She realized then that not everybody in her life would regard her metamorphosis as a tragedy. Dr. Renhol from the Symbiosis Commission would no doubt be relieved to be freed from having to deal with her any further, shepherding the integration of her many personalities. And Mom would be positively thrilled. Yanas Tigan had never wanted to see her daughter, or either of her sons, joined in symbiosis in the first place. It’s so much easier to browbeat your children,Ezri thought, when they aren’t also your elders.Her brother Janel would get his sister back, albeit not quite in mint condition. And Norvo, the younger of her two brothers, would probably relate to her better now that she was no longer joined. Once his prison term is finished,she reminded herself.
And then there was Julian. Had she lost himas well? She knew that he had been in love with Jadzia Dax before he had begun sharing his life with Ezri Dax; Dax had been the common denominator in both of those relationships. Now, given Julian’s cathedral-induced decline, was their current relationship a moot point?
There would be no way to know, she told herself—unless Vaughn could find a way to defeat the Nyazen blockade and search the interior of the alien artifact. Assuming, of course, that there were answers to be had there.
She quietly instructed the computer to play back the peculiar sounds Nog had recorded just before the first encounter with the artifact. The empty lab was immediately filled with the strains of the quasimusical cacophany. No longer filtered through Dax’s sensibilities, it sounded different to her now than it had when she’d first heard it aboard the Sagan.It was almost agreeable. She thought of the syn laracompositions of Joran Belar, the twenty-third-century psychotic murderer who had briefly hosted the Dax symbiont, until Verjyl Gard had tracked him down and killed him. Ezri wondered if Joran’s music in any way resembled these emergent, intertwining chords, melodies, and countermelodies.
Without the reassuring presence of the symbiont in her belly, she simply couldn’t tell. All she knew was that it sounded alien, as ungraspable as the true shape of the interdimensional artifact itself.
Watching the leathery-skinned Dax symbiont as it floated in its purple nutrient bath, Ezri wondered if the creature was as distressed as she was over their current circumstances. Or was it relieved finally to be free of her, hoping perhaps for a more appropriate host-match once the Defiantreturned it to Trill?
Feeling helpless and utterly alone, she wept as the bizarre nonmusic swelled and crashed all around her.
Nog set the celestial music at an agreeably bone-jarring volume. To his somewhat surprised satisfaction, Shar made no objection as the darkened lab came alive with sound.
In Nog’s experience, the single place aboard the Defiantmost conducive to thinking was the stellar cartography lab. Particularly when it was doing what it did best—displaying the universe in all its infinite scope and grandeur. The room was dark save for their softly glowing padds, the fixed, jeweled pinpoints of distant stars, the dimly reflective iceballs of the local Oort cloud, the haze of the distant galactic plane, which gleamed like latinum wherever it wasn’t obscured by dark interstellar dust clouds—and the artifact.
In the middle distance, the alien construct continued its eternal tumble as the vibrational strains of several nearby icy bodies provided an eerie accompaniment. It’s guarding its secrets,Nog thought as he watched holographic simulacra of the thirteen Nyazen ships that blockaded the object. Gently tapping his new left leg, Nog wondered if he and Shar could really do anything about that.
And just how badly he really wantedto do anything about that.
Nog was seated at a table large enough to accommodate both himself and Shar while they ate their hastily replicated dinners. Or rather, as they worked while simultaneously picking at their dinners. The table, chairs, and food trays were the only things mooring either of them to the solid world of decks and bulkheads and artificial gravity. Everywhere else around them, the Gamma Quadrant blazed and beckoned.
A padd cast an amber glow across Shar’s pale blue features, turning them an almost Orion green as he stared intently at rows of figures. Nog noted that he appeared uninterested in his meal, something called paellathat Shar had agreed to try on Bowers’s recommendation. Nog saw that some of the dish’s ingredients looked enough like the tube grubs on his own plate to be almost appealing.
Shar set the padd aside, his eyes now riveted on the alien artifact that floated above them.
“It’s clearly a holy object to both the D’Naali and the Nyazen,” Shar said in a tone that struck Nog as nearly reverent. It reminded him of the times during his childhood when his father had told him stories about the Divine Treasury.
“And the text you recovered has to be some sort of scripture,” Shar continued.
“Scripture?”
“Sacred writings. A body of legend which may be based upon certain objectively true information. Or myth-driven ethical pronouncements, like the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.”
Nog scowled at that, then instructed the computer to turn the music down by a few decibels. “Translating the alien text is no longer our top priority. Let the computers handle that. We still have to find a way around the Nyazen blockade. And the captain wants our report in less than two hours. Let’s meet with Senkowski and Leishman’s teams one more time and go completely through it all again. There must have been something we missed on the first two tries.”
Shar’s eyes never wavered from the floating object. “Of course. Perhaps we can run another simulation on the idea of using the warp nacelles to extend the range of the transporter.”
“We keep losing the transportee through signal attenuation,” Nog said, shaking his head. “We need a different approach. I don’t think brute force is going to work this time.”
Whatever the solution was, it was bound to involve something subtle. Or perhaps several subtle somethings. A four-cushion bank shot on the dom-jot table, involving both luck and skill.
Shar nodded dreamily, his eyes still fixed on the artifact.
Nog had never seen his friend appear so…haunted. Or so quiet. He was used to Shar’s reticence about discussing his personal life, of course, but his moody silence over the past several days was extreme, even for an Andorian.
Nog set his own padd down. “Shar, what’s wrong?”
Shar sat mutely for a long time before speaking. “You are one of my most valued friends, Nog. I wonder if I have ever taken the time to tell you that before.”
Nog wasn’t sure what to say. “Thanks, Shar. The feeling’s mutual. Now, what are you trying to tell me?”
“Just that the people in our lives are irreplaceable. Once they’re gone, there are no more opportunities to repair our relationships with them. There are no second chances.”
Nog was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Clearly, something cataclysmic was going on in his friend’s life. And just as clearly, Shar didn’t know how to begin talking about it.
“Has something happened back home?” Nog asked quietly after ordering the computer to silence the background music.
Nog found Shar’s sudden burst of brittle laughter surprising. He couldn’t have been more shocked if his friend had suddenly sprouted a second head.
“Tell me,Shar,” Nog said, after his friend had again subsided into silence. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Almost a minute elapsed before Shar spoke again. “It isn’t easy…. We Andorians do not confide easily withone another, let alone with…outworlders.”
“Ouch, Shar, I thought we had more in common than that. Aren’t we boththe sons of Very Influential People? And aren’t we bothalways trying to keep that fact from swallowing us whole?”