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 free-floating 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. Museum-piece 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 anti-symbiont 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 memories, 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.