Warchild

by Esther Friesner

  "Yes, I am his daughter." She reached into her pocket and produced a clean, folded cloth. "And now let us see whether my remedy will also work on your eye."

  "I'm sorry our paths haven't crossed earlier," he said as she applied the compress to his face. "You have a natural instinct for healing."

  She laughed. "You think you flatter me, but you speak truer than you know. I have more than instinct: I was trained in the Temple. I was to have entered a healing order, but my father sent word that he needed me more." She set the compress down and looked wistful. "I should have been Vedek Jalika by now."

  "Didn't you just tell me that what we're called can imprison us?" Julian asked. He wished there were some way he could get her to reapply the cold cloth. The touch of her fingers on his face filled him with longing.

  "You are clever." Her lashes were thick and sooty, bright eyes captivating him with a sideways glance. "Father warned me about clever men."

  Julian raised one hand as if taking an oath. "I swear I'll be as dense as a rock if you'll like me better for it."

  "You have brought healing to us," she answered. "How could I not like you?"

  Julian's face fell. He had been hoping for a different sort of declaration. "I didn't have much choice in the matter," he said. "Your father and his men brought me here. I ought to be on the road, bringing the fever vaccine to other camps."

  "You are here because Belem asked for you," Jalika told him. "When he was well, he used to help me take care of our sick. He spoke of you often and he told me how you mended his leg. He respected my skills as a healer, but he made it very plain that I was nowhere near as talented as you."

  "I'll have to have a few words with him about courtesy when he gets better," Julian joked. If he gets better. He didn't care to admit it, but he had his doubts about that.

  "He said that you were seeking a cure for the fever that was ravaging his old home. He was certain you'd find it; there was nothing you could not do, according to him. Soon after Belem joined us, we began to get word of a man—a man who wore the uniform of Starfleet—who traveled from camp to camp curing the sick, conquering the fever, bringing help and then disappearing. Belem heard the descriptions and said it was you. My father was impressed."

  "Impressed enough to have me kidnapped," Julian remarked.

  The crystals adorning Jalika's earring tinkled as she shook her head. "He would never have done it for that reason alone. The camps needed you more; I was enough to look after our people's health. Then Belem fell ill. At first he swore it was not the camp fever. He had already had it, he said, and he recovered on his own. Is that possible?"

  "Yes; I've seen several cases like that in my travels. There doesn't seem to be any common factor for cases of spontaneous recovery—not age, not sex, not even previous physical condition. The initial case I saw was a little girl, eight years old, in the first camp I visited."

  "Maybe Belem will cast off the sickness on his own this time, too." Jalika tried to sound hopeful. "May the Prophets will it." She sighed. "My father refused to believe it was not the camp fever. He had heard reports of how devastating that could be, and he wanted it out of our midst as soon as possible. He recalled how highly Belem praised you, and he had word of your accomplishments. Do you wonder that he set out to find you and bring you here?"

  "I wonder what he thinks of my accomplishments now," Dr. Bashir said somberly. He picked up his empty bowl and stood. "I'd better get back to Belem."

  Jalika rose to her feet, took his bowl from him, and stacked it on top of hers. "I'll take you. You'd never be able to find your own way."

  As they wandered back through the twists and turns of the caverns, Julian asked, "You still haven't answered my question: Why haven't I seen you before this? If you worked as a healer, why aren't you in the infirmary now?"

  "Father," came the terse reply. "He fears for my health. He claims that old Merab Jis can manage the infirmary without me." A half-smile came to her lips. "He did not forbid me to visit the infirmary, only to work there. And today he is away."

  "Where has he gone?" Julian asked.

  "Down out of the mountains. We need fresh supplies." Her voice was strained. Julian could guess at the methods Berilak Selinn and his followers used to obtain supplies, and he could tell that this knowledge was a source of deep shame to the man's lovely daughter.

  "When he returns, I want you to tell him something for me," Dr. Bashir said. "The same injection that cures victims of camp fever also protects against contracting the disease in the first place. If he'll give me space where I can set up my equipment, I can manufacture enough vaccine to immunize all of you. That's what I've been doing in the camps."

  "If there were no more danger of infection, Father would have to let me return to my work. Oh, would you?" Jalika's clasped her hands, beseeching.

  "No reason why I wouldn't. If everyone here is immunized, then perhaps I can convince your father that he has no further need of me."

  "But … Belem—"

  Julian's hands closed tightly over Jalika's. "I promise you I won't abandon him."

  "You will heal him, Julian." Jalika's eyes shone. "I know you will heal him."

  "I don't see how he did it," Major Kira said to Lieutenant Dax, resting her hand on the back of the Trill's seat in Ops. "I do not see how Cedra managed to find his sister while she was hidden by that miniature cloaking device."

  "I thought he explained all that," Dax replied. "Her scent—"

  Kira snorted. "If there ever was a Bajoran who could follow a scent trail that subtle, that stale, for that far, we wouldn't need to breed tokkas to track fugitive criminals."

  "I've seen stranger things," Dax said.

  "I'll bet you have."

  "So you think it was another of Cedra's pranks?"

  Major Kira took a deep breath. "How can I think of it as a prank when it saved his sister's life—and so much more? Why should I care if the boy lied to us? He found Dejana, that's the only thing that ought to count. But it still leaves me with a funny feeling …" She twisted up her mouth. "Why do I feel so guilty for suspecting Cedra of trickery?"

  "Probably because the boy's so distraught right now. He and his sister are as close as twins."

  "When you go through so much with another person, it makes you grow closer, even if you're not related to start with. Sometimes it gets to the point where you don't know how you'll survive if anything should happen to your—your other half." Major Kira spoke as if inspired by memory, not theory—a memory at once personal and painful. She shook off her ghosts and asked Dax, "Any sign the girl's getting better?"

  "No. The opposite's truer, sad to say. I've taken biosamples from the child, run tests, and come up with no answers."

  "You're baffled?" Kira was amazed. "You mean there's no information you've gathered from any of your lives that can help?"

  "I was always drawn to science, but that doesn't mean I concentrated on medicine. If I had, I'd be Dr. Dax. I never wanted to limit my studies by specialization." She gave Kira a rueful smile. "For all of my precious scientific knowledge, it was Dr. Bashir who found the cure for the camp fever."

  "It's Dr. Bashir who should be here now," Kira muttered.

  "I thought you were the one who was so proud of him for taking his medicine to the people?"

  "There are people who need him here, too. If anything happens to the Nekor—" She didn't want to think of that eventuality. "I thought the child only had a cold. What happened?"

  "I thought the same; all the signs pointed that way. As near as I can tell, in its first stages the illness she's contracted mimicks the symptoms of the common cold. Then, when Dejana's resistance was lowered by all she went through during Vung's kidnap attempt, the disease bloomed."

  "The disease?" Kira echoed. "Doesn't it have a name?"

  "If I had a name to attach to it, I'd have a treatment. I've run all the data through the computer and come up blank. The symptoms she's showing now could belong to any one of dozens of illness
es, but the microorganisms in her blood don't match any of them. I ordered her put on wide-spectrum antibiotics and antivirals, but it's only a stopgap." Dax looked her Bajoran friend full in the face. "I'm afraid we're losing her."

  "We can't lose her." If passion could cure Dejana, Major Kira's would do so in an instant.

  "Agreed. But we can't save her; not without help. There must be medical personnel on Bajor who—"

  Kira threw up her hands. "Impossible. Vedek Torin's kept his word to Kejan Ulli even better than promised: There's to be no commerce between DS9 and Bajor until the eve of Nis Thamar. No one's objected because it's less than two days away." She shuddered and repeated, "Less than two days."

  Dax stood up. "We need Dr. Bashir."

  "How did you ever manage this, Jalika?" Dr. Bashir stood on the outthrust crag overlooking the Kaladrys Valley and let the cool evening wind scour his face. It felt good to breathe air that did not reek of dampness and stone. "How did you ever convince your father to let me out?"

  The Bajoran woman looked up from the thicket of scrub where she knelt beside a small reed basket, her lips curving up sweetly. "It was simple, Julian. I told him that if your Federation medicine alone could not heal Belem, perhaps it might work better coupled with some of the herb lore I learned while in the Temple. I have his permission to teach you the healing uses of our Bajoran plants."

  He could not resist returning that enchanting smile. "Alone?"

  "Does that surprise you?"

  "No guards," he pointed out.

  "What need do we have for guards?" she replied with a casual toss of her head. "None of father's men are interested in herb lore or healing, and they have enough to do elsewhere. Besides, I don't need nursemaids."

  Julian squatted on his heels. "Isn't your father afraid I might try to escape?"

  Jalika moved a few feet to one side, her back to Julian. "On foot? Without equipment, supplies, even a map? You would be very easy to catch."

  He recognized that what she said was true. He had known it from the moment she came to him with the offer of a brief respite from the caverns. Still, he felt like teasing her, if only to make her pay some attention to him. He wondered if there was some way he could work his prowess as a Starfleet Medical prodigy into the conversation. Failing that, he urgently needed to impress her somehow.

  "I could—" he said, rising soundlessly and beginning to edge toward her. "I could find my way. I've grown familiar with the hill country, and only a fool wouldn't know you reach a valley by going down a mountain. Once I'm down there again, I know the territory. I could find my way to a friendly camp. They know I'm their ally."

  "Ally," the woman repeated with a little laugh. "Their legend, you mean."

  "They would provide me with whatever I needed—if it was theirs to give," he said. His talk was allair, and he knew it. Despite the easy confidence with which he outlined his grand plan of escape, he knew that there was more to finding a way out of these mountains than merely tumbling downslope like a rockslide. Still, he had to make her believe he was the equal of his own legend. "They'd even give me a new verdanis. I could gallop away in acloud of—"

  "Aren't you afraid that I'll tell all this to my father?" Jalika responded, still not turning around. Her hands grubbed in the rocky soil, uprooting a brambly green shoot and laying it in her basket. "Then he'll never let you out of the caverns again."

  Julian crept nearer, his feet making no sound. Not even a pebble was dislodged as he came nearer and nearer to the apparently preoccupied young woman. "Then perhaps I shouldn't return to the caverns at all," he murmured. He rested his hand on the trunk of a wind-twisted tree. "And perhaps, when I go, I should make sure that your father doesn't try to follow—"

  The beam of energy sang through the air, shearing off a dusty green twig just inches from his fingertips. "Pick that up, will you, healer?" Jalika requested demurely, placing the phaser back in her belt. "If you brew the needles with hasva root it stops fever visions."

  "Does it." Julian fetched the twig, a wary eye on Jalika. "It certainly cut down my illusions." He brought her the twig and maintained a rigid silence for the rest of their time on the mountainside.

  The light was mostly gone from the sky by the time she led him back into the caverns. The guards on duty and the other folk who shared the underground warren observed the two of them closely, but said nothing. He noticed that this time, she conducted him back to the infirmary by a route so direct it would be simple to retrace.

  The old woman, Merab Jis, came bustling up to greet them with her wide, almost toothless smile. "The Prophets praise your name, healer," she enthused, her gnarled hands shaking. "Hardly a bed remains occupied here, and no new sickness comes in."

  "No more will," Julian responded. "No camp fever cases, at any rate." He patted the old woman's shoulder and said, "You were a very great help to me, taking the inoculation first in front of all the others."

  Merab became as flustered as a maiden. "Oh, healer, I did nothing!"

  "You were very brave," Julian insisted. "Half the struggle with a vaccine is getting the patients to take it."

  "Some of these men, yes." Merab sniffed. "All talk about how bold they are, but not a one would let you tend to them until they saw me receive the treatment with no harm done."

  "Precisely what I've been saying." Julian had become far better friends with the old woman since Jalika's appearance. He wasn't sure whether Merab hoped to impress her leader's daughter by cultivating the healer or whether he himself was working it the other way around. He stole a peek at Jalika, who was surveying the nearly empty infirmary and paying no attention to either of them.

  "Borilak Selinn himself was here to inspect our efforts," Merab continued, "and he was pleased. That is—" She cast an uneasy glance toward Belem's place apart.

  "Soon we will give my father no cause for displeasure, Merab," Jalika reassured the crone, showing her the contents of her basket. "Bring me some freshly boiling water-draw it from the spring itself, mind!—and we will see if that may do some good."

  The old woman bobbed her head and scuttled away. Jalika led the way to the cozy side cavern where Julian had set up his equipment. Here she appropriated a mortar and proceeded to strip the needles from the twig she had so dramatically harvested. "You only need to bruise the needles," she explained while she worked. "Just enough to encourage the release of the aromatic oils. If you crush them, too much of the essence is lost. Here." She passed Julian the mortar and pestle. "I need to prepare the hasva root."

  He watched her as she cleaned and slivered the spidery root end of the shoot she had dug from the mountain earth. She worked with a cool, professional expertise that even Selok of Vulcan might have approved of. The thought of his old teacher passing judgment on this flower-faced Bajoran woman twisted Julian's mouth into a peculiar mix of skepticism and amusement.

  Jalika caught him staring at her that way. "What is it, healer?" she asked. "Am I doing something wrong?"

  "That's not for me to say," he replied. "After all, you're the one in charge now."

  "In that case, why have you stopped working?" She nodded toward the idle pestle in his hand.

  "Oh … I was just thinking of someone I used to know."

  "Someone—special to you?"

  "You might say that."

  "Ah." Her lashes lowered. She chopped the root more briskly.

  "I was thinking that he'd like you … as far as it's possible for a Vulcan to like anyone."

  "He?" she repeated, raising her eyes suddenly, then looking away before Julian could read their expression. "I thought—I thought that when you said you were thinking of someone special you meant …" Her voice trailed off.

  He understood. "No." He worked the pestle carefully, mashing the needles just enough so that a clean, heady fragrance filled the small cave. "There's no one like that—no one special—for me."

  She made a sound of acknowledgment.

  "And you?" he asked.

  "None.
" The slivers and threads of hasva root were chopped almost to dust under the edge of her knife. "When we enter the Temple to study healing, we make a promise: Until we have mastered the art with hands, heart, and pagh, we must regard all others equally as vessels to receive healing or sources to teach us. There is no room for anything else in our lives."

  "Good Lord, that's Starfleet Medical!" Julian blurted. Then he added, "My training was like that, too. At first, that is. No time for any sort of social life, just study, study, study—although I was very good at it," he said hastily, seeing his chance and pouncing on it. "Did you know I was second in my class? If I only hadn't incorrectly identified a postganglionic—"

  "Why must that matter to us here?" Jalika asked quietly.

  Julian stood slack-jawed. Her soft words stung like a slap across the face. His mouth snapped shut. "I suppose it doesn't makes a difference," he said curtly. "Except when I'm trying to make a damned fool of myself. Now there's a function of the postganglionic nerve we never covered."

  Meticulously she brushed the powdered root into a small wooden bowl and set it aside before taking the mortar from his hands. "You are no fool, healer."

  "Kind of you to say so," he said stiffly. "Even if only to spare my feelings. You needn't bother; I've been put in my place by other beautiful women before this."

  "Beautiful?" Her lips scarcely moved over the word.

  "Here is the water!" Merab Jis bustled in, carrying a steaming pot. She set it down on the table between them. "What else shall I do?"

  "That is all for now, thank you," Jalika replied.

  "Well, if I'm not needed here, I think I'll go have a little nap. You will call on me if I'm wanted, won't you, healer?" she simpered at Julian.

  He called up a smile just for her. "You know I will." After he was sure she was gone, he addressed Jalika once more: "Listen, I'm sorry if I've embarrassed you. Before, when we were outside gathering plant samples, you gave me the message loud and clear."

  "What message?"

  He pointed at her belt where the phaser was partly visible. "I have been known to take no for an answer. You might have to slam my head against the wall a few times, but I do catch on. Ask Lieutenant Dax, if you ever have the chance to meet her."