Ledahn was nearly out his seat. “Uh, you may not have that luxury, First Minister….”
Asarem held up a finger. “Stop right there—”
“I’m just saying—”
“Not another word!”
“If you’ll just calm down and think about it for a moment—”
“The answer is no.” Asarem pointed at her aide. “Get out, Theno. Get out, or by the Prophets, I’m going to kill you.”
Unfazed, her aide walked calmly toward the door leading to the anteroom. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Ministers,” Theno drawled. “I’m quite confident that between the two of you, you’ll find someone passable.”He closed the door behind him without a backward glance.
Fuming, Asarem turned back to Ledahn. “Now, as for you…”
“He has every quality you said you wanted Bajor’s Federation councillor to have,” Ledahn said, speaking rapidly. “And unless something has changed in the last seven years, he’s available. If not him, who?”
Shaking her head, she rose from the conference table and retreated behind the imaginary safety of her desk. “Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m going to—”
“First Minister, it’s either this, or we hand the decision back to the Chamber of Ministers.”
“Then let them have it!” Asarem shouted.
Ledahn stood his ground. “We both know you don’t mean that.”
Asarem sat down heavily and rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I can’t believe you support this idea, you of all people.”
“That should tell you how seriously I take it.”
“He made it very clear when he left public service that he wanted to be left alone.”
“You weren’t first minister then,” Ledahn said. “Now you are, and your job isn’t to give people what they want. It’s to provide them with what they need,and to let the right people know when theyare needed. I understand your reasons for not pushing the matter with Sorati, but Aldos was always willing to put Bajor before his personal feelings.”
“Yes, and all it cost us was our marriage.”
“That’s not for me to say. My job is to advise you on the course of action that serves our people best,” Ledahn said, refusing to let the conversation be derailed. “And you knowthis would serve Bajor best.”
Asarem said nothing.
“At the very least, you have to ask him, First Minister. I’ll remain with you while you contact him, if that’s what you want.”
Asarem closed her eyes, seeing the springball ricocheting wildly. She tried to anticipate where it would fly next, knowing that she was in real danger of losing control of it, even missing it completely.
“No,” she said, opening her eyes. “Thank you, Muri, but this is one I’ll need to handle alone. And I’ll have to do it in person.”
Solis
Mirroring Vedek Solis’s mood, the clouds over Ashalla broke, letting the afternoon sun warm the domes and towers and tiled rooftops of the coastal city, so different from his native Ilvia, a sprawling inland community built along the slope of a great mountain. Although this wasn’t his first visit to Ashalla, he had never before seen it from his current vantage point, the meditation balcony near the top of the Shikina Monastery. Standing with his right hand pressed flat against one of the four-sided columns that encircled the balcony and supported its roof, Solis looked out at Ashalla and beyond it, to all of Bajor, his paghswelling with hope.
For all the turmoil of the last half-century, Solis Tendren believed that Bajor was once again on the cusp of a great change. As the wars to unite Bajor thirty thousand years ago had changed the course of their civilization. As the discovery of the first Tears had opened up his people’s own self-awareness. As their first tentative steps toward new worlds had altered their perception of the universe. As the Cardassians, and the coming of the Emissary, and the Ohalu prophecies had brought changes…so now was another transformation coming. He needn’t gaze into a Tear to know this. He felt it in his pagh,and in the stone against his hand, and in the breeze that came in from the sea.
Bajor is never still,he thought, enjoying the wind in his thinning hair. Life moves, and Bajor with it.
It was that understanding that had driven him to come to the Shikina Monastery today. He hoped to insure that, whatever came next, Bajor’s path would be lit by the one who had always seemed to see the Prophets most clearly.
Solis heard the shuffle of soft sandals behind him. He turned to welcome she whom he had come to meet with. Opaka Sulan emerged from within the monastery and stepped lightly around the little pool in the center of the balcony. Solis had heard a rumor that the water was merely a hologram disguising a long stair that spiraled deep into the hill on which the monastery was built. Supposedly it had been created secretly during the Occupation to hide the last of the Tears from the Cardassians. If so, visitors to the balcony did well to avoid venturing too close to the pool.
“Vedek Solis, I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” Opaka said at once, taking both his hands in hers. “I was delayed in Janir, where the Oralian temple is being constructed.”
As always, Solis found Opaka’s smile infectious, and he reflected it. “The work goes well, then?” he asked.
Opaka nodded, releasing his hands. “It is far enough along that services may be held within, as of this very day. That’s why I was delayed. The Oralian guide, Cleric Ekosha, invited me to join the first gathering of the Cardassian followers of Oralius on Bajor. I could not resist the opportunity. It was a most moving experience. So like, yet unlike, our own devotion to the Prophets.”
“Which is closer to the truth, I wonder?” Solis asked.
Opaka’s smile widened…and was that a hint of mischief in her eyes? “Why, Tendren, they are of course equally true,” she said, “and equally false.”
“Because if one world’s religion is true, all must be?” Solis challenged good-naturedly.
“No, though I believe there is some merit to that argument,” Opaka said, lowering herself to the stone bench situated opposite the doorway. She gestured for Solis to join her. “It is because any religion is about attempting to comprehend the universe beyond what we, as merely parts it, can perceive. But though the faithful may scratch the surface of Truth, I believe we each see only a fragment of a much larger and more complex totality. Different religions may see different fragments, none of them wrong, but none of them entirely right either.”
“But together…” Solis said.
“Together they may begin to form a mosaic,” Opaka said. “Or a Tapestry. Just as our lives form the tapestry that is Bajor. Just as our experiences form the tapestry that is each of us.”
Solis nodded. Nothing of what she said surprised him, of course. But it was good to listen, to hear her express her thoughts with such enthusiasm, such sincerity and serenity. It made him that much more certain about what he was going to say next. “You know why I asked to see you.”
Opaka sighed. “I suspect I do.”
“I know I am not the first to ask,” Solis went on, “but I feel compelled to add my voice to the others. Will you be kai for us again?”
Her smile grew smaller, but did not quite disappear. “No, Tendren, I will not,” Opaka said.
Solis was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. Still, he was not yet ready to give up, either. “The Vedek Assembly never recovered from your loss, Sulan. It fell into discord, politics, corruption…. Bareil Antos might have kept us from that decay, but once he was gone too, Winn Adami seemed to feed upon it. We lost our way, and we need desperately to find it again, now more than ever, with so much change in the wind. Ohalu, the Avatar, the Eav-oq…” He faltered, overwhelmed. “Can nothing persuade you?” he asked.