Original Sin

by David R. George III

  “I know,” Kasidy said. “I wasn’t sure initially because of the subject matter, but that coarse metalwork and its kinetic feel . . . it just had to be Flanner.”

  “It surprised me when he brought it in last month,” Kit said. “I might not have believed it if he hadn’t told me.”

  Kasidy studied the piece. The style screamed Flanner Posh, but the theme in no way resembled any other sculpture of his that she had ever seen—and she had seen quite a lot of his work over the years. As far as Kasidy knew, he had previously concentrated exclusively on Bajoran individuals during the Occupation—enduring a hardscrabble existence under the oppression of the Cardassians: seeking moments of the slightest reprieve, praying to the Prophets for liberation, living hand-to-mouth in the ghettos, performing hard labor in the camps.

  “I don’t really know how to feel about it,” Kasidy said. “It has all the striking elements of his artistic style, but it somehow seems . . . I don’t know . . . wrong.”

  “He told me he woke up one day and decided the time had come for him to move on from the Occupation,” Kit said. “He thought to try sport because he figured he could find nobility in the physical and mental effort of it.”

  “Well, I can certainly see that in this piece,” Kasidy said, “but I guess because I know so much of his work, this puts me in mind of a young man on the run and trying to escape from Sharhite or Gallitep or one of the other labor camps.”

  “Now that you mention it—”

  “Hi, Kit!” The woman’s bushy eyebrows went up when she heard Rebecca speak. She craned her neck to look over the sculpture and down past the table.

  “Is that the wee one with you?” Kit asked. She started to come around the table.

  “Yes, we just decided to go out for a walk this afternoon,” Kasidy said. She leaned down and unstrapped her daughter from the antigrav stroller, knowing that Kit would want to hold her and that Rebecca would want to be held; the toddler often behaved shyly around other children, but she seldom had trouble interacting with adults.

  As Kit came down the aisle, Rebecca reached her little arms out to her. Despite her thickset form, the older woman had no difficulty bending down and scooping up Kasidy’s daughter. She plopped Rebecca into the crook of her elbow. “How are you, my sweet girl?”

  “Goo-ood,” Rebecca said, stretching the word out into a second syllable. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, my,” Kit said. “Ain’t you polite?”

  “Yes,” Rebecca said.

  Kasidy smiled. “She’s just started doing that,” she said. “Thanking people like that, I mean. It’s amazing to me how she just picks up things.”

  “And don’t you know that’s gonna be a blessing and a curse,” Kit said with a chuckle. “So I’d say thank you is a good place to start.”

  “I’d say you’re right,” Kasidy agreed.

  “You know,” Kit said, chucking Rebecca on the chin, “I just might have a little something sweet in my desk. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, yes,” Rebecca said excitedly.

  “Should we ask your mother if that’s okay?”

  “Mommy, Kit wants to give me sweets,” Rebecca said. “I think you should let her.”

  “Oh, you do?” Kasidy said. She glanced outside and saw that the afternoon had dimmed as sunset approached. “All right, but just one. It’s getting late, and we’ll be eating dinner soon.”

  “Yes,” Rebecca told Kit in a whisper, as though uttering the word any louder could have induced a change of heart by her mother.

  As Kit carried Rebecca over to her desk, Kasidy moved the stroller off to the side, out of the way, and continued browsing. She visited the gallery often enough that she had seen much of the work before, including paintings by Bajoran artists such as Acto Viri, Denik Alash, and her favorite, pointillist Galoren Sen. But Kasidy saw some new pieces, and one in particular caught her notice: projected from a base that looked like a spherical segment of a star, a holographic kinetic sculpture took the viewer on a moving tour through a wheeling solar system filled with planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and other astronomical objects, all rendered in differing malleable materials. She noted the name of the programmer-sculptor, Waska Veneeda, so that she could ask Kit about her. By the time she finished her circuit through the gallery, though, Kasidy saw that dusk impended, and she wanted to get home before darkness fell.

  She headed to the desk, where Rebecca sat on Kit’s lap, the end of a red jumja roll sticking out of the toddler’s mouth. Amid all of the artwork in the shop, Kasidy’s daughter worked on her own masterpiece. Crayons of various hues lay strewn across the desktop as Rebecca used a green one on a canvas to color in the tops of a dense cluster of trees.

  Kasidy circled around so that she could view the drawing in its proper orientation. She saw that the trees Rebecca had sketched circled around a clearing. A large dark shape sat inside the ring of trees, with a smaller form beside it. “That’s very pretty, honey,” Kasidy said. “What’s that?” She pointed to the dark object.

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca said. She didn’t look up, but continued to add leaves to the tops of the trees.

  Kasidy chuckled. “Okay,” she said. “Then what’s that?” She gestured to the smaller figure.

  “That’s me.”

  “That’s you?” Kasidy asked, surprised. “And just what are you doing out in the middle of the woods.” Rebecca responded by offering an exaggerated shrug, a fairly new means of communicating for her.

  “Quite the imagination,” Kit said.

  “There’s no doubt about that,” Kasidy said. “Honey, the sun’s going down, so we need to get going. Daddy will be home soon.”

  “Where is the mister today?” Kit asked. “He didn’t come into town with you?”

  “No, he’s out at B’hala today, helping on the dig.” Kasidy tried to keep any note of disapprobation out of her tone, though she didn’t know how successful she was. Ben had started working at the archaeological excavation about six months earlier—not long after the tragic deaths of their friends Prylar Eivos Calan and his wife, Audj. Kasidy hadn’t been in favor of her husband returning to B’hala. The city had been lost for twenty millennia, until Ben had rediscovered it, back when he’d been commanding Deep Space 9. His search for the ancient site led to him suffering a serious plasma shock, which resulted in an unstable neurological condition. Ben subsequently claimed to have visions—pagh’tem’far, according to the Bajoran religion—but the injury to his brain threatened his life. Despite that, he had wanted to forgo curative surgery in favor of continuing to experience what he considered to be mystical, prescient dreams. Ben had eventually collapsed, suffering a seizure and falling into unconsciousness. Kasidy had nearly lost him, and would have, had Jake not overridden his father’s medical directive.

  When Ben had returned to her from his time with the aliens inside the Bajoran wormhole, just in time for the birth of their daughter, Kasidy had been elated. He didn’t return to Starfleet, but instead settled into the house he had planned to build before he’d vanished after the end of the Dominion War, and that she had completed. They finally became the family Kasidy had dreamed of during Sisko’s absence.

  Those first couple of years together on Bajor, in the house they shared in Kendra Province, had been close to idyllic. While Kasidy continued to oversee the operation of her freighter, Xhosa, and intermittently to command the ship during some of its short-range cargo runs, Ben faced few demands on his time. Various Bajoran spiritual leaders, including Kai Pralon once she’d been elected, initially encouraged him to speak publicly about his experiences in the Celestial Temple, but he almost always declined. Later, they sought his participation in various religious events, but he seldom chose to do so. Far more often than not, he simply stayed at home to help raise their newborn daughter. They did socialize, frequently welcoming family and friends to their house. Jake met Azeni Korena, and the two married and lived on Bajor; they visited a lot. Friends and colleagues also made t
heir way to the house: Wayne Sheppard, Brathaw, Luis García Márquez, and others from Xhosa, Kira Nerys, Nog, Ezri Dax, Elias Vaughn, and others from Deep Space 9. Kasidy and Ben also grew close to people they met on Bajor, most especially Calan and Audj.

  Kasidy had to admit that life had not been perfect. Ben occasionally seemed distracted and troubled, though he refused to admit it, let alone talk about whatever weighed on him. She sometimes found him staring out the picture windows in the front room, or sitting out on the porch, in the dead of night. He always claimed simple insomnia, but Kasidy knew him better than that. She could tell that something bothered him, but she knew that he would discuss it with her if and when he saw fit. She contented herself in the understanding that whatever gnawed at him had nothing to do with their life together; Ben could not have been a more loving or devoted husband and father.

  But then Calan and Audj had died in a fire. Kasidy and Ben both felt the loss deeply, and they helped each other through it. Almost seven months after the accident, sadness remained, but time had eased the pain brought on by the tragedy.

  Except that, since the fire, Ben’s sleeplessness had grown more frequent and his melancholy deeper. Kasidy at first attributed it to the deaths of their friends, but Ben’s sorrow somehow seemed broader than that, perhaps aggravated by a sense of discontent. He decided, even over her objections, to contribute his time and efforts to the work going on at B’hala. He claimed that he did it to honor the memory of Eivos Calan, who had toiled relentlessly at the ancient city, but Kasidy felt that more drove her husband. Lately, she began to wonder if Ben had developed doubts about their marriage.

  Kasidy said none of that to Rozahn Kather, but her voice must have conveyed some of her concerns, because Kit raised an eyebrow. The gallery owner offered no other response, though, but instead turned her attention back to Rebecca. “All right, then, little miss,” she said, “I guess it’s time you and your mama were on your way.”

  Rebecca plunked the green crayon down on the desk and looked up at Kit. “Okay.” The older woman lifted Rebecca into her arms again and stood up.

  “You can take her canvas home so she can finish it,” Kit said, “or you can leave it here for next time.”

  “What do you think, Rebecca?” Kasidy asked.

  “Next time,” Rebecca said without hesitation.

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” Kit said. She followed Kasidy back over to the antigrav stroller and set Rebecca down into the seat. “I’ll see you next time, my sweet girl.”

  Unexpectedly, Rebecca raised her hands up toward Kit, who bent back down. Rebecca wrapped her arms around the woman’s neck. “I miss you,” the little girl said.

  Kit laughed, a round, hearty sound. She stood back up and said, “You need to leave before you can start missing me. But when you do, I’ll miss you too.”

  “Thanks for the jumja roll and the picture,” Kasidy said. She headed the stroller for the door. “I’m sure we’ll see you again soon.”

  “Take care, dearie,” Kit said with a wave. “You too, my sweet girl.”

  “Bye!” Rebecca said, fluttering her hand about in a gesture that looked less like a wave and more like somebody flopping around the arm of a ragdoll.

  Back out on Adarak’s cobblestoned main thoroughfare—which had once been called Central Avenue, but, after Ben’s return from the wormhole, had been renamed Avenue of the Emissary—Kasidy headed west, along a line of leafy trees that ran down the median. In the distance, the striated fall clouds shined pink and orange in the dying light of B’hava’el. As she pushed Rebecca along in her stroller, the traditional oil lamps hanging from the poles on both sides of the avenue came on, their yellow flames dancing in the twilight.

  The number of pedestrians had increased since Kasidy and her daughter had arrived in town earlier that afternoon. Many of them, she saw, headed for one or another of the restaurants nestled in among Adarak’s many shops. Morova’s Kitchen, which specialized in modern interpretations of traditional Bajoran fare, appeared particularly busy. Kasidy also saw few empty tables inside The Federation; the much newer eatery featured menu items culled from a score of worlds across the UFP, including Earth. She and Ben had yet to try it, but they’d talked about doing so sometime soon.

  By the time Kasidy and Rebecca reached Nerak Lane, dusk had deepened to the threshold of night. The temperature had dropped a degree or two as well, but not so much that she felt the need to put a jacket on Rebecca or herself. She knew that winter was fast approaching, and so she felt grateful for the fall mildness.

  “Here we are,” she told Rebecca when they reached the public transporter. Kasidy pushed the stroller through the wide, open doorway to the passenger terminal. Several people exiting the facility nodded and smiled to her as they passed—none, thankfully, showing any signs of wanting to approach her. It had been different when she had first relocated to Bajor, and again when Ben had come home from the wormhole. In those days, people had often recognized her as the wife of the Emissary and felt compelled to pass along their best wishes to her, or take a holophoto with her, or ask her advice on personal matters. Fortunately, the locals had grown respectful, and even protective, of Kasidy and Ben’s privacy.

  “Pleasant day,” she said as the people passed her. The interior of the circular terminal had been designed in blacks and grays on the horizontal surfaces, and garnet on the walls. Inside, Kasidy saw all four transporter platforms empty. Two of the round stages stood side by side to her left, and two to her right. Between them, at the far end of the depot, Kasidy saw a young man sitting behind a freestanding control console. He had been on duty earlier, when she and Rebecca had beamed in from home. Kasidy had first met him several months before, when the Bajoran Militia had originally assigned him to Adarak. “Hi, Pol.”

  “Hello, Ms. Yates,” he said, looking up. Kasidy had invited him to call her by her given name, but he had never done so. She guessed that his youth—Nendi Pol couldn’t have been much more than twenty—prevented him from being so familiar with a mere acquaintance more than twice his age. The towheaded transporter operator had soft features and a slight build that actually made him look even younger. “I hope you and Rebecca had a pleasant afternoon in town.”

  “Hi, Pol!” Rebecca said.

  “Hello, Rebecca.”

  “We did have a nice time today, thank you,” Kasidy said. “I hope things haven’t been too hectic for you here.”

  “Oh, you know, we just had a bit of a rush,” Pol said. “It’ll get even busier as we get deeper into the dinner hour, but that’s okay; the shift goes faster the more that people come through.”

  “Then I hope everybody in Kendra Province south of the Yolja River is hungry and doesn’t feel like eating a replicated meal tonight,” Kasidy said, for which Pol rewarded her with a big smile.

  “Are you headed home, Ms. Yates?”

  “We are,” Kasidy said, moving to one of the scanners in front of the platform currently designated for outbound traffic. She waved her wrist before the sensor, and the device read her combracelet, which stored both her identification and her home transporter coordinates. The scanner chirped its affirmative response when it registered her data. She inclined the stroller so that the antigravs would adjust to the steps, then pushed Rebecca up onto the platform.

  “You’re all set,” Pol said.

  Kasidy set Rebecca’s stroller in place, then stepped onto the adjacent pad. “Thank you, Pol. Have a pleasant evening.”

  “Thank you. Pleasant evening to you too.” The young man worked his console. The squeal of the transporter sounded, and then the white specks that accompanied dematerialization clouded Kasidy’s vision. The terminal faded from sight, replaced by the familiar view outside the front of the house: the Kendra Mountains off in the distance, with the dark form of the Yolja River snaking before them. She turned toward the stroller to take her daughter inside.

  Rebecca wasn’t there. Neither was the stroller.

  Panic gripped Kasi
dy, but she realized that Pol must have made a mistake in beaming her home. Or maybe the transporter malfunctioned, she thought, but then she pushed that idea away; even in the late twenty-fourth century, transporter accidents still accounted for a number of injuries—and worse—every year.

  She tapped her combracelet and raised it to her lips. “Kasidy Yates to Adarak Transporter Terminal,” she said. She dreaded any delay in receiving a response, or in hearing any note of concern, but the operator replied right away in a normal voice.

  “Pol here,” he said. “Did you forget something, Ms. Yates?”

  “Just my daughter,” Kasidy said, thinking that she had somehow erred in her placement of the stroller on the platform, and that Rebecca still sat there in front of Pol.

  A moment passed before the operator responded, and Kasidy’s fears rose up again. “What?” Pol said, sounding confused. “She’s not with you?”

  “No,” Kasidy said as she broke into a run.

  • • •

  Sisko had just pulled a saucepan from one of the kitchen cabinets when he heard the front door open. Footsteps followed. He opened his mouth to welcome his wife home, but before he could say anything, Kasidy called out to him.

  “Ben! Are you here? Ben!” He heard an inflection he didn’t know if he’d ever perceived in his wife’s voice: terror.

  Sisko sped out of the kitchen into the dining room and peered to his left, toward the front door. Kasidy stood between the sitting area around the fireplace on one side and the living room proper on the other. With her body tensed and her eyes wide, she looked prepared to spring into physical action. “Kas, what is it?” he asked her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just transported home from Adarak with Rebecca,” she said, “but when I arrived here, she wasn’t with me.”