Stopping just before the first columns, Keev saw that the support beams and joists had lost their appearance of solidity. White and blue streamers of light danced within their forms, swimming in gentle arcs, dazzling her with their complexity and beauty. Keev did not know what lay ahead, but she wanted to find out.
As she walked forward, the blue and white illuminated shapes surrounded her. Keev could feel her legs moving, carrying her along in the cave, but she had the sensation of flying out in space, high above her world. This must be what the Celestial Temple is truly like.
Keev passed one pair of columns after another, losing count of them as she moved forward. She wondered if Veralla knew this would happen. She didn’t think he did, not specifically, but he must have had some notion that Keev had been meant to make such a journey.
When she reached the last pair of columns that marked the reinforced section of the cave, Keev could not see past them. The blue-white glow surrounding her clouded her view, and yet she knew that she had come to the end of that section of the tunnel. In a way, she didn’t want to continue ahead—not out of fear or any concern about the unknown, but because she already felt as though she’d come home.
But this is not my destiny, she thought. The Celestial Temple or whatever this might be is not my destiny—at least not right now.
Keev took one step forward, and by the time she’d brought her back foot even with her first, the enveloping light had vanished. The cave walls and roof had vanished. Instead, she stood inside a building, in a hallway, only a bare bulb hanging on a wire providing a dim reprieve from darkness. A door stood closed before her. She knew that she had been in the hall before, although she couldn’t remember the circumstances.
The green glow of the Tear no longer leaked from the ark in Keev’s arms. She looked down at the plain container, and she saw clothing that she didn’t recognize. She wore a dark red jacket and matching skirt over a white blouse. Somehow, though, the outfit felt right.
Keev bent down and set the ark on the floor. When she stood up, she took a deep breath and thought, Destiny. Then she raised her hand and knocked on the door.
Keev waited. She heard voices on the other side of the door—a man and a woman, it sounded like. Then she heard footsteps and a series of locks being unlatched. The doorknob turned, and then—
The doors separated and slid apart. A tall, dark man stood there, clad in what looked like a uniform, mostly black, but with gray shoulders and a crimson collar. The Emissary of the Prophets.
“Hello, Benjamin,” Kira said. She experienced a moment where she felt so dizzy that she thought she might pass out. She closed her eyes and tilted her head down, trying to regain her balance. When she opened her eyes, she saw that she wore the traditional brown robe that vedeks often favored.
“Nerys,” Benjamin said, and Kira thought, Anora, my name is Anora. “You’re all right.”
“Of course, I’m all right,” Kay Eaton said. She felt herself wrinkle her nose at her friend Benny. He stood there in a muddy green shirt and dark gray slacks. “You didn’t think a little accident would keep me down for long, did you?” Eaton recalled the collision that had sprung a leak in her boat . . . but she also remembered the collapse of the Celestial Temple . . . and a cave-in.
“I . . .” Benny started, but he looked confused.
“Cat got your tongue, Benny?” Eaton asked. “This oughta loosen it.” She held up a bottle of red wine she didn’t even recall she’d been carrying. Wasn’t I carrying something else? Something larger and more important? She couldn’t remember, but she entered the apartment, and Benny closed the door after her.
Once she had walked deep into the room, Kira faced Benjamin across the desk in his ready room aboard Robinson. She set down the elegant curved bottle of springwine and waited for Benjamin to turn toward her. When he did, he said, “Nerys?”
“It’s time to celebrate, Benjamin,” Kira said. That seemed perfectly appropriate to her.
“That you’re alive?” Benjamin asked.
“We don’t need to celebrate that I’m alive,” Kira told him. “We need to celebrate that you are.”
“I’ve got glasses,” said a voice to Kira’s left, and she saw Kasidy Yates walking over from the replicator. She held three fragile-looking flutes in her hands, which she set down beside the springwine.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” Benny said.
Eaton pulled the cork from the bottle and poured the deep-red liquor into three water glasses. She handed one to Cassie and then one to Benny. She took the third glass for herself and held it aloft before her. “To family,” she said, and then she held her glass out, first toward Cassie, then toward Benny. “To mother, father—” She motioned toward where Becky slept on the couch. “—and daughter.” Eaton sipped from her glass, as did Cassie, and finally Benny did too.
“We’re a mother and father and daughter,” Benjamin said, “but we can’t be a family.” He spoke the words as though they impaled him.
“Yes, you can,” Kira said, completely sure of herself. The Prophets told me Themselves. “You can be a family.”
“Nerys,” Benjamin said. He placed his flute of springwine down on his desk. “You know how much I want that to be true, but you also know the Prophets’ warning to me.”
“I do know,” Kira said. “You told them that you wanted to spend your life with Kasidy, and They told you that if you did, you would know nothing but sorrow.”
Beside Benjamin, Kasidy closed her eyes. She wore her pain like an open wound. “As much as I want to,” Benjamin said, “there’s nothing I can do.”
Kira smiled. “But you already have done something,” she said. “You haven’t spent your life with Kasidy.”
Kasidy opened her eyes. “What are you saying, Nerys?”
“I’m saying that nearly eight years ago, the Prophets told Benjamin that if he spent his life with you, he would know nothing but sorrow,” Kira explained. “But he defied their warning, and, eventually, the prophecy began to fulfill itself: Benjamin began to know nothing but sorrow. But then he stopped spending his life with you, so there’s no longer anything to be concerned about. You can be together.”
“What?” Benjamin said. “If I go back to Kasidy, we’ll be right back where we started.”
“No, you won’t be,” Kira insisted. “There’s an old saying: you can’t step twice into the same river.”
“What does that mean?” Kasidy wanted to know.
“It means that as a river flows, it changes,” Kira said. “When you enter it for the first time, it’s in a certain state. Every drop of water in a particular place, exerting a particular force on the drop next to it. But just by entering the river, you change it. If you leave it and enter it a second time, the drops of water have moved, their forces have changed, and it’s not the same river.”
“And time is a river?” Benjamin said. He sounded desperate to believe what she told him.
“The Prophets say that it’s a continuum,” Kira said.
“You’ve spoken to the Prophets?” Kasidy asked. “Did they save you?”
“They’ve spoken to me,” Kira said. She set her glass down on Benjamin’s desk. “Benjamin, they want you to know that you can enter your continuum again.”
Benjamin’s lips spread into a broad smile. “I’m going to transport down to Bajor,” he said. “I’m going to consult an Orb. I’ll—”
“Benjamin,” Kira said, casting her gaze downward. She knew that she had to tell him all of it.
“What?” Kasidy asked, clearly frightened by whatever Kira might say next. “What is it?”
“Benjamin, you have fulfilled your destiny,” Kira said, looking back up at him. “At least, with the Prophets.”
“They’re done with Ben?” Kasidy asked, excitement rising in her voice.
Kira continued to peer at Sisko, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. She knew that he understood precisely what she meant. She thought that maybe he’d unde
rstood it for a long time. He’d accomplished all the tasks the Prophets had set him. They therefore had no further need to communicate with him, to be a part of his life.
Benjamin didn’t say anything, and Kira watched his face cycle through a scale of emotions: anger, fear, relief, joy, and perhaps finally acceptance. “You’re sure, Nerys?” he asked. “About all of it? The Prophets are done with me, but I can safely go back to Kasidy?”
“I’m sure of it,” Kira said.
Sisko looked at Kasidy. “Then we can celebrate,” he told her. “If you’ll have me.”
Cassie held up her glass of red wine. “To family,” she said.
“To family,” Eaton echoed, tapping her glass against Cassie’s with a clink.
Benny reached forward and touched his own glass against the other two. “To family,” he said. He lifted the wine to his lips, closed his eyes, and drank. He looked as though he partook of ambrosia.
And in a real way, Keev thought, he did.
• • •
At the end of the evening, Kay Eaton said good night to her friends Benny and Cassie. Kira Nerys turned away from a man who had once been her commanding officer, who had become a religious icon to her, and who continued to be a wonderful friend. As Eaton opened the door to the hall, she glanced back. Kira said good-bye again to Benjamin and Kasidy, then exited Robinson’s ready room.
In the hall, Keev heard the latch click closed behind her. She turned to look at the door, but she saw only the wall of the cave, bathed a stark white in the light of the beacon she had attached to her arm. I guess it’s time to move on, she thought.
Keev bent and retrieved the ark containing the Tear of Destiny. She gazed back through the tunnel, back the way she had come, and saw the rugged timbers the gild had used to secure their passage through the area of the cave-in. The light of her beacon didn’t even reach the columns farthest away from her.
Then Keev Anora continued her journey to Shavalla.
Twenty-one
Ro stood at the rounded rectangular port in her office, hands behind her back, and gazed out at the stars. She hadn’t slept well the previous night, the third in a row since the assassination of President Bacco, but at least she’d finally gotten some measure of rest. When she had woken up that morning, though, the memory of the terrible events of three days prior immediately fell over her like a pall. She proceeded through the day feeling as though she hauled around a tremendous burden, unable to shake the dread pervading her mind. She wondered how long it would take for life to feel normal again.
Has my life ever felt normal? she asked herself.
Ro adjusted her eyes and focused on her reflection in the port. “Nice try,” she said aloud, chastising herself. She liked to think of herself as tough, having lived through so many trying times, and also as different, having frequently had difficulties fitting in and making friends. But the Federation contained more than nine trillion individuals—and that didn’t count all the people in the Klingon Empire and the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance and all the others—so how tough and how different could she really be? Trying to tell herself that she didn’t feel normal—whatever that might be—because she never felt normal missed the point: the president’s death troubled her greatly, impacting her in a way that unsettled her and would likely continue to do so for some time. Perhaps the sooner she could fully accept that, the sooner she could heal.
I need to make an appointment with Phillipa, she thought. Until Ro had arrived on the original Deep Space 9, she hadn’t had much use for counselors—at least not for herself. Somewhere along the way, though, she’d had a casual conversation with Phillipa Matthias over tea in the Replimat. Ro couldn’t recall precisely when that had been, but she thought maybe it had been during the period after Bajor had joined the Federation and she’d needed to choose whether or not to apply for reentry into Starfleet. She liked the counselor personally and found her easy to talk to, but she thought nothing more about her until everything that had taken place with Taran’atar.
Taran’atar, Ro thought, remembering the fearsome presence of the Jem’Hadar elder. When Odo had returned to the Dominion after the war, he’d sent Taran’atar to Deep Space 9 as an observer, hoping both to cement a lasting peace between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants, and to bring a new perspective to a member of a species specifically bred as soldiers. Ro had gotten to know him, and had grown to consider him a friend.
And then he had brutally attacked her, damaging her spine and facing her with the possibility of permanent paralysis. Ro found it hard enough dealing with the physical trauma and the threat of her potentially life-altering wounds, but the betrayal of trust cut her even more deeply. Although she later learned that Taran’atar had been forced to his violent deeds, and even though he made the only amends he really could, Ro could not seem to get over the emotional pain that the entire incident had caused her, and so she had sought out Counselor Matthias.
That was what? Ro thought. Seven or eight years ago? It seemed impossible to her that she’d stayed in the same place for so long, after living a largely itinerant existence, and she thought that the counselor had helped make that happen. Phillipa had taught Ro how to look inward without tearing herself apart, had allowed her to grow more comfortable within her own skin, had let her see that happiness was not something that happened only to other people, but was a choice she could make for herself.
Speaking with Counselor Matthias had benefited Ro in so many ways, had helped her endure so much—from Taran’atar’s treachery, return, and subsequent death, all the way through the destruction of Deep Space 9 and the loss of all those still aboard the station. She doubted that she could have served successfully as Captain Vaughn’s first officer without the benefit of Phillipa’s counsel through the years. And I sure as hell never would have been capable of rising to the rank of captain and the position of starbase commander.
Ro dropped her gaze and looked down upon the curve of Deep Space 9’s sphere and the horizontal ring arcing around it. After the glut of spacecraft in previous days, the station looked not nearly as crowded. Earlier that day, Ro had taken DS9 off lockdown, allowing the visiting delegations to depart, and nearly all of them—Cardassian, Klingon, Gorn, and Romulan—had done so at once, and the first minister and her party—save for one member, of course—would likely be returning home within the next day or two. Asarem had already addressed her people, via the Bajoran comnet, about President Bacco’s assassination.
Enkar Sirsy remained in custody in the stockade. Her guilt had appeared obvious when she’d been caught with a weapon immediately after the assassination, and the continuing investigation the next day had turned up only evidence reinforcing her culpability. Although it had not been easy with all the heads of state aboard, Ro had kept the lockdown in place for that third day, wanting to make absolutely sure that her security and medical staffs were completely convinced of Enkar Sirsy’s identity as the lone assassin. One small detail still troubled Blackmer—he hadn’t yet been able to locate a sensor block in the theater’s control booth—but the overwhelming consensus of Ro’s staff—as well as that of the JAG office—remained that Enkar had perpetrated the crime, and that she had acted alone. Finally, the captain had little choice but to throw wide Deep Space 9’s hatches and allow the dignitaries to head home.
The first minister’s chief of staff no longer proclaimed her innocence, though she also refused to admit her guilt. She continued to maintain that she had no memory of the incident. Enkar waited for the attorney she’d chosen to arrive from Bajor, as well as a Federation judge so that she could be arraigned. Ro could only hope that the trial would take place on Bajor, or somewhere else entirely, rather than on DS9.
She also hoped that the president’s body would soon be removed from the station. It remained in the morgue, awaiting the arrival of a Starfleet vessel to retrieve it. Captain Dax had been scheduled to escort President Bacco to Cardassia after the dedication ceremony, but Starfleet Command was in the
process of reassigning ships in the wake of the assassination. At the moment, Ro didn’t know which starship would travel to Deep Space 9 so that its crew could recover the body, or when it would arrive.
Ro peered along the horizontal ring, where she saw two ships still docked: Aventine and Robinson. Lieutenant Commander Stinson had taken Defiant out on routine patrol, though she suspected that he—and probably the members of the crew he’d taken with him—had simply wanted to get off the starbase. That day, the general mood on DS9 had settled into a pervasive numbness. Ro wished she knew how best to combat that. She hoped that the influx of ten thousand new residents—which Cenn had pushed back and would take place beginning three days hence—would help restore a sense of normalcy to her crew—and to herself.
Captain Dax had informed Ro that Aventine would be departing the starbase in the morning, while Captain Sisko awaited confirmation of his existing orders, which would see Robinson embark on an extended exploratory mission out beyond the Bajoran system. After the death of President Bacco, Starfleet Command had put such assignments on hold until they could determine whether its matériel might be required elsewhere.
Other than those ships and the first minister’s transport, the only vessel still moored at Deep Space 9—though Ro couldn’t see it from her office—was Wealth, the Ferengi starship that had brought the grand nagus there. The captain had hoped to spend some time with Quark’s brother and his family after the dedication ceremony, but circumstances had prevented that from happening. With Rom also leaving the next morning, Ro supposed that such a visit would have to wait.
Turning from the port, Ro stepped over to the replicator, intending to order a glass of pooncheenee, a Bajoran fruit juice usually served at breakfast, but then she thought that perhaps she wanted something a bit stronger than that. She knew that the time closed in on midnight and that she should probably go to her quarters and try to get some sleep, but the idea of a quick stop at Quark’s appealed to her. Given the mood on the starbase, she’d likely be in there by herself, but a quiet drink—
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