Dukat said hi the awful silence. "You must accept the truth, Emissary. It is
now, and you are very much here."
"I don't believe you," Sisko insisted, feeling dazed and doubtful. Arla wasn't
dying, couldn't be dying, not in the wormhole. "There was a flash of light in
the trav-elpod," he told Dukat. "Like an Orb being opened. That's when all this
started."
"True," Dukat agreed. "Except that the light was my transporter, not an Orb."
Sisko fell to his knees and placed a hand on Arla's throat. Nothing. No pulse
this time. He struggled to remember something Weyoun had said. "But
transporters aren't allowed in the Bajoran system."
"Have you asked yourself why that should be?" Dukat asked. "What Weyoun is
really afraid of?"
"He's afraid of attack." Sisko didn't know why he
felt compelled to answer the madman—unless it was the influence of the Prophets.
The light in Dukat's red eyes flared again. "Or is he afraid of escape?"
"Escape to where, Dukat?' Sisko asked in frustration. Then Arla's pulse
quickened to sudden life under mis hand. "You see," he said in triumph, "she's
not dead!"
"Emissary, I can't believe you're being this obtuse. Look where you are."
"Deep Space 9!"
"Yet that station was destroyed, was it not?'
"The Defiant was restored! Obviously the station was too."
Dukat shook his head ponderously. "But it wasn't"
Sisko had had enough. Arla was alive. So was he. Where there was life there was
something to fight for. "Then how can we be here?"
Dukat's eyes glowed with insanity. "It's as easy as looking into a mirror and—"
A silver beam sliced through the air, smashing Dukat to one side.
Sisko recognized a directed-energy weapon attack when he saw one, and
reflexively he grabbed Arla and pulled her back, to shield her.
But she fought in his grip. "Let go of me! You're no better man—"
Her body stiffened. Her protest ceased. She saw what Sisko saw.
For all around them, in the ruins of what once had been Sisko's Deep Space 9,
from every dark shadow and alcove...
The dead walked.
CHAPTER 17
in the company of Dr. Bashir, Jake walked along the corridor of the Utopia
personnel dome heading for the planning room, where they were to meet Jadzia
and Worf.
The doctor had said little since the mess hall, where Jake had told him about
Nog's lie. At least what Jake had suspected was a lie.
For once he had seen Bashir's reaction to what he had described, once he had
realized the danger they all faced because of it, Jake had gone over his last
conversation with his friend, reconsidering, worried that he might have jumped
to an unwarranted conclusion.
"What if he's not lying?" Jake asked Bashir.
The doctor kept walking briskly. "I was waiting for you to say that."
"No, really," Jake said as his long legs kept easy pace with Bashir. "What if
Nog's changed in the past twenty-five years? What if... if I misread the signs?"
'Think of it this way, Jake. There conies a time when each of us has to trust
our instincts. And I trust your instincts from a time when you had no idea what
the repercussions of your observations would be more than I trust your rather
predictable second-guessing of yourself now that you're aware of the danger in
which you've placed your friend."
Jake was intimidated by Bashir. He knew the man was genetically enhanced, like
some latter-day Khan Noonien Singh. How could he argue with someone whose brain
was the equivalent of a computer?
But he had to.
"Dr. Bashir, I'm not doing this to save Nog."
Without breaking stride, Bashir shot him an amused smile that let Jake know that
was exactly what he was doing.
"Look!" Jake finally said, and for emphasis he stopped dead.
"I'll... I'll go tell Nog myself what you're—"
It took a few steps before Bashir realized Jake was no longer beside him. The
doctor turned and came back to him, looking irritated. "You will do no such
thing!" Bashir hissed. "I know what it's like to lose a friend, Jake. But you
what pressures he's been exposed to, what compromises he's had to make, all the
little capitulations and loss of ideals that accompany adulthood. The fact is,
you don't know Nog anymore. You can't know him."
Jake felt his face grow hot. "Then why should you accept what I said about his
maybe lying to us about the Phoenix's chances?"
"Because that wasn't a conclusion based on friend-
ship," Bashir said. "It was a straight observation, devoid of emotion."
"You mean, like I was a Vulcan," Jake said, depressed at the turn this
conversation was taking.
"Say what you will, but Vulcans make the best witnesses. Now—shall we go?"
Jake gave up and then fell into step beside the doctor again. He supposed Bashir
had a point, though the guy was awfully cynical about the process of becoming an
adult What sort of compromises would an adult ever have to make? Kids—even
nineteen-year-olds—were the ones who were trapped by society and convention.
Anyone could tell them what to do, force them to go to school, restrict their
entertainment choices, and even, on the frontier where it was used, keep hard
currency out of their hands.
But adults, it seemed to Jake, had none of these restrictions. Sure, there
might be pressures associated with their jobs, but don't forget those pressures
were taken on by choice. That choice, in his opinion, was the key difference
between someone his age and someone Bashir's.
As they neared the planning room, Jake took a sidelong look at the doctor's
face, trying to remember bis real age.
Bashir paused beside the door. "What now?"
The guy has eyes in the side of his head, Jake marvelled. "I was just
wondering... how old are you anyway?'
Bashir sighed. "By our standards, or hi this time?"
"By our standards, of course," he said. He knew that technically everyone from
the Defiant was twenty-five years older than they had been a week ago.
Bashir seemed to hesitate. "How old do you think I am?"
Jake couldn't resist the opportunity the doctor had just given him. "I don't
know," he said with a perfectly straight face. "Fifty?"
Bashir's face twisted into an incredulous look. "Fifty? I'm thirty-four, Jake."
"I said I didn't know," Jake said innocently. "You made me guess. I guessed."
"Fifty..." Bashir rolled his eyes skyward, then punched in his code to open the
planning-room door. Jake kept his smile to himself.
The security condition light was still red. It didn't change to either amber or
green. Then the computer voice said pleasantly, "This facility is sealed.
Operating conditions gamma five."
Bashir flashed a knowing smile at Jake. "Fortunately, I've read the security
operations manual. Computer: Permit access to this facility, authorization
Bashir, Julian, operating condition beta one."
This time the security light obediently turned from red to amber.
Jake whistled, impressed. "How did you get a security clearance?"
"I'm a physician," Bashir said smugly as the door began to slide open. "It comes
with the job. Automatically it seems."
A sudden crash and a strangled cry from inside startled them both.
Bashir didn't wait, so neither did Jake. They both threw themselves at the door
before it was fully open and pushed their way into the room where—
—Jake felt his legs threaten to give out as he sud-
denly found himself facing Lieutenant Commander Worf and Lieutenant Commander
Dax, both of whom were, to put it politely, out of uniform.
Bashir instantly spun around and with a quick apology literally leaped back
into the corridor.
A second later, open-mouthed, Jake felt Bashir's hand on his arm as he was
hauled out as well.
With a thunk, the door slid shut behind them. Only then did Jake risk looking at
Bashir.
"Well," Bashir said tersely, and Jake thought it was odd that a medical doctor
would be disconcerted by the scene they'd just encountered, "they are married,
after all."
"I'll say," Jake added. He wanted to say something more. He wanted to ask if Dr.
Bashir had known Jadzia's Trill spots went all the way down to... but something
in Bashir's face told him that not talking about what had just happened was what
adults did. If only Nog were still his age and—
The door slid open again.
"You may now enter," Worf growled at them.
Jake set his face on neutral and followed Bashir into the planning room. Worf
and Jadzia were both back in uniform, and the large schematic padds were back on
the planning table.
"Sorry to have ... intruded," Bashir murmured.
Jake had a sudden flash of inspiration, as he decided that part of the reason
for the palpable tension in the room was that Bashir had always been after
Jadzia for himself. Now that was a complication of being an adult that was
exactly the same as being a teenager—always wanting what couldn't be had. Maybe
there isn't all that much difference between us after all, Jake thought, as he
suppressed the nervous grin that threatened to expose
his unseasoned youth. He filed the revelation in his mind for accessing later,
when he could more comfortably turn this extraordinary experience into
something for a book. He was already full of ideas about how he could
incorporate the whole scenario of traveling into the future into Anslem, the
mostly autobiographical novel he had put aside a few years ago and to which he
still returned sporadically when inspiration hit him.
"We have reviewed the schematics of the Phoenix," Worf said stiffly.
A half-dozen different jokes sprang up unbidden in Jake's mind, but he pushed
them down, followed Bashir's lead, and said nothing.
"Its weapons systems are impressive and adequate," Worf continued. "However, its
propulsion characteristics are... unusual."
"They're Borg," Bashir said.
"Transwarp?" Jadzia asked without the slightest trace of embarrassment in her
manner or voice. Obviously, being a conjoined Trill had its advantages, Jake
thought enviously.
"That's not how the engines were called out in the specs," she said.
"Then maybe it's something beyond transwarp," Bashir suggested. "But believe it
or not, an hour ago I met a Borg in the corridor. She's a Starfleet admiral."
"They're our allies," Jake volunteered as he saw Worf's and Jadzia's surprised
reactions. "They signed a treaty with the Federation."
"Well," Jadzia said after a moment's thought, "if the Phoenix's warp engines are
based on Borg transwarp principles, then from the time they attacked Earth we
know they've already demonstrated the ability to chan-
nel chronometric particles for propulsion. I would guess the ship is sound."
Then Jadzia looked from Jake to Bashir, as if somehow her Trill senses or
experience told her that the two of them could tell her something more about the
Phoenix. "I'm going to guess you two have data we don't," she said.
Bashir turned to Jake. "Mr. Sisko, tell it to them exactly as you told it to
me."
There was no way out, at least none that Jake could think of. So he told the
same story he had told Dr. Bashir in the mess hall, about how he could always
tell when Nog was lying, how he had sensed Nog was lying about his confidence in
the mission of the Phoenix, and most importantly, that he thought he knew why
Nog might have lied.
"And why is that?" Worf asked.
Feeling like a traitor and a turncoat, Jake stared down at the dirty floor of
the planning room.
"I think Nog... I think Nog actually believes that the universe will end."
No one responded to this statement, and after a few moments Jake glanced up to
see that they were all waiting for him to go on.
"Just before that dinner we had," he said, "at Starbase 53.1 went up to him."
"I remember that," Jadzia said. "I thought you were having an argument."
"We were. Sort of," Jake confirmed. "Anyway, I told him that... well... that he
hadn't really changed all that much in twenty-five years. That he was still the
same old Nog—" Jake smiled briefly as he remembered that part of the
conversation. "—well, older Nog.
And that it was like things hadn't changed—I could still see when he was ...
well, he used to call it adapting the truth to close a sale."
Bashir interrupted. "Jake—you told me that you told him flat out that he was
lying."
"I know," Jake said defensively. "Okay, so that's what I told him. I told him I
could tell he was lying to us when he said he had confidence in the Phoenix
completing her mission."
"And his response?" Jadzia prompted.
"I... I wish I could remember the exact words, Commander. He kind of got mad at
me then."
'Told you to keep your ridiculous hew-mon opinions to yourself?" Bashir
prompted.
Jake nodded. "Yeah, something like that. And that there was really nothing to
worry about. Then something about how he had seen how the river flowed, and
that the balance could be restored."
"Was that a reference to the Great Material River of Ferengi myth?" Worf asked
sharply.
"I don't think they call it myth," Jake said. "It's more like their religion."
"And in their religion," Jadzia said, "to say someone has seen how the Great
Material River flowed is the same as saying they've seen the future."
"That's right," Jake said.
"And restoring the balance," Bashir added, "is what happens when the River
returns to its source, having completed its course. It's nothing less than the
Ferengi apocalypse. The end of time, as it were."
"Maybe...," Jadzia offered. "Maybe Nog's just feeling discouraged."
"It doesn't matter what he's feeling," Jake said
glumly. "It's that he made a prediction, that he claimed to see the future."
"I do not understand," Worf said.
Jake didn't know where to begin. But Jadzia apparently did.
"Everyone knows the Ferengi culture is steeped in business customs," she said to
Worf. "Well, part of business is the ability to predict future market trends.
So a Ferengi's business prowess—which would be the equi
valent of how Klingons
judge their own ability in battle—is one of those characteristics that gives him
his reputation. As a result, Ferengi usually only make definitive predictions
about the future—about how they've seen the 'river' flow—when they're absolutely
certain what the outcome will be. And from the Ferengi point of view, the best
way to know the outcome is to... well, stack the deck."
Worf narrowed his eyes at Jadzia. "You seem to know a great deal about Ferengi
culture," he said heavily.
Jadzia shrugged. "So I dated one once. Some of them are kind of... cute."
Worf grunted. Then he glared at Jake. "Do you really believe your friend Nog
will sabotage the Phoenix in order to ensure the universe is destroyed?"
Jake held up his hands as if defending himself from a physical rather than a
verbal attack. "Hey, I didn't say anything about sabotage!"
"But that's the only logical conclusion we can draw from what you've said,"
Bashir said. "If this was one of your stories, Jake, what other motive could Nog
have for what he said?"
Jake shook his head. "I... I don't know. But sabotage? That's different from
just going into something without expecting it to succeed. Isn't it?"
Bashir patted Jake's back. "Look, that's all right. You've told us what you
needed to tell us, and... if you're uncomfortable, you can go."
All at once, Jake felt as if he were eight years old again and his father was
putting him to bed just as the dinner party conversation was getting
interesting. He felt his face heat up again, but this time in annoyance, not
embarrassment.
"I'm not a kid anymore, Dr. Bashir. I want to get back home or stop this or do
something as much as the rest of you."
Jadzia put a restraining hand on Bashir's arm, and earned an annoyed look from
her mate. "Jake, you do know that we can't go home, don't you?"
"Yeah, I know."
"So the Phoenix is the best option we have for stopping the Ascendancy's plan,"
Worf said with a touch of impatience.
"You mean, it might be," Bashir cautioned. "First we have to be absolutely
certain about Nog's motives."
Jake rubbed his hands together in frustration. "If all of you are going to talk
about motives, then what about this? If Nog had some plan to sabotage the
Phoenix, why would he go to all the trouble of warping out to Starbase 53 to see
us and then invite us onto the ship as its crew? I mean, we're a complication,