Deep Space 9: Dr. Bashir Apologises

Yet another short expansion bit! Dr. Bashir has been outed as genetically enhanced; this is how his friends/colleagues dealt with it.

DS9, Ops

An hour after Richard Bashir is shipped to New Zealand

"Doctor," Kira requested, "Odo wants you to inventory the medical supplies we're receiving for Bajor." She smiled. "Shouldn't take you long."

Primly Bashir inquired, "Because I'm genetically enhanced, I suppose?"

But Kira frowned. "No, because you're our CMO and you've proved you know what you're doing. I didn't mean to imply anything else."

"Oh, I've had that from several Starfleet officers," Bashir griped, "not 'meaning' to imply anything."

Prophets give me strength, Kira thought. Sternly she retorted, "Doctor, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not in Starfleet. This," she indicated, "is Bajoran dress, not a Starfleet uniform. In the Maquis I learned to judge as I find. Now I admit at first you came across as condescending, but you soon disabused me of that notion. Frankly, after all we've been through, I don't care what you are. I care about one thing: whether or not you can do your job. You've shown that you can. For me, that's the bottom line. Okay?"

Bashir sighed. "Okay. I do apologise, Major. I suppose I'm a little oversensitive about it."

She nodded. "Not surprising. But my view is that we all serve the Prophets in the way They see fit. And They chose to give you certain gifts. Never mind that it was illegal - your father's paying his dues. Now you save lives. That doesn't come from genetics - not in any doctor I ever met. I ran into Dr. Crusher of the Enterprise on the day I was assigned here, and she's almost as brilliant without enhancement. So maybe they didn't do that much."

They did, actually, Bashir thought ruefully, about the only thing about me which they didn't change was my name. I did that, at 15. But he let it slide. "Where is Odo?"

"Cargo Bay 5," she smiled.


Cargo Bay 5

"Ah," Odo nodded as Bashir entered, "your punctuality remains, Doctor."

Bashir sighed. "Is everyone going to make a veiled reference to my enhancement?"

Odo gazed at him. "It was merely an observation, Doctor. How you choose to perceive it is entirely your own affair. It may be that your time sense has little to do with it. Either way," he added as Bashir was about to speak, "it's irrelevant to the task at hand. I want to be sure we've received enough isotalamine to cater to the cases of malnutrition reported in the Kendra Province."

Bashir nodded and opened a package to inspect it, sniffing it; isotalamine was an aromatic compound which smelled not unlike Terran celery.

Something was wrong. He sniffed again, frowning.

Odo noticed, and inquired, "Anything wrong, Doctor?"

"Yes," Bashir growled. "Oh, the smell's mostly correct, but I can detect a cutting agent. The compound is not pure."

"Are you sure?"

"For once my background is actually useful," he nodded. "One of several qualities to be enhanced was my sense of smell, invaluable to a doctor. I believe this compound is watered-down, so to speak. About," he sniffed again, "5%, I'd say. Close enough to fool a customs inspector - or you, for that matter -"

"In fact," Odo said dryly, "I have no sense of smell."

"- but not close enough to fool me," Bashir finished.

Odo took out a tricorder and analysed it. Normally he might not have bothered, given that these were medical supplies, not weapons or gold-pressed latinum. But it seemed prudent here.

Perhaps whoever was responsible had counted upon him not scanning them, he mused, and resolved to scan every incoming item from now on, even children's toys. The analysis results were...interesting. "Mmm. 5% of this is indeed something else. Extract of...zan periculi." He looked up sharply. "Lappa 4! That's a -"

The doctor said it with him: "- Ferengi world!"

"QUARK!" Odo bellowed.


In short order his Bajoran deputies delivered Quark to Cargo Bay 5.

The Ferengi attempted to maintain his innocence, but Odo, well accustomed to Quark's devious ways, wasn't having it. Quark complained, "You wouldn't even have known if Dr. Bashir -"

"Don't say it, Quark," Odo growled, "you're in enough trouble as it is!" A deputy hauled a protesting Quark off to the constable's office. "Mind you, he did have a point...for once. Seems you're useful after all. Frankly I wonder why it isn't done more often."

Bashir snorted. "Ask the computer about the Eugenics Wars sometime."


"You shouldn't worry about it," Dax smiled in Ops shortly afterwards. "The books have been balanced. Your staying in Starfleet is far more beneficial than being invalided out. Whatever else Admiral Bennett is, he's not stupid."

"Dax, what do you think about it?"

"Me? Well, it explains a few things. Your tidying mania, for one," she teased, and sighed. "To be honest, I could use some of that. I'm not the tidiest Starfleet officer who's ever lived."

"To put it mildly," Worf put in.

"Hey!" She swatted him.

"I mean, does it affect your perception of me?" Bashir persisted.

"No, not at all," she said warmly. "Like I said, it explains a few things. But the good, decent person you are, Julian? That came from your early upbringing, not your genetics. No amount of enhancement could turn an indecent person into a decent one. Some things are beyond genetics."

"My people had an...unfortunate history with genetic engineering," Worf told him in a low voice. "For reasons of tradition I can say no more. But ultimately the true nature of the Klingon won out. So too has your nature, Doctor."

"Thank you," Bashir said gratefully. "Thank you both."


Ops, Captain Sisko's office

"You realise, of course, that strictly speaking you should have told the instructors at Starfleet Academy," Sisko told him severely.

Bashir sighed. "Yes...and we both know what they would have said."

"For a Starfleet officer, especially a doctor, to be living a lie doesn't sit well with me, Doctor," Sisko rebuked, settling back in his seat.

"To be fair, sir, it wasn't easy for me, either," Bashir protested.

"One of several reasons why Admiral Bennett accepted your father's compromise," Sisko nodded. "Bennett was right. The ban on non-medical genetic resequencing remains, and will remain until we can guarantee the results. As a case in point, Starfleet's Chief of Staff, Admiral T'Sara, is a half-breed, as Spock was - human father, Vulcan mother. The science to intermix different species is even more exact and precise than it was at the time of Spock's conception." He smiled. "And in spite of all their careful planning, there was one entirely unexpected outcome: T'Sara is a redhead."

"To coin a phrase: Whoops."

"Quite. Redheads are very rare on Vulcan. They tend to find the discipline expected of Vulcans somewhat...wearing. By all accounts, T'Sara herself is a case in point. But in her own words, to quote Descartes - or Popeye - she is what she is."

"Popeye?" Bashir wondered, recalling with his (enhanced) eidetic memory who Popeye was.

"Sources differ," Sisko smiled again.

Bashir too smiled. "There's been a debate raging for centuries now, about whether the randomness of natural selection is its greatest strength or its greatest weakness. Even with such meticulous planning it's still a crapshoot, with odds even I can't predict." He looked wry. "And believe me, I've tried. It's been likened to shooting craps with hundreds of irregular buckyball dice - except some of the dice you can't even see, some are travelling randomly in time and an unknown number of them are four-dimensional. And at least one has random numbers on it, not simply 1 to 32 - and they change from time to time."

Sisko lost his smile. "Exactly. One can never tell. Fortunately the doctors who worked on you were competent and knew what they were doing, and the result was well worth it." He inclined his head. "But...it might have gone worse. Much worse. That's why the ban has to be maintained, at least for now."

"A ban I agree with, actually, even though I'm a beneficiary of an illegal procedure," Bashir nodded. "So does this mean I remain as the CMO of DS9?"

"Doctor Bashir," Sisko said quietly, "in my time as a Starfleet officer I've been called all sorts of things. But I've never been called stupid." He grinned. "Except once, by Curzon."

Both laughed.


DS 9, Quark's Bar

That evening

"Darts as usual, Chief?" Bashir ventured.

"The tournament continues," Miles nodded. He won the first leg, and the next three.

"Not my day," Bashir groused.

"Not your week," O'Brien sympathised, recalling what Julian had been through. True, he'd lied, but O'Brien's granny had taught him that sometimes you had to. What mattered wasn't that you lied, but why you lied. In this case, it was so Julian could help people as a doctor - and that, Miles O'Brien had decided, was a perfectly good reason. He had nothing but the utmost respect for doctors, and Julian was one of the best.

"You know what, Chief? I never got a chance to thank you for what you said when -"

"Uh-uh," O'Brien interrupted, to spare them both mild embarrassment, "none o' that. Especially not in the middle of a game." He aimed, threw, and the dart landed in double 16 as intended. "Ooo, yes!"

"Looks like it's your game again," Bashir conceded, a good sport as always.

"What's that, five in a row?"

Bashir nodded. "At least."

Then a thought occurred to O'Brien, who frowned. "Wait a minute. You haven't been letting me win, have you?"

"What makes you think that?" Bashir asked innocently...as if he didn't know exactly what the Irishman had meant.

"You said your hand-eye coordination had been genetically enhanced," O'Brien pointed out.

Now he'd been found out, and not rejected by his friends, Bashir felt the urge for truth. "Well, maybe I have been letting you win a little bit," he confessed.

"I don't believe it. I don't need you to patronise me!" O'Brien groused, indignant. "I can play at your level!"

"I never said you couldn't," Bashir protested.

"Well, play, then," O'Brien huffed, faux offended. "Really play."

If you insist, Bashir thought amusedly. It was a trivial task for him to quickly throw three bull's-eyes in a row. After gaping briefly, O'Brien collected the darts and took Bashir back to double the oche distance.

"All right," he declared briskly, "From now on you play from over here. I play from up here," he stood at the standard oche distance. "And if that doesn't work," he added, "we'll try a blindfold!"

Bashir only smiled. It was worth these, to him, minor concessions to spare his friend's pride. It wouldn't make as much difference as O'Brien was hoping, but again it would be worth it for his best friend.

Anything would be worth it.

THE END