Miras was overcome with an unexplained sense of dread, but as she put her hand on the object, it gave way to an even more unprecedented feeling of calm. She found that she did not want to take her hands away from the object, which felt warm where she was certain that it had been cool before. It did not occur to her to be curious about the change, which was curious in itself, but she felt so tranquil, she did not mind. She sighed out loud, and then gently pushed open the edges of the object with her hands.

The artifact was indeed a case, as Kalisi had imagined, and inside was a very unusually shaped piece of stone, an oblong rock with a slender middle that widened at the top and bottom. The color was nothing like the Bajoran soil, which had been a reddish brown. This rock was a blue-gray color, a little more like common Cardassian rocks, but still alien in texture.

Excited at this new development, she quickly changed the sensor setting and scanned the piece of stone to add to the soil sample database. She punched in a code on the computer to compare the readouts to the dirt she had already examined. What she saw bemused her profoundly, for there was nothing even remotely like it in any of the other recorded data regarding Bajoran soil and geologic formations. The database showed this rock to be a complete anomaly.

Miras stared at the piece of stone for a moment, full of questions that she knew could not be answered. She put out her hand to touch it, and for a moment she seemed to drift away from where she stood, forgetting herself…but she was jolted from her temporary daze when a comm voice piped into the room. It was Professor Mendar.

“Miss Vara, are you there? We have to return the object to the storeroom now, or sign it out for an additional period. Is it ready for transport?”

Miras reluctantly closed the case. “In a moment, Professor.” She wished Kalisi were here to help her put it back in the container. She wondered if she was supposed to have removed the item at all. She couldn’t remember what the professor had said about it, and she struggled for a moment to hoist the object back into the cylindrical container. She clicked it closed and brushed the leftover dirt from her hands. Dirt that should serve to make her project a success, she remembered. She gathered up the vial with her soil sample, the reason she had come.

“It’s ready to go, Professor Mendar.”

Miras watched as the container was transported back into the cavernous storage facility, and as it shimmered into nothingness, she recalled that mysterious sense of calm she had experienced when she had touched the artifact. She wondered what, exactly, she had just been looking at.

OCCUPATION YEAR TWENTY 2347 (Terran Calendar)

4

Opaka Sulan had just been asked the question that she did not know how to answer. It was not the first time she had been asked it, and she knew it would not be the last. But the question still distressed her, because it was such an important one.

Having left the comfort of the sanctuary, she and Fasil had begun to travel to the refugee camps, looking for charity wherever they could find it. Already she had found that a great many people were eager to hear what she had to tell them, and as she traveled from one camp to another, her audiences had begun to grow.

She was no longer calling herself a vedek, asking those who listened to her words to refer to her simply as Sulan, but she had encountered many who still continued to address her as Vedek Opaka. She did not dissuade them, only made it clear that the kai no longer approved of her viewpoints and therefore it was not right that she use the title herself. This seemed to satisfy the congregations—congregations made up of skeptics, travelers, elderly men and women, youthful rebels, and the pious faithful. They sat together on the hot, dry ground, the dust baked into a hard crust by the midsummer sun. And yet, still the occasional determined bunch of salamgrass would grow in patches big enough and soft enough for some young mother to lay down her restless infant as she listened to what Opaka had to say. It humbled her to look beyond the insular life she’d led for so long as a vedek and to see how her brothers and sisters lived in these difficult times.

Though her congregations came from many walks of life, and had once belonged to all facets of Bajor’s ruined society, they seemed to have one thing in common—they were hungry to hear Opaka’s words. They were hungry to be told that Bajor could be whole again one day, if they would only forget their differences and unite against a common oppressor. Opaka had been revitalized by the eagerness and faith of the people who came to listen to her, so much so that she would occasionally be stricken with silently joyous bouts of tearfulness after her sermons had concluded.

But…then there is this.

“Do you condone the resistance? If you believe we must unite to be strong against the Cardassians, then you must also believe that it is right that we fight them. But the prophecies have always been clear on their advocacy for reason over conflict.”

She had considered the question many times, and still had no clarity to pass along.

“We must look inside ourselves,” she finally told the man, who was barely older than Fasil. He had long, sandy hair and wide-set, earnest eyes. “We must come to terms with our individual beliefs. It is not for us to judge one another, but rather to decide what each of us can do, ourselves, to make a difference. Above all, we must be unified—and in the Prophets, we can find that unity.”

The crowd responded with exclamations of agreement, thankfully making any further comment unnecessary, and she moved to other topics.

Later, as the small crowd began to disperse, Fasil approached his mother. She could see his dark head as he made his way toward her through the cluster of people. He suddenly looked very tall to Sulan, with unusually broad shoulders for a teenager, and she realized that he must have shot up just in the span of their weeks traveling. His sixteenth birthday had come and gone, and Sulan could no longer deny that he was a man, his ideas and desires grown beyond her jurisdiction.

“Mother,” he said. He sounded annoyed, and she instantly knew what he was going to say. “You skirted the issue. When that man asked you about the resistance—”

“My business is not to be an advocate for the resistance. I am here to address other matters.”

“You’re wrong. You must take a firm stance regarding the resistance if you want people to continue to listen to you.”

Opaka shook her head. “I won’t do it, Fasil. My message is not about fighting. My message is about setting aside our differences.”

“So that we can fight.”

She continued to shake her head, but she was disarmed, and her son knew it. It did gall her to avoid the topic, but she felt ill-equipped to deal with the matter. Her own feelings regarding the conflict were still complicated, but she refused to suppress the core of her message just because she hadn’t yet sorted out how to approach every aspect of the concomitant issues.

“Mother, I may as well tell you. I’ve met some people here…and I’ve decided to join the resistance. I’m going to fight.”

In an instant, Sulan felt her body rooted to the spot where she stood, paralyzed, though her hands seemed to move of their own volition. They crept to her chest and covered her heart. She could feel the same choking tightness inside that she remembered when she had finally accepted that Bekar was dead.

“You’re doing what you feel you must do,” he continued. “You left the sanctuary. You have begun to speak out against the words of the kai. Almost nobody would dare to do what you have done, but I believe that what you have done is right. Now I ask that you support me in what I believe is right.”