He rose high enough that he could see the Senha River as it traced its way southward along the Releketh Range. With the Bajoran sun dropping toward the horizon at Odo’s back, the river meandered darkly along. He spotted a number of vessels floating along the stretch of water visible to him, most of them barges.
When Odo neared the river, he angled south. He followed the lazy course of the Senha until at last he reached the point where the Elestan River branched off from it. Odo swept to his left, putting the tributary below him and tracking it through a break in the mountains to where it carved out a fertile valley along the base of the tallest peak in the range. Odo found a thermal column and used it to gain altitude, then executed a series of switchbacks in order to climb toward the mountain’s crest. Once high enough, he soared across the ridge there, past the circular structure standing on the summit, awash in the last, colorful remnants of daylight. Though officially called the Inner Sanctuary, the nine spires atop its outer walls had earned it the appellation “the Crown of Bajor.”
About the Inner Sanctuary and down the slope below, an intricate network of long walkways and ranging staircases bound together a complex of ancient buildings. The setting sun pushed long shadows across the Vanadwan Monastery. Odo coasted over it, observing little movement within its confines. At that time of day, he knew, many of the residents would either be sharing their evening meal or participating in vespers. The mostly vacant outdoor spaces would serve him well; he had little taste at the moment even for salutations, much less for conversation.
Odo drifted down along the slope to one of the lower courtyards, an empty cobbled platform encircled by a parapet. He dipped his wings and flew toward it. As his claws set down on its stone surface, he again morphed into his alternate, humanoid self.
Hoping to avoid meeting anybody, he walked quickly through an opening in the low wall bordering the eastern side of the courtyard. He followed a path that declined at a low angle, until he arrived at a divide. There, a set of stone steps led up to the left, while another descended to the right.
Odo hesitated. He would reach his destination by taking the lower walkway, but Nerys’s shanty stood along the upper path. Although she had been gone for two years, the leadership at the monastery had focused on her official status of missing. Since she had last been seen within the Celestial Temple, they designated her as missing and presumed to be in the hands of the Prophets. As a result, they had chosen not to assign her quarters to another adherent.
She’s not there, Odo told himself. Just because he’d been away from Bajor for the previous two months did not mean that the wormhole had churned back into existence in that time and deposited Nerys back in the Bajoran system. But it’s at least possible, he thought, even against his better judgment.
Odo hied up the steps to the left. On the upper path, moving through thickening shadows, he counted the dwellings as he passed them. Basic in design and execution, the small wooden structures provided shelter and a place for sleep and private meditation, but little else. Near the end of the hutment, Odo reached the ninth shanty. He braced himself before reading the sign hanging beside the door, preparing to read a name other than Nerys’s, which would have been testament to a declaration of her death having been made during his time away.
In Bajoran characters, the sign read: KIRA.
Though he knew the sign proved nothing, Odo felt relieved anyway. He raised his arm, paused, then rapped his knuckles on the door. He received no response. Odo waited a moment, then reached for the latch and released it. He pushed open the door—the monastery equipped none of the rooms with locks—and stepped inside. An overhead light automatically came on, rinsing the small space in dim illumination.
Nerys’s living quarters, like the rest of those at the monastery, consisted of only a single room and an attached refresher. It contained little more than a basic sleeping platform and mattress, a small desk and chair, a low dresser, and a few floor mats. It looked untouched since the last time he’d visited.
Odo moved over to the dresser, where a large tome sat, along with several framed photographs. He recognized the book, even though its gold-inlay title had been almost completely worn away from its deep-red cover. One of the Bajoran religion’s canonical texts, When the Prophets Cried had been one of Nerys’s favorites, and the only material possession she retained from her early childhood.
Odo gazed from the book to the photographs. Among them, he saw Captain Sisko and his family in one picture, and Bajor’s former kai, Opaka Sulan, in another. Odo also saw his own image staring back at him.
I shouldn’t have come here, he thought. He had been there before, had looked around Nerys’s empty quarters, had seen the photograph of him that she’d kept. It never helped.
Odo made his way back outside, tapping the control for the overhead lighting panel as he left. He retraced his route along the upper path, descended the steps, then went down the next set of stairs and followed the lower walkway. He confirmed the name on the fifth shanty and then knocked. When he received no reply, he unfastened the door and opened it. Inside, a lighting panel activated, revealing living quarters that matched Nerys’s almost exactly, but for the lack of padding on the sleeping platform, the dearth of photographs—or anything—sitting atop the dresser, and a padd lying on the desk.
Leaving the door open, Odo moved to the desk, where he pulled out the chair and sat down. Despite his respite in the clearing, he still felt tired, both physically and emotionally. After his many exertions and his fruitless trip, he wanted at that moment to revert to his intrinsic state. He would not want his host to find him that way, though, and so he simply waited.
Isn’t that all I ever do these days? he asked himself. Isn’t that almost all I’ve ever done? Decades earlier, he had waited for Doctor Mora to recognize him as a life-form and communicate with him. On Terok Nor, he waited for the Bajorans to overthrow the Cardassians. On Deep Space 9, he waited to find his people, and then to be accepted by them, and then for the end of the war. In the Dominion, he waited for the Great Link to mature and understand the injustices in their thinking. He waited for the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar to throw off their shackles and become all that they could become. Odo had taken action in all of those cases—he’d tried hard to make contact with Doctor Mora, he’d worked to undermine the Cardassians, he’d searched for his people, then pushed for peace with them, and finally struggled to show the Founders and the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar better ways. In all those instances, though, he had spent too much time waiting for things to happen.
And since I’ve been back in the Alpha Quadrant, I’ve been waiting too. For two years, he’d been leaving Bajor for weeks or months at a time in search of the Hundred or other Changelings. Sixteen months into that effort, he actually did locate another shape-shifter. One of the Hundred, she called herself Moon, and she had been badly injured when Odo found her. Too late to help, he could only wait for her to die.
Of course, I also keep coming back to Bajor, he thought. He attempted to justify that choice to himself, tried to pretend he returned to the Vanadwan Monastery again and again to ease the pain of somebody other than himself, but in truth, he came back for Nerys. She’d been lost and probably dead for two years, yet he continued to wait for her.
Odo didn’t really know what to do, other than what he’d been doing. If he could, he mused, he would go back to the beginning, to his own beginning, to when he had been discovered adrift in the Denorios Belt. Living his life over again, he would make other choices than he had, he would do so many things in other ways. Ironically, considering his ability to alter his form at will, he thought he wanted more than anything to be a different person.
Outside, the sound of somebody approaching rose along the path. Odo waited—Waited!—to see if the footsteps would lead to the shanty in which he sat. They did.
A lone figure appeared in the doorway. She wore a simple brown robe that hung loosely about her tall physique. A hood covered her head, but within, Odo cou
ld see her large golden eyes, fluted around the edges as though melting into her silver, metallic-looking skin.
Odo stood up from the chair. “Raiq,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
The Ascendant bowed her head in acknowledgment. Though she possessed a naturally musical voice, she said nothing. Unless she had spoken during Odo’s latest time away from Bajor, Raiq had not uttered a sound since the wormhole had collapsed with Nerys inside it. She did not seem incapable of talking, merely unwilling. In silence, her grief remained palpable.
Raiq stepped inside. She peered at Odo with a slight cock of her head to one side. He recognized the questioning look.
“In my travels, I found none of my people,” he said. “Nor did I find any of yours.” Odo had not specifically searched for any of the supposedly missing Ascendants, but he certainly would have told Raiq had he encountered any of her people.
Raiq closed her eyes and lowered her head for a moment. When she looked up again, she pointed to Odo. So often had they played out similar scenarios that he understood her almost as well as if she’d spoken to him. Off and on for two years, Odo had stayed with her at the Vanadwan Monastery whenever he returned to Bajor.
“I’ve come back so that I can attend the dedication ceremony aboard Deep Space Nine tomorrow,” he said. “After that, I don’t know. I’ll probably spend a few days at the monastery, maybe a week, before heading back out into space again.” He cursed himself for his apparent lack of direction.
Raiq nodded. Odo expected another unspoken question, but instead she walked toward him. The movement surprised him, and he tensed. Raiq stopped at once and held up her hands, palms out, demonstrating that she carried neither weapons nor anything else, and suggesting that he had no reason not to remain calm.
Odo relaxed his body, and Raiq slowly finished crossing the room. At the desk, she retrieved the padd resting there. She tapped at its display, then held it out to Odo. He accepted it from her and examined the readout. He saw that she had queued up a message that had been sent to him half a day earlier. He worked the padd to play it.
“This is Lieutenant Ed Radickey aboard the U.S.S. Robinson, contacting Mister Odo,” said a male voice. “Captain Sisko would like to speak with you as soon as you’re able. Please contact him aboard the Robinson.” Odo felt his own head incline to one side as he looked up at Raiq.
“If I may,” Odo said, “I’d like to use your padd to contact Captain Sisko.”
Raiq nodded once, quickly.
“Thank you. I’ll be back in just a moment.” He crossed the room and went back outside, closing the door behind him. As he operated the padd to open a channel to Robinson—he assumed that the ship remained in the Bajoran system and in communications range—he wondered why Captain Sisko needed to speak with him so urgently. He didn’t try to delude himself into thinking it would be good news. Whatever the reason, though, he needed to find out.
“Bajor to the Robinson,” he said once he’d opened a channel. “This is Odo trying to reach Captain Sisko.”
Six
Kira ran in the direction of the Orb of the Prophets, though she could no longer see it. She raced ahead anyway, confident that she knew what she must do, that she must reach the Orb. She didn’t know why she needed to do so, or even how she would cross the chasm separating her from it, but she envisioned reaching her goal, kneeling down before it, and allowing it to bathe her in its ghostly radiance. She imagined that an Orb experience would follow, and from that she would learn how to proceed. The Prophets would guide her.
The brilliant white glow emanating from the chasm intensified. Not only had the Orb been lost to Kira’s sight, but so too had the chasm itself, as well as the cliff faces rising up to either side of her. She didn’t stop. She simply fixed her gaze on the ground before her and concentrated on moving forward.
The glare increased. Kira could no longer see the earth on which she ran. Even though she hurried on, even though she could feel the impact of her feet against a solid surface, it appeared as though she moved through a white realm of sheer emptiness.
And still Kira ran.
As she did, she felt her mind . . . detaching . . . from her body. Her point of view seemed to float upward, away from her physical self. She felt her legs pumping, her arms swinging, but at the same time she also watched herself from afar.
And still Kira ran.
She thought about stopping, or at least slowing, but all at once it didn’t seem as though she any longer knew how to do that. She looked on from above, observing herself in a way she had never experienced—until her mind suddenly dived down, racing toward her body. With a rush of motion and then a sensation of instantaneous deceleration, her awareness slammed back into her corporal existence.
And still . . .
• • •
. . . Keev ran.
She held her hands out before her, trying to deflect the leaves and branches through which she moved—although suffering lacerations across her face hardly seemed to matter. Even with the sounds of her crashing through the dense wood, she could hear whoever chased her closing the gap between them. She didn’t know how she possibly could have been followed, but at that point she had no recourse but to outrace her pursuer to her destination.
Something sharp pierced Keev’s left palm. She pulled her arm toward her body, but only for a moment. She’d caught the end of a tree limb, she thought, and not a revolver shot, but either way, she did not stop running. She did not even examine her hand for blood or for a wound before thrusting her arm back out before her.
Despite her efforts, leaves and branches lashed at Keev’s face as she sped through the wood. She didn’t care. She only needed to reach—
There! her mind screamed as she spied through all the leaves the familiar tree lying dead across her path. It rose up to at least half her height. When she normally approached it, Keev would leap up onto the trunk, take a step across it, and then jump down on the other side. But—
I’m running out of time, she thought in a panic. She could hear the person chasing her tearing through the wood, closer than before. When Keev reached the tree, she opted not to spring onto it, but to attempt to hurdle it in a single bound. She led with her right foot, and her heel just cleared the bark. She tried to pull her trailing leg up high enough, but the tip of her boot grazed the tree at its apex.
Keev’s body jerked to the left and she landed awkwardly. For an instant, she sought to keep her balance, but she came down on the outside of her right foot. Acting on instinct, she let her body collapse to the ground, knowing that if she tried to complete her landing, she would twist her ankle badly, perhaps even break it.
Keev threw her shoulder into the fall. Her upper arm struck soft earth—it had rained the night before—and she rolled, riding her momentum. Her legs came around and she drove her boots into the ground, her hands coming down and acting like pistons, pushing herself back to her feet. Then she ran on.
Just a moment later, she heard two almost simultaneous thuds and then a grunt. Whoever followed her had landed after negotiating the dead tree. Keev understood that she had almost no time left.
Desperate, she sacrificed safety for speed. Keev dropped her arms to her sides and swung them in her natural running motion, pushing herself as fast as she could go. Leaves and branches bombarded her face, and though she ignored the pain, she could no longer survey the ground even just immediately ahead of her. A rock or a depression in the soil, a broken bough, or anything else in her path could bring her down. If that happened, she doubted that she would have a second opportunity to pick herself up and start running again.
Between her gulps of air, Keev heard labored breathing behind her. She considered stopping and making a stand but didn’t think she’d have enough time to draw the wooden blade from the sheath strapped to her calf. She wished that she had carried a revolver with her that day. But then I never would’ve been able to bluff my way through that Aleiran checkpoint, she realized.
Keev suddenly burst from the trees and into the small tract that had been cleared by her gild. She saw every face there already turned toward her, along with at least three revolvers. “Ice!” Keev called out, even as she expected to hear the report of weapons fire and to feel her flesh torn apart by multiple slugs. She threw herself to the ground, spinning around so that she landed on her back, facing the way she’d come. Even as she scrambled for her hidden blade, yanking up the right leg of her pants, it amazed her that she hadn’t been shot by her compatriots. As she reached to draw her honed hardwood dagger, her pursuer erupted from the same spot where Keev had emerged into the clearing.
The man skidded to a halt as though a steel wall had been dropped in his path. His eyes darted about, presumably taking in the weapons aimed in his direction. Keev unsheathed her blade and cocked her arm.
“I’m not ice! I’m not ice!” the man yelled, throwing his empty hands in the air. Keev wondered if he used those words because he’d heard her only a moment before, but then he added, “I’m sky!”
Keev whipped her arm forward and down, intending to fling her blade at the man who had chased her through the wood. She aimed for his neck, and in her mind’s eye, she saw the hilt of her weapon extending from the soft flesh of his throat. At the last instant, though, she held on to her dagger, her hand coming down and striking the ground beside her. It had not been her pursuer’s claim of being “sky”—her gild’s label for anybody associated with efforts to free the oppressed—and not “ice”—their label for the oppressors; Keev hadn’t thrown her blade because it registered that none of her compatriots had fired their revolvers.
For an uncomfortable moment, stillness descended on the clearing. Nobody spoke and nobody moved. Finally, Keev turned her head and gazed at the members of her gild. Several looked back at her, and as though that movement had undammed a river, events began to flow again.
Star Trek: The Fall: Revelation and Dust Page 10
