Never before in any of her lives could Dax recall having seen the city of Leran Manev in the grip of such palpable tension. Restive crowds milled behind barricades, held back by serried ranks of black-armored police. Behind the barriers, slogan-festooned placards waved. On the way to the landing concourse, Dax caught a glimpse of a sign that read SYMBIOSIS EQUALS DEATH, then another emblazoned with the words JOINING FOR ALL. A third said, more ambiguously, TIME FOR TRUTH.
She shook her head sadly. What a mess of contradictions. Welcome to the homeworld, Ezri.She felt a surge of gratitude that Ezri Tigan had actually grown up far from here, on the New Sydney colony. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew it was unfair; to the best of her knowledge, none of Trill’s cities had ever experienced such sharp political divisions at any point during Ezri’s lifetime. And she had to concede that the stories she had read on Trill’s newsnets might have overstated the possibility of real social unrest.
“That’s quite a gathering out there,” Julian said dryly as Dax landed the runabout in one of the wide spots that was specially marked for official Federation visitors. A few moments later she was standing beside him on the landing pad, in the lengthening shadow of the immense Senate Tower.
Dax spied a pair of figures approaching briskly from the building’s glass entryway portico.
“General Cyl,” Dax said to the tall, white-haired man on the left as she and Julian closed the remaining distance between them. “Mister Gard,” she said to the younger man beside him, nodding in greeting. Gazing at Gard, she hoped she’d managed to conceal her surprise at being received by the man who had actually carried out the assassination of Bajor’s first minister. Perhaps the newsnet rumblings of Gard’s forthcoming presidential pardon really was the done deal that some seemed to believe it was.
As perfunctory greetings were exchanged, Gard smiled disarmingly, though his dark, neatly trimmed goatee gave him an almost roguish aspect. “Please, Lieutenant, call me Hiziki. And that goes for you as well, Doctor.”
Julian looked toward the broad boulevard that lay perhaps a hundred meters past the landing area. Beyond a handful of parked skimmers, hovercars, and small air trams, the milling crowds were clearly visible.
“It looks like a lot of people are becoming rather exercised over current events,” he said dryly, apparently addressing no one in particular.
Eyeing the crowd with evident apprehension, Gard said nothing. Cyl nodded gravely. “The Senate’s public inquest is already under way,” the general said, meeting Dax’s gaze. “Needless to say, there’s been a great deal of popular interest.”
“A lot of people across the planet are anxious to learn the truth about the parasites,” Gard said. “It may be that secrecy is no longer an option.” He sounded almost relieved at the prospect of setting aside Trill’s long history of surreptitiousness; Dax wondered how many of his numerous lifetimes Gard had devoted to maintaining it.
Ushering the group toward the Senate Tower’s broad, balustraded entrance, Cyl shook his head. “It’s a pity we weren’t able to keep the hearings entirely closed to the public. We could have decided later how much to reveal, and when to reveal it. But I suppose that wouldn’t have been realistic.”
Gard glanced briefly back at the crowd before returning his gaze to Dax. “At any rate, the Senate is particularly eager to hear yourtestimony, Lieutenant.”
No pressure,she thought, hoping that the unalloyed truth about the parasites would serve to calm the restless crowds rather than inflame them further. Though she was well acquainted with her people’s penchant for secrecy, she also knew that Trills, like all Federation members, were proud of their free and open society. She had to believe that her people would never throw away the latter because of an habitual attachment to the former.
“When does the Senate want Lieutenant Dax to testify?” Julian asked the general.
Cyl directed his reply to Dax, almost as though Julian weren’t there. “Immediately, if that’s all right with you. I’ll be at your side throughout your testimony, just in case security considerations make it necessary to recommend that you answer any of the Senate’s questions in a special closed-door session later.”
Dax felt her stomach flutter slightly. She wasn’t surprised at Cyl’s evident reticence about what her upcoming testimony might make public. But she hadn’t expected to have to leap into the thick of things so soon after landing on Trill.
“So, are you ready, Lieutenant?” Cyl asked, his dark eyebrows raised.
“I suppose so,” she said at length, hoping she didn’t sound quite as apprehensive as she felt.
“Lead on, then,” Julian said.
Gard stopped at the gleaming transparisteel door, which was flanked by a pair of alert-looking, dark-garbed police officers. Turning to Julian, he raised a hand in a polite but firm gesture that clearly said “halt.”
“If you don’t mind, Doctor, we would prefer that you don’t accompany us into the Senate Chambers themselves.”
Julian looked astonished. “Excuse me?”
“You’re welcome to walk around inside the building, of course,” Cyl added. “Or tour the city. But the Senate has requested that no non-Trills be present at the inquest.”
Dax saw that Julian looked peeved, his pride clearly wounded. Smiling, she said, “I did try to talk you out of coming along, Julian, remember?”
“Yes, you did at that,” he said quietly, then put on a smile of his own a few seconds later. It was clear to Dax that her reminder hadn’t helped matters.
He nodded to her. “I suppose I could go for a walk. I’ll catch up with you in a few hours.”
“Julian…” she said, trailing off as he walked away in stony silence. It was clear that he wasn’t at all happy about being excluded from her mission. And that neither Cyl nor Gard wanted him to come along. Dammit.
“This way, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, making a follow megesture toward the Senate Tower’s doors. For a moment, Dax was tempted to put up a fight on Julian’s behalf.
But I’m here to help calm things down. Not to contribute more problems.With a sigh, she went where she was bid.
Secretive bastards,Bashir thought as he stalked away.
He was a little surprised at how quickly his initial feeling of pique evaporated as he made his way through the crowd that ringed the broad boulevards around the Senate Tower. Of course, he was well aware that he tended to be distracted fairly easily by interesting surroundings.
Political dissension was rare in recent Federation history, and as he passed through gaps in the placard-carrying crowd he found himself wondering about the substance of it. There were easily a thousand people lining the portion of the main thoroughfare visible to him, and a few minutes’ study revealed that the only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they were unjoined Trill humanoids. It was a surprisingly diverse group, containing faces of every hue, from Ezri’s pale tones to Captain Sisko’s deep, burnished brown. Bashir’s keen eye even discerned a handful of people whose faces were distinguished by graceful, upward-
arching brow ridges instead of the facial spots more commonly associated with Trill humanoids.
He realized immediately that he shouldn’t have been surprised in the least; after all, most of the Trills he had encountered until now belonged to a tiny minority of the populace.
The joined.
Judging from the signs carried by the largest clusters of people, at least three clear political viewpoints were discernible. One faction was demanding accountability from the Trill government regarding the parasite crisis; they carried signs suggesting that the genetic relationship between the parasites and the symbionts was quickly becoming common knowledge. Another group’s placards vehemently denounced the entire institution of joining, offering the parasites as proof that the symbionts were in fact mind-controlling alien life-forms bent on the conquest and domination of Trill. A third group—which apparently equated symbiosis not only with upward social mobility, but also with a sort of immortality—demanded joining for all healthy Trill humanoids who requested it.