“In the meantime, I stand with you, the unjoined, as one of you. I call upon those of you who have taken your legitimate grievances to the streets to set aside violence now. I ask you to consider carefully all the changes that lie ahead, and how these changes stand to benefit you.Consider how we can work together to create a future in which all Trill are treated equally under the law.
“We all stand together at the edge of a precipice. Today we can write a new page of history together. We can record new memories of change for the better. Of progress for all of Trill. Of equality for all of Trill. Again, I implore you to reject violence. Joined and unjoined, let us face our common future as one. Let us build a new Trill together. And let us begin today.”
She touched a button on her desk console, and the visual pickup’s red light immediately faded to a dull black.
The president sighed and cast quick glances at Lieutenant Dax, Hiziki Gard, Dr. Bashir, and the few staffers who had gathered nearby. Though their expressions all showed varying degrees of apprehension, they were otherwise unreadable.
For better or for worse, the die had been cast.
During the president’s speech, Dax began feeling nauseated. It was a sensation she used to experience during her earliest days aboard Deep Space 9; she had been certain then that she could feel the immense Cardassian space station slowly turning beneath her feet. That certainty had been borne out by the same vertiginous queasiness she was experiencing right now.
Only now, she was conscious of an entire civilization turning beneath her feet.
It would be really bad form to throw up on President Maz’s carpet,she told herself. No, that’s PresidentDurghan, now.
She considered, as she had many times over the past several hours, that the president’s name change might seem more like a complete identity switch in the eyes of some. Would the Trill Senate or the courts try to invalidate the president’s symbiosis ban, claiming that only Lirisse Maz, not Lirisse Durghan, had the authority to issue a presidential decree?
It’s a good thing Maz signed the order before she went into surgery with Julian.That thought settled Dax’s lurching stomach somewhat.
But not entirely. In fact, there seemed to be no end to her misgivings, now that she knew there was no turning back. It was as though she had taken a flying leap off the Senate Tower spire, only to change her mind about the plunge halfway down. Doubts of similar futility nagged relentlessly at the back of her mind. What if the drug Julian had used to end the president’s symbiosis were to become common knowledge? She knew that this wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, since Julian had also just used it to safely extract many nonfatally injured symbionts from their otherwise doomed hosts. The president had admitted publicly to undergoing an experimental procedure that had enabled her to survive separation from the Maz symbiont, but she had withheld the details. People would certainly demand them, though, and what then? Wouldn’t such a revelation tempt certain unjoined malcontents—people like the late Verad Kalon—to get around the symbiosis ban by simply kidnapping one of the few remaining symbionts still conjoined with a humanoid? Dax already knew from her own symbiont’s memories that black market trade in living symbionts wasn’t an entirely unknown crime.
Maybe the powers that be will have to see to it thatsome secrets remain buried,Dax told herself unhappily as she struggled to maintain focus on the here and now rather than allowing hypothetical calamities to drive her to distraction.
After the president finished her address, Dax walked to the observation window that faced the speaker’s platform. She looked down at the crowd, which had grown steadily throughout the president’s speech as people arrived by hovercar, skimmer, antigrav bus, or on foot.
She glanced toward the president, who had slumped limply backward into her chair, her eyes closed in apparent fatigue while Julian hovered nearby, examining her with a small medical scanner. Neither the president nor Julian seemed to be paying any attention to the storm gathering outside.
Beside the president’s desk stood Gard, who continued watching his wrist-mounted comm unit intently.
Dax’s heart sank when Gard cast a brief glance her way. His appalled expression spoke volumes about what must be going on all across the planet as a result of the president’s speech. There were already thousands of confirmed dead; if all the unjoined were rising up now to bring still more blood and fire to the streets, then millions more could follow.
Then, as he continued studying the information scrolling on his wrist, Gard’s expression shifted to one of stupefaction. Dax walked quickly toward him.
He grinned at her a moment later, then pressed a button that opened up an audio channel. Dax had expected to hear screams, catcalls, slogans, epithets. Instead she heard an unmistakable rhythmic sound, like the susurration of a waterfall punctuated by sharp, enthusiastic whistles.
The people outside weren’t rioting. They were cheering.Amid the bursts of applause rose a chorus of voices, repeating the newly unjoined president’s birth surname in a rolling, ebullient chant: “Durghan! Durghan! Durghan!”
“It might be a little soon to jump to any conclusions,” Gard said, still grinning. “But I think your speech could have gone over a whole lot worse, Madam President.”
Suddenly overcome by an enormous sensation of relief, Dax broke with protocol by letting herself sag into a sitting position on the corner of the president’s wide desk.
After having endured so much intense upheaval so quickly—and after having been subjected to so many centuries of casual, unacknowledged oppression—Trill’s disaffected majority could finally look forward to a new era of hope.
Stardate 53779.6
Walking between Julian and Gard, Dax wearily picked her way across the Senate Tower’s lobby, guiding the trio through the small clusters of arriving office workers. As they headed in the general direction of the landing pad where the runabout Rio Grandewas parked, Dax found herself avoiding Julian’s searching gaze. Instead, her eyes roamed across the wide, vaulted ground-floor chamber.
Almost immediately, she saw a familiar face.
“Ranul!” Ezri shouted as she ran toward him. She hadn’t expected to see the massive Guardian again so soon, given the previous day’s chaos at Mak’ala. “What brings you to the Senate Tower?”
“I was hoping I’d see you again before you left Trill,” Ranul Keru said, giving her a firm but gentle hug.
Dax suddenly realized that Julian and Gard had flanked them. Julian was regarding her silently, with an expression that blended curiosity with impatient anticipation.
“Sorry, Julian,” she said, disengaging from the Guardian. “Ranul Keru, meet Doctor Julian Bashir, also from Deep Space 9. And Hiziki Gard, a special officer of the Trill Symbiosis Commission. If not for Ranul’s help, I might never have made contact with the elder symbionts.”
“You’re one of the Guardians,” Julian observed after momentarily scrutinizing Keru’s utilitarian brown tunic and slacks.
“For now,” Keru said with an enigmatic half-smile. “I’ve only been working with the symbionts for the past couple of years. It’s been very restful and therapeutic for me.”