Part 6 (1/2)
”Yes, Professor Mendar, I'll be right there.” Miras switched the comm over to contact Kalisi, who was slow to answer, her eyes bleary.
”Wake up!” she teased her friend. ”Professor Mendar found a way for me to get a soil sample. She's sending a Bajoran artifact over to the lab right now, and I'm going to brush the soil off it for a.n.a.lysis.”
”What kind of artifact?” Kalisi, who had undoubtedly been dozing over a textbook, rubbed her eyes. Kalisi, who had undoubtedly been dozing over a textbook, rubbed her eyes.
”I don't know,” Miras told her. ”But if you want to see it, you should come along.”
Kalisi shrugged. ”I guess I could use a break,” ”I guess I could use a break,” she said. she said. ”I'll meet you outside the transport in five minutes.” ”I'll meet you outside the transport in five minutes.”
Miras and Kalisi arrived at the east facility in time to see Professor Mendar speaking with someone who apparently worked in the ministry's storage facility. She was affixing her thumbprint to an inventory padd when she saw the girls approaching, and her usually saturnine features turned to a pleasant smile. ”h.e.l.lo, Miss Vara, Miss Reyar. The container will be transported up to the main laboratory on floor two.” She offered the padd to Miras. ”If you put your thumbscan here, you will be able to open the s.h.i.+pping container.” Miras did as she was told.
Kalisi was excited. ”Where did it come from? How did the ministry come to have it?”
Professor Mendar bent forward as if she were telling a secret, an uncharacteristically girlish expression suddenly coming over her face. ”I was told that the ministry acquired it at an auction of repossessed goods,” she confided, ”but there was a rumor-and of course, it's only a rumor-that the item was on loan from none other than the Obsidian Order.” She stood back and waited for the girls' reaction.
”The Obsidian Order!” Kalisi exclaimed. ”That can't be. They don't loan out their inventory.” She said these things with an authoritative air, and Miras wondered how her friend even came to have an opinion on the matter. Miras had an inkling that Kalisi's father was involved in some confidential faction of the government, but so were a lot of people.
”As I said,” Professor Mendar replied, ”it's only a rumor. I had understood that the Order underwent some sort of political upheaval over a decade ago, and certain...priorities changed. The ministry acquired the object not long afterward.”
Kalisi said nothing more until the professor had excused herself, leaving them to find the laboratory on their own. ”She's talking about Enabran Tain,” she finally told Miras in confidential tones. ”When he took over the Order, a lot of things changed.”
Miras could only nod, wondering if her friend really knew what she was talking about. It was interesting in the context of the object they were about to look at, but Miras had never been one to concern herself with the potboiler gossip that often surrounded the Order.
Miras and Kalisi took the lift to the upper level and found the main lab. The cylindrical s.h.i.+pping container, sitting atop a stainless metal work surface, was quite a bit larger than what Miras had expected. It was as wide as the breadth of a man's shoulders, and half as tall as Miras herself. She put her thumbscan on the s.h.i.+pping container's security panel, and peered inside as the side of the container flipped open. It was indeed full of dirt-reddish Bajoran soil that was as fine as ash. Miras quickly set about capturing several samples in a vial, and calibrated a handheld scanner to break down the soil's composition.
”Let's see the artifact,” Kalisi suggested as Miras tapped out the results. Absently, Miras stepped back so her friend could look inside the container.
”I can't really see it,” Kalisi complained. ”Let's take it out and have a better look.”
Miras balked. ”It's enormous,” she pointed out, though it wasn't so much big as c.u.mbersome.
”Come on, aren't you interested in history?”
”What does a Bajoran artifact have to do with history?”
Kalisi laughed. ”We aren't the only civilization in the universe, you know. Here, help me. I like looking at old things.”
Miras helped her friend heft the artifact from the container, and the two managed to remove a four-sided object with exotic designs incised on each section. There were numerous polished stones set into the panels, hidden beneath the dirt.
Kalisi ran her fingers over the raised design on one panel, and then inspected the ruddy dust left behind on her pale fingertips. ”The dirt isn't really embedded in it. This must not have been buried. Maybe it was windy when they put it in the container.” She brushed her hands together. ”Is there a database with ancient Bajoran characters in it?”
Miras shrugged. ”I'm sure this thing has already been catalogued and examined,” she said. ”If you look in the university database, they're sure to have some information on it.”
Kalisi was already tapping away at her padd, connecting to the university mainframe. ”I don't see anything here,” she said. ”Maybe they just inventoried it and then never scanned it. How long ago did Professor Mendar say it had come in?”
”Over a decade, I thought she said.”
Kalisi continued to run her fingers over the surfaces of the object. ”Hmm. Look at this corner. It looks to me like it's meant to open up. Maybe this is really just a case for something.” She knocked on it with a closed fist, and it answered with a dull clang. ”I think it's hollow!”
Miras was doubtful. ”I don't see how this thing could open,” she muttered, and slipped her finger along the edge. She was a bit surprised to find something like a seam there. The object was not comprised of a single piece of...whatever it was made of-wood, apparently, though there was no indication of how it was held together. Miras tried to insert her fingers in the crack, and Kalisi joined in, prying at the edges, but it would not budge.
”Maybe you're right,” Kalisi said, and glanced up at the clock. ”I don't know about you, but I haven't eaten all day. I'm going to find a replicator.”
”I'm not hungry,” Miras told her. ”I think I'm going to scan this thing and see if I can't find out anything about these characters.”
”So! You're interested in history after all!” Kalisi walked away on a note of triumph.
Miras smiled after her. ”Linguistics, actually,” she called, as Kalisi left the room. Miras used her own padd to record the object's written characters. She flipped on a nearby viewscreen while she downloaded the scan to the computer's database. The machine made a barely audible whirring sound as the processors worked to recognize the writing, but nothing came up. Miras turned once again to the artifact, touched the corner where Kalisi had been so sure that she felt a seam. She ran her fingers down the side. This time there was a clicking noise, and the crack on the corner of the object widened noticeably.
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 Carda.s.sian 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 s.h.i.+mmered 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 t.i.tle 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 salam salam gra.s.s 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. gra.s.s 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 Carda.s.sians, 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 pa.s.s 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.”