Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Read online

  Suddenly, as the runabout rumbled again—obviously passing through a second forcefield—Kira understood the point Taran’atar had been trying to make to her. “No, I can’t imagine disobeying the Prophets,” she said, “unless, by my doing as they say, they might come to harm.”

  “Then we are of like mind,” Taran’atar said, “for I would not follow the Founder’s instructions to help her escape her prison, not at the risk of her life.”

  Kira nodded, believing him. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—”

  “But it is,” Taran’atar asserted. “You don’t trust me. But that is of no concern to me.” The light in the cabin increased as the tractor beam pulled Rio Grande into Ananke Alpha’s brightly illuminated shuttlebay. “What I find…interesting,” Taran’atar continued, “is that even though you do not trust me, you still asked me what I was going to do. If I had planned to break the Founder free of this prison, do you think I would have admitted that to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she could see again that she had startled Taran’atar with her response. “Yes, because of your dedication to the Founders. Odo directed you to follow my orders, and when I ask you a question, it’s clear that I am expecting you to answer me honestly and completely. For you to do otherwise would be contrary to what Odo wanted you to do.”

  Kira felt the gentle impact as Rio Grande touched down. The sapphire radiance of the tractor beam fled as the energy field released the runabout. She stood up and moved toward the portside hatch.

  “You are correct, of course,” Taran’atar said as he got up from his chair and joined her. “And I have told you the truth.”

  “I know you have,” Kira said. But as she reached for the controls that would open the hatch, she thought something different:

  I’m about to find out.

  Wearing his humanoid appearance, Odo paced across the islet, then back again, his thoughts a storm of confusion, doubt, and concern. After communing with Indurane, he’d retreated here, wanting time alone to process what he had learned—or at least what he had been told. Since then, he’d spent a considerable amount of time debating both the reality and the content of the ancient Founder’s pronouncements. Although he had never even conjectured much of what the old changeling had communicated to him, Odo now found explained several questions he’d long contemplated. For him, though, the details proved far worse than any disappointments he’d suffered from not fully understanding his people.

  Odo leaned against the rock spires situated at one end of the islet, the heel of one hand resting against each. He gazed between the two formations, out at the fluctuating mass of the Great Link. The notion of their population as one—a concept often advocated by the Founder leader—had never led Odo even to consider that the changelings did not multiply. But even as the idea readily explained the intense paranoia of his people—since each Founder death would move their species closer to extinction—it seemed almost impossible to credit, more likely a ridiculous lie than an implausible truth. He peered over his shoulder at the ashes of the dead changeling, and wondered again how a species could survive without the ability to produce succeeding generations. And yet…thinking back, Odo realized now that, within the Great Link, he had never perceived any gender among the Founders.

  Pushing away from the twin spires, Odo began to walk along the edge of the islet. The strange silence that encompassed this world surrounded him as he walked, broken only by the crunch of his own footsteps on the rock surface, and the occasional lapping sounds of the changeling sea as it rubbed along the banks. Odo remembered the initial time he’d ever seen members of his own kind emerge from that golden soup and take humanoid forms. The first Founder to address him had been the individual who had come to be known in the Alpha Quadrant as the “female changeling,” and her appearance did contain distinguishing sexual characteristics. But her distaff form could have been simply a component of her emulation, rather than reflecting a personal attribute. Odo himself had chosen his own Bajoran-like façade, during the time in which he’d learned to shapeshift, from that of the person he’d known best: the male doctor, Mora Pol.

  Still, changelings did not necessarily require gender in order to breed. They conceivably might have been able to reproduce by fission, or via some other unusual means. Odo had told Indurane that, looking back, he’d always considered himself an infant at the time he’d been found in the Denorios Belt. Now, he recalled the undersized changeling Quark had once purchased from an Yridian—a changeling Odo had also believed newborn, based upon its mass and its inability to change its shape. But Indurane had ascribed such characteristics to inexperience, and not to infancy.

  Trying and failing to make sense of what he knew of his people, and of what Indurane had told him, Odo felt his frustrations boil over. He reached the rock towers again, and brought his closed hands down hard against the surface of one of them. His fists flattened and spread against the dense material, absorbing the impact, but the sudden, violent movement did little to stanch his frustrations.

  Indurane claimed that the Great Link hadn’t evolved, but had been created in its entirety by a Being the changelings called the Progenitor. This supreme Being, Indurane asserted, had made the whole of the universe: energy, time, matter, life. Then, in the final stages of Its creation, It had gathered a population of solids and imbued their physicality with Its own awesome, changeable essence, making the Great Link after Its own image. Odo remembered questioning the changeling leader about whether the Founders had always been able to shapeshift, and her response that, eons ago, their people had been like the solids. Indurane’s contentions did not contradict that.

  According to the ancient Founder, the Great Link had been formless at first, possessing no knowledge and no understanding of shapeshifting. But as time had passed, some portions of the Link had separated from their collective mass, and with their changeling senses and intellect open to the universe and to their own selves, they’d learned about existence—about the world without, and the world within. Rejoining with their people, they’d shared their new knowledge and experience, and their civilization had developed.

  During his time with the Founders, Odo had intuited the presence of unformed, unaware segments within the Great Link. He’d always thought of these as infants, but Indurane described them as those who had not yet divided from the Link, had not yet begun to learn. When eventually they did, they would be considered newly formed—just as Odo had been, prior to being sent out as one of the Hundred.

  Behind him, Odo heard the familiar sound of a changeling varying its form. He stepped back from the rock formation, pulling his hands back into normal Bajoran shapes. He spun on his heel to see a glittering column swirling upward out of the Great Link. He watched as it arched forward over the surface of the islet and down. Its form tightened and coalesced, and Odo expected Laas’s humanoid form to materialize from the biomimetic mass. Instead, an alien appeared, taller than Odo, taller even than Laas. An exoskeletal lamina covered its body and limbs—two legs, two arms—the hue and texture of the shell resembling a silvery, liquid metal. It had rounded, pearlescent features, and parallel grooves rimmed its large golden eyes, causing the orbs to look as though they were dissolving into its lustrous flesh. Odo identified the being from the data he’d collated from historical reports, as well as from Opaka’s description of her own encounter with such a being: an Ascendant.

  Although Odo knew the striking alien to be only a facsimile, its manifestation nevertheless chilled him. His recent confirmation of the continued existence of the Ascendants, and of their possible return to this region of space, concerned him greatly—particularly if, as Indurane had alleged, the Founders did believe in the Progenitor. Religious zealots on a quest to unite with their gods, the Ascendants destroyed any whom they believed worshipped falsely.

  Indurane, Odo thought, sensing that the ancient Founder had followed him here. “You’re the changeling I just linked with,” Odo said, seeking veri
fication.

  In response, the Ascendant nodded slowly.

  “Why are you here?” Odo demanded, but he thought he already knew: Indurane had come here to finish providing the information Odo had sought. For of all the questions he had just posed, one—Laas’s question—remained unanswered: Why were the Hundred sent out into the galaxy?

  “I am here for you,” the old changeling said, its tone high-pitched and musical.

  Odo studied the form of the Ascendant, looking for clues. He understood that, as had occurred within the Great Link, Indurane intended his shape to convey an idea. Thus, embodied in the image of the resolute and fearsome being, the historical disposition of the Founders revealed itself, the emotional context in which they’d sent out the Hundred: certain and fanatical.

  Indurane shifted form again, the metallic covering of the Ascendant seeming briefly to melt before hardening into a figure resembling Odo’s. The smooth-featured male Bajoran walked forward, to the center of the islet. He looked down, his mouth contorting into a rictus of grief. “This is one of the Hundred,” he said, the words sounding almost as though they had been delivered by Odo’s own rough, masculine voice. He looked up. “We failed you,” he said.

  Odo wanted to agree, wanted to tell Indurane that the circumstances that would have allowed him a complete life had been unfairly taken from him when he’d been sent away. He’d spent decades wondering about his people, yearning for them, and then when he’d found them, lamenting that he had no place among them. Except, for all of that, his life had improved immeasurably when Nerys had fallen in love with him, something that surely would never have happened had he not been sent out as he had.

  “We failed the Hundred,” Indurane said again before Odo could formulate a response. “But the Hundred did not fail the Great Link.”

  “What?” Odo asked. “What do you mean?”

  “As the Great Link diminished over time,” Indurane began, “persecuted by solids, decimated by wars, unable to reproduce, we sought completion of our lives…we sought to join with the Progenitor. But It had left us after creating the Great Link, back in the beginning of time. We had no idea where to search for It, or how. We had been met with suspicion, hatred, and violence by the solids we’d encountered, and fearing our metamorphic abilities, they hunted us, beat us, murdered us. We withdrew to a planet in the Omarion Nebula, where we made a home for ourselves in isolation. We wanted to seek the Progenitor, but dared not venture back out into the universe.”

  “So you sent out a hundred newly formed changelings,” Odo said, angered at the blatant disregard for the well-being of the Hundred. “As bait.”

  “We’d hoped your lack of knowledge and experience would protect you from the solids,” Indurane said. “Some argued against this, but the opinion ultimately prevailed.”

  “But how could you expect us to find the Progenitor,” Odo asked, “when we didn’t even know who we were, let alone of Its existence?”

  “We did not expect you to find the Progenitor,” Indurane said. “We hoped that It would find you.”

  “A hundred innocents lost in the universe,” Odo said, understanding. “A hundred innocents, programmed to return to the Great Link.”

  “Yes. We hoped that you would attract Its attention, enjoy Its protection, and that It would ultimately be drawn back to the Great Link itself.”

  “It sounds preposterous,” Odo said, even as he believed it. “Why did you keep this from me?”

  “We did not expect any of the Hundred to return to the Great Link for hundreds of years,” Indurane said. “We were not prepared, and we did not know when we could reveal it to you in such a way that you would not hate us. And your relationships with the solids…our quest was not for them to know, so that they could thwart us.”

  “Then why now?”

  “Because Laas wanted to know,” Indurane said. “And…”

  “And?” Odo asked.

  In response, Indurane lifted his head and gazed up into the sky. “And because the Progenitor has finally returned,” he said, almost rapturously.

  “What?” Odo said. Indurane continued peering up into the heavens, but behind him, a disruption began in the Great Link, its surface suddenly growing rough, its gently wavering form becoming wild and frenetic. Indurane turned just as a wave formed, a high wall of the changeling sea rising up just off of the islet. He turned back to Odo.

  “There is much to decide,” he said. As he rounded to face the wave again, the shining mass reached toward him, sending tendrils oscillating above the islet. Indurane reached up and joined with the filaments, his humanoid form losing shape and becoming one with the Link. In seconds, he was gone, the wave departing with him back into the golden flows.

  Odo pondered what he had been told. The belief in the Progenitor struck Odo as almost religious, though he was sure that the Founders would have disagreed, claiming it to be a simple fact, rather than a matter of faith. But of course, a lack of doubt often defined faith. Odo thought of Nerys, of her great faith in the Prophets, and he remembered again their conversation in Dax’s closet. They’d discussed faith then too.

  Odo stared out over the Link, his thoughts wandering from Indurane to Nerys, from what he had just been told to what he recollected. After a few minutes, he pictured Indurane standing there, gazing upward. Odo turned and looked up, past the paired rock formations, and into the sky. And there glowed the nova he’d first seen when he’d returned from the Alpha Quadrant, a brilliant disk shining more brightly than anything else in the heavens.

  A harbinger of a bright future for his people, he’d thought when he’d first seen it from the islet after beaming down.

  Now he was not so sure.

  4

  Odo watched Kira stride across Dax’s bedroom toward the closed door. As he stood up from the storage container, he recognized the set of her shoulders, the quickness of her movements. He knew that she intended more than simply to leave this room. She wanted to get away from him, and not for just right now.

  “Nerys,” he called after her a second time, the solitary word an earnest plea for her to stop. It seemed to have no effect on her as she reached for the panel in the bulkhead beside the door. But then she hesitated, her hand hovering before the control, poised to open her route of escape.

  He waited. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, afraid that going to her or saying the wrong thing would fracture whatever delicate balance had been struck, would bring her hand down on the panel and send her fleeing from him. He stood motionless, gazing at her back, hoping that she would turn to him, hoping that they could put all that had happened behind them and resume their friendship.

  Kira knew that he loved her, had known for months now. She did not reciprocate his feelings. Both facts had hung between them at times, awkward realities with which neither had seemed to know how to cope. For the most part, though, they had been able to ignore those emotions and continue on, as if the revelation of Odo’s love had never taken place.

  Yet as Odo waited now for Kira either to leave or stay, her reaction to his disclosure that he had slept with the Founder leader struck him as curious. Although Odo and Kira had never been romantically involved, she appeared hurt, her almost reflexive flight from him seeming like the response of a lover betrayed. He harbored no illusions that she had come to share his feelings—especially after the events on the station during the period of Dominion control—but he thought that perhaps it upset her to think that his love for her had been lessened by his actions with the Founder leader.

  “Odo,” Kira said, a multitude of emotions seeming to color her tones: frustration, disappointment, even yearning of a sort. She dropped her hand to her side and turned around. As she did, the hem of her dress flared outward momentarily, just above her red-stockinged knees, a graceful movement that somehow caused his deeper feelings for her to flare as well. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no right…” She dropped her gaze to the floor, letting her words trail into silence.

 
“No, it’s all right,” Odo told her. “I want to explain it to you.”

  She looked up at him again. “No,” she said, “that’s not necessary.”

  “I don’t know if it is or it isn’t,” he said, “but I want to explain.” He gestured toward the vanity in the closet, toward the small stool she’d been perched upon during their conversation. “Please come sit back down,” he said. She nodded, then walked back over and took a seat again. He leaned across the doorway and worked the controls beside it, sending the closet door sliding closed.

  He turned to face her, but did not sit back down himself. “I…” he started, and searched for the easiest way to refer to his liaison with the Founder leader. He decided to employ Kira’s own vernacular. “I…‘slept’…with the Founder,” he stammered, uncomfortable even with the euphemism, “not so that she and I could grow closer, or share something special, but so that I could try to teach her about sol—” He hesitated, choosing to rephrase the end of his sentence. “About humanoids,” he concluded.

  “About solids,” Kira said, emphasizing the word he had been about to utter.

  Odo nodded, admitting to the term. “I don’t mean it in a pejorative way,” he said. “It’s simply a means of distinguishing changelings from those who can’t shapeshift.”

  “That’s just it,” Kira said. “I have no interest in distinguishing between us. You’re my friend, and it’s not important to me what species you are.”

  “I agree,” Odo said. “And that’s the sort of thing I was trying to convey to the Founder…my relationships with humanoids, my closeness to some of them. She didn’t understand how I could sustain such feelings.” Odo paused, wanting to isolate for Kira the words he would say next. “What I want you to know is that my…experience…with the Founder was not about intimacy, not with her. I wanted to bring her to an understanding of humanoid relationships, and to an appreciation of my feelings for some of them.”