One of the prospective Guardians below raises a hand.
“Yes. Question?”
“How?” she asks.
“How what?”
“How does one. . .” She reads off her notePADD, “get into the groove?”
“Oh. Good question. The first thing you might wanna do is observe the symbionts’ behavior. Watch what they do, how they respond to things. Get a feel for the rhythm of their lives. And then when you introduce changes into the environment, like lowering the pH in the pool, you can see how that affects them. Eventually, you’ll be able to anticipate their reactions.”
At the bar, observing, Lenara calls out, “Observation and hypothesis. That sounds a lot like science to me.”
“Of course, it does. You’re a scientist.” Vic comes off the stage, walking down the stairs to main dining area of the bar. “I’m not knocking you for it; I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. But there’s a difference between science and what we’re doing.” He weaves through the crowd of prospective Guardians, heading towards the symbiont pool. “At the end of the day, whatever science gives you is the best guess, am I right?”
“Essentially,” Lenara says. “Science attempts to offer the best explanation for phenomena based on the available information. When new information presents itself, that explanation may change. Science is a constant process of trying to understand the universe.”
“Right.” Vic addresses his pupils. “So, Lenara tells us science is trying to understand. Our Vulcan friend tells us telepathy is knowing. This is probably a little of both.”
“Maybe you could give us a demonstration?” Lenara prompts, glad her schedule allows her supervise this lesson. Vic, having never taught in his short, holographic existence, was about as nervous as Lenara had ever seen a hologram. (Like most of the old school rec deck users, Lenara keeps away from programs involving serious danger to her or the characters. Holosuites were designed for safe relaxation and exercise, not an endless parade of blood and Vikings and private detectives.) Her presence seems to calm him as he gets into his pedagogical groove.
“Sure. Why don’t you all come over here? Gather around.”
Lenara hops off her barstool.
“Not you,” Vic says. “You stay there for right now.”
“Okay.” Lenara stops still.
“Alright.” Vic smiles at the Guardian initiates. “Now, notice how the symbionts are acting. They’re swimming around slowly, active, but not doing much. Very calm.” Vic looks to Lenara. “You can come over now.”
Lenara crosses to the symbiont, noticing how with each step she can hear the symbiont splashing about more and more.
“Now, look at ‘em. They’re flailing all over the place. Why is that?”
“My presence has an excitatory effect on the symbionts,” Lenara answers.
“Okay, good. That’s our science answer. What else?”
Trivora, a little girl of only five (and, according to Sybok, their strongest telepath) leans over the pool, one of her braids dipping into the water before being tucked backed into place by her father. She looks up and smiles, several teeth missing from her grin. “They like her.”
“What was that, sweetheart?” Vic asks.
“They like Kahn,” Trivora repeats. “The sym-byunts are happy to see her.”
“Exactly. The symbionts like her. When she goes by them, they get excited because they’re happy to see her. Very good. As you can see, there’s a lot you can tell about the symbionts just by looking at their body language, but as Trivora showed us, intuition can go the extra mile and tell us for sure what the symbionts are thinking.
“Now all of this relates back to maybe the most important thing you need to know about symbionts: they don’t like being alone. They’re very social people. If they’re left alone for too long, they get sad, they don’t eat as much, they don’t swim around the pool. That’s why it’s good to have two of them together so they can keep each other company, but still, they like having visitors.”
Trivora’s father raises his hand.
“Yes, sir?”
“The Caves of Mak’ala are fairly isolated. Do you think the symbionts could be growing faster here because they’re happier and eating more?”
“Could be,” Vic says. “That’s a good point. Maybe that’s something Lenara and her scientists can look into.”
“We will,” Lenara says. “I think that’s enough for today. Unless anybody has any questions, I think we’re—”
Trivora’s hand flies into the air.
“Trivora?”
“Do sym-byunts poop?”
The bar fills with chuckles as Trivora’s dad admonishes, “Honey, that’s not a very polite question.”
“It’s alright,” Lenara says. She kneels to eye-level with Tivora. “Symbionts, like most living beings, expel waste after eating. So, yes. Symbionts do poop. Why do you ask?”
“I think the older one is pooping right now.”
“Okay.” Lenara smiles. “Well, why don’t we give them some privacy?” Lenara stands up, placing a hand on Trivora’s tiny shoulder to lead her and her father out with the other students. She takes a look back at Vic. “Have a good show tonight. Break a leg.” Something in the pool catches her eye. Her hand falls from Trivora’s shoulder. “Trivora, you go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Okay. Bye-bye!” Trivora skips out with her father, leaving Lenara gazing down at the symbiont pool awestruck.
“What’s wrong?” Vic asks. “The big guy got the runs or something?”
“No. It’s laying eggs.”
—
“Come,” Ezri calls.
Kira pokes her head into Ezri’s office.
“What’s up?”
Kira taps her fingers on the doorframe. “I thought I’d let you know that a Trill vessel has just registered to dock at the station tomorrow morning.”
“A Trill vessel?”
“The Niantis, to be specific.”
“Oh my god,” Ezri gasps, letting PADDwork fall to her desk. “That’s the Symbiosis Commission’s official cruiser.”
“I just thought I’d let you know.” And she leaves.
—
Lenara and Vic bite their nails at the bar while Dr. Girani and Y’Pora, Colonel Kira’s midwife, supervise the birth.
“I don’t think I was this nervous the last time I was in labor,” Lenara says. She stares at Vic nibbling at his thumbnail. “When did you start biting your nails?”
Vic pulls his hand away, wiping his thumb on his pants. “I don’t know. When did you?”
“Chilar.” Lenara folds her hands in her lap. “When we were working on creating believable, three dimensional character renderings, to get through the uncanny valley every team member made something we called a ‘life mold.’ Essentially, a motion capture device that recorded our mannerisms to make more realistic characters. As far as I know, the character attributes taken from Chilar’s life mold are still used by programmers today. In other words, it runs in the family.”
Y’Pora turns around, glaring at them. “If you do not quiet yourselves, I will remove you from the birthing suite.”
Lenara rolls her eyes at Y’Pora treating this like a normal Bajoran birth with all the need for quiet and relaxation for the mother. The symbionts aren’t Bajoran; they’re not even mammals. They’re parasitic mollusks. They don’t have ears.
Even so, Lenara keeps her mouth shut for the rest of egg laying out of a healthy fear of midwives which she developed after a traffic collision with a Klingon midwife. That was two lifetimes ago, but Lenara can still feel the bite marks on her arm.
After about an hour, Girani holsters her medical tricorder, her lips thinning as she rubs the wrinkled bridge of her nose.
“What’s wrong?” Lenara asks.
Y’Pora doesn’t shush her, so it must be serious.
“The birth was successful,” Girani says. “All forty of the eggs appear healthy. But the mother’s lif
e signs are showing an appreciable drop.”
“What does that mean?” Lenara asks.
“We don’t know.”
—
“Hey, Dax. Good to see ya,” Quark says. “Isn’t it a little early for lu—”
Ezri hops over the bar like Emony with a vault, and presses Quark against the wall with her forearm pinning his throat. “Who did you tell about Vic’s?” she hisses.
“No one!” He squirms. “I swear. No Ferengi businessman would admit to anyone that he was letting someone use his holosuite free of charge—little worm person or not.”
Ezri eases off his throat slightly. “What about your waiters? Do any of them know?”
“I imagine there’s been some gossip amongst the staff about what’s going on in Vic’s. All those Trill coming in and out. You and Lenara there at all hours of the night.”
“Would any of them try to sell that information?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“All of them.”
On the other side of the bar, Grimp puts down a tray of dirty glasses and hotfoots to the exit, bumping into several patrons on the way.
Ezri and Quark share a glance. “I really wish Odo was here right now,” Quark groans.
Ezri lets him go. “Me, too.”
With no Changeling on hand, they run after Grimp themselves, Quark trailing behind Ezri considerably. (To be fair, Ezri probably wouldn’t be able to walk in his shoes, let alone run in them.)
Ezri tackles Grimp in front of Lysia’s cart.
Looking up at Ezri with wide, terrified eyes, he pleads, “Don’t hurt me! I only sold that information to feed my family.”
“Please,” Quark spits. “You’d sell your own mother to the Dominion for a strip of latinum.”
Grimp looks confused as to whether he should treat that as a compliment or an accusation.
“What did you tell them?” Ezri demands, shaking Grimp by the collar.
“Only that the symbionts were on DS9,” Grimp says. “Not where they were on the station. I was going to charge them extra for that.”
“If you do, I will make the rest of your life very unpleasant.”
Grimp pshaws. “You Starfleet uniforms are all talk.”
“But I’m not,” Quark says. “Maybe you’re forgetting the confidentiality agreement you signed that states that any Quark’s employee who reveals customers’ holosuite habits for profit thereby surrenders their property and the profit they accrue over the next ten years to the proprietor. That would be me.” Quark crosses his arms over his chest. “You can tell the Symbiosis Commission whatever you want, but you’re not seeing a single slip of that latinum.”
—
With Grimp seeing the error of his ways (don’t get caught), Ezri comes to Vic’s to break the bad news to Lenara. . . and see the forty symbiont eggs who could very well be seized by the Symbiosis Commission tomorrow morning. She finds Vic, Lenara, Girani, and Y’Pora huddled around the pool, murmuring amongst themselves.
“We’ve got trouble,” Ezri says.
Lenara looks up, the corners of her mouth turned down. “So do we.”
“The Symbiosis Commission is on its way here.”
“The older symbiont is dying.”
“You win,” Ezri says. “What happened?”
“After giving birth,” Girani explains, “its autonomic nervous system started to slowly shut down as all neural activity refocused to producing isoboramine.”
“Isn’t there something you can do?” Ezri asks.
“No, I’m afraid not. The symbiont has reached maturity and in order to live it needs a host.”
“Then let’s get it a host.”
—
“No,” Sybok mutters, shaking his head violently. “No, it will not be done. No.” He squints his eyes once more at the dying symbiont and then back at the pool of prospective hosts. “No,” he pronounces. “None of them are suitable.”
“What do you mean?” Lenara asks. “Were we wrong about psi-negatives being capable of joining?”
“No. They—” He points at the crowd of trembling Trill. “—can be joined. But not to that symbiont.” He looks Lenara up and down. “It wants you.”
“What?”
“It has grown far too accustomed to you. The Kahn symbiont has told the dying symbiont too much about how good a host you are.” He points a finger in her face. “You should not have spent so much time with it.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” And why joined Trill aren’t allowed to become Guardians.
“It will reject any other host. It wants you.”
“What about the next best thing?”
—
Sybok seizes Bejal, gripping his upper arms tightly. “This one will do.”
In the background, Ezri tries desperately to calm the rest of Lenara’s family, attempting to convince them that a dead Vulcan religious fanatic/terrorist bursting into their quarters unannounced is actually a good thing.
“Do what?” Bejal asks, looking to his sister for answers.
“One of the symbionts needs to join or it will die,” Lenara says. “And, owing to a slight error of judgment on my part, you’re the only Trill on this station it can join with.”
“Me? Are you sure?”
“I'm sure.”
Bejal sits down on the couch, putting his head between his knees. “I can’t believe it.”
“Bej. . .” Lenara rests a hand on his back.
He looks up at her. “I gave up hope of this ever happening a long time ago.”
“But you always said you didn’t want to be joined. That’s why you didn’t sign up for the registry.”
“I only said that because I knew what we all knew: if anyone in this family was going to be joined, it would be Lenara, the smart one. Or Nulat, the talented one. Or both of you. But not me. Never me.” He pauses. “And now it’s happening. It’s actually happening.”
Lenara rubs his back.
“I just. . . I need a minute, okay?”
—
Lenara’s family sits in the infirmary’s informal waiting room, awaiting word from Bejal’s surgery, all biting their nails. It really does run in the family, then.
Girani comes out, still wearing her red scrubs. “I have bad news.”
Bejal’s wife gasps, hugging her children to her chest.
“The other symbiont has gone into labor,” Girani says. “It’s already showing signs of isoboramine hyperproduction.”
“What about my brother?” Lenara asks.
“Bejal and the symbiont came through the surgery well. They’re in recovery.”
The Otner family groans, filling the waiting room with Trill invectives.
“I probably should’ve said that first,” Girani says.
“You think?” Lenara’s mother snaps.
Lenara and Ezri leave the family to their griping—only Trill could complain about someone being healthy—to talk to Girani about the other symbiont.
“According to the Vulcan,” Girani says, “this symbiont is just as attached to Lenara as the last.”
Lenara nods. “I see. How long does it have?”
“Twelve, maybe fifteen hours if I place it in stasis immediately following birth.”
“Good. That’s just enough time.”
“For what?” Ezri asks.
“To get Nulat here from Cardassia.”
—
Lenara slaps their quarters’ communications array. “She’s still not answering. And neither is the volunteer coordinator. The whole damn grid is spotty. What the hell is going on on Cardassia?”
“I don’t know,” Ezri says. “But I think I know someone we can get a clear channel to.”
A few minutes later, their vidscreen is graced by Elim Garak’s bleary-eyed and pajama-clad presence. “Garak here.”
“Hey, it’s Ezri. I need to ask you a favor.”
He rolls his eyes and mutters something like, “All of civilization is crumbling
around me and she wants a favor.”
“It’s about my sister,” Lenara says, stepping into frame.
Garak squints at the screen. “Who’s that? Oh, no. Wait, of course, the lovely and beguiling and cuckolding Lenara Kahn. So lovely to meet you. What was it you needed?”
“Nulat. I haven’t been able—”
Somewhere offscreen, a man’s voice scratchily mumbles, “Garak, what’s going on? Come back to bed.” The man wanders into the frame. Or at least one particularly facet of his anatomy does.
Ezri grimaces at the sight before cocking her head to the side. “Julian?”
Julian yips, flinging himself away from the camera. “You didn’t tell me you were on a vidcall,” he hisses.
“I wouldn’t worry, dear,” Garak says. “It’s nothing she hasn’t seen before.”
Hiding behind a sofa, Julian looks to Garak’s monitor. “Ezri?”
She waves. “It’s just me. And Lenara.” She looks to the cub reporter sitting in an armchair, desperately covering his eyes. “And Jake.”
“Jake!”
Ezri shrugs. “He’s recording this for posterity. After his article blew up, we gave him exclusive rights to the story.”
“Jake,” Bashir pleads to the camera. “Promise me you won’t put this in the book.”
"I don't even want it in my mind right now," Jake groans.
"What was it you wanted?" Garak asks somewhat distracted by Julian's state of undress.
"Nulat," Lenara repeats. "I haven't been able to contact her and I need her on DS9 in ten hours."
"I see,” Garak says. “I should be able to get her on subspace for you within an hour or so, but getting her to Deep Space Nine may prove difficult. Transport off-planet is presently at a premium, and I’m afraid those most likely to face the guillotine have booked their tickets in advance.”
"Is there anything you could do?” Ezri asks. “This is a matter of life and death.”
"There's a lot of that going around." Garak sighs, sparing a long lingering look down Bashir's bare chest. "I'll talk to Leeta and see if she can stop at DS9 on the way to Ferenginar.”
“Thank you.” Ezri's face scrunches up. “What’s Leeta doing on Cardassia?”
“It is a very, very long story that I’m sure Nulat would love to regale you with tomorrow morning.”
The Trail: A Star Trek Novel (New Frontier Reloaded Book 1) Page 20
