Bashir startled everyone by choosing that moment to speak. His earnest brown eyes were trained on Sacagawea as he said, “Why would anyone worship a thing that can destroy entire worlds?”
That struck Nog as an excellent question, though he hadn’t given the matter much thought before now. Sacagawea merely sat impassively, showing no overt evidence of having even understood the question.
“Many ancient Earth religions were built around some rather fearsome, angry gods,” Vaughn said. He sat once again, keeping a weather eye on the doctor as he continued. “Maybe the D’Naali and the Nyazen have developed similar belief systems.”
Ezri nodded in agreement. “That fits with everything we’ve seen so far. And it might explain their confusion about whether that artifact out there is a ‘cathedral’ or an ‘anathema.’ My guess is that they have a sort of love-hate relationship with whatever gods they worship.”
Again, Sacagawea said nothing, though the creature was looking in Ezri’s direction. The D’Naali either did not understand the drift of the discussion, or it was keeping its thoughts to itself.
Shar was scowling. “How much faith are weprepared to place in this alien religion?”
“Do we really have any other choice?” Vaughn said. Everyone rose, most of them clearly anxious to see Nog’s calculations finally put to some practical use.
“So the Kukalakans worship monsters,” Bashir said to Ezri in a plaintive, almost singsong voice. She took his hand again. “I wonder if any of them will be waiting for us inside the cathedral.”
Ezri’s reply was quiet, but not quiet enough to elude Nog’s sensitive Ferengi hearing. “I’ll be right beside you, Julian. And there aren’t reallyany monsters.”
Images of Taran’atar, Kitana’klan, and the Jem’Hadar hordes who took his leg at AR-558 sprang without warning to Nog’s mind. He wasn’t at all certain he agreed with Ezri’s reassurances.
Bashir didn’t look completely convinced either. But Nog saw no sign of panic on the doctor’s face. Despite his obviously stressed, diminished state, Bashir still seemed prepared to face whatever terrors awaited them all within the alien structure.
As Vaughn adjourned the meeting and dispatched everyone to their various tasks, Nog resolved that he could do no less. With Shar at his side, he walked briskly toward transporter bay one.
And tried very hard with every step not to think about his left leg.
Chief medical officer’s personal log, stardate 53580.3
While we were sitting in the place where Ezri and I eat, and where the captain sometimes calls meetings, I went away. There was a flash of light, and I was…gone. Sam Bowers says it wasn’t just a dream this time. He says we were actually off the ship, someplace else, for a second or two.
Sam says that Ezri and Nog went away, too. But they didn’t seem very happy about wherever it was they went. Nobody seems to want to talk about it much, so I’m telling the computer about it instead of worrying my friends with this. They already seem to have plenty to worry about.
It seems like I spent years in the place I vanished into during those few moments Sam said I was gone. It was as though I’d stepped into a whole different life for myself. I was still Julian Bashir—maybe nothing that doesn’t outright kill me can take that away—but I wasn’t thesame Julian Bashir everybody here knows. I wasn’t a doctor, but I didn’t seem to mind that. My days were filled with plenty of interesting things to do and a great many wonderful people to speak with. I was living on Earth, where everything anyone needs pops out of replicators. Lack of professional credentials isn’t really a big issue in the heartland of the Federation the way it is in other places, after all. It was an alternate world, and I lived in it as an alternate Julian Bashir, although everybody there called me Jules, including my wife—who was also the mother of our two very happy, very healthy children, a boy of six and a girl of three.
It’s funny. I haven’t let anybody call me Jules since I first found out about my genetic enhancements as a teenager. That was when I started insisting that everyone call me Julian. From that time forward, I’d thought of Jules as dead, and never expected to hear from him again. But running into Jules again wasn’t the most unexpected thing about my little trip. The biggest surprise was discovering that Jules seemed to be a fairly happy man with a lot of friends and family who cared about him.
I can’t help but wonder which of us is better off, Jules or Julian. If I really am reverting into Jules, maybe I ought to stay this way.
18
Vedek Yevir had never paid much attention to his distaste for confinement, but he noticed that it had become unnaturally heightened ever since his visit to the crypts at the ancient city of B’hala months ago. Now, sealed into a bulky radiation suit and skulking about in the dust-choked streets and dim corridors of ruined Cardassia City’s Munda’ar Sector, he was becoming keenly aware of his burgeoning feelings of claustrophobia.
The entire group had come to the shattered core of this vast, secret storage facility. Garak explained to them that the building had formerly been maintained by the Obsidian Order, Cardassia’s powerful and deadly secret police. Nondescript from the outside, the squat gray building had apparently escaped obliteration during the Jem’Hadar bombing spree of the Dominion War’s final blood-soaked hours—but not by much. Still, Yevir was surprised at the extent to which the building, holed and broken though it was, remained intact and standing, given the utterly pulverized condition of the surrounding structures.
Most of the members of the Oralian Way who had come along had remained above, standing guard throughout the facility, alert for the inopportune appearance of any of the Way’s domestic political enemies. Only four of the combined group—Yevir, Macet, Garak, and Cleric Ekosha—had ventured into the subbasements. Yevir was quite surprised that the stout older woman was able to keep pace with the men, then reminded himself that neither he nor the two Cardassians were likely to be more than a decade and a half younger than she was.
Now the foursome was rappelling into the very bowels of the cracked and blasted structure—cautiously. Transporters were useless in this area, owing to the residual hard radiation levels, and not even Garak claimed to know for certain precisely what lay below them. The wrist-and belt-lights they all wore provided some illumination, but a dust-caked darkness seemed to close around them as they descended deeper. Every now and then, a fist-sized creature would come flying at them, apparently drawn by their lights—and obviously well adapted to radiation. Yevir hoped that the animals’ predatory-looking teeth couldn’t pierce their radiation suits, and that nothing larger awaited them further below. “They can’t smell us through these suits, can they?” he finally asked, after the sixth flapping creature dove past them.
“The utoxa?No, they can’t smell you,” Garak said, from the other side of Macet. “There could be some scottrildown there, though, and they’ll be able to smell us easily, radiation suits notwithstanding. But phasers can stop them. Usually.If we see thembefore they see us.”
Yevir hoped that the Cardassian was smiling behind his face shield, but he couldn’t tell for certain. Prophets, protect me. You have not led me this far to allow me to fall to my death, or be eaten by ascottril. Whatever that might be.His prayer comforted him slightly. Enough to get his feet and hands moving again.