“There is no evidence that you have caused any deaths,” Selar began.
“Thamnos said I was!” Zetha cried. “ ‘Sample 173’ he said, and Sisko believes him. How can it not be true? The datachips…they gave me the injections, said they were nutritional supplements…I never had enough to eat when I was little….”
“Hey, I never meant that!” Sisko said. Her accusation struck him so hard, he winced. He wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. He went to her, crouched down and took her hand as if he were talking to Jake. “It was a diversion, to distract Thamnos, like what you and Tuvok did with Jarquin. You didn’t really think—? My God, little girl, how awful it must be not to be able to trust anyone!”
In the meantime, Tuvok had gone up to the entrance of the cave, estimating the time until sunrise, then returned. He and Sisko had walked in under cover of night, but there was no time for that now.
“You and Selar beam out first,” Sisko instructed him. “Zetha and I will follow.”
Carrying the Romulan transmitter as well as the datachips, Tuvok signaled the transporter on Albatrossto beam them in. As the transporter beam engulfed the two Vulcans, Sisko took Zetha’s hands and gently pulled her to her feet. He wrapped his arms around her and she clung to him like a child. Her bones felt as fragile as a bird’s.
Hell,he thought, if I’ve caught the disease, it’s too late to worry about it anyway. And Selar seemed awfully confident none of us had. Guess I’ll know more once we get out of here.Not knowing what else to do or say, he rocked Zetha in his arms until the transporter grabbed them both.
“I was beginning to worry,” Uhura said a short time later as Sisko settled in at the controls and answered her hail. It was a little disconcerting seeing her as just a face on a viewscreen after so long using the fully dimensional holos, but the away team was in a bit of a hurry right now.
“All present and accounted for, Admiral,” Sisko responded as Tuvok locked into the seat beside him. He barely noticed Selar touching the hypo to his arm to draw blood. “We have a lot to tell you.”
“Hold that thought for now,” Uhura said crisply. “There’s a warbird in the vicinity, and Okinawa’s on her way. Curzon Dax is aboard. Okinawawill be looking for you. Rendezvous soonest.”
Sisko didn’t know whether to be elated or alarmed. Having Okinawacome to them meant he’d be reunited with Jennifer and Jake that much sooner, but he was disturbed at their being inside the Zone and potentially in harm’s way.
“Acknowledged,” he said, keeping rein on his thoughts. “Tell Okinawawe’re on our way.
“Easier said than done,” he said to Tuvok as soon as Uhura had signed off. His cough forgotten, the possibility that he might be infected with Catalyst forgotten, his main concern now was how to get the clumsy bird off the ground. “Recommendations, Mr. Tuvok? Tiptoe out the way we came in, or push the afterburners, go up like a rocket, and risk frightening the neighbors and, maybe, signaling our position to a warbird?”
Tuvok had been scanning for any energy displacement that might have been a warbird under cloak. So far, so good.
“I submit we cannot reveal our position to a warbird that is not yet here.”
“Agreed,” Sisko concurred, powering her up full. “Maybe the natives will think it’s just thunder…”
With a shudder and a roar, Albatrosstook wing.
Selar had gathered serum samples from everyone, Zetha last. The girl lay on her bunk, no longer weeping, but curled up into herself in stony silence.
“I will need your assistance with the next phase of the experiment,” Selar began.
“All those people—!” Zetha whispered hoarsely. “Everywhere I went, I carried it with me. Cretak, the crew of the ship that brought me, Admiral Uhura, Dr. Crusher and her son. Other ‘seeds’ may have started the outbreaks on Tenjin and Quirinus, but I must have brought it again to the domes we visited, the survivors in Sawar, Citizen Jarquin, the Sliwoni when I went into town to steal the adaptor…we wondered how it spread so quickly there…”
“You have not infected anyone,” Selar said. “Of that I am certain.”
Zetha sat up, rubbing the tears off her face with the heels of her hands. “How can you be sure? Thamnos said—”
“As with everything else, Thamnos was incorrect. Admiral Uhura is quite well. She and Lieutenant Sisko were in communication minutes ago. No one else on Earth has been infected.”
This seemed to give Zetha hope. “Then maybe the disease was still…incubating? Perhaps it’s only active now. But still, you and Tuvok and Sisko, even that madwoman on Renaga…”
“Lieutenant Sisko shows no signs of the illness. His cough, I believe, is psychosomatic,” Selar said.
“Psycho—What does that mean?”
“It means, and you did not hear me say this,” Selar said, in a rare moment of confidentiality, “that Lieutenant Sisko is uneasy with the responsibilities of command. The emotional stress is taking a physical toll.”
Zetha remembered how her gums used to bleed in the final weeks in the barracks. She understood about stress. For a moment she almost pitied Sisko. Then she remembered about Catalyst.
“So I didn’t infect him? Does that mean—?”
“Will you assist me in continuing my experiment?” Selar asked again.
Puzzled, emotionally spent, Zetha could think of nothing else to do. She followed Selar to the lab.
Many in the village on the hilltop were awakened by the rushing sound of Albatross’s thrusters, and some ventured to their windows in time to see the fiery orange trail soaring upward, but none dared venture outside to investigate. Some prayed, others simply went back to bed. In the morning, some would venture into the woods from which the demonic sight had originated, see the scorch marks in the grass, and pray again. The only one who might have offered some explanation, however incredible, was Boralesh, who slept through it all.
Speculation might have entertained the villagers for days if they had not soon had newer marvels to concern themselves with. For that morning Boralesh informed her neighbors that she had dreamed her husband had been murdered by a demon, and this was of far more interest than some unexplained fireball in the sky. Perhaps the two were somehow connected?
When Thamnos failed to reappear that same evening—the villagers were accustomed to his seemingly aimless peregrinations, but he always returned for supper—some would whisper behind their hands that perhaps he had deserted the woman who had forced him into marriage. Others would speculate that it was not a demon that had killed him. The buzz would last for several weeks, then dissipate. It was all in the stars and the gods’ hands, anyway, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“Well?” Admiral Tal demanded yet again, wishing Koval would get out of the habit of standing just between his peripheral vision and the forward screen every time he was on the bridge. “We’re here. Now what?”
Koval did not look at him so much as address him over his shoulder. “I beam down. You wait.”
“Alone?” Tal demanded, though not with any great passion. If a Tal Shiar operative chose to beam into a possibly hostile environment without a security team, who was he to stop him?
“Yes, alone,” Koval said. “Where I’m going, no one will even see me. I will instruct your transporter crew. You will stay in constant contact with me and await my orders.”
The sight of the knife in Thamnos’s throat almost made Koval wish he’d brought guards. But there was nothing living in the cave, and Koval was confident he could beam out before anyone might come shuffling in from outside.
He had already silenced the other two transmitters and their operators, ordering the warbird’s transport officer to beam him from site to site. He’d planned to silence Thamnos next, but someone had beaten him to it.