“Good,” Julian said. His eyes sparkled above a thin, tight-lipped smile she had seen many times before. He was pleased, she could tell, but also worried and unsure.
“What…what happened?” she wanted to know, still struggling to swim up to full consciousness.
“Later,” Julian told her. He reached up and laid his strong hand atop hers, the warmth of his touch almost overwhelming her. Her vision blurred, and a tear spilled from each eye, down the sides of her face.
“Julian,” she said. She pushed her body to move. She turned her hand over so that she could take hold of his. He glanced down for a moment, and then she felt him squeeze. He smiled again, but fully this time, with no reservations or concerns—only with love. “What happened?” she repeated.
“You need to rest now,” he told her. “We can discuss it later.”
“No,” Ezri said with as much vigor as she could marshal. “Tell me now, Doctor.”
“I’m afraid you’re off duty, Lieutenant,”he said, a sternness and seriousness underscoring his words. She was in the medical bay, it occurred to her, with no memory of how she had gotten here, and so of course Julian must be upset about whatever had happened. But that only strengthened her resolve to learn what had taken place.
“Julian, I needto know what happened,” she said, imploring him to talk to her.
He breathed in and out deeply through his nose, his nostrils flaring. “You’ve been in a coma for several hours,” he finally told her. “I was barely able to keep you alive.” He glanced up and over her head, probably at the diagnostic panel. When he looked back down, he said, “Frankly, I’m not even sure how I was able to bring you out of the coma.”
“You didn’t,” she said without thinking. She lifted herself up off the bed, sliding her elbows back underneath her and propping herself up. Her head spun.
“Easy, easy,” Julian entreated. He put a hand to her shoulder and tried to restrain her, and then to ease her back down. She resisted. “Lieutenant Dax,” Julian said in his strong physician’s voice, “you need to rest. Your body has been through an enormous trauma.”
Ezri relented, allowing herself to be lowered back down onto the bed. “What happened?” she asked again, driven to talk about what she had been through. “I remember heading to a Jefferies tube…one of the engineers found something…”
“Later,” Julian told her. “I want you to rest right now.”
Ezri struggled up again onto her elbows. “Dr. Bashir,” she said, injecting a tone of command into her voice, “there are four billion Vahni lives at risk right now. I don’t have time to rest.”
“Look,” Julian said. “You’re not going to be able to help anybody if you attempt to do too much too soon and simply end up collapsing.” He stared directly into her eyes as he spoke, his expression hardened. She lowered herself back down onto the bed.
“I’ll lie back down,” she said, “and I’ll rest. But first you have to tell me what happened. It’s important that I know.”
At last, Julian relented. “Ensign Leishman found an amorphous gray substance in one of the Jefferies tubes—”
“Yes,” Ezri said, the recollection springing forth from somewhere in her clouded mind. “The substance. We were trying to transport it.” She remembered that Nog had been with her in the tube.
“That’s right,” Julian said. “According to Nog, it somehow moved when we attempted transport. He said he didn’t actually see it move, but that suddenly, it was elsewhere on the deck, and your hand was touching it. You collapsed immediately.”
“Julian,” she said, reaching up and grasping the sides of his shoulders. “The substance is alive.”
“All right,” he said, taking her hands in his own and lowering them back to her sides. “But you have to rest now.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Nurse Juarez,” he said, “would you prepare a hypo?”
“You have to listen to me,” she said when he peered back down at her. She saw how tired he looked, saw the tension in his features, and she understood how hard this must have been on him. “I’llrest,” she told him, “but first you have to listen to me. And tell Lieutenant Bowers.” She heard footsteps, and then saw Juarez above her as he stepped up to the bed. He held a hypospray in his hands, she saw; Julian reached across Ezri’s body, and Juarez handed it to him.
“All right,” Julian said. “Tell me.”
“The substance is alive,” she said again. “I sensed it while I seemed to be unconscious.”
“‘Seemed to be’?” Julian asked with evident skepticism.
“I didn’t fall into a coma,” she forged ahead. “Or maybe part of me did, but I was…I was…it’s an enormously powerful mind. And very alien. And I think it knows about the pulse.”
Julian looked over at Juarez. The two men seemed to share a moment of nonverbal communication, and then they looked back down at her. “All right,” Julian said. “I’ll inform Lieutenant Bowers.” He held the hypospray up in both hands and checked the setting. Ezri could see that he did not believe what she had told him. She had been in a coma, and whatever she told him she had experienced, he would ascribe to dreaming, or whatever you called the state your mind entered in such circumstances.
And maybe he’s right,she admitted to herself. But she did not think so. And despite Julian’s arrogance—born of his superior knowledge and abilities—she knew that he would pass on what she told him to Lieutenant Bowers.
Julian lowered his hands, preparing to administer the hypospray. “Wait,” Ezri said. “I have to tell you one more thing.” Julian withdrew the hypo. “The being…I think it took me to another universe.” This time, the expression on Julian’s face reflected not skepticism, but curiosity. It was almost as though she had furnished him an important piece of a puzzle.
“I’ll inform Lieutenant Bowers of everything you’ve said,” he told her. “But now it’s time for you to rest.” He reached forward again, and Ezri felt the slight pressure of the hypo against the side of her neck, its tip slightly cool.
She was very tired. She had used so much energy coming back here, she thought, and the sense of that suddenly became clear in her mind. She recalled a struggle against gray clouds, and the recollection came to her not like a memory, but like a dream of a memory, the way the lives of Dax’s past hosts often came to her.
Ezri heard the brief whisper of the hypospray close by her ear. It occurred to her that Dax had heard or felt similar sounds—quiet, short, sibilant—so often back in the Caves of Mak’ala. And thinking of the symbiont’s time in the pools back on Trill, she slid beneath the waves of sleep.
The next time Ezri opened her eyes, she woke naturally from sleep, rather than regaining consciousness. She still felt tired, but she also felt much better. Her mind had cleared, and her thoughts came easily now. She reached her arms out to each side and stretched, yawning heavily and, at the end, loudly.
“Well, hello,” she heard Julian say from across the medical bay. She lifted her head and peered across the room. Julian handed something to Nurse Richter—Juarez appeared to have left—and then started toward her. His demeanor—the sound of his voice, the expression on his face, the ease of his gait—seemed light-years away from where it had been earlier. From his manner, she supposed that her condition had improved markedly. “How are you feeling?” Julian asked as he arrived beside her bed.
“I must be feeling much better for you to be smiling like that,” Ezri joked. She offered a smile of her own, then shifted on the bed and sat up, swinging her legs over the side.
“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, you are,” he agreed. He peeked up at the diagnostic panel. “All of your vital signs have returned more or less to normal, and—” He reached up and tapped at a control, which beeped twice in response. “—your isoboramine levels have increased significantly.”