He did not look at her, sitting back on his haunches to regard the tumble of rock, which looked very much the same as it had when they had begun digging. He heaved a sigh of his own. “I suppose I have to trust you. It’s either my neck, or all of our necks. That’s not much of a choice.” He was quiet for a moment.

Natima spoke quietly. “Please,” she said. “Please. For Veja…?”

He turned. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

Natima picked up the light, crawled to her feet. “Let’s go down to where Veja is. I want to keep an eye on her.”

He nodded, and they walked the length of the conduit, picking through the rocks. When they reached Veja, the Bajoran held out his hand.

“Give me the phaser,” he said.

Natima was taken aback. “What do you want with it?”

“I’ll need some of the components in it to fix the communicator. Give it to me.”

“But you said the power cell was dead.”

“It is. That isn’t the part that I need. There’s a pin inside the trigger mechanism that I can use to reset the relay, to send out a general distress call.”

Natima hesitated. She didn’t want to give up the phaser.

The Bajoran looked annoyed. “Here you are, talking about trust. What am I going to do, shoot the two of you, so I can die in here without any company? Give me the phaser.”

Natima knew it was no use, but she wanted to feel like she had a little leverage, at least. “What is your name?” she finally asked him.

He stared at her a moment, then shrugged. “Seefa,” he said. “Aro Seefa.”

Natima swallowed. “Fine, Aro Seefa,” she said softly, and she handed over the weapon. Seefa crouched on the ground next to Veja, picking the weapon apart with his hands, and a thin piece of wire he had pulled from one of his boots. Natima set the palmlight down, focusing on Veja. Her breathing was a little less shallow now, her expression peaceful, but Natima knew she needed prompt medical attention.

She watched the Bajoran work as the light began to grow dimmer and dimmer, the gray shadows cutting across the orange light on his face. He was sorting through a handful of tiny pieces of metal and composite, carefully setting them aside. He removed the combadge from his pocket, cracked it open, and laid it next to the phaser’s components.

“How do you know how to do that?” Natima asked. “I thought Bajorans weren’t allowed to practice things like engineering, unless they work for the government.”

“Bajorans do a lot of things they aren’t allowed to do.”

“But…who taught you to do that?”

Seefa shrugged. “People,” he said. “Since nobody follows D’jarras anymore, we had to learn by doing, not by being taught.”

Natima was surprised, remembering some of her past interviews. “You mean, you don’t approve of the caste system?”

Seefa snorted. “Hardly anyone does. It was never an efficient system, even in the old times.”

“But your own government—”

“Right,” he said. “Each and every politician appointed by Cardassians, for being fastest to sell out their friends and family. Not mygovernment.”

Natima considered it. She had always believed the Bajorans’ caste system to be remarkably foolish and backward, and it interested her to hear that this Bajoran actually agreed with her. And that others did, as well.

The light went out entirely for a split second before popping back on again, and Natima and Seefa both breathed in audible relief. “That’s all I need,” Seefa muttered. “To have to fix this thing in the dark.”

Natima felt annoyed. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” she said, “if you had started work on it when I initially suggested it, we wouldn’t have to worry about the light going out.”

“You may find this to be madness, but I’d rather avoid calling on your friends for help,” Seefa said. He carefully poked at the combadge with a curved metal rod he had removed from the weapon. An infinitesimal spark shot up, and Seefa dropped the device. He mumbled what she took to be some kind of Bajoran expletive and then picked it up again.

Veja groaned slightly, and Natima stroked her forehead ridges, quieting her.

“Of course, we wouldn’t be here in the first place if you hadn’t been so stupid as to attack a couple of unarmed civilian women.”

“How was I supposed to know you were civilians?” Seefa said, looking up at her sharply.

“Two women wandering around a vineyard? Didn’t you notice the way we were dressed?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know if it was a trick…and women can be every bit as dangerous as men—if not more, in some cases.”

“Our military does not usually employ women,” Natima informed him.

Seefa snorted. “That’s foolish,” he said. “Half of your population wasted—twice as many people that could be fighting.”

“Women are viewed very differently in our society than Bajoran women are in theirs.”

“As less capable, because they carry young?”

Natima frowned. She had often thought the same thing herself, but she wasn’t about to discuss it with a Bajoran.

Seefa reacted to her silence. “There are plenty of things about my own culture that I don’t like. The D’jarras, for example. There’s nothing wrong with disagreement.”

“My government doesn’t look kindly on dissent,” Natima said.

“That doesn’t surprise me much,” he said. “But if you can get enough people to listen to your viewpoint, then there’s nothing the government can do about it, is there?”

“They can have those people arrested and executed.”

Seefa laughed. “What a great society the Cardassian Union has created. Everyone must agree, or die. No matter how ridiculous or outdated the policies.”

Natima said nothing. She felt that she should be furious with this man, this Bajoran man with the temerity to criticize her world, but she was too tired to argue with him. Too tired, and more than a little confused. She considered herself an upstanding member of the Union, but had sometimes questioned the wisdom of her superiors…

You should not think on these things. Not here, not now.

“I haven’t been this hungry since I was a child,” she said, determined to change the subject.

“Really?” Seefa had looked up again, his expression unknown to her, his eyebrows raised.

“We doeat, you know. Aren’t you hungry?”

“No, I mean—why were you hungry as a child?”

“Oh,” Natima said, realizing that the comment was somewhat more revealing than she might have intended it to be. “I suppose…you must know that our world suffered great hardships in years past. Before the annexation, many people on Cardassia Prime starved to death. We had to go elsewhere to find the resources to sustain our people.”

“Ah,” Seefa said. “Yes, I suppose I did know that, in a roundabout sort of way. So, your childhood was difficult.”

He seemed to be mocking her, and Natima felt a spark of anger. “Yes, my childhood was difficult,” she snapped. “My parents died during an epidemic, and they left me alone to fend entirely for myself. None of my relatives would have anything to do with me—lone children are seen as an unwanted burden, an extra mouth to feed on a world whose resources were already stretched thin. After nearly a year on my own, I was picked up by authorities and put in a terrible facility on Cardassia II, worse even than living on the streets had been. If it hadn’t been for the Information Service…” she stopped, her breath coming fast. She couldn’t imagine what had compelled her to share such details from her life with this…person.

Seefa had stopped working. “So,” he said softly. “That’s why you don’t care for the orphanages.”

Natima didn’t trust herself to speak.

Seefa picked up the gutted phaser. “Before my parents died,” he said, “I never went without anything. I didn’t know the meaning of hunger.”

“How cozy that must have been for you.”

Seefa went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “It’s too bad, really.”