Rising Son

by S. D. Perry

  That, and she seems honestly concerned. He had to take his own situation into account. Pif and Pri’ak and possibly Coamis were going to start getting worried soon, if they weren’t already. Jake didn’t want to walk away without helping, but it was looking like a bigger job than he’d anticipated, and if Wex really wanted to assist…

  “Tosk, maybe Wex has some ideas,” Jake said. “You’ve already talked to me…”

  Tosk hesitated, then nodded his consent. Relieved, Jake introduced himself and Tosk to Wex and then gave her an abbreviated version of Tosk’s story. Wex listened intently, asking a few thoughtful questions along the way…and at the end of the brief summary, she nodded firmly, decisively at both of them.

  “I was right before. You should come with me.”

  “Why?” Jake asked.

  “Because I’m on my way to see somebody who might be able to help,” Wex said. “I came to Ee…it’s a long story, but I’m here to see a sage, a wise woman with the power to heal. It’s said that her very touch brings peace, that it can calm the wounded spirit. Stories like that make me curious, and it sounds as if your friend here could use some of that.”

  Jake nodded, inwardly wincing. Ee didn’t exactly seem like an appropriate backdrop for such a person. “Is she…does it cost very much, because—”

  Wex shook her head. “Oh, no. She’s not even here. That is, I’ve just learned that she lives outside the main gate. It’s only a short walk from here. I was on my way to see her when…when I saw you.”

  Jake smiled. “Lucky us. What do you say, Tosk, do you want to give this…sage a try?”

  Tosk didn’t sigh or shrug, but the look on his face expressed his feelings clearly enough. He was resigned, and Jake thought it was a few steps up from desperate, which was good. Tosk’s gaze seemed less haunted, as well. Maybe sharing the burden had done something for him.

  “Great,” Jake said, smiling wider at Wex. “Let’s go…”

  The bar. “…or, actually, maybe you two should go on ahead, I could catch up with you.”

  Wex was frowning. “Why?”

  “I should tell my friends what’s going on, so they don’t worry,” Jake said.

  “Your friends…” Wex said, her expression carefully neutral. “…all right. We’ll come with you.”

  Jake suddenly realized that Wex probably thought he was trying to push Tosk off onto her, which he wasn’t…but it didn’t seem like a good idea to take Tosk back to the tavern, either, not after his earlier reception.

  They were pretty drunk, and she did say it wasn’t far…. If they really got worried, they could always use the emergency signal.

  “Never mind,” Jake said. “They can wait.”

  “I’d like to…maybe you can tell me how you ended up here, while we walk,” Wex said, and smiled tentatively. “I mean, there aren’t a lot of humans out this far.”

  Jake smiled back at her, still feeling the alcohol, thinking that she was kind of attractive, for a…for a female humanoid.

  “Now, that’s a long story,” he said, and with Wex leading the way, they started walking.

  Tosk didn’t know how he felt it, but he felt it. Something was happening. The desperation and anxiety that had driven him for so long seemed to be lessening ever so slightly as they walked through the busy night avenues, as though…as though he were getting closer to what he needed. It seemed almost a chemical reaction, rather than an emotional one—and wasn’t that how he’d come to Ee in the first place? He’d thought all of his decisions random since encountering the crystal, but if that were so, how had he made it across so many light-years, to end up where he now was? He had not analyzed his reactions, the reasons for his decisions, but he could see it now—there had been some small sensation of relief when he’d landed on Ee. And since, just thinking about leaving had caused the slightest increase in his distress, enough to keep him from withdrawing.

  He considered telling Wex and Jake, walking in front of him, but they were conversing, explaining their own paths to Ee. Jake had come through the Anomaly, it seemed, and had been picked up by a salvage ship, and was now working for the ship. Wex, a Trelian, had been on a journey of self-enlightenment, a customary practice among her people, and had heard of the sage on some other planet. The sage, it seemed, had moved through at least two other communities before coming to Ee, and Wex wanted to meet her.

  Tosk listened and walked, examining and reexamining his thoughts with each step, feeling for an awareness of the Other. He kept hoping that it would reveal itself, that his mind would open and have the knowledge of the new purpose, but as they reached the market gates, he still did not know. What he did know was that he felt…better. Still deeply anxious, still profoundly alarmed that the Hunt was not all, but better.

  On the other side of the gate, Tosk could see the community of poor, of which Wex had spoken. It was far enough from the port’s lit shield that much of it was cast in shadow, the darkness broken up by many small fires.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” Jake asked Wex, who nodded.

  “I’m sure of it,” she said.

  The security people posted at the gate ignored them, once they realized where the trio wanted to go. With Wex still leading the way, they moved out from beneath the protective weather barrier and into the gloom, toward the tattered community. The temperature dropped a degree, then another as they moved away from the shield. Tosk reflexively puffed himself, realizing as he did that it was the first time in weeks he’d had a care about his personal comfort.

  As they neared the first of the low, poorly made structures, heard the edges of soft conversation, the air scented with boiling meats and poverty, Jake paused, again addressing Wex.

  “How do we find her?” he whispered.

  Wex didn’t answer him directly, instead loudly clearing her throat. Tosk saw a figure on the stoop of one shabby building stir, a shadow thickening as it leaned forward.

  “Who is it?” An old man’s voice, mild and unafraid.

  “We’re looking for the leader of the Sen Ennis,” Wex said.

  Tosk could hear a smile in the man’s response. “Walk to the twelfth structure from this one, straight back, with the two lights in the window. Sulan lives next to it.”

  “Thank you,” Wex said.

  “Tell her that Umi says hello,” the old man answered, his voice still smiling.

  Wex began walking again, Jake and Tosk following, Tosk continuing to feel, with each step, that something was happening to him, to the planet, to reality. He wondered if he would have found this relief on his own, given more time, or if he would have blundered past it, mistaking and misreading the subtle difference. Surely, this Sulan would be able to tell him the new purpose, there was no other explanation for the steadily decreasing tension in his body, and in his mind.

  “Nine…ten…” Jake was counting softly. Somewhere nearby, a child laughed, an innocent sound. Talking to Jake had been the right thing, Tosk realized. He’d felt something when he’d first touched the young human, but hadn’t understood it then. Now he could see that talking to Jake had led to Wex, which would lead to Sulan.

  There, the two lights in the window. They stepped past the small building, moving to the second, Wex approaching a cracked and dirty door. Jake smiled encouragingly at Tosk, but Tosk needed no encouragement as Wex knocked, he was desperate to meet Sulan. A second later, the door opened, and instantly, wonderfully, Tosk’s mind shifted. Perspectives moved, and for the first time in weeks he was well, his mind sound and whole. The Hunt was all, and this was the Other, a second thing, he’d found it and now he could breathe again.

  We have to go back, he thought, and was consumed by relief. That was the purpose, it was why he’d suffered. But…would she go with him?

  The Other studied them for a few seconds, her tiny, lined face serious and searching and a little sad…and then she smiled warmly, radiantly peaceful, and stepped back from the door.

  “Come in,” the Other said. “I’ve been
waiting.”

  For many weeks, Opaka Sulan had suspected that the Prophets would be sending for her soon. Throughout her seven years away from Bajor, there had been signs, dreams, and shadows. For a long time she had dreamed of struggle, of sacrifice, of her ancestors hiding in the dark…but for several months now, there had been better dreams. New life, and hopeful children reaching toward a rising sun…and something else she couldn’t see, but knew was important and wonderful and different.

  New hope, she dreamed of…and travel. When she heard the knock at her door, she had a feeling that it might be time…and when she opened the door and saw the Emissary’s son, she knew that it was so. She didn’t recognize the other two on the step, but knew that they, too, had come to take her away from Ee, and from the people who had been her family for the last seven years. She felt a fleeting sadness, but let it pass. She would go where and when They wished her, of course, as she always had.

  “Come in, I’ve been waiting,” she said, smiling, thinking of how amazing the Tapestry was, and her own place in Their weaving. She’d left Bajor and the Alpha Quadrant seven years earlier, knowing only that she wouldn’t be returning with the Emissary and his crew…and now the Emissary’s son had come to take her home.

  The three filed past her into the sparse, open room where she received visitors. A slim, pale gray girl, Trelian, she thought—there was a Trelian family in the camp—with lucent eyes, only slightly taller than Opaka, her manner courteous and respectful. Jake Sisko, looking so grown…and puzzled, peering at her without recognition as he stepped inside. And the third, a reptilian being, tall and muscular, his pleasure at meeting her a palpable thing. From the relief in his eyes, she imagined that he had suffered to find her…and that he had something to tell her.

  Just as in the dreams. In them, there were three beings who came to travel with her, faceless but familiar, bearing a message of great import…or a task to be done, she wasn’t sure which. She went away with them, and though it wasn’t clear what they did together, the dreams always ended with her at the monastery where she’d lived as Kai. She was going home, back to Bajor. At least, that was what she’d taken away from the dreams. She could be wrong, she supposed. The Prophets weren’t always clear, but the challenge of interpreting Their meaning had always been her secret joy.

  “Please, sit down,” she said, motioning at the two plain benches that made up the main room’s furnishings, choosing for herself the one padded chair across from them. “I hope you don’t mind if I take the chair, but my back isn’t what it used to be….”

  They all seemed reluctant to sit, but obeyed, all watching her intently as she sat back in her seat. She smiled, realizing that she was going to have to get things started.

  “I’m Opaka Sulan,” she said.

  “Wex,” said the Trelian. “And this is Jake, and this is Tosk. It’s…it’s very good to meet you.”

  “It’s good to meet you,” she said, and saw that Jake was staring at her, his handsome young face a picture of surprise. Of course, they’d met only once, and he’d been a child.

  “You…you’re Kai Opaka!” He said.

  “I was Kai,” she said gently. “I’ve just been Opaka Sulan for some time now.”

  Jake was shaking his head. “But…you were stuck on that moon, years ago, where the runabout crashed.”

  Opaka nodded. Seven years earlier, she had died in the crash of the Yangtzee Kiang, the craft shot down by the satellites that guarded the Gamma moon. Died, and been brought back to life by a miracle of science, only to discover that the miracle was environment-specific. Like the moon’s prisoners, the bitterly warring tribes of the Ennis and Nol-Ennis, leaving the environment would have meant her death. For them, the miracle had been a curse…

  …which was why the Prophets had me go to them, she thought, smiling inwardly; that, too, had been in a dream. A dream that had catalyzed her first journey away from Bajor to DS9, where she had, in turn, asked Jake’s father to take her through the Celestial Temple and into the Gamma Quadrant, where they had crashed on the moon. The Prophets had given her such opportunities; she was truly blessed.

  “You died there,” Jake added, eyes still wide. “You couldn’t leave, it would have killed you. How…how?”

  “Will of the Prophets,” Opaka said…and saw the slight tightening of the boy’s mouth at her words, and understood a little more about him. Poor child. It must have been very difficult for him, growing up as the Emissary’s son.

  Wex seemed to have gathered something from Jake’s surprised half-questions. “If I may ask…how did you leave this moon where you, ah, died?”

  Opaka folded her hands in her lap, considering the question, remembering. In recent weeks, since the dreams had begun to shift, to tell her that she was soon to leave, she’d found herself reflecting over her time in the Gamma Quadrant more and more…from the first days on that moon to the release, to her traveling time, to where she was now. It wasn’t an exciting story, stories of faith rarely were, but she thought it was an interesting story, of a brief span of years in an interesting life.

  I have been so blessed, she thought again, and sat back in her chair, searching for a few words to answer Wex’s question, remembering so much more.

  13

  “SULAN!”

  Her name echoed through the cave garden, the eager shout much louder than was necessary. Opaka looked up from the patch of greens she was tending, smiling as the ever-excitable Misja came rushing in, preceded by his resounding cry. He had been a young man at the time of his clan’s imprisonment and still looked like a child, scars or no.

  “Sulan, are you here? Sulan!” Misja cast a single, wild stare around the enclosed garden and turned to run back out again.

  Acts as a child, too. That he was at least a hundred years her senior made no difference. Opaka rose to her feet, brushing dirt from her knees.

  “Yes, Misja. What is it?”

  At the sound of her voice Misja spun toward her, as excited as she’d ever seen him. “There’s—Zlangco was out walking at the east cliffs, and he saw a ship crashland, right in front of him!”

  Surely the satellites again. Opaka’s hands reflexively went to her heart. “Oh, no.”

  Misja nodded, visibly calming now that he was able to deliver his important news. “He sent me to get you—there was an alien inside, it’s alive but he says it’s sick. You have to come, they’re at Tadia’s.”

  “Of course,” she said, well aware that there was nothing she could do for a sick being that Tadia couldn’t do better. Opaka also knew, however, that the Sen Ennis, the recently united tribe she had helped create, still depended heavily on her counsel. They didn’t need it, but they believed they did…and until they believed otherwise, she was willing to continue counseling.

  Together, she and Misja left the cave and started for Tadia’s, her thatched home located at the outskirts of the newly appointed communal area—a series of caves and structures and open spaces where the Sen Ennis met to work together, that had once belonged to the Nol-Ennis. Tadia was the closest thing the united tribe had to a healer, in that she had studied plant medicine before the imprisonment; afterward, of course, there had been no need, but since the fighting had ended, she had taken it up once more, mostly because she could. There was finally time for more than mere survival.

  In spite of the unhappy circumstances, Opaka took some enjoyment from the brief walk. The sun was shining, and there were a number of people out and working, smiling at one another and talking pleasantly as they sewed or dug for roots or sharpened tools. The scars were harder to see, when they smiled. The grim reminders of more than a century of battle were still apparent, too deeply etched by time to disappear so quickly, but were no longer so obvious as they once were.

  It pleased Opaka to see the flourishing sense of community, still so new to the young tribe. It seemed the discovery of the alien crash had not yet spread. In the nearly four years since Opaka had come to the moon, there had been three ot
her crashes, all considered to be events of importance. None had yielded any survivors.

  Zlangco, once the leader of the Nol-Ennis, was standing outside of Tadia’s home, apparently awaiting Opaka’s arrival.

  “It seems to be breathing all right, it just won’t wake up,” he said, in lieu of a greeting. “Shel-la has taken some people to look at the ship.”

  Opaka nodded, gratified that Zlangco had already contacted Golin Shel-la, the Ennis’s leader, to include him in the event. It had been less than a year since the end of the fighting, and while she could feel the strength of both men’s resolve to maintain peace, she also knew that a year was hardly an eternity. In their prolonged lives, it was barely a blink.

  Excused, Misja ran off to spread the news, while Zlangco and Opaka went inside, moving to the bed-chamber at the rear of the small home. Zlangco knocked once on the clay wall, and pushed the chamber’s curtain aside, ushering Opaka inside.

  Tadia and her mate, Korin, were sitting beside the floor pallet against the back wall, studying the alien; it seemed they had just managed to pry a face shield off, the thin rind of alloy still in Korin’s hand.

  How lovely it is, Opaka thought, and moved to join them, kneeling beside the pallet.

  The semiconscious creature was very tall, perhaps half again Opaka’s height, its body defined by a layer of fluid-looking armor, a silvery metal shell that closely matched the color of its pale face. Two arms, two legs…it had breasts, small but apparent, and Opaka assumed it was female—the face, too, had a feminine cast in spite of its alien nature, a roundness to the cheek and jaw.

  The armor was cracked across the breastbone, a short, deep break…and a thin, cloudy fluid was leaking from beneath it. Opaka was about to suggest that they remove the armor when she noted the veinlike threads running through the edges of the crack, and how the armor surrounding it was discolored, a dusky matte gray. She realized that it wasn’t armor at all, but an exoskeletal sheath, organic.