“Okay,” he said, “what animal is—” He raised the top placard and displayed it for the children. “—this?” Taran’atar at once recognized the pictured beast, a brown-haired, four-legged pack animal native to Bajor called a pylchyk.The children all yelled their own responses, most of which were correct. Gavi said, “That’s right. This is a pylchyk,”apparently ignoring the children who had called out the wrong answer, or given no answer at all. “This animal lives on Bajor, and the people there use it to carry supplies and to tend their fields.” Gavi’s tone of voice, and the manner in which he pronounced his words, seemed very strange, almost as though he believed the children incapable of hearing or understanding him. Taran’atar wondered if these might be defective children. He knew that defective Jem’Hadar were occasionally bred; when that happened, they were simply destroyed.
Gavi looked over at one of the children, a small human girl, and said, “Can you tell me the name of this animal, Claudia?” The girl, who had not properly identified the animal the first time, stared back at him without saying anything. “This is a…” He waited for the girl to say the name of the animal, but she said nothing. “Come on, Claudia, I know you can do it. This is a pyl…a pyl…”
“Pylchyk,”the girl erupted, and all of the children cheered.
Taran’atar watched as Gavi went through all of the placards, showing them to the children and then asking questions and talking about the animals on them. Taran’atar found himself fascinated by the process, despite—or perhaps because of—his lack of understanding about the purpose of the exercise. And Gavi even presented pictures of a few animals—including trenicats and cotton-tailed jebrets, both supposedly native to Ferenginar—of which Taran’atar had absolutely no knowledge.
After Gavi had shown all of the placards, he asked the children who among them wanted to draw. The group made loud noises in response, several of the children putting their arms up in the air as though attempting to call attention to themselves. Gavi then asked what they should draw today, and again the children responded, although Taran’atar could not tell if all of the responses actually answered the question. Gavi held up his hands, palms out, and quieted the children by saying, “Wait, wait, one at a time.” Then he pointed to the child closest to him, a young girl who looked essentially human, but with some vague Bajoran characteristics. “What would you like to draw today, Mireh?” he asked her.
“I want to draw the wormhose,” she said.
Gavi smiled at the girl, leaned in, and poked her in her midsection. “Okay, Mireh. We can do that. But it’s not called a ‘wormhose.’”
The girl laughed—at least, Taran’atar thought it was laughter, though it could have been some other sort of spasm. “It’s not?” she said.
“No,” Gavi told her, and then he addressed all the children. “Who knows what it’s called?” he asked. A number of the children pushed their arms straight up into the air again, and two of them yelled, “The wormhole!”
“That’s right,” Gavi said. “The wormhole.” He leaned back in to the girl. “Can you say that, Mireh? Can you say wormhole?”
The girl looked at him, crossed her arms in front of her, and said, very definitively, “Yes.”
“Well, okay,” Gavi said, laughing. He stood up and said, “So let’s draw.” The children stood up and headed for the little chairs around the tables at the sides of the room. Gavi joined the human man, and the two moved across the room to the other cabinet, from which they extracted large pieces of white paper and what appeared to be colorful drawing implements.
Something bumped into Taran’atar’s leg. He looked down, just in time to see himself finish shimmering back into visibility. A human boy stood beside him, apparently having wandered while making his way to one of the tables. A sense of shock filled Taran’atar at even having been approached without realizing it. And for this boy, this little human, to have penetrated his concentration and concealment…he felt humiliated.
“Look at the alligator,” the boy said, staring up into Taran’atar’s face. Unlike the Ferengi aboard Defiant,this being displayed no fear of him. He gazed up at Taran’atar with a smile, then raised his arms. “Up,” the boy said.
The human man yelled— “Hey, get away from him!”—and then Gavi gasped. Taran’atar looked up to see the two men glaring at him. Gavi walked slowly forward, his arms outstretched, palms out, as though trying somehow to ward off Taran’atar. “Don’t do anything,” he said, and Taran’atar wondered what he thought Taran’atar might do. “They’re only children,” he added.
As Gavi neared, Taran’atar looked past him at the other man, and saw an expression of fear and anger on his face. It occurred to him that perhaps these men had also encountered Jem’Hadar in the past, as the Ferengi had, and perhaps they had been wounded by them as well. The children, though—Taran’atar saw that most of the children were peering at him and smiling; some looked surprised, and some looked curious, but none of them appeared scared. Interesting,Taran’atar thought, though he was unsure of the import of what he had noticed.
Gavi stopped two paces from Taran’atar. Still moving slowly, he bent down and reached out for the boy. His fingers closed around a sleeve of the boy’s shirt, but the boy pulled his arm away, his eyes never leaving Taran’atar. Gavi, with an obvious sense of desperation, lunged forward, snatched the boy by the shoulder, and reeled him into his arms. The boy said, “No,” loudly, but Gavi told him to be quiet in a very stern tone of voice, and the boy quieted.
“Take him, Joshua,” Gavi said, staring at Taran’atar’s face, but clearly not speaking to him. The other man stepped forward and gathered the boy up, then moved back toward the windows again. Gavi asked, “What do you want?”
Taran’atar held Gavi’s gaze for several seconds before he said anything. The Bajoran stood slightly crouched, his muscles tensed, his attention focused, and Taran’atar perceived that he would stand his ground if Taran’atar charged. After three months on the space station, this was perhaps the most interesting thing Taran’atar had learned.
“Only to observe,” he said at last.
Gavi’s expression did not change, although Taran’atar sensed an alteration in his stance. A moment ago, he had been poised to fight, but now he had relaxed somewhat, evidently trusting Taran’atar’s words.
A fool,Taran’atar thought. He could be on the man before he had a chance to scream, snapping his neck where he stood. This time, Taran’atar did not correct himself about judging the beings here; this was simple truth.
“I think,” Gavi said, “I think you should leave.”
Taran’atar nodded. “Yes.” He took two quick paces to the doors, which opened before him. He stopped for a moment, still curious about all that had gone on here, not so much with respect to the two men, but with the children. Taran’atar turned and looked back into the room, at the boy who had bumped into him.
The boy looked back at him for a moment, then held out his arms in Taran’atar’s direction, and said, “Alligator.”
Taran’atar whirled and left, more confused now than ever about life in the Alpha Quadrant.
23
Vaughn was angry.
Clad in full dress uniform, he stood in an area that the Vahni called the Remembrance Garden. The word remembranceinduced just that for Vaughn right now, bringing to mind the lovely picture of the city that Ventu had thoughtfully presented to him. Both the gift and the giver had been lost in the collapse of the tower, and as Vaughn stood amid the enormous congregation of Vahni assembled in the garden, he craved vengeance: for Ventu, for the more than three thousand Vahni who had died in the quakes and aboard their interplanetary ships, and for Ensign Roness. But vengeance, Vaughn knew, always carried with it a steep price, and in the end it paid for nothing. Short of that, the need for justice beckoned, though like so many things—beauty, truth, duty—the notion of what constituted just actions varied with perspective.