“That’s enough,” the voice said, and the sipstick withdrew.

Hovath looked up, squinting against the light, attempting to see the speaker through the glare. The most he could discern was a dark shape sitting on the opposite end of the table. “What do you want of me?”

“The same thing you want. Answers,” his captor said.

“I won’t help you.”

“I think you will.” The dark figure seemed to turn slightly to one of her henchmen. “Show him.”

The underling on his right—Hovath thought dully he might be a Nausicaan, though he was uncertain—moved to the nearest wall, where a viewscreen was set up. The alien activated it, and Hovath’s heart lifted.

Iniri was alive. She was slumped in the corner of a small room, her red-blond hair in dissaray, her clothing singed. She had her arms wrapped around herself and she appeared to be weeping. She looked as if she’d been beaten, and Hovath’s moment of relief turned to rage.

Then he felt the blood drain from his face as he recognized her surroundings. An airlock.

“As you can see, your wife lives. For the moment,” the woman said. “If you wish her to stay that way, I require your full cooperation.”

“Please,” Hovath moaned. “Let her go.”

“No. Not until you give me what I need. Otherwise Iniri dies.”

Hovath squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his hands into fists on top of the table, his mind searching for a way out of his nightmare. His teeth bit into his swollen lower lip until he tasted blood again.

“How can I possibly help you? I’m no one.”

“Oh, but that is hardly true.” the woman said. “Until this very morning you were the sirahof Sidau village. But that’s not all, is it, Hovath? You’ve also spent half of each of the last six years as a student in Musilla University, where you pursued what can only be described as an atypical course of study for someone of your upbringing, and published a rather remarkable document.”

From the far end of table, something slid toward him across the surface. His fingers caught it. A padd, but not of a design he’d ever seen before. Its little screen displayed the title, Speculations on the Architecture of the Celestial Temple.

His name appeared directly below it.

“I’ve become quite familiar with your work,” his captor said.

Tears streamed from Hovath’s eyes as he began to understand why all this was happening.

Hovath’s spirit had always been restless, distracted; it was for that very reason, he recalled, that the old sirahhad pushed Hovath so hard before his death, seven years ago. Hovath had stumbled during his first attempt to control the Dal’Rok.The old sirahhad felt Hovath’s pagh,and found him wanting. Enlisting the aid of two humans from the space station, he crafted a lesson whereby Hovath learned to commit fully to the duty for which he had been trained his whole life.

As the new sirah,Hovath served his people well. But the villagers needed his services as storyteller only for a span of five days each year. The rest of that time he was merely a scholar and sometime spiritual guide. Though he had mastered his role, his spirit remained restless, his mind thirsty for knowledge that had no place in the village. A year after he became the storyteller of Sidau, he announced his intent to spend Hedrikspool’s autumn and winter months each year in secluded study, away from the village. No one, not even his new bride, Iniri, had known where he went, or the controversial nature of his work: a single line of theological and scientific inquiry that had been circling round and round in his mind since the Emissary had first come to Bajor.

From the day of its discovery, the wormhole had excited him, captured his imagination. For the Celestial Temple to manifest itself in such a manner, it could only mean that the Prophets sought to be understood in ways apart from the wisdom of the prophecies. Or so Hovath believed. Come,he felt the Temple beckon. See what I am.

After the death of the old sirah,Hovath’s life walked two paths. On one he was the faithful storyteller of the village, Keeper of the Paghvaramand Foe of the Dal’Rok.On the other path he’d become a contemplator of Their Manifestation, seeker of secular truth, and student of the architecture of the Temple. He had believed that these two paths, while seeming separate and parallel, would in time converge into a single path of Truth on which he could guide his flock in Sidau, and perhaps others, toward a new enlightenment.

Now a different Truth was upon him, and it stood revealed as his own folly and arrogance.

He shook his head and pushed the padd away. “This is nothing.”

“I very much disagree,” the woman said. “I find it quite compelling. Your imaginative approach to theoretical physics is not merely unexpected, but inspired. You believe the wormhole is not what it seems to be.”

“No,” Hovath said tightly. “I believe it is morethan it seems to be.”

“Explain.”

Hovath brought his fist down on the table. “If you’ve read my work, you already know the explanation.”

“Indulge me.”

Hovath said nothing.

His captor addressed the Nausicaan, who still stood next to the screen showing the image of Iniri. “Space her.”

Rena

The ranger patrol craft met them a few dozen meters down river from the bridge landing. Rena wasn’t surprised to see the fear-mongering officer from the rest-and-sip commanding the boat; she was too tired and irritable to argue with his lecture on the risks involved in recklessly disregarding his organization’s dictums. Her reward for enduring the speech was a promise to deliver her to Mylea Harbor before midday. He would transmit any messages she wanted to send in an effort to reassure any concerned relatives.

Afterward, a female lieutenant brewed hot tea for both Jacob and Rena and escorted them belowdecks to small, interior cabin furnished only with a bunk bed. She had left them both with victims’ aid packs, each of which included a set of lightweight, one-size undergarments (loose shorts and T-shirt), plus some personal-hygiene supplies. The lieutenant had also laid out a pair of green forest-ranger work-duty jumpsuits, faded from age and use, as well as giving them a few extra blankets. Jacob started stripping off his sopping clothes as soon as the lieutenant left. Indignant at his presumptuous behavior, Rena huffed, turned her back, and waited for him to give the all clear that she was safe to start changing her own clothes. Once she had changed, she scrambled up the ladder and leaped into the upper bunk, snuggling beneath the blankets without a word to Jacob. She waited for sleep to come.

From Jacob’s breathing below, she could tell that sleep hadn’t come to him either.

“Rena.”

She debated answering him for a moment, then, knowing it wasn’t fair to punish him for her bad luck, said, “Yes?”

“Your sketchbook…I’m so sorry. I know how I’d feel if I lost my work.”

“I’m sure it’s just the Prophets letting me know they’re aware of my rebellious heart, in spite of my outward obedience.”

“Why would the Prophets take your art away?”

The finer nuances of Bajoran theology were always difficult to explain to nonbelievers, so Rena pondered carefully how to answer Jacob’s question. “The Prophets aren’t taking my art. More like, the Prophets have put Bajor on a path. As a result all Bajorans are on a path. When we follow our path, our lives unfold in a way that brings us confidence and peace. When we resist our path, we find chaos and uncertainty. We demonstrate our faith by how we live. As you can see tonight, my faith isn’t doing so well or I’d probably be asleep safe in a hostel somewhere instead of on a patrol boat, lucky to be alive.”