Just to be on the safe side. Couldn't hurt. He smiled as the science dis-plays came to life, running through their paces. He glanced sideways at the young Bajoran officer, tried to remember what it was she had just said... Oh, yes. "It's good to know how to do different things, Com-mander. So in an emergency, everyone can trade off Watch each other's back. That sort of thing."
"Would you call this an emergency?"
"I don't know what the captain knows." O'Brien kept his attention on the science displays.
"And that doesn't bother you?"
Arla's voice was serious. O'Brien sighed. "It's not my position to be bothered by it, Commander. But I
can see that you are." He could see where this conver-sation would be going. He straightened up, deciding he might as well head back to his engineering station. If Arla was going to talk his ear off, at least he'd be com-fortable.
Arla, it seemed, had come to a decision of her own. "Can I speak freely, Chief?"
Safe in his chair, O'Brien nodded, giving her a half-smile. "You're the commander, Commander."
"Captain Sisko, he's not the most orthodox com-manding officer, is he?"
"Well, let me say that this isn't the most orthodox command. Y'know, before I came here, I served on the Enterprise-"
"Under Picard?" Arla asked, with true admiration in the way she said that famous name.
O'Brien appreciated that attitude. "The one and only," he said proudly. "And for a Starship captain on the cutting edge of the frontier, out where no one's gone before, you need exceptional flexibility, because the situation's always changing. Picard was brilliant at that kind of give-and-take. Still is, from what I've heard. But, when I took this assignment at DS9, I thought I'd be settling back into a more normal rou-tine, like being at a Starbase."
"From what I've heard, I didn't think anyone ever got tired of serving on the Enterprise."
"Oh, I didn't get tired." O'Brien chuckled. "I got married. Had a little girl. And all of a sudden, as much as I loved the Enterprise...." He thought back to those agonizing days, when he'd debated endlessly with himself about putting in for a transfer. And the terrible nights, when he awoke from stomach-twisting nightmares in which the Enterprise ran afoul of Borg
cubes, black holes, runaway warp cores... a thousand and one disasters that must never touch Keiko and Molly.
And how he'd felt when he read the reports of what happened at Veridian III, the ship blown from space to a terrifying crashlanding, with all its crew and its fami-lies and the children... at the same time that he'd said a prayer for the survivors he'd thanked the stars that he and his wife and their daughter were safe and not with them.
"You were saying, Chief-as much as you loved the Enterprise... ?"
O'Brien, still distracted, made an effort to retrace his thoughts. "What I meant to say was, Commander, as... as complicated as I thought commanding that ship was, I've found DS9 to be even more... chal-lenging. I suppose that's the word. I mean, Captain Picard could take us to a planet in trouble, we'd show the flag, do what we could to resolve things, and then we'd move on, knowing that three other ships and half the Federation's bureaucracy would be in our wake to follow up on what we had done. But here," O'Brien looked at the young Bajoran officer, wonder-ing if she could understand what he was trying to stay, with life experience so different from his own, "staying in one sector, dealing with the same worlds over so many years, there's no chance to move on. Captain Sisko has to live with the consequences of his decisions. It calls for... a very creative approach to command."
"Plus," Arla said carefully, "he's the Emissary."
"Ah, now, I wouldn't know about that." O'Brien knew his limitations, and this kind of discussion was not his strong suit.
"So you don't believe the wormhole aliens are gods?"
O'Brien knew the right way, for him, to answer this one. "When I was at the Academy, one of the best lessons I learned didn't come from a classroom, or an instructor. It came from Boothby."
Arla blinked. "The gardener?"
"Among other things. But he told me-Miles, when you find yourself locked up on a ship hundreds of light-years from nowhere and no chance of escape from your crewmates, there are three things you must never discuss: Politics, religion, and another crew-mate's spouse." O'Brien stretched back in his chair. "So, right about now is when I think it's a good time for me to follow old Boothby's advice."
Arla tapped her fingers on the edge of her flight console. "There are a lot of cautious people on Deep Space 9."
"Goes with the territory."
Arla nodded. "I had a long talk with Dax about Cap-tain Sisko."
That didn't surprise O'Brien. Dax was the most experienced member of the DS9 crew, and she was never reluctant to pass on whatever help or advice she could. All anyone ever had to do was ask. "They've been friends for a long time, those two."
"She wouldn't answer my question, either. About the wormhole aliens being gods."
O'Brien felt he was going to regret being sucked into this debate, but he didn't see as how the young commander was giving him any choice. If Julian were here, O'Brien knew, the doctor would view the situa-tion entirely differently. Julian would relish the argu-ment. O'Brien didn't. But it was either join the
discussion or spend the next ten hours watching level-four diagnostics run. "I take it, then, that you don't believe the entities in the wormhole are gods."
Arla shook her head, and O'Brien thought he could detect a hint of unhappiness. "That's why I'm trying to understand how it is that Captain Sisko, an educated, intelligent man, an ali
en, brought up without any cul-tural influence from Bajor-how could he accept that they're gods? I mean, someone born on Bajor-fine, I can understand that. I don't agree with it, but I under-stand. They don't really have a choice. The whole primitive Prophet belief system permeates every aspect of our culture. There's no escape."
"You escaped."
"I wasn't born on Bajor."
That explains a lot, O'Brien thought.
After a few moments of silence, Arla leaned for-ward. "You're not saying anything."
O'Brien shrugged, looked around the unnaturally empty and quiet bridge. "I don't see that there's a lot I can say. Obviously, the type of environment someone's born into has a lot to do with what they end up believ-ing in life. Vulcans embrace logic. Klingons find honor in battle.
"So what do you believe, Chief? Not about the Prophets. But about... whatever faith you were raised in."
O'Brien relaxed. This was one of the questions he could answer, one that rarely caused offense. "Oh, I'm a great believer in EDIC, Commander. Infinite diversity in infinite combination. The beauty of it is that nobody's wrong. Logic. Battle. They're all facets of the same thing. As if the true reality of the universe, whatever final answers there are to be discovered-if
they can be discovered-is like a hyperdimensional string. Look at it one way it's an electron. Another way and it's a proton. Yet another one, you see a verteron. But it's all the same thing, just different ways of look-ing is all."
As pleased as O'Brien was with his answer, he didn't like the way Arla was staring at him, as if she had heard those exact words too many times before.
"Well, I'm not afraid to say when something's wrong."
Oh, oh, O'Brien thought. This is where it can get ugly.
"I think," Arla proclaimed, "that my people's delu-sional worship of the Prophets turned them into the galaxy's biggest victims."
"Now, that's harsh, don't you think?" O'Brien asked.
"No, I don't. Do you know how old Bajoran cul-ture is?"
O'Brien wasn't sure. He thought back to that lost city the captain had rediscovered. "Twenty thousand years, I believe."
'Try five hundred thousand years," Arla said. "Think of that, Chief. Half a million years of almost unbroken continuity of culture. No notable worldwide disasters. No great empires fell. No dark ages. And no natural ebb and flow to history like on so many other worlds. But one, unbroken strand of culture that has lasted since before your species ever evolved."
"Quite impressive," O'Brien said.
Now Arla's sadness abruptly became disgust. "Quite a waste." She stood up, started to pace. "Half a million years of utter, contemptible passivity! That whole time, we did nothing but pray and wait for the gods to guide us. And ten thousand years ago, when it finally looked as if some forward-thinking communities were at last going to throw off the yoke of stagnant religious belief, what happens?"
"I wouldn't know," O'Brien said nervously, though he could guess. He had heard the number ten thousand before. But somehow, he didn't think Arla was really interested in what he knew. She was working her way through some argument that had nothing to do with him. And one he wished that he knew how to deflect.
"The first Orb lands on Bajor." Arla's face twisted with loathing. "It was the worst thing that could have happened to my people."
O'Brien didn't like the hostility Arla was express-ing. He wondered how anyone could get through the Academy with such negative views of an alien culture. Since Arla wasn't born on Bajor, he felt justified in thinking of the Bajoran culture as an alien one from Arla's perspective. "To be fair, Commander, I don't think you'll find a lot of Bajorans agreeing with you on that."
"Of course not," Arla said. "Because for the past ten thousand years, the wormhole aliens have been manip-ulating our culture, breeding us, in fact, to develop even greater passivity."
O'Brien couldn't believe what she had said. Even at the risk of provoking her further, he felt he had to object. "You're going to have to explain that, Com-mander. I've known too many Bajorans from the Resistance to think of you as a passive bunch."
"The facts are simple, Chief. Ten thousand years ago, humans were just getting ready to invent the wheel and the roads that go with it. Vulcans were bloodthirsty savages. Klingons were less than Vulcans.
And Cardassians? Ha! They were still swimming in swamps catching fish in their mouths. But we Ba-jorans were peaceful, advanced, and shared a world government."
"What's your point, Commander?" O'Brien won-dered if it were too late to make a call to Worf. Just to check in. That sort of thing.
"My point is, ten thousand years later, every other race in the quadrant is busy carving up the galaxy- except Bajor. Instead, we've been brutalized, terror-ized, occupied, and looted. And do you know why?"
"No," O'Brien said, his hand on his communicator, "but somehow I know you're going to tell me."
"Because for the past ten thousand years, the worm-hole aliens have dropped their Orbs on us, deluding us into thinking that there are gods above managing our fates. And since the gods are taking care of us, why should we bother taking care of ourselves?" Arla now stood in the center of the bridge, arms spread wide in frustrated anger. "Honestly, can you think of a better way to cripple a species than by telling them that if they just wait peacefully, everything will be given to them? There's no need to study, to learn, to explore. Or even to dream. Just sit down, make yourself comfort-able, and wait for the next dispatch from heaven." She shook her head, oblivious to O'Brien now, caught up in her own speechmaking. "You humans, and the Vul-cans, and Klingons, and Cardassians... you reached out to the universe. You built Starships and went look-ing for your gods. But on Bajor, with those hideous Orbs, the gods kept coming down to us, telling us not to worry, and not to try to better ourselves."
Arla flung herself down in her chair as if exhausted. O'Brien regarded her warily, wondering if she would
settle down soon. "The Prophets occupied our world long before the Cardassians ever did," she concluded bitterly. "And that makes them the biggest enemy of the Bajoran people."
"Commander Arla, I don't mean any disrespect. But I certainly hope you know better than to go spouting off like that in public."
Her frown wrinkled her epinasal ridges. "I do know. But I asked if I could speak freely...."
"You did that all right."
"Sorry, Chief," Arla said. "It's just that, coming to Bajor, seeing the shape my people are in, when I know how much more we could be capable of...."
O'Brien nodded, relieved that her outburst was over, and that he hadn't had to alert anyone else. That he'd been able to handle the situation himself. Even Julian could not have done better. "That's all right. It's all off the record."
Arla nodded and turned her chair back to the board and the distant view of Deep Space 9.
"Someday, the Prophets are going to destroy us," she said quietly. "And the horrible thing is, sometimes I think I'm the only Bajoran who realizes it."
O'Brien didn't begrudge her having the last word, though he suspected there was something else the young commander wasn't telling him-whether about the Prophets, about her past, he couldn't be sure. But now was perhaps not the time to probe for it, not when the topic was so disturbing to her. There'd been enough emotional venting for now.
The Chief contemplated the next ten hours of silence with more equanimity than he had before.
It wasn't as if they had to be unproductive hours.
With his spirits already rising in pleasant anticipa-
tion, he asked the computer to run a level-five diagnos-tic on the engineering subsystems.
In all the confusing diversity of the universe, O'Brien knew he could always find his peace in the beauty of a well-constructed machine, operating according to the inalterable laws of physics.
He wondered where Arla and others who felt as she did would find their answers-their peace. And what might happen if they didn't find it soon.
CHAPTER 14
in the surgery, Vash was sitting up in the angled examination bed. She had shadowed circles under her large, expressive eyes and her lustrous skin was pale, but Jadzia could see no signs of trembling or weak-ness.
Vash's query was unspoken but obvious to all who observed her.
Kira started to speak but Odo coughed and she reluctantly turned to Jadzia.
"You're safe for now, Vash. Odo's using suppression screens to protect against unauthorized transportation." Jadzia moved to block Kira and Odo from Vash's line of sight. Julian was standing on the other side of the examination table with his hands behind his back, keeping watch on the Cardassian diagnostic displays above his patient. "And there are security officers standing guard outside the Infirmary."