The nurse reappeared, and it looked as though she handed something to Julian.

“What about Gerda?” Ezri wanted to know. “How is she?”

“You need to rest,” Julian said, and he reached up toward her neck.

“No, now,” she said, her voice loud and insistent. “How is Gerda?” Instead of an answer, she heard the sibilant puff of a hypospray, like somebody whispering into her neck.

“Rest, now, Ezri,” Julian said, not responding to her question. But as she closed her eyes and let sleep pull her back into its velvety folds, she could not help but think that Julian had already given her an answer.

22

Taran’atar stood alone inside the turbolift, watching the walls of the shaft rush horizontally past the open front end of the car. He reviewed the details of his current operation, as few and as simple as they were, and thought about delaying his plan. He could even abandon it completely.

You taste fear,he told himself, disgusted with his vacillation. He had been charged with a campaign by the Founder, and he would see it through, however long it required, however many operations he had to prepare and execute. No matter the vagueness of the Founder’s directive, or its apparent pointlessness. A god had spoken, sent him a mission, and he would see it through.

Or die.

The turbolift slowed, then stopped in front of a set of doors. They parted and slid into the bulkhead, revealing a corridor within the habitat ring. Taran’atar waited. When nobody entered the lift or passed by, he shrouded and moved out. The muted sounds of voices drifted to him, some coming from farther down the corridor, others from behind the closed doors of the quarters on this deck. The smells of food and of the beings who lived here permeated the air. He detected no threats to him, and so he set out purposefully toward his objective.

As he walked, Taran’atar thought about the Founder, who had instructed him to immerse himself in the various cultures he would encounter on Deep Space 9, and in the various aspects of life in those cultures. After spending as much time as Taran’atar had on the space station, doing little besides standing in the operations center and going into battle when he could—even if that meant utilizing the holosuites—he knew that he must do something more. He had observed Colonel Kira in combat, both in the Delta Quadrant and once in the holosuite, and he had spent a few days in the week prior to Defiant’s departure roaming the ship, but still, he knew that had not been enough. Even the colonel had suggested to him that there was more to see here than just the operations center and the holosuites. And so he had begun to travel to various locales throughout the station.

Two people came walking down the corridor together toward Taran’atar. One was a human male in a Starfleet uniform, he saw, the other a Bajoran female in a Militia uniform. He wondered if they might be coming from the place to which he was headed. As they drew nearer, talking with each other, Taran’atar gauged their movements, waited as long as he could to commit, and then flattened himself against the bulkhead. They passed him, never even having suspected his presence. Contempt welled up within him for these Alpha Quadrant beings and their pathetic observational abilities, but then more of the Founder’s words echoed in his mind: Don’t judge them. Experience and try to understand, only. Judgment will come later.He put the beings out of his mind and continued on down the corridor.

The first place Taran’atar had gone to “experience” Alpha Quadrant life, other than the operations center, had been Defiant.After Commander Vaughn had asked him to come aboard the ship to answer questions about the Gamma Quadrant, Taran’atar had decided to remain aboard, and he had returned daily, roaming through the ship and watching the crew as they prepared for their mission. But then the little being, the Ferengi, had run into him. And the Ferengi had feared him.

Correctly so,Taran’atar thought now. Jem’Hadar soldiers had maimed the little being, destroyed one of his legs. The Ferengi had experienced the superiority of the Jem’Hadar, and his subsequent fear was justified. Taran’atar understood, though, that his encounter with the Ferengi had not served the goals the Founder had laid out for him. He had inspired fear, and had himself felt disdain for the pitiful little being, and neither of those things furthered his mission. He had failed, and that was unacceptable.

After that, Taran’atar had selected other locations and activities with which he was not familiar. He had already visited several of these—shrouded, to avoid incidents like the one with the Ferengi—and now he was about to visit another. He arrived at a set of closed doors, beyond which lay his destination. He stood across the corridor and waited for somebody to enter or exit.

Thirteen minutes and thirty-five seconds later, the doors opened, and a human woman in a Starfleet uniform walked out. “Okay, bye,” she said, looking back into the room. Out of habit, Taran’atar measured her at a glance—medium height and weight for her species and gender, blond hair, green eyes, the blue collar that designated her as working in the sciences. When she had cleared the way, he moved quickly, turning sidelong to steal through the closing doors. Once inside, Taran’atar peered to his right, then took two silent steps to an empty space along the bulkhead.

The room was fairly large. Three oval windows in the back wall looked out into space, the trio flanked on either side by a pair of wide, tall cabinets. The cabinet on the right stood closed, but the one on the left was open; inside were several empty shelves, but others were filled with colorful artifacts that Taran’atar could not identify. A table sat in front of the leftmost window, with two long, but much lower, tables lining the left and right bulkheads. In the center of the room, mats and pillows and blankets were strewn about, and amid these meandered nineteen small beings.

Children,Taran’atar thought, grasping the concept, if not the reality, of what he saw. Two other beings—fully formed males—stood near the windows. All of the beings appeared to be either Bajoran or human, though two of the children may have been descended from both species.

The children were even smaller than Taran’atar had anticipated. He found himself unable even to speculate about their ages. Had they been Jem’Hadar, he would have put them at just a few days old, but he knew that most humanoids developed far more slowly than that. It was a sign of weakness.

Taran’atar stopped himself. Withhold judgment,the Founder had told him. Taran’atar stood against the wall, watched, and listened.

In an unsystematic, even a chaotic, manner, the children gathered up the mats, blankets, and pillows, and carried them over to the open cabinet. There, they dumped their cargo into a pile. One of the adults—the human; the other was Bajoran—thanked them, picking up the material and placing it onto the empty shelves in the cabinet. Despite the lack of ceremony, the actions seemed ritualistic to Taran’atar, though he could not fathom their meaning.

After the children had completed their task, they returned to the center of the room, where they sat down on the floor. Near the middle of the three windows, the adult Bajoran thanked the children for cleaning up, then asked them if they wanted to look at some animals. The children sent up a clamor, some of their words indecipherable, but they identified the Bajoran man as Gavi. From the table by the window, Gavi picked up a group of placards, each a third of a meter by half a meter in dimension. Then he crouched down, setting the placards on his thighs.