You should get busy, he told himself, head lowered. He opened his eyes and looked across the unoccupied beds. There was no way of telling how soon he'd need to be ready. He pushed himself away from the desk and straightened up.
Walking through the dimly lit area, Bashir came to the last door. The one that led to the infirmary's attached morgue. It at least had one occupant.
He went in and stood looking down at the face of Ahrmant Wyoss. At peace, as though asleep . . .
"That was smart of you," said Bashir. There was as much pity as irony in his soft words. "You beat the rush."
She slept. And dreamed: again in air, in the night sky of her home planet. But not wrapped in fire this time; Kira felt only a cold emptiness in that place where her heart had been torn by a scouring wrath.
As though on a bed of stars, she turned, opening her eyes to look down upon the world below her. A cry of anguish caught in her throat, almost breaking through the silent chambers of her sleep.
Below her was ashes. And whitening bones. As though the contents of her stricken heart had covered the bared mountains and dry seabeds of Bajor. No living thing remained; all had been transformed to the denizens of this new, harsh landscape. The dead creatures of a dead world.
"No . . ." Kira tasted ashes upon her tongue. Her eyes squeezed shut. A single tear emerged and fell. It glistened diamondlike against the other cold sparks of light.
She saw it fall and strike the scorched, lifeless ground of Bajor, as though the tear had been a last, futile drop of rain.
She saw, as the night's sharp wind filled her clenched fists. She saw, but did not, could not, waken.
CHAPTER 15
She knew more than he did. Perhaps that was why she had made no more than a token protest when he had wanted to leave. As much as he had been her partner in the research up to this point, there were now things to be done—decisions to be made, actions to be taken—that would be easier without him.
Carefully, Dax set the rectangle of the glossy-black casing to one side of the lab bench. The innards of the CI module formed a glittering assemblage before her, the microcircuits like a maze rendered too fine for the humanoid eye to follow. There were mysteries locked inside the tiny components and networks of fibers that trembled at the touch of her breath, as she bent her face lower to study them. Some of the mysteries had been revealed, opened by the patient force of her investigation; others still waited, beckoning her to enter their domain. . . .
And the mysteries outside the CI modules, outside the boundaries of the station, entwined into the fabric of the universe; those had come closer, the pattern of data from the remote sensors growing clearer. The questions that were posed by the bits and pieces of information were more discernible, even if they still lacked answers. The connection between what was happening on the surface of Bajor and the web of seemingly random anomalies that had slowly formed both through and beneath space itself was real now, if still invisible. To others, but not to her. Bashir and the others would have been able to see it as well, if she hadn't made the decision to keep the growing data file a secret.
It would be a secret no longer. After Bashir had left, she had recorded another message, in addition to the research logs already in the computer's data banks. A private message, addressed to the only other person on board DS9 who would understand—not just what she had done, but why. She had tagged the message for a delayed delivery to the recipient; a delay of no more than an hour, but still enough to make her actions and their consequences irrevocable.
That message had been the last thing she'd needed to take care of. Now, sparks of light glowed along the circuits as Dax switched on the power supply that she and Bashir had rigged up for the CI module. Now that the last of the altered holosuites had been shut down on Sisko's orders, this device was the last functioning piece of the CI technology aboard the station. Like a caged animal, its tearing claws pulled to render it even less capable of harm—if Dax loosened the grip of her rational thought processes upon her imagination, she could almost feel the sense of sleeping danger contained by the object. But not entirely asleep; with the power activated, it seemed as if one of the glinting points was the corner of an eye, twitching open just enough to watch her, waiting for its chance to spring.
Stop that, commanded the wordless voice of the centuries-old symbiont inside her. The younger half of her share consciousness could sense the other's stern but patient tolerance of humanoid folly. Right now, the symbiont—with its accumulated wisdom, its perspective that reached beyond the births and deaths of its host bodies—served as an anchor against the running wild of her fears and dark fantasies. She was safe that way . . . yet at the same time, the humanoid part felt a twinge of resentment. It was easy enough for the symbiont to take a lofty, enlightened attitude; it hadn't walked around in the nightmare world that had been created in the altered holosuite for Ahrmant Wyoss. The CI modules' interference effect had divided her into two, and only one of those two had gone into that other world. The symbiont had had no knowledge of what she had seen and felt, the claustrophobic streets and decaying buildings, until their separate minds had been merged again into a single consciousness, and the symbiont had been able to examine the new memories presented to it.
The voice moved within her once more, bringing emotion into synch with wisdom. It was her voice that told her to go on with her work, with the tasks that she had made her own.
"Computer," she spoke aloud. "Initiate simulation sequence." Dax drew her hand back from the CI module.
"Sequence initiated and holding at input stasis level." As the computer's level voice responded to her order, a cluster of the module's filaments glowed brighter.
Inside the CI module, Dax knew, a little world had been created; one that was infinitesimally small, not even existing in the dimensions of physical space. Yet one that was still real enough, in the fluid and shifting definitions of reality that shehad come to embrace since beginning this investigation. The CI module's internal programming had been, at her command, set into motion; through the linked microcircuits, a loop held steady. And waiting.
"Increase power to operational level." She stood back from the device, her arms folded before her. "Break stasis and begin external effects relay."
"Warning—" The voice of the station's computer held no emotion. "Order as given will result in possible neurosystemic perception of simulated reality, as programmed within the subject device. You are advised to set field limits before proceeding."
Dax had heard the cautionary statement before; she had been the one who had entered it into the computer's data banks. She didn't need to be reminded, but if anyone else had come into the lab in her absence—such as Julian—and activated the CI module, the unanticipated results could have been dire.
"Set radiated field at one meter from center axis of subject module." She stood just within the sphere she had described. "Terminate field effect at maximum abruptness; no distance-algorithm taper to field strength."
"Settings established. External effects relay commenced."
She closed her eyes, placing herself in darkness as the CI module's reality expanded from a mathematical point of nothingness to a circumference that held her within. She could feel the reordering of the synapses inside her skull, the microscopic tug upon the delicate fibers of the nerve and brain cells. Like the pull of a magnet upon iron filings, the simplest possible demonstration of the touch of the unseen upon the visible—the image had struck her before, of how the CI technology worked. But an inexact simile: the magnet, whatever its powers, was an inanimate thing, without thought or volition. Whenever she had felt the CI module's effects, a disquieting certainty had risen within her, of a malign intelligence unfolding to embrace her own.