The pain in Tambor’s chest receded slightly. Soon, very soon, the joined would all begin to pay.
Dax found the quiet of the place almost deafening. Until this evening, she had made a point of avoiding this place. Memories could be treasured, after all, without having to dwell on them.
The sun had long vanished behind the ranks of low, ancient rooftops that dotted the edge of Manev Bay. Nearby, orderly rows of crystalline obelisks cast lengthy shadows over a lawn that stretched for kilometers. As with all cemeteries on Trill, the grave markers were a riot of color, even in the darkness. Illuminated subtly from within by remote-mediated photonics, each marker instantly told a story about the status of every interred person. The unjoined, who comprised the vast majority of the dead, were denoted by a simple, dignified yellow. The joined dead whose experiences were no longer being carried by a joined successor host—a fate that Dax knew awaited every joined Trill humanoid eventually—glowed a deep, mournful green.
The smallest group, representing only a tiny percentage of the forest of small spires, glowed a hopeful purple, the color of Trill’s ever-regenerating oceans, the ultimate source of all life. These were the graves of once-joined humanoids whose symbionts currently lived on in other hosts, hosts who sustained their predecessors’ memories in much the same way that Trill’s oceans nurtured the planet’s biosphere. As Vic might say, these are the best seats in the house,Dax thought wryly, uncomfortable in the presence of so much stark, immutable death. Maybe it’s not exactlyMak’relle Dur, but I suppose it’s a pretty reasonable facsimile.
A slender shadow, taller than any of the spires, fell across a grave marker bearing a name that was barely discernible in the waning light:
JADZIA IDARIS
Inscribed directly beneath the familiar name, in the same stark, simple script, were the words:
BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, STUDENT, FRIEND HOST OF DAX
Dax had the eerie sensation that she was standing at the edge of her own grave. At the same time, Jadzia was very much a stranger to her.
She moved quietly toward the still shape that now stood beside Jadzia’s obelisk. “I thought I might find you here.”
Julian didn’t seem in the least surprised at her arrival. He continued staring straight ahead at the grave marker, and the darkness that framed it. “You could have asked the Rio Grande’s computer to locate me.”
“Didn’t think I needed to. Besides, I needed to take a walk, too. I guess I owed her a visit as well.”
“Why? You never knew Jadzia.”
“True. But in some ways I know her better than anyone,” Ezri said, placing a hand on her abdomen. “Sometimes I wish I could have reallyknown her. The way other people did, I mean.”
“I think she would have liked you,” he said, before trailing off into brooding silence.
Then he turned to face her. For a moment, Julian’s grief shone through the darkness like a beacon. She felt a surge of relief when he changed the subject. “How did your testimony go?” he asked quietly.
Dax shrugged. “Bumpy, but survivable. Cyl seemed nervous about a few of the senators’ direct questions about the parasites. He kept insisting that a lot of them be redirected to a closed-door session.”
Julian nodded. “ ‘Security considerations,’ ” he said, using the general’s words.
“Doctor Renhol seemed to be trying to make an issue of Cyl’s need for secrecy,” Dax said.
“That’s rather ironic, coming from her.”
“No argument from me. I think she’s just positioning herself to run against Maz in the next presidential election.”
“Why does Cyl feel the need to hold back so many secrets?” Julian asked. “Now that the parasite danger has been dealt with, what’s the point?”
“I keep asking myself the same question. Senator Talris quizzed me about our mission on Minos Korva, and what we found there,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket. She raised the fragment of Kurlan pottery into the light of the cemetery spires. “When I mentioned this, and your theory that it came from ancient Kurl, he became pretty curious about it. And Cyl insisted that the whole issue be kept under wraps. Like you said, ‘security considerations.’ ”
Julian stepped toward her, taking the shard and examining it in the near darkness. “Then I suppose he’ll be doubly glad that I wasn’t testifying beside you.”
She felt a frown creasing her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Before we arrived at Leran Manev, I was still researching the historical records on both Kurl and Trill,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “And I learned a bit more about the provenance of this thing.”
“It would have been nice to have known that before facing the Senate, Julian.”
“I’m not sure it has any significance. Besides, if your General Cyl hadn’t booted me from the building, we might have been able to let the Senate make that determination.”
“Or Icould have. If you’d told me everything you’d learned before we arrived on Trill, that is.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened, as though cast in iron. “Given Cyl’s fondness for secrecy, I tend to doubt that, Ezri. Besides, I told you everything I thought was important at the time. Most commanders don’t enjoy wading through too much extraneous information.”
She regarded him in stony silence for a long moment. Was he questioning her ability to conduct the mission with which Captain Kira had charged her? Or was it something more basic and petty than that?
You really don’t like being under me in the chain of command, do you, Julian?
Aloud, she said, “All right, what else did you find out?”
“Just that this piece is a fragment of the outer covering of an ancient Kurlan naiskos.”
“A what?”
He handed the fragment back to her. “A naiskosis a ceramic figurine made in a squat, roughly humanoid shape. They stood about forty centimeters high, and they were designed to be opened. The inside was filled with dozens of smaller but similarly proportioned internal figures, illustrating the Kurlan people’s belief that each individual is comprised of a diverse chorus of sometimes conflicting impulses and desires.”
Though Dax found Julian’s discovery interesting, she had to agree that it wouldn’t have been of any intrinsic value during her Senate testimony. She immediately regretted having questioned his judgment, and wondered if she hadn’t merely been projecting her own doubts about her ability to carry out the current mission.
Hold it right there, Counselor. You’re on the command track now, remember?
She suddenly realized that Julian was still talking about the naiskos.“I find one thing particularly intriguing about this artifact.”
“What’s that?” she said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her woolgathering.
“The philosophy behind the naiskosmakes me wonder if the Kurlans might not have been a joined species, like the Trill.”
“That sounds like a bit of a reach,” Dax said, shaking her head.
“Maybe. Maybe not. We know that the parasites have a relationship to the Trill symbionts. The presence of this fragment on Minos Korva suggests that they also had some connection to the Kurlans. Maybe there’s also a more direct relationship between Trill and Kurl.”