“‘Something else’?”
Slowly, Vaughn divulged a strange and unsettling tale about an encounter he had experienced with one of the Bajorans’ Orbs of the Prophets. From anybody else, Akaar would have considered the story either a fabrication or a delusion. But not from Vaughn. Still—
“I have never known you to trust in mysticism,” Akaar said.
“No, you’re right,” Vaughn said. “And I don’t know if that’s what this was. Maybe, maybe not. I’ve been thinking of it as a personal epiphany. But not about Prynn; about me. I want to explore.”
“Then explore,” Akaar told him. “But do not bring Prynn with you.”
Vaughn paused and looked down. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts—gathering himself—and Akaar could not recall ever having seen Vaughn in such a desperate state. When he looked back up and spoke, his voice grew low and beseeching. “This may be my last opportunity to reconnect with my daughter. Things have been improving; we’ve been working well together the last few weeks. L.J., you know what it was like to grow up without your father.
Imagine if you had also not had your mother.”
The personal nature of Vaughn’s appeal startled Akaar. A spill of emotion washed over him suddenly, bringing with it his long-simmering melancholy about never having known his father, and the fear he always felt when he thought about how close his mother had come—more than once—to losing her life during his infancy and childhood.
“Why would Prynn still be on DS9, and ready to pilot Defiant,”Vaughn asked, “if some part of her didn’t want to reconcile with me?”
“She loves her job,” Akaar said, recognizing the weakness of his argument, and that the direction of the conversation had changed.
“She loves her job more than she hates her father,” Vaughn agreed. “And that’s a start.”
Akaar gazed at Vaughn, and he felt his resolve slipping away. Finally, Akaar dropped his head. “All right,” he said, and hoped he would not regret the decision.
“Thank you,” Vaughn said, his voice thick with gratitude and relief.
“I have to inform Captain Mello,” Akaar said. He turned away from Vaughn and headed for the door. “Thank you for dinner, and for the grosz.”
“L.J.,” Vaughn called, and Akaar stopped and turned back to his friend. “If you’re concerned that I’ll somehow jeopardize the crew because Prynn is on the ship, I can promise you, that won’t happen.”
“I know that,” Akaar said. “But sometimes it becomes necessary for a commanding officer to make difficult decisions…even to make sacrifices. And I know that you will do what is best for your crew.”
“Thank you for that,” Vaughn said.
“Do not thank me,” Akaar told him. “Thatis what concerns me: that you will do the right thing for your crew, even if it is the wrong thing for you and Prynn. I am not worried about your crew, Elias; I am worried about you and your daughter.”
Vaughn said nothing. Akaar held his gaze for a moment, then turned toward the door, which opened before him. He left Vaughn’s quarters, not knowing whether he had just done his old friend a favor, or consigned him to a terrible fate.
13
The sun shined down on the mountains and glinted off the distant ribbon of the river. The vibrant colors of the autumn—the green of the grass, the reds and oranges of the leaves falling from the trees—had deserted the landscape now, overtaken by the muted hues of winter—the yellow of the dead grass, the brown of the barren trees. Kasidy Yates gazed out from the porch at the vista before her and knew that another change was coming; snow had been forecast here for later in the month, and soon all would be dusted white. Already, in the past week, some of the higher peaks had been frosted.
Kasidy reached up and grabbed the edging of the deep-blue shawl draped across her shoulders, pulling it closed about her. The weather had grown warmer today than it had in weeks, in part because the winds had died down, but a chill continued to blanket the land. Kasidy breathed in deeply, enjoying the crisp freshness of the air, though she missed the rich, sweet scent of the mobafruit that grew on this land in summer.
Now, come on,she told herself. You’ve only been living here a couple of months.But she had visited here in the summer, when the mobafruit had ripened and hung down from the trees in succulent, violet globes. The aroma had captured her senses back then, and now she looked forward to next summer, when she would live in the midst of that splendid bouquet with—
Kasidy stopped the thought before completing it, not ready to think again about who would be with her in the future, because that also meant thinking about who was not here now. Instead, she opened the shawl and peeked down at the swell of her belly beneath her sweater. A smile came instantly to her lips as she ran a hand over the bulge in her flesh, in her body, that still seemed so strange to her, but that by next summer would be her son or daughter.
Kasidy walked the length of the porch to its western end, where sunlight streaked past the overhang and illuminated a patch of the wooden planking. She reached out from beneath the shawl to grab the arm of one of the two rockers, and pulled it over into the sun. She sat down without too much effort, although such maneuvering became more troublesome for her each day; she could only imagine the level of difficulty her final trimester would bring.
A cloud scudded by overhead, sending a shadow sweeping across the land toward the house. Kasidy wrapped the shawl tightly around herself, and when the cloud had passed, she tilted her face up and let the comforting rays of the Bajoran sun warm her. She closed her eyes, and this time she could not keep herself from thinking about Ben; she never could, not for long. He had loved this place, had looked forward to witnessing the change of seasons, and now she lived here, wishing every time she closed her eyes that, when she opened them, he would be here too. One day, she believed, that would be true. One day, she would open her eyes, or come around a corner of the house, or look out past one of the mobatrees, and there he would be, smiling so wide, with the love he felt for her reflected in his eyes. And he would come to her, and then this house, this land, would truly be theirs.
She lowered her head and opened her eyes. Ben was not there. That was hard, but somehow, it was also all right, at least for now. There might come a time, she knew, when she would not be able to hold on to her hope, and on to that last, evanescent connection she had experienced—or thought she had experienced—with Ben almost half a year ago. For now, though, she remained content, even amid the despondency and the emptiness, to believe that she had communicated with him in whatever realm he had ascended to, and that what he had told her—what he had promisedher—would eventually come to pass.
In all the time she had been together with Ben, Kasidy had never really understood the Bajoran religion, not in any deep and emotional way. She supposed the conceit of her own beliefs—the conceit of almost anybody with religious beliefs—prevented such understanding. Well-defined theological convictions did not admit contrary viewpoints, for even the consideration of alternate possibilities ran contrary to the notion of faith. Lately, she had begun to wonder if she should—or even could—find her way out of such a self-limiting perspective.
As for Ben, she had never understood how he had done what he had done. He had never been an impractical man, and yet somehow, over time, he had allowed himself to be made an icon of an alien spirituality. She knew that he had come to have a deep and abiding love for the Bajoran people, and that he had actually conversed with their “gods,” but she could not imagine taking on such an enormous responsibility. It was one of her concerns about being here on Bajor, where her relationship with Ben threatened to make her something of a minor figure in their religion herself.