A shadow fell across them.
"You see?" McHogue's delight was evident as he turned his face toward the sky. "I think it's admirable," he said fiercely, "that your old friend would come all this way for your sake. Especially when I know how terrified he is, deep inside."
Jadzia looked at the dark-clothed figure with contempt and loathing. "I very much doubt that Benjamin Sisko has any fear of you."
"Ah, well . . ." McHogue shrugged. "You've been acquainted with him so much longer than I have. Or at least that other part of you has, that part you didn't bring along with you when you came to pay me a visit here. But you forget that I've had some experience of our mutual friend that's a little different from yours. A little more . . . internal. There's nothing like walking around with somebody inside their deepest nightmares, to give you that sense of really getting to know him."
"But that's all you would know of him. Or anyone."
"Touché, Jadzia. That's a point well taken; I'd be the first to admit that my view of my fellow sentient creatures might be a bit on the jaundiced side. Though I'm glad to see that the argumentative tendency is still active in you." McHogue's expression turned glum as he gazed across the landscape of bones, like intricate snow sloping down from the peak on which he stood with Dax. "My one substantial regret about this glorious enterprise upon which I have embarked is that it's all been too easy. People just fold and toss in their hands, without putting up a fight. It all makes me rather nostalgic for those pleasant, innocent days when I was defrauding people in partnership with that rascal Quark. There were times when I had a knife put to my throat over a gold-pressed latinum chip no bigger than your fingernail. That was fun. Oh, well . . ." He slowly shook his head. "Can't be helped. I suppose it's what comes with selling a product that everybody wants. Immortality inside me, an expanded form of existence, the satiation of every perverted desire—you know, if I had it to do all over again, I might have made the deal slightly less attractive to the customers. So my salesmanship skills wouldn't have gotten so rusty."
The image's self-aggrandizing rhetoric nauseated Jadzia. It was as much to blank out McHogue's voice, as from any hope of rescue, that she focused her attention on the runabout that had appeared in the sky overhead. She recognized it as one of DS9's; her own expectations told her that Sisko was piloting it.
"Well done!" McHogue registered genuine approval as the runabout touched down and came to a halt in what had been Moagitty's grand concourse; there had been just space enough along the rows of decapitated pillars for the craft to glide to its landing. "Such professionalism—but then, we really wouldn't have expected much less, would we?" He glanced round at her.
Jadzia made no reply; the relief she felt at Sisko's appearance in the runabout's hatch was like a rush of oxygen into her lungs.
"My dear commander; it's always such a pleasure to see you." McHogue made a small bow toward him. "And especially on such a reciprocal basis. Not that I mind always coming to your place. It's just the thought that counts, I suppose."
Sisko had sprinted the few meters from the runabout's landing point. He grasped Jadzia by the arm. "Are you all right?"
She nodded. "I'll be fine . . . soon as I'm away from here. And I'm reconjoined with my symbiont. You know, don't you, about—"
"Bashir found the last research notes you logged into the station's computer. That, plus the message you sent me, was enough to fill us in on your plans." Sisko nodded toward the runabout. "The CI field has apparently coalesced here; once we're out of actual physical proximity to its locus, the effects upon you should be reversible—just as if you had been able to step backward from the module aboard the station. Then you'll be able to merge your neurosystem's processes with those of Dax again."
"Maybe; maybe not." Arms folded across his chest, McHogue had listened to the words between Sisko and Jadzia. "They calculate poorly, who don't take me into account—at least around here, that is." He shook his head in disbelief. "What, you think you can just drop in, refuse my hospitality, and take off whenever you feel like it? Really, Commander Sisko, I had thought Starfleet officers had more of an education in diplomatic etiquette than that. After all, there is an official relationship between us—I still am the Bajoran Minister of Trade."
"I hardly think your status applies any longer." Jadzia glared angrily at him. "Not when you've managed to turn the whole planet into a charnel house—"
A look of confusion crossed Sisko's face. "What are you talking about?"
"You'll have to forgive her, Commander." McHogue's smile became tolerant and knowing. "My fault, really. When you entered Bajor's atmosphere, your approach path was above the capital, so no doubt you saw the population there in relatively good health, all things considered; perhaps just a little battered from this spate of bad weather we've been having. Of course, there's no need to thank me for this brief respite I arranged just for your arrival—as I've always maintained, I am by nature a hospitable entity. Even more so, now that I've come into my own, as it were. Be that as it may, Commander; you're really only standing on the doorstep of my world." He gestured toward Jadzia. "Your colleague, however, has been inside and enjoying my company for some time now—though ordinary notions of time are not strictly applicable here. Let's just say that she's come to see the situation in its more fully developed state. When the weak and fallible flesh has been discarded, so that all who came here can assume the immortality they sought."
"He's insane, Benjamin." A trace of what Jadzia had learned from her symbiont emerged inside, enabling her to speak with clinical dispassion of the image standing before them. "There's no difference now between him and this world he's created. I had thought that I could come here and somehow change things; I believed that the rational nature of the universe outside—its original nature, before this madness began—I thought that could be brought to this place, like light into darkness. I was wrong." She grasped Sisko's arm, drawing him away from McHogue. "He's stronger than that; the infection from the CI modules has grown even more powerful than before. We should return to the station immediately; perhaps there is still some way we can find to limit the damage to the surrounding universe."
She saw the effect her words had upon her friend. Silent, Benjamin looked up at the sky. Or what had been, in this world, a simulation of Bajor's sky; now jagged lines of force could be seen writhing in it, shadow and fire intermingled, as though reality had become no more than a sheet of paper being crumpled in a gigantic fist.
McHogue's smile had faded with each of her words; the image's dark gaze took in both Sisko and Jadzia. "Now I amannoyed." The voice was a humorless, grating sound. "After all I've done for both of you—taken you in, shown you things you would never have imagined. I was even willing to let our little differences be forgotten, to welcome you here and make you part of all I've accomplished. You should have considered that a measure of my respect for you. And was any of that respect returned to me?" From the depths of his brooding, McHogue regarded them. "Fine; that's what I get for being nice to the marks. Well, no more of that." He straightened his arm, index finger pointing to the center of Sisko's chest. "You want to leave here? All right, I'll make it easy for you. But you might be surprised about what you find when you get home."
Jadzia saw the blow coming, the hand curling into a fist. She tried to pull Benjamin out of its path, but was too late.
As close as she had been, she was still unable to discern exactly what happened. Which had been real, and which illusion. The fist or its target; they seemed to pass, one into the other, illusions overlapped and mingled—