Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key by Olivia Woods Page B

strangely eager to return.”
    Ghemor felt her anger rising. “I only came to your mixed-up continuum to stop my counterpart before she stole the mantle of Emissary in my universe. I would havethought you of all people would appreciate the enormity of that.”
    Sisko’s tone remained even. “I’m surprised to hear you say that, given that we both know you had the perfect way to stop your counterpart while you were still on the other side. And you didn’t use it.”
    Damn him. “So you sent Vaughn?”
    “Someone had to step up,” Sisko said. “Because up to now, too many people have been dropping the ball.” He moved on down the curving corridor.
    “You’re playing a dangerous game, Captain,” she called after him.
    “That’s the difference between us, Ms. Ghemor,” he answered over his shoulder. “This isn’t a game to me.”
    “But it is to Them, isn’t it?” Ghemor asked.
    Sisko stopped. That got to him, she thought, gratified that her words had finally struck a sensitive spot.
    “They treat our lives like kotra pieces,” she pressed. “Tell me, Captain, how do you go along with it—putting your own people’s lives on the line for some abstract concept of fate, abandoning any sense of free will, any sense of choice—”
    Sisko turned to meet her accusing stare one last time. “Everyone has a choice, Ms. Ghemor,” he told her. “Everyone.”
    He left her alone in the corridor, and never looked back.
     
    It was with a profound sense of irony that Ro Laren had become an expert on Bajoran prophecy, studying for endless hours in her quarters.
    She’d never been the religious sort—not since the death of her father, anyway. If growing up during the Occupation had made her doubtful of the Prophets, Ro Gale’s cruel and senseless murder before her seven-year-old eyes had solidified her complete rejection of the Bajoran faith. She didn’t deny the existence of the wormhole or the sentients within it, of course. But that wasn’t the same thing as believing they were gods. As far as Ro was concerned, any mysticism attached to them wasn’t merely unnecessary; it served only to muddle the truth, effectively widening the gulf between the darkness and the light that her people’s religion was ostensibly supposed to narrow.
    And yet, quite inexplicably, it was Ro’s very skepticism that fueled her absorption of Bajor’s wealth of religious writings. Because of the accepted transtemporal nature of the wormhole entities, no one disputed that the prophecies were essentially imperfect attempts to understand genuine flashes of precognitive insight—courtesy of contact with beings who existed outside of linear time—going back thousands of years. Where people differed, of course, was in their interpretation of those quasimystical ancient insights. Deciphering those florid descriptions had long been the passion of scholars and theologians all over the planet, as well as a serious area of inquiry—ever since the rediscovery of the long-lost Book of Ohalu—of one agnostic security officer on Deep Space 9.
    Admittedly, Ro’s attempts to understand the frame of mind of Iliana Ghemor were leading her into turbulent philosophical waters. If Iliana’s intention was indeedto fulfill the prophecy of the Emissary in the alternate universe, Ro needed to understand what she expected to achieve by doing so.
    The obvious first stop was to review the prophecies that foretold the coming of that religious icon. Those texts, at least, tended to agree on the specific circumstances that would define the Prophets’ fated intermediary with the Bajoran people: the Emissary was the one to whom the Prophets would call, the one who would open the Gates of the Celestial Temple, and the one to whom the Prophets would give back life. For Iliana, Ro knew, the key variable in that formula would be the second one. It was the condition that, in Benjamin Sisko’s case, had been fulfilled literally when he discovered the wormhole. The