Nightlife of the Gods

by G.Dunbar

Salvation a la mode. Lies, love, blood, mud, and mutants...2nd book in a series

3. Default Chapter Title

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"You!" Kira was up, spitting the taste of his mouth from hers as she scoured hers clean.

"I…" Anar rose to his feet; a mistake. She stepped as if she was going to charge him, his hands immediately coming up in a gesture of surrender and peace while she screamed at him something about his nephew Shakaar, not forgetting to invoke Dukat. Her words making little sense, there was no way they could make coherent sense, tumbling over each other in her bristling rage, her arms, hands and feet thrashing and attacking the air as she stomped and kicked, emphasizing what she thought of him.

"It was a kiss?" Anar endeavored to explain at one point in her tirade.

"I know what it was!" Kira assured. The same as she knew he was as vile as Dukat as vile as Shakaar, neither of them anywhere near as vile as him. "He's your nephew!" she screamed again, incensed, appalled.

"Adon," Anar understood. True, Adon was. Her sense of morality somehow upset by the fact that Adon was, which, granted Anar's wasn't. It wasn't upset at all. Either meaning he had no sense of morality as she proclaimed, or simply a different sense than she, one that found him quite comfortable with daring to kiss the former lover of his nephew. An act, one would swear by her reaction equable to incest. She was irrational under her incoherent, searing chatter, close to accusing him of physical violative assault. He endeavored to bring her back to a sense of reality. "Adon is a fool."

"Fool?" Kira sputtered.

"Yes, a fool," he insisted, his impatience with the melodrama getting the better of him. "To allow someone such as Dukat to divide the two of you? When what choices you would have had are clearly none? As innocent as Janice in her struggle with Hawk. A difference in the ages, that is all. One with her throat crushed, the other with her guts torn. Forced to birth a child she was forced to conceive."

"What?" Kira said. "What?"

What. Anar sighed. Angry with himself for his impatience, annoyed with her for refusing to purge herself of the vomit choking her for twenty something years.

"You think that I…" her step forward was stiff, contained.

Think? He knew. Having seen it all in fifty-eight years and knowing it when he saw it as well. His impatience softened. His smile gentle, his words uttered to reassure. "I care little if you birthed twelve children for the beast, or only one. I am not Adon who shuns or condemns you. Or Dukat with any inclination or desire to rape or mock you. Your child as innocent as her mother. Her father your master, not your lover. Let it go, Nerys. What you cannot forgive, you must forget -- "

She let it go. Her hand slapped his face. The two of them Bajoran, their strength reasonably matched though one was male and the other female, one endeavoring to remain calm, the other engulfed in fury, the damage her hand inflicted was minimal. A slight taste of blood as his teeth bit his tongue. A light trickle as her nail scratched his lip.

She vanished into the mist before he could stop her. Anar retreated to the Town Center to dress in the warmth of modern clothes, collecting a cloak for her and his field unit so there be no question with his ability to locate her before she found herself lost on her directionless path of anger. He bumped into Elise upon his exit.

"Force, not love. Rape, and a child of blood. That is without doubt." Grateful for his daughter's vigilant sense of protection the sigh was Anar's.

"Forced to conceive, to birth, not love, which she does." The words of wisdom were Elise's.

Anar stared at her. "At age fourteen at best? Who could love a man three times one's age, and not even a man, but Dukat?"

Elise shrugged. "We are all fools at fourteen, some more so than others. I couldn't love at any age. Not the child or the man unless it was one I chose. Kira Nerys is not me. Think, is all I am saying to you. Think and walk wisely. I am not condemning some child named Kira, nor will I ever, no more than you…though are you sure…" she hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "You seek to absolve a woman of a past that is hers? One that is perhaps easier for you to accept? One of rape rather than indiscretion? I repeat, father. Forced to birth, to conceive, never love. Not some unwilling child of hers, or some child of some whore to Prefect Dukat."

"No…" Anar said. "No." Beyond the loathing he could see in Anon's eyes, the teasing he could hear in Pfrann's voice and the voices of others, Kira's fear was too great. Her terror strangling and obvious. There in her voice, her mannerisms and expression on her face. Whatever lies Dukat might spread about her, whatever truths he might tell, he could not see her acknowledging or accepting any unless within the lies was a truth she could not hide, such as a child. He eyed his daughter. "You're talking about a woman I might some day decide to make your mother."

Elise smiled before she laughed. "I know. Be sure you do heed me then, father. For if you ever pledge yourself to my mother, you pledge yourself to her, not some woman you have created to satisfy yourself."

"Who could argue against that?" Anar walked off into the mist, activating his field unit and easily locating Kira already a mile and a half away.

"Ah, now I could have told you that!" The mist turned wet and icy outside the town's perimeter, Dukat looming ahead of Kira in the blanketed fog, his black and silver uniform glittering white in the frosty mixture, satisfaction smearing his thin lips.

"Oh, just shut up!" she stormed past him to stop and whirl back around.

He was still there. Leering "What?" as she stared at him. "Something wrong?"

"Wrong…" Kira repeated. Her mind was playing tricks on her. The wine, the cold. "Wrong?" she held him by the breast of his tunic, screaming up into his face. "Yes, there's something wrong! Did you hear what he said? Did you hear him?"

"Yes!" Dukat pulled her hands free. "And, well, Major," he extended matter-of-factly, not at all dismayed or perturbed, "what can I say? If it wasn't him, it would be someone else. In the meantime you're right. He appears to be jealous of you and I for some reason…apart from that!" he leered again, "clearly deranged!"

"I don't care about him!" she snapped, or for that matter anything he might have to say. "You killed her!" she grabbed him again, twisting his tunic, her fists pounding into his chest. "You killed her, not Damar. You with your stupid nonsense…you with your stupid everything! Stupid! Stupid!" she screamed, charging him when she wasn't screaming and demanding "Why? Why?"

She was starting to cry. Her shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she clung to him, her fingers clawing at his chest, angry, confused, sobbing as she shook her head still asking "Why?" as she slipped down off him to sit on the ground.

Anar had no idea. Stupid? Probably? As she said? He slipped the cloak off his shoulder, stooping to drape it around hers. "You'll catch your death out here…"

Her head snapped up with his touch to stare at him wildly and wild-eyed. She jumped up to push him away, whirling around to collide with him when he stepped to block her escape. "Yes, it's me," he reassured her fervent, desperate looks back at whatever or whoever she thought she was seeing. Dukat, he believed, having figured that much out. The Prophets' visions stark at times the same as they could be vague. Cold, he would have to say this time. Not as gentle as he would have preferred, or as gentle as he attempted to make his own overtures. "I cannot in good conscience allow you to freeze…"

She pushed him away, flinging the cloak on the ground and stalked off. Anar toyed with his field unit. "That is if I'm allowed."

"Will you just get!" Kira snatched the field unit from him to fling it out into the darkness when he showed up to extend it to her, citing concern over her ability and sense of direction across a region she had traveled only once.

Anar was grateful the field unit had a proximity sensor, and grateful for Elise's advice he step wisely as he almost stepped on the unit in the dark. There remained that issue of Nerys, seven miles and an hour or more until the earliest light of dawn. He opted to track her accuracy from a safe and reasonable distance, activating a holographic projection only when necessary to advise her when she strayed too far east, or too far west. She was going to kill him long before either of them could see the outline of the shuttle, morning's light just breaking overhead. His field unit told him the Trill was outside.

The light, freezing rain had stopped at some point earlier. Kira was hot from her pounding exercise, not cold with exposure, startled to find Dax rounding the corner of the Ark to greet her with a smile. "Late night."

Kira nodded, absently at first and then flustered. "I fell asleep."

"What?" Dax said.

"Asleep," Kira's hand gestured wildly. "I fell asleep."

"Oh," Dax frowned slightly and then smiled again. "That boring?"

Kira's head snapped up from unzipping her field jacket.

"Actually I meant me," Dax offered. "Julian and I…" she trailed off momentarily. "Well, we had a rather interesting time trying to decide if the expedition should be chronicled as medical or botanical…you fell asleep?" she frowned again, realizing what Kira was saying. "With Anar?"

"Not with Anar," Kira gestured irritably again. "But with Anar, yes, with Anar; I fell asleep." She stalked inside.

Dax nodded. "I think I have it." She followed Kira inside where it was crowded.

"What?" Kira stepped on Bashir's foot, her head banging off his chin. "I fell asleep, all right? I fell asleep."

"Yes, well, my apologies…" Bashir began even though all he had done was attempt to exit his quarters; he paused. "What?"

"She fell asleep," Dax nodded over Kira's head.

"Asleep?" Bashir repeated. "On Anar?"

"Oh!" Kira pushed him roughly aside to bang her way to the commissary.

"I wouldn't exactly say on Anar," Dax shook her head at Bashir's agog expression.

"The devil you wouldn't," he whistled. "No more than I wouldn't. Well, that rather lets us off the hook, doesn't it?"

"I…" Dax wasn't so sure that was the point. She turned around to smile at Anar appearing through the doorway.

"Kira?" he inquired pleasantly as if he didn't know she was there.

"Commissary," Dax obligingly pointed aft.

"Thank you," Anar stepped in to step past.

"You naughty boy," Bashir added under his breath.

Not quite far enough under his breath. Anar halted. Bashir smiled. "Well, perhaps not a boy, exactly."

"No, not exactly," Anar agreed.

"But naughty nevertheless," Bashir's mouth twisted slyly as Anar moved on.

"Yes," Dax agreed.

"I am, you mean," Bashir stopped her from following Kira. "No, wait a minute. I just wanted to say…"

"What happened to nary so much as a cross-eyed look?" she verified.

"Sideways glance, thank you very much -- And, no, what I wanted to say was simply even though I might not appear to be, I am thinking of you; fondly. Constantly. Throughout the day. I'm not withdrawing, I mean to say. Distancing myself, as I have in the past…I simply wanted you to know that," he swallowed under her scrutiny. "Understand that. Especially now. Under the circumstances…and, yes," he nodded, "perhaps I should also consider foregoing any unnecessary long winded speeches or explanations…"

"They're really not necessary," Dax left him to curiously follow Anar.

"Perhaps for you they're not," Bashir said to himself. "On the other hand I'm not quite so sure I can toss off a night of lovemaking so lightly and carry on as if nothing has happened, is changed, or new. As a matter of fact, I have a distinct impression I'm going to be frightfully awful at this whole affair business…if you care to know that…" he curiously proceeded after Dax for the commissary.

Why Kira seemed to think she had to strike and pound on everything perplexed Anar. But there she was, sharply cuffing the replicator and impatiently tapping her foot for the moment it took the cup to appear.

"It works just as well by pressing it," he offered; she ignored him. He could hear himself sighing again. "Kira…"

"I know what you said!" her cup slammed down on the island, the dark brown and hot liquid sloshing out to stain the cuff of her uniform.

"She's always like that before she's had her raktajino." The Trill was behind him offering some clever advice of her own.

"Yes…" Anar started to say in diplomatic agreement, pausing to focus on the cup. "Raktajino…"

"Coffee," Dax clarified.

"Klingon!" Kira reared up in his face.

Her meaning was clear. "Kira, I never said…"

"I know what you said!"

"What did he say?" Bashir's whisper tickled Dax's ear.

She shrugged. Nothing monumental or incriminating that she overheard. "I think it must have been earlier."

"They were sleeping together earlier," he reminded wickedly.

For some reason Dax wasn't too sure about that. Though neither was she too sure about anything else. She surveyed Anar. His white hair, his tanned, toned frame. He was tall, handsome, proven arrogant, if not athletically inclined. "Wishful thinking?" she surmised, truly seldom having seen Kira as angry as she was without a reason, usually a good one.

"Go on," Julian scoffed in a fair imitation of the Chief.

"Well…" Dax still wasn't necessarily convinced.

"Could we..?" Anar tactfully cleared his throat with an indicating motion and request of Kira.

"I guess they can," Dax nodded as Kira stalked past her followed closely by Anar tipping his head.

"Quite. You're excused," Bashir agreed with a smart, satisfied turn for the replicator. "Merely a lovers' spat as I said. No reason to be concerned. I had one of those myself not ten minutes ago."

Dax looked at him; he grinned. "Not in the corridor, in my quarters. And not obviously with you. Though, yes, as obviously with you, though in absentee expression, I guess you could say. I spoke for you, is what I'm saying. Argued your point for you."

"Who won?" was her sole concern.

"You did, I suspect," he imagined. "But only because I was man enough to acknowledge the only thing likely wrong with me is that I suddenly crashed. Plummeted. Emotionally I'm talking about. Likely only because I was high -- possibly a little too high," he considered briefly. "I really wouldn't know. I've never been quite that high before. Not even the time I disengaged the gravitational field…" He stalled, his grin flashing mildly sheepishly and definitely chagrined as he bent his head to sip his coffee. "Yes, well, you don't really need to know about that."

"No," Dax rather had that same idea.

"It's the old me talking anyway," he admitted. "But then it's the new me who feels distinctly out of sorts."

"We have a week," she reminded.

"Quite. And after that? A host of staggering opportunities," he recalled.

Dax wouldn't say a host exactly, but she also wouldn't say Bashir was making his point. "What's really wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Nothing's wrong quite possibly…nothing that isn't remarkably commonplace anyway. Panic? Sheer panic? Separation anxiety? Insecurity? Simply not ready for the night to end and the morning to begin…yes, I know," he smiled back at her, "I just said all of that. Now I'm saying I love you madly. Deeply. Wholly. With every part of me. I want there to be a commitment between us. For us to see this through -- us through. Follow it to wherever it's going to lead."

"Yes," she agreed.

"Jadzia…" he stepped sharply forward, pinning her back against the replicator.

"Julian…" she reminded.

"Damn what we promised for a moment, listen to me. It's not the way it was. It will never be that way again. Say you know that. Swear you know that. That you believe me. No dangling myself in front of you to snatch myself away. I'm guilty as Hell is what's wrong. Of anything you care to imagine or accuse me of, and it's all returning to haunt me."

"Julian, I love you," she assured. "In ways I can't remember ever loving anyone else."

"And I love you," his eyes closed against the sensation of her hair brushing his face. "Terrified who will end up being hurt is you. Damn it, Jadzia, one pulled muscle and I'm apt to kill him."

"I wouldn't be concerned about that."

"I meant in anger."

She knew what he meant. "And I wouldn't be concerned. Worf isn't violent."

"The devil he isn't. It's a vile analogy, but one whiff of you being in bed with me and we'll find out, won't we? Which I don't care to do."

No. Neither did she. "Possibly for a different reason?" her hand touched his cheek lightly.

"Except I can take better care of myself than you can. It's not all brute strength. Anar certainly proved that, didn't he? In his tango with Martok's bridge crew? It's skill and just plain knowledge of Klingon anatomy."

"Close enough," she accepted his paraphrase of Tracy Sorge's verdict of just what had transpired aboard Martok's Bird-of-Prey that found five Klingon warriors dead at the hands of one lone, middle-aged Bajoran Town Elder formerly of the Maquis.

Five Klingon warriors who had been simple by comparison, Anar was posed to admit. "Kira, I did not say you were Dukat's mistress…"

"Don't tell me what you said!" she seized him by the banded collar of his shirt, attempting to yank him down to her level.

"Certainly not in the manner of any form of insult," Anar maintained calmly, gently removing her hands from his tunic; she snatched them away from him. "Hardly willingly…"

She wasn't listening. "Do you know why you are so obsessed with Dukat? Do you?"

He wouldn't say he was obsessed with Dukat. The farthest from it, actually. He glanced down on the coffee she had thrown to the ground thinking about Anon's adopted battle cruiser the Tir, its crew, Kira's familiarity and its unusually varied replicator menu that included Klingon raktajino and a limited selection of traditional Bajoran fare. It was circumstantial evidence; not even circumstantial evidence, the same as everything else and it nagged at him just the same.

"Because you're just like him!" she accused. "Exactly like him! Adon? Ha! Try Dukat!"

"Now that I take as an insult," Anar admitted.

"Good. It was meant as one." She strode several feet away from him to collect her composure.

"As would I…" Anar chanced to approach her. She spun around prepared to strike. He nodded, holding up his hands in obedient demonstration. "No hands."

"Unless you want them broken."

He believed her. "As would I not like to think my competition with Adon extends to you…Though admittedly the competition is as old, as it is entrenched. You're a beautiful woman, Kira Nerys…"

"I was twenty-six years old when I met Dukat," she was back in his face, straining to be up in his face.

"I meant…"

"I know what you meant!"

An adult, not a child. Ziyal could be her younger sister, but not her daughter; she was wrong. Wrong as far as assuming he was talking about Dukat rather than himself…as she was, remained extraordinarily focused on Dukat. For whatever reason. Anar sighed again. The reason beyond him, becoming less interesting as the seconds passed them by. "Fine. Have it your way. You were twenty-six…not fourteen?" he guessed. "Thirteen?"

"Ten!" She claimed a youth that was not hers, and that time he groaned.

"By the Prophets, Nerys, I am talking about myself, not Dukat. I care little about your age then, or now. You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman to me. A woman I would like to get to know…and, yes," he agreed, "I was wrong to assume your…" he paused.

"Devotion," Kira offered.

Anar smiled. "Perhaps too strong a word. I was wrong to assume your commitment to Ziyal to be anything more than your compassion for her plight."

"It's the right word," Kira nodded. "I was devoted to Ziyal. I loved Ziyal. Treasured, cherished, admired -- cried," she swallowed, her throat burning from her outrage.

"Like any child," Anar said gently.

"Daughter!" Kira snapped. "Like a daughter, yes. Sister…whatever word you care to use!"

"Child," Anar felt to be more ambiguous. "Dukat's reputation precedes him. What else can I say? I was wrong."

"And now, your daughter…" she stepped close to him again.

"Janice, yes," he said. "I look upon Janice as my daughter."

"Is married to Dukat!"

"Which gives us something in common?" he guessed.

"Which gives you something in common with Dukat. Think about that!"

Admittedly Anar hadn't. Not quite sure if he wanted to, not quite sure why he would. "Why?"

"I don't know!"

He laughed. "Well, if you don't know…"

"I don't," she insisted.

"What if I just concede?" he offered. "Not to being a Bajoran version of Dukat, but, yes, to being wrong, rude…presumptuous," his eyes traveled over her slender, shapely frame; beguiling and inviting, she certainly was. "Lastly to being a member of the opposite sex in the captivating company of such a lovely member of the opposite sex to me?"

She didn't laugh back, but that was all right. Anar had a feeling he was on his way to being forgiven. "To the opposite, what I didn't do in any way was insinuate, promote, or presume you to be the mistress of Chancellor Gowron."

She had no idea what he meant. "The raktajino?" he prompted. "You said Klingon as if I had."

"You said raktajino as if it were poison for voles," she returned coldly.

Voles. Cardassian voles, no doubt. As yes, no doubt, to a Cardassian it would be shunned as such. She insisted on tempting his suspicions. He was beginning to wonder if she was doing it intentionally. "Dinner?" he hoped.

"The grotto," she said.

"The grotto it is," he conceded.

"And from there dinner," Bashir advised Dax where they lounged in the hatchway eavesdropping. "Damn six-hour stroll one way we'd better get something for our trouble; and I do mean we, not just Kira."

"Will you stop?" she requested.

"Me stop? Anar's the one who should stop. For God's sake simply because Kira had a friendship with Ziyal does that have to put her in bed with Dukat? Is he mad?"

"Bajoran," Dax quite accurately suspected. One who had seen much, if not too much in fifty-eight years. "That," she smiled, "and I think he's rather attracted to her."

"So he accuses her of sleeping with Dukat?" Bashir missed the correlation.

"You have a point," she agreed.

"Thank you. Of course, by the same token you and I are sleeping together and so if anyone were to accuse us, they would be right…not that I mean to suggest," he grinned, "there's any connection, or for that matter, even relative."

"Oh, good. Because quite frankly I missed that correlation."

"Not the only thing you're going to miss," he threatened. "I repeat, a six-hour stroll one way is just that; six hours, one way. Not including some preliminary field study. Not including a six-hour stroll back. What does that suggest to you?"

She pondered the question. "Blisters?"

"Not exactly," he cracked a sly and somewhat tawdry alternative in her ear. "True or false?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Well, perhaps not personally. But I do insist…" he ogled Kira approaching, "it is a legitimate medical condition."

"What is?" Kira asked.

"Starvation," Bashir assured. "Short for is there a particular reason why you get to feast on an expansive variety of culinary delights while Dax and I have to sustain ourselves on field rations, at best a replicator?"

"Rank."

"Short for I think it's time to get packing," Dax nodded.

"Quite." Bashir's interpretation as well. "And, well, I must say I'm certainly looking forward to this…"

"Or not." He posed on the banks of what was hardly a grotto, more a primal swamp.

"The grotto's on the other side," Dax encouraged his pioneer spirit.

"Twelve thousand square," Kira added to his elation.

"Kilometers I take you to mean," Bashir agreed. "Is there a particular reason you felt the need to drown your dead a half day's walk from home?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sisko's Bashir knew the answer to his caustic dig masked as humor without the Trill having to bring it to his attention. An unlikely find in the foothills of a range of abandoned Cardassian mines, the grotto was picturesque in her primitive, unkempt state. Tranquil. Timeless, or time-forgotten. Within twenty meters her shores graduating into smooth grassy mounds high above the banks of the river's inlet she embraced. Unfamiliar with the geography they hadn't realized come the torrential rains of the late seasons the river with no place to go quickly rose, overflowing its banks, transforming much of the region into a muddy pool of quagmire.

Bashir also knew beset by a quickly advancing infectious plague it seemed the best idea to continue transporting the dead to an area far, yet still reasonable, from the township in an effort to protect those struggling to survive, despite the risk of the graves flooding.

Sisko's Bashir knew all of that, appearing to enjoy jolting his audience with his biting ridicule or sarcasm, or be oblivious to them altogether. Whichever, the doctor's sneers and sly comments eventually dissolved into focused silence. Engrossed in the randomly selective field study. Frustrated by the governing rule of no scans of the area, and having to rely on his intelligence and the Trill's background in exobiology rather than the assortment of auxiliary attachments for his tricorder. His interest piqued by the challenge. His field uniform, face and hands shortly as filthy as everyone else's.

The Trill was simply interested. Kira's concentration split between obediently logging the samples collected and thinking about the honeycomb of mines watching them.

"Exobiology," Anar mentioned at one point to Dax as she chanced sinking knee-deep in the mud to obtain a water sample offshore. "You suspect some alien lifeform to be responsible for the cream's properties."

"I know it's possible," she said.

"Cleansing properties, anyway," Bashir interjected, treading through the silt to join them. "Like a maggot stripping spoiled flesh…who cares whose flesh? Certainly not fussy insofar as whose, simply infinitesimal…what?" he grinned at Dax looking down her premier distinctions at him. "I'm agreeing with you. Definitely the most plausible explanation, and probably right."

"I don't think that's it," she shook her head.

Five minutes later they were both back on the banks, Dax's boots promptly consuming her socks with a gleeful, sucking sound when she pried them off to scoop out the mud by the handful.

"They're warm," she assured Bashir laughing.

"Whose? Mine? Certainly are," he nevertheless sat down to tug off his boots, feeling sorry for her and willing to share.

"No, I don't want your socks."

"What about one of them?"

One of them? Now, what was she going to do with one of them? Bashir didn't know. Same thing he was, he supposed.

"Funny," Dax had to say as he dangled his insulated footwear temptingly in front of her, "but you don't look the jealous type."

"Of Anar?" That brought a broad smile to Bashir's face. "Hardly. Besides, we've already decided if he's interested, he's interested in Kira."

"I'm sure he's been interested in others," Dax decided to take his socks and use hers to finish cleaning out her boots.

"Certain he has," Bashir pulled a fresh pair of thermal hose out of the pocket of his jacket to dress his feet, snuggling them back warm inside his boots. "Can't see to where that amounts to my being jealous -- I'm not jealous," he laughed at Dax looking at him. "Where do you get this idea that I'm jealous of Anar, of all people?"

"I don't think that's it," she shook her head again.

"Oh," Bashir said, wondering curiously, "well, what is 'it' then, if I may ask?"

Dax stared at his boots, from them to him. Unable to believe he did what he just did, while at the same time believing he did what he just did. "And here I was going to ask are you sure you'll be comfortable?"

"What?" he said. "Oh, yes, quite. You?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Good," he rose with an offer to give her a hand up. "After all, can't very well be walking around without socks in our boots, neither of us…On the other hand," he agreed, attempting to wipe his trousers off, dust was certainly out of the question, "what I don't have with me is a spare pair of trousers. I guess we're just going to have to make do."

Dax laughed. "You're jealous."

"Fiercely," Bashir grinned. "To be expected, isn't it? You needed as much help collecting that water sample, like I need help collecting my water samples. If he wants to help someone, let him help Kira."

Anar turned away from Bashir and Dax with a better understanding of what the conversation in the Defiant's shuttle bay may have been about, and why the Klingon Worf may have found himself mentioned in the discussion.

"I would think there are probably thousands of us here," he looked back from observing the framework of mountains with a smile for Kira.

She ignored the attempt at conversation, morbid though it might be; clipping the field pack closed with a snap. "Any lifeform would have devoured the mummy."

"Point." Bashir and his opinions were back. "Any should have."

"You'll get your chance to examine Dolores, Doctor," Anar's eyes came down from the skies and praying for temperance and patience.

"When?"

The last of the limited sunlight faded on them quickly requiring they abort the field study until the next day. It made more sense to return to the shuttle where they could freely begin any analysis they wished rather than linger in the discomfort of the dark and the cold eighteen hours waiting for the new dawn. Anar managed to convince Kira to give dinner and conversation a second chance; it wasn't difficult to do. She wanted to know what they expected of the Federation and/or Shakaar, and what the UFP and Bajor Prime could expect in return.

Dax decided she was interested in learning the geography and placing her position. That was somewhat more difficult, particularly without a tricorder to guide her. The mountains vanished against the black, starlit background, the terrain again flat and absent of landmarks in the dark. In spite of herself she couldn't help returning to Julian's accusations of deliberate. Everything was deliberate. From what they could scan, to what they couldn't.

From what they could see, to what they couldn't. Perhaps. To assist in obtaining Kira's hesitant agreement to return to the township for a frank discussion on the colony's future Anar committed to Julian examining Lange's mummy come the morrow. Julian was apparently thinking of other things, Anar's concession failing to impress him.

It was a four-hour hike across the endless flat plains from the grotto to the town square, from there the familiar three hours more to the shuttle. Tired of being cold and wet Julian was interested only in continuing. That was fine with Dax. She remained interested in learning her surroundings. The detour for the colony lengthening their return trip by only an hour, the three sites were actually in reasonable proximity to each other, possibly drawn in a rough circle. She studied the position and patterns of the planet's strung wave of crescent moons and visible terrestrial bodies. It was a fair presumption that Anon's downed transport was somewhere within its own reasonable distance from the township, unless the rule of no transporting did not apply to Cardassians.

She wasn't quite sure what did apply to Cardassians other than freedom and friendship. Something she continued to find most interesting of all. Kira's teeth had to be on edge. Anar's personal interest only serving to further aggravate her.

She smiled at Bashir striding along at her side. "What happened to the least we can expect is dinner?"

He smiled, somewhere between shy and slyly before he stopped to slip his arms around her and kiss her. "The truth is I'm not entirely inept when it comes to a replicator."

"The truth is neither am I."

They resumed walking, his arm in place across her shoulders. "What do you think is really out there that they don't want our scans to pick up?"

"Other than Bajorans with DNA inhibitors?"

Bashir laughed with a granting nod for his arm. "If there are it's too late. Our secret's out. I wonder if they care any more than I do about what they know really?"

"I don't know. How much do you care?"

"Fairly little," Bashir admitted. "Rather the same as I do about Dukat's transport -- which is probably what is out there. Along with any variety of Klingon Birds-of-Prey and so-named Maquis raiders buried along with their pilots; that much of Anar's claim I do believe. Interesting they think we would care."

Dax shrugged. "Perhaps they think we're obligated."

"Not in the least. I have all I can do to maintain any level of interest in this 'study' whatsoever…other than the child…or you. Come on…" He unfastened his field jacket stiff with mud when they boarded the shuttle to drop it on the floor, pulling her toward the shower where they scraped and rinsed the river's grotto from their skin and made love.

For the first and last time Bashir swore as they collapsed against the wall satisfied and exhausted from the intensity of their union and oppressive heat, his fingers gripping the nape of her neck. The ends of his drying hair wet, his shoulders and neck slippery with sweat, his chest feeling saturated as she relaxed against him.

"Feeling better?" Dax asked. Bashir laughed, she did also. "You know what I meant."

"Quite. I do, as I do," he toyed with her hair. "Better even tomorrow. Rather suspect any lingering insecurity will be gone by mid-week to return at the end. Add to that an occasional feeling of anger and resentment that there's even a Mister Worf to have to take into consideration."

His honesty was stark, not brutal. Dax appreciated that. She simply disagreed, pleasantly. "Worf is noble, Julian. As innocent as I am if you're right about Curzon abusing his position."

"In your opinion. In mine he's a savage. An enabler at best. It's possible the truth will be found somewhere in the middle. What isn't available for dispute is I am right about Curzon attempting to control Dax and you rather than assist. We'll explore all of it, everything. As far as everything else, just try to bear with me is all I can ask. That first night alone is bound to be the worst of it. Can only get better from there; us get better from there. Stronger. Other than that it's a great deal of fun, actually -- all of it's fun," he clarified with another laugh as she laughed again as well. "Everything. I enjoy working with you. Always have. The fact that we're lovers is only an improvement on an already perfect professional relationship."

They actually did get some work done. Quite a bit of it. Admittedly some of it in the cabin where they could be comfortable and relaxed in the closeness of each other's arms as they worked at compiling their data. Bashir matching wits with the shuttle's limited medical bank determined to design a relatively risk-free program of therapies for Nadya, Dax concentrating on following the assortment of organizational breakdowns of their field samples. The Ark's temperature controls consistent in being erratic, blasting them with zero cold for an hour or two and broiling them for the next. At some point before they lifted off Kira was going to have to suspend her diplomatic efforts and resume her role of engineer. She suspended them for the evening around 2600 extended time. Loudly as the morning before. Her boarding announced with a crash.

"Kira," Dax tentatively identified who or what was responsible for the sound of something falling over or being thrown.

Bashir's reply was an absent "Yes…" his attention absorbed by his tricorder and Nadya's chromosomes as he sat, reclined against the supporting wall of the bunk with his knees bent, his arms wrapped around her propped against him.

"I think I'll just make sure," Dax crawled out from under his arms to tuck in her T-shirt and find her boots.

"Probably should…" Bashir agreed disinterested, eventually joining her outside the cargo hold.

It wasn't Kira. One of the field packs of samples was on the floor of the cargo hold, fallen from its perch atop the console. They had opened the hatch over an hour ago for some much needed air circulation when the shuttle's thermostat threatened to approach inferno and the light wind had picked up a little Dax supposed. However even a sudden, stiff gust couldn't explain the weighted pack being the only item to find itself pushed several inches to the edge before it toppled. She collected a tricorder and stepped outside to break a rule or two.

"You'll catch your death out here." Julian's hands ran briskly over her bare arms, borrowing her tricorder to have a look with the reminder, "DNA inhibitors."

"Convenient," Dax agreed.

"And largely inactivated, oddly enough," Bashir nodded. "I read a community of approximately thirty Bajorans roughly ten miles southwest. If there's anyone else awake and moving around out here apart from us they're invisible or dead. If you care to wait a moment I'll get my medical tricorder and confirm which."

"There should be thirty-six," Dax took her tricorder back.

"Counting Kira," Bashir grinned. "You're forgetting about the holographic matrix. Thirty Bajorans could be a stock projection for whatever reason, arbitrary, even, cloaking their one time impressive number of 2,000. Ironic that arbitrary would turn out to be remarkably close to accurate."

Dax wasn't forgetting anything, only the rules.

"Fair enough." His kiss brushed her throat, his arms treading their way around her. "If they can break them, so can we."

"You're suddenly wide awake," she laughed.

"And cold," he assured. "Though I insist residuals of tachyon in the area would confirm activity in the sector rather than desolation. The same as the Klingons were hardly here for no reason, no more than Dukat."

"Border patrol."

"In a transport?"

"Well, perhaps not Dukat."

"No. Dukat can be explained as salvaging what he could from an abandoned outpost -- top secret outpost, no doubt. Rumored to exist though unconfirmed. From there everything else can be explained. From Jem'Hadar to Maquis to Klingons to Anar being no better than Shakaar Adon for all his high and mighty attitude, not surpassing holier than thou. One dangling Janice's proposed discovery to get what he wants, the other doing precisely the same."

"I think there's probably a difference," Dax nodded.

"Oh? What's the difference?"

"Motivation," she teased. "Which, speaking of?"

Bashir's smile was sly. "Well, I would have to say my motivations are distinctly clear, if not obvious…if not sound."

"Sound?" she said.

"Quite," he pointed out the evidence provided by her tricorder. "Who doesn't have a DNA inhibitor is Kira, placing her ten miles and three hours from us, apparently in no more of a hurry to return than yesterday despite her excuses, claims, and tirade to the contrary."

"It does look that way, doesn't it?"

"Rather the same as it's damn cold out here," Bashir urged her back to the shuttle.

"What about our visitor?"

"If there's a visitor. I doubt it. As a matter of fact I distinctly recall just dropping everything wherever, other things on my mind. Why? Surely you're not suggesting we post watch?"

"Well…" Dax said.

"Better idea," he kissed her. "Curiosity or sabotage they can have whatever they want, take whatever they want, including the Ark. Gut the thing for all I care, burying its duranium carcass alongside the rest of them."

"Which we just may wake up to find we have been," she laughed.

"Nonsense. I'm telling you it's my fault. I probably set it on the edge -- "

"Probably?"

"Well, obviously, yes, if the damn thing fell over…"

The hatch closed, Ziyal turning her solemn, stern Cardassian face on Nadya lying disgusted and impatient beside the shuttle's landing gear, her elbows propped up in the mud, her chin resting in her hands.

"He kissed her," Nadya offered as the explanation behind why she could be found ten miles from home under the Federation shuttle in the middle of the frigid night. It wasn't a very good reason, one Ziyal did not accept.

"Okay…" Nadya crawled out from her hiding place to take her friend's smooth gray hand. "But he still kissed her. Why? She's a Klingon's mate. I know. Janice told me. Who would kiss a Klingon's mate? Other than the Federation," she decided for herself with a sneer. "They like Klingons; they would."

"And what did you say that had to do with taking Commander Dax's field samples?" Ziyal verified.

Nadya grinned. "I would have if you hadn't surprised me. The grotto is Dolores's home. I promised Janice I'd protect it."

"They'll only go back for more," Ziyal proposed wisely.

"Why? They don't even believe in Janice's cream."

"Oh, I think they do. But they also know enough to know it's an extensive project, and maybe they're just not sure where to begin."

Nadya wasn't sure she wanted them to figure it out. "Are we going to become a Federation colony?" she groaned.

"No," Ziyal laughed. "A science community, yes, probably for a while. After that? Who knows," she smiled at the child. "Home to some of the finest Bajoran wine in the galaxy. Anything's possible."

So Nadya had been told throughout her young life. In the meantime her needs and wants were much simpler right now than trying to understand the confusing cesspool of politics, conflict, and war. She bit her lip, her feet beginning to drag, her hand unconsciously tightening inside of Ziyal's supporting grasp.

"Are you cold?" Ziyal asked.

"No," Nadya shook her head.

"Tired?"

"No."

"Then what is it?" Ziyal knelt down to hold the child crying in the cool flesh of her heavy broad breast.

"I would be happy just to have Janice come back," Nadya gasped out her pain. "Anon and Pfrann, too. I'm never going to see her again. Janice only told me I was because she knew I would be upset."

"Oh, but you are going to see her," Ziyal promised. "Much sooner than you might even think. Never is only that Commander Dax and Doctor Bashir would never harm Dolores' grotto, or Dolores herself. Nor will Keiko O'Brien. You'll see."

"Who?" Nadya said.

"Keiko O'Brien," Ziyal smiled. "Chief O'Brien's wife. They have a daughter Molly only a year or two younger than you. A little boy as well. A little brother, just like you do."

"So?" Nadya said.

"So…" Ziyal teased her with something Janice had once said about Cardassians. "Everyone likes to be liked. Even Humans."

Nadya thought about that. She thought about it long and hard. "Why? They don't like me. I heard them. They called me a monster and a mutant. You can't know how that feels…or can you?" her finger traced the Bajoran ridges on the bridge of Ziyal's thick Cardassian nose. "Child of blood you're cursed, everyone knows that. Your mother's guts torn. If you're not a mutant what are you?"

"Unique. Just like you. And simply because you think they don't like you, is that a reason you can't like them?"

"I don't like them," Nadya assured.

"Pick one to like," Ziyal encouraged. "Kira doesn't count…no, that's cheating," she shook her head. "Kira's Bajoran. Pick one of the Federation to like…and, no, it can't be Keiko O'Brien either," she shook her head again. "You haven't met Keiko. It has to be either Commander Dax or Doctor Bashir."

"Commander Dax," Nadya supposed.

"The Klingon's mate?" Ziyal blinked her watery eyes in mock surprise.

Nadya shrugged. "She's a girl."

"A pretty one, too," Ziyal took her hand as they started walking again. "Though you should know Commander Dax really isn't a girl. She's a transandrogen. Do you know what that is?"

"Someone who's neither."

"Became neither," Ziyal nodded, "in the instance of Commander Dax. That was her choice when she chose to be joined with the symbiont Dax."

"She chose to be a mutant?" Nadya eyed her.

"Unique," Ziyal smiled. "Just like you and I."

"I like being unique," Nadya admitted.

"So do I," Ziyal assured.

"And if I ruined Commander Dax's samples," Nadya advised her, "I wouldn't be too upset. They really weren't very good ones."

"Well…" Ziyal said. "Perhaps instead of playing tricks you can tell her how to collect better ones?"

"I'll think about it," Nadya broke into a hopping skip to warm her chilled feet.

"I thought you weren't cold?" Ziyal chastised.

"I'm not."

"Nor tired."

"No."

"Come here," Ziyal picked her up in her strong arms. "We don't need any more nine year olds, we have more than we can count. You need to grow old and strong. An example of endurance and delivery, not a portrait of senseless tragedy…" The child was asleep before she took twenty steps. She sang her a Bajoran lullaby for the two hours she carried her before she turned her over into the arms of the one who could see her and the three who could not.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was a frantic thirty minutes once realizing the child was missing, not in the Temple as Elise anticipated when she returned from silent participation in the town's spontaneous forum with Kira Nerys to find her infant son crying in his wraps wet for hours.

"Sian!" her panicked call for her husband and Anar interrupted over Anar's communicator, aborting the discussion of the colony's future. The pit her fear, the dark and cold and Nadya's frail condition her daughter's enemy, the grotto on her mind. Twelve of them left for the grotto armed with torches, aided by the string of crescent moons and starlight. Sian descended into the pit with four others, desperate not to find his child. Elise hovered beside Anar at the console in Janice's laboratory. Petting and cradling her son now innocently asleep, unaware of his sister's absence as his mother and grandfather impatiently watched the short range scans jerk across the display. The youngest woman of the village, twenty-six to her twenty-seven, the one she called the tramp, pregnant herself with a third man's child she announced just this evening at the meeting, citing concern for this one's well-being and pain for the past two killed in the Klingon attack, posed alert next to her, ready to console or assist.

"Nadya," Elise pointed before Anar spoke his words, the scans locating her daughter alive and on the path home from the Federation shuttlecraft.

"She's with Ziyal," Anar recognized the energy readings of the Cardassian child's soul.

She was alive was all Elise cared. She fled to collect her daughter, leaving her son safe in the comforting arms of the tramp.

"Call them to return from the grotto and out from the pit," Anar instructed the child of his village he simply called child, not tramp. Honoring her as she honored them and would with the birth of her child five months from then.

"Anything?" Kira greeted him exiting the Town Center behind Elise's slipping footprints in the mud.

"Yes, we have her. Three kilometers…" he glanced at the tricorder in Kira's hand.

"Three kilometers?" Kira accused.

"Yes," Anar politely reached for the tricorder. "We appreciate the assistance, but we really do prefer…"

"Don't tell me what you prefer," she slapped his hand away, "when you have a child missing three kilometers from home!"

"In the middle of the night," Anar agreed. "That no one knows about for hours …You have to understand Nadya…"

Kira stalked off, tracking Elise. Anar nodded. "No, that's wrong. You don't have to understand anything."

He caught up with her in a running race that was beginning to become reminiscent of the one the evening before, one, this evening, for which he really did not have the time. His words were polite though firm. "The tricorder is out of the question. A violation of your Prime Directive, if you persist."

She was silent, staring at the Cardassian field unit he carried.

"Out of the question," Anar simply repeated, regardless. "Though you are welcome to attend, welcome to stay. Bashir and Commander Dax will be here in the morning anyway. It makes no sense to return to the shuttle at this time tonight, I am certain Nadya is fine. Any vigil we post will have to do with Nadya's past difficulties with unsettling dreams."

She slapped the tricorder into his hand and walked off, following the general path Elise had taken, he moved to stop her but Sian was behind him, grabbing for his arm and news of Nadya. "She is with Ziyal," Anar reassured.

Sian's face whitened, not understanding him at first and thinking of his daughter as dead. "What does that mean?"

"No harm, certainly. Only that I can't guarantee what you will …or will not see…" he glanced in the direction Kira had taken and his son was now running the same as he.

They saw nothing. Only Nadya on her feet, rubbing sleep from her eyes three miles from home. Sian reached her moments ahead of Elise to whisk her into his arms. That was good. It was time his son exerted himself. Reestablished his position with his daughter stagnated since the trauma of the Klingon attack and Nadya's witness to her grandfather's near death. Time Nadya began remembering her father whom she loved as he loved her, as they all did. Anar stroked his granddaughter's head as her mother clung to her and her father gripped her to his heart.

"He kissed her," the child explained her actions to the three of them, fortunately for Bashir and the Trill Dax, Kira not a member of her close-knit audience. "The Federation kissed the Klingon's mate. I wanted to know why, and what they were doing with Dolores' grotto. Ziyal told me if I had questions about kisses I should ask you. But that the work they were doing was important to Janice and I should help Commander Dax collect better samples tomorrow."

"Ziyal…" Elise stared into the blackness for the soul that remained invisible to her. "Here with you, child, now?"

"She can't see her," Nadya agreed, less perplexed by her mother's blind eyes than those of Kira Nerys.

Her daughter was perplexed. Elise's gaze turned from where the Cardassian child either stood, or stood no longer, for Anar standing there without explanation as to how a mother could be that blind. She reserved any comment on the phenomenon for later.

"Soon perhaps," Sian reassured Nadya, "the same as all of us; Ziyal is right though, you say nothing of kisses to anyone."

"No, no one," Elise concurred. "Nor of Ziyal to Kira."

"We come of our own accord," Nadya nodded to Anar.

"So we do," he smiled.

They moved on ahead toward home, he stopped at Kira lagging in the background of the family reunion. "Do you want Bashir?" was her natural question.

"Actually," Anar admitted as they also began walking the miles for the town, "Nadya just came from the shuttle -- I would suspect Doctor Bashir and Commander Dax are unaware. She was curious about the field studies and not satisfied with the samples collected…Wouldn't you be curious?" he smiled at her irritation. "Weren't you curious? More independent than one might think appropriate for your age?"

"The Cardassians maybe," Kira assured.

"We only stopped fighting Cardassians eighteen months ago," Anar reminded. "The Federation. Klingons…a week or so," his humor returned to stay along with his desire to entice and intrigue her the way she intrigued him. "And actually, the only fight that stopped was the physical one, not the one of principle, and never will. Nadya was just verifying the principles that govern the study to her satisfaction. The Federation as old an enemy to her in her short life as the Cardassians are to you and I."

"Why nightmares?" Kira asked. "I mean other than…" she waved when he looked at her.

"Klingons?" he said. "No reason other than Klingons and her witness to what she thought was my death. You'll find the bat'telh a perfect fit," he agreed when she stared at his chest remembering the scarred circles of flesh.

"I'll take your word for it," she declined any need for personal investigation.

"How disappointing." He swayed on his heels like Dukat, his head bent close to her, his voice low and whispering, and couldn't have known how alike her return look was to the one she would normally give the defiler. "Here I was hoping you would at least be interested in listening to my story. Nadya is extremely close to Janice, as she has always been extremely close to me. Janice is gone. If I interpret her absence as a deep loss, I cannot fathom how it must feel to one of Nadya's age, other than like a death. The fact the dead did not die is of little comfort in the middle of the night."

"Stay where?" Kira did feel the need to verify that much.

He was biting his smile along the inside of his mouth. "Do you know I can't remember the last time I had to pursue a woman, or when I even may have wanted to?"

"Oh, well," Kira said.

"Yes," he agreed. "You may stay in the Town Center, any mat or cot of your choosing. You'll find several as long as you don't mind they have seen their share of ill, dead, and Cardassians wounded or just resting. I'll be with my family, and swear I will call if I find Bashir's attendance preferred now, rather than later."

Nadya had her own ideas about now versus later. She lay down on the mat next to her tiny brother to apologize for her neglect and kiss his sleeping head. "I think we should call the Federation to come now. The light is limited; we want to have enough time. If I'm in attendance Kira can come with Commander Dax and I to the grotto, and Anar can stay to help Doctor Bashir in case he has any questions about Dolores."

"Perhaps in a few hours," Elise agreed. "You'll have ample light and ample time, don't be concerned. Sleep, daughter, sleep."

She slept well for the next few hours. Better than her elders posting their vigil, unnecessary other than to relieve their own concerns. The entrance of the soul Ziyal into the child's troubled life was ironic in that its timing was so perfectly Cardassian and divine at the same time. Surrogate. Pacifier. Guardian, friend. Elise did not dispute the soul walking among them, Ziyal's purpose, or her intent. A simple statement she offered Anar for his contemplation regarding the unenlightened eyes of Kira Nerys. "I would see my daughter if she were the whore her mother was."

"Presuming she was daughter, presuming Ziyal was there…She was there," he acknowledged before Elise had to ask. Lagging in the background as Kira had lagged, sad longing of separation in her gaze watching Kira, a smile on her face for the distraught family now relieved. "They were close, as they are close. I admit no explanation as to why…other than possibly compassion in Kira's heart," he smiled at Elise. "Not only rage and fight; a mother's heart. Similar to yours, surpassing mine. Though I agree, I would know my son, never having seen him, or aware of his existence; I would know my son, as I did…It's the mate I remain uncertain about," he concluded wryly. "Though the attraction is definitely there."

"You're hopeless," Elise's hand cracked his arm and went to brew him some breakfast tea. "Only you would see mates among the Prophets' chosen…Janice and Anon are different," she insisted arbitrarily to him following her with questions poised on his lips. "The seed you seek to plant is planted. Its vine of Shakaar and Dukat and is done. Anon of his father, Janice as much of you as Nadya is of me."

"What about Bashir and the Trill Dax?"

She was thinking of them. Irking her background of a conservative sect their indiscretion was of little interest to her. The convenience of their presence, their potential for usefulness, perhaps mildly interesting she had to admit. "Nadya is Janice's shadow as much as she is yours. I know less than either of you of Janice's experiments, though I know the grotto and the graves you dug, including the one that was to be mine. The Trill is as strong as any of us. She can share the burden of her samples and my child's weight should Nadya grow tired on her trek."

"The Trill is twice the strength of any of us," Anar assured, "to survive her choice of a Klingon for her mate."

Elise shrugged. "Perhaps something Bashir would find interesting, not me. You and Sian can share the burden of my son, carrying his weight wherever you go, ensuring his wraps remain clean. Nadya and I, we leave for the grotto with Kira and the Trill as soon as the Federation arrives…I agree with my child," she said to him looking at her, "you should call them now to leave, if they haven't left. The light will be here in two hours."

They were there with the light.

The morning brighter than the two before her, fewer clouds in the azure-blue sky, the hills in the distance remained shrouded in a heavy, milky mist. Kira was solemn and preoccupied waiting for them in the town square, Dax beginning to wonder if Anar truly was as difficult to deal with as she intimated why she just didn't put him in his place. Call time-out and take a break instead of spending every waking moment with him and all others, contrary to Benjamin's orders of spending every waking moment with her and Julian, and all others.

Julian gave every indication of thinking something else, quickly making himself scarce with the hasty invitation, "Stop by when you have a chance" upon first sight of the look on Kira's face that, in his mind, could only spell disaster. He fled for the sanctuary of the Town Center and Lange's laboratory where he could pretend to be interested in examining the mummy as much as he pretended to be interested in everything else, excluding the child, including her?

Dax had to bite her tongue. It was the first time she felt any nervousness about her decision to become involved with Julian. Uncertain if the doubts inspired annoyance or simply a resigned "I should have known" over his quick about-face before being confronted by Kira, if they were even about to be confronted by Kira. Elise was on her way out of the Town Center with Nadya, Julian stopping her with the equally hasty request "I'd like to talk with you and Sian. "

"Tell the Trill and Kira we'll be right there," Elise pushed Nadya on to haughtily eye Bashir, daring him to accuse or chastise her child. "What about?"

Bashir's tone was curt, hardly thinking of midnight visits, but instead the child's poor health that had to change. "You know very well what about. I believe we'll just stop the nonsense now and get down to deciding what's best for Nadya."

"Therapies," Elise assured as coldly. "You talk to Anar. Anything he doesn't like he'll tell you. Anything Sian and I don't like, we'll tell him. That's the order of things, Federation."

"Chain of command," Bashir agreed. "Sorry, but I keep forgetting where I am and who I'm dealing with." He left her there on the steps while he made his way into the Town Center, through the maze of connecting corridors to Janice's laboratory and the mummy to begin his analyses before someone told him he had to stop.

"What's the matter with him?" even Kira noticed something as Bashir vanished.

"Well…" having difficulty extending Julian the benefit of the doubt, Dax nevertheless also decided to play it as safe as she could. "Not to accuse anyone, but Julian and I are pretty certain we had a visitor last night…"

"Nadya," Kira was already nodding.

Nadya? That wasn't who came to Dax's mind. Nor whose feet fit the footprints she noticed when they were about to leave despite the dark, but then she had taken the time and made the effort to notice them.

"Unless she was wearing her father's boots," she offered Kira's quizzical expression. "You're right. Who says those footprints couldn't have been there before and I didn't notice them until I looked."

Kira knew she was right. "Her father was here; I was with them."

"As we could have had any number of visitors within the last two days," Dax agreed. "I said you were right."

"I know I'm right!"

"Maybe it's me," Dax admitted at that point.

"No, it's not you," Kira was not in an agreeable mood no matter what. "It's everything; this place; everything."

Clandestine love affairs hardly weighing on her mind, what did prey was a prevailing sense of déjà vu in a town on a world where she had never been before in her life, with a man who persisted in reminding her of Dukat. She was beginning to think intentionally, never mind what Anar thought about her. If anything seemed out of place it wasn't the cold, the dark, the confusing spiral of corridors haunted with death, it was the mines in the distance and the eight moons overhead. She looked down on Nadya joining them and asking eagerly, "Did I ruin your samples?"

"Were you trying to?" Dax responded with a friendly laugh.

"I didn't understand what you wanted," Nadya shrugged. "It's all right, I do now."

So did Dax even before Elise walked up to them with a field pack slung over her shoulder. "The grotto…" she said. "Oh, but…"

"You can't have Dolores' mud," the child explained, "it's under water this time of year; this high," she held her hand chest level. "I know. Janice got stuck and I had to run and get Anar to help us."

The anecdote from Lange's life and career did not surprise her. Dax smiled. "Maybe even a little deeper than that this year. Don't misunderstand me, we appreciate your wanting to help…"

"Then accept it," Elise was there. "Anar tells us you have the strength of your mate. What's a little mud to a Klingon? If it's the coldness of the water that concerns you, it doesn't concern me."

Dax believed that; she still smiled. "Not really. No more than I'm concerned about leaving Doctor Bashir unattended while Kira and I return to the grotto regardless of who may or may not have been visiting the shuttle last night or any other time; it wasn't only Nadya. There was an adult with her -- "

"You saw us?" the child gasped startled, quieted immediately from saying anything else by her mother's hand pressing on her shoulder.

"Your footprints, anyway," Dax agreed with a nod for Kira. "Julian and I already settled the argument between us earlier over who does what and who goes where, including you; Julian won. But then he's right. We're here for a reason, as I'm sure we were asked to be here for a reason."

"So let's go," Kira said impatiently.

Dax sighed. "So much for Benjamin's orders and my being the one with the strength of Worf…Sorry," she admitted, "but I have to say, unconcerned, I'm not exactly comfortable with leaving Julian anywhere without one of us there?"

Kira snorted. "He'll be fine."

"Oh, I know," Dax was looking at Elise. "I know."

The woman's shadowed eyes slid away from hers to inspect Kira. "You were there. My child was alone."

"She was alone," Kira nodded. "Could we just..?"

Dax supposed they could. "But as far as you…" Dax smiled at Nadya.

"You don't like me. I knew you wouldn't no matter what I did."

"What an odd thing for you to say," Dax studied the stubborn clench of the child's jaw. "Of course we like you. Doctor Bashir simply also wants to help…"

"The little mutant," Nadya agreed.

She really didn't have to say that. Dax could already hear Julian's words. There was an explanation for them, certainly no excuse. Frustration? Anger? That and neither of them knew the child was there. She crouched down, short of taking the child's hand in hers. "If I apologize for Julian's insensitivity, will you accept that he truly does want to help you? That if he's angry, he's hardly angry with you, or anyone here? More with those who aren't here any longer, the Klingons? Anything and everything else that has happened, especially to you? And he very well can't help you, can he? Not today if you and your mother come with Kira and I to the grotto?"

"Maybe even this high," the child's hand reached as high as her head in demonstration of the water level. "She was so coarse and gray we thought she was Cardassian at first."

Until they saw her face. This one's face looked like her mother's probably. There was a resemblance to Elise, a slight one to Anar, a greater one to his son Sian. To the family's true black sheep? Her uncle Hawk? With his large skull and vacant eyes that Dax recalled? The resemblance was there. Created and accentuated by the nakedness of her face, clean of eyebrows and lashes beneath her balding head of thin brown hair.

"You're right," Dax finally replied. "It can't wait a day? Even though it really is a little bit more complicated than that." She stood up. "We're only here a few more days, and Julian does want to make sure you're at least all right." When they left. Until whatever new horror saw its way to befalling her. She could also hear those words. Julian maddened to the point that he couldn't get any angrier, or so he had said.

"If he needs a day, we'll extend it a day," Kira was saying while Dax toyed with the idea of activating her com badge and notifying Julian his patient would be unavailable, or leaving him to find out for himself.

"Actually," Dax smiled, "he wants to do more than that…excuse me…" she stepped away to hail Julian.

"Yes, well, that rather settles that, doesn't it?" he answered when she advised him of the change in plans, probably even angrier than he sounded, certainly emphatic.

"Well…" Dax wasn't quite sure what it settled, or if it settled anything. "Kira's saying we can delay departure a day if you're concerned about rejection -- "

"Of course I'm concerned about rejection," he sputtered over her. "I'm concerned about a great many things -- excuse me, but there's a bit of a difference between genetic intervention with a fetus, and genetic intervention with a grown child. So, no, I beg to differ, that's not all we can do -- certainly not all I can do…"

"Julian…" she tried at that point.

"Except there's nothing to discuss," he reminded. "Nothing to talk me out of, because you can't…What's he going to do, say no? She's his own blood, for God's sake."

He signed off at that point after reminding her to take care of herself and, so, no, perhaps fear of discovery wasn't on his mind. Perhaps he was only anxious to actually "do something" rather than the nothing they had spent doing the past two days.

"What's he want to do?" Kira was curious and at her elbow.

Other than take Nadya and her mother back with them to the station where he had the equipment he didn't begin to have there? Dax had her you-know-Julian look on her face. "What do you think he wants to do?"

Kira thought about the question, not for very long. "Well," she shrugged, "he's right. What's Shakaar going to do?"

"Say no?" Dax agreed. "She's his blood also. A few strains removed…"

"She's his blood," Kira assured.

Dax nodded. "Actually I was thinking more about Benjamin."

"I'll work it out with Benjamin."

"And Shakaar," Dax quite accurately suspected. "Well…" she sighed, resigned to Kira's notorious stubborn streak, not only Julian's. "That only leaves who?" The mother? The father? The child herself? And, of course, her grandfather, Anar. Sure to be comfortable and reasonable about leaving his granddaughter to the care and responsibility of the Federation on the heels of Janice Lange.

"My responsibility," Kira corrected, confident as Benjamin nothing would have happened to Lange or anyone if she, like Benjamin, had been made aware of Lange's association with Dukat from the beginning.

"I'll also leave you to work it out with Anar," Dax volunteered, while she continued to work on Julian. Somehow getting him to understand approaching Benjamin with the issue of boarding Nadya should not include springing the child and her mother on him, as in theirs being the first two faces Benjamin saw disembark the Defiant after he saw the faces he expected to see.

"And brother," Kira interjected over her thinking, apparently thinking similar thoughts. "We can't insist the woman leave her son behind; he's five months old!"

"And her brother," Dax agreed.

"So, let's go," Kira gestured.

"Where?" Dax checked.

"The grotto!" Kira said. "We're just wasting time."

Probably why Julian made his getaway when he did. Nothing to do with her, fear, a guilty conscience or cowardice. Everything to do with not wanting to become involved in yet another rhetorical discussion about something or another; he had also had his fill of those.

"Let's go," Dax gestured. When they returned some eighteen hours later Julian was wearing a lather of Lange's frightful colored cream, artistically smeared underneath and along the side of his blackened purple eye.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Madness," Bashir announced when Anar saw to joining him in Janice's laboratory where even notes were out of the question for a host of catalogued samples buried in a mountain of ones that weren't. He gave up early to pursue a detailed examination of the mummy, one he was intending to perform anyway. "You can begin with the idea that a team of scientists could make sense out of this chaotic clutter in two months time, hardly a week."

"Unfortunately Janice was preoccupied with trying to save lives, Doctor, rather than spend time dictating and documenting her study, however shortsighted or disorganized that might make her in your eyes."

"And you can end with your granddaughter taking off on some jaunt without even bothering to consult me." Bashir's waving tricorder slammed down on the examining table where the mummy lay insufficiently protected by her low-level sterile field, exposing her to any number of biohazards. The area was contaminated, however uncontaminated Anar insisted it remain. That not only insured any analysis would be markedly different than those performed by Janice and not seen to being documented so he could run comparison analyses, it tacked a question on the actual value of the mummy other than that of general interest.

Anar stared at the examining table for no reason other than he did. "As at the time there was no reason to believe Janice wouldn't always be with us. No reason to believe should she ever leave, she wouldn't return. And certainly no reason," his eyes stared into Bashir's, "to think she would ever be unable to communicate or remember what she had not taken the time to transcribe."

"I'm talking about Nadya," Bashir snapped. "Yes, she's been ill for six years. Yes, it can wait a day. It can wait six months if you don't mind the idea of your granddaughter living in pure hell, which apparently you don't, whereupon I do. I can't guarantee success if I'm not allowed the time to monitor the child for rejection or failure. I certainly can't guarantee anything if I'm not allowed to treat her in the first place."

"There will be ample time…" Anar nodded.

"She'll be too damned exhausted by the time she returns. Are you callous or simply dense? The child is ill."

"Tomorrow," Anar finished. "More than the child's body has to be ready, Doctor. The child has to be. Perhaps that isn't the way it is in your culture, but it is in mine. It isn't an immediate matter of life or death. As neither can you, in your own words, guarantee success, and therefore I will understand any risk there is for Nadya. Her parents will understand it. The child, if we can help her to. Failure, I understand. Rejection, I wait for you to clarify. Nadya's leukemia is in remission. Janice had extensive equipment when she first came to us. Her shuttle was a Bajoran science vessel. We salvaged what we could of her equipment after the second Klingon attack; they certainly didn't take anything with them other than the replicators. That one you see is obviously Cardassian, as obviously a gift from Anon. It can replicate clothes and crude implements from the raw materials we have available to us. What it can't do is raise Nadya from the dead if you in your determination to cure her, kill her; can you?"

"No. I came here prepared to collect plant clippings and soil samples. I would be out of my mind to attempt to do anything more than restore Nadya's immune response with the equipment I have with me -- which is my point!" Bashir charged. "The equipment is limited. I'm limited. The procedure I propose to do, while archaic, is extraordinarily simple. A matter of intravenous administration of her father's bone marrow, which if it's accepted, will replenish hers, which is largely destroyed. Your granddaughter is dying. One of these days she just won't have the strength not to die unless extensive therapies and treatments are forthcoming. In the meantime should the leukemia recur she will die within a matter of days not months. A reason why I'd like to be able to leave here at least reasonably confident the transplant is accepted, will continue to be accepted, and for that I need time to monitor her response, particularly since the best that can be offered her is less than ideal."

"Only eighty-two percent ideal," Anar understood. "You continue to underestimate what were Janice's abilities. Why do you think the leukemia is in remission? Nadya's had four such techniques performed. All of them successful to a certain extent, for a period of time."

"I don't think anything," Bashir assured. "I know I'm the doctor. The mutation at the cellular level is extensive. I can make adjustments for that given the opportunity, given the time."

"As do you for all your gifts lack Janice's grace," Anar's gaze dropped back to the mummy so patiently and peacefully waiting her turn. "If I were the one in charge of such things the worlds would find you in attendance to the dead, not Janice. Where respect has likewise been earned and should be forthcoming, though the ears aren't alive to hear, and the mouth isn't alive to tell if it isn't. Be advised what you don't say is nevertheless very clear. As what you do say be advised the walls do have ears. Hearing and repeating words other than mutant or monster."

It took Bashir a moment to understand what he was saying. When Anar looked up, if the doctor was angry before, he was angry now, tightly in control. "So there was someone out there. Apparently you. Dax insisted she heard someone, or something. Before you misinterpret my request for discretion as some sort of dreaded fear of reprisal, understand the only fear I have is for Jadzia. She is legally, at least, married to Mister Worf. Who you may have noticed is Klingon. Need I elaborate?"

"Certainly not to feed my interest, Doctor," Anar assured. "I have none."

"Then why even bother mentioning it?"

"A fair exchange of information. I won't tell, if you won't tell, in other words."

"About what? You? First Minister Shakaar or your brother Hawk? How alike the three of you aren't and in fact are with your dangling jars of cream and video cameras, you apparently not above waving either or all. Should I be surprised or simply disgusted, which I am. By the three of you."

"Kira," Anar corrected harshly. "Specifically the child Ziyal."

Bashir blinked, dumfounded. "You're mad, of course. Quite clearly."

"That's not an answer."

"To what's hardly a question," Bashir agreed. "The only child Kira's ever birthed was Chief O'Brien's. And even he wasn't their child, but rather Keiko's whom Kira carried in surrogate."

"I'm not questioning the child's parentage."

"No, you're questioning Kira's relationship with Ziyal's father, otherwise known as Dukat. Mad, as I said. I ought to do Kira a favor and tell you, yes, she was Dukat's mistress, but I'd rather not contribute to maligning her, if that's all right with you."

"I believe you mean protection," Anar retorted harshly. "Kira rambles because she's terrified; of that I am convinced."

"If Kira rambles," Bashir insisted, "she rambles because she's not allowed herself to grieve for Ziyal. Likely out of some reason as idiotic of being afraid someone like you would interpret her grief as evidence of a love affair rather than an innocent friendship with a young woman she cared for; one who just happened to be the daughter of Gul Dukat. In the meantime, beings must grieve. I don't care what species they are. Human, Bajoran or any other."

"Grieve…" Anar repeated slowly.

"Grieve," Bashir assured. "For some odd and obviously erroneous reason Kira must feel extraordinarily comfortable with you to bare her emotions to that extent…or at least consider baring them. In any event, if I were you I wouldn't consider revealing Jadzia's and my relationship regardless of how satisfying, or dissatisfying you find the answer. I might have to forget I'm a doctor. I haven't done that too often, and I'd much prefer not to ever have to do it again."

Anar chuckled. He couldn't help himself. While Bashir remained strikingly hostile he couldn't be serious with his threat; he told him as much. "If you were anyone else I might be tempted to believe you."

"Do I give a damn?"

"That would require common sense, Doctor." Anar walked away from him to stop, speaking with his back still turned. "If I agree to commit Janice's mummy to you, I trust the exams and analyses will incorporate a mandatory respect for the being she once was…the divinity of the soul she's become?" He turned back around to Bashir frozen in silence and rage. "We need the recognition as a Bajoran colony even if we don't need, or want the Federation's attention; we'll take it, however, obviously. Deal with it. Provided it is within reason. That is the offer on the table. The only offer on the table: legitimacy. But then as much as we love and admire Anon, Pfrann, Tan, all of them, we really don't want to become Cardassian; not this lifetime."

"To the devil with your colony," Bashir exploded. "Who you'll remand to me is your granddaughter for the therapies I can give her; for the life you took from her, the mother you killed, no one else. Damn Klingons, Cardassians, and damn you. How can you stand there in your hypocrisy? How can you stand yourself?"

"To the contrary, Doctor," Anar had already reared, "who you denounce as extortionist, voyeur, partisan, is a nine-year-old child. Interested, confused, suspicious and wary of the Federation, as we all are, for reasons not needing to be defended. As I insist the only interest in Kira's past is one of protection, not condemnation. Even if I'm forced to accept the innocence of Ziyal, that acceptance will never extend to Dukat. Kira is terrified of him, I maintain, not her reputation. Of him. By him. It plagues me to understand why -- for personal reasons, I admit," a thin smile returned to cool his tight lips. "And others far more esoteric. None of which have the least to do with madness of mind or jealousy that the woman I find interesting may have found herself at the bidding of his Prefect in some distant past, or merely a target of his abuse of her friendship with the child Ziyal, both equally enraging thoughts. But then I've never been a doctor, Doctor. Quite like you with your genetic enhancement, I've come to prefer my new life to my old. Still, like you, that can change, with surprisingly little difficulty -- I suggest you keep it in mind! Together with your affairs behind closed doors. We're not interested, and we prefer not to have it shook in our children's faces!"

He spun away from him that time to leave. Incensed, Bashir sprung. Probably as much in desperation as anger, uncertain as to where the argument would be going from there. Thinking of Worf. Counting the days left to the end of the week, paralyzed it wasn't nearly enough time for Jadzia not to falter in her commitment to him if confronted. Unconvinced it wasn't Curzon's plan all along; not regain, but maintain control. He lost control. Grabbing for Anar's shoulder, feeling his index finger compact and fracture as his fist connected with Anar's jaw.

More shocked than hurt, Bashir's surprising strike had Anar staggering back a step or two before he caught his balance to touch his cheek in disbelief and stare at the doctor. Bashir nodded content and satisfied, his voice calm as he shook his bruised hand. "Something I believe Jadzia owes you."

"If that's the case…" Anar snapped alive and lunged. Startled, Bashir reacted quickly enough to block the first punch and attempt to connect with another himself before a combination of superior strength and skill found him strangling in the Bajoran's powerful grasp as Anar slammed him up against the wall. Dazed, Bashir came to his senses on the floor, Anar standing over him.

"Something," Anar said as Bashir gingerly touched his blackened eye, "I believe Janice owes you."

Bashir nodded. "Can't be for her life, must be something else."

"Must be," Anar offered him a hand up; he accepted it. "O'Brien isn't the only one whose behavior was offensive, so was your own. Be glad that punch came from me rather than Anon."

"Yes, well, be glad mine came from me rather than Jadzia," Bashir suggested. "Quite all right. Guilty as charged, apologies in order and all of that, I hope you don't mind if I refrain from suggesting we shake hands. My aspiring to seduce your daughter really isn't the same as your willful assault of Jadzia…hardly the same," he touched his eye again. "I didn't assault Janice, never even verbally, whereupon your brother did. You'll accept your responsibility in that nightmare, the same as you'll accept your responsibility in the one you created for Nadya. You'll agree to her returning to DS9 with me for appropriate care because you have no choice but to agree."

"If I were the man of substance you are."

"You can't know the nightmare Jadzia has had to live!" Bashir's fists clenched, his voice shrill with desperation. "You have no right to pass judgment on what you can't begin to understand. Jadzia is my mate, not Worf's. But for a bizarre set of circumstances she would be my wife, not Worf's -- "

Anar caught his wrist. "In which I have no interest. To repeat. Behind closed doors are my instructions to you, not advice. I presume apart from that you will in turn accept your responsibility when the Klingon kills his mate for infidelity. In the meantime, I will take your advice of Nadya returning to Terok Nor with Nerys under consideration. Though understand it will not be without her mother -- "

"Of course it won't be without her mother," Bashir snapped. "I've no intentions of turning your world, or anyone's upside down. Kindly stop trying to turn mine!"

"Agreed," Anar said and left.

"Agreed," Bashir sputtered. Agreed to what? To whom? He hadn't agreed to anything. Wanting to hail Jadzia to hear the reassurance of her voice he managed not to, not wanting to alarm or upset her with what was truly nonsense. Wanting to pursue Anar and demand his word seemed absurd when all he'd come away with was the man's word. Rattling with nervous energy, frustration, and anger to the point he wasn't certain that he wouldn't just shake apart the throbbing pain in his hand commanded his attention. He grabbed his tricorder to evaluate the damage, forgetting about his eye until he sat at the console soothing the mending fracture and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the readout display half-swamped, as every square millimeter of the console was swamped, under Janice's extensive collection of samples. In reflex he moved to turn the massage on his face and stopped, the vibrant array of samples suddenly entrancing, his bio-repair unit forgotten in his hand.

Whatever came over him? Was sure to be one of Dax's first questions. Curiosity? Was probably one of the better answers. Other than that? The availability of the samples and a test subject? He hardly threw caution entirely to the wind. Diligent in screening the exact condition of his eye before he settled on the first sample his hand touched. Dotting the cream along the bruised flesh, careful to keep it on the surrounding tissue only, the acidic compound momentarily causing his eyes to water. He grabbed for his tricorder, but everything was fine. The tearing cleared almost immediately. He supposed if the cream felt anything, it felt cool. From there he resumed the repair of his injured hand and set off on a fascinating stroll through the mummy's 4,000-year-old thorax for the next several hours.

"I'm sure there's a story behind that," Dax ventured when she showed up to find him sitting at the console in the process of applying a fresh lather of Lange's miracle.

Bashir grinned with an indication for her to have a look at the data log. "Zero change. Or at least no difference in what one would normally expect with an abrasion after…fourteen hours is it, really?" he expressed surprise with a check of the time.

"I don't know," Dax picked up the log with a smile, "is it?"

"Close enough," Bashir hopped down off his stool to take the padd out of her hand and pull her arms around him. "Should be the fifth. Only the fourth -- application," he clarified. "I lost track of the time. Understandable. It really is fascinating."

"Fascinating," Dax agreed with a cautious poke of the caustic smelling smear to have a look at what lay underneath.

Bashir laughed. "The mummy; Dolores. Or whatever her name is. She's fascinating. The ointment's fairly worthless; said that, didn't I? Four separate applications and there's no affect -- not on closed tissue injury anyway. Don't know about open. But then I certainly wasn't about to gouge myself to find out. No more than I was inclined to sock myself in the eye just to prove or disprove a point."

"Yes, you said that," Dax nodded. "And, no, of course, you wouldn't do that."

"Quite," he kissed her.

"That's cheating," she said as he kissed her.

"What's cheating? No, it isn't cheating. How is it cheating? It's hello. How are you? Glad to see you. How was your day?" he wondered softly, his face nestled comfortably against hers. Her hair stiff and smelling like organic residue. Her uniform filthy as the day before. Her jumpsuit damp under her field jacket. "Someone go for a swim? In this weather? Can't be serious. If that's not worth a scolding, I'm not quite sure what is."

"Well…" Dax was not about to say her day was apparently boring by comparison to his, if only because she didn't necessarily find his exciting. "Julian…" she asked, her tone encouraging, her finger seductively tracing the outline of his cheek, "what happened to your eye?"

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, obviously something happened to it."

"Obviously," she nodded.

"And, well," he grinned, "where should I begin? The beginning probably."

The one that included how aggravated he was to find out Nadya would not be available for treatment. Quickly graduating to the part about Anar wandering in to notify him how their secret was not their secret in an attempt to extort information about some imaginary relationship between Kira and Dukat. Dax straightened up from their cuddle listening intently.

"Can you imagine the audacity of the man?" Bashir fumed. "I was furious; I am furious. Apart from his version transcends exaggeration to an utter and complete lie…I mean, to hear him tell it you and I are little more than exhibitionists, frolicking naked in the Town Center, copulating like two nymphs, and that simply isn't true. It isn't," he stressed, not needing to, but she moved like she was preparing to move away from him and he stopped her, feeling the tension in her muscles.

"No," he acknowledged, "I wouldn't say the shuttle is exactly private. But it certainly is the extent of privacy you and I can expect to have. Surely our cabin is private. Who knew the child was there? Would even dream the child was there? Peering around corners when she wasn't rifling through the samples? Even though what I suspect actually happened as far as Nadya is she saw us outside. Where she fled after you heard her in the cargo hold. Damn her DNA inhibitor. Her DNA -- "

Dax stopped him, her fingers pressing lightly against his mouth.

"Is a nightmare," Bashir finished. "The child isn't a nightmare. Her genetic sequencing is."

"Julian, we just can't…" Dax began quietly.

"Do nothing?"

"Yes," she eyed the cream, eventually wiping it clean with the hem of her shirtsleeve to see just how willing he had been to do nothing.

"That was certainly sanitary," Bashir laughed.

She forgot to smile in return. "Julian, you have a black eye." And maybe she was wrong but when she left she didn't have this idea of the women going gaily off on their field outing, leaving the men free to start wrestling with each other in the dirt.

"Yes, I know," Bashir said. "But really what can we do, darling? Certainly not berate or pound the man into submission. I learned that the hard way. Though in all fairness I was the one who threw the first punch. I don't know what came over me, other than rage? I wouldn't say we had exactly reached an impasse, but the argument was certainly going nowhere. Anar turned away, infuriating to the point that all I could think of was to hit him, and I did. Retaliation perhaps for the punch he gave you in Quark's? I don't know. My eye is certainly retaliation for the punch I gave him."

"Julian…" she said, really not satisfied with the direction of this conversation, never mind some argument with Anar.

"What I'm saying, darling," he urged, "is I took care of it, primitively, I admit. What I'm asking is let me take care of it? If I wanted to involve you, for that matter, upset you, I would have hailed you immediately. There really was no reason to do either. If I didn't understand Janice's decision to do nothing when faced with Hawk's ultimatum, I do now. But then really what could the man truly have expected me to say to him? What could he really have expected me to do?

"Rather the same," he said as she studied him, "if I didn't understand Anon's anger, and I believe I did, I do now. It is nothing less than an invasion of privacy. Obviously in their case, much more. But in ours, it is an invasion of privacy; we were 'behind closed doors'."

Dax nodded, one of consideration. "How do you know you took care of it?"

"I don't," Bashir admitted. "Quite frankly I don't believe his only interest was informing us. I do believe it was an attempt at extortion. Less to do with love affairs and Kira than it has to do with Shakaar. He wanted our silence. To ensure it, he went looking, digging, if you will, for something, anything, to hold over us. Has his brother's appetite for the salacious that's for sure. Mad, as well. For God's sake, Kira and Dukat?"

"Misinformed, anyway," Dax shook her head, really having difficulty herself with that part.

"Grossly," Bashir suddenly grinned again. "Though I'm not quite sure which would enrage Kira more. The idea Anar thinks she had a child at age twelve. Or the idea he thinks she's older than she is."

"I think we could probably stop with the child."

"Quite," Bashir agreed. "Dukat's child."

"And do something a little more conventional with that eye," she pushed him back down on the stool.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, it's entirely possible I didn't give the cream a chance to work."

"Yes," Dax could see where that might be a factor.

"Couldn't have been more than a couple of hours," his eyes closed under the bio-unit's massage. "Would be something of a miracle to expect instantaneous results."

"Something like that," Dax said. "We're expected for dinner in ten minutes."

"Informal dress apparently," his eyes opened with a reach for the unit.

"There's informal and then there's informal," Dax pushed his hand away. "Stop that."

"What?"

"You know what," she assured.

So he did. "Why?" he quipped. "Door's closed."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Funny," Dax mentioned as they strolled into the community dining hall with their heads held high, prepared to meet the lions, the lambs, or whoever else might be waiting their chance to pounce, "but there doesn't seem to be a bruise on Anar's chin."

"Noticed that, did you?" Bashir agreed. "Perhaps I didn't hit him hard enough. Quite all right. I was just about to say…funny, but while I wouldn't go as far to say Kira appears to have been recently shampooed, you really are a dreadful sight by comparison."

"I wouldn't say I went for a swim exactly," Dax denied.

"No, and as long as you remembered to wash your hands I'm sure no one can complain…this all right?" he stopped at one of the long tables heavily laden with fruits and bread.

"Yes, that's fine…anywhere. It doesn't matter," Elise turned around from her impatient instructions to one of the men. Her son balanced on her narrow hip accentuated by her streamlined trousers and knee-high boots as filthy as Kira's, still nowhere near as filthy as Dax. She paused in her permissive wave toward Bashir to pry the meat of a skinless peach out of her son's mouth, the infant busily entertaining his own appetite and/or boredom by sucking on the piece of fruit. "No, you can't have this…where did you get this?" she scolded with a look around for her daughter before she looked down.

"He's hungry?" Nadya said.

"Yes, I know he's hungry. You're hungry; we're all hungry; sit, no, sit," she steered Nadya toward a seat at the table. "You see Kira talking to Anar, she'll be here."

"Anywhere's fine," Bashir smiled at Dax.

"Wash my hands?" she countered.

"Did you?" he grinned.

"Sit," she pulled out a chair.

"Yes, thank you," he sat down, across from Elise changing her mind about Nadya sitting until she had tossed the remnants of her brother's snack in the solid waste disposal. "Not the replicator," she called after Nadya, scurrying off into the other room. "The waste disposal."

"She knows which one," Sian set down a bowl of jellied vegetable salad for his son and platter of hasperat for the table.

"Yes, she knows which one. If she pays attention, she knows which one," Elise agreed, advising San the salad he could eat, would eat, should eat and promptly dove into with both hands to eat.

Bashir could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise and his appetite decline. The clatter of the plates suddenly seemed very loud. The talking of the people, the shuffling feet. He realized he really didn't want to be there at all, sitting down with any of them. Wondering what they were thinking behind their eyes, saying behind their hands.

"Kira's coming," Nadya was back with a stage whisper for her mother.

"I know," Elise teased, equally animated with a smoothing brush of the daughter's hair, the fragile strands clinging to the sticky residue of San's fruit.

"Here," Sian unwound the long, thin scarf wrapped around his neck for Elise to clean her hand.

"No, it's all right," Elise plucked the hairs free, with a smile for Nadya watching them float to the ground; her hand she wiped across the back of her son's shirt.

"It's falling out again," Nadya nodded. "It's okay. I like it."

"Yes, but not to eat. You and Janice, the two of you."

"You all right?" Dax asked quietly as she handed Bashir the hasperat.

"Apart from I'm about to vomit and mad as hell," his head dipped. "Quite. You?"

"Never better."

"Yes," he said. "What's it called? Not giving them the satisfaction?"

"Is that what it's called?"

"Yes," he said.

"Either that or a family," Dax smiled at Nadya, the child's legs pumping in an excited kick under the table, trying to pretend she didn't notice Kira.

"We used to have contests," she told Dax. "Janice and I."

"What sort of contests are those?"

She set her hasperat down to toss her head back, shaking the loose strands of hair free and laughing up at her grandfather. "Where's the yamok sauce?"

"Right here," he set a small cruet down in front of her with a tap of its corked top and gesture for Kira to please be seated.

"You like yamok sauce?" Bashir said surprised.

"No," Nadya made a face. "Why? Do you?"

"Well, I think it's all right in small doses. I have a friend though, yes, Garak, who enjoys it quite a lot -- "

"Ziyal's Garak?" Nadya interrupted him in excitement, and was it Dax's imagination or did the room suddenly seem extraordinarily quiet?

Bashir didn't know what to say. Reactions varying from expecting a public disclosure about him and Dax to disbelief Anar could be so determined as to turn a dinner conversation into an interrogation. "Ziyal…" he stared across the table at Kira seated at the child's side.

She nodded. "Lange explained about Ziyal and Garak in her letter."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, that would make sense…" he had to think hard for a moment as to how it would. "Yes, of course it would. After all Ziyal was Anon and Pfrann's sister. Though, no, I wouldn't…" he smiled at Nadya, "necessarily say Garak was Ziyal's…" he could feel Dax's eyes on him in forewarning to watch his wording. "Friend, of course," he smiled again at the treacherous little girl. "Yes, Garak and Ziyal were quite good friends. Rather the same as Garak and I."

"Did you see the footprints?" she asked.

"Footprints?" Bashir repeated.

"Commander Dax saw the footprints," she explained happily to Anar for some reason. "She said they were too large to be mine."

"Perhaps," Anar accepted with a call for the wine that was missing, never mind the Cardassian yamok sauce that was there. "Or perhaps a shadow in the mud."

"Yes," Elise seconded his request with a scream for the dark haired young woman seated at the adjoining long table with her men.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Yes, of course, those footprints -- outside the shuttle," he smiled at the young woman arriving breathlessly apologetic with two silver urns of wine. "Hectic day?"

"The day is fine," Elise answered for her with a snatch for the wine. "Sit; eat. Go eat like we want to eat."

"Elise is a perfectionist." The young woman had the sense and grace to have humor about her as Bashir's look flickered over Elise having a good idea what he was looking at. Odd, but he never would have assumed a Bajoran Maquis outfit would uphold the D'jarras.

"Actually…" Dax said from behind her hand.

"Actually nothing," he said. "That rather complicates things also, doesn't it? Caste discrimination?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Dax smiled. "Winn's certainly a traditionalist. That didn't stop Bajor's successful bid for admission to the UFP."

"Winn," Bashir rolled his eyes in contempt for Bajor's domineering religious leader. Fanatical and mad the woman was. "Successful, more probably in spite of Kai Winn. Hardly an example of a reasonable or sound mind. Equable perhaps to Dukat."

"True," Dax said. "But you're still wrong."

"Wrong?"

"I'll explain it later," she promised because right now for all the attention he didn't want them to incur they had just about everyone's; there was just something about those whispered private conversations.

"It's synthale," Kira contested Bashir's dilly-dallying in disgust.

"Oh, yes," Bashir picked up the urn to pass it on. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were waiting for me."

"We were just wondering about the cruet of yamok sauce," Dax explained to Nadya.

"It's for Anon and Pfrann," she said.

"For when they return," Dax understood.

"Yes. Did you tell him I apologized?"

"Apologized?" Bashir said.

"Doctor Bashir is right," Anar upheld Bashir's uncertainty and the child's innocence. "Curiosity is understood from one of your age. Apologies are not necessary."

"For the samples?" she questioned.

He couldn't help but smile. "Perhaps for the samples, yes."

"It's okay," she assured. "We got better ones -- right?"

"You're right," Dax agreed.

"Good," she yawned, her charged energy beginning to wear on her. "What time do my father and I have to meet the Federation?"

"That's you," Dax cued Bashir.

"Oh," he said. "Morning?"

"Can I eat?" she pushed her hasperat away to put her head down.

"Eat?"

"What if I swallow?" she negotiated. "Janice used to tell me to swallow…" she picked at her brother's shirt, finding a thread to twirl.

"Tired?" Elise asked.

"No," she denied as usual, her eyes closing to open, watching Dax across the table. "Did you really see the footprints?" she wondered. "Or were they just shadows in the mud?"

"We can also do something about that," Bashir argued against continuing to let the child shed like some Circassian cat when the dining hall was cleared and they waited for Anar to return to confirm Nadya's treatment was, in fact, scheduled for the morning.

"Julian…" Dax suggested what she had been suggesting, though not necessarily in so many words, "you need to try and relax."

"I can't relax," Bashir propped himself against the edge of the long table because he didn't feel like sitting. "This isn't some primitive world…"

"Yes, it is."

"No, it isn't. If it were then, yes, I could relax…I would be relaxed. Understanding, if not comfortable with their rituals. Respectful, if not appreciative of their apprehension -- these aren't some primitive people."

"Yes, they are," Dax said.

"They're not supposed to be," Bashir challenged Kira with her usual indifference toward what was obvious and self-explanatory to her and therefore should be obvious and self-explanatory to everyone else, opposed to her usual raging rants when what was obvious and self-explanatory to her failed to impress itself on anyone else.

"Who are you talking to?" she said.

"You," he assured, "I'm talking to you. The occupation's been over six years."

"Uh, huh," she said, and she was right according to Dax. The Cardassians decimated Bajor Prime and her worlds of colonies. Whatever Bajor had been was moot because it certainly wasn't much of anything by 2369 and the Cardassian withdrawal, regardless of their technologies, their intelligence, their lives. They had only recently set off to set themselves firmly back on track with Vedek Bareil's Cardassian Peace Accord in 2371 and the election of Shakaar Adon as First Minister that same year, reasonably quieting the world's internal power struggles and threats of civil war. Here the occupations by whomever along with their wars were over ten months? A year?

There were some minor discrepancies in Anar's chronology and numbers. Dax thought about that later. Right now she was listening to Julian's irritated rattle, not Anar's smooth, mildly condescending speech. In a few minutes she was listening to the two of them when Anar returned to flow across the floor in what weren't the robes of a Vedek monk but could have been. That was probably one of Julian's problems. Anar wasn't a monk. He didn't look like a monk. He looked like…?

Dax wasn't sure what Anar looked like other than far less trustworthy than he looked in more practical dress. Practical for whom? She settled a look Kira's way, sitting with her deadpan expression. Practical for those who piloted crafts when they weren't wading waist deep through gray pools of silt and mud without having to worry about their skirts or gowns getting in the way. Trousers and boots were probably far more practical for working in the fields also. That was probably why Lange wore them. For all the pretensions Lange didn't have, Anar did. No more really than the majority of them, no less.

That was probably one of Anar's problems. Julian had pretensions. Unintentionally when it wasn't intentional, he wasn't intentionally pretentious now, only obviously attempting to speak evenly and calmly, his hyperactive, kinetic-like energy underscoring how obviously. Anar was smooth, tolerant, full of wisdom. Dax noticed that later, she also noticed it now listening to him agreeably confirm Nadya's availability in the morning and debate Julian's mention of her chronic hair loss.

"At the very least it would help with the child's self image," Bashir said.

"You are presuming there is something wrong with Nadya's self image," Anar countered.

"No, I'm not saying that," Bashir groaned, seeking support from Dax because he certainly wasn't going to get any from Kira.

Dax wasn't concerned with Kira. Kira's reactions and responses, excluding Anar and the initial mentioning of Ziyal, were textbook routine. Anar's accusation, which was what it was, not an insinuation, was untrue more than it was unnecessarily inflammatory; that was not what Julian was saying, nor what he said.

Dax was more adept at undercutting than Bashir, not at all defensive. Simply factual and simply said, leaving little room for misinterpretation, less for debate. Argument was another story. But any argument would have to come from Anar's direction, not hers, making Anar argumentative, not her. "You look pretty stylish," was what she said with a smile on her face. Her hands clasped behind her back in her open, relaxed stance.

If there was one of them Anar liked without the added attraction he felt toward Kira, it was Commander Dax. He didn't miss her point; it would have been extraordinarily difficult to miss it, the same as her. Incorporating the celestial with her blended aura of insight, humor, and peace, if there was a singular facet of Commander Dax impossible to deny it was that she was an advanced intelligent lifeform. Gracious, helpful and attentive to her companions whether or not they were her evolutionary equals, which none of them were. That alone probably explained her ability to see Ziyal's footprints in the mud, less her ability to see Ziyal.

Power of suggestion probably explained Bashir's.

Anar laughed. What else could he do? The twinkle in his eyes brighter than the one in Dax's, his smile broader. Bashir, he knew, remained precariously balanced on his edge of just wanting to throttle him, take the child and the shuttle and go home.

Kira? He was at his wits end with Kira and she was at hers with him. The man was the man he was. Tall tanned and strong. The robes were the sackcloth they were. The trousers and boots, routine. She wasn't impressed enough to be bored or dazzled. He was resigned to having to try a different way. He dropped the subject of Nadya's hair Bashir had brought up to talk of quarters for the night and ideas for the evening's social plans. Knowing Kira's restless energy was as restless as his, and though it was late, it was still early. The Temple, her short walk from the Town Center, extensive conversations waiting to be had. Kira exerted herself into the conversation now to cut him off with the first sentence. "I'll show them," she volunteered.

"Well, no," Bashir said to Dax in case she had some other idea, "whether or not I want to return to the shuttle, it makes no sense to return to the shuttle." Particularly since by the time they walked there, they would have to turn around and walk back.

He fairly stalked down the corridors of the center, deaf to the thousands who had walked before, all of them haunting their world still. Pulling his field jacket off as he stalked, looking back and forth across the hall at the lengths of non-modular chambers set back in their stone casements.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "No, of course it doesn't matter," he decided. Choosing one and flinging his field jacket down on what may as well be the floor. Some sort of linen mat is what it looked like to him. In tune with his rhythm he turned around to pause in the doorway, his arms draped and pushing against the alloy frame, his mouth open as if he were about to say something.

"What?" Kira said.

"Nothing," Bashir shook his head and set off down the darkened corridor, back the way they had come. "Forgot Nadya's treatment plan, that's all. Quite all right. I know where I am. Can find my way back…"

Dax grimaced when she heard him walk into something after he rounded the corridor junction, probably the wall. "Springball?" she joked to Kira, not about Julian's coordination, but how she might like to spend the remainder of her off-hours.

Kira snorted. "I wish." A day spent wrestling the jungle underbrush of the river's banks she wouldn't mind vesting any unspent energy in a rigorous game or two. "Actually," she said, "I wouldn't mind getting a night's rest."

"That's not a bad idea," Dax agreed, opting to have a look in the chamber next to Julian's and the one across the hall; they were the same. "Does it matter?" she asked.

"No," Kira said. Truthfully unable to recall which one she had borrowed the night before.

"Easy to do," Dax nodded, counting the evenly spaced doorways along the wall; there were fifteen of them on each side. "Forget," she smiled at Kira. "Do you know what this was?"

"No…" Kira cast a half-ambitious glance around the corridor, reminiscent of one aboard a ship with its tight, uniform design. "I should. I've seen it before. Security, maybe."

"Town jail, yes." That's what Dax was thinking. "Explains why the doors work."

"Well, Anon…" Kira passed off, "apparently helped conduct some repairs."

"Or at least ordered them," Dax nodded. Foregoing mentioning Kira's distancing Anon from the name Dukat to agree how while she may see Anon Dukat doing a lot of things, she couldn't see him "sweating his butt off" as the Chief would say. Physically powerful, Cardassians were notoriously averse to performing menial tasks and manual labor, which was why they had a tendency to employ slaves to do it for them. An ancient people themselves, a world of artists, upon the military coming to power very little of their ways had changed. Thinking of that Dax was able to place something else. That's what Anar had, the Bajoran strut. Kira's strut. The one that drove the Cardassians insane.

"Definitely…" Kira was agreeing about Anon Dukat inherent laziness that had to be.

"Well…" Dax sighed with a look up the hall where Julian was yet to be found returning. "He's either lost, or involved…or found a shower. Do they happen to have…"

"No," Kira scoffed at the idea. "A town bath."

"I'll pass." Though not because she was self-conscious or unduly inhibited.

So would Kira for the same reasons.

"It's too cold," Dax laughed.

So it was. The environmental systems all supplied and controlled by Nature. It was cold outside, it was cold inside. Colder; the corridors, dank tunnels leading in and out of the Town Center frigid and numbing. "There's a sonic shower, yes, off Lange's lab. We can use that in the morning."

"The surgical suite. I forgot about that. Morning will be fine…And well," she said cleverly with another look up the corridor where Julian remained unfound, "maybe I should use the time to work on my report for Benjamin before Julian's back and pounding on the door for some reason."

"Tell him you're tired," Kira sneered, briefly eyeing the corridor herself before resettling on Dax.

Dax smiled. "Doesn't work."

"No," Kira agreed, "it doesn't."

"No," Dax said, thoughtful for a moment before she treaded carefully into the subject of Anar. "You know, if you really want to…"

"I don't want to do anything," Kira cut her off with an abrupt, sharp turn into the chamber immediately facing her.

Dax nodded as the door closed, agreeing Kira couldn't be any more comfortable here really than Julian for her own reasons, few of them having to do with Anar or his Maquis. It would be like having stepped down on Bajor Prime six years ago to find only thirty-five of them left alive.

Or at least set down on the outskirts of a remote farming village, not its Capitol city. But still it would be like stepping down to find only thirty-five survivors globally, all clustered together in this one ravaged town. She smiled up the corridor to Bashir's head cautiously peering around the corner. Her eyes grown accustomed to the darkness, she wished she could say the same for the overwhelming smell of dampness that psychologically anyway had to reek of death. There were cities out there, she knew there were, long since abandoned, silent as the mines. It would be interesting to learn whose cities they had been, whose world, before it came to be claimed by Bajor Prime four to six hundred years ago; her best guess to the age of the structures around her, dating somewhere back to Bajor's early days of space flight. Perhaps that's what Anar didn't want them to know, and knew he was opening a door to. Though the mummy was a Bajoran female in its exterior structure when lifted from her grave of 4,000 years -- Dax admitted fascination with the details of the cadaver so extraordinarily preserved -- they were a long, long, way from Bajor Prime an isolationist people for the past 25,000 years or so.

"Kira?" Bashir was mouthing as he approached her, his gesturing data padd and arching eyebrows supporting the question.

"Gone to bed," Dax turned toward their quarters where he carelessly tossed the data padd aside to discard his jacket and shirt, balancing against the wall to pull off his boots. So much for wanting to protect his study from prying eyes and hands.

"A convenient excuse?" she smiled amused for the log.

"What?" He helped himself to helping her out of her jacket.

"For staying up all hours of the night," she nodded, not that either of them could see well enough to read.

"Why? Kira say something?" he folded his arms around her.

"About Anar? No."

"Bother," he kissed her, really not interested in discussing Anar. "Half-tempted to myself. Not the details, no. But about the brief exchange of fisticuffs…Call it a minor difference of opinion -- damn!" he released her suddenly. "It's freezing in here. Aren't you cold?"

"You just noticed?" Dax laughed as he grabbed for his jacket to pull it on.

"More preoccupied with the stench," Bashir eyed the mat with trepidation.

"It's a Cardassian bed roll."

"Yes." One merely unrolled and spread out. He knew that probably somewhere in the back of his mind. Caring more than he probably wished to. "Telltale smell. Doubt if I'm the only one on the verge of vomiting…"

"Julian…" she reminded as he exited into the corridor following what could hardly be called a preliminary cautious check for occupants.

"Quite all right," he said. "Has to be another one of them around here somewhere. There's two of us, after all, as I'm sure there were far more than one of them borrowing on Anar's hospitality -- yes," he was quickly satisfied to find one conveniently right next door, reasonably clean as the other one.

"At least in the dark," Dax helped him roll the stiff insulated pad so they could get out of there before Kira's senses roused her from her meditation and had her wondering about the commotion and voices out in corridor.

"No, she can't hear us," Bashir maintained as they snuggled down under the warmth of the second roll and their jackets. "Certainly not about to conduct a bed check."

"No," Dax wasn't thinking that.

"Good," Bashir kissed her; no more inclined to think about anything than he was a few minutes before. "Private as the shuttle could ever be, I insist. Not breaking any rule."

That logic might be something that was briefly flitting through Dax's mind however, no, that wasn't it either.

"Why I would be tempted to tell Kira," Bashir explained when asked, "is it's hardly our begging for his silence Anar wanted, but our silence. Two can play that game. I'd like to hear his answer as to why the exchange of fists when asked by Kira. Wouldn't you?"

"No," Dax said, hardly needing to give the proposal much thought to determine it really wasn't worth the risk.

"The devil it's not. The devil there's any risk at all. I could hear him trying to divulge our affair in the midst of what? Accusing Kira of one with Dukat? I think not. Simply a matter of bringing that to his attention…what?" he laughed at her watching him. "I'm not the devious one, he is. No more than I'm the one bogging us down with all this needless walking. It's a delay tactic, I'm telling you. For whatever reason, control more than likely. That's all; control. Whatever he thinks he's controlling. I'm not the one with the misplaced priorities, I'm the doctor being denied the chance to treat a patient."

"You'll be able to take care of Nadya tomorrow," she assured.

"We'll see. In the meantime, yes, if I could get that out of the way then maybe I could find the time and interest in focusing on some mummy…"

"You're interested," she nodded.

"Plants and trees," he agreed, enjoying the closeness of their bodies. "Rather the same as I would just like to spend some time focusing on you. Sleep I can probably do without…the same as this jacket," he sat up to cast it aside for good this time, settling to smile at her beautiful face smiling back into his, his hand lightly combing its way through her loose hair.

"My God, I love you," he said. "Kill anyone who tried to hurt you; I would. Odd thought. Odder still perhaps feeling it, knowing it, above all that it's true."

"Yes, it's true," she said, talking about her feelings and him. In that way the smile on her face as misleadingly gentle as his. So don't push her, was what she wasn't saying, not to him or about him, but Anar. Don't give her a reason to prove just how inept a Bajoran would actually be attempting to pit himself against the skill and strength of a woman who wasn't a Klingon.

"My God ,you're beautiful," Bashir concentrated on her face, the softness of her flesh touching his, not the muscles in the arms around him, or the chest lying under his. "Your eyes. Smile. Welcome sight. They're sullen if they're nothing more. Empty. Robbed of their souls and personalities, I don't know. That Elise certainly is. Sian. Don't even try. Other than that one hollered down on like she was a servant."

"Comfort woman," Dax nodded.

"What?" Bashir said.

"Um, hm," she nodded. "She's pregnant. Elise is a strict matriarch. You may not

marry, but you do mate. Pledge, at least, selectively. The point of the coupling is the children you bear, hopefully female. 'Fool for a mother, fool for a father as well' is how she views the union…possibly explains Anar's interest in Kira's relationship with Ziyal," she paused, wondering now that she thought of it.

"Well, there you have it," Bashir agreed. "Can't believe it. There's what? Not but four women here. Bit absurd to start shunning or labeling each other when faced with no less than extinction, which they are extinct. Regardless of who bears one or who bears twenty-five by whomever. They're extinct. There simply aren't enough of them."

"Well," Dax said, "actually I think it's a more realistic picture than the one Anar would prefer to show. They're people, Julian. People. Some of conservative sects, others not. Their numbers large or small mean nothing other than these are the ones who survived."

"And I'm only a doctor," he shook his head at their sanctioned ignorance and bigotry. "Pregnant. That explains one's refusal for a medical screening."

"Well, that may have had something to do with wanting to be the one to make her announcement rather than you."

"Examine," he said. "Not make an announcement. What do I care? Other than the woman should have a medical screening; probably needs a medical screening for all I know. That's the point. For all I know."

"As long as that's all you do."

"What?" he said. "What?" he laughed as she smiled.

"I'm teasing you," she kissed him, marking the end to the conversation. He fell asleep on her shoulder. She lay there for a short while listening to his rhythmic breathing and the silence around her. He stirred once when she eased her arm out from under him to dress, the door sounding so loud when it opened. She looked back but he was sleeping, and she was descending the stairs of the town hall to stand in its center deciding Anar would be found at the Temple rather than home. She was right, patiently waiting in the numbing cold for him to emerge some thirty minutes later.