at the same moment that Earth's calendar starts a new century with the first day
of 240lA.C.E.?"
Her question was so incredibly naive, Sisko couldn't believe the Bajoran had
even asked it. "Coincidence, Commander." Now it was he who was expectant,
waiting for her to say something more, to somehow explain herself.
"Coincidence," she repeated thoughtfully, obviously not accepting his answer.
Sisko regarded her with puzzlement.
"Did you know," Arla said, "that an old Klingon calendar system reverts to the
Fourth Age of Kahless on that same date? That the Orthodox Andorian Vengeance
Cycle begins its 330th iteration then also? That that very same date is the one
given in Ferengi tradition when some groups celebrate the day the Great Material
River first overflowed its banks among the stars and, in the flood that
followed, created Ferenginar and the first Ferengi?"
As Arla recited her list, Sisko observed her gesticulate with one hand to
emphasize her words, and was fascinated to see the sudden action in microgravity
billow the commander's robes around her like seaweed
caught in a tidal current, pulsing back and forth in time with the slow,
floating motion of her earring chain.
"Seventeen different spacefaring cultures, Captain Sisko. That's how many worlds
have calendar systems that either reset or roll over to significant dates or new
counting cycles on the exact same day the two wormholes come into alignment.
Two systems coinciding is a coincidence. I'll give you that. Maybe even three or
four. But seventeen? There must be some better explanation for that. Wouldn't
you agree?"
Sisko took his time replying. He wished he knew the reasons behind the Bajoran
commander's sudden obsession with the timing of events and timekeeping systems
derived from religious traditions. When he had first met her on DS9, he
remembered being impressed by her intensity and by her drive to do the best
possible job. True, there had been an awkward moment when he had realized that
she was discreetly communicating her interest in getting to know him on a more
personal level, but she had responded properly and professionally the moment he
had made her aware of his relationship with Kasidy.
He had had no doubt that Arla would make her own mark in Starfleet. Though she
had little interest in taking command of a ship and had opted instead for a
career track in administration, some of Starfleet's best and most
forward-thinking strategic leaders had come from that same background.
But most of all, Sisko knew that Arla had been one of the rare few Bajorans who
were completely secular. By her own account, she had no faith in the Prophets.
To her, she had maintained to him, they were merely a race of advanced beings
who lived in a different dimensional environment, one which rendered communica-
tion between themselves and the life-forms of Arla's own dimension very
difficult. And she had told him emphatically on more than one occasion that the
Celestial Temple was simply a wormhole to her, worthy of study, not for
religious reasons, but because it was stable and apparently artificial.
So how did someone like that, he now thought, suddenly become so interested in
comparative religion? And even more intriguingly, why?
Sisko decided to change tactics. "Do you have an explanation?" he asked.
"I don't know," Arla answered simply.
"A theory then? Something that we could put to the test?"
A frown creased Arla's smooth forehead. "A week ago, if you had asked me about
the Stardate standard, I would have given the same answer you did. That it was
an arbitrary timekeeping system. That absolute time didn't exist any more than
absolute location." A fleeting smile erased her frown. The smile seemed slightly
nervous to Sisko. "What's that old saying, Captain? Everything's relative?"
"That's true, you know," Sisko said.
The Bajoran commander shook her head vehemently in disagreement. "No ... those
other timekeeping systems ... Terran, Bajoran, Klingon, Andorian... they're not
really arbitrary. They all share a common underpinning—not relative but
related."
"Commander." Sisko spoke in his best authoritative tone. "The calendar systems
you refer to date back thousands if not tens of thousands of years, to a time
before star travel. There is nothing to connect them."
"But there is." Arla's voice was rising with an urgency that was beginning to
concern Sisko. The source
of whatever had upset her was still not clear to him. "Don't you see? They all
came out of religion. They're all based on some form of creation story. And
maybe... maybe life arose independently on all those worlds, but maybe it also
all arose at the same time— from the same cause."
Sisko's concern changed to indignation. It appeared the Bajoran commander was
simply guilty of sloppy thinking. "Commander, for what you're proposing—
something for which there is no conclusive empirical proof, by the way—you might
as well credit the Preservers with having seeded life throughout the quadrant,
as much as invoke a supernatural force. There's about the same amount of
evidence for both theories."
Sisko couldn't help noticing Arla's hurt expression, as she came to the correct
realization that he considered her idea to be totally without merit. "Captain, I
was just trying to explain why I disagreed with the commonly accepted belief
that all the timekeeping systems were arbitrary. If they all stem from the same
act of creation by the Prophets, then it makes sense that they all come to an
end at the same time."
"Then what about Stardates?" Sisko asked. "Without question, that's a completely
artificial system based in me necessities of interstellar travel."
But Arla was not giving up so easily. "No, sir. You said it yourself. The need
for Stardates arose in part from the religious need to chart Earth's festivals
and holy days on other worlds. How do we know the religious scholars of the
time didn't build into their timekeeping system the same hidden knowledge that
underlies all the other systems in the quadrant?"
Sisko shifted in his accelerator seat, feeling the re-
straints securing him in place. He felt trapped in both the conversation and the
pod. It was all too obvious that he wasn't going to prevail in this argument As
soon as anyone brought up anything like "hidden knowledge," all possibility of
a debate based on available facts flew out the airlock. "I take it your
religious views have changed in the past few days," Sisko said in massive
understatement
'1 don't know," Arla said, her voice declining in intensity. At last, even she
was sounding weary now. Sisko knew how she felt. "What I do know is that there
has to be some sort of explanation," she said. "And as someone trained in the
scientific method, I have to keep my mind open to all possible explanations,
even the ones I might think are unlikely."
Sisko was aware that the Bajoran commander was chiding him for apparently
closing his own mind to the possibility of supernatural intervention in the
affairs of the
galaxy. But he felt secure in his approach. After all, he had
dealt with the Prophets firsthand. And though explanations from them were often
difficult to come by, subtlety was not their style. If there had been some sort
of connection between the Prophets and worlds other than Bajor, Sisko felt
certain that strong evidence for it would have turned up much earlier than now.
"An admirable position," he said in deliberate tones of finality, hoping that
Arla would understand and accept that he wanted no more part in this
conversation.
Just then the hull of the travelpod creaked, and a slight tremor moved through
the small craft.
'Tractor beam?" Arla asked.
"Or docking clamp. Do we seem to be slowing down?"
Immediately, Arla held out both her arms, and watched them as if trying to see
if they might respond
to a change in delta vee. But except for the undulations of the sleeves of her
robe, her arms remained motionless. "Some tractor beams have their own inertial
dampening effect," she said. "We could be spinning like a plasma coil right now
and not know it."
Sisko knew that was a possibility, though he didn't see the point. From what
he'd learned so far, the Ascendancy, for all its apparent capabilities, seemed
to be in favor of not expending any effort or supplies unless absolutely
necessary.
The lights suddenly flashed with almost blinding intensity, and there was
another scrape and a stronger metallic bang, followed by the sound of rushing
air. Sisko looked to the pressure door.
"That'll probably be an airlock sealing against the hull "Arla said.
"Not on DS9," Sisko said. "If we were at a docking port on a pylon or the main
ring, we'd be within the artificial gravity field."
Arla was looking at him with concern. "Then where did we go? To another ship?"
"I don't know," Sisko said. He braced himself against his restraints and half
twisted in his chair to face the door. He debated the wisdom of releasing the
restraints, but if a gravity field did switch on suddenly, he couldn't be sure
in which direction he might fall.
A new vibration shook the hull—something fast, almost an electrical hum.
"We're changing velocity," Arla said.
Sisko saw the chain of her earring slowly begin to flutter down until it hung
beside her neck. But whether it was the effect of acceleration or the beginning
of a gravity field there was no way to tell. Einstein had de-
termined that almost five hundred years ago and that, too, was still true.
And then both he and Arla were abruptly shaken as a loud bang erupted in the
pod. The sound seemed to come from the direction of the door.
The next bang was even louder but not as startling.
The third deformed the door, and Sisko tensed as he heard a hiss of air
indicating that atmospheric integrity had been lost around the door's seal.
But when the pressure within the pod didn't seem to change appreciably, Sisko
revised his deduction. They had docked with or somehow been taken aboard
another vessel whose atmosphere was slightly different from the pod's.
A fourth bang rocked the pod. The door creaked and swung open.
Beyond the pod's simple portal Sisko glimpsed a pale-yellow light fixture
shining within a dark airlock. He could just make out the curve of a Cardassian
door wheel in the gloom.
"This is the station," he exclaimed. He touched the release tabs on his
restraints and pushed himself from the chair. His feet gently made contact with
the floor of the pod. Automatically, Sisko estimated gravity at about one-tenth
Earth normal.
He nodded at Arla, who then released herself to stand on the floor, still
holding the loose restraints to keep herself from bouncing into the pod's low
ceiling.
With extreme caution, Sisko began moving toward the open portal. The glare from
the single dim light fixture in the airlock prevented him from seeing through
the viewport in the far door. All he could be sure of was mat whatever was
beyond, it was in the dark as well.
He stepped from the pod into the airlock, almost falling as normal gravity
suddenly took over.
The moment he regained his footing he took hold of Arla's arm. "Careful. They
must be able to focus gravity fields better than we could."
"Who?" Arla asked, as she cautiously entered the more powerful field.
"Knowing Weyoun, this is probably some game he's devised."
"Or a trap."
"He already had us," Sisko reminded her. He pushed his face against the
viewport, cupping his hands around his eyes to shield his vision and squinting
to see some sort of detail in whatever lay beyond. But the darkness there was
absolute.
A sudden mechanical grinding noise caused him to spin around. He saw the other
wheel door roll shut, cutting off any chance of their returning to the pod. In
any event, with the pressure door damaged—by what? Sisko suddenly wondered—the
pod would not be the safest place to be.
Another rush of air popped his ears. Oddly enough, the effect made Sisko feel
better, because he knew it meant that when the second wheel door opened there
would be an atmosphere on the other side.
He turned to check on Arla. "Are you all right?"
Silent, she nodded, slowly raising her hand to point toward the second wheel
door, her eyes wide with alarm.
And then just as the second door began to roll Sisko caught sight of what had
disturbed her. For just an instant, through the moving viewport, against the
darkness of what lay beyond, two eyes glowed red.
accomplish with this bit of theater was beyond him.
Then a sudden wind of hot, damp air from beyond the airlock swept over him in a
rush, and he gagged at the sweet, fetid stench that accompanied it Behind him,
Arla did the same.
Sisko looked up, eyes watering, the sharp taste of bile hi his mouth, knowing
that whatever else lay in the darkness, there were organic bodies, rotting.
Then, from out of the darkness, the two red eyes approached him.
Sisko's vision was still blurry in the assault of that terrible smell, but with
a sudden tensing of his stomach he realized that the shadowy outlines of the
figure who was entering the airlock indicated someone taller than Weyoun. And
those shoulders—
It was a Cardassian!
Arla cried out in fear behind him.
A powerful hand closed around Sisko's throat, its cold grip unnaturally strong.
Red eyes of fire blazed down at him.
And Sisko recognized the creature who held his life in one gray hand.
It was Dukat!
CHAPTER 15
"where are my people?" Worf growled.
Normally, Jadzia didn't like to see her husband give himself over to typical
Klingon confrontational techniques. But in this case, as Worf glared down at
Captain T'len Jadzia was in full agreement. There were too many unanswered
questions and too little time to use diplomacy.
T'len stepped back from Worf, her Vulcan features revealing no outward sign of
intimidation. Her
gaze, however, moved almost imperceptibly to the closed door
leading from the planning room to the corridor, as if checking for a path of
retreat Good, Jadzia thought Here was where having three hundred years of
experience paid off. And her experience was telling her now that mere was seldom
a better person to negotiate with than a Vulcan who had a logical reason to cut
negotiations short.
She watched as T'len tugged down on her black
tunic. "If you wish to determine the fate of your family members," the Vulcan
captain told Worf, "you have been instructed in accessing Starfleet computers
for all pertinent personnel records."
Jadzia hid a smile as Worf slammed his massive fist down on the table beside
him, causing a large schematic padd to jump several centimeters into the air and
spilling a coffee mug onto the floor. Klingons could be so messy. It was one of
their most endearing traits, she thought as she regarded her mate with loving
pride.
"I am not talking about my family," Worf shouted. "I know my parents have passed
on to Sto-Vo-Kor. I know my brother died in the evacuation of Lark 53.1 am
asking, What happened to the Klingon people? And I want an answer now!"
T'len narrowed her eyes, in what was to Jadzia a rather startling and misguided
display of unalloyed Vulcan defiance.
"Or you'll do what, Commander?"
Worf didn't hesitate an instant. Jadzia expected no less of him. Once her mate
made up his mind to do something, she knew little could dissuade him.
"Or I will kill you where you stand," Worf said.
T'len raised a dark, sculpted eyebrow. "You wouldn't dare."
"I would rather die battling my enemies than wait passively for the universe to
end."
T'len looked past Worf at Jadzia. "Will you talk sense into your husband?"
Jadzia took a moment to enjoy the undercurrent of fear in T'len's voice. It was
so satisfying when people had their worldviews turned upside down. As she had
discovered in her many different lifetimes, on a per-
sonal level few events proved more rewarding. Though it might, of course, lake
some time for the person caught in such turmoil to realize it.
She shrugged as if completely powerless in this situation, though she and Worf
had carefully rehearsed the moment—and this confrontation. "What can I say? You