Warchild

by Esther Friesner

  Dr. Bashir doubted whether getting mother and child out of this nexus of infection would save them, but he knew it would do them no good to remain. He escorted them to the exit personally. At the blanketed doorway, the young woman hesitated, then suddenly seized Dr. Bashir's hand and pressed it to her right ear. Then she darted through the flap and away.

  "Ow," said Julian, regarding the thin scratch that the naked wires had left on the fleshy part of his palm just below the thumb.

  "Ah, Dr. Bashir!" Brother Gis stood before him, pleasure lighting up his face. He was no longer clad in the long robes and cap he had worn aboard the station. Instead he was bareheaded, with a knee-length brown tunic and serviceable yellow apron covering him. He took Julian's hand and examined the scratch. "Nothing serious. Come with me and we'll put something on it."

  Dr. Bashir trailed after the monk back down the aisle. At the very rear of the building, a sheet had been hung across the entrance to what looked like a stall. Julian had to duck through a slit in the sheet to enter. Inside he saw a rickety table, a back-broken chair, and a hodgepodge of chests, bins, trunks, and other storage furniture. Here the clean, spicy smell of medications was stronger than the sour smell of sickness.

  "Welcome to my office," Brother Gis said. "Will you be seated?" He motioned Dr. Bashir to take the only chair, but Julian politely refused. "No? Then with your permission." The monk sat down with an audible sigh. "That feels good. Even when I am gone for so short a time, the work piles up. I had just left you in you tent and was about to escort your friends to their accommodations when Belem, my assistant, came rushing up with an emergency only I could handle. According to Belem, that is." He gave Julian an arch look. "I have been going from one emergency to another ever since. Ensign Kahrimanis and Lieutenant Dax still do not know where they are to sleep tonight. It reflects poorly on our hospitality. I hope that you, at least, are well settled?"

  "Everything is fine," Julian replied. He pictured Dax and Kahrimanis, hard at work, while he huddled in his tent. The spark of anger against himself burned hotter. "If you can tell me where I can find the boxes we brought from DS9, I'd like to deploy the supplies and start setting up a field lab."

  "Of course, of course." Brother Gis made calming motions. "I shall have Belem take you there at once. In fact, I shall tell Belem that for the duration of your stay, he is to be your personal aide."

  "Ensign Kahrimanis is here. I really don't need—" Julian began.

  "I implore you, Doctor, take him." the monk's hands joined in a sign of supplication. "He is a good lad, only a little too—how to say it?—eager. He helps where there is no need of help and there is no stopping him. He means well, yet he leaves me feeling that half the emergencies he reports are emergencies he has created."

  "Surely you don't mean he causes them?" Dr. Bashir was on guard. This was not the sort of aide he wanted.

  "Did I give that impression? Forgive me. It is an injustice to the boy. What I meant was, his imagination exaggerates ordinary situations to the rank of emergencies. He is very young, very excitable, and very far from home. He needs to calm down."

  "I'll take him off your hands and do what I can with him," Dr. Bashir promised. He wondered whether he was blushing. While Brother Gis was describing the overeager Belem, Dr. Bashir had had a momentary vision of himself chattering at Commander Sisko about his latest dabblings in espionage with Garak. Did the few instances when he had turned up useful information make up for all the other times he had bent the commander's ear for no reason? "It's the least I can do."

  "You will not regret it," the monk reassured him. "Now let me see that scratch."

  Obediently, Dr. Bashir stuck out his hand. Brother Gis gave it a brief look and said, "Hardly a nick, but I would feel better if I cleaned and bandaged it for you. There is contagion in the air, and we still do not know if the disease limits itself to Bajorans. I will get my kit."

  He was still rising from his chair when Dr. Bashir produced a thin, metallic instrument and ran the flashing tip of it down the length of the scratch. It vanished without leaving so much as a scar behind.

  "By the Prophets!" the monk gasped. "What did you do?"

  Dr. Bashir had a charming smile. "I didn't want you to waste your supplies treating something so minor."

  "Er, yes." Brother Gis looked at him askance, then picked up a bronze handbell from the tabletop and rang it twice. Julian heard a scuffle of heavy footsteps from beyond the screens and was nearly bowled over by the lanky young Bajoran who came bursting into the makeshift office.

  "You must be Belem," Dr. Bashir said when he recovered his balance. The boy shifted his weight awkwardly and nodded without looking the doctor in the eye. He could not have been older than fourteen, and he, too, wore a strand of bare wire dangling from his right ear. "Brother Gis says that you'll be helping me here," Julian persisted. "I need to be taken to the supplies we brought from the station. Do you know where they are?" Again the jerky nod.

  "Don't stand there like a jeskla, Belem; obey the healer!" the monk said severely. To Dr. Bashir he added, "After Belem has shown you where you are to work and helped you set up your things, I would like to take you on a tour of the entire camp. I say I would like to, barring any new emergencies." He gave the boy a significant look, but Belem was studying his own bare feet and missed it. "After that it will be time for our evening meal. We eat communally, in the square."

  "The square?"

  "We call it that. It used to be the exercise yard for the draft animals."

  "Draft animals? How could a farm survive without machines?"

  "There were machines here." Brother Gis folded his hands. "In fact, we have two of them in fair working order—a tiller and a fertilizer—and I have a man working on salvaging a third. But we were lucky that some Bajorans still enjoy the old-fashioned ways enough to make breeding verdanis profitable."

  The word was alien to Dr. Bashir until he remembered Major Kira using it once when she and Quark got into an argument about gambling. The Ferengi thought the Bajorans were fools for not betting on the verdanis races and said so. "They're like horses!" Julian exclaimed with a snap of his fingers.

  "If you say so," the monk replied. "Even the verdanis that has been trained for the racetrack can still pull a plow and tread out the grain or turn a millstone. They have been our salvation, especially now that so few adults remain to work the fields. I only wish we could give them back their old accommodations, but we need them more."

  "Well, then, if I don't see you earlier, I'll meet you in the square," Julian said.

  "Anyone can direct you there. In bad weather, we move into the stables, but when the sky is clear it is good to live as much as possible under the eye of the Prophets." He rose from his chair with a grunt of weariness "Until then. Dr. Bashir."

  Julian walked out of the infirmary with Belem by his side. The young Bajoran had a strange gait, a rolling limp that drew the doctor's eyes immediately. One if the boy's feet was malformed, and the calf badly bowed.

  Poor fellow, he thought. That looks congenital. Still, it's nothing I couldn't fix for him fast enough. I wonder when I ought to offer? He may be sensitive about it—I'd be surprised if he weren't! And if Bajoran adolescence is anything like ours, he's at that age when there's nothing about his body he feels at home with. He decided he would wait until Belem got to know him better before bringing up the subject.

  Belem guided Dr. Bashir to a shelter that had one stone wall, three wooden ones—one with a real door—and a wooden roof. There was a latch on the door, held closed by a complex device that looked like a hand-manipulated puzzle box. Belem pounced on it with nimble fingers, and after a series of quick twists and turns had it open. The Bajoran could not suppress a smile of pride when he opened the door for the doctor.

  Dr. Bashir returned the smile and said, "Thank you, Belem. You'll have to show me how that works."

  "'Seasy," Belem mumbled, and darted into a nearby tent to fetch an oil lamp. It was rancid oil, but it
was the only light source available. By the flame of the rag wick, Dr. Bashir surveyed his new laboratory.

  The containers from the station were there, set down neatly in a row beside three wooden tables. Julian knelt beside the first one and began to unpack. Belem hung back at first, though it didn't take long for his naturally helpful nature to manifest itself and send him to work at the doctor's side. The boy picked up all the things Julian laid out beside the chests and arranged them on the tabletops.

  "Careful," Julian said automatically as Belem set out a variety of glassware and a portable microscanner.

  "Don't worry, sir," the boy said. "Brother Gis told us to give you the best tables. These have their own legs, not broken, not even fixed once. They don't wobble at all, and their tops are smooth and level." He announced this as if it were the greatest miracle his world could boast.

  Which it is, Julian thought. With Belem's help, they soon had a laboratory setup that was to Dr. Bashir's liking. His next step was to show the youth how to use a sampler. "I'd like you to take this into the infirmary and gather blood samples from the fever patients," he instructed him.

  "There's nothing but fever patients in there now," Belem replied. He studied the slim, shining wand, awestruck. Do you think I could? I am no healer. It would be arrogant."

  "It would help me," Bashir said. The boy looked dubious. "I need the samples, and it won't hurt the patients," he went on, trying to gain Belem's confidence. "All you do is touch the blue-banded end to the patient's inner elbow—that cleans the area—then flip it around and touch the other end to the same place to take the blood. There won't be even a mark left behind. Oh, and I'll give you something to use to identify which patient each sample comes from. I could do it myself, but Brother Gis can use my skills better elsewhere. Do you see?"

  "I—I think so." Belem's lower lip trembled. "But I'm so clumsy. What if I do it wrong?"

  "I'll accompany you and watch you try it the first few times, then you can carry on on your own. Will that do?" Belem nodded without much conviction. "Anyway, who says you're clumsy?"

  "Everyone." The boy sounded sure of that.

  "Brother Gis said that?"

  "Nnnnnno," Belem admitted. "But he's the only one. It's because of this." He extended his twisted foot, at the same time looking away from it as much as possible.

  Dr. Bashir felt his heart leap at this unexpected opportunity. There would be no need for him to await a more favorable moment to heal Belem. It wouldn't take long, he knew it, and if he could perform the operation before it was time for the evening meal—

  —you'll redeem yourself, the voice within whispered. Fix the boy's leg and you prove you can be the great, romantic frontier healer of your dreams. But is that who you are? Or are you just the man who was cowering in his own tent not so long ago?

  Proving myself isn't important, Julian thought ferociously. What's important is the boy. "May I examine that?" he asked Belem.

  "Yes, sir." The boy answered in away that as good as said he did not dare refuse the great healer's request. He sat down on one of the empty containers and continued to look away while Dr. Bashir ran a diagnostic probe over his skin.

  The boy's rigid, terrified attitude troubled Julian. He tried to relax his patient by chatting with him while he worked. "Have you been here long, Belem?"

  "Five years. I was twelve when our village was—resettled."

  Julian looked up sharply. Belem didn't look seventeen. His healthy growth had been stolen from him by the years of Cardassian occupation. More than his growth: Julian knew that resettlement was often just another word for destruction. He tried to keep his tone casual as he went on to say, "I should have known. I see you're well past the age of initiation." He touched the bare lobe of his own right ear where Bajorans wore the shimmering ornament that marked their status.

  Belem touched his own right ear reflexively and blushed to feel the naked wires. "I had to sell them," he muttered.

  "What?"

  "The crystals. I was the oldest, my brothers were seven and five. I had to buy us food for our journey."

  "Your journey?" Julian repeated.

  Belem looked at him as though the doctor had just hatched. "The journey here, sir. We had to come, you know. There was trouble on our farm. The Underground sabotaged Father's harvester, and the Cardassian agents were coming to collect the crop. Father ordered all of my uncles and aunts and the bigger cousins into the fields to do the work by hand—even me! Only we couldn't do it fast enough. The Underground must have been watching. They came back the next night and burned the fields." The life went out of his eyes as the past came back, remorseless. "They did the same with all the other farms near our village, too. The Cardassians didn't care why we hadn't met our quotas. Father tried to reason with the Gul, but he said things—Father forgot himself and shouted back at him." Belem shuddered. "We ran into the hills when we saw what they did to Father. Then there was a bigger fire—"

  "You don't have to tell me any more," Dr. Bashir said gently. Belem blinked at him, waking from the old nightmare.

  "Oh, I don't mind talking about it, sir," he said. "I was able to save two of my brothers and bring them all the way here. That's something. Jin—that's my middle brother—Jin always stuck up for me after we got here. He told everyone who called me useless and a coward to shut up. Then he told them how I'd brought him and Narel—he's ten now—all the way here from home."

  "I can't see anyone calling you a coward, Belem," Bashir said. He finished his examination and stood up. As he'd thought, the malformation was congenital but correctable, even here. "And Brother Gis would be the first to contradict anyone who called you useless."

  The Bajoran boy's eyes filled with tears. "But I am useless, sir," he said.

  "How can you—?"

  "I lost it." His head dropped to his chest.

  "The crystals? But you needed to sell them in order to live."

  "Not the crystals." He looked up, and all Julian could see in that young face was pain and shame. "Our name, sir. Jin and Narel were young and terrified, and the way here was so hard that no one can blame them for forgetting, but I—I should have held on to it. It was who we were. It's why we're just Belem and Jin and Narel instead of who we should be." Tears flooded his cheeks. "Our name, sir; I lost our name."

  CHAPTER 6

  "JULIAN, YOU'VE GOT TO EAT." Dax slid onto the bench beside Dr. Bashir and looked pointedly at his untouched plate. A lump of grainy black bread and a dollop of meatless stew covered the chipped clay platter.

  "I'm not hungry." He said it so softly that she had to have him repeat it.

  "I know this isn't the Replimat's best," she said, "but it's all they've got to offer us." She picked up a piece of bread and with some effort tore off a hunk with her teeth. "Mnoff vad," she said, struggling to chew it.

  Julian poked at his stew once with chopsticks, then pushed his plate away.

  "You could always ask for shipments of food from the station," Dax suggested quietly. "Just do it so that Brother Gis and the rest don't find out. It would hurt them deeply."

  "I'm not interested in eating station food here," Julian said, fists tightening on the table. "I'm just not hungry."

  The intensity of his words startled Dax. It was the first time she'd heard him speak to her harshly. In ordinary circumstances, Julian was either trying to impress her or flirt with her, neither one with great success.

  These aren't ordinary circumstances, she reflected. "What's troubling you, Julian?" she asked.

  Instead of answering, he got up and walked away.

  "He's still not used to this," Ensign Kahrimanis remarked.

  "This is not the sort of thing anyone gets used to," Lieutenant Dax replied. Not if you've got a heart. Her glance swept the square, where a dozen plank-and-trestle tables had been set up for the evening meal. The sun was almost down, staining the sky shades of deep amber, peach, and purple between the camp buildings. Wooden torches smoldered and flared in their socket
s, lighting the way for the children who went back and forth from the cook shack with the big serving platters or who hauled buckets of drinking water from the storage barrels.

  Most of the tables were empty. Those that were occupied were packed with children who huddled near each other. The few tables where adults sat were the most thickly mobbed. As Dax watched, she saw a little girl try to squeeze onto a bench beside a grown man. The man gave her a tired smile, but the boy beside him snarled, then launched himself at her.

  "Calin! Calin!" The man pulled the boy off the little girl and scolded him while the other child slunk away to take a place at another table. A heartbreaking look of yearning filled her eyes, which never left the man's face. "Why did you do that, Calin?"

  "'Cause you're my father!" the boy shouted. "She wants to take you away from me, just 'cause her father an' mother's both dead. She can't! You're mine!" And he seized his father's arm fiercely.

  "It is often so," said Brother Gis. The monk and his two brethren were the only ones sharing the table with the crew members of Deep Space Nine. "There are perhaps a dozen children for each adult here, counting ourselves. Some of them came to us already orphaned, although a number were in the care of older brothers and sisters. The fever has changed much of that. Those who came to us with parents that the fever took are like blossoms on the wind, and those who still have parents living are terrified of losing them"

  "If things were otherwise, we might hope for aid from the district centers, offers of fosterage, adoption, even adult volunteers to come here and work with the children," said Mor. He was the youngest of the three monks manning the camp. He had the face of a man who was once fat. "But this is an isolated area. In the good times, pleasure-travelers seldom came this far into the Kaladrys Valley. The village of Lacroya never even had a guest-house, just a tavern. As it is, people have their own problems. To them, our hardships are unimportant in comparison. When I travel to the camp at Jabelon to trade for lamp oil, I hear rumors that there is much unrest in the cities, and it is spreading rapidly. The government is unstable, like a pavement made of broken stones. If we send them word asking for help, they send us silence. If we were to pack up the children and travel to the capital itself so that they could not pretend we are not there, they would give us excuses."