She wasted no time in telling him. “Constable,” she said in an urgent whisper, “do you know anything about my transport off the station?”

“What?” Odo did not immediately follow. “You were…leaving the station?’

“Of course I was leaving,” she whispered, looking around. “It was arranged that a Cardassian gil was supposed to transport me off the station, but he never came. He was supposed to pull me out of ore processing last night.”

Odo shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “Probably, though, the Cardassian pocketed the money and left. Motivated by profit, of course,” he added.

The woman only stared at him, no less angry and frantic. “It’s…a possibility,” she said, “but it’s just as possible that he was found out, and something happened to him.”

Odo frowned. “Are you concerned about him?”

“Of course not! I need to get off this station, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he repeated.

She sat back in her chair, looking down into her empty cup. She still seemed angry, but there was something else in it, too. Distress. Odo wanted to help her, though he wasn’t sure why. Helping her would certainly welcome chaos here, and Odo had no desire to bring more chaos upon himself.

“Why are you fighting the Cardassians?” he suddenly asked.

She looked up from her cup and laughed, though it was not a happy sound. “Because,” she said. “Because everything the Cardassians have, they stole from us. From my people—from me.”

Odo considered it. “It has been suggested that the Bajoran people asked the Cardassians to come to Bajor,” he said.

Kira shook her head. “Suggested by Cardassians, I’m sure.” Her eyes flashed, expressing a depth of emotion that he could scarcely imagine. “You see how we’re treated. You think this is something we want?”

It certainly seemed unlikely, but he did not see how his opinion mattered, one way or another. He could only do his job, which was to correct injustices as defined by Cardassian law…which quite suddenly seemed terrifically unfair. Shouldn’t he be allowed to discern fairness based on the specifics of any given situation? Shouldn’t everyone?

He spoke before he had a chance to think further. “I can help you,” he offered, having no idea how he would go about it.

“Help me?”

“Get off the station.”

Her eyes widened slightly, her expression of anger softening somewhat. “How are you going to do that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But…I’ll find a way.”

16

Only two days after Kalisi contacted the university rep, Doctor Moset walked into the hospital’s main computer room with a broad grin on his narrow face.

This is it, she thought, and relaxed. Finally. The waiting had been uncertain.

“There you are,” he said, walking over to where she sat, running the weekly diagnostics on the security system. “You’ll never imagine what happened this morning.”

Kalisi was the picture of innocence. “What happened?”

He sat next to her, looking around to be sure they were alone. One of the nurses had been in to check something, but had left promptly when he’d seen Moset come in. No one else was within earshot.

“I was contacted by the University of Culat,” he said. “They’ve offered me a position in exobiology, specializing in nonhumanoid. A chair, Kali, if it works out. And…I’ve accepted.”

Kalisi widened her eyes. “Crell! How wonderful!”

He took her hand, squeezed it in his own thin, sleek fingers. “We could work together, darling. You must call them back, ask if the weapons position is still open.”

She met his gaze, her own filled with manufactured hope. “I’d like that. But—” She shook her head. “The vaccine…there’s the batch recovery in just a few more weeks. If we want to replicate the master samples, we should start with a new synthesis.”

Moset frowned. “Perhaps I could arrange to come back for a time…”

“No, Crell,” she said, firmly, lovingly. “I will stay. I’ve already explained that I have a project to finish before I can consider their offer, and you’ve accepted. I will see to it that the master vaccine samples are properly adjusted.”

He reached out to touch her face, fingers spidering over her skin. “It is my work, Kali. I couldn’t ask you to stay…”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” she said. “Truly, is there anyone else you would trust with the documentation of the process? To see it through?”

She waited, watched him think. She was prepared to lie outright to get him away—create some false family issue she needed to resolve before she could return home, or even suggest that she wanted him to make a place ready for her, calling on the archaic tradition in which a man creates a suitable home for his affianced before she will agree to marry him.

Funny, though, how neither of us has mentioned marriage…She suspected that he would, before much longer. Or not. In some ways, she knew nothing at all about Crell Moset.

He finally shook his head and answered her question. “You know there isn’t.”

“Let me stay,” she said. “I’ll finish the work, I’ll record everything…And then I can meet you at Culat.”

Moset beamed at her, impulsively raising her hand to his lips, dry as desert grass. “What would I do without you?”

So far, so good.

She smiled back at him. “Does this mean I’ll meet your cousin?”

“My cousin?”

“The one you were telling me about, who walks the Oralian Way.”

Moset grinned ever wider. “Did I say it was a cousin? I don’t recall.”

She laughed. “I thought you had,” she said, and went in another direction, wanting to defer his suspicions. “Ever since you told me about the Way, I’ve wondered…You say the current leader was trained at the Ministry of Science?”

“Yes.”

“As was I,” she said. “I am curious about when she was supposed to have worked there. Perhaps I knew her.”

Moset smiled. “Perhaps you areher.”

His attempts at humor were oblique and rarely funny. “What do you mean?”

“Only that when you told me you’d handled the Bajoran artifact—Astraea was alleged to have received her call by touching one of those Orbs, at the ministry. And she is about your age, I believe. You would have trained around the same time.” He chuckled, then turned mock serious. “Tell me, Kali, are you secretly speeding away to Cardassia City when you’re not with me, leading an ancient religion in your spare time?”

Miras.Instantly, she knew. Her friend from school, who’d borrowed Kalisi’s clearance to look at the Orb, who’d suffered some sort of hallucination that day the computers had glitched… Astraea is Miras Vara.

She’d planned to use the information about Moset’s relative as her leverage, but if it was true, if the secret leader of the Oralian Way was Miras…

She had to pretend admiration at his clever jest, but her laugh was real. Crell Moset had just inadvertently provided her with exactly what she needed to ensure that she could achieve all of her objectives.

I will be free, she promised herself, and laughed again.

Making his way through the corridor near the empty habitat ring, Odo was startled when someone grabbed his arm. Without thinking, he dissolved into a liquid from his shoulder to his wrist, removing himself from the clutching fingers. He was considering his response when he realized that it was Dalin Gaten Russol.

“Odo!” The Cardassian appeared unhappy, his movements anxious. “I need your help.”

Odo took a step back. The urgency in Russol’s voice was troubling. “What’s happened?”

“I…I need you to do something for me. There is an isolinear recording in Dukat’s office. I need that recording. My life depends on it, Odo. Possibly more than my life.”

Odo blinked, a conscious action that did not, of course, come naturally to him. It was something that he often remembered to do only when he was beginning to feel distress or confusion. It was one of the first habits he’d been taught. “What is more important than your life?”