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Work in Progress. If you like this story, check out my other stories on the Fanfiction Net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Fonts of Wisdom websites.
I'm British, so's my spelling. Live with it.
By Marcus L. Rowland
II
"... and a medium rare Terran fillet steak with all the trimmings for the little lady," said Quark, noting their orders on his PADD.
Dawn looked at the alien, giggled, and said "I'm kinda taller than you, actually."
"But I'm meaner."
"Don't bet on it. I've had vampires running scared of me."
"Computer," said Odo, "I'd like a diagnostic on the translation circuit in this room. Miss Summers, I'm sorry, I think that there must be something wrong, that came out as..."
"As undead blood-sucking monsters? That's right. They're a problem in my universe." Quark was suddenly listening much harder. "They're stronger, faster and tougher than humans. My sister has supernatural strength and speed to fight them, I didn't get that but I picked up a few tricks."
"You're from another universe?" asked Quark. "Interested in opening trade negotiations?"
"I can only transport myself, not cargo, and I doubt we have much you'd be interested in buying anyway."
"Miss Summers is from an alternative version of Earth," said Odo, "more advanced than the version you visited when you time-travelled, but still relatively primitive by our standards."
"And we have some really nasty monsters that this universe seems to be missing," said Dawn, "demons, vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing, so you might want to leave us quarantined. Now about this food..."
"On it's way," said Quark, heading back towards the bar. "Nobody's interested in turning a profit," he muttered, "how's a Ferengi supposed to make a living..."
"Oh.. my.. god," giggled Dawn, "he sounds exactly like Principal Snyder used to, the couple of times I met him. Looks a little like him too, apart from the ears and sharp teeth. It's so weird."
"After we've eaten," said Ezri, "we'll buy you some clothes and arrange guest quarters. With the war on there isn't a huge range in the shops, but we ought to be able to find something you'll like."
"What will you need?" asked Odo.
"Well, I could use a couple of changes of clothes, underclothes, a jacket, something like leather or tough fabric, and some sort of back-pack to carry everything. Apart from that it'd be great if I could get a sword and a crossbow and something like a hunting knife if you've got them, a sleeping bag, a tent, bottled water, camping rations, that sort of thing. How can I pay for it all?"
"Actually the Federation don't use money any more," said Ezri, "except at outposts like this and when dealing with other cultures, but it has deep pockets. We'll be happy to help you. Of course anything you can tell us about the worlds you visited, magic, and so forth would be greatly appreciated."
"Sure. What do you want to know?"
"Why don't you start with your own world, tell us about that, it sounded interesting and it's probably a good starting point for everything else."
"Okay. Let's see... I was born in LA in eighty-five. No, that's what I remember as being true, not what is. I was created in Sunnydale in two thousand, with the memories of having been born in eighty-five."
"Why don't you stick to life as you remember it, it'll probably save time in the long run."
"Okay, sounds good to me. Well, I was just a normal kid until ninety-five, when my sister Buffy was having a lot of trouble... she was staying out late, getting into fights, that sort of thing. What none of us knew was that she'd been called as the Slayer..."
"What do you think?" Odo asked while Dawn was trying on clothes and Ezri was helping her choose. "She doesn't seem to be a threat, although I've a squad standing by in case we're mistaken."
"She seems genuine," said Julian, "I haven't noticed any contradictions apart from the conflict between real and implanted memories she's mentioned a few times. If it wasn't for the Captain's vision and her own version of events I'd be sure that she was nineteen as she says. But the world she describes... it'd make a great holodeck setting, but I'd hate to live there."
"And she's really telling the truth?"
"I had a tricorder on her while we were in Quark's, unless she has uncannily good biofeedback control she didn't tell any lies, except when Quark asked her if she'd enjoyed her meal."
"She didn't?"
"She wasn't as enthusiastic as she pretended. She's from an era when they routinely ate real meat, not replicated protein, I suspect that she can tell the difference."
"Disgusting."
"Don't knock it until you've tried it," said Julian.
"When you said she told the truth... the things she said about her sister were true? And her friend the witch?"
"They're true, or at least she believes them to be true."
"Then the sister would be at least as strong as a Klingon," said Odo, "and the witch as powerful as one of the Q."
"We're talking about the sister of a girl who can apparently cross dimensions by an act of will and a witch who somehow enabled her to survive in deep space using a bead bracelet as her only protection. And before you ask, I scanned it, it really is just made of beads and cord. No energy signature I could detect."
"Well, at least things are quiet today, gives us time to deal with it."
"I was just thinking that myself. Maybe too quiet..."
"Hmmm..." Odo touched his comm badge and said "Odo to control, weren't we expecting a Klingon battlecruiser some time today?"
"Yes sir, the Glorious Slaughter. She should have checked in an hour ago, and ought to be docking about now."
"Where is she then?"
"Unknown, sir. There's still a communications blackout on anything more than three light-hours away. No signals in either direction."
"I see. Keep me informed. Odo out."
"This fabric is amazing," said Dawn, trying a silvery tunic top, "so soft. Same for the underwear."
"It's replicated from a natural Bajoran fibre. I don't think we'd have any problems with you taking it back to your world, there are no technological tricks involved other than the replication itself and the fibre is similar to silk."
"And I can have it any colour I want?"
"If I were you I'd go for a light blue," said Ezri, "I think it'd go well with your complexion."
"You have great taste."
"I'm cheating. Dax has been a guy as often as he's been a girl, and he knows what he liked to see when he was a guy."
"Oh.. right, I'd kinda forgotten that."
"I'm sorry, am I embarrassing you?"
"No, it's okay, Willow's gay and she must have seen me undressed dozens of times, if that doesn't bother me you shouldn't."
"Willow's happy?"
"Oh, I guess that didn't translate well. Sorry, shouldn't use slang. She's a lesbian. Prefers women to men."
"Ah, I see what you mean."
"Do you still have problems with that sort of thing in the Federation? Prejudice against homosexuals?"
"Prejudice?" Ezri looked shocked. "gender is so minor compared to species differences, anyone manifesting a prejudice on those grounds would probably be given therapy. Jadzia married a Klingon, you can imagine the problems they had. If she'd chosen another Trill of either sex I doubt anyone would have noticed."
"I haven't met a Klingon yet. What are they like?"
"Fierce proud warriors, loyal friends if they aren't planning to betray you."
"You like them."
"I've spent a lot of time with them in different lives. As I said, I married one the last time around. Commander Worf, he recovered you from the wormhole."
"You were his wife, doesn't he..."
"He took a while to get over it and really take in that I'm not Jadzia but he's fine with it now, we're working all right as friends. I think."
"I really need to thank him for rescuing me. Is there something I could get him, a present of some sort?"
"If you want to make Worf's day just buy him a drink and ask his advice about the weapons you want to buy. He'll keep you talking for an hour and try to sell you on getting a bat'leth but if you can get past that he's pretty good on sword metallurgy and adjusting the weight and balance for the user."
"A bat'leth's one of those curved two-handed things with the grips in the middle, isn't it?" asked Dawn, considering a sari-like dress with a grey moire pattern then rejecting it in favour of a pair of skin-tight trousers made of the same silky fibre.
"That's right, how did you... oh, the fiction you mentioned."
"There's a couple of swordsmiths in our world that've tried making bat'leths, my sister had one for a while. She kinda liked it, but it was too hard to conceal. I could never get the hang of using it. These days she's got the Scythe anyway, that's kinda similar but a lot more useful against demons."
"You'll have to draw it for Worf, he'll probably want to have one made."
"Sure, but it's a magical weapon and you need Slayer speed and strength to use it properly."
"Klingons are fairly strong, he might surprise you."
"Okay... I think I'm done here, if I can get another pair of these trousers in the dark gold and the rest of the underclothes and stuff they've put aside for me. I'd like the dress too, but it's not really suitable for hiking and it's gonna crease if I put it in a backpack."
"Crease?" Ezri seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. "Oh, no, it won't do that. You could tie it in a knot and leave it for a month and that wouldn't happen."
"Was that the translator there?"
"Yes, it had to explain the concept to me, modern cloth just doesn't do that."
"Okay. It'd be nice if I get to go out on the town somewhere, will it cost too much if I'm greedy and have it?"
"I doubt it. You don't need any alterations so they'll just be replicated to your order. Just costs a little power and that's not expensive."
"How do I pay?"
"You have a line of credit, just say your name and press your thumb to the PADD when they ask you."
"Great. I could get to like this, I hope you'll think I'm worth it."
"Don't worry about it, the Captain has a generous budget for entertaining guests."
"Okay... I wonder what the jewellery is like here... only kidding."
"Better not push your luck."
When they came out of the shop Julian was still waiting and Odo had been joined by a security team.
"What's the problem?" asked Ezri.
"There are four ships overdue since Miss Summers arrived and all communications outside the immediate vicinity are still down. The problem began when she came through the wormhole. The Captain wants to see her right away."
"But I haven't done anything," said Dawn.
"I'm sure that's true," said Odo, "but you must admit it is an odd coincidence. The Captain wants to ask you a few questions, he's wondering if there was something about the method you used to enter our universe that might have caused it."
"I can't think of anything," Dawn said nervously, "but I guess it's possible. How can we find out?"
"I'm not sure, but I'd imagine the Captain will have some ideas. He's in the control room, please follow me."
"We've been through this three time now," said Ezri, "and I still don't see what the problem is. Why won't you tell us how you activate the dimensional transfer?"
"Because there's a good reason not to," said Dawn, looking around the control room and noticing that most of crew there seemed tense.
"Let me ask something," said Julian. "Is it that the method could endanger you in some way?"
"uh.. yes."
"Does it have something to do with your scars?"
"Scars?" asked Captain Sisko.
"I thought you said medical confidentiality," Dawn said bitterly.
"Sometimes..." began Julian, but was interrupted.
"There's no sometimes about it," said Sisko. "She's your patient. Leave it."
There was an awkward silence, then Dawn said "It's my blood."
"What's your blood?" asked Sisko.
"If you don't force me to tell you... I think I can trust you with it. My blood opens portals. A few drops spilled in the right place will do it, enough for me to get through."
"And the scars?"
"I told you some of it already. When I was fifteen a bunch of demon cultists wanted to open a gateway for their god, so she could leave my world and get home. Something as powerful as a god needs a lot more than a few drops. They were going to bleed me to death to open the way. My sister saved me."
"Why your blood?" asked Julian, "It tests perfectly normal."
"It's some sort of magical life force deal," said Dawn, "as near as Willow could figure it, my blood is symbolic of the Key. You have to understand, a lot of magic is symbolism and intentions. But that's about all the explanation I can give you, I really don't understand it myself. It's one of the things I was hoping to find out on this trip."
"So someone could take a few drops of your blood to one of these weak spots you mentioned and it would open?"
"No, it has to be me bleeding. The blood on its own won't do it."
"You've tried?" asked Odo, surprised.
"Willow was a science nerd before she got into magic, she favours the experimental method. We tried quite a few things. It has to be me bleeding at exactly the right place. And I have no idea how I sense the right place."
"And once you've bled?" asked Sisko.
"I just step into the portal and find myself in a new world. There's a kinda rushing feeling and I'm there."
"What happens if you don't step through?"
"It closes in a few seconds. Usually nothing gets through first."
"Usually?"
"We got a weird little animal once, looked like a dopey rat. When we checked it carefully we found it was a marsupial, a little possum, had three babies in its pouch. We gave it to Cleveland zoo."
"From a world where evolution went differently?"
"Maybe, more likely the other side of the portal was somewhere like Australia. It turned out to be a species we have in our world, just not locally."
"How do you get back?"
"Open a portal and want to get home."
"That simple?"
"So far."
"Which takes us back to the question of how you find the portals."
"I just, I guess, know where they are."
"Can you point to the nearest one?"
"Sure," said Dawn, pointing up and to one side, towards a blank bulkhead. Sisko scanned her with his tricorder, looked at the display and whistled tunelessly. "Well?" asked Dawn.
"You just pointed directly at the wormhole, within five degrees or so."
"I could tell it wasn't close. There might be another one that way," she pointed again and Sisko took another reading, "but I'm not so sure about that one."
"And that's Bajor, the main inhabited world of this system."
"I think most inhabited worlds have a few portals. There are at least four in the USA alone on my version of Earth."
"Commander Worf for you, Captain," said one of the crewmen.
"Put him on the main screen."
A full-sized image of Worf appeared on one of the screens; Julian watched Dawn's face, and thought he saw a flicker of recognition. Worf said "Captain, we are encountering an unusual problem."
"What sort of problem?" asked Sisko.
"As instructed we have been attempting to probe the boundary of the communications anomaly, and to travel outside it to restore contact with the battleship Glorious Slaughter and other overdue vessels. We have failed."
"Failed?"
"We can approach the boundary at transwarp speeds, but as soon as we reach it our real velocity drops to lightspeed, irrespective of the warp speed in use. We are unable to penetrate it."
"You're dropping out of warp drive?"
"No. We appear to be travelling at transwarp speed, but our real velocity drops to lightspeed. Or rather, to a maximum speed which keeps us just inside the boundary, which is travelling at lightspeed. We can achieve higher velocities if approach the boundary at an angle, but our outward velocity is limited to lightspeed."
"Strange. Set a course for Bajor Nine, it should be inside the boundary in twenty-two minutes. See if the miners on the third moon have noticed anything odd going on, and check the automated observatory there for anomalies."
"Acknowledged. Defiant out."
Sisko turned back towards Dawn. "'Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.' Are you quite sure you can't help us with this, Miss Summers?"
"Um, yeah, right, like I'm gonna know what's wrong with your warp drives. Two semesters of college so far, and I'm majoring in ancient languages and mythology. That doesn't exactly include a big chunk of twenty-fifth century theoretical physics."
"Twenty-fourth actually."
"Whatever."
"Very well. Am I right in thinking that you can't open a portal on this station?"
"That's right."
"Very well. Odo, Miss Summers is not to leave the station for now."
"What?" said Dawn.
"Miss Summers, I'm reasonably sure that we have you to thank for this problem. You may genuinely have no idea why, but I think it's probable that any solution will require the use of your powers. I can't risk losing you in another dimension before we have some answers."
"This sucks."
"I'm sorry. Please try to think of yourself as a guest, not a prisoner."
"Yeah, right. Boy, you guys change your tune in a hurry."
"Please give it some thought, Miss Summers, and if anything occurs to you my comm-link is always open. Odo, if you would escort Miss Summers to her quarters."
"Follow me, please," said Odo, turning to the turbolift. "By the way, what exactly does it suck?"
TBC