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“Yes, you did at that,” he said quietly, then put on a smile of his own a few seconds later. It was clear to Dax that her reminder hadn’t helped matters.

  He nodded to her. “I suppose I could go for a walk. I’ll catch up with you in a few hours.”

  “Julian . . .” she said, trailing off as he walked away in stony silence. It was clear that he wasn’t at all happy about being excluded from her mission. And that neither Cyl nor Gard wanted him to come along. Dammit.

  “This way, Lieutenant,” Cyl said, making a follow me gesture toward the Senate Tower’s doors. For a moment, Dax was tempted to put up a fight on Julian’s behalf.

  But I’m here to help calm things down. Not to contribute more problems. With a sigh, she went where she was bid.

  * * *

  Secretive bastards, Bashir thought as he stalked away.

  He was a little surprised at how quickly his initial feeling of pique evaporated as he made his way through the crowd that ringed the broad boulevards around the Senate Tower. Of course, he was well aware that he tended to be distracted fairly easily by interesting surroundings.

  Political dissension was rare in recent Federation history, and as he passed through gaps in the placard-carrying crowd he found himself wondering about the substance of it. There were easily a thousand people lining the portion of the main thoroughfare visible to him, and a few minutes’ study revealed that the only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they were unjoined Trill humanoids. It was a surprisingly diverse group, containing faces of every hue, from Ezri’s pale tones to Captain Sisko’s deep, burnished brown. Bashir’s keen eye even discerned a handful of people whose faces were distinguished by graceful, upward-

  arching brow ridges instead of the facial spots more commonly associated with Trill humanoids.

  He realized immediately that he shouldn’t have been surprised in the least; after all, most of the Trills he had encountered until now belonged to a tiny minority of the populace.

  The joined.

  Judging from the signs carried by the largest clusters of people, at least three clear political viewpoints were discernible. One faction was demanding accountability from the Trill government regarding the parasite crisis; they carried signs suggesting that the genetic relationship between the parasites and the symbionts was quickly becoming common knowledge. Another group’s placards vehemently denounced the entire institution of joining, offering the parasites as proof that the symbionts were in fact mind-controlling alien life-forms bent on the conquest and domination of Trill. A third group—which apparently equated symbiosis not only with upward social mobility, but also with a sort of immortality—demanded joining for all healthy Trill humanoids who requested it.

  The sentiments of the joining-for-all contingent—which was comprised of adults of both genders and every age group from teens to the elderly—struck a chord of sympathy within Bashir’s breast. What would it be like to be denied something that so many of one’s peers regard as so important?

  He walked south, approaching Leran Manev’s graceful sprawl of reflecting pools. As the crowds receded behind him, he considered the demands of the third group of demonstrators, and recalled what the Trill Symbiosis Commissioner Dr. Renhol had said about the issue during one of Bashir’s visits to Trill five years earlier. Renhol had begged him and Benjamin Sisko not to reveal their discovery that some fifty percent of Trill’s humanoid populace could, in fact, qualify for symbiosis; she had argued that complete social chaos would erupt were the truth to emerge. Because the symbiont population had never been large enough to accommodate such a huge demand, the Symbiosis Commission had perpetuated the lie that only a tiny fraction of the humanoid population could join successfully.

  Passing the reflecting pools and moving toward what the map on his tricorder identified as the periphery of the government quarter, Bashir wondered if the Trill people had finally begun honestly challenging the restrictions to symbiosis. If so, would Dr. Renhol’s dire prediction actually come to pass?

  He tried to push those concerns aside as he made his way into what was clearly a far different sector of the city. Rather than creating a skyline of vertical spires, the buildings were low and broad, few exceeding four stories in height. Narrow, decorative watercourses threaded between streets and buildings, crossed at intervals by bridges of wood or metal. Bashir wondered if the purpose of the clearly artificial waterways was to stimulate comforting thoughts of Mak’ala, the underground, aqueous caverns where the Trill symbionts bred.

  Turning his attention to the storefronts, office structures, and apartment complexes, it struck Bashir that virtually every structure within sight was a landmark, a touchstone to some bygone age or other. An ancient rococo library that resembled a medieval Terran cathedral made entirely of glass and translucent crystal beckoned to him with uncountable racks of data rings and old-style hard-copy books. An old-fashioned, meticulously hand-painted sign in the main gallery window touted a forthcoming personal appearance by a noted Trill author of an apparently highly regarded new work of serial biography. The book concerned a figure from Trill history whose lives spanned the period of warfare before the planet’s political unification to the uncertain years after first contact with Vulcan. The walls were bedecked in swirling, colorful portraits, apparently actual wood-framed canvas paintings mounted on easels rather than freefloating holograms; the images, some of them old and cracked, showed a wide range of visual interpretations of the biography’s evidently controversial subject, some heroic, others monstrous.

  Bashir wandered on, eagerly drinking in the sights. Museumpiece retail storefronts were being carefully shuttered by their proprietors, while the operators of cafés and sidewalk restaurants appeared to be preparing for a busy evening. Bashir paused momentarily to people-watch near a construction site where an elaborately designed edifice was being erected; he was immediately taken by the confident bearing of the young woman—the architect, Bashir presumed—who was directing a crew of workers. While the young woman carried herself without a hint of trepidation, she also moved as though she was acutely aware of anything that might conceivably endanger her. Only someone with an extremely long view of life could control her body with such surgical precision, while at the same time making it look so casual.

  She’s either a very old soul, or she’s joined. As he resumed walking, he wondered how many other lives echoed and reverberated inside her symbiont. Who but the most ardent antisymbiont partisan could resist the siren song of such instantly installed, modular wisdom, which was in some ways so like his own genengineered abilities? How many clear advantages did those former lives confer upon their hosts—advantages that might be forever unavailable to the vast majority of the people now carrying signs outside the Senate Tower?

  He walked on through the streets of the living Trill museum, troubled in spite of himself by what he had just seen. Though he certainly considered himself worldly enough to understand that Federation member worlds sometimes fell short of the UFP’s social ideals—the planet Ardana’s segregation of its intellectual and labor classes during the previous century sprang immediately to mind—he was still idealistic enough to be disturbed by it.

  Trying to put such thoughts out of his mind, Bashir walked on for several more blocks, noting that the buildings he was encountering seemed increasingly ornate and baroque. A quick scan with his tricorder revealed that all of the structures around him were far older than any of the buildings in the government sector, though none betrayed any obvious signs of neglect or disrepair. A few dated back more than a millennium, a fact that would have been apparent only to a true expert in Trill architecture—or to the discerning eye of a Starfleet tricorder. Clearly, entire sections of Leran Manev had become gallery displays of cultural history. It was a vibrant, though chronologically arranged, metropolis.

  Of course, he thought. Joined Trill symbionts have serial lives that can go on for centuries. It made perfect sense that the Trill people would have a tendency to revere mem
ories, whether personal or architectural, and take great care to preserve as many of their cultural manifestations as possible.

  The notion of Trill memories brought to the fore some poignant recollections of his own. Finding a vacant public information terminal, he tapped in an inquiry and determined that the source of his musings was in this very city. Within walking distance, even.

  A small melancholy smile crossed his lips as he realized just how close he had come to the place he had avoided for nearly two years now.

  * * *

  Jirin Tambor entered the grand, crystalline foyer of the Najana Library and eyed the display of the new serial biography of General Tem.

  The sight of Grala Tem’s smirking visage set off yet another wave of chest pain. The joined newsheads on the nets seemed united in their praise of the old butcher. But Tambor always had to wonder if Tem could have risen to such prominence without standing on the shoulders of his symbiont’s previous lives. What if he’d been among the faceless ranks of unjoined cannon fodder who had fought and died for him?

  How hard could it have been to achieve apparent greatness with a built-in advantage like that?

  Tambor suddenly became aware of the head librarian, who stood scowling at him, arms akimbo. Though she was young, her eyes were old. Joined eyes, he concluded. He realized with no small amount of embarrassment that she had been trying to get his attention for some time.

  “I said, are you here to deliver the rest of the General Tem display for the art gallery?”

  His chest hurting, Tambor nodded, abashed. “It’s on the hovertruck outside.”

  “Fine, then,” she said impatiently. “Bring it on down to the basement. The staff will unpack and assemble it tomorrow. And no antigravs inside the building.”

  “All right,” Tambor said. Though he didn’t relish carting his heavy cargo without the benefit of antigravs, he was thankful for once for the obsessive need to keep anachronistic technology out of their old landmark buildings. Because of that need, Tambor now had permission to place a large, sealed crate into the Najana Library’s basement. He was confident that no one would notice that he was still in the basement along with it until after the library closed. By the time anybody did, it would be far too late.

  The pain in Tambor’s chest receded slightly. Soon, very soon, the joined would all begin to pay.

  * * *

  Dax found the quiet of the place almost deafening. Until this evening, she had made a point of avoiding this place. Memories could be treasured, after all, without having to dwell on them.

  The sun had long vanished behind the ranks of low, ancient rooftops that dotted the edge of Manev Bay. Nearby, orderly rows of crystalline obelisks cast lengthy shadows over a lawn that stretched for kilometers. As with all cemeteries on Trill, the grave markers were a riot of color, even in the darkness. Illuminated subtly from within by remote-mediated photonics, each marker instantly told a story about the status of every interred person. The unjoined, who comprised the vast majority of the dead, were denoted by a simple, dignified yellow. The joined dead whose experiences were no longer being carried by a joined successor host—a fate that Dax knew awaited every joined Trill humanoid eventually—glowed a deep, mournful green.

  The smallest group, representing only a tiny percentage of the forest of small spires, glowed a hopeful purple, the color of Trill’s ever-regenerating oceans, the ultimate source of all life. These were the graves of once-joined humanoids whose symbionts currently lived on in other hosts, hosts who sustained their predecessors’ memories in much the same way that Trill’s oceans nurtured the planet’s biosphere. As Vic might say, these are the best seats in the house, Dax thought wryly, uncomfortable in the presence of so much stark, immutable death. Maybe it’s not exactly Mak’relle Dur, but I suppose it’s a pretty reasonable facsimile.

  A slender shadow, taller than any of the spires, fell across a grave marker bearing a name that was barely discernible in the waning light:

  JADZIA IDARIS

  Inscribed directly beneath the familiar name, in the same stark, simple script, were the words:

  BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, STUDENT, FRIEND HOST OF DAX

  Dax had the eerie sensation that she was standing at the edge of her own grave. At the same time, Jadzia was very much a stranger to her.

  She moved quietly toward the still shape that now stood beside Jadzia’s obelisk. “I thought I might find you here.”

  Julian didn’t seem in the least surprised at her arrival. He continued staring straight ahead at the grave marker, and the darkness that framed it. “You could have asked the Rio Grande’s computer to locate me.”

  “Didn’t think I needed to. Besides, I needed to take a walk, too. I guess I owed her a visit as well.”

  “Why? You never knew Jadzia.”

  “True. But in some ways I know her better than anyone,” Ezri said, placing a hand on her abdomen. “Sometimes I wish I could have really known her. The way other people did, I mean.”

  “I think she would have liked you,” he said, before trailing off into brooding silence.

  Then he turned to face her. For a moment, Julian’s grief shone through the darkness like a beacon. She felt a surge of relief when he changed the subject. “How did your testimony go?” he asked quietly.

  Dax shrugged. “Bumpy, but survivable. Cyl seemed nervous about a few of the senators’ direct questions about the parasites. He kept insisting that a lot of them be redirected to a closed-door session.”

  Julian nodded. “‘Security considerations,’” he said, using the general’s words.

  “Doctor Renhol seemed to be trying to make an issue of Cyl’s need for secrecy,” Dax said.

  “That’s rather ironic, coming from her.”

  “No argument from me. I think she’s just positioning herself to run against Maz in the next presidential election.”

  “Why does Cyl feel the need to hold back so many secrets?” Julian asked. “Now that the parasite danger has been dealt with, what’s the point?”

  “I keep asking myself the same question. Senator Talris quizzed me about our mission on Minos Korva, and what we found there,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket. She raised the fragment of Kurlan pottery into the light of the cemetery spires. “When I mentioned this, and your theory that it came from ancient Kurl, he became pretty curious about it. And Cyl insisted that the whole issue be kept under wraps. Like you said, ‘security considerations.’”

  Julian stepped toward her, taking the shard and examining it in the near darkness. “Then I suppose he’ll be doubly glad that I wasn’t testifying beside you.”

  She felt a frown creasing her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “Before we arrived at Leran Manev, I was still researching the historical records on both Kurl and Trill,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “And I learned a bit more about the provenance of this thing.”

  “It would have been nice to have known that before facing the Senate, Julian.”

  “I’m not sure it has any significance. Besides, if your General Cyl hadn’t booted me from the building, we might have been able to let the Senate make that determination.”

  “Or I could have. If you’d told me everything you’d learned before we arrived on Trill, that is.”

  His eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened, as though cast in iron. “Given Cyl’s fondness for secrecy, I tend to doubt that, Ezri. Besides, I told you everything I thought was important at the time. Most commanders don’t enjoy wading through too much extraneous information.”

  She regarded him in stony silence for a long moment. Was he questioning her ability to conduct the mission with which Captain Kira had charged her? Or was it something more basic and petty than that?

  You really don’t like being under me in the chain of command, do you, Julian?

  Aloud, she said, “All right, what else did you find out?”

  “Just that this piece is a fragment of the outer covering of an ancient Kurlan
naiskos.”

  “A what?”

  He handed the fragment back to her. “A naiskos is a ceramic figurine made in a squat, roughly humanoid shape. They stood about forty centimeters high, and they were designed to be opened. The inside was filled with dozens of smaller but similarly proportioned internal figures, illustrating the Kurlan people’s belief that each individual is comprised of a diverse chorus of sometimes conflicting impulses and desires.”

  Though Dax found Julian’s discovery interesting, she had to agree that it wouldn’t have been of any intrinsic value during her Senate testimony. She immediately regretted having questioned his judgment, and wondered if she hadn’t merely been projecting her own doubts about her ability to carry out the current mission.

  Hold it right there, Counselor. You’re on the command track now, remember?

  She suddenly realized that Julian was still talking about the naiskos. “I find one thing particularly intriguing about this artifact.”

  “What’s that?” she said, hoping he hadn’t noticed her woolgathering.

  “The philosophy behind the naiskos makes me wonder if the Kurlans might not have been a joined species, like the Trill.”

  “That sounds like a bit of a reach,” Dax said, shaking her head.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We know that the parasites have a relationship to the Trill symbionts. The presence of this fragment on Minos Korva suggests that they also had some connection to the Kurlans. Maybe there’s also a more direct relationship between Trill and Kurl.”

  Looking at the fragment in her palm, seeing it in the context of Julian’s new information, Dax suddenly recognized what part of the humanoid form it represented: the mouth.

  She heard a keening wail in the distance. Surrounded as they were by the remains of hundreds of the formerly joined dead, she found it impossible to suppress a shudder.

  As if on cue, her combadge flared to life. The gravelly voice it carried needed no introduction.

  “General Cyl to Lieutenant Dax. I’d like to see you back at the Senate Tower as soon as possible.”