She studied the figure beside her while he delivered his dark sermon. A leaping fervor, like fire coursing across the branches of drought-withered trees, shone in the functionary's eyes. She could barely recognize him as a creature born of the same blood that flowed in her veins. This is what it's come to, she thought, her own voice masking the other's flow of words. This is what McHogue, and all the outsiders before him, have brought to our world. First the Cardassians, then the Federation, and now every intelligent species in the galaxy, swarming to Moagitty like insects to anoverripe fruit rotting on the ground; the outside universe had impinged upon Bajor, and things could never be the same again. The Bajorans wouldn't be the same; they were already in the process of becoming different to each other. Their suffering had made them one, but that had ended. Wealth and power would split them apart, each a stranger to what had been a brother or sister. She had seen this functionary coolly slay her old comrade Malen, with no more reluctance than the assassination of a Cardassian during the resistance might have evoked. Perhaps less; the functionary—and how many more like him?—was now closer in nature to McHogue and Cardassians than to other Bajorans. They had evolved somehow, in a way that she could never have anticipated; they had become the very creatures that the resistance had fought to cast out from Bajor.
Her meditations took her to a dead place inside herself. Maybe this is the reason that Kai Opaka left us—a thought even bleaker than the steps that led to it. Perhaps the Kai hadn't answered the call of the Prophets at all; perhaps she had been cast out in her turn by the Prophets, those who could see what the future of Bajor would be like. A future that had no place for one such as the Kai.
"Why did you come here?"
For a moment, Kira suffered an auditory hallucination; it had sounded to her as if it had been the Kai's gentle voice that had spoken. Her breath came back into her lungs, and she realized that the words had come only from the functionary who had guided her to this inferno of excited laughter.
"Or why do you think you came here?" The functionary smiled as he peered more closely at her.
"I . . . I don't know. . . ." Kira shook her head, as if that might dispel the dream that had folded around her. She wondered where she would be if she did wake up—in her quarters aboard DS9, or on the bare ground of her homeworld? She could remember a time when she had slept under the night sky of Bajor, surrounded by the forms of her fellow resistance fighters, their weapons at their sides; they had all expected to die in the morning's action, a raid on a Cardassian armaments dump. Half their number had wound up exactly as feared; but in the night before, she had felt at peace, beyond hope or desire. . . .
The functionary's voice seemed to speak right at her ear, soothing her heavy eyelids closed. "I can tell you why. The same reason you came the last time, before the coup d'état by the Severalty Front. You have this vision of yourself, don't you, Major? The avenging angel, the fiery sword, the one-woman hit squad. The people around you, your fellow officers up on Deep Space Nine, they think that you're always so irascible and impatient, that you go charging off on your own because you don't feel anyone can keep up; you have to do everything all by yourself. When really it's quite different: you don't want anyone else to help you. You want to do it all by yourself. What did you think you were going to do this time?" The voice became slyly mocking. "Find some switch to throw that would overload the power generators and blow all of Moagitty to atoms? One big cataclysm, with you at the center of it—I'm sure that would have made you very happy. Or perhaps something less flamboyant but just as satisfying—you could have leapt and with your bare hand torn out my throat."
Her eyes flew open. She saw before her, not the functionary, but the image of McHogue turned to flesh. The transformation had been accomplished as easily and swiftly as discarding a mask—the narrow face that she had seen photos of now smiled at her.
"You shouldn't act so surprised, Major." The black-clad figure was an optical vacuum, holding her attention with no chance of her breaking away. "You've entered my territory—this is the city that bears my name, is it not? You should be flattered that I'm giving you such special treatment."
It almost seemed as if she had stepped from the shuttle that had brought her here into one of the Cl-modified holosuites. Anything could happen.
"Major, I regret that we seem to be on opposing sides; that's unfortunate. This—" McHogue gestured toward the vast open space before them. "It's all going to be much bigger than what you see; this is just the beginning. That's why General Aur and so many others—so many of your former comrades, Kira—that's why they joined me in this great enterprise. Because they could see the possibilities. I'd find it veryconvenient if one of your capabilities took part as well. There'd be a place for you."
"Spare me the recruiting pitch." The shock of the transformation had passed, though it was still a mystery how it had been done. "I've got a better idea of just what your program entails."
"No, you don't. You don't have the slightest idea." McHogue's smile turned cold. "If you did, you'd realize that you might not have a choice about joining or not. Come on—" He turned and started walking farther along the balustrade. "There are some other things I'd like you to see."
Away from the murmur of the gaming floor, a balcony framed by raw girders and nets of dangling electrical cables opened to a view of the hills surrounding the new city. The landscape had been scraped bare by the towering construction equipment arrayed along the horizon. Cranes taller than any of the capital's minarets dangled pre-formed panels and modular units toward the waiting plasma torches. The scale of the partly finished buildings was beyond anything Kira seen before. DS9 itself could have been settled between the massive walls like an egg in a steel and cementene nest.
"I suppose I should be impressed," said Kira. "Your friends the Cardassians certainly have a taste for epic architecture But then, I already knew that they like to build monuments to themselves."
"Gul Dukat has been very useful . . . and discreet." McHogue leaned his hands against the balcony's rail. "He's been quite agreeable to the proposition that the Cardassians should not just be silent, but invisible partners in this enterprise. They've suffered serious public relations problems before; they're not universally well liked. It's better for all concerned that the Cardassians should stay in the background. We wouldn't want anything to keep potential guests away."
"Or their money."
The look in McHogue's eyes grew distant as he gazed across the empire being assembled before him. "You don't understand yet, do you, Major? It's not that simple." He pushed himself away from the rail. "I'm not done giving you the tour yet."
Another corridor, high-ceilinged, with soft, dreamy light the color of a perfect dawn; McHogue indicated the doors extending in a curve whose end couldn't be seen. "Look familiar?"
"Holosuites." Kira shrugged. "Should I be surprised? There's obviously a limit to how much you can mess with people's minds in reality."
"Bravely spoken, for one who's not quite sure who she's talking to." McHogue regarded the holosuites with a proprietary satisfaction. "But of course, you're right about that. Everything else—the Dabo tables, the ordinary brothels and simpler pleasures of life—that's all pretty much a loss leader to attract a wider range of customers. Though I think that once word spreads across the galaxy about the rather more outré delights that can be sampled here, all of that other stuff could be largely dispensed with."