“I’ll do it,” Jake said. He crooned, “Molly. Oh, Mollee! Time to wake up. Your friends are here.”
Molly sniffled a little in her sleep and turned over on her side. Jake called again, a little louder. For a moment nothing happened, and he was afraid she couldn’t hear him. Then she blinked her eyes open, rubbed them with the back of her hand, and grinned at him. “Hi, Jake,” she said. Her voice sounded faint and tinny, but he could hear her words, and she could obviously hear his. That was a relief, anyway.
Jake could have hugged her—but he suspected that if he tried, his arms would go right through her. He grinned back. “Hello, Molly. Sorry to wake you up.”
“Still dark,” she said. “Where’s Mommy?”
“We’ll call her soon,” Jake said. “See who else is here?”
Molly raised herself up in bed and grinned.
“Dhraako!” she squealed. “Didn’t you like the picture I made?”
The picture was pleasing, Dhraako responded.
“’Cause you ran off. I thought maybe you didn’t like it.”
“Molly,” Jake said, “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”
Molly grinned shyly. “Uh-huh.”
“Do you think you could say everything that I say?”
“Is it a game?” asked Molly.
“That’s right,” Jake said. “It’s a game.” He hoped that it would be more than that, but Molly was too young to understand. “You know how your Mommy can’t see Dhraako?”
“Grown-ups are weird,” Molly agreed, wrinkling her nose.
Jake almost laughed. He had to agree with Molly. He had known some very weird grown-ups in his time. “Yeah, they are,” he said. “Well, your mommy can’t hear me now, either, because I’m where Dhraako is. So you’ll have to tell her everything I say. All right?”
“All right,” Molly said.
“Okay, call your mother.” To Dhraako, Jake said, “Here goes. Wish us luck.”
Luck? asked Dhraako.
“I’ll explain later,” Jake said. “Call your mommy, Molly.”
Grinning, Molly yelled, “Mommy! Mommy!”
“Again,” Jake said.
Molly liked this game. She screamed out again, and although her voice came thinly to him, Jake knew that she was really bellowing. In a few seconds the lights came up, and Keiko came hurrying into the room, wearing a dark blue kimono and a worried look. She spoke to Molly, but though Jake could barely hear a few sounds, he could not understand anything she said.
“Jake is here,” Molly said, pointing.
Keiko crossed her arms. By looking hard at her lips, Jake could just follow what she said: “This is not time to play with invisible friends, Molly. You have to go back to sleep.”
“Molly, say this!” Jake yelled. “Jake is in another dimension.”
Molly squinched up her nose. “Jake is in ’nother di—dimension,” she said, and then she laughed.
“What?” asked Keiko, with a frown.
Jake said, “Molly, say there’s a bomb in the reactors.”
Molly tried to repeat what he said: “Jake says there’s a bob in the tree tractors.”
“Molly,” said Keiko. “You’ve been having a dream. Would you like some hot milk?”
Jake groaned. His brilliant idea was not working out. He said, “Molly, tell Keiko that Jake needs help.”
“Jake needs help,” Molly said.
Going to the food replicator, Keiko said, “Your father has already checked on Jake. I’m sure Jake is in bed, sound asleep. Which is where you should be.” In a moment she came back with a glass of milk. “Here,” she said. “You drink this down and then go back to sleep.”
“He’s not a dream,” Molly said, sounding disgusted.
“Dreams can seem very real,” Keiko replied.
“Mommy! He’s right there,” objected Molly, pointing.
Keiko swept her arm—and Jake gasped as it passed right through his chest. “See?” Keiko said. “Nothing is here, darling. Now, you drink your milk.”
“Sorry, Jake,” Molly said.
Jake gave her a sickly smile. “That’s all right, Molly. You go back to sleep. Dhraako and I will find some other way.”
They left Keiko with Molly. In the corridor Jake said, “There’s only one other person who can even see us. I’ve got to find Nog. He wouldn’t be in any of our usual places, because he thinks that I’m some kind of ghost now. So he’d be close to someone who might protect him. We have to go to Quark’s place.”
By now it was very late. The last few customers had walked, staggered, or crept out of Quark’s bar and restaurant, and a yawning Quark stood behind the bar counting the day’s take. Behind him the door to his office was open. Jake and Dhraako went through, and sure enough, there lay Nog in an exhausted sleep on the sofa.
“Do you think he’ll be able to hear me?” Jake asked the Quester.
Dhraako replied, Difficult to say. Perhaps. The Nog form can see Dhraako better than Jake Sisko, but not as well as Molly. Perhaps Nog may hear you if you speak loudly.
It’s worth a try, anyway,” Jake said. “At least it’s quiet here.” Then, at Jake’s suggestion, the Quester made itself so transparent that even Jake had trouble seeing it. He guessed that in this form, Dhraako would be completely invisible to Nog. It would be better if the young Ferengi saw only his human friend, not a menacing ancestral spirit. Satisfied, Jake bent over and called to him, as loudly as possible. Nog’s eyes flew open, and he scrambled back into the corner, too terrified even to scream. Jake held up his hands, trying to show that he meant his friend no harm. He smiled.
Nog made a strange gesture with two crossed fingers. Jake thought hard about some way to communicate. He had a sudden idea. He held up one finger of his left hand, then one finger of his right hand. He brought his hands together, lowered his left finger, and held up two fingers of his right hand. Then he did the same thing, except this time he added one finger to two to make three. Did Nog understand him? He was speaking mathematics, a universal language. One plus one is two; two plus one is three; three plus one—
Nog stared. He held up both of his hands and added one to four to make five. He understood—and fortunately, he had caught on before Jake had run out of fingers. “Jake?” Nog asked. By lip-reading, Jake could recognize the word.
“Yes!” he said, exaggerating the word and nodding.
“Are—are you dead?” Nog asked.
Jake shook his head emphatically. “I’m stuck,” he mouthed.
“Struck?” Nog asked. “Who struck you? The Ferengest?”
“Not struck—stuck.” Jake mimed walking along, and then suddenly acted as if his foot had become glued to the floor.
“Stuck!” Nog shouted. This time Jake could hear his faint voice. “You are alive?”
Jake nodded again. Then he pointed to himself. He pointed to the empty sofa beside Nog.
Nog frowned. “You—you want to get back to where I am?”
Jake grinned and nodded so hard he thought his head would fall off. “Yes!”
Nog scratched his bald head. “You must speak louder. I can hardly hear you. How—how do you get back?”
Jake could not speak louder. He had been bellowing at the top of his lungs. This called for some real acting. First Jake played a transporter engineer, engaging the controls. Then he dashed across the room, drew an imaginary circle on the floor and stood in it. Then he waved his hands to show that he was shimmering and disappearing. Then he jumped to another place, patted his body, and nodded his relief to find himself solid.
“The transporter!” Nog said. “You need to use the transporter!”
Jake clasped his hands and shook them over his head. “Way to go, Nog!” Then he pointed to an antique Ferengi timepiece that Quark kept on his desk.
“Clock,” Nog said. “Hours. A special time? Oh—you have to transport at a special time?”
Nog was great at the game. Jake looked at the time display. Fortunately, Quark had ad
justed the clock to follow ship’s time. Jake indicated a time forty-five minutes from that minute, and Nog caught on. Then came the hardest part. Jake beckoned to Nog and began to back out of the room.
“F-follow you?” Nog said. “Uh, w-will I wind up like you?”
Jake shook his head.
“I don’t know if I ought to trust you,” Nog said.
Jake flapped his arms in despair. Then, very deliberately, he pointed at Nog, and then at himself. He clasped his hands before him, then moved them up and down. He was imitating an enthusiastic handshake.
“We’re—we’re friends,” Nog said. He knew of the odd Earth custom of shaking hands. He bit his lip with his sharp teeth. “All right,” he said at last. “May the ears of my ancestors hear my plea for protection! Let’s go.”
Quark looked up sharply as they left. “Nog! I told you to stay in my office! Where are you going?” he asked in an angry voice. “you have to be punished for—”
l“Later, Uncle!” Nog shouted, and he, the ghostly Jake, and the almost invisible Dhraako hurried out into the Promenade and ducked into one of the boys’ private passageways.
CHAPTER 9
I am impressed,” Nog said. “Even I have never come down here!” Jake was really getting the knack of lip-reading now, and he could understand Nog pretty well. The young Ferengi had either recovered his self-control or else was doing a good job of hiding his fear. He and Jake stood in the big empty room that Dhraako had used as headquarters, still lit only faintly by the reddish glow of the emergency lights. When Nog walked right through the chest-tall metallic mushroom, Jake blinked. Then he remembered that the mushroom-shaped piece of equipment must be Dhraako’s. Jake could see it as more real and solid than anything else in the room, but to Nog, it was invisible. “What now?” Nog asked Jake.
Jake could not see Dhraako clearly in the dim light, but the Quester was right beside him. The unemotional voice of the speaker said, Show Nog that Jake Sisko will stand where I will stand. The transporter must try to lock onto Jake Sisko there.
Jake squinted, trying to see Dhraako better. The shimmering humanoid form paused a meter away from the strange metallic mushroom, and then it stepped back. Jake carefully stood in the same place. Again he pantomimed drawing a circle on the floor. He looked at Nog expectantly.
Nog nodded. “I think I have it. You have to be right here in”—he checked his chronometer—“in thirty-six minutes when the transporter activates, you’ll stand on that spot there. All right. I have the deck level and the room location memorized. Let’s go find your father.”
Yes, Dhraako’s speaking device told Jake. You go. Dhraako will stay here to complete computer calculations.
Jake and Nog hurried along. Time was running out—in more ways than Nog knew. If the bomb had been set to go off before the transporter crew could retrieve Jake, then all was lost. And even if it wasn’t, there was a chance that Jake could not be retrieved at all. Then the station would explode, and everyone on it would die. Or would they? Jake wondered what would happen to him and Dhraako. If they could survive the hard radiation close to the reactor cores, would an explosion destroy them? If it didn’t, could Jake live in the hostile vacuum of outer space? He began to shake from a combination of exhaustion and dread. That was one experiment he never wanted to try.
Taking every shortcut they knew, Jake and Nog reached Ops level in just over seven minutes. Only half an hour left! They found everything in the operations center in a swirling state of chaos. Jake almost yelled with relief when he caught sight of his father, standing behind the Ops table with a tired and worried look on his usually strong face. Commander Sisko was speaking, and Jake was so familiar with his facial expressions and his way of talking that even before they approached him, Jake could tell what his father was saying.
“O’Brien,” Sisko said to a communicator, “have the repairs to the docking circuits been completed?” He listened for a moment to a reply that Jake could not hear. Then he puffed out his cheeks and said, “That’s good, because Chok has just informed me that our time is up. Of course, Starfleet and the Bajorans haven’t replied to his ultimatum, but Chok won’t listen to reason. His ship will depart in five minutes.”
Another pause, and then Sisko grinned without much real humor. “I agree with you: Good riddance to them.”
Major Kira,looking irritable and grouchy from lack of sleep, came up beside Sisko. “Commander,” she said, “the Cardassian vessel is signaling that it is ready to go. Security reports that the Cardassians have left the station and are aboard the ship. All of Chok’s crew are accounted for.”
“They have permission to leave dock,” Sisko said. Then he tapped the communicator again. “Odo,” he said, “any trace of Jake?” Jake watched his father’s face fall. “Well, continue the search. Blast it, he has to be somewhere aboard!”
“He’s here!” Nog shouted.
Everyone froze. Sisko jerked his eyes off the readout board and stared at Nog. “Here? Where?” he demanded.
Nog pointed. “You can’t see him,” Nog said. “He’s stuck. But I know how to get him back.”
A security man took a step forward, but Sisko put out his arm and held the man back. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘stuck,’ but how can we get Jake back?” Sisko asked.
“You have to set a transporter to the coordinates I will give you and look for Jake’s locator signal,” Nog said. “And you have to do it in exactly twenty-four minutes.”
Sisko tapped his communicator. “Chief O’Brien, meet me in the main transporter bay at once,” he said. Then to Nog, he added, “You’d better be telling the truth.”
Nog ignored him. He turned to Jake and said, “Go now! Hurry! I’ll wait on the transporter side.”
Jake nodded and ran back along the passageway. He hoped that everything would work. If not—
Well, if not, he did not even want to think of what might lie in store for him and for Deep Space Nine.
A few minutes later Nog stood before a hologram, a three-dimensional sketch of the deck level where Jake had taken him. He placed a finger on a spot almost in the center of one compartment. “Here,” he said. “Jake will stand right here.”
Nog and Jake’s father had met O’Brien in the transporter bay, and O’Brien had tapped into the computer to call up the hologram. Now Commander Sisko looked at the chief engineer with an inquisitive expression. “A fabrication room,” O’Brien explained. “It’s where the Cardassians used to assemble personal weapons. Since accidents happen, particularly with Cardassian design systems, the room’s a heavily shielded compartment, out of the way and not of much use. As far as I know, it’s vacant.”
“Can you lock onto this coordinate?” Sisko asked.
“Certainly,” O’Brien said. “I ran the transporter array on the Enterprise for years. If Jake’s there, I’ll bring him back.”
“Four minutes left,” Nog said.
Commander Sisko’s communicator chirped. “Ops to Commander Sisko,” said Major Kira’s voice.
“Sisko here,” acknowledged the commander.
“Sir, you’d better come back here, on the double. There may be trouble brewing.”
Commander Sisko looked angry. “What is it now?” he demanded. “Make it short, Major.”
“Sir, the Cardassians aren’t leaving.”
“That’s ridiculous. They’ve already gone, Major. They departed before I left Ops!” Sisko said.
Major Kira’s tone was earnest: “Yes, sir, but the Cardassians merely withdrew on impulse power. They’re about ten thousand kilometers away now, and they’re just hovering there.”
“What?” Sisko said. “What do you mean, ‘hovering’?”
“Just what I said, sir. They’re dead in space, as if they’re just watching us.” After a brief pause Major Kira added, “As if they’re waiting for something to happen.”
“Major Kira, scan them. See if their shields are up,” Commander Sisko ordered.
“Yes, sir.”<
br />
Nog tugged at Sisko’s arm. “Two minutes!” he said, his voice high with excitement.
“I know,” Sisko said. “O’Brien, get ready.”
O’Brien moved to the control panel of the transporter and adjusted the settings. “Yes, sir. I’m setting the coordinates.”
Again Major Kira’s voice chirped from Sisko’s communicator: “Sir, they have not raised their shields.”
Sisko said, “Then they are offering no threat.”
“No.” Major Kira sounded as if she were reluctant to make that admission. “But, sir, they’re up to something. They must be. Cardassians can never be trusted. I repeat my request: You should return to Ops immediately.”
Nog said, “One minute!”
Sisko said, “I’ll be there shortly, Major. Continue to monitor them. Do not, repeat, do not attempt to hail them or to undertake any defensive action that they might misinterpret. As soon as we have Jake back, I’ll come straight to Ops.”
“Sir, is it wise to delay?”
“Major,” said Sisko, “calm down. I know you don’t trust Cardassians, but there’s no rush.”
“Now!” yelled Nog.
Chief O’Brien activated the transporter.
Jake had arrived at Dhraako’s quarters with just a few minutes to spare. The Quester was still there, making some adjustments to a control panel atop the strange mushroom-shaped mechanism. Dhraako looked up and nodded a greeting as Jake came in. “Are you ready?” Jake asked.
After a final adjustment Dhraako produced the speaker. All is ready, Jake Sisko. If everything proceeds as Dhraako wishes, you will be restored to your own people in seven and a half of your minutes.
Jake nodded. “I see. I—I suppose we won’t be able to talk to each other after the change.”
The Quester’s face reshaped itself in another of the creature’s unreadable expressions. That is correct, Jake Sisko. But you are a part of the Dhraakellian Whole now. You will forever be a part of the Whole.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #1: The Star Ghost Page 7
