"I cannot speak much further;
But cruel are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear…"
from Macbeth

Cruel Are the Times

Chapter I: Ill News Out of Ghent

The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and San Francisco seemed like the epicentre of paradise. In a quiet arbour on the northwest corner of the Starfleet Academy campus, Julian Bashir lounged in the grass, his PADDs scattered around him like scales from a dragon's hoard. He had one propped in the crook of his elbow, and two more fanned out in the other hand as he cross-referenced the Tellarite physiology textbook with the cellular exobiology reference and the latest edition of the Interplanetary Pharmacopeia.

It was slower going, studying outdoors. He couldn't read at speed where others might observe him. He followed the advice his mother had given him years ago when she'd caught him ripping through The Once and Future King as quickly as his eight-year-old eyes could devour it. She'd plucked the PADD from his hands and silenced his indignant protestation with one reproachful look.

"It isn't polite to read so fast where other people might see you, Jules," she had said, in that kindly censorious voice that never failed to smite him with guilt. "You've got to slow down. Imagine you're saying every word out loud as you read it, and read only that fast. You don't want to be rude, do you?"

He hadn't wanted to be rude. In those days, bad manners had seemed like the worst crime imaginable, the most horrifying transgression he could possibly commit, publicly or privately. His mother had used that conditioning, and his overwhelming eagerness to be liked, to be well-regarded, to be praised by those around him — her most of all — as a means to keep him in line. She had used the spectre of social faux pas to curtail any number of behaviours that would have seemed suspicious to even the most casual observer.

But of course, she hadn't meant it's rude to read so fast, Jules. She had meant you can't be seen to read so fast, or people will realize you're unnatural, Jules. She just hadn't had the courage (or was it the cruelty?) to say it. Over the course of this past decade, while he burned with bitterness over what his parents had done to him, Julian had grown to resent these innocuous little "etiquette lessons" almost more than anything. His father had simply hollered at him. His mother had played to his vulnerabilities. Somehow, that was worse.

The strategy itself, though, was a sound one. If he played out the lines he was reading as if they were being recited in his head — albeit recited with the manic patter of a Gilbert and Sullivan song, almost too quickly for the human ear to follow — he could manage a credible facsimile of a normal human reading pace. It was tedious, and sometimes frustrating, but for the pleasure of stretching out in the shade, and smelling the fragrance of the cherry blossoms on the sweet breeze blowing in from the Bay, it was a small price to pay.

He was so absorbed in his reading, part of his mind already composing the paper that was beginning to look genuinely groundbreaking, that he didn't hear his name the first two times it was called. The third shout was more urgent, and bordering on irate.

"Hey, Bashir!"

He stiffened and looked up, mildly surprised. On the nearest of the neatly raked paths stood Erit, squinting into the sunlight with one blue hand sheltering his eyes. The Andorian's antennae flexed and rippled as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His Starfleet Medical Academy uniform with the peacock-blue shoulder bars was crisp and pristine. Julian raised his eyebrows at his classmate, the closest thing he had to a real friend.

"What do you want?" he asked, bluntly but good-naturedly. "I'm reading."

"You promised to return my lab coat," said Erit. "I have the xenografting seminar tomorrow, and I need it."

Julian sighed in mild annoyance, directed more at himself than at Erit. He'd forgotten all about the lab coat, which he had borrowed on Monday after forgetting his own back in the dormitory. The loan had spared him from two equally unpleasant outcomes: either running back for his own, and turning up late for the seminar, or showing up without one and facing the icy disapproval of Doctor Saavrel. Somehow, the emotionless way she upbraided cadets who failed to meet her exacting standards was far worse than the most outraged of tongue-lashings. But then, Julian had always dreaded unspoken disapproval and disappointment, hadn't he?

He gathered up his PADDs — arguably more devices than anyone needed even for the most complex research, but it was quicker to flick his eyes from one screen to another than to wait for the processors to change between books or articles on the same PADD. Juggling the pile as he sprang nimbly to his feet, Julian trotted down the hillock to join his comrade on the path. Together they started for the glittering glass tower that housed the medical, nursing, pharmacy, counselling, and physical therapy students. The Academy grounds were lush and beautiful on this sunny spring afternoon. The only sombre mark on the landscape was the flagpole, where the emblem of the United Federation of Planets flew at half-mast. A cadet had died earlier that week in a flight accident while on manoeuvres near Saturn.

Julian fell into stride, matching the Andorian's brisk pace. It was a companionable feeling, walking like this. He and Erit had been roommates for their first year, before the attrition rate of a rigorous academic schedule and several semesters of challenging practicum placements had whittled down the size of their class a little. Julian was glad to have his own room, because it afforded him privacy for things he couldn't risk doing in front of another person — like, for example, reading at speed. But he had to admit it was isolating. Erit had always been the one to make the social arrangements, herding a shy and awkward Julian Bashir along. Even after he'd come out of his shell a bit more, discovering the joys of blithe conversation if not quite how to gauge when his listeners grew disinterested, he'd been reluctant to elbow in where he hadn't been invited. Erit never seemed to have that problem.

"It's quite a brilliant seminar, really," Julian said as they passed under the ornate glass awning and into the vestibule of the dormitory building. "I learned a lot. It's fascinating — did you know that if you modulate the cellular mitosis in the donor cells, it's actually possible to mimic the host's own regeneration profile in order to—"

Erit held up a staying palm, laughing. "Easy, there, Bashir," he said. "I'd like to give Doctor Saavrel a chance to teach me something. It's her seminar, after all."

Julian felt the tips of his ears go hot. He'd been rambling on again. He did that a lot, but Erit was the only person he could count on to rein him in when he overdid it. Most other people didn't care enough to interrupt. Either they got progressively more annoyed until they couldn't stand the sight of him, or they just walked away.

"S-Sorry," Julian stammered, abashed. "I just…"

"Yeah, I know." Erit shrugged companionably. After a moment, he took pity on his classmate's discomfiture and tossed him a gentle conversational serve. "Did you get the opportunity to handle the new harvesting laser?"

Julian opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it. Waiting for the lift was Bruce Lucier and his crowd. They were middle-of-the-road students, unremarkable on Starfleet Medical's spectrum of excellence, but far above the average for drive, intelligence and skill when measured against the general Earth population. They drank heavily, played Parrises Squares on weekends, and frequented the more adventurous nightlife establishments down on the docks. People like Lucier had been the bane of Julian's existence since the second grade, and he'd learned to give them a wide berth.

"We should take the stairs," he murmured, but Erit was already strolling up to the others, hand outstretched. The loquacious and personable Andorian feared no social situation. He certainly had no reason to steer clear of a man who had a floor plan of Sarina Kaur's subterranean laboratory facility hanging over his dorm-room desk, exits and routes of attack marked in red. One glimpse of that at the New Year's Eve party that had overtaken the entire tenth floor had been enough to confirm every uneasy feeling Julian had ever experienced in Bruce Lucier's presence.

"Did you hear?" he was saying now, leaning in confidentially to draw Erit into the conversation. Julian hung back half a step, trying not to look out of place but reluctant to draw too near the bull-necked blonde Atlas. "The Planetary Housing Authority's put them up in Ghent. One of the canal-front heritage houses. It's an outrage."

This wasn't at all what Julian had expected the man to say. He'd assumed they would be talking about their course loads: in this final semester before their licensing exams and postgraduate practicum, newly returned from residencies all across the sector, this year's graduands had vastly divergent class schedules varying according to their interests and ultimate goals. Julian's own was heavy on exobiology, surgery, cultural medicine, and virology, while Erit, for example, was focused on gerontology, microbiology, and biotechnology. Julian's primary focus and Erit's tertiary one overlapped where cellular xenografting lay, but that was the only class they had in common this term. Comparing courses and schedules was for the class of '68 as commonplace as comparing feeding anecdotes was for new parents, or swapping accounts of warp coil escapades was for engineers.

But no, these four were talking about something else entirely: an entity almost forgotten within the hallowed halls of Starfleet Medical, where complex problems of physiology and pathology absorbed the daily attention of the cadets. They were talking about current events.

"I heard the CMO onboard the Enterprise pulled some strings to make that happen," Dorian Prinn whispered salaciously. She was of mixed planetary heritage: Risian and human. Slim, athletic and well-endowed, she'd been Lucier's girlfriend since their second year. They'd contrived to have four out of five clinical placements at the same sites, which seemed to Julian to be a waste of educational opportunities.

Then again, neither of them had ever even considered that opportunities might be finite for some people, if not for them. They took their easy access to the broad world of options for granted.

"Why would she do that?" This was Narpak-Eshra, a tall Grazerite and the one member of their group with no human parentage. His horns were covered with a cowl of science-and-medicine blue that matched the shoulders of his uniform. "Why bring them to Earth at all?"

"That's what I'm saying," Lucier insisted. "The whole thing's disgusting, if you ask me. The founders of that colony left the Federation in the first place because they knew their methodology was illegal and immoral. Welcoming them back now after eight generations of tampering is insane. It shows tacit approval of unacceptable practices, and it shouldn't be allowed."

Julian's throat seemed to clamp down as if in the throes of anaphylaxis. He took a hesitant, horrified step backward, looking anxiously around for some way to extricate himself from this. He knew what they were talking about now. He had been following the discussion on the Federation News Service since the Enterprise had appraised Starfleet Command of the existence of the colony. Until today, it had been mostly idle speculation percolating in the background, lost in the vast quantities of information seething through Starfleet's databases.

The lift doors hissed open, and he had lost his chance to run. The others piled in, still talking.

"Did the Enterprise really come all the way back to Earth just to deliver a bunch of Augments?" Ellamaria Rocha asked. "That seems like a colossal waste of resources. Drop them off at a starbase and let them book passage on a freighter."

"You coming, Bashir?" Erit asked, using his palm to block the sensor that kept the doors from closing.

"Or are you just going to stand there and gawk?" Lucier asked. "I swear, the smarter they get, the dumber they come."

This provoked a round of chuckles of the sort that usually followed cracks about the students in the ninety-fifth percentile. Julian had borne his share over the years. Elizabeth Lense was another popular target, as were Cadets T'Priel and Belios. It was part of the complex dynamic of envy, insecurity and scorn that had dogged Julian's interactions with his peers since his first day in his brand new school, in a brand new city, where his parents had brought him to begin his brand new life. The brightest pupils, even here where the last in the class were still among the Federation's academic elite, were frequently accused of being book-smart but not street-smart, or of being able to memorize every base pair in a virus but unable to explain to a worried mother what to do about her toddler's head cold, or of being so socially inept that they couldn't string two words together in public.

That last, at least, was true at this moment. Julian couldn't think of a single thing to say. The very believable excuse that he wanted to take the stairs to maintain his cardiac fitness died on his lips. So did the story of how he must have forgotten one of his PADDs outside. A dozen plausible reasons not to climb into that lift battled for primacy in his head, and not a single one rose to his lips. He had no choice. He stepped in, and the door hissed closed behind him.

"Tenth floor," said Lucier, and they began to ascend. "It's not just the Augments; that's only a bonus. Captain Picard is delivering the Commencement Address at the Academy graduation next week. They probably showed up early for some shore leave."

Julian stared resolutely at the seam of the door, trying to shut his ears to that hideous word. It carried with it the burden of psychosis, of genocide, of evil incarnate. Applying it to the Moab IV colonists, who from the sketchy reports that had been released for general consumption within Starfleet Medical sounded like well-adjusted, competent, and highly skilled individuals, seemed galling and unfair. But maybe it only seemed that way to him, Julian Bashir. He didn't dare to speak up. He didn't dare to express a conflicting viewpoint, as he might have done on any other issue. It was far too dangerous.

"Lucky devils. Wish our commencement was next week!" Prinn said. Everybody laughed. Everybody but Julian.

"You'll be missing this place before you know it," Rocha warned. "There are no cherry blossoms in space."

Lucier snickered, but Prinn sighed happily. "Aren't they beautiful this year?" she enthused.

"Exquisite," agreed Erit.

"They taste good, too, but don't let Boothby catch you picking them," Narpak-Eshra advised. Again, airy laughter filled the turbolift.

Julian closed his eyes, still fighting off the crawling dread that spidered up his spine. It was easier not to think about how he'd been enjoying the fragrance and the ethereal, lacelike grace of the blooms himself. He hated moments like this, when he could see both his similarity to those around him and his otherness so clearly at the same time. Like a badly-aligned stereoscopic hologram, the two images of himself never quite fit together, leaving only disorientation and cold nausea in their wake.

Why did you do this to me? a wounded part of his heart wailed, crying out to parents who were not here to hear, and had never been there to listen.

The lift jolted to a stop and the doors hissed open. Lucier cleared his throat. "Uh, egghead?" he said, prodding Julian in the flank with two stiff fingers. "Either get off or move over: this is our floor."

Julian stepped hurriedly aside, the PADDs shifting and clattering in his arms as the husky young man jostled him unnecessarily. His entourage followed him, but at least they didn't feel the need to assert their social dominance or assuage their academic shortcomings quite so physically. As they walked off down the bright corridor to the bank of windows overlooking the Bay, they were already talking about the weekend's intramural round robin on the Parrises Squares courts. The doors closed on their conversation.

"Fourteenth floor," said Erit, startling Julian out of his dark thoughts. The lift rose again. "Sorry about that. I know you don't like them."

"It's n-not that I don't like them," Julian said, painfully aware of his stammer. It always flared up when he was distraught or overexcited or embarrassed. He closed his eyes again and sucked in a deep breath to calm his nerves. "Have you been following that?" he asked. "The Moab IV colonists coming to Earth?"

"Sort of," said Erit. "We discussed it in Biomedical Ethics on Wednesday. You know how Professor Xanyr'oyr loves to be topical."

"And?" asked Julian, knowing better but still feeling the need to sound out this person he liked to consider a friend. Almost a friend, anyway. Mostly a friend? Theirs was really just a comfortably collegial relationship, but Erit had bothered to reach out to renew it when they'd come back to San Francisco after their last practicum, which was more than any other "friend" in Julian's life had ever done.

"And nothing," said Erit. "It was just like our debate about the eugenics laws in second year: three-quarters of the class came down firmly against. The rest were indifferent apologists: try to be open-minded; give people the benefit of the doubt; don't judge too harshly, lest ye be judged. That sort of thing."

His tone wasn't contemptuous or mocking, but it was dreadfully detached, reciting the clichés of social consciousness as if they were meaningless. In this context, they probably were. There were always a few people in the class willing to take the opposing viewpoint, however unpopular, in the name of intellectual discourse. In second year, most of those who had spoken up in favour of leniency for the genetically enhanced had been doing just that.

Julian knew he should leave well enough alone, but he couldn't help himself. He pushed a little harder. "And what's your opinion?" he asked.

"About genetically enhanced humans?" asked Erit.

He didn't say that word. Even in his mind, Julian couldn't bring himself to form it again. That's something, isn't it? He knew he was being ridiculous. Erit would never know the truth, so his opinion didn't matter. Only it did, somehow.

"Yes," said Julian.

"Is an Andorian even qualified to have an opinion?" Erit said, shrugging boredly. "Your Eugenics Wars had been over for more than a century before we made First Contact. It's always just been something you humans were determined not to do. Whereas we didn't have the technology to do it at all until we joined the Federation anyway. What difference does it make? It's ancient history."

"Not to the colonists from Moab IV," Julian said softly. Not to me, his traitorous mind added.

The lift stopped again, and the two of them stepped out. Four floors higher, the view was even more spectacular. Julian supposed that was just another reason for the middle-of-the-pack socialites to resent him and the rest of the high fliers. There were certain privileges allotted according to achievement, and dormitory location was one of them. So was the new crop of duty assignments offered to graduates every year. When it came time to choose, Julian would have one of the premier picks. Valedictorian was his for the taking, if he held his current course. He'd be able to claim any post he wanted, while Lucier and his ilk would be stuck with the leftovers.

Or, Julian thought as he turned the corner and opened the door to his room, he could take his degree and his licence, and resign his Starfleet commission. There was a place for him at the most prestigious medical complex in continental Europe if he wanted it. Docteur Delon had made the offer last month, in light of Julian's extraordinary work as an intern at the facility and his academic excellence since. Palis had been almost unable to contain her excitement when her father had brought the conversation around to that subject, the three of them sitting in the sunny drawing room of a stately West Bank château. Julian hadn't known what to say. It was an incredible opportunity. Such jobs were rare, especially on Earth, and the scope for advancement was dizzying.

With your brains and those hands, you could be Head of Surgery in five years, Docteur Delon had said. In fact, I'll guarantee it. Don't waste your talents out in space! Our complex is a destination for patients from across the Federation. Anything you can do out there, you can do right here in Paris!

Options. Opportunities. The vast Galaxy of dreams and aspirations spread out before him like San Francisco Bay was spread out beneath the window Julian now went to, moving almost hypnotically. There was nowhere he couldn't go, nothing he couldn't accomplish, and all for the price of one simple lie.

One simple lie.

"Where is it?" Erit asked, looking around the room.

Julian's living space always exhibited a bizarre combination of personal meticulousness and academic chaos. Clothing, toiletries and personal effects were always neatly tucked away, everything in its place. He made his bed perfectly every morning, and never let more than two days' worth of dust (almost a nonexistent problem in this building with its state-of-the-art filtration system and atmospheric controls) accumulate on any surface. That was just as well, because almost every available surface was covered in study materials. PADDs, styluses and isolinear data chips were scattered about. There were real, bound books heaped on the shelf over the bed, and old, fragile medical periodicals spread across the little dining table in the corner. His computer terminal was practically buried in charts and hastily handwritten notes on pages torn from replicated notepads. Most of his classmates eschewed paper completely, but Julian took a tactile satisfaction from writing out some things with a pen. He didn't know why he found it soothing, but he did. PADD and stylus were convenient, but they just were not the same.

He deposited his armload of materials on the foot of the bed and raked a hand through his hair. It was getting shaggy again: time to visit the barber. "What's that?" Julian said, not quite understanding the question. He hadn't really been listening.

"My lab coat," Erit said, enunciating slowly as if Julian might be struggling with basic language comprehension. "We came up here so you could give me back my lab coat."

"Of course," Julian said. He went to the small closet and hooked the first hanger draped in pale blue he laid eyes upon. "Thanks again: you really saved me the other day."

"I know," Erit said sagely. He took the garment, looked at it, and then handed it back with a roll of the eyes. His antennae curled, echoing the expression. "This is yours, Bashir. I'd tear out the sleeves trying to get into it."

"Oh. Sorry." Julian looked down at the coat, which was indeed too narrow for the Andorian's muscular shoulders. He returned it to the rail and found the other one. "Here. It's clean."

"And pressed," said Erit, mildly admiring. "How'd you find the time for that? I can barely remember to tip my uniforms into the reprocessor at the end of the day."

Julian shrugged. "I like things neat," he said.

Erit raised a feathery white eyebrow, looking around at the clutter of academia. Julian raked up a self-deprecating little smile. "I like most things neat," he amended.

"You'll have to break yourself of the untidy workplace habit," the Andorian warned. "It'll never pass muster in a Sickbay."

He was probably right, but Julian wasn't about to admit it. There was no fun in that. "Maybe wherever I go, they'll just have to learn to adapt to my habits, not the other way around," he said.

Erit laughed. "Maybe. And maybe you'll be a perennial Lieutenant until the day you retire, because nobody wants to promote a disorganized CMO."

"It's not disorganized," Julian said pertly. "I know where everything is."

As soon as the words were out, he was second-guessing them. Was that a normal thing to say? Was it worse that it was true? It seemed like something he'd heard other classmates say, usually to justify their clutter… but what if he was misremembering? What if whoever had said it was a member of a species with a more highly developed eidetic memory than humans? Damn it, he tried so hard to fit in, to be inconspicuous even in excellence, but at times like this he didn't know what was a slip and what was not! How smart was too smart? What was not smart enough to justify his grades? And why was he suddenly agonizing about this now, when he hadn't had a fit of these anxieties since his second year of officer training?

He knew why. The Moab IV colonists. The conversation in the turbolift.

"I really need to get back to work," he said, hoping the words sounded casual. He didn't want Erit to see his inner turmoil. Erit had been in the lift, and he'd heard Lucier's words. He might put two and two together if he noticed Julian was upset. "This paper… it's going to be very important, if I can just get it all sorted out on the screen."

"You do that," Erit chuckled, moving to the door. "I can't tell you how many very important papers medical students turn out in their last semester of study. It's a wonder anyone bothers to publish after graduation at all."

"All right, no need to tease me," Julian groaned, flapping a hand at his erstwhile roommate. "You must have work of your own to get to. I'll see you at dinner?"

"Probably," Erit said, noncommittal. He winked as sidestepped over the threshold. "You never know: it's cherry blossom season!"

Julian chuckled at this suggestion, but only until the door hissed closed. Then the smile vanished from his face, and his eyes slid to the computer terminal in the corner.

He knew he shouldn't do it. He knew it was a mistake. He couldn't stop himself. It was better to know the truth, wasn't it? Better than constant anxious speculation and the parade of worst-case scenarios his imagination could conjure up at will.

He slid into the chair and called up the Federation News Service.

(fade)

They were protesting on the waterfront in Ghent. The FNS had footage of the throng on the cobblestones in front of a beautiful old house with mullioned windows. Some waved flags — not just the sky blue and argent of the United Federation of Planets, but the defunct United Earth Government flag with its golden laurels, and even the flags of old nation-states. Julian recognized enough of these to know they belonged to the countries that had suffered the highest death tolls in the Eugenics Wars. Other protestors brandished stencilled banners and even hand-lettered placards. On his small computer screen, Julian had to freeze and enhance the images in order to read them. Some seemed innocuous enough at first glance. Others were horrifying.

Nature is Beautiful.

Superior Intellect = Superior Ambition

Banish Frankenstein's Colonists

35 Million Murdered — NEVER AGAIN!

Our Genes are Our Heritage: Hands Off!

Julian stared at that one for a long time before he could quite make himself believe it. Then he had to switch to footage taken later in the day, to see if the sign was still there. It was, and it had multiplied: two more protestors had adopted the same slogan. The meaning in this context was clear, but the words could be so easily twisted to an anti-interspecies-marriage dogma that Julian was shocked no one had spoken up against it. Ordinarily the social pressure to avoid the appearance of such bigotry made it very uncomfortable to come out with anything that undermined the Federation values of harmony and sensitivity.

Then again, the genetically enhanced were so universally reviled that apparently even the most considerate were content to look the other way.

Julian unpaused the feed, tapping his communicator to disable its Universal Translator and switching the footage to native language mode. The protestors were chanting in half a dozen tongues, all of them from Earth. French and English were most prominent, but he heard a smattering of Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, German and what he thought might be Dutch. As he watched, there was a lull in the cacophony, followed by a rising swell of new noise: half a dozen voices chanting wrathfully, clapping hands and stamping feet to keep the rhythm. The first two repetitions, before everyone else in the crowd caught on and joined in with their own languages, were in Punjabi. Although his father's side of the family boasted distant ancestors from the region, Julian didn't speak Punjabi: he only recognized the cadence and the phonemes from attending the occasional cultural holiday celebration in the Academy's enormously diverse calendar of such events. But he understood one word perfectly, and in this circumstance its meaning was clear. It appeared twice in each couplet, four times in all: Khan. Khan. Khan. Khan.

His thumb smacked the control panel, muting the feed. Silent now, the protestors continued to wave their signs and fly their flags and shout their recriminations at the silent building before them. The blinds were drawn, the windows eyeless. But as Julian watched, a curtain fluttered on an upper floor and a pale, wrath-like face appeared for a few seconds, looking skittishly down into the street before vanishing again.

He took his foot off of the running board at the back of the desk, and sat forward in his chair, eyes fixed on the screen. "Computer, freeze and go back two point eight seconds," he instructed, hearing the intensity in his voice. The computer obeyed. "Isolate grid Beta-3 and enhance."

The window filled the screen. The image sharpened and clarified, and Julian found himself staring into the frightened eyes of a beautiful woman. She was about his own age, and she was of mixed ethnic heritage, just like him — in her case, a blending of East Asian, European and South American features. Smooth, dark hair cut in an outdated fashion framed the oval of her face. The fear and disbelief upon it was heartrending. She was staring down into the street below in consternation, watching the protestors.

The founders of the Genome Colony had left Earth two centuries ago, intent upon creating a genetically integrated society. The return of long-lost colonists to their planet of origin should have been a joyous and exciting occasion, celebrated and lauded as proof of humanity's ability to thrive among the stars. The people from Moab IV should have been welcomed like family, treated as honoured guests and shown all the beauty and bounty that Earth had to offer. If they had been from any other colony, that's exactly what would have happened.

Instead, they had to face this.

Julian couldn't tear his eyes away from the woman's face. She was like him: her DNA had been manipulated, resequenced to enhance intelligence, memory, physical capabilities, general health. The methodology differed: the Moab IV colony employed embryonic splicing methods, while Julian's augmentations had been imposed upon a metabolically independent and self-aware child of six. She would have been groomed with a particular societal role in mind; talents, aptitudes and disposition all tailored to that. Julian's modifications had been more general: critical neural pathway development, improved hand-eye coordination, changes to height and body mass and cardiac efficiency. Even so, they were more alike than they were different, and Julian was transfixed.

There she was, someone like him: a genetically enhanced human who had managed to grow up and prosper despite the changes made to her genome. She was alive and real, present right here on Earth. He had never seen another person like him, except in images in the historical databases. Images of the warmongers of old: Austin, Joaquin, Kati, Chen, McPherson. Images of Arik Soong's adopted children, awakened from cryogenically frozen embryos dating from the same dark period in Earth's history: Malik, Persis, Lokesh, Raakin, Saul. And of course the most infamous of all: Khan Noonien Singh, both as he had looked when he had reigned over a quarter of the Earth as a covert autocrat and a tyrant, and during his final resurgence, weathered and aged but still deadly: as hard and unyielding as a chip of lonsdaleite.

Looking at this woman's face, even though it was still just an image, even though he didn't know her name or anything else about her, made Julian feel just a little less isolated, a little less alone. Maybe even a little less like an aberration, an outlier, a freak. She was real, she was living, she was here on Earth, and she was just like him.

And she was functionally imprisoned by an angry mob, crying out for her banishment from the surface of the planet that was her ancestral home. The message was clear: the genetically enhanced were not welcome, not on Earth, not in the human genome, not in Federation society.

Julian's hand moved to the panel again. He meant to turn off the terminal, but his fingers seemed to move of their own accord. Instead of shutting down the feed, they changed it: from the raw footage to the commentary he had been deliberately avoiding. The mute command was overridden by the data transfer, and a brisk, professional voice cut in, mid-sentence, over footage of the protest.

"…in Belgium today, following the arrival of several genetically-engineered humans from the rogue colony on Moab IV. Noted historian David Makepeace of Oxford University, where one of the colonists has been invited to take on a fellowship in astrophysics, offers his perspective."

The view changed to a head-and-shoulders shot of a distinguished sexagenarian in an elegant, classically furnished office. He looked into the camera with sober eyes and said, in an accent closely akin to Julian's own; "What these protestors are doing is reminding us of the slippery slope of permissiveness. If we allow these people to integrate into Earth society, to take up important positions at our institutes of research and higher learning, perhaps even to collaborate with Starfleet, what we are in effect saying is that it is acceptable for those with altered DNA to work alongside normal, natural people."

He frowned to emphasize his point. "And if it is acceptable for them to do that, to compete and contribute without restriction, what is to protect us from the pressure engineer our children to measure up to their falsely elevated abilities? The laws against genetic recoding and the restrictions on opportunities for the genetically enhanced were put in place because there is no other way to prevent humanity from creating the next race of Augments. Today, a colonist from a minor world is allowed to take up a fellowship at Oxford. Tomorrow, ordinary men and women will awake as slaves to the next Khan Singh."

The image changed again, this time to a transporter facility somewhere on Earth. A full pad of passengers materialized: three women, two men, and a child of about ten. Their clothes were bright and unusually geometric. Their bodies and facial features were flawless. They looked smiling and hopeful: eager to be setting foot on Earth. The caption at the bottom of the feed read, Genetically Enhanced Colonists Arrive in Europe — 1330 Yesterday.

The newscaster was speaking again. "Critics are calling for the colonists to be barred from taking up the proposed positions at several key academic facilities planet-wide, and for the usual restrictions on the employment of the genetically-enhanced be applied and enforced with immediate effect. Doctor Beverly Crusher of the U.S.S. Enterprise addressed the governing board of Starfleet Medical via subspace three days prior to the colonists' arrival, but no statement has been released to the press. Doctor Crusher has been unavailable for comment since the arrival of the Enterprise in Earth orbit yesterday: sources say that she is dividing her time between the flagship and the Starfleet Academy campus, where her son is a cadet."

They were showing a picture of the doctor in question now, wearing her duty uniform and a lab coat identical to the one Erit had collected this afternoon. She had her arm around the shoulders of a boy who was presumably her son — but if that was the case, the image was several years old. The child in that picture couldn't have been older than fourteen.

"We now join our legal panel," the newscaster said; "for a more detailed look at the laws governing the genetic enhancement of humans, and how they pertain to this case…"

This time, Julian did reach to turn off the screen. But his hand was shaking and his fingertips were numb. They glanced off the smooth glass, and again the feed changed. For a ghastly moment he thought he'd found some other coverage of the same story, because an image of five cadets appeared on the screen, and the second from the left was clearly the boy from the other picture. He was older, his face set in proud, inspirational lines instead of crinkled into a lopsided grin, but it was undoubtedly Doctor Crusher's son. He and the other four were posed for a formal portrait. Behind them hung the emblem of Nova Squadron, one of the most elite show-flying teams at Starfleet Academy.

"…details have been released about the tragic death of Cadet Joshua Albert on the Titan Flight Range earlier this week. Speculations that a mechanical failure was responsible have not yet been confirmed by the Academy's aeronautic forensics experts at Utopia Planitia. Cadet Albert's teammates have all been released from hospital, and are recovering well—"

Julian found the right key at last, and the screen went blank with a faint crackle of isolinear circuitry. Everyone on campus had been following the Nova Squadron crash, but information was thin on the ground. His own knowledge of the situation didn't extend much farther than the fact that Elizabeth Lense had been the resident called in to assist in treating one of the pilots in the Academy Infirmary. Julian had been envious — he still was envious. She was top of the class in Advanced Burn Trauma and Regeneration this term, so she was fresh in Doctor Traegar's mind: that was all. Still, Julian (who had taken the course last year and excelled) couldn't help but feel a little jealous that his great academic rival had been hand-picked for the patient, and he hadn't.

But then again, didn't Lense have a better claim to that opportunity? She was the one who was actually legally allowed to be here, after all. She was the real human, the natural human, the one who hadn't had to lie on her application to Starfleet Academy. Never mind failing to be called in to help with an emergency: if the truth came out, Julian wouldn't even be allowed to be in this room, in this program, on this campus.

If the protests in Belgium were anything to measure by, there were people who were prepared to question whether he should even be allowed on this planet.

He launched himself out of the chair, nerves afire with sudden impotent energy. He wanted to pace. He wanted to run. He wanted to throw himself down on the floor and beat it with his fists and his feet like a toddler in the throes of a tantrum. He didn't do any of it. He just stood there in the middle of his bright, pleasant lodgings, quaking with emotions he couldn't identify, much less untangle or control.

The blaze of colour beyond the windows drew his eye. The sun was setting over the ocean. It was a breathtaking sight, one that never failed to make him pause and watch, no matter how absorbed he was in his studies. He couldn't bear to look at in now: the splendour of a world to which he didn't truly belong. And if he didn't belong here on Earth, where he had been born, where he had spent his formative years and most of his adolescence, where did he belong? Anywhere? Nowhere?

"Computer," he said hoarsely, trying to force enough volume from his lungs that the machine would be able to pick up his voice. "Close blinds."

Suddenly the rosy glow was cut off, and he was standing in the gloom only broken by the glow of the instrument panel on the desk and the three keypads for the doors. One led into the corridor, one into his spacious bathroom. He went to the third instead, stumbling clumsily even though he knew the way. His legs were just as unsteady as the rest of him. He slapped the panel and dropped to his knees as the door hissed open, groping into the dark at the bottom of his closet.

There was a small strongbox in the rear left corner. Strictly speaking, cadets were not supposed to have any luggage with nonstandard locking mechanisms, and to the idle eye this one looked no different from those issued to every student at the Academy. Julian had, however, made some modifications to the algorithm. He hadn't wanted any of his classmates to be able to pick the lock if they got curious, or simply wanted to haze him. As far as he knew, nobody had ever tried, not in the officers' education program, nor at medical school. Then again, if someone had tried and failed, they were hardly going to tell him about it, were they?

He might have earned a demerit or a reprimand if a room inspector had ever tried to open it with the Academy's passkey — but then again, Julian would have willingly opened it for an inspection if he'd been commanded to. He wasn't hiding anything illegal or even frowned upon, at least not in the box. He just didn't want to be ridiculed by his classmates. He could only imagine what Lucier and his crew would have made of Bashir's Big Secret.

Only this wasn't his big secret, was it? And the consequences if the greater truth came out would not be merely mortifying, but absolutely catastrophic.

Julian did not open the lockbox. He told himself he didn't have to. Just kneeling here with his palm against the lid was enough: the comfort of proximity, a reminder that he was still in control of everything: of his life, of his secrets, of his feelings. He breathed slowly, compelling his heart rate to drop. He'd discovered he could do that when he was twelve, and his tennis game had started to get serious. It had taken the better part of two years for him to realize his opponents could not do the same, and another six months to understand why.

Those memories weren't comforting. He pushed them away. He closed his eyes against the darkness in the room, and thought about the bones of the hand. Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform. Trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate.

"Metacarpals," he whispered, unaware that he was speaking aloud. He was calmer now. It was helping. Beneath his palm, only the durable parsteel shell separated him from the one constant in his unsettled life, the one binding tie between who he was now and who nature had intended him to be. That thought soothed him, as did completing his recitation. "Phalanges."

When he felt able, he picked himself up off the closet floor, and got ready for bed. Only after he was barefoot and pyjama-clad did he realize he hadn't gone down to dinner. He didn't care. He wouldn't have been able to eat anyhow.

(fade)


Note: This shorter work will be updated weekly on Thursdays, health and schedule permitting. More frequent updates will continue to be made to "The Viewless Winds". Thank you for reading!