“Doc-tor More-ah,” Odo said from behind him, his newfound voice rough and guttural. Mora started. He’d been under the impression that Odo was “sleeping.”
“What is it, Odo?”
“Doctor More-ah, Doctor Yopal. He is…not the same…as you are. He looks…not the same.”
“She,” Mora corrected Odo. “Doctor Yopal is a woman, Odo. There is a distinction between humanoid men and women, remember?”
“Yes,” the shape-shifter said. “Woman. She. Doctor Yopal is a woman.”
“That is correct.”
“And men. Don’t make good scientists.”
Mora smiled reservedly. Odo had never stopped delivering this refrain from time to time. Perhaps it comforted him, as the first intelligible phrase he’d come up with on his own, but Mora failed to be quite as amused by it as he had been the first few times.
“So says Doctor Yopal, Odo.”
The shape-shifter cocked his head, an affectation he had picked up somewhere. “Women look not the same as men.”
“Well, it isn’t only that she is a woman and I am a man, Odo. Doctor Yopal and I…we come from different worlds. Our features are dissimilar because we are of different races. There are many different varieties of humanoids in the galaxy, Odo, and they all have distinguishing features.”
“Different. Doctor Yopal is different from Doctor Mora.”
“Yes. That’s correct. She is a Cardassian, and I am a Bajoran.”
Odo said nothing for a moment, then he gestured to himself. “And Odo. Odo is not a Bajoran. Odo is not a Cardassian.”
There was nothing in the creature’s expression or inflection of voice to suggest it, but Mora had a distinct impression of sadness. “No,” he answered. “Odo is a shape-shifter.”
Odo said nothing, and Mora decided that he wanted to change the subject. “You have learned to speak so quickly, Odo. Did you understand what I was saying, before I began my attempts to coax you to speak on your own?”
Again, Odo’s face did not change much; though the shape-shifter had been experimenting with expression, he was revealing nothing now. “Understand. Odo did not always…understand. But some sounds…some words, began learned.”
“Why then, did you not try to speak?”
The shape-shifter tried a smile, an effect that never failed to unsettle Mora. “Odo did not know if Mora wanted it.”
“You mean, you didn’t think I wanted to hear you speak?”
The shape-shifter nodded jerkily.
“Well, there was plenty you could have said!” Mora exclaimed, but Odo only continued to stare, his strange, barren expression continuing to reflect absolutely nothing to suggest what might have been going on in his brain, as though “brain” even applied.
Mora cleared his throat. “I’ve got to finish my notes, Odo. Why don’t you go back to your tank.”
Odo said nothing, just obeyed. As always, Mora was left with the hunger to know more, though he had no choice but to follow a certain protocol. Had he been left to his own devices to study the shape-shifter, he would have carried out the process much differently, but it was imperative that he perform in the manner laid out by the Cardassians, for there was no telling what would happen to Odo if Mora were pulled off this project. Indeed, Mora had come to regard the shape-shifter as more than just a “project,” for he saw Odo more often than he saw his own parents. With as much time as he spent with the shape-shifter, teaching him, testing him, he almost felt that Odo was part of his family, now.
Dukat had called Kubus Oak to his office to harangue the man about his failure to deliver more workers to Gallitep in a timely manner, for the mines were still operating at far below capacity since the accident, now six months gone. Kubus was full of excuses, as usual. He claimed that Dukat had warned him never to pull his workforce from Dahkur province, which was utter nonsense—Dukat had never said anything of the sort. He advised the so-called “secretary” to tell his men to pick up any stragglers found outside the proscribed boundaries and bring them to Gallitep at once, for Darhe’el had been contacting Dukat on the matter with annoying frequency.
Kubus was just leaving to go back to his quarters and do whatever it was he did in there, when a breathless Basso Tromac arrived in his office, unusually late to the briefing.
“My apologies, Gul,” Basso said. “There was a mechanical problem at the docking ring that needed to be resolved. It could not be helped.”
“Well, you’ve missed the conference,” he told the Bajoran. “Kubus is just leaving, and I’ve no reason to repeat our conversation. Although…I do have a question or two for you, Basso, if Kubus will excuse us.”
The Bajoran official took his leave, and Dukat immediately set to interrogating his aide. “Have you come from the hospital?”
“Yes, sir. I took the last shuttle back, but as I said, there was a problem at the docking ring and all passengers were briefly detained while the engineers—”
“I’m not interested,” Dukat said tensely. “I want to know of Meru’s condition. Is it—”
“Terminal, yes, sir. Doctor Moset confirmed that it is a particularly virile strain of the Fostossa virus. She is not expected to make it through the week.”
Dukat’s chin dropped on his chest. “Such a tragedy for one so young,” he said softly. “I suppose I will have to go look in on her in the next few days…” He felt a genuine regret as he said it. A hard ache persisted in his chest, thinking of her, frail and nearly lifeless in the clinical isolation of the hospital—yes, he’d better go to her, soon. He owed it to her to make her final moments as comfortable as possible. Although perhaps she would prefer to see her Bajoran husband…
Dukat felt his face darken in resentment as he remembered the sob caught in her throat. “My husband,”she’d said. After all the years he’d spent with her, everything he’d done to make her happy…and at the back of her mind, always it was him.
Dukat looked up at Basso, who was waiting to be told what to do next, for like all Bajorans, he scarcely had a mind of his own. “I will see what I can do to visit her,” Dukat said.
“It is understandable if you can’t make it down to see her,” Basso said. “You are a busy man, an important man. You can’t be expected to keep constant vigil by her bedside while she wastes away—”
“That’s enough,” Dukat snapped. “You’ve done your job, now get out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Basso said obediently, and left the office.
Dukat sat down heavily in his chair. He wanted to unburden himself from thoughts of Meru, but it was proving difficult.
Difficult decisions have to be made every day,he reminded himself. Being prefect of Bajor was not an easy job; it required great strength of character. It required a man who did not allow his personal feelings to distract him from those things that must be done, discomfiting as they might sometimes be.
Lenaris’s raider entered Bajor’s atmosphere like a dart. He clung to the yoke, the thrusters propelling him at dizzying half-impulse speed, too high a speed for even the best Cardassian pilots to keep their ships underneath the atmosphere without losing control. The little raider tore through the air, the proximity sensors clicking madly as he came closer to the target, and he reduced his speed, keeping his attention divided between his ship’s course and the transponder signals that told him whether the rest of his team was still with him. They all were, though the Legans were predictably straggling a bit, but not so much as to compromise their formation. Lenaris prepared to descend.
The blood rushed to his face as his ship looped and fell, a straight plummeting nosedive toward the surface of the planet, the hills and glens of Musilla province rushing at him. There was a Cardassian naval base directly below, a “secret” installation that the Ornathias had learned of through contact with another cell operating in this region.