Kalisi nodded slowly. "And you don"t have high enough security clearance to access it."
"That"s right." Miras felt a tinge of shame, for she didn"t want her old friend to think that asking this favor was the only reason she"d contacted her. "I thought of you instantly, because I haven"t seen you in such a long time, and wanted to catch up anyway-"
Kalisi laughed. "It"s all right, Miras. I"ll clear you to have a look at the object. I can arrange for it to be sent to one of the laboratories here at the ministry-would that be all right?"
Miras nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, that would be perfect. Thank you so much, Kalisi. In the meantime-would you like to have lunch with me?"
It was Kalisi"s turn to look uncomfortable. "Actually, I can"t. I wish I could, but my responsibilities right now...I usually eat lunch in my laboratory, while waiting for my downloads to complete."
Miras decided that she didn"t envy her friend"s position. There was no one pressuring her for results. "Another time then, perhaps?"
"Yes. Let"s not make it quite such a long time between calls, shall we?"
Miras quickly agreed, and Kalisi ran her thumbscan on a security padd to allow Miras access to a vacant laboratory in the main building"s lower level. "Room 109-green," Kalisi told her before they parted company. "Wait there while I arrange the artifact"s retrieval."
Miras wasted little time, feeling a strange kind of giddy antic.i.p.ation as she walked to the lab. She didn"t know what she expected to find, looking at the object again, but she"d realized only recently that her strange dreams had begun shortly after her exposure to it. They"d been intermittent at first, but as the months had pa.s.sed, as she"d settled into her new career, the dream had grown in frequency and clarity, almost becoming a part of her. She"d done more extensive research on the artifact and its possible origins in what spare time she had, and when she"d learned that the objects were said to inspire visions, she had made up her mind that she needed to see it again.
And it"s not as though I have anything better to do... She"d had a brief, unhappy romance with one of her co-workers soon after coming to the ministry, a man who had since transferred to the private sector; she was not ready to engage in another relationship anytime soon, much to the displeasure of her rather traditional family. Pursuing this minor mystery had become something of a fixation for her, one she was eager to solve. The sooner she could put this behind her, the better. She"d had a brief, unhappy romance with one of her co-workers soon after coming to the ministry, a man who had since transferred to the private sector; she was not ready to engage in another relationship anytime soon, much to the displeasure of her rather traditional family. Pursuing this minor mystery had become something of a fixation for her, one she was eager to solve. The sooner she could put this behind her, the better.
The lab was small but brightly lit. Within an hour of her arrival, the artifact was once again transported in its shipping container. She thumbed the lock and lifted the heavy object onto the work table, thinking that perhaps she had lost her mind, after all. If she"d told Kalisi that she"d started to believe she was having visions of ancient Carda.s.sia...
Just thinking it made her feel incredibly foolish, but she"d come this far; she was determined to see her folly through. She looked at the thing, the case-the "ark," in Bajoran vernacular. It did not appear that the object had been disturbed since she had seen it last. Traces of red Bajoran dirt still smeared the outside of the container and rested in the crevices of the characters and stones that stood in relief from the object"s flat paneled sides.
Miras ran her fingertips down the side of the object, as she had before, wondering if she would be able to open it again. Perhaps there had never been an opening, she thought to herself; perhaps she had been slowly losing her mind ever since her first encounter with this thing. Why not? Maybe the Bajorans had visions because of some mind-altering chemical in the materials of the box, or in the Orb itself, one that gave Carda.s.sian women frustrating dreams and irrational notions. But the seam was indeed there.
Miras gently pried at the corner...and stepped back in amazement as a brilliant light spilled from the vertical opening in the case. She knew she should be closing the case, calling for help, but the sense of tranquillity that she recalled from her prior experience had returned, compelling her to further open the case. The Orb inside was illuminated so brightly that she could not even make out its size or shape, and after a moment, she could see nothing at all, nothing but a white, piercing light that flooded her vision, her reality, her thoughts.
Blind and confused, she struggled to maintain her senses. From a pinpoint of distinction within the harsh flood of brilliant light, the shimmering figure of a woman began to appear.
"Miras." The Hebitian woman"s voice was as gently rolling as the hills of the surrounding farmland, melting into place all around Miras as the impossible whiteness began to recede. "I have been waiting."
It was the dream...But this was no dream, this was happening. The woman led Miras inside the spa.r.s.ely furnished little house of black brick, and walked to the heavy wood table. She reached into the obsidian box- -and brought out the mask, turning to Miras. Miras half expected everything to dissolve as it always did as soon as the mask appeared, but she knew better, too. This, this whatever it was, vision, vision, was real. was real.
"The mask of Oralius," the woman said, and handed it to her.
"Oralius," Miras repeated, taking the delicate carving. She frowned. The Oralians had been a cult of some kind that had been extinct in the Carda.s.sian Union since Miras was barely more than an infant. It was something that was rarely discussed, a topic that seemed distasteful to most, a superst.i.tious holdover from an unfortunate time.
"Go ahead," the graceful Hebitian woman coaxed, and Miras slipped the mask over her face.
She turned to find herself alone in the house-but it wasn"t the same house anymore. This new place was made of cool stones, coated thinly with delicate mats of velvety green foliage. Miras could smell the pungent odor of food cooking, foreign and overpowering. The ceiling was very tall, accommodating a rickety wooden ladder that stretched to a sleeping loft against the far wall. The loft was equipped with a door, situated very near the peak of the ceiling. Miras watched as an old man, an alien man with smooth, ruddy skin and an oddly slender neck, climbed up to the loft and exited through the door. After a beat, Miras followed him. He"d walked out onto a large wooden porch that overlooked part of a lush forest, with trees so giant and bizarre that Miras knew with certainty that she was not on Carda.s.sia Prime.
Bajor? She believed so. She believed so.
The man seemed unaware of her presence, and Miras continued to follow him as he walked down a set of stairs that had been built against the side of the porch, toward the back of the small home. When he reached the ground, he lifted a wooden hatch that revealed yet another staircase, this one curving down into an underground pa.s.sage that had been dug next to the foundation. Miras seemed to float after him down the darkened steps and into a small chamber. The man did not sense her presence as he knelt down before a little hollow in the wall, a hollow that accommodated a four-sided object, tiled, bejeweled, with an oval lens on each face. Miras knew what he would do before he even did it; he opened the ark, and brilliant light spilled into the room.
She shielded her eyes from the glare of the Orb, washed over again with light before the room suddenly went dim. As her eyes adjusted, she found that she had been transported to yet another place-a room lined with books, and there were two other men in the room with her, Bajoran men. The cold, heavy air smelled of incense. From what Miras had read on the subject, the Bajorans" clothes indicated that they were religious officials of some kind. In fact, she knew who they were, she knew what their raiment denoted without quite knowing how she knew it. These men were Kai Arin and Vedek Gar Osen. The names and t.i.tles were unfamiliar, but she knew them anyway.
The men were engaged in an argument, a debate, perhaps, but Miras could not be sure what they were saying. One man, the younger, departed the room-dismissed, she thought. The older man sat down at a desk and began to read from a book, a very old one.
Miras tried to call to the older man, for she was convinced that he was in danger, and when she saw the first man reenter the room, she became sure of it. The younger man crept up behind the elder and slid his hands around his narrow throat.
Miras tried to scream, to move, but she could only watch, silent and still and horrified as the old man thrashed in futile resistance, as his attempts to break free grew weaker. She tried to pull at the mask she wore, hoping that if it were removed she would be transported away from here, this nightmarish experience concluded, but her limbs were like fog and she had no control over her hands, her fingers. She was not even sure if she was inhabiting her own body anymore.
The younger man closed the book that the dead man had been reading, and removed the ceremonial headpiece from his lifeless body. The vision became more dreamlike, blurry and indistinct, things occurring in a jerky, clicking fashion. The murderer looked up, and Miras wanted to shield herself and could not. He seemed to be looking for someone, looking for her-and she realized suddenly that he, too, was wearing a mask, one that bore a strong resemblance to her own. He hadn"t been wearing one before, she was sure of it. He seemed to be looking right at her, and he reached up and pulled his mask away- -and Miras was finally taken away from the unfortunate scene, just as she registered that the face beneath the mask was no longer Bajoran.
It had been Carda.s.sian.
There was almost no time to consider what it meant, for Miras was suddenly home again, at the very center of Carda.s.sia City, the environment grainy and one-dimensional, like a very old image capture. She recognized it, but at the same time she did not-for the capital of Carda.s.sia Prime lay in ruins, great heaps of smoking rubble and debris blocking the streets, the aftermath of a devastating attack. Bodies were everywhere, Carda.s.sian men, women, and children. The stench of death and burning composite was terrible, cloying.
In horror and panic, Miras squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried once again to tear the mask from her face. At last, she was successful. When she opened her eyes again, she was in the laboratory, the Orb case was closed, and someone was pounding on the door. Before Miras had time to think, Kalisi burst into the room, her face reading fearful bewilderment.
"Miras! What happened in here? The inventory staff was trying to contact you, and the ministry computer indicated that you weren"t in the room-that you weren"t even in the building! building! They tried to transport the object out but they couldn"t get a lock on it. They called me because the artifact was under my clearance, but then my thumbscan wouldn"t open the door!" They tried to transport the object out but they couldn"t get a lock on it. They called me because the artifact was under my clearance, but then my thumbscan wouldn"t open the door!"
Miras tried to slow her own frightened breathing back to normal, but she was still continuing to receive images and thoughts that were not her own, like faded pictures in a dream, like connections made in deepest slumber.
"Kalisi...I have seen the devastation of Carda.s.sia Prime. I have seen...there is a man on Bajor...his name is Gar Osen...but...but it isn"t his real name. He-he isn"t really a Bajoran, he"s there to-oh, he must not find the final Orb! Carda.s.sia will be destroyed!"
Kalisi"s eyes widened in concern and confusion, and Miras realized how utterly insane her ramblings must sound. Whatever had happened to her, she felt she must not embarra.s.s herself or her friend.
"Forgive me," she said. "I...believe I need to eat something. How long have I been in here?"
"All afternoon," Kalisi told her, placing her hand on Miras"s arm. "I think food is a very good idea." She glanced at the object as it was transported back to storage, her expression even more anxious than before, and Miras stumbled along after her friend, trying to straighten out her thoughts.
"There must have been a malfunction with the linkup to this lab," Miras suggested. "That must be why you couldn"t contact me, why the object wouldn"t transport to the storage facility."
"Of course," Kalisi said. "It might also explain why my thumbscan didn"t work at first." She did not sound especially convinced. "Miras, I think I will take you up on your earlier offer of a meal. It would do us both good, I think, to catch up a bit. It has been a long time."
"Yes," Miras agreed. "Too long." Her head was finally beginning to clear, and she felt foolish for the nonsense that she had just sputtered, and unnerved by the things she had seen. There had to be a scientific explanation for what had happened, some technology-obviously, it had produced a dampening effect on the ministry"s computer system. Considering the chaos she had caused, she knew that she would not get another chance to look at the Orb. And considering what she"d seen, she thought that that was just as well.
Lenaris Holem was dozing in his makeshift home when someone rapped heavily on his door. He stumbled to answer, blinking in the orange light of the setting sun. The visitor proved to be Ornathia Delle, a round-faced woman of about thirty, one of the people who was conspiring to help Taryl get her brother off Terok Nor.
"Holem," she whispered, looking around nervously. "Taryl says she"s found something that could help us rescue Lac." She hunched down slightly, as if it would make the pitch of her voice even lower. "Someone contacted her-someone who says they"ve been on the station."
Lenaris stepped out into the dying sunlight. "I"ll go talk to her," he said.
Delle shook her head. "She says not to. She said Seefa is getting suspicious."
Lenaris was getting tired of sneaking around behind Seefa"s back. Since he"d come to stay with the Ornathias, he"d finally begun to understand why Taryl cared for Seefa; for all his pessimism and neurotic habits, the quirky young man was very bright and entirely devoted to Taryl. Still, if Seefa didn"t like what they were up to, perhaps he should go elsewhere. Ignoring Delle"s warnings, Lenaris headed for Taryl"s house.
A few steps from her door, Lenaris was intercepted by Seefa, who looked troubled. Lenaris attempted to walk right past him, but Seefa addressed him directly. It seemed he"d just left Taryl, as he kept glancing back at her door.
"Seefa." Lenaris nodded in turn, trying to sound casual. "I"ve just come to check on the progress of those new sensors that Taryl said she was working on."
Seefa didn"t seem suspicious, only worried, and maybe even sad. "She"s very upset about Lac," he said, almost to himself. "I"m foolish to be putting pressure on her right now."
Lenaris was puzzled. It was not unusual for Seefa to suddenly blurt out strange pieces of personal information, but that didn"t make this any easier to understand. "I suppose that"s wise, considering her brother"s disappearance."
"It"s just...we"ve been engaged our entire lives. I don"t understand why we can"t just make it official. Taryl says that the middle of the Carda.s.sian occupation is no time for a wedding. But I think she"s wrong. We have to be able to go on with certain aspects of our lives; we have to be able to occasionally indulge ourselves with small measures of happiness where we can take it. Don"t you think I"m right, Holem?"
Lenaris knew better than to get in a disagreement with Seefa, or even a discussion about how to live one"s life. Taryl"s betrothed was not the sort of person that one wanted to engage in argument; he was perpetually answering questions with more questions, or changing the subject so that any specific aspect of a discussion would never be fully addressed. Brilliant, perhaps, but tiresome.
"Sure," Lenaris said. "Yes." His heart dipped as he said it. He continued to work to put his own feelings for Taryl aside, all too aware that they were wasted. Although it wasn"t what he truly wanted, he"d resigned himself to being her friend a long time before.
He looked out to the west, where the old road had once been. He thought he had seen a moving object in the sideline of his vision. In fact, there was was something moving. It was a person, that much was clear, but whether it was male or female, Bajoran or Carda.s.sian, it was much harder to tell in the fading light. something moving. It was a person, that much was clear, but whether it was male or female, Bajoran or Carda.s.sian, it was much harder to tell in the fading light.
Lenaris walked a little closer to have a better look, Seefa following. After a moment, Lenaris could be fairly certain that the person was a Bajoran, probably a woman, and...she wore the raiment of a monk.
"It"s Winn Adami," Seefa said.
"Who?"
"She"s well known around here. She has long been advocating for a full-scale effort to repair the irrigation systems. Her order does not approve of the departure from the D"jarra D"jarras-she"s in favor of fighting the Carda.s.sians, but she thinks the fighting should be left to others. She believes our responsibility is to feed Bajor, not to fight for it."
"Does she come to preach the castes, then?"
Seefa shrugged. "I imagine she has more reason than that. She disagrees with us, but she"s still very well respected. Several years ago, she bribed a Carda.s.sian official who was sending a large group of Bajorans from a nearby village to be executed. Because of her intervention, the shuttle was diverted to a work camp. She saved their lives."
"Really?" Lenaris squinted.
"Yes, really." Seefa sounded annoyed. He tended to take offense at any perceived slight. "I had more than one relative on that shuttle. She must be coming to see someone here."
Lenaris decided the business about Terok Nor could wait until later. "Let"s go out and meet her, then. Bring her some water. She must have come a long way."
Seefa appeared to agree without actually speaking, and together the two men fetched a gourd full of clean water before they began to walk along the dusty road to meet with the approaching traveler.
"Ranjen Winn!" Seefa called as they drew near her. "What brings you all the way out here?"
The monk appeared to be slightly younger than Lenaris himself. She was fair of complexion, probably originally from the north, with ruddy spots flaming high upon her cheeks-the day had been hot. Her pale hair was twisted into complicated designs at the back of her head, her eyes gla.s.sy in their colorlessness.
"Aro Seefa. h.e.l.lo." She accepted the gourd that he offered her, and after taking a small sip she reached out and took his ear to read his pagh. pagh. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again as she released his ear. "You are troubled," she said. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again as she released his ear. "You are troubled," she said.
"Not any more than usual, Ranjen."
She smiled tightly. "I have come to speak to someone in your village."
"Oh? May I ask who?"
"Ornathia Taryl. Can you take me to her?"
"Taryl? Of course." Seefa offered her the gourd again, and she took another sip, eyeing Lenaris with what seemed to be mild suspicion.
The three started to walk toward the village together, Winn continuing to look Lenaris up and down as if she did not trust him. "You are not one of the Ornathias," she observed.
"My name is Lenaris Holem. I"m from Relliketh."
"I"ve never seen you here before."
"I"ve been here about two years now."
"Two years." Winn turned to Seefa. "Can it really have been that long?"
"It was almost four years ago that you were here last, Ranjen," Seefa said.
"Four years," she said, her expression unreadable. "And I am still but a lowly ranjen."
Lenaris was not sure how to respond to her. The revelation was spoken without emotion, yet it seemed to upset the woman. They reached the village without further conversation, and the two men escorted her to Taryl"s hut, though she already seemed to know where to go.
"Ornathia Taryl," Winn said formally as she entered Taryl"s hut. Lenaris and Seefa stepped inside behind her.
Taryl was, as usual, working on something. She stood up from her bench and bowed before the monk.
"Now, my child, there"s no need for that. I am hardly the kai-or even a vedek."
"You honor us with your presence, Ranjen."
Winn looked pleased at being addressed with such respect. "I have come with news of your brother Lac."
"Lac?" Taryl"s hand floated to her chest, and Lenaris saw, for a beat, the emotion that she was denying herself. It was gone just as quickly, that veil of restraint back in place.
"One of the prylars in my order just returned from the Pullock system," Winn said. "It seems the Carda.s.sians have a prison camp there, on Pullock V. As you may know, the Carda.s.sians permit some religious officials to give counsel to their prisoners, if it is requested. One of the prisoners on Pullock V specifically requested that an official from my order be sent. That prisoner was Lac."
"Lac!" Taryl exclaimed. "He is is alive!" alive!"
"He"s not at Terok Nor!" This was Seefa. "I knew it, Taryl. I told you it would have been foolish to go there!"
"To Terok Nor!" Winn looked appalled at the very suggestion. "What kind of foolishness is this?"
"Nothing, Ranjen," Taryl said, shooting her fiance a look of urgent fury. "Please, tell us what you know of my brother."
The ranjen was clearly unsettled, but she continued. "Lac wanted to be sure to send back word to you that he is alive.... He doesn"t believe the Carda.s.sians took possession of his ship-"
"He"s letting us know that we"re still safe!" Lenaris exclaimed. Winn glared at him, and he apologized quickly. "Forgive me, Ranjen." He turned to Taryl. "I"ve seen star charts of the Pullock system-it"s not far from our own."
Taryl turned to Lenaris. "Are you saying what I think you"re saying?"
"What is the meaning of this?" Winn demanded.
Lenaris continued to talk as if Winn weren"t there. "Tiven Cohr," he said.
"No," Seefa argued. "Enough with the warp ship, already. Even if your friend could could fix it, you"re guaranteed a death sentence if you leave the atmosphere in that ship." fix it, you"re guaranteed a death sentence if you leave the atmosphere in that ship."
"You"re underestimating what kind of a pilot Halpas Palin is," Lenaris informed him. "He fought the Carda.s.sians in the early stages of the occupation. If anyone can do it, Halpas can. If I leave now, I can get to where he and Tiven live by tomorrow morning."
He smiled at Taryl, ever so slightly. "I"ll even apologize, if that"s what it takes."
Ranjen Winn was visibly agitated by this talk, looking back and forth between Taryl and Lenaris. "Any foolhardy attempts to travel offworld will only result in lives lost, more Bajoran prisoners in Carda.s.sian camps!" she admonished.
Taryl turned to the holy woman. "He"s my brother," she said simply, and went right back speaking to Lenaris. "You would do it, then? You would contact Tiven Cohr-even after what he said?"