Quark headed out across the upper level of the Promenade toward the nearest turbolift. The image of the horrible creature in the holosuite stayed with him only an instant. Odo’s face replaced it in his mind, along with the notion that the constable essentially had acquired everything he had ever wanted. And I can’t get almost anything I want,Quark thought bitterly. Not the moon for which he had always longed, not great monetary wealth, not even much of a business. And he also might have thrown away whatever small chance he might have had with Ro Laren.

But now Quark decided he would do what he had to do to change that.

47

Vaughn took a last sip of water, then sealed the container and set it aside. He stood up, packed his bedroll—the blanket and beacon inside it—and strapped it to his back. He slung both water containers over his shoulder, then started up the side of the hollow in which he had chosen to rest.

At the top of the incline, a roadway stretched away to the left and right. Vaughn had found the road a few hours ago, on the way out of the city. It measured a dozen or so meters across, traveling through the rise and fall of the landscape in a predominantly straight line, directly toward the complex surrounding the source of the pulse. Walking on the even terrain beside the road allowed him to maintain a steady gait, while at the same time putting less strain on him than if he were to move along the harder surface of the road itself.

Vaughn turned left and resumed his journey. A long upgrade lay ahead, the summit about a kilometer away. He slipped his tricorder out of a coat pocket and performed a scan. As he had drawn nearer the site of the pulse, the range of the sensors had decreased dramatically, though the amount of interference from the energy still confirmed that the road continued in the right direction. He closed the tricorder and slid it back into his coat.

Above, the dark sea of clouds gloomed, matching Vaughn’s mindset. Since his encounter in the city with Captain Harriman—or whoever or whatever it had been—he had spent considerable effort conceiving of possible explanations. Time and again, though, his mind would drift from asking questions and searching for answers, to recalling his days with Harriman. Over and over, he had to force his thoughts back to the situation at hand, a problem of focus that did not usually afflict him.

In the end, he figured that the problem broke down simply enough: either that had been Harriman back in the city, or it had not. If it had been Harriman, then how had he come to be here, and why? And why from so long ago? Had there been a reason he had not responded when Vaughn had called to him? Most important, how would this affect the mission to disable the pulse?

On the other hand, if it had not been Harriman—which seemed far more likely—then who or what had it been? Had it occurred only in Vaughn’s mind, or had it been real? And if real, then how had it been accomplished, and why? Again, most important, what effect would it have on his mission?

What most troubled Vaughn was the agreement between what he had perceived and what his tricorder scans had shown. If it had not been Harriman, or at least a human male, then either both Vaughn and the tricorder had been fooled, or Vaughn’s perception of the tricorder had been fooled. Either way, it left the accuracy of the two most valuable tools he had right now—the tricorder and his mind—in doubt.

As Vaughn hiked up the gradient, leaning into the slope, his thoughts wandered again from Harriman’s apparent presence here to those dangerous days spent with him— What? Sixty-five years ago?He remembered with horror the catastrophe of Ad Astra,in which lives and hopes had been lost. He recalled the mission to remedy the damage done, to avert the unwinnable war…the success, but at a cost. Vaughn had still been a young man then, in his thirties, and naïve.

No, not naïve,he thought, a word that carried negative connotations with it. Innocent.Back then, he had believed in the virtue of fighting evil, without really understanding the toll that such fighting could take.

Now, alone on this planet, he shook his head and laughed, with not humor but curiosity. He had not thought about Tomed— reallythought about it—in years, perhaps decades. And yet for the last few hours, he had come back to it again and again. All this time later, he found that those ancient emotions could still take hold of him, as though he were experiencing them for the first time. He knew now that he would always carry within him the simple hollowness of the tragedy, along with the complicated sorrows that came from fighting in the shadows.

Underneath the gray skies, Vaughn marched alongside the road, up the incline. Pebbles crunched in the dirt beneath his boots, a sharp contrast to the spectral hum still pervading the air like the aural equivalent of mist. As he approached the summit of the upgrade, a shape became visible in the distance, slowly climbing into view. Vaughn’s hands balled into fists, a symptom of the adrenaline that began to course through his body. If he had reached the complex around the pulse already, then he would have an entire day to determine a course of action to save the Vahni.

But as Vaughn topped the rise, he saw only a single structure. A dark tower of some sort, it sat perhaps another kilometer away, reaching up from the center of the roadway itself. It appeared to be about as tall as the road was wide, its base measuring about half that size. Vaughn pulled out his tricorder and attempted a sensor scan, but the interference from the energy made it impossible.

Vaughn kept his gaze on the structure as he continued walking, looking in particular for movement. He saw none. He wondered about the purpose of the structure. Considering its placement, he speculated that it might have functioned as a checkpoint of some sort. He looked for openings in the side facing him, and saw a rectangular doorway at ground level, and several narrow slits in a vertical line above it. With its dark coloring and slightly irregular edges, it appeared to be constructed of stone and—

Vaughn stopped. He checked the tricorder again, but still could not take a reading. It didn’t matter. He had drawn close enough now to recognize the structure. It was identical to the tower at the center of the Vahni city.

In less than a quarter of an hour, Vaughn had reached the tower. When he had come within half a kilometer, he had been able to scan the structure: stone and mortar, four stories tall, a single doorway, and a stairway that ascended up the inside walls to the roof. He did not have the readings of the actual Vahni tower—why would he?—so he could not compare the two structures, but his memory found them indistinguishable.

What’s going on?Vaughn wanted to know. Was he in a holosuite somewhere, or was this all occurring in his mind? Maybe he still lay back in the wreckage of Chaffee,unconscious or even comatose, imagining all of this.

Except…this did not seem like a holosuite or an illusion or a dream. Of course, he understood that he might not be able to prove such a belief one way or another. It had been more than a day since the shuttle had gone down, though, and all of the events since then—finding Prynn alive, treating the badly wounded ch’Thane, walking for kilometers across the empty land, passing through the city—had all seemed real. But then, so too had Harriman.

Standing beside the doorway, Vaughn patted a hand against an outer wall of the tower. The stone felt cool to the touch, hard, rough. He closed his eyes for a moment, and the sensations remained.