A worker sat down, a female with dead eyes. Hypo, stand, next. A man with a scar. Hypo, stand, next. A young woman with a babe at one pallid breast; neither looked well. Kalisi looked away, unhappy with the pity that welled up in her. At least at the institute, the only Bajoran she’d had to see was Mora Pol. Fumbling, frightened Doctor Mora, with his pet plastic man and his pedestrian mind. For him, she’d felt contempt. For these dirty, sorrowful people she couldn’t help but feel pity, in spite of what they’d done to the Union, what they’d done to her life…
“How many more are there?” Kalisi asked.
Trant shot her a glance. “Eager to get back to the facility, Doctor Reyar?”
The looks, the smiles, that was one thing; with that insinuating tone, Seia Trant had overstepped her bounds, and Kalisi was no novice to professional malice.
“Are you implying something about my relationship with Doctor Moset?” Kalisi asked, loudly, brightly, and was rewarded for her candor. Trant looked away, her face darkening.
“If I’ve offended you—” Trant started, but was interrupted by a wild-faced man a few people back in the line, dirty and greasy-haired, his teeth bad. He had stepped out of line, was staring at the two doctors with an expression of disbelief.
“Crell Moset? You work for Crell Moset?”
One of the soldiers stepped forward, a hard-faced glinn with a scarred temple ridge. “Back in line.”
“Moset the butcher? Is that who sent you here?”
The glinn raised his rifle. “Back in line, now.”
The Bajoran lunged past him, grabbed at one of the hyposprays on the table, his expression crazed. Kalisi and Trant both stood and backed away as the other soldiers came running. The Bajorans scattered.
“What’s in these?” the man shouted. “Another infection? Poison?”
He shook the hypospray in Kalisi’s face, and then the soldiers were on him, knocking him down with their rifles, holding him down while Trant stepped forward and injected him with a hypo she’d pulled from somewhere, something that instantly halted his struggle, calming him into a glassy-eyed stupor.
Two of the soldiers carried the mumbling madman out while the glinn barked instructions to the workers, shuffling them back into line, calling off work code numbers.
Kalisi looked to Trant, who was calmly stepping back to her place, checking the tray of vaccinations.
“Seems like there’s one at every camp,” Trant said, sighing. “Doctor Crell Moset, evil scientist.”
“What? Why?”
Trant shook her head. “They’re superstitious and ignorant, these people. They don’t understand how advances in medicine are made. How advances in anythingare made.”
Kalisi nodded, remembering Mora’s puffy, stupid face. “I’ve noticed that,” she said. As they went back to their work, she tried to picture it—Crell Moset, the work-obsessed, silently passionate man who fancied that he had a good sense of humor, as some kind of mad genius…
Bajorans, she thought, and refilled a new hypospray.
When she’d left home that morning, it had seemed like a grand adventure, a daring, heroic journey that would end with hugs and jumjacake, rewards for bravery…And Sito Jaxa had managed to hold on to that fantasy while the sun was still in the sky, imagining the surprised faces of the dashing resistance fighters when they realized a little girl had saved them, imagining the ride home in one of their flyers, the stories she’d be able to tell her friends at school…She’d darted and hidden, pretending that there were enemy soldiers after her, and for a while she’d walked by a stream that had small fish in it, and she’d stopped twice to eat the snacks that she’d packed for herself—all the while dreaming and pretending, acting like a little girl, doing all the things she had imagined she would do if she ever got to explore the forest on her own.
Jaxa had longed to go back into the forest for what seemed like an eternity. When she had been very small, children of the village could run into the forest and play together whenever they liked, and Jaxa thought she remembered going into the forest all the time, though it was a very long time ago in her short memory. Jaxa wasn’t sure exactly how old she had been when the rules had abruptly changed, when children were suddenly kept close to their parents at all times, when punishment for wandering off suddenly became severe and frightening—frightening because the children understood immediately that there was serious danger waiting for the entire village if they ever disobeyed. Fences had been built, warning signs erected. None dared challenge them—until today, when Jaxa had been so sure she was setting off on an auspicious adventure, one with the happiest of endings.
Now the sun was setting, and it was much colder than Jaxa had thought it was going to be. Even though the early fall days had been hot lately, the forest night was chilly, and too cold for sleep—as if Jaxa could have slept anyway, with the fears and regrets that were reeling in her head. What had she been thinking, sneaking away like this? Well, her pa always said she was rash. She’d made a foolish decision, a childish decision, and now she was likely going to freeze to death for it.
She huddled miserably in the dark, hiding beneath the exposed roots of a rubberwood pine, thinking to herself that she should have reached the mountains by now, anyway. She thought it would be so easy to find them—the tips of the tallest peaks were clearly visible from Ikreimi village, but here, with the trees so close overhead, she could only catch glimpses of them, and even then it appeared that they were moving farther away, not closer. She had most likely been walking in circles. Now she only wanted to go back home, but she didn’t know which direction that was, either. She had badly misjudged her own abilities, her own sense of direction. Well, how could she have known? She had scarcely ever been out of the village, not since she was a little girl, going to the city with her mother and father before the grid went up. It had seemed so easy, then, but what had she known at that age?
Jaxa was alone, frightfully alone. The old road she’d roughly paralleled all day had badly deteriorated until it finally gave way to tangled forest. Jaxa had seen no footprints; the branches and weeds grown across the path were undisturbed. It especially surprised her, considering her assumption that the alien visitor, Odo, had traveled this road. She supposed he must have come by another route. The forest appeared entirely devoid of humanoid activity, now and for a very long time past.
But with that thought, she heard something. A rustle in the low branches. Something moving toward her, something big. She froze, her eyes open wide in the darkness. She tried with all her might to see what was making the noise, but she could only see the dark gray shadows of the trees around her, and the brilliant, cold stars wheeling overhead.
Another, nearer rustle, and she thought she saw one of the shadows moving, thought she heard the sound of padding feet. A soldier? She tried her best not to breathe, holding herself in a small, tight ball, knowing it would do no good. If a soldier had come, he would have equipment that would tell him exactly where she was. She heard a sound, then, that she could not at first identify. A low, rhythmic grumbling.
It’s ahara cat.
The fear changed. The animal didn’t need sensors, it could smell her plainly. She could only hope that it had already eaten, that it hadn’t been stalking her, as harashad been known to do when food was scarce. Jaxa’s breathing grew tight with quickly mounting dread. Would it hurt when the harapounced and dragged her from beneath the tree? Or would she simply go into shock, numb to the animal’s inevitable attack? The animal growled, and Jaxa froze in fear.
But now she heard another sound. Something was running, crashing through the underbrush. Something very, very large, larger definitely than the hara. Jaxa began to cry, and then she screamed when she heard the terrible sound of the haraas it howled in furious pain. Something was attacking it. A cadge lupus? She could hear the thrashing of the foliage around her as the animals struggled, and she covered her face with her hands. The sounds were coming closer, close enough that she could see them now, two shadowy forms locked together in the moonlight.