The nearest of the gigantic elder symbionts answered with a powerful bioelectrical blast that took her full in the face.

11

The group of Annuated and their caretaker abruptly vanished, as did Dax’s environmental suit. She was suddenly falling naked through a void that was like nothing she had ever experienced before. It wasn’t filled with the crushing gray water of the deep pools of Mak’ala, nor was it a vacuum like empty space.

A sudden recollection of a therapeutic mind-meld Curzon had once shared with the late Vulcan Ambassador Sarek made it clear what she was experiencing: a freefall tumble into an ocean of pure experience—the vast storehouse of memories of the Annuated.

Her mind quickly converted the disorienting mindscape into something concrete, a white backdrop filled with an apparently infinite number of spheres, each one bearing an absolutely unique color. Intuitively, she understood that each sphere represented a discrete package of stored memory and experience. The motley assignation of colors made it appear that each of these was gleaned from the memories of a different person.

Of course,she thought, angling herself toward one of the closer spheres with an effort of pure will. The Annuated have been isolated down here for ages. The only way they’d be able to stockpile memories is if those memories came to them from others on a fairly regular basis.It was a sobering thought. The Annuated stored the knowledge retained by dead symbionts, at least the ones who made it down here into the deep waters before expiring.

The nearest of the spheres made a close approach. Though it had to be over a meter in diameter, she threw her arms around it—

—and became Dhej, a symbiont who had descended to this place of remembering more than six centuries ago. Dhej’s eleven hosts had distinguished themselves in fields ranging from medicine, cybernetics research, poetry, and criminal law. This symbiont’s hosts had experienced motherhood, fatherhood, exultation, grief—

Dax released the sphere and thrust it roughly away, unwilling to risk losing focus on her mission by becoming caught up in the minutiae of a serial existence as rich as her own. She reached for a second sphere—

—and became one with Liak, a symbiont whose fourteenth host expired nearly fifteen centuries earlier. Dax ached in sympathy as the dying, senescent symbiont swam laboriously into ever deeper, denser, and hotter waters, desperate to leave its enormous burden of memory in a safe resting place, as though it were carrying a clutch of eggs—

Again, Dax pushed the mnemonic orb away and clutched at others, spending momentary eternities with a whole series of them. Though she wasn’t certain how much objective time she had spent in this pursuit, she realized that a pattern was gradually emerging: Each successive batch of memories hailed from farther and farther back in the long history of Trill.

Even as this realization struck her, the encounters began coming with steadily accelerating frequency. The successive touches of multitudes of other memory-laden symbiont minds quickly ran together in a dazzling mnemonic blur, a rapid experiential torrent that submerged both Ezri and the Dax symbiont, washing them swiftly backward in time. Like an unprotected swimmer caught in the rapids, Dax reached out frantically with her mind, seeking anything that might slow the dizzying motion. Nothing worked; her course seemed as unalterable as that of Trill itself as it made its stately, eternal freefall around its sun.

Shutting her eyes tightly, Dax felt her abdomen begin lurching crazily from the sensations of acceleration and falling. Oh, pleasepleasepleaseplease don’t let me yark inside my helmet,she thought even as she realized that her closed eyelids posed no barrier to the telepathic kaleidoscope that assailed her.

Time passed in reverse even more quickly, and her perception of falling reached what felt like terminal velocity. She tried to calm herself by getting analytical; she reasoned that the oldest stored memories must lie closest to the center of this weird mindscape, like the pungent, meaty nut found at the heart of a sytobean.

More glimpses of the lives of other symbionts and humanoids entered Dax’s consciousness, vanishing almost as quickly as they arrived. Shards of millennia-old memories that seemed as broken and worn as the piece of Kurlan sculpture she had found on Minos Korva came and went, briefly grafting themselves onto her consciousness as they passed. For a few moments, Dax became—

—a nearly naked humanoid male named Hodak. As Healer, it fell to Hodak to use the valley’s plants and animals to try to restore health to those members of his tribe who fell ill. After lifting the riverworm over his head in supplication to the gods of healing, he brought the wriggling brown creature down onto the abdomen of the fever-stricken young woman who lay unconscious before him.

Hodak had seen the riverworms attach themselves to other animals, and noted that both had seemed strengthened by the contact; perhaps a similar effect would save this woman from the fever that was consuming her. As the villagers looked on, hope and apprehension etched across their painted, spot-framed faces, the eyeless riverworm found the opening of the woman’s empty abdominal pouch. The pouch not only allowed males and females alike to provide postbirth incubation for helpless newborns, it also served Healers as a conduit for their cures and medicaments.

The riverworm worked its way into the pouch. The woman’s eyes opened moments later, and a beatific smile split her face. Hodak thanked the gods and—

—disappeared. The village and everything in it were swept away, replaced by darkness. But the darkness was filled with sensation, warmth, and even flashes of wordless conversation. Dax—

—became Sef, one of the first of its kind to gain the sense known as “sight.” On numerous occasions, Sef had used the mind-tendrils it customarily used to converse with its fellow Swimmers to entice various four-legged beasts to the Pool’s edge. Some of those creatures had bolted at the last moment, but others had permitted Sef to “ride” them, sharing their sensory experiences, sometimes for lengthy periods.

And what experiences the Fourlegs had to share! To see! To hear! To run across the Aboveworld, basking in all its light, glorying in the variegated colors and tastes and smells. Few Swimmers had any real knowledge of these sublime sensations, for only a handful had ridden on the Fourlegs. And like those others, Sef wanted more.

Many had been the times that Sef had wished to share the experiences of a creature whose subtlety of intellect equaled Sef’s own. But did any such creature exist anywhere on Trill?

Then the first of the two-legged Walkers approached the Pool’s rocky edge, in answer to one of Sef’s mind calls. Of course, Sef did not know what a Walker was until after riding the creature for the first time and examining its sleek, furry coat and feeling its steeply ridged brow with the being’s own graceful, long-fingered hands. The Walkers had bigger brains than any of the Fourlegs, and quite subtle intellects—at least in comparison to the Fourlegs. The creature’s initial fear response had been quite intense, and might take some time to counter.The Fourlegs have taken us far from the Pool and back again, Sef thought, gazing wonderingly at the beetle-browed face reflected in the Pool’s surface.Who knows how much farther the Walkers might take us?