Proud Helios Read online

  Odo said, "I don't think she's what she seems."

  "What?" Sisko frowned. "What do you mean?" Even as he spoke, he knew the words sounded angry, unreasonably so, and he was not surprised to see Odo pull back a little, his own habitual frown deepening in response.

  "I mean that she's not behaving as I'd expect a Trehanna noble to behave," Odo said. "If you're questioning my competence, sir—"

  "No." Sisko waved the words away. "Not at all."

  Odo said nothing, still watching him, and Sisko waved his hand again.

  "It's just—" He broke off then, unable to face explaining the surge of disappointment, of unreasonable disillusionment, that had filled him. He could barely explain it to himself, the glimpse of memory that seeing Diaadul had given him, and could not imagine beginning to tell Odo. "It's nothing," he said, more firmly, and put aside the memory of the blue-veiled figure. "How is her behavior unexpected?"

  "I followed her to her meeting with Quark," Odo said. He smiled, thinly. "I was fortunate enough to be passing by when she went to see him. In any case, I followed her through the air ducts, and into Quark's office."

  A spasm of something passed across his unfinished face. Chagrin? Sisko thought. Regret? It was gone then, too quick to be identified.

  "At that point," Odo went on, "Quark suggested that she should go unveiled—"

  "That must've gone over well," Sisko said. Even for Quark, that was less than subtle, bordered on stupidity.

  "Quite. But not," Odo said, "as I'd expected." He put both hands on Sisko's desk, leaned forward slightly. "The Lady Diaadul picked Quark up by the collar of his jacket, set him down hard enough to rattle his pointed teeth, and told him to get on with business."

  Sisko chuckled. "I bet that got his attention."

  "They went into the inner office then." Odo gave the bad news without flinching. "I wasn't able to follow them."

  "That's too bad," Sisko said. He could just picture the situation, the slim, veil-wrapped figure, picking up Quark and slamming him down again. It served the Ferengi right—and Quark in particular needed constantly to be reminded that females of other species were individuals in their own right. He became aware that Odo was still staring at him, and schooled himself to seriousness with an effort. "I'm not sure I see the point, Odo. That sounds like an aristocrat to me."

  "Not to me," Odo said. "Or, more precisely, not like a Trehanna female. According to the library computers, they are trained to defer to males—all males, not just of their own species."

  Sisko shook his head. "I don't know. Are noblewomen expected to defer to their social inferiors? That doesn't sound like the little I've heard about Trehanna society."

  "I don't know how class and gender would balance out," Odo said. "I don't pretend to understand humanoids or their customs. But this I am certain of, Commander. Her behavior simply does not feel right."

  Sisko looked at him for a long moment, impressed in spite of himself by the constable's obvious sincerity. And besides, he told himself, haven't you learned yet to trust Odo's hunches? "All right," he said slowly, "what do you recommend?"

  "I'd like to continue to keep a watch on her," Odo said. "Personally, as well as more routine methods. And I'd like to be sure I have your support if I need to stop her leaving the station."

  "That's an extreme measure," Sisko said, startled.

  "I'm aware of it," Odo answered. "But if she isn't what she seems, then she has to be working for Quark—and I would like very much to put an end to his smuggling games once and for all."

  "I doubt that's possible," Sisko said. "Short of killing him. Ferengi enjoy breaking the law."

  Odo smiled. "And I enjoy stopping them."

  Sisko sighed. The last thing he needed right now was to have to deal with another episode of Quark-and-Odo. Jake had said once, not thinking his father could hear, that the constable and the Ferengi was just like an old cartoon. They keep bashing each other, Jake had giggled, keep laying traps and making trouble, and neither one of them ever even comes close to winning. Sisko had stepped in then, given him a heavy-father lecture—for which he still felt slightly guilty—about respecting the law's agents as well as the law, but he had been unable to shake the too-apt image. He said, "I agree, you should continue surveillance, and I leave the arrangements to your discretion. But I'm not prepared to restrict her travel without a good reason. Bring me that reason, and I'm with you all the way."

  Odo sat motionless for a fraction of a second, then nodded. "Agreed. Thank you, Commander."

  "Oh, wait," Sisko said. "There's one other thing."

  Odo turned back from the doorway. "Sir?"

  "About your surveillance," Sisko said. "I'd suggest you recruit one of the women to help you—or, better yet, see if Major Kira would help out. I expect a Trehanna would be more likely to confide in someone of her own gender."

  Odo nodded slowly, eyes widening. "A good point, Commander. I will ask Major Kira—with your authority, of course."

  "Of course," Sisko said. He waited to smile until the door closed again behind the constable. That was, if he did say so himself, an elegant solution to a minor problem. With any luck, Kira would be busy enough with Odo's investigation to distract her from her need to warn Bajor. And he had meant exactly what he said: a woman who was expected to socialize only with other women would be more likely to talk to another woman than to Odo. Though, to be fair, Kira was not the most tactful person he'd ever met. . . . Perhaps it would have been better to suggest that Odo take on a woman's shape—or would that be worse, for Diaadul? Sisko tilted his head to one side, contemplating dizzying possibilities, and reached for the keyboard, calling up the library computer.

  Half an hour later, he had a partial answer. If a Trehanna woman spoke to a man disguised as a woman, she was still culpable because she should have recognized him as a man, though extenuating circumstances were recognized. So, Sisko thought, a shape-shifter would probably fall under the same prohibition, except that she would be forgiven because there would be no plausible way to detect the deception. But she would still feel betrayed, if she found out—or would she? Did Odo actually have a gender? Could someone whose natural form was a shapeless liquid be said to have gender in any sense that was meaningful to Trehan's peculiar legal system? Or did his general choice of shape count, somehow? Sisko shook his head, glad he didn't have to deal with the minutiae of Trehanna law—worse than the worst of Starfleet protocol, worse than ambassadorial precedence—and closed the system down again. It was, he decided, a very good thing he'd decided to send Kira.

  CHAPTER 5

  DAX LEANED CLOSE to her console, watching as the indicators changed slowly from orange to yellow, and finally shaded slowly to green as the Vulcan filter's software mated itself to the main scanner program. When the last bar had turned to a deep and steady green, she ran her hands over the membrane boards, setting up a quick test sequence. The screen blanked for an instant, and then filled with numbers. Everything was well within operational limits—so far, she told herself. There was no knowing what would happen when she tried to run a purely Vulcan program—well, not purely Vulcan; O'Brien had made modifications already—on their hybrid system. The computers were mostly Cardassian with Federation boosters, but the scanners were Cardassian through and through, maximized for military effectiveness, and limited in the broader ranges that were of scientific interest. We're nearly blind and deaf in some areas, she thought, not for the first time, and no one is willing to do anything about it. Which wasn't entirely fair, either—both Sisko and O'Brien had far more important things to worry about—but she was convinced that, sooner or later, the station was going to pay for its neglect of pure science.

  "How's it going, Lieutenant?" O'Brien's voice said in her ear, and she jumped slightly.

  "Fine, so far."

  "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." O'Brien leaned over her shoulder, scanning the screen, and she slid her chair sideways to let him take a closer look. If it had been Bashir, now,
she would have had a hard time resisting the impulse to tease him, to stay close, but O'Brien was a sober and sensible man—and far too much in love with his wife to notice anyone else.

  "Ah, good." O'Brien leaned forward still further, tapped the screen. "You see there? I was hoping that would happen. You'll get thirty percent better resolution on the broad-beam scan with this system running." He leaned back again, grinning. "You see, Lieutenant, I do listen to you."

  Dax smiled back. "I never thought you didn't, Chief. Thank you. That is helpful."

  "I'll stick around if you'd like," O'Brien offered, "keep an eye on the hardware while you finish the fine-tuning."

  Dax swung around in her chair to look directly up at him. "I thought you were off-watch now."

  O'Brien shrugged. "I can stay a little longer. Just in case."

  "And what will Keiko say?"

  "She's Starfleet. She'll understand."

  Despite the cheerful words, Dax saw the faint flicker of guilt that crossed the young man's face. Keiko O'Brien was Starfleet, all right, but she was also O'Brien's wife, and he was well aware of his obligations to her—obligations that all too often had to take a lower priority than O'Brien would have liked. Dax allowed herself a smile that barely wrinkled the skin at the corners of her eyes. "Miles," she said, and let her voice take on the faintly teasing note she used with Bashir. "I appreciate the offer, but I don't anticipate any problems. And besides…" She smiled more openly this time. "I have been doing this for somewhat longer than you have."

  O'Brien opened his mouth to protest, then blinked, and closed it again. "You have, haven't you," he said, blankly. "I forget sometimes."

  "So," Dax went on, "I think you can safely leave me to it, Chief. And don't worry, I'll call you at the slightest hint of a problem."

  "Frankly, Lieutenant," O'Brien said, "I hope I don't hear from you until tomorrow." He turned away, and a moment later, Dax heard the hiss of the turbolift descending out of Ops.

  This was her favorite time of the station's day, between nineteen and twenty hours by the twenty-four-hour human clock. Ops was all but deserted, the day watch gone home, the night watch still in the transitional phases—the Bajoran tech who would take over O'Brien's station was on her nightly tour of the operational reactors, and Sisko's current deputy, Philips, was in conference, catching up on the events and decisions of Sisko's day. The only other person in Ops was the monitor technician, and Dax had never heard the Bajoran say an unnecessary word to anyone. He wasn't unfriendly; he had just withdrawn himself from everything except his work. Dax would have worried about him—had worried about him, until she encountered him once off duty. The man had been standing on a table in the center of Quark's, the voice she had never heard raised above a murmur lifted in raucous, explicit—and very funny—song. He hadn't been drunk, she found out later; it was just his monthly night out. Looking at him now, hunched over his console, his coveralls drab even by Bajoran standards, she found herself wondering if she had hallucinated that earlier evening.

  And that was none of her business. She turned back to her console, and let the quiet surround her. She could hear the hiss of the ventilators, the faint, distant hum of the power conduits, and the soft chirr and beep as the computer finished the last complex set of calculations and presented its results. She scanned the screen thoughtfully. The search pattern it displayed—the third revision of their standard scan—would now concentrate on the section of the Denorios Asteroid Belt that lay between the station and Helios's last known position, and on the wedge of space beyond the asteroids. She studied it, made a final adjustment to the z-axis, and watched while the image re-formed. That was what she wanted, that precise area, there where the Belt ringed the Bajor system. There had been little study of the Belt, at least so far—the Bajorans had lacked the technical expertise, and the Cardassians had lacked interest—and she caught herself staring at the pale band with something remarkably like lust. At times like this, here when she was alone and she could expand into the silence, could feel most herself—herselves—she thought she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life in search of pure knowledge.

  And that was one of the greatest temptations of being Trill: to forget because of your own long life span that there were things that did demand immediate attention, instant action and reaction. She smiled to herself, acknowledging the new host's contribution, her youth and fire that made it so much easier to remember those things, and turned her attention to the new scanning routine. She touched a button, and watched the final dry calibration scroll across her screen. There was nothing left to do, then, but run the new system. She keyed in the sequence that pulled the entire system back on line, and set the scan for its maximum range. There was no point, she thought, in wasting even a single scan.

  Her screen went white for a second as the system shifted into its new operating mode, and then began with numbers and symbols, all flowing past too fast for the eye to follow. The computer would sort it out within minutes, sift through the undifferentiated mass of data, and present it in order of interest and importance. She watched abstractedly, wondering if one day she would find something really interesting in the data discarded by the computers, and then the screen went dark again, displaying the same familiar starscape, the Denorios Belt barely a thicker haze against the starry darkness. A moment later, the computer beeped for her attention. Dax swung around to face it, and frowned slightly at the schematic presented on her screen. The computer was showing—something, a reading, possibly elevated thorium or related particles in a discrete area, possibly something else, but in any case something that stood out as an anomaly. Dax's frown deepened, and she touched keys to run the same scan again.

  Two minutes later, the computer reported its verdict: whatever the sensors had picked up before was no longer present. The scan showed nothing unusual, just the random debris that filled the asteroid belt. Dax keyed the scan again, and turned back to the first results.

  "Query," she said aloud. Sometimes it was easier to talk to the computer as though it were another Trill: her own thoughts flowed more freely, and it was easier to define what she needed from the computers. "Can you isolate the anomaly spotted in the first scan sequence?"

  "The anomaly is isolated," the computer answered. "The scan showed a concentration of anterium ions, with a smaller thorium component, which has since vanished."

  Thorium, Dax thought. Elevated thorium levels were not her favorite discovery right now—she was still wary of them, since the time their discovery had heralded the arrival of her own double, Bashir's fantasy-Jadzia, along with a few other oddities. She shook that memory aside—she had teased Bashir unmercifully, but it had been an awkward feeling nonetheless—and said, "List the possible causes."

  "Listing possible causes in order of probability," the computer said. "First, imperfect calibration—there was nothing actually there."

  "A reflex shadow," Dax said, half to herself. "Probability?"

  "Forty-five percent."

  Dax's eyebrows rose. "Continue with the list."

  "Second, debris from an asteroid of unusual composition. Probability, twenty percent."

  And I would call that estimate high, Dax thought. I grant that the Denorios Belt hasn't been thoroughly explored, but I think we would have spotted anything that left an active trail—and besides, that doesn't explain why it vanished.

  "Third," the computer went on, "emissions from a cloaking device at point of closure. Probability, ten percent."

  Cloaking device. Dax froze, staring at the innocuous image in her screen. In the secondary screen, the results of the third scan, and then the fourth, rolled past, monotonously blank. Only the first scan had spotted anything—but if it was Helios recloaking, she thought, only the first scan would. She ran her hand over the controls, setting the system to scan the Denorios Belt continuously, and then turned back to her working screen. The numbers were still there: a one-percent probability that her anomaly was a ship recloaking. One cha
nce in a hundred that Helios was out there, waiting—for what? There was nothing to be gained from attacking DS9, but there was enough traffic through the wormhole already that a pirate might make a profit attacking. . . . She shook herself—tactics were Sisko's province, and his strength—and reached for the intercom button.

  "Dax to Sisko."

  It was a few minutes before Sisko answered, and when the screen lit, Dax could see Jake hovering, out of focus, in the background.

  "Yes, Dax?"

  "It's not an emergency, sir—" With Jake there, it was important to offer reassurance first, Dax thought. "—but something's come up that needs your attention."

  Sisko was silent for a heartbeat, but when he spoke, his voice held no hint of any private regrets. "Problems with the station?"

  "No, sir," Dax answered. "Something showed up briefly—very briefly!—on the scan."

  "Damn." Sisko glared at the screen for an instant before he'd mastered himself. "I'll be right up."

  The commander was as good as his word, appearing in Ops less than five minutes after Dax had shut down her working screen. "So," he said, and stepped out of the turbolift. "What's this about the scan?"

  "I wouldn't call you if I didn't think it was important, Benjamin," Dax said, answering the anger she saw in his stance and movement.

  "I know." Sisko sighed. "I'm sorry, Dax, it's just—well, you know I haven't had much time with Jake lately." He shook himself. "But that's beside the point. Show me what you spotted."

  No, it isn't beside the point, Dax thought, and knew perfectly well she couldn't say it, any more than she could tell Sisko that his son might be happier with relatives or friends back on Mars or on some ship or station larger than DS9. She said, "When I started the new system, I got an anomalous reading on the first scan that hasn't been repeated." She smiled, aware of the sulfurous comment lurking just below the commander's polite smile. "Believe me, I wouldn't have called you for that, except for the analysis. Basically, the computer says it doesn't know what it saw, but it could be a reflex shadow, debris from an asteroid of unusual composition—or a ship caught at the instant of recloaking."