Kalisi couldn’t stand it. She went to find Crell.
It was midweek and late, so she headed for pathology, fuming all the way. She exchanged nods with a few other workers, but no pleasantries; they all knew what she was to Moset, and his blatant favoritism had distanced her from anyone she might have looked to for friendship.
He was happy to see her, in his distracted and quirky way. They hadn’t been lovers for long enough to breed too much familiarity, and he seemed to enjoy listening to her complain. She ranted about the ministry for a spell, as he nodded appropriately, shaking his head in shared frustration. She didn’t expect him to offer any solution, and wasn’t disappointed. He had been distant lately, in a way she’d come to recognize as a precursor to some new twist in his research.
“Well, it won’t be for much longer,” he said finally, smiling his thin smile. “This might be among the last upgrades we’ll have to suffer.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re an educated woman,” Crell said. “You can see that the resources here on Bajor are dwindling.”
“Yes, but the projection for dropping below quota is still decades away.”
Moset leaned against the metal table behind him, cocking one eyeridge in a melodramatically cryptic expression. “That’s just what they wantyou to think.”
Her irritation was no pretense. “What do you mean?”
“That’s propaganda, newscasts aimed at home. From what I hear, Cardassia will pull out of here less than a generation from now. Possibly within the next five years.” He smiled with faint distraction. “I’m hoping for sooner, rather than later, of course.”
Kalisi was surprised. She’d heard rumors, but hadn’t believed them. Crell was well-respected, though, and had earned a number of influential friends in the science ministry and Central Command. If he believed it, he had reason to.
“What will happen to the Bajorans?” she asked, not sure why it was the first question that came to mind.
His playfulness fell away, his demeanor suddenly uncharacteristically grave. “Considering the declining state of their society and their ecosystem, in my estimation they’ll be lucky to die off quickly.”
As if to illustrate his point, a lab assistant wheeled a cot through the room’s far entrance, a cadaver, mostly covered by a sheet. A Bajoran woman. Her skin was nearly white beneath the bright lights.
“If you’ll excuse me, Doctor,” Crell said, nodding at her. “I have some work to do. Perhaps we can continue this conversation at a later time?”
Kalisi nodded, already backing toward the door she’d entered by, as the assistant parked the corpse in front of Crell. She wasn’t particularly squeamish, but wasn’t interested in watching a dissection, either. She turned, thinking. She still had to decide how to handle the ministry’s “gift.” It was reprogram again or reject the computers…
She glanced back at Moset as the door slid open, and saw the Bajoran woman twitch.
Kalisi stopped, peered closer at the body as the door slid closed again. The assistant had disappeared, and Crell was pulling back the sheet to expose the woman’s bare body, so strange and smooth, no ridges crossing her midriff. Kalisi was sure she had moved, like a shiver, when he had lifted the coverlet.
He tapped at a recording panel and lifted his scalpel, leaning over the naked alien.
“Subject is mid-20s—ah, 26, I believe, no history of disease before end-stage Fostossia—”
There!The Bajoran’s hand this time, a spastic movement.
“Crell,” she said, forgetting herself as he brought the blade down.
He paused, looked up at her.
“She’s still alive,” Kalisi said.
He blinked, frowned. As though he was still waiting for her to get to the point. “Yes?”
“I thought—I mean, I suppose…” She wasn’t sure what to say, not sure what was happening. He acted as though performing a vivisection on a living person—a Bajoran, but still a person—was something he did every day.
He smiled, straightened slightly. He glanced about, confirming that they were alone.
“You have a tender heart, Kali,” he said. “This woman is already dead. Terminal coma. The disease was untreatable by the time she came to us. Better we learn something from her death, don’t you feel?”
Kalisi took a step back to the table, unable to look away from the Bajoran’s face. She saw it now, the quiver of her thin nostrils, a slow beat at her temple.
“What could you hope to learn?” she asked.
He gestured to the woman’s flat belly. “More about their reproductive systems, for one thing.”
“To what purpose?”
He smiled again, what she thought of as his teacher smile. “Ultimately, our work here is about finding ways to improve the health of the Bajoran labor force. To maintain optimal productivity. Gestation and child-rearing generally hinders the productivity of the parents.”
Kalisi shook her head. “You’re devising ways to sterilize them?”
His smile took on an edge of excitement. “Think. For the Union, there’s no need for another generation of Bajorans—and really, it does them a kindness. Spares them from having to watch their children starve to death, once we’re gone. And, it means a more effective work force while we’re still here.”
He leaned over the woman and made a swift, deep incision across her lower belly. Blood pulsed and pooled, slid over her bare hips to the table beneath. He lifted the flap of tissue, gestured at the wet red inside the bleeding gash, as though Kalisi would recognize the dying woman’s womb.
“That’s the problem,” he said, nodding once. “They breed like voles, pregnancies one right after another, with rapid gestation periods. An effective sterilizing agent solves it. Getting it to them would be a simple matter—we add it to one of the Fostossia boosters; they’re all required to have them. The issue is isolating the right component. I’ve already tried several formulas. There were promising results in the viral carrier, but those subjects all developed tumorous cysts. Obviously, we want to treat these people as humanely as possible.”
The body on the narrow table between them convulsed sleepily and gave a ragged, guttural exhalation—the last sound it would make. The blood ceased to pump, the woman’s thin, alien face relaxing.
“Horrible,” Kalisi said, unable to help herself.
“This one stayed unconscious, at least,” Crell said, with no emotion save for the affable tint that usually colored his voice. “Your reaction strikes me as slightly hypocritical, darling. You’ve devoted your entire adult life to designing weapons that target and kill them.”
Kalisi stared at him. “Since my detection grid was installed, combat deaths of both Bajorans and Cardassians have been reduced exponentially. My work has preventedunnecessary suffering.”
Her lover nodded. “As will mine,” he said evenly. After a moment, he leaned in and resumed cutting, and Kalisi left him.
The ground unfolded beneath him, broad and green and thick with shadows. Odo was tired—he’d had so little time to regenerate—but decided it was for the best that he just approach these resistance people now and be done with his task. In the short time since he’d left Mora’s care, things had happened so quickly, the environments and faces and rules constantly changing. He wished for time to assimilate his new experiences, to draw conclusions, but away from the laboratory, he’d discovered that time moved differently; it seemed that there was not always opportunity to stop and think.
A final stretch of his wings, and he landed in the mountain pass that Sito Keral had told him of, hopping across a fallen tree, fluttering for balance. He became a small tyrfoxthat could amble effectively over the rocky ground.