Warchild

by Esther Friesner

  "I'm glad to hear you say that, Julian." She took him firmly by the arm and steered him toward the door.

  "What are you doing?" he demanded.

  "I'm taking you back to your tent and putting you in your cot," she explained.

  "Well, this is a switch," Julian muttered. "You trying to get me into bed."

  Dax ignored the gibe. "You look awful. Talk about disasters, you're one just waiting to happen."

  He yanked his arm out of her grasp. "There's nothing the matter with me. I have work to do."

  "Do you trust yourself to do your best work on no sleep?" she countered. "That's the perfect formula for making mistakes—fatal mistakes." Putting on her most persuasive voice, she slipped her arm around him and steered him toward the door once more, saying, "You've done the most important work already. I think you've found the answer to our mysterious fever. Leave your notes with me and I'll take it from here. You know I've got several degrees in genetic engineering."

  "Yes, but—" His protests were met by strong, steady encouragement out of the lab.

  "You're our doctor, but I'm our science officer. I let you do your job, now you let me do mine. With luck, I should have a breeding batch of antibodies tested and ready for injection by this evening … if you get out of my way. Go on, rest; you'll need it when we start the immunization program. You know how children adore getting shots!" One final push and he was out the door. Jadzia shut it on him with a sigh of relief.

  She rechecked his notes and found that despite his obvious near-exhaustion, Julian had hit the mark. All indications were that he had found the answer to a puzzle that was stealing lives. No matter what she thought of his countless attempts at flirtation, she had to confess that he was as brilliant a doctor as he prided himself on being.

  Jadzia adjusted the microscanner and began her work. It would take time for her to design an antibody tailored to the task of destroying only the retrovirus and not the organism it mimicked, but the most difficult part was done: thanks to Julian, she knew the face of the enemy.

  He tries to do too much, she thought. He'll destroy himself if he doesn't learn some moderation. Oh, well, I did manage to send him off for some sleep. I don't need to worry about him now.

  She bent over the blood samples, her mind at ease.

  Across the camp, in the infirmary, Brother Mor looked up to meet Dr. Bashir's wobbly smile. "I'm here to lend a hand tending the patients," he announced.

  "I thought you were working in your laboratory," the monk replied, perplexed.

  "I was, but I reached a good stopping point. I've discovered that sometimes when you work too close to a problem for too long, you lose insight. A different activity may give me a new perspective on the disease. I'm very close to an answer."

  Brother Mor looked dubious. "You don't sound well," he said. "You look tired. Perhaps you would be better advised to lie down in your tent and—"

  "What, my voice?" Dr. Bashir forced a creditable chuckle. "Cooped up in that lab, it's just a bit rusty, that's all. Oh, and don't be misled by these." He indicated the dark rings under his eyes. "A family quirk. We all look like raccoons half the time."

  "Raccoons?"

  "Brother Mor, can't you use an extra pair of hands in here?" Julian wheedled.

  Grudgingly, the monk admitted that he could. Soon Julian was hard at work, doing what he could to clean the bodies of those fever victims who were too far gone to perform even the most basic hygiene care for themselves. It was not a pleasant task, but he did not focus on that.

  It's work, he thought. At least I'm doing something for these children, something to help them. Something to keep me from thinking about how many of them might die before Dax comes up with that antibody.

  Something to keep me from thinking about Belem.

  He moved doggedly from pallet to pallet, cooling the small, burning bodies with sponge baths to ease the fever. It was primitive, but he knew it was the best solution he had to apply until Dax was ready. The retrovirus did not respond to any of the pharmacopeia at his disposal. For now, he could only deal with symptoms.

  Frontier medicine, he thought as he dabbed at a little girl's flushed face with a damp cloth. This is it, all right.

  The child's hair lay in damp tendrils across her forehead. They looked like the finest Arabic calligraphy. He stared at the patterns they made, suddenly certain that if he could stop them from weaving and blurring so badly, he would be able to read the answer to a great riddle in their pattern. The letters danced in and out of focus, mocking him, but he concentrated on their elusive message, determined that the answer would not escape.

  The infirmary began to spin around him, but he knew it was just a trick of the mysterious letters to evade him. He held on, though the spinning went faster and faster, until he could reach out and seize the meaning. Yes, there it was, the answer! It was his! Another triumph for Dr. Julian Bashir!

  He opened his mouth to speak the word he read in the twisting letters and pitched forward to the ground, unconscious.

  CHAPTER 7

  A DAMP, WARM CLOTH patted Dr. Bashir's cheek like the paw of a persistent cat. He opened his eyes to see two Bajoran children kneeling over him. Still dazed, Julian marveled at how clean and well groomed the little girl's long braid of brown hair was, a sight rare and remarkable in a place where most of the children went around scruffy and indifferent to appearances. There was something uncanny about her fragile prettiness and the luminous pallor of her skin. Although her dress was as ragged as that of any other child of the camp, there was nothing squalid or shabby about it. The taller of the two, a crop-haired boy with face and arms browned by the sun, continued to dab at the doctor's face with the wet cloth.

  "Better?" he asked gruffly when he saw that Dr. Bashir was awake. He sat back on his haunches as if he intended to stare the answer out of his patient.

  "I—I think so." Julian touched his forehead. "I must have—"

  "You fell over on your face," the boy stated. "Wham. Like that. Lucky you didn't break your nose." He snorted. "Might've improved its looks that way."

  Julian smiled woozily. "Yes, I expect you'd think that." He supposed human noses must look peculiar, if not downright unattractive, by Bajoran standards.

  "I think his nose is nice," the little girl whispered. She dove into hiding behind the boy's back.

  Julian tried to sit up. His head still spun a little, but the feeling passed. He was surprised that his collapse hadn't brought Brother Mor running. He looked around, trying to catch sight of the monk, but saw only the rows of infirmary patients.

  "He's in the office," the girl said, bobbing her head up from behind the boy like a bright-eyed ground squirrel popping out of its burrow. "He's getting my medicine."

  Her words were enough to banish the last traces of dizziness from Julian's head. "What medicine?" he asked, speaking gently to her. "Are you ill?" He dreaded the thought of this exquisite child becoming yet another victim of the fever.

  She ducked behind the boy again, who rolled his eyes at the ceiling in exasperation. "Don't pay attention to my sister, healer," he said. "Dejana's scared of her own shadow."

  "Am not," came the muffled response from behind him, and a thump on the back that knocked him forward.

  "Stop that!" he commanded. He turned back to Dr. Bashir. "She's all right, but she had this fever that's going around. Now she's better—"

  "Better?" Julian echoed. "You mean she recovered on her own?"

  The boy shrugged. "That's what Brother Gis said. Some do. Brother Talissin told us it meant that Dejana's specially—" He slipped into a mocking nasal singsong as he repeated the dour monk's words. "—belooooooved of the Prophets. As if the Prophets didn't care a pinch for all our friends who got the fever and died."

  "Shush, Cedra!" Dejana hissed, scandalized. "Don't make fun of the Prophets like that!"

  "I'm not making fun of the Prophets, ninny; I'm making fun of Brother Talissin," the boy replied calmly. He returned his attention to
Dr. Bashir. "So anyway, Brother Gis said she's not supposed to work in the fields and she's supposed to take this special tea every six hours. It's to give her strength." He leaned closer to Dr. Bashir, and with an adult's serious intonation added, "You look like you could do with a little strengthening yourself. Drink a bowl of Brother Gis's tea and lie down for a couple of hours. Unless you like falling on your face."

  "Cedra! Don't talk to him like that! He's the healer!" the girl wailed, and dealt the boy another thump.

  Even Dr. Bashir could tell that the blows were never intended to hurt. He'd seen similar behavior countless times—one medical student congratulating another with a jab to the arm, the backslap his tennis coach gave him when he scored off an arduous volley—fake punches, skillfully pulled, given with only the friendliest intentions. He was surprised to see it here, where all the blows exchanged by the camp children were meant to hurt, and did.

  He was even more surprised to notice something that set these two children apart from nearly all the others he'd seen: their eyes. Their eyes were alive.

  "A healer can take medical advice as well as give it," he said to the girl. "Sometimes he'd better take it." His left cheek began to sting. His exploring fingers encountered a few minor contusions that made him wince. He fumbled for his instruments and treated the scrape as best he could without a mirror to guide his hand. The children watched, fascinated, as the silvery wand restored Dr. Bashir's skin to wholeness.

  "Can I try that thing?" Cedra demanded, already reaching out for it.

  "Later," Julian replied. "There's no one who needs a scrape or a cut treated now."

  "I can fix that!" The boy sprang to his feet and started off. He looked determined to bring back an accident victim.

  "Come back here, Cedra!" the little girl called. "No fair making yourself fall over something just so the healer lets you play with his magic."

  "That's not magic," Cedra scoffed. "That's Federation technology. You don't know anything if I don't tell you." But he came back, reluctantly, and resumed his place on the ground beside Dr. Bashir.

  "Look, I promise you I'll give you a chance to try this," Julian said, amused and impressed by the child's spirit. "But in exchange, I'll want something from you."

  "What?" The boy's dark eyes narrowed, on guard.

  "An introduction." Dr. Bashir made himself keep a straight face. "As one healer to another." He offered his hand. "I'm Dr. Julian Bashir of Starfleet."

  The boy took his hand uncertainly, as if it were a bundle of sticks, unaccustomed to the gesture. "I am Talis Cedra, and this is my sister, Talis Dejana."

  The fact that children who looked so young still recalled their family name took Julian by surprise. "Any relation to Brother Talissin?" he had to ask, struck by the similarity between the names.

  Cedra gave him a look remarkably reminiscent of Selok's expression when the younger Bashir made one of his infrequent mistakes. "Talissin's not a family name," he said. "Besides, who'd want to be related to him?"

  "Cedra, what you said!" Little Dejana was horrified. "Brother Talissin is—is—holy."

  "He's also a grouch," the unrepentant Cedra replied.

  Brother Mor came bustling out of the office cubicle just as Julian forced a laugh of agreement into a cough. "Here we are, Dejana"! the monk called, a steaming clay bowl held gingerly in his hands. "You drink this as fast as you can and you'll— Ah, Dr. Bashir! What are you doing sitting on the floor? Is anything the matter?"

  "It's all under control, Brother Mor." Slowly, with a few minor aches and pains, Julian got to his feet. "I've just been discussing the cure for stubbornness with my young colleague here." He gestured at Cedra.

  The boy stood up and took the bowl from Brother Mor's hands. "He fell over," he explained. He held the hot brew for his sister to sip while Brother Mor turned a shocked look on Dr. Bashir.

  "I am guilty as charged," Julian admitted, palms out. "I think I'll take some very good advice I was given earlier and have a little nap. I would appreciate it if some responsible person would volunteer to wake me when the additional supplies are beamed down at thirteen hundred hours."

  "Me! Me! I'll do it!" Cedra perked up like a puppy, though for all his enthusiasm he never so much as joggled the bowl he held to his sister's lips. The tea had cooled enough for her to take the bowl from his hands, leaving him free to leap up and insist, "And I'll help carry them into camp, too! Please, Brother Mor? I'll go straight back to the fields afterward, I promise."

  Brother Mor looked from Cedra to Dr. Bashir. "What do you think?" he asked.

  Dr. Bashir smiled. "I think I have a new assistant."

  "They're the most remarkable children, Jadzia," Julian enthused as he watched Lieutenant Dax load the hypodermics with her antibody solution. "You won't believe it, but they've been in this camp for two years, and they're still so—well, cheerful's the word I want, I suppose. I realize it doesn't sound like much but—"

  "For children to keep their spirits up after two years in a refugee camp sounds like a miracle to me," Dax replied.

  "Cedra was only ten when he brought his sister Dejana here—she's eight now. Brother Mor tells me they arrived unaccompanied by any adult. I don't like to think of all they must have endured to reach this place, yet here they are!"

  "Many children reached the camp on their own," Dax commented, concentrating on the work at hand. She was eager to be done with it so that she might begin her real mission here. The few conversations she had been able to have with the refugees so far were short and unsatisfactory. The adults she'd approached wore faces haunted by suffering and suspicion. They disliked speaking of the past. The children often could recall no past to speak of. Sometimes she encountered a person who reacted to her questions as if he might have the answer she sought but refused to trust any words to a stranger's ears. Her quest for the Nekor was off to a poor start.

  Given time, I might be able to win their trust, she thought, sealing another hypodermic and setting it aside. But I don't have time. The crops are coming in, even here. The Berajin harvest festival isn't that far off. If the Nekor isn't found by then . . .

  There was little doubt in her mind that word had already reached the Dessin-ka that the Federation had consented to take part in the search. If the Federation failed to deliver the child, the Dessin-ka would quite likely do a violent about-face as far as their previous support went. Such a switch by a formerly pro-Federation group of the Dessin-ka's size and influence would have seismic repercussions in the Bajoran political strata. The already unstable provisional government couldn't stand a shake-up of that magnitude.

  If I find the Nekor too late for the Dessin-ka's deadline, it will be as bad as if I never find the Nekor at all, she thought. She hoped the council representatives of the Dessin-ka might be open to reason, but a host of memories from her symbiont's past experiences of dealing with such people swarmed up to remind her how hollow such hopes must be.

  Jadzia's natural optimism reached out and grasped one encouraging thought: At least Julian's stopped trying to wear himself into dust. He's accepted the fact that he can't cure everything that's wrong here by himself. I would like to meet the children responsible for this change in him. They must be remarkable.

  "There," she announced with satisfaction. "That ought to be enough for us to treat all the fever patients and immunize the rest of the camp."

  "Are you sure?" Julian regarded the array of hypodermics on the table.

  "As sure as I need to be. But if you're worried, there's a genetic template of my antibody design stored in the portable replicator the ship's doctor from the Shining Blade sent us."

  Julian squatted to stare at the stark black metal oblong resting beneath the laboratory table. It was no larger than two old-fashioned tricorders set end-to-end, yet it had the capacity to duplicate any carbon-based biosample introduced to it. If he cocked his head, he could just pick up a faint humming sound coming from the unit. "All self-powered, too," he murmured in admiration.
r />   "Did you say something, Doctor?" Dax asked.

  Julian stood up and stretched. "I was just wondering what my old professor Selok of Vulcan would have to say about this. He didn't have a very high opinion of Klingon medical technology."

  "Any reason?"

  "With Vulcans there's always a reason. He was forever tied up in a faculty feud with Rhakh-tem, an eminent Klingon neurobiologist. All very polite, it was—Rhakh-tem never threw anything larger than a retort, the glass kind, and Selok always managed to catch it before it hit—though there were times I swear I caught a glint of some less than logical temper in Selok's eye."

  "Well, Vulcans are kin to Romulans." She passed two of the primed hypos to Dr. Bashir. "You take care of the patients in the infirmary; Ensign Kahrimanis and I will organize the immunization program for the rest." No better way to make certain I speak to everyone possible about any refugees from Bennikar, she thought.

  "Bennikar?" the man repeated as Dax administered the injection. "No, I. can't say I know if any of the children come from that region. Of course, I'm not from around here." He rolled down his sleeve and gave Dax an impish look that urged her to ask where he did come from.

  "Oh, I couldn't tell you that," he replied when she asked. He shook his head gravely. "The answer would be over your head."

  "Try me."

  "That's just it, dear lady." He pointed at the sky above. "That's where I hail from, over your head. The name's Mullibok. I used to have a farm on Jeraddo."

  "The fifth moon?" Dax blinked, remembering a conversation she'd had not so long ago with Major Kira. Recognition showed on her face. "I have a friend who'll be very glad to hear you're alive and well."

  "Let me guess; the stubborn one with the pretty eyes?" He chuckled. "The lady is very persuasive when she puts her mind to it."

  "But what are you doing here?" Dax asked.

  The farmer sighed. "When your friend … persuaded me to leave my home, I thought it would kill me. It didn't. So the next thought I had was to find myself a place where people would appreciate me for what I am: living proof that losing your home isn't the end of the world. A walking, breathing lesson in hope, as it were." He lowered his voice conspiratorially and added, "Also I'm the best damn farmer on Bajor. These monks mean well, but they couldn't grow bread mold in a damp box without my help."