Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 23:47:05 -0700 (PDT)
Julian hefted the dufflebag a little further on his shoulders.
His mouth hung slightly more open then he would've liked if he had been observing himself in a mirror right at that moment.
::Here I am. I finally made it. The edge..::
Dr. Bashir made sure his eyes lingered on every lucky person he encountered on the ring passageways of Deep Space Nine.
::Smile, everyone.. Don't you see where you are?
You're on the frontier.. You are all in the place I've always longed to be:
he wondered in the privacy of his own thoughts.
The young doctor couldn't help but smile like a school boy at all the strange non-Earth like stars that winked at him through the ports accompanying his journey from Airlock Five to the rail ringing the main Promenade Deck below.
Julian planted his rear on the precarious railing above the bustle of all the people moving below.
::Strange place for a guide rail leading up to this window but....:: he sighed.
The young doctor plastered his nose to the glass after a brief check with his chronometer to make sure he still had enough time to report. ::Ten minutes to go. I still have time to see it...:: he thought with a sense of wonder.
There she was. The shuttlecraft which dropped him and about fifteen other members of the galaxy taxi-ed to very specific coordinates to the upper left of where the physician was craning his neck. Then it happened.
A great flash of cool ice blue and silver kissed his eyes and the Bajoran wormhole flowered into irridescent existence to admit the tiny Orinoco back into its heavenly maw.
"How fortune that I am here..." Julian said aloud. "To see sights such as this. It may be the whole reason for my existence. Deep Space Nine. Deep space! Man! Hear those words ring.
What a station!
To be given a chance to serve her people with all the latest modern medicine that Starfleet has to offer. "
His face glowed with the cool fires of the nearby wormhole as it received the passing vessel for a few more moments before the black and stars reclaimed the vision.
"I wouldn't be so over eager if I were you.." came a gruff voice.
"This station, actually , is just one designation above being unsalvagable." Julian shifted his seat on the odd railing looking about him for the owner of that gravelly voice. Then he felt something melt under his very rear.. "Would you mind moving off me? I am trying to survey here."
With a cry Julian pinwheeled his arms and he lost his balance,falling backward, plummenting quickly to the Promenade far below him. "AHhhh!" He didn't have time to be scared.
Then as he tumbled head first downward, he felt a grip snake around his ankle jerking his vulnerable head and neck away from the impacting surface.. His speed slowed but still his left leg cracked down hard as he landed among the startled spectators at the end of his fall. "Oww..."
he grimaced. He flattened to the carpeting protectively until he was certain only that leg was the injured part. Automatically, his hands searched for further damage to his person. There was none.
He waved away a few portly Bajoran women and heard a muted alarm start up in reaction to his near fatal plummet from the upper story.. "Oh, great.. less than five minutes in the place of my dreams and already I am to be the laughing stock of my new CO and his security guards."
Then Bashir studied the rope that had broken his fall a little more in detail, it was still around his good ankle and seemed to be part of that soft railing that had given way above.
Then , it morphed and pillowed like chocolate taffy and formed into a shape that spoke in the odd voice he had heard near the windows. "No need for embarrassement, Doctor. This unfortunate incident was partially my fault. I never should have assumed the form of such a public construct as a safety railing.. I'll not make the same mistake again."
Julian could only gape at his morphing benefactor with a flopped open mouth. He couldn't find words to express his reaction to Odo. He probably made a small sound in his throat but that was all.
Odo finished humanoidizing and regarded Bashir with an appraising eye. "You are injured in that other leg.
Can you speak? Or are you going into shock..?"
Bashir then felt his fracture but he was quite clearheaded.."You ...changed.. You...were.. something else before.. but now.." he pointed to Odo's face..
Odo self consciously put a hand up to his face and checked out all of his features there.,, "I'm sorry,
did I miss an ear? I'm still not that good on humanoid forms..."
"No.. no, no. You've got the proper number.." Dr.
Bashir blinked.. "It's just that you startled me.
I've never seen anyone...quite like you... before.
and I thought I thoroughly studied the station species manifest."
Odo held out a hand.. "I'm not on the station manifest.. I was here long before the Federation stepped in.. Need a hand up?"
Bashir took it carefully, still staring at Odo in wonder. "Yes, I think I do.. My left tibia may be fractured.. I'm Doctor Julian Bashir... and you are?"
Odo levered himself to hold the weight of the young man on his injured side. "I'm the station head of security.. Constable Odo, as the Major is so fond of calling me.." he grinned half lopsidedly. "As for what I am.. I don't rightly know.. I've just been called the Changling by those Federation scientists who cared to even examine me when I was found."
"But you...but you..." Bashir murmured.
"Yes." Odo said, helping the doctor get his balance.
"I can change... They gave me a pretty unoriginal species designation if you ask me.."
"No, what I meant to say was that you probably just saved my life back there."
"Part of my job, doctor.." Odo stiffened. "I just wanted to make sure a mistake of mine didn't cost you your life." He waved away the two security personnel who had answered the emergency incident alarm activated when Bashir had tumbled. "You should have come seven seconds faster," he told them. "Work on it." They respectfully retreated away back to their duties' station.
Bashir gave a gasp when he took a misstep and he paled visibly.. Odo froze in his tracks. "This isn't going to work I can't counter your balance and handle my own at the same time.. Allow me ......"
He promptly shrank in size and form and in a blink,
Odo was a pair of crutches.. "There you go, doctor.. I trust you know how to get around with a pair of these."
Bashir shifted his weight around taking the handles of the apparently shiny metal aids. "I see it, but I don't believe it..How is it that you can still talk to me?"
"Just, get to sickbay.." the voice grumbled again.
"The sooner you heal yourself, the sooner I can get back to my surveillance of Quark's bar.." The crutches lurched forward on their own and Bashir animatedly lurched into motion again. His head snapped back in surprise but he quickly regained his equilibrium and he got the hang of things.
"All right, all right.. I'm going.. I'm going.. " the young doctor complained lightly.."You know this will make me late for reporting to Commander Sisko.."
"He'll survive.." Odo said about the level of his hip.
Soon, Bashir and his living crutches made it to the sickbay proper and Julian transferred himself to perch on a biobed and the personnel on duty soon clustered around him with concern.. "It's my leg.. An osteo regenerator on setting three should take care of this..." he grinned..
He set the crutches aside and once again he startled when Odo transformed back into the tan suited man.
"Oh!" he gasped.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to that.." he said grabbing his sore leg. "But tell me... do they have dart boards in Quark's?"
Odo just grumbled..."I hadn't noticed."