“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”
“Excuse me?” Dad said.
“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” Molly repeated.
Dad looked up at Molly’s parents in complete incomprehension.
Keiko looked embarrassed. “You have to understand, she grew up on a space station….”
Dad rolled his eyes and shook his head, then turned back to Molly. “Well, I have a solution to that. I have an old bicycle in my basement that my son used to ride when he was your age. How would you like to have it?”
Molly’s eyes lit up. She turned to her mother. “Can I, Mommy?”
Keiko grinned. “I don’t see how we can refuse,” she said.
“Yes!”
“That’s just fine,” Dad said, beaming. “You and your parents can try it out in the park, tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast.”
“Sir, we wouldn’t dream of imposing any more than we already have,” O’Brien protested.
Dad’s smile fell. “So what are you saying, Chief? Are you going to deprive an old man of the company of these children?”
“No, sir. I just meant—”
“Never mind, never mind,” Dad said, brushing off O’Brien’s explanation. “I’m not taking no for an answer. You’ll all stay the night, at least, and we’ll have a fine time. And tomorrow, Molly can try her new bicycle.”
“What do you say, Molly?” Keiko prompted.
“Thank you, Mr. Sisko,” Molly said.
Dad laughed. He laughed!“You’re very welcome, Molly. Of course, you’ll need to take off that pretty necklace first. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to such a lovely thing.”
Molly touched the ornate silver chains around her neck, adorned with pendants of different sizes and shapes. Judith had noticed it when she first laid eyes on the girl. It wasn’t like anything she had ever seen before, and she had to agree, it was lovely.
“May I ask where she got it?” Judith said to Keiko. “It’s very unusual. Is it Vulcan…?”
Keiko looked at O’Brien, who decided to answer the question himself. “Actually, it’s Bajoran,” he said quietly.
Dad’s eyes darkened, but only a little. “Well, on your Molly it’s positively beautiful, Chief,” he said, then looked at him sternly. “She obviously takes after her mother.”
Miles snorted and shook his head, sipping from his beer.
“Dad, enough already,” Judith chastised him.
“Oh, I’m just kidding,” Dad said, and slapped O’Brien on the shoulder, causing Miles to choke on his beer. “Anyone with children like these is welcome in my home any time. As long as he stays out of my kitchen.”
“Noted, sir,” O’Brien gasped, coughing. After a moment he went on, “You know, the necklace was actually a gift from someone. I don’t think about it much anymore, because it happened the first year we were on the station, but it’s actually a bit of a mystery.”
“What do you mean?” Judith asked. “You don’t know who gave it to her?”
“No, I do,” O’Brien said. “It was Kai Opaka. She was the religious leader of Bajor at the time. The thing is, she was lost in the Gamma Quadrant right after that. See, she’d come to the station after spending her entire life planetside, and had asked Captain—I mean, Commander Sisko, to take her through the wormhole. I prepped the ship they took for the journey. Opaka and I passed each other in the airlock, and she was wearing that necklace. Then suddenly she looks at me—and I swear it was like she could see inside me—and she says, ‘You have a daughter, don’t you?’ Now, I want to stress I’d never met this woman before. There was no reason for her to know anything about me, and Molly was only a year old at the time. But when I told her I did have a daughter, she took off the necklace and put it in my hand, asking me to give it to Molly. Then she stepped into the ship like she never expected to come back.”
“So what happened?” Judith asked.
“She died,” Miles confirmed, then added, “sort of. She wound up trapped on the surface of a moon in the Gamma Quadrant. There was nanotechnology—artifical microbes—in the biosphere that resuscitated anyone who died there, and Opaka had been killed when the ship crashed. She came back to life, but she was now dependent on the nanotechnology, which wouldn’t function outside the moon’s biosphere.”
“So she was trapped there?” Judith asked, apalled.
O’Brien nodded. “I’m afraid so. I know Julian—Dr. Bashir, DS9’s chief medical officer—worked for years on a cure, but he never had any success. Then we met the Dominion, and our dealings with the Gamma Quadrant became more complicated.”
“Why would anyone introduce technology like that to an uninhabited moon?” Dad asked.
“Well, it wasn’t entirely uninhabited,” O’Brien said. “It was actually a penal colony for two small warring factions of a Gamma Quadrant species. They had refused to stop fighting, so they were sentenced to fight, and die, and fight again, forever. From what Julian told me, Opaka believed that what happened to her was preordained. She dedicated her life to teaching the factions peace.”
“My God,” Dad muttered, shaking his head.
“She sounds like a remarkable woman,” Judith said.
O’Brien nodded. “I talked to Major Kira about it afterward. Opaka had been a force for peace and unity on Bajor for a long time. Her loss was a blow to everyone. But the thing is, she never doubted for a second that everything that happened to her was happening for a reason. She really believed she was serving a higher purpose, something bigger than herself.”
Judith saw that Dad was listening attentively. The point of O’Brien’s story clearly hadn’t escaped him. “I understand what your trying to say, Chief,” he said, shaking his head, “but my son—”
“Sir, with all due respect,” O’Brien said, “I knew your son as a father, a soldier, a diplomat, a ship wright, an explorer, a religious icon, a baseball fan, not to mention an exceptional cook.” This drew a smile from Dad, and Miles went on, “None of those things were responsible for what happened to him. From what I know, he sacrificed himself for a world he’d come to love more than himself. During his life he was responsible for saving countless lives. You should be proud of him.”
“And my grandson?” Dad asked bitterly. “For what was he sacrificed?”
“Dad,” Judith said. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to remember that Jake was a grown man. He was already taking responsibility for his life before the war ended. Wherever he is, whatever happened to him, he chose it.”
“How can I know that, Judith? How can anyone know?”
“I don’t pretend to know anything,” Judith said gently. “None of us do. But are you so determined to assume the worst that you’re afraid to have any hope at all?”
“Judith—”
“And what about Kasidy? While you’re here missing Ben and Jake, she’s missing them on Bajor, about to give birth to your grandchild. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Dad looked at Molly, humming contentedly to herself as she finished the last of her jambalaya. His gaze went to Kirayoshi, who a half-hour ago had demanded to be held and subsequently fell asleep in his mother’s embrace.
With a sudden movement of his arms, Dad pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “I need to get up early. Judith, you’ll see to our guests, won’t you?”
Judith sighed. “Yes, Dad.”
“Then good night,” he said, and headed off to bed.
“That’s it, Molly—keep pedaling!”
Keiko knew there was little chance of Molly falling over, as her father was holding the back of the antique bicycle that she was struggling to learn to ride. She even kidded him that everyone must have ridden bicycles when he was a little boy growing up on Earth, but he assured her that he wasn’t thatold. “I learned a lot younger than you when I was a little boy in Dublin,” he said. “My brothers taught me. There’s no better way to learn balance.” He did admit that he’d skinned his knees more often than he made it from one end of the street to the other without falling off. But there was little risk of that happening to her, as he was holding on tight.
At least, that’s what she believed until she looked over her shoulder and saw that her father was no longer holding on, and was still standing next to her mother at the far end of the block.