He made no reply to the younger man's words; for a moment, he was incapable of any. The weight upon his own soul eased a fraction, as if he had found a way to get his shoulders beneath it.
"Very well, Julian." He managed a faint smile. "In medical matters at least, I yield to your greater expertise." And more than that, he thought. The doctor's lecture had been a humbling experience. "I suppose that right now, there's a lot I need to talk to Jake about."
With his hands clasped at the small of his back, Bashir gazed up at the room's ceiling. "About some things, Comlander. But not everything; not what you found in there, inside the holosuite. You've had a glimpse into your son's heart—-or at least a small part of it. If your father had seen inside you—when you had been, as you said, stupid and angry—would you really have wanted him to talk to you about it?" Bashir slowly shook his head. "There are some things that are worth feeling ashamed about. That's another thing we all learn."
He knew that Bashir was right. And that was the hardest thing of all to learn, to even admit to himself. That there we matters about which he could do nothing. Except wait and trust.
"What I need to think about, then," said Sisko, "is what Jake would want me to do. About us leaving DS9."
Bashir nodded. "Of course, whatever your son's wishes might be—that is, if he tells you he wants to stay here at DS9—then you can be assured that I'll maintain a close monitoring of him. If any symptoms manifest themselves, if there's any sign that he may have been harmed by his exposure to the CI modules' effects, we can reevaluate our course of action then."
"All right." He nodded. "I'd better go speak to him."
"He's waiting for you." Bashir pointed to the corridor. "In the examining room."
His son looked up at him as the door drew open. "Hello, Jake." Sisko stepped into the small room, their privacy sealed by the exclusion of everything outside. "It's been rather too long, hasn't it?"
Jake studied him warily. "I thought you'd be angry."
"Not at you." He sat down beside his son. Only at myself . . .
Somewhere beyond, the affairs of the station and the surrounding worlds clamored for his attention. He ignored them as he talked with Jake.
As they spoke, a part of him stood aside and watched. Studying the boy, to see if there was anything a father could detect, that all of Bashir's instruments and batteries of tests had been unable to.
And then, between one word and the next, he realized he didn't have to worry. Not about this, at least. Jake had bed scared, and was still frightened and confused by the things he had experienced inside the altered holosuites . . . but he hadn't been damaged by them. Not in that intangible part of him that those wiser than doctors called the soul. Sisko felt as if an invisible stone had been lifted from his heart, breath rushing in to fill his starved lungs.
"Let's go home." He stood up, wanting to squeeze his son tight against his chest, but knowing that all he could really do was wrap his arm around the boy's shoulders.
As they walked through the station toward their living quarters, they passed by the entrance to the Promenade. Through it, Jake caught sight of one of Quark's holosuites, still presumably safe and uninfected by the CI modules. "I don't want to go in there again." He looked up at his father. "Ever."
"That's all right; you don't have to." Sisko steered his son toward the turbolift. "But not even for a game of baseball?"
Jake's face clouded, brow creased with deliberation. "I'll have to think about that."
He waited, controlling his impatience as best he could. Odo knew that if the commander was busy with family matters, there was no one to blame but himself; after all, he had been the one who had notified Sisko about his son's use of the altered holosuites. The commander's situation was one that Odo both deplored and envied, keeping both those reactions tightly contained inside. The lack of family—indeed, the lack of any creature in the known universe similar to himself—meant that he could devote his full, undivided attention to the security of Deep Space Nine; that same lack left a hollow space at his core, like an airless bubble in his natural liquid state.
His watch on the door of the commander's living quarters had lasted for over an hour now. Odo stood with his back against the corridor wall, trying to make himself look as inconspicuous as possible to anyone who might pass by. It would have been easy enough to achieve effective invisibility, transforming himself into a transparent membrane on one of the curved panels, the way he had when he'd been tailing Ahrmant Wyoss—but he knew that when the commander emerged from his conference with his son, Sisko would likely stride toward the nearest turbolift at top speed, heading back to the crises left hanging on the Ops deck. Odo didn't want to miss his chance at grabbing a share of the commander's attention before anyone else could have a shot at him.
He pulled himself to full alertness as he heard the initial hiss of the door sliding open. Just as he had anticipated, Sisko bulled out in the hurried manner, not looking to either side that had come to characterize him in the last several high-pressured shifts.
"Commander—" Odo hurried to match his pace with the commander's. "I take it that your son is all right. Dr. Bashir indicated as much to me; I hope you won't consider that a breach of confidence on his part. It is, after all, a matter that touches upon the station's security."
"Jake appears to be fine." Sisko glanced round at him. "But I appreciate your concern."
"There are some other things, however, that should be brought to your attention. Some more recent developments."
"Such as, Constable?"
They had reached the turbolift door; Odo turned to face the commander. "We've found more holosuites; virtually all of the new units have been altered with the illicit CI modules. Our Chief O'Brien has determined that the modifications were performed within the last two shifts. It seems as if whoever's behind this operation—perhaps our mysterious McHogue—was somehow able to bring a large quantity of the modules on board in a way that can't be traced through the pylons' loading docks."
"I see." Sisko nodded as he mulled over the data. "And I suppose there's still no indication of how this McHogue himself might have gotten into DS9? Or if he's still here?"
"You mean physically, rather than as an apparition in one of the altered holosuites?" Odo had been informed by the commander about the spectral figure he'd encountered when he'd gone into his son's hallucinatory world. "At this point, there's no way of determining that. With the manpower available to me, it would take weeks to conduct an exhaustive search of the station—the structure is riddled with hiding places. And if we didn't find this McHogue person, we still couldn't be sure whether he's aboard or not; he could evade detection by simply moving from place to place ahead of the search teams."
"In other words, it's up to our mysterious visitor as to whether he shows himself to us or not."
"I'm afraid so, Commander. Surveillance has been increased in the Promenade and in all the sectors where the CI modules have been found in the holosuites, on the off chance that McHogue might return to those areas. Other than that, there's not much we can do."
The turbolift opened beside them. "That will have to suffice for now." Sisko stepped into the transportation device. "Let me know if anything further develops."