Note: anamnesis (n): 1. recollection or remembrance, often vague, especially of past lives. 2. a patient's recounting of their medical history.
Part III, Act III: Escape, Evasion and Elusive Anamnesis
"It is an asteroid," Martok said, grimacing ruefully as Julian stretched his left arm to the point of first visible discomfort. He massaged the General's elbow with the side of his thumb as he eased the arm back in again. "The Dominion used to mine ultritium here."
"Tain told me that much," said Julian. They were each perched on one side of the high bench, turned in towards each other. "Is it in a belt?"
"Orbiting a planet," said Martok. "A gas giant, I believe. Our orbit is rapid: sixteen days."
"Like Titan," Julian mused absently, pronating Martok's palm. "Press down on my hands. Now grip my fingers, hard as you can. Harder?"
Martok obliged, and Julian felt his knuckles grind together. He wrinkled his nose as the General let go, rubbing at his first two fingers. "All right, I asked for that," he laughed. "Do I need to test the other hand for comparison?"
"There is nothing wrong with my grip strength. You have set the arm well, and it is healing," said Martok, impatient to return to their other conversation. "What is Titan?"
"A moon," said Julian; "orbiting one of the gas giants in Earth's solar system. It… doesn't matter."
"It is easier not to think of home," Martok agreed. He flexed his fingers, glaring at them. "Those who have seen it report that the asteroid is not large. There is nothing on it but the compound, and the power generators. They are beyond our reach. Outside the dome, there is no atmosphere. Only barren rock and the vastness of space."
"Is there a hangar for the Jem'Hadar ship?" Julian asked. "Or is it in orbit? Touch each finger to your thumb in turn, please."
"There is no ship!" Martok rumbled. He pinched his index finger to his thumb, and then apparently forgot what he was meant to be doing. He fixed his eye squarely on Julian and said in the brisk, unmistakable patter of a tactical report; "Deyos and his men are on fixed assignment. They do not have so much as a shuttle. A transport vessel comes once every thirty-two days, bringing supplies. If replacement personnel are needed, they arrive at the same time."
"Replacement personnel…" It took Julian a moment to understand what Martok meant. "You mean, to replace Jem'Hadar who have been killed."
Martok nodded, making his breathy sound of agreement deep in his throat. "In one month, I slew three with my own hands. Two broken necks, and one ruptured heart. I shattered four of his ribs."
The relish with which he spoke these words would have made Julian uneasy in any other context. But the memory of yesterday's bouts was still fresh: Martok, blind in one eye, battered by long attrition, and fighting mounting exhaustion, forced to face Jem'Hadar after Jem'Hadar until he could no longer rise. He did not share the Klingon appetite for battle, but he thought he could understand Martok's triumph in this.
"When is the supply vessel due to return?" he asked. It was easier for both of them to focus on the tactical situation. "Keep touching your fingers to your thumb."
Martok resumed the exercise. "I do not know," he admitted. "I have lost count. It is… difficult to separate one day from the next."
Julian supposed that it was. He would ask Major Kalenna later. Her intelligence training had probably instilled a reflexive attention to detail. "Does it land, or do they transport the cargo from orbit?"
"From orbit," said Martok. "New prisoners are delivered the same way, at irregular intervals. The ships never linger long, and no goods are ever transported up from the surface."
"Are there inspections?" Julian asked. "Do other Vorta come to look over Deyos's shoulder? Or the Founders?"
"I have never seen a Founder, at least not to my knowledge," said Martok. "As for the Vorta, occasionally there is a woman who comes with the supply vessel. She is one of their doctors, if you can call them that. She was summoned especially when Ikat'ika did this."
He gestured at the place where his left eye had been. Julian could not help raking his gaze miserably over the tangle of scar tissue. He had assumed Deyos and the Jem'Hadar had made clumsy work of the repair, inexperienced with the tools. The idea that anyone styling themselves a doctor, even a Vorta doctor, might produce such indifferent work made him queasy.
"Make a fist," he murmured, forcing himself to focus on the injury he could actually impact. "Is there a way out of the dome?"
"There is an airlock," Martok said. "Beyond the administration pod near the isolation cells. But it leads to nowhere, Doctor. Without a pressurized environmental suit, you would decompress as soon as the outer door was released. Have you ever seen the remains of a man who has undergone an explosive decompression?"
Julian shook his head. It didn't really work that way, except in certain improbable circumstances, but suffocating in the vacuum of space while your cell membranes ruptured was horrifying enough. He had begun this line of questioning not merely to occupy his patient through the exam, which was an unfortunate reminder of mortal frailty that ground on Klingon pride. He had also hoped that he might learn something useful, something that could nudge him towards some sort of plan for escape. He couldn't let himself sink back down into the abyss of despondency, where miseries piled atop one another until the weight was crushing and it seemed easiest just to lie down and stare at the wall. He needed something to occupy his mind, and thankfully the General's elbow wasn't enough of a diagnostic paradox to do that. Escape seemed the natural choice.
Only it was beginning to sound as if escape was impossible.
"What about the mines?" Julian tried. He didn't know what possible advantage there could be to being trapped in the core of this asteroid instead of on its surface, but he felt the need to exhaust every possibility. "There must be tunnels, shafts, caverns?"
"Only accessible from the generator station," said Martok. "Doctor, if it is escape you are considering…"
His voice trailed off, and the lines about his weathered mouth deepened. His eye flicked off to the side, towards Tain's empty cot. He sighed and spread his good hand over his breastbone, chafing the front of his armour so that the chain links rattled.
"There is no way off this asteroid except by ship," he said at last. "Stowing away with the Dominion would be folly. There is nothing to be gained by it. And to take control of a warship full of Jem'Hadar would require more hands than you could possibly get into orbit. Without outside aid, without rescue from a friendly vessel, it is impossible."
Julian tugged down the sleeve of Martok's undergarment, covering the elbow and forearm again. He reached to draw up the General's vest to support the limb, but Martok twisted to reach for the armhole instead. "Help me," he instructed grimly. "I am going outside. I cannot sit here and talk of this with you any longer. It is not honourable."
Not honourable to let me dream of an impossible escape? Julian wondered, but he did not voice the question. He knew that was an non-negotiable pronouncement, and the reasons that Martok considered this conversation dishonourable would be immutable and therefore immaterial to any debate. He helped Martok rearrange his garments instead, sliding the outer sleeve on and lacing it into place. He fastened the bracer, too, so that Martok did not need to rotate his forearm in order to reach the hooks himself.
When they were finished, Martok got to his feet. Julian stayed where he was, but he twisted at the waist to follow the General with his eyes as he stumped to the door. Martok stopped before it and heaved a ponderous sigh that rocked his massive head.
"Doctor…" he began. Then he seemed to think better of it. With a noise of disgust deep within his chest, he slapped the panel that opened the door and marched through.
Julian glanced at the slumbering — or at least, supine — Breen as he straightened himself and spread his palm to kneed his knee through the greasy bandage. He was not used to such guarded company. Tain would not share his thoughts with anyone, of course: for him it was practically a matter of principle. Major Kalenna was reserved and slow to confide in others — the result of her cultural upbringing and her training with the Tal Shiar, no doubt. Parvok was nervous and reluctant to say anything at all without prompting. The Breen was eternally silent. Julian had hoped Martok might be the exception, after the Klingon had confided in him and then offered him insights into his own mental turmoil. But it seemed there were some things even he intended to keep to himself. The human, apparently, would just have to wonder.
The door screeched open again, and Kalenna came in. She did not greet Julian, nor did she take any action upon entering that would have explained the motivated stride that brought her back into the room. As soon as the door was closed, she seemed to lose her purpose. She looked around idly, and then went to sit on her cot. She folded her hands in her lap and gazed resolutely at the opposite wall. Julian did not try to engage her in conversation.
(fade)
The noise of the guards congregating just beyond the barracks corridor was louder than Julian had expected. He could hear their deep, dispassionate voices and the thunder of their boots on the composite floor. He had made up his mind what he was going to do when he heard them, and yet he hesitated, crippled with dread.
He didn't want to go out there to witness the deed, to see another hapless prisoner hopelessly outmatched against another Jem'Hadar soldier. He didn't want to dive into the midst of the circle of assembled guards, only to find when he got painfully to the ground that there was nothing he could do to help anyway. He did not want to face the revulsion, the powerlessness and the futility that lurked in the arena. But the alternative, skulking in the shelter of the barren barracks when he knew his skills were needed and there was a chance, however slim, that he might be able to ease another person's suffering, was infinitely worse.
In another place, almost any other place at all, he would have snatched up his well-appointed medkit on his way out the door. Here, all he had were two fat rolls of torn blanket and his steady, trusted hands. Julian took what he had, and slipped out into the corridor.
Today's victim — it seemed wrong to think of him as a combatant — was a Romulan. The Jem'Hadar stood aside as the Second led the prisoner into the ring. Unlike Martok, who had strode to meet his destiny of his own accord, this prisoner hung back and had to be dragged forward by the elbow, reluctant and struggling to hide his terror. First Ikat'ika had no inspiring speech to offer, either.
"Today, we face a Romulan," he said dourly. "Observe his weaknesses and remember." And the match began.
The poor man tried to fight, but it was hopeless. The Jem'Hadar's first blow, catching him under the ribs, sent him crashing to the ground, curled up against the pain. He struggled to his feet once, and managed a glancing punch to his opponent's shoulder before a sweeping foot tangled between his and he was thrown flat on his back. His skull cracked sickeningly against the stone floor, and he lay still. Neither the shifting feet of the Jem'Hadar prowling above him nor the murmurs of black disapproval from the spectators could bestir him. On the far side of the ring, Ikat'ika turned his back with a noise of disgust.
For a moment, Julian could not quite believe it was over. He half expected some other unfortunate to be brought forward to take the fallen Romulan's place. But it seemed the Jem'Hadar adhered rigidly to the rules of engagement even when it did not suit their thirst for combat. One prisoner was chosen each day, and made to endure as many fights as he could before he proved unable to rise. Whether that meant nearly an hour of grappling with a Klingon warrior, or less than a minute watching a Tal Shiar clerk being knocked down like a bowling pin, that was the way it was done.
That was the Order of Things, Julian thought darkly.
He slipped between the dispersing Jem'Hadar, his adrenaline response triggered by their brooding displeasure. They looked like they were just waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to release their pent-up energy on a convenient target. But they did not try to prevent him from stepping into the ring, and Julian reached the unconscious Romulan's side unmolested.
He got awkwardly down on his good knee, offloading the bandages in the dust. Wary of tilting the patient's head when there was the possibility of trauma to the cervical spine, Julian placed two fingers behind each tempromandibular joint and lifted the Romulan's jaw instead, clearing the airway. He was just about to manoeuvre his right hand down to check the carotid pulse when long fingers clamped suddenly around his wrist.
Julian had to swallow a gasp. The Romulan, still apparently unconscious, had raised an arm to grab him. He studied the pale, green-tinted face. It was slack and unmoving, but the grip on his arm tightened imperiously. He thought he understood what the man was trying to communicate.
"All right," he whispered, careful that his lips should move as little as possible. He did a quick visual sweep left and right, moving only his eyes. Most of the Jem'Hadar had withdrawn, but a few still stood nearby, speaking amongst themselves in low, businesslike tones. "You're unconscious. I'm just going to check you for injuries."
The hold on his arm went slack, the Romulan's hand slithering bonelessly to rest on his chest.
Julian did all of the things he would have done if he'd come across an unmoving body with no context for its condition. He checked the pulse, counting off the seconds in a low voice so that both the Romulan and the nearby guards would have no doubt about what he was doing. He slid a careful hand behind the patient's neck, feeling for fractures he was now almost certain could not be there. He felt the back of the Romulan's skull where it had smacked the floor, and was surprised to find no signs of trauma at all. Then he shifted his position uncomfortably and began a sweep of the patient's body, tucking his hands beneath the torso and each arm at intervals, checking them for blood each time. None of this was necessary, but it all looked very routine and professional.
Apparently it was boring, also, because the last of the Jem'Hadar tired of watching him work, and moved off to go about their afternoon's affairs, whatever those might be. By this time, Julian's heart was hammering with the anxiety of maintaining the subterfuge. His voice was hoarse and more unsteady than he would have liked when he finally whispered, "They're gone."
"Gone?" the Romulan muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Julian risked lifting his head to look around more broadly. "The nearest ones are the sentries by the outer pillar," he supplied. "Twelve point eight-six metres."
He cringed at the slip. Thinking in specific distances was one thing. Actually saying them aloud was something he always studiously avoided, except in surgical situations where that kind of attention to detail was expected and positively critical. This Romulan was hardly going to pursue the matter, and there was no one to tell if he did, but that wasn't the point. It had been careless.
The Romulan opened one eye. It was bottle-green and completely lucid, with no trace of fogginess or disorientation or concussion. Julian restrained the urge to squirm as he was studied coldly. The man seemed to reach a conclusion, because his stare relaxed marginally and his mouth tightened with resolve.
"Help me to sit up," he instructed in his rapid, hushed whisper. "As if I am groggy and you are concerned for my welfare."
Julian was concerned, and perplexed. But he had spent too many dozens of hours in holosuites not to have a knack for playacting. "You're going to be o-kay," he said in his best bracing-but-a-little-too-cheerful Doctor Voice. "You took a couple of blows and a nasty knock to the head. Let's sit you up. Slowly, now. Easy…"
The Romulan had the heart of a thespian too, apparently. He was in truth a little too convincing. He exerted only a shaky effort to sit, compelling Julian to do most of the work. He wasn't well-positioned for it, and his right boot slipped when he tried to gain traction. His knee barked painfully against the floor and he rolled his eyes briefly heavenward as he rode the rapidly rising wave of pain. Thankfully, it sank off almost as quickly, and soon the Romulan was upright, bowed over his lap and panting shallowly.
"There, that's better, isn't it?" Julian soothed, placing a hand on the man's back. Under his breath, he muttered, "If there's anything actually wrong with you, you're going to have to let me know."
"Thank you, Doctor," the Romulan puffed. "You are very kind." In a reciprocal subversive whisper, he said; "I am unhurt, and intend to stay that way. Get me to my feet."
"You're going to have to do some of the work yourself this time," Julian whispered, more than a little annoyed. He understood the Romulan's motives for wanting the Jem'Hadar to think him injured, but he wasn't willing to aggravate his own hurts in service of the subterfuge. "I've got a bad leg, and whoever takes your place tomorrow might really need my help getting up."
The Romulan scoffed softly at this, but he nodded his agreement. Julian hoisted himself to his feet, leaning briefly on the other man's shoulder as he did so. Then he made a show of helping the Romulan up. The man bore his own weight, but did a lot of distracting, ever-so-slightly exaggerated pawing at the Federation doctor as he rose. Finally, he was clinging to Julian's shoulder and hanging his head dazedly, letting out a low and very convincing moan.
"Which barracks are you in?" Julian asked, still in his caregiver's tone.
"Eleven," the Romulan yipped. He sagged with apparent weariness and motioned vaguely at the block beyond Julian's. "That way."
When they were out of sight of the guards at last, the Romulan straightened up and disentangled himself from Julian. He tugged at the hem of his tunic, trying to make himself presentable. "You were very convincing," he said with grudging respect.
"So were you," said Julian. "All of that was for show?"
"You have to look like you're trying to fight," said the Romulan grimly. "If they think you're passive, they'll beat you for cowardice — or they'll shoot. But if you're simply inept…"
"Then they leave you in peace once you're down," Julian said quietly, understanding perfectly. The deception would have revulsed General Martok, but he had the feeling that Enabran Tain would respect the cunning of it. Personally, he was just grateful that he didn't have to cope with any injuries beyond his means to treat.
"It is undignified, but effective," said the Romulan. "I would rather have my ribs and my limbs intact than my pride. Remember the strategy when they come for you."
Julian glanced over his shoulder as if the Jem'Hadar might be watching. There was no one within the line of sight of the corridor's mouth. "When they come for me," he echoed softly, trying not to feel the chill of dread in his bones.
"It's only a matter of time," the Romulan said with a sour half-smile. "They've never fought a human before."
(fade)
Julian made his way slowly back to Barracks 6, staring up at the dome as he went. At ground level, there were window-shaped holes in some of the walls, but they either opened on other passageways, or they were covered by sheets of milky polymer concealing cheerless light fixtures. Higher up on the dome, nine metres above, a few of the circular ports looked out onto the staring night beyond. The glass, or high-tension methacrylate, or transparent aluminium, was scratched and cloudy. Though he could see the vacant heavens and the sky-glow of the planet below, even Julian's keen eyes could not make out any stars.
The two rolls of scavenged bandage lay where he had left them, partly uncoiled in the dust of the combat ring. Winding them neatly again gave Julian something to do with his hands as he loped back to his barracks. Martok had returned, and was once more sitting with his arm braced obediently inside his vest. Parvok stood near Kalenna's cot in a rigid at-ease stance. They were talking quietly as Julian entered, but the Major held up her hand to silence the Sub-Lieutenant as the door screeched closed.
"Doctor?" she said. The casual disdain from the second day was gone from her voice, replaced with an almost collegial respect.
"No work for me today," Julian said. He looked around the room as if to reaffirm that only four of his cellmates were present. "Where's Tain?"
"Occupied," said Martok, resolutely refusing to meet Julian's eyes. The toe of his boot, apparently, was fascinating.
Julian cast a querying glance at Kalenna, but she only nodded her head. "Occupied," she confirmed, with far less dislike of the word than the Klingon had shown. "No work at all? Then it was Sub-Commander Darok in the ring."
"A tall Romulan with bright green eyes and a small cyst in his nasolabial crease?" Julian asked. Kalenna nodded. "Then yes."
"Many have tried his technique. Few escape the ring entirely unscathed," said Kalenna.
There didn't seem to be much to say to this. Julian went to his cot, stowing the bandages beneath, where he had folded the rest of the blanket. There was no sense in demolishing the whole thing at once. He recovered his canteen, still almost full, and sat down to untie the dressing on his knee. He would apply the cold bottle to it for a while, and then he supposed he would rest. There didn't seem to be anything else he could do.
(fade)
The klaxon for curfew awoke Julian briefly, which it had not done the night before. He stirred on the rigid cot, trying to find a comfortable position or at least to shift the pressure-points to other areas of his body. He was tense with the chill of the room, not quite shivering but poised to start if the temperature dropped even a fraction of a degree. He managed to doze off again, and when he dozed, he dreamed.
He could hear voices, low and strained. He could not make out the words, but they were very close at hand: just behind the frosted screen that sheltered his bed from the broad observation window. The door was always closed when the aliens weren't coming and going. He had tried to get out, but he couldn't figure out how to use the panel. The doors at home were marked with round, green stickers so that he knew which button to press. He didn't know all his colours, but he knew green, because it was the colour of the ground outside, and the fuzz on the trees. A green sticker meant push to open the door. There were no stickers here; only strange, squiggly symbols. He wanted to get out. He wanted to go home. But even when they didn't tie him down to the bed with the broad not-green straps so they could put the machine on his head, he couldn't open the door.
He wasn't alone in the room, now. He hated to be left alone, and they did it a lot. The aliens weren't very good company, but it was better than being alone. Still, he wasn't sure. These aliens sounded angry. They were talking about him; he understood that much. But he couldn't make sense of the long words they used. That frightened him: he couldn't understand and he was sure that he should.
"…everything when the time is right. I need some assurances," one of the aliens said. He was whispering, but his voice was very hard.
"He has proved himself worthy of trust!" said the other. He had a deeper voice than the first, and it was hoarse. Maybe he had been crying, calling out for his mother, too. "He is a driven man. He needs something to strive towards. You saw him today. You took steps to intervene, as I have never seen you do. You do not want to lose him to despair, either, Tain."
"There's no danger of that," the other one scoffed, almost chuckling. He didn't like that, being laughed at. It didn't feel nice at all. It made him hot and sad and sick inside. The children at school laughed at him, when Teacher wasn't looking. He didn't want the aliens to laugh at him, too. "He's an insufferable Starfleet optimist. He'll look for any excuse not to despair, even if it's only so he can feel contempt for me! And today's little performance should be proof enough that he's unstable and unreliable. Tweaking the nose of the Vorta like that — he could have been vapourized where he stood."
He couldn't make sense of one word in five, but he knew about Starfleet. Starfleet officers were heroes. They were the bravest and the brightest and the best. Sometimes he saw them in the high street, or coming out of the library. They always looked so tall and strong in their uniforms, and he knew they would never give up. A Starfleet officer would never give up. Never.
"That was an act of bravery. Foolish, perhaps, but very brave: by now surely you can see that is his way. Perhaps he can be of some assistance to you," the deeper voice pressed, hissing emphatically. "He has the most recent intelligence from the other side of the Wormhole. He will know—"
Julian awoke with a snort, sucking in a mouthful of foul-tasting fabric. He screwed his eyes tightly closed against the light, as for a muddled moment the memories of the hospital room on Adigeon Prime blotted out his sense of time and place and self. The disorienting feeling of fogginess clung to him, as if he was groping at the world around him through a thick, opaque layer of gauze that muffled his senses and addled his thoughts and made imponderable puzzles of the simplest of tasks.
But all that was long ago: the room with the door he couldn't open, the frosted screen by the bed, the shadows of the Adigeon doctors murmuring beyond it. He was a different person now, one of the Starfleet officers he had worshiped from afar, and he was lying on an unyielding bunk in a Dominion internment camp twenty-five years and half a galaxy away from that frightened, lonesome child.
Someone coughed once, sharply, and he heard the thump of a closed fist on a breastbone. Julian plucked the corner of his ill-smelling pillow out of his mouth, and drew his fingers over his eyes. He blinked owlishly, adjusting to the light, and found himself looking across the way at Enabran Tain's bunk.
The Cardassian sat on one end, and General Martok was sitting on the other. They were both leaning in, heads bowed together as though they had been deep in some important conversation. They probably had been, Julian thought ruefully: whispered voices in the room could well have triggered his dream about the hospital. He couldn't remember much of what had been said. In those dreams, he only ever had a functional vocabulary of a couple hundred words. His imagination was peopled with looming adults who spoke in polysyllabic gibberish, and the feeling that he ought to be able to understand every word of it was more terrifying than almost any of the rest of what happened in those dreams.
Those nightmares. He supposed he was lucky that this time he'd roused himself with a gasp, instead of trying to scream himself awake.
"What's going on?" he asked blearily, hitching himself up onto his elbow and rolling his hip onto the hard ridge of the pipe frame. He groped below, fingers questing for his canteen. The sour taste in his mouth was stronger than ever, and he could not help running his fingers over his teeth in disgust. He dearly wanted to clean them. Forget a sonic sanitizer or a nylon toothbrush: he would have settled for a shredded twig and a pinch of sodium bicarbonate.
"Nothing at all, Doctor. Go back to sleep," Tain said soothingly, one of his grandfatherly smiles lighting up his whole face.
"I am sorry we woke you," muttered Martok. He had been staring at Julian in wide-eyed unease, but now he fixed his eyes on the floor midway between the two beds. "It is some hours yet before they open the doors."
The need to get out, to run, to find his way home gripped Julian for a horrible instant that told him he wasn't yet out of the grasp of his dream. He focused all of his attention — far, far more of his brain that the task actually required — on the lid of his bottle. He unscrewed the threads slowly, letting an attitude meter whirl in his mind's eye, calculating the tilt and motion of the lid as if it were a starship executing a tight spiral ascent. By the time he finally took a drink, he was once more firmly entrenched in the mind of Doctor Julian Bashir, Starfleet Lieutenant, decorated veteran, and Chief Medical Officer. Small, mystified Jules was left behind; again.
Of course, he still wanted to get past that locked door, and he still had every intention of trying to get home. But though the obstacles in this case were objectively far greater than any in the worst of his nightmares of Adigeon Prime, the springboard from which he could tackle them was exponentially more powerful. Despite his dire situation, Julian found himself enormously comforted by that.
He took a drink of water, tilting his head back awkwardly. It cleared his head still further, and he looked thoughtfully at the two men. The others were sleeping, Parvok whistling faintly in the recesses of his sinuses.
"You were talking about me," he said, gazing levelly at Tain. "What's going on?"
"Talking about you?" the Cardassian blustered. "Ridiculous! I'm sure you're used to being the centre of events where you come from, Doctor, but out here we have more pressing concerns."
"Such as?" challenged Julian, unswayed by Tain's protestation. He couldn't make sense of the words, but the feeling was clear: the voices had been talking about him.
"I beg your pardon?" Tain huffed.
"What are your more pressing concerns?" Julian spelled it out carefully. "Perhaps I can be of some assistance."
"If you can, I'll let you know: believe me, Doctor," said Tain. "You owe me more than one favour, you know."
Julian smirked as he lay back down, but his bravado was fading. Tain's words had a sobering effect. He did owe him more than one favour. He owed him at least four. And men like Enabran Tain did not live so long by forgiving debts.
(fade)