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  “A self-authorizing language,” said Nog. “If we’re smart enough to figure out how to read it, we’ll be admitted into the system.”

  “Exactly. Once I’m in, then I can deactivate one system, or both.”

  “But if that’s the wrong thing to do? You’ll be choosing, Soloman,” said Gomez. “You’ll pick one path out of infinite possibilities. For that matter, if you squeeze yourself into a system even as an observer, that will collapse superpositions, right? It’s that old paradigm, Schrödinger’s Cat. So long as you don’t look the cat’s both alive and dead.”

  Gold asked, “Are you saying we shouldn’t do it, Gomez?”

  “No, I just want everyone to know the risks. The events in this other universe may actually favor the opposite, or something we can’t, or don’t, want to imagine.” She let out a breath. “But it beats doing nothing. I’m going with Soloman’s recommendation, Captain—Captains,” she added with a look at Kira. “We need to get to Empok Nor.”

  After Gomez, Nog, and Soloman transported over to the da Vinci, Ezri Dax said, “All this talk about possibilities and universes…awfully interesting timing.”

  “Why?” asked Kira.

  “Soloman.” Pensive, Dax folded her arms across her chest. “Earlier, he asked if he could access the Orb of Time.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. It seems he’s been studying the Orbs and concluded that the way an Orb emits energy is very much like a computer program. I think he also sees them as devices that access information available on the quantum level, like the Androssi use dimensional shifts. He said he wondered how the wormhole aliens manage to harness and direct the energy you need to create a time shift. I told him those were all good questions, but—”

  “He didn’t know about the Vedek Assembly’s new restrictions on the Orbs?”

  Dax shook her head. “And I tried to tell him what it was like the first time Jadzia tried studying an Orb. Not exactly a spiritual experience—but, maybe, the Dax symbiont’s not receptive to spirituality. I don’t know.”

  Now it was Kira’s turn to look thoughtful. “I’ve never thought about spirituality like that. Spirituality is just me. I wasn’t aware that a Bynar could get religion.”

  “Maybe communing with a computer is about as spiritual as a Bynar gets. Or maybe it’s just the way a Bynar’s brain is wired. You can never really know whether a god exists, or if you search for a god and construct a religion because that’s the way your brain works. If you buy into that, then spirituality’s as innate and natural as breathing—and not mystical at all.”

  “Can’t disprove that one way or the other and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need to hope that…” Kira tried finding the right word but couldn’t. “Maybe we just need to hope.”

  They looked at each other. Then Dax said, “In the end, maybe hope is all we have.”

  Chapter

  2

  From space, looking at Empok Nor, Gomez’s first thought was: haunted house. In her EVA suit now with the rasp of her breathing very loud in her ears, Gomez glanced right, left. There was something about the way Cardassian design emphasized the slash of shadows and the arch of bulkheads that made the absolute black of the abandoned station seem like a carcass. Kind of the way a bug looked flipped on its back, legs stiff, deader than a doornail. Pattie might not have appreciated the analogy, but there it was—though knowing the Nasat’s sense of humor, maybe she would.

  The station was a derelict with just enough auxiliary power to keep it in orbit, a rudimentary deflector system to prevent the random meteor strike—and not a drop more.

  Keep expecting a couple eyes to pop out of nowhere and go booga-booga…

  Suspended in midair, Gomez turned in a slow pirouette. The light of her wristlamp slid over bulkheads and empty computer wall panels and open-mesh grids—there and then just as quickly gone again as she spun around. A stable pocket of normal space enveloped this part of the station, including the now-empty fusion core, two-thirds of the habitat ring, and one set of docking pylons above and below, the latter onto which Vance Hawkins had eased the Kwolek. The other third of Empok Nor slipped in and out of temporal-spatial fissures.

  The da Vinci had shadowed them the whole way—not just for evac if needed, but because the da Vinci’s cargo hold was crammed with two emergency generators beamed in series from DS9. When they were ready, Hawkins would activate the Kwolek’s transporters at the same time as Transporter Chief Poynter powered up the da Vinci’s transporter, snag the generators’ transporter patterns and do a linked transport right into the lower core. Easy, right?

  Wrong-o. Gomez came out of her spin and pulled herself to another handhold. Nothing about this is going to be easy. Nothing ever is.

  They rolled and tucked and pushed off in a straggly single file, like beads on a very loose string, down a pitch-black service corridor tacking toward the base of the station’s midsection and the control room for the lower core: Hawkins in front with a phaser rifle, Conlon’s tiny figure bobbing just ahead, and Gomez bringing up the rear. (Corsi had reluctantly remained behind at DS9. If things got dicey on the station and they had to start evacuations, Ro Laren would need all the security expertise she could find. Besides which, Gomez wasn’t sure that a dangerous mission like this was such a good idea so soon after Caitano and Deverick’s deaths.)

  Hooking the fingers of her right hand around the metal rim of a bulkhead, Gomez pulled her body along, tucked her knees, planted her feet, and pushed. Normally, Gomez got a kick out of weightlessness. Not this time. Gomez hadn’t been on the mission to retrieve Empok Nor’s fusion core; she’d been on Sarindar and Kieran had taken her place and he’d said that Nog was a helluva good engineer….

  As always when she thought about Kieran Duffy, a wave of sadness curled and broke over her mind and body. The wave was small, this time. As she got farther and farther away from Galvan VI, the crushing grief got less debilitating. She’d been able to go hours without thinking about him. She’d even gone and set a date for a vacation with Wayne Omthon on Hidalgo Station in a few days.

  To some degree, that scared her. If she stopped thinking about Duffy, ceased missing him so much that the ache was physical…well, then, what was left?

  Can’t think about that now. She shoved thoughts of Duffy into a mental black box and slammed down the lid. Later, maybe, when she was alone…

  A click in her helmet just as they reached the access hatch to the control room: “Okay, we’re in ops.” Nog. “It’s like the rest of the station. Everything’s off except for the computer system. Soloman’s going for access in a couple seconds.”

  “Roger that. I don’t suppose there’s any way that Soloman would like to access this hatch down here and pop it for me.”

  “It’s gonna be no. He won’t want to interfere with things too much.”

  “Ask anyway.”

  A pause while Nog said something then came back. “No.”

  “Figures,” said Conlon. The petite engineer made a face. “It’s never easy.”

  “Our motto,” said Gomez. “Well, one of them, anyhow. If it’s easy, they don’t call us. Okay, Nog, thanks. Holler soonest.” Then, activating her magnetic boots, Gomez planted herself onto the deck. She unholstered her tool kit, pried open an access panel and isolated the hatch’s primary circuits. Fitting a portable battery pack to her patch, Gomez flicked a switch, was rewarded with a flash of orange light, and then the hatch slid to one side.

  Okay. Gomez secured the battery pack to a bulkhead just in case and walked inside. Her wristlamp punched a hole through the darkness, the light sliding over the contours of reactor panels and computer banks and then, just beyond, the silver gleam of a railing lining the drop-off: a void now, a hole in Empok Nor’s heart where the core would’ve been. She stepped forward, poking her lamp here and there until she found the main computer console. Without knowing why, she smeared dust off the console with the flat of her left hand, then played the light over her
glove and the rim of gray fringe held by electrostatic charge.

  “Commander.” It was Conlon at her right elbow, and Gomez turned, looked down, read understanding in her dark eyes. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Right.” Slapping dust from her glove, Gomez turned aside and nodded at Hawkins. “Contact the da Vinci. Let’s get to work and then?” She huffed out a breath. “We get the hell out of here.”

  Nog stabbed his tricorder harder than absolutely necessary. That little dressing-down in front of the da Vinci crew was all kinds of fun and thank you, Captain Kira. The captain’s displeasure had been like a smack right on a lobe. He’d gotten dressed down before. That wasn’t it. But to have it happen in front of a crew that Nog had worked hard to prove he could do whatever engineering job they could, and light-years better? That was worse.

  And talk about worse. Last time he’d set foot on Empok Nor he’d nearly gotten fried by a computerized Androssi security sentry device: a brown ball that shot arcs of electricity like a Van de Graaff generator on hormones. Time before that, the Jem’Hadar kidnapped his grandmother. Time before that, Garak had taken potshots. Vic told him once: Kid, relax, third time’s the charm. Except it hadn’t been a charm at all, although he had convinced the da Vinci crew to tow the station back and yes, he had saved DS9’s butt.

  Still, given all this? Nog figured he was within his rights to expect all kinds of bad stuff.

  Furious, he jabbed at his tricorder, forcing his mind to concentrate on his readings and Soloman. The Bynar wasn’t as hesitant as he’d been the last time. Probably more time being alone had done that for him, made him autonomous.

  Yeah, and Nog still hated being alone. No drad music this time, though, and the Bynar was oblivious. The blue computer glow gave the Bynar an eerie, otherworldly quality, and if Nog looked closely enough, he’d probably be able to see the whiz of computer code mirrored in Soloman’s eyes. Soloman was completely silent, not chittering away the way he’d done with DS9’s computer but just still, staring. Intent. Something spooky was going on in the distance; Soloman was watching, and Nog wasn’t a part of anything, really.

  Out of the loop again. What was it he’d thought about the last time as he hung in the Rio Grande? Right before the da Vinci had shown up in the Trivas system? Yeah, he’d thought about AR-558, and about how he’d been humiliated. He’d thought about loneliness, too, and here he was, full circle, as if he were on some weird carnival ride that stopped in just exactly the same place every single time.

  “Face it,” he muttered, though he probably could’ve shouted in the Bynar’s ear, Soloman looked that out of it. “Nog, you’re a bad-luck magnet.”

  As if to prove him right, his tricorder picked that moment to sound an alarm—and Soloman screamed.

  For Soloman it was glorious, but in a way that was as much about pain as pleasure. He was doing nothing, really, other than watching the stream of numbers racing across his monitor. He disengaged himself as much as he could, what a human might call free-floating attention, trying not to focus on any one parameter but merely to hover and allow the impression and the form of the datastream wash over him like cool water.

  Unbidden, his thoughts tugged him to the last time he’d been privy to the same blaze of information crossing between systems: the Bynars 1011 and 1110 on Ishtar Station. Communing with the other Bynars had activated memories Soloman had suppressed. He hadn’t told Lense about it. He hadn’t told anyone. He’d felt it as envy and knew it now as…a void. Being self-contained was an asset and a curse. Communing with DS9’s computer, or the da Vinci’s, or any of a host of other computers was like trying to snuggle up to a ghost for warmth. But there was Empok Nor’s unseen twin matching move for move, like a perfectly mirrored counterpart. Like he’d been for 111…

  What? Soloman’s mind lurched. A tiny prickle of something close to alarm touched his mind. He’d seen something, he’d…Unconscious that he was doing so, Soloman leaned forward, as if to bring the numbers into better focus. A synchronization signature whizzed by, and before he knew what he was doing, because it was second nature, Soloman honed in, focused, and…

  There! Soloman’s breath caught. No, it can’t be, it can’t…. His head throbbed and his heart ballooned with joy and pain; without realizing he had, he snagged the signature….

  Stop…

  …meshed, and then his thoughts…

  Stop…

  …whirled like leaves caught in a fast-flowing stream, swirling and hurtling out of control and…

  Stopstopstop…

  “Stop, stop, stop!”

  Not something Soloman had said: The word, the voice was from outside, not the datastream, and Soloman pushed back, hard, forcing his mind to stay with the synchronization signature.

  “STOP!”

  The word tore the veil of his communion, and Soloman was jarred free with a violence that was physical. He was thrown back; even weightless, he hit hard, rebounded off the deck before getting slammed down and pinned into place. His head bounced against his helmet like a bean rattling in a tin can. His concentration blanked; the communion blacked out, and his mind was hurled, brutally, into his body, his consciousness snapping back like a stretched, elastic cord snipped in two.

  Soloman stopped screaming. His throat was raw and his ears rang. When he opened his eyes, he was staring into Nog’s faceplate.

  “Are you okay?” Nog shouted even though it was perfectly silent now. “What happened? Are you all right? What the hell happened?”

  Soloman cleared his throat. “I am fine, Lieutenant. If you would not mind getting off, please?”

  “Oh.” Nog rolled off, then extended a hand and helped Soloman, who’d activated his boots, clamber to his feet. “Sorry. It’s just that my tricorder registered a spike in your chip, and then you started screaming and I…”

  “I apologize,” said Soloman, embarrassed that he’d been so public with something so very private. “It is only…this datastream is a search program and I found a synchronization signature. A Bynar signature.”

  “What? A Bynar?” Nog was goggle-eyed. “Who?”

  “One-one-zero,” said Soloman. “The person on the other end of this datastream is…it…it is I.”

  Chapter

  3

  “Give that to me again, Soloman.” Gold’s voice was measured and Soloman did not detect that his captain thought he had gone insane. “A search program in a parallel timeline?”

  “Yes, Captain.” Soloman and Nog were still in Empok Nor’s ops. “We can agree that parallel universes and worlds within worlds contain all possible arrangements of matter, yes?”

  “I got that.”

  “Time is just a concept, a way of ordering matter in a sequence our minds can handle. There is no time. There are events that occur in a multiverse upon which we impose order.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Hawkins, who’d come running as soon as Nog called for help. “There are a couple of dates I’d like to—”

  “Stow it,” said Gold. An audible sigh. “Soloman, what are you talking about here? Time travel?”

  “No, what I am saying is that the multiverse is fixed. The fact that I accessed my own synchronization signature, even for an instant, implies that I have tapped into another point in the timeline of a parallel universe. I have found myself somewhere and some when else. Therefore, I can commune with this 110 at another point in his universe and determine what it is that 110 is searching for.”

  “For all you know, son, that is precisely what the Androssi want you—and us—to believe. Remember, the Androssi programmed their sentry security systems to respond to our combadge codes. Anyone smart enough to design this code or whatever it is where da Vinci has been before had to bet we’d be back when things went haywire.”

  That stopped Soloman for a moment. “That is a possibility I had not considered.”

  “You’d better. You’re proposing that you commune with…well, with an alien. We won’t even call 110 a mirror—you. H
e’s his own person. He represents forks in the roads you did not take and some you can’t imagine.”

  “For that matter,” Nog said, “how do we know that the Bynars there even call themselves Bynars, or think the same way? Maybe they’re the quantum computers: all things at once.” The Ferengi had recovered from his initial panic and was busily collating the information he’d stored from Soloman’s foray into Empok Nor’s computer. “There may not even be a Federation. He—if it is a he—won’t know what we’re talking about. We’ve had some experience on DS9 with mirror universes—from the reports I’ve read, we shouldn’t assume anything.”

  “That may be true, Lieutenant, but we must try,” said Soloman. “That 110 bears some trace of who I am, or else I would not have recognized myself, correct? This is our best option.”

  “Or a booby trap.” This, from Gomez down at the fusion core where she and Conlon were halfway through rigging up the generators. “Soloman, you’ll be making a choice. Once you do this, we’re locked in because everything will change around what you do. How do you know this is the right way?”

  “I do not. But it is a choice.”

  “So is not taking it.”

  Gold said, “There’s something else. If you’ve reached, well, you and this 110 is still Bynar enough that you recognize you—he’s probably bonded, right? To his own 111? And if he is, wouldn’t you also have picked up her synchronization signature?”

  It was the question he had been waiting for, and he knew what he would say. There were, in fact, two questions. But Soloman knew that Captain Gold did not have enough information to ask one of them. Indeed, it would never occur to Captain Gold to ask because the Bynars of his universe did not possess the ability. (The ability was there: alien and utterly surreal in its intimacy.) Soloman wondered if he would feel differently about himself afterward, and decided that this was a risk he was willing to take. So, he took it.