Bula Torem paused to note a soft flutter, like the touch of insect wings beneath his skin. Nothing, he reminded himself, rubbing his chest until the uneasiness of it had faded to little more than a memory. It's nothing important. Not like it hasn't happened so many times before.
But something was different about this morning. The slightest hint of vertigo, which passed in a moment and left him with the echoes of a faintly throbbing ache at one side of his head.
"Right then. Time to wheedle you out of hiding…"
The Mundara virus was every bit as tricky as any other. Before lodging in close to every major organ of its hosts, it would conceal itself in their circulatory systems, quietly, innocuously disguised, multiplying unnoticed as it steadily took over the victim's blood. Too often those infected were beyond saving before the cells of their immune systems had even discovered that anything was amiss.
"I'm busy," Julian snapped, finally aware of a reddish-orange patch of colour at the very edge of his vision. He hunched forward, not taking his eyes from the fluctuating display.
If he could only discover what it was about his own Human physiology that had so far prevented him from falling ill. Was it his immune system that was behaving differently, or was it the virus? And if only there was something to be done about these constant interruptions…
"How long have you been working this time?" came the voice of his elderly friend.
"Not long enough."
Fourteen hours. Maybe fifteen. Or, if he was honest, probably more like twenty…
"Then I guess there's nothing left for me to say." Vedek Taenor paused, but then his words turned to a long, wet spasm from deep inside his chest.
That caught Bashir's attention. He rose hastily, but the priest was equally quick to shoo him away.
"I'm fine."
"Like Hell you are." Intensity rising in his voice, Bashir crossed the floor in two long strides, and looked deep into the eyes of his elderly friend. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Two days," Taenor replied once it had subsided a little more. "And that's no more than two, out of all the seventy four years of my life. I'm an old man, Julian. These things happen to old men."
But he allowed himself to be ushered to a nearby chair, releasing a sharp outward breath as he dropped his weight heavily onto its base. Once seated, he closed his eyes as if even that one small act had taken his final remaining trace of energy.
"Frankly," he said, once he had finally regained control over a second noisy coughing fit. "I'm amazed I lasted this long."
"You'll last a while longer yet."
Secretly making himself the same determined promise, Julian assisted his friend to settle on the nearest vacant bed, but Taenor's weary gaze was still not ready to release him from its hold.
"I tried my best," the elderly cleric admitted softly, mouth twitching upwards into the faintest of smiles. "Not enough, perhaps. I have never been a healer. And yet I sense that you are."
"I was," Bashir found that he was confessing. He committed himself briefly to a contemplative study of the narrow flap of skin between his thumb and index finger. "I was a doctor. Once. Not any more." Looking back, he noticed that the older man had continued to search his face as though for the answer to some great riddle.
Julian sighed, and shaped his mouth into its best impression of a smile. "You should rest."
But instead of surrendering to the gentle temptation of sleep, Vedek Taenor hooked one hand around Julian's shoulder, and pulled him close until the young man could no longer avoid his scrutinising gaze. His voice was quiet, barely able to gather strength. But the ferocity of his words surprised Bashir enough to make him listen.
"Being a doctor, and being a healer, are not the same thing."
The map that Elmek downloaded from the Comnet had been entirely correct, it seemed. Even from a distance, a thin blade of white was already peeking shyly from behind the surrounding forest. The Cardassian waited, hesitating, not entirely sure why his legs so suddenly refused to lead him forward. Or why he was stuck in the same position as though the roots of nearby trees were forcing their way up through the soles of his feet.
A soldier, once, he thought. More recently, a daring escapee. And only now, a coward?
It wasn't right. He couldn't - mustn't - let it be that way.
Two small figures sat by the steps in front of the building, their appearance so uncannily alike as if someone had held a mirror to the face of a single child. If he'd met these girls at any time before leaving Cardassia, Elmek would have been a little disturbed by the not quite foreign lines upon their skin. But now, after seeing so many Bajoran faces in recent days, even these strange little hybrids barely gave him reason to pause.
"Hello," he said.
Turning his way, the twins confronted him with a double helping of mutely distrustful stares. One was already rising warily to her feet.
"I'm looking for a boy." Elmek told her, wondering uneasily what could be holding back his voice. Clenching both hands to stop them from shaking, he pulled out the padd that Orlana had given him - the one still bearing the image of his son.
The nearest girl frowned when she saw it. But this was no expression of anger, or even the anxiety that had marked her face just moments earlier. It was quiet, pensive… Possibly even… Seeing the change in the youngster's eyes, Elmek allowed the seed of a dream to unfurl within his mind. Almost imperceptibly slowly, like the opening of early morning leaves…
…Recognition?
The girl was still silent as she revealed the contents of Elmek's padd to her sister. The same frown now spread across both their brows. Finally, after an agonising pause, the second girl pointed away from the Centre, to where yet more trees stood as though in anticipation. She spoke the first words that Elmek had heard, from either of his new found guides.
"Over there."
"Wait just a moment," called a voice from the darkness of the loft. "I'll come down to you."
There were scuffles from above, accompanied by the smoothly drifting powder of dislodged straw and dust. The noises drew gradually closer, and finally a large man emerged into the light and descended a ladder, with his back still turned to his waiting guest.
"What was it you wanted?" Nalor asked as he brushed away the finer threads of hay that had attached themselves to his hands and trousers.
"I have a question." Bashir replied without hesitation. "You seem to know this place a lot better than most people around here. It's about your neighbours."
"What about them?"
"Are they dangerous?"
Bula knew pain. He had encountered it too many times before, at the hands of people who had made a study of ascertaining exactly what would hurt the most. Johl had discovered some of his father's past, but far from all. There had been pain in the Cardassians' holding cells, and again in the camps - where they'd starved him until his bones were as brittle as dry twigs, then beaten him until they cracked apart. He'd been astonished in his youth to learn how many different ways a man could hurt.
But with the passing years, surprise had turned to dull acceptance, and the realisation that harsh and painful was how his life was going to be. He'd grown to expect things that no sentient being should ever have to accustom himself to, much of it before he'd even met Johl's mother, and again at a time when his son was still a child. That was his one regret - that the boy had been nearby to see him beaten.
But there were no tormentors on this day. The soldiers had gone, leaving nothing behind for him to fight, save for the torment of his broken body. No other humanoid was inflicting these jolts of agony surging all the way along his arm. He looked down, saw his own tendons raised impossibly along his wrist, felt the pressure of it all the way to the deepest part of his head. Every breath stabbed; his chest could no longer rise beyond the pain. Surrounded by the isolation of his fields, Bula Torem was falling. Losing…
Dying.
Nalor settled himself at the table where his guest was already seated. "I don't know what I could possibly tell you."
"I'm not entirely sure either, but… anything at all. Whatever you can think of would help a lot."
The farmer sighed, gazing momentarily through his open window. "They're good enough people, for the most part," he said eventually. Bashir said nothing of his own experience. "They're just hurt. You understand? And when people are hurt, they don't like to be reminded of their pain."
Bashir nodded, believing - at least in part - that he was beginning to understand. "And having the Cardassians' children within such easy walking distance is one more in a long series of reminders."
"Not just Cardassians," said Nalor.
Glancing sidelong at his stringy-haired companion, Bashir paused to allow his thoughts to surface. "You're worried too."
"Aren't you?" came the farmer's response. "You never really needed me to outline the mood of the locals. And now there's all this business with the Dominion… They're a powerful enemy. You know that. Far more dangerous than Cardassia alone. Take a jar of water, and fill it up with mud from the river. You can wait as long as you like for it to settle. But then it only takes an instant to shake it up again."
He leaned forward. "Listen, Earth man. I like having you here. It's good to have more than the usual company on occasion. But my advice to you is to get away before that happens."
"Father!" Johl shouted. The cry that finally reached his ears was barely a word.
The soil enhancer he'd been carrying in both strong arms fell dangerously close to his feet. But the younger Bula gave no further thought to the damage it might have done. He shot forward, bounding across the field as though propelled by the force of a hurricane. His own heart was pounding from more than mere exertion as he saw that his father's face was tinged with blue - lips grotesquely reminiscent of the stains that had lined Johl's mouth as a child, when he was caught guzzling stolen berries from the next door orchards.
What do I do? Hunching over as though in prayer, he pleaded with himself, with the surrounding trees, with the distant Prophets in their Celestial Temple. None of these accorded him any answers. The son pressed his fingers against his father's neck, fumbling for a pulse - which he did not find. But how would I know? he despaired. What if I'm doing this all wrong? Johl was no healer. All he had was raw, anxiety-fuelled instinct, and his instincts were of little more use than if he really had left it entirely to the Prophets.
"Father." Louder now, shaking the old man like he was merely asleep. As impotent a son as that pasty young boy he'd once been, trying to rouse his father from one of those regular nightmares.
"Torem!"
His head jerked upwards at the approach of footsteps, revealing the brown faced seventeen year old farmhand his father had hired to assist with the maintenance and sorting of his katterpod harvest. Anyone but you, Johl thought, hope returning rapidly to despair. The boy was just a step above worthless on the farm, but perhaps there was a chance he could be of some small use.
"Don't just stand there, Rustahn," barked the farmer's son, his own ineptitude adding fuel to the frustration in his voice. "Go. Find whoever you can - we have to get help."
"Now!" he yelled.
Useless boy.
As the youth sped across Bula's farm, limbs flailing like bits of loose string, Johl turned back to clasp his father's hand. It was rough to the touch, crossed with dark lines where mud had gathered in every small cut, and with fingertips as white and cold as morning frost.
"Father." Leaning forward, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and clenched his jaw against unwelcome sobs. Why hadn't anyone come to aid them? His face was aching with the rush of blood, but he fought to hold back his own tears. To start crying now was too much like an admission of defeat. None in the Bula clan had been caught in the middle of such weakness - not for a tremendous count of years. And even as the old man's face turned from white to stark grey, he could not allow himself to admit that his father was defeated.
It had been in front of him all along. A protein buried deep inside the roots of one of Keiko O'Brien's plant samples appeared to act as a natural booster for the immune system, just enough so that it could finally recognise the infection within. For the first time, it appeared that a steady drop in the viral count in each vial of blood would continue to subside to a far more tolerable level. Within the space of twelve to thirty hours, Bashir was able to calculate, depending on the overall health and age of the patient. But in nearly every projection he took himself through, they did recover.
Why couldn't he have thought of it before?
The soft moss grew all around the lower cliffs of Dakhur Province. He'd collected a sample in a sealed container and shut himself away to study it in detail. He remembered wondering if it could be of some use as a natural interferon, or perhaps a shield to prevent all but the most stubborn infections from taking hold. But then he set it to one side before he'd even heard of the Mundara plague, thinking that he would get back to it later. There were too many other interesting discoveries to make.
He ran the same test once, twice… every time with his heart racing - imagining every kind of wretched disappointment. By sunset, his experiment had reached its third and final stage. As he watched the repeated decrease in viral concentrations, Julian leant back and rubbed his face with both hands, too tired even to smile.
The discovery had both delighted him and brought him close to tears. If only he could have realised a day ago, or two. If only he hadn't been as willing to abandon the work he'd done with Keiko's research group. But that had hardly seemed important with the news of what was taking place. And was no more so now, he insisted to the silence. Later, there would be time for regrets. People were depending on him. Taenor had said he was still a healer. Whatever else, he could not allow his friend to die.
"What is that?" the old man asked, his voice never rising above a whisper.
"Something I want to try," replied Bashir. He longed to tell everything. But even the most eager enthusiasm was hardly productive, after a point. Wait and see. "With a little luck, you should be feeling better soon."
"You look as if you could use a little luck," commented Taenor.
The young man's smile was tight and exhausted. "I have to make sure this gets around," he said quietly. "I'll come back soon to check on you."
"And then sleep?"
Bashir wondered if he'd caught a touch of doubt in the old priest's voice. He smiled, nodding. "And then sleep."
Perhaps, he added secretly. There was only enough in this first batch of medicine to treat five - possibly seven - more people at most. He was already bracing himself for a long night making more.
The boy was standing exactly where the twins had said he would be, staring into the canopy of a nearby tree with thick, dark lines of bark peeling roughly from its surface. As Elmek watched, he lifted a handful of pebbles from the ground, transferred them individually to his left hand, and threw each one all the way to the top of the trunk. Following the stones' trajectory with his gaze, Elmek saw that something was perched in the fork of one branch - the tight-packed, tangled shape of a nest.
"Aruvel."
The boy turned, and stepped back, regarding this heavy newcomer with a wary sidelong frown. One grey hand still fidgeted with his collection of rocks, and he gave no sign that he even recognised the name. A deep pain clenched at Elmek's heart. The doubts he'd barely known he still possessed soon vanished like forgotten whispers. This child was exactly the right age, just as Aruvel would have been. And there was no mistaking those deep-set obsidian eyes.
"Who are you?"
There was stone behind that gaze, and a hostile edge underlying every word like the hardening of molten rock. Elmek choked on his reply. "Your father, Aruvel."
"That's not my name." Shaking his head, the boy turned to leave. Gorol Elmek watched his child's broad, unsteady gait, one leg battered and barely functioning.
What have they done to my boy? He could only imagine, and his own imagination scared him.
He stepped forward again, and called with the desperation of a man who saw his final chance before him.
"Rul!"
The boy stopped. There was tension in the too-straight set of his back and shoulders, even before he turned around.
"Did you never wonder how you got that name?" Elmek spoke from the very bottom of his throat. "You are my son. Your mother and I, we named you Aruvel. But you shortened it yourself when you were barely two years old. How would I know that, if what I have said were not the truth?"
The boy stepped away, but Elmek interrupted his retreat. "Perhaps you don't remember. You were still so young at the time. But see? I've remembered for both of us. You can have no idea how I've held to every memory. The day I first saw your face. Holding you in my arms, telling you stories. And the very first time you called me Father."
"I never called you Father." But there was a little less certainty in his words this time. A little less resistance.
"Aruvel, you are my son…"
"Why are you doing this?" The boy's hard gaze turned fierce, like an explosion of rogue energy. "I already said, I don't know that name!"
"But, Aruvel…" Elmek pleaded against his child's sudden, hate filled rage.
"I've never seen you before," shouted Rul. "I don't know who you are."
He shoved his way past the startled newcomer, who stood and watched him disappear. Gorol Elmek leaned forward, hands pressed to his thighs, longing to believe that the stomach-curdling nausea and the weakness in his knees would pass. His son's final cry echoed painfully in his memory, even when he looked up to see the double-image of staring, open-mouthed twins. It was the boy's voice which had screamed at him - the voice of his boy.
"Just leave me alone!"
First the Cardassians, Johl thought, back and shoulders tense with impotent rage. Then the Federation…
And who would come next? The Dominion? His people's will to fight may well have died with Federation promises, but as far as he was concerned, the old factions had ultimately been right from the beginning. New invaders threatened from every side. They would bring Bajor's old enemies right back in. And if they didn't, was he now to wake to the regular sight of those pebble-faced Jem'Hadar patrolling the borders of his father's katterpod fields? One grey soldier to be replaced with another?
Not this time, he decided. He might not be able to keep the aliens from invading the Bajoran system - not alone, anyhow. But he could at least do something to stop them from smothering the life from his valley.
The son positioned his father's heavy arms across his heart, and with that action, his sense of conviction grew. This was no accident of fate. Bula Torem had been broken, starved, beaten so many times that his once young body was as haggard as that of a man forty years beyond his age. "He was sixty seven," whispered Johl, rising to his feet. Certainty burnt at the depths of his gut. The Cardassians had killed his father, as surely as if he had never even lived those extra years.
And what was their next generation doing barely two kilometres from his own ancestral home?
Could it ever really have been any different? The question played again, with no more of an answer than it had offered the first time he'd asked. Elmek found himself wondering if he would ever shake this overwhelming, black despair. To come all this way, discover his son… and for the boy to want nothing to do with him? And who would catch enough of his thoughts to give him a reply?
There were times when pain could be comforting, when it was easy to wrap it around him like a blanket and shut himself away from the eyes of the universe. But this would never be a comfort to him. He could only watch each carefully constructed dream break apart and blow away like dust and ash, disappearing as surely as the residue of kanar that was cold against his hand. Even the glass that held it was chipped at the rim.
"Cardassian," snarled a voice at his ear. With a deep and troubled sigh, Elmek turned his head towards the speaker.
Amon moved deliberately to claim the seat opposite him. He nodded to the bartender, who relaxed somewhat, but continued to track them warily from his place at the counter.
"So." Amon's yellowed face gleamed with grease and sweat. "You're back."
"Perhaps I am," said Elmek. shifting his gaze the near empty glass in his hands. The liquid at the bottom was no higher up than the width of one calloused finger. But the other man had not ceased staring beneath his dark and heavy brows.
"You shouldn't ha' returned, Cardassian."
Elmek said nothing.
"We told you in a thousand ways, no-one wants you here." Something flashed in Amon's hand, and the other man looked down to find the point of a fractal blade pressing lightly against his torso. "You really ought to've listened."
Go on, Elmek thought, allowing this silent challenge to surface from behind his eyes. The Bajoran's threat had not come to the attention of their sharp-eyed host, it seemed, but his weapon had not even pierced the Cardassian's skin. I don't have anything left to fight you for. Nothing to lose - not any more.
He thought about how it would feel once the knife slid into him - separating skin and flesh, severing his tortured nerves. But one way or another, the pain would not last forever. It would be as nothing - meaningless - compared to the ache he already felt. And when it was over, he would welcome the shroud of dark oblivion.
He was taller than Amon, but that meant very little while the smaller man still carried a blade. Elmek spoke. His voice was cold and resigned. "If attacking an unarmed man is all it takes to make you feel big," he intoned. "Then go right ahead. There's nothing you can take from me."
Amon's mouth twitched into a wicked half-smile. "There's the boy."
"What?" A sudden shock ran coldly through Elmek's veins.
Nodding to Orlana's padd still set upon the table, Amon transformed his smile to a fiercely grotesque leer. Only his mouth was smiling. The display still bore a holo-image of Aruvel's face.
"What your people did to my cousin," the lank-haired Bajoran whispered, bringing his face so close that their noses almost touched. "I'm gonna do to the boy. I'll gut him like a stuck fish."
The floor beneath Elmek's feet dipped and swayed, as though in the grip of a slow ground tremor, the tavern spinning dizzily around him. It continued its sickening revolutions, faster and faster until he could barely separate his own movements from those of the room. Every line on Amon's brow, even the dull colours of his skin and clothing, were suddenly as clear to Elmek as any one of his most horribly lucid nightmares.
Amon stared, face slackening, progressing from incomprehension, to horror, and finally to a look of pale realisation as he cast it down towards the Cardassian's hand. But then Elmek staggered backwards, face numb and bloodless, recoiling from the sight that met his eyes. He barely noticed the clatter of his fallen chair or the shocked looks from other patrons as - one by one - they turned to see what had caused the sudden commotion.
But his white-knuckled hand refused to loosen its grip upon the same gleaming knife, which only moments ago had been embedded in the chest of the Bajoran Amon.
