Cathedral by Michael Mangels (ebook reader color screen txt) 📕

meet with Senkowski and Leishman’s teams one more time and go completely through it all again. There must have been something we missed on the first two tries.”

Shar’s eyes never wavered from the floating object. “Of course. Perhaps we can run another simulation on the idea of using the warp nacelles to extend the range of the transporter.”

“We keep losing the transportee through signal attenuation,” Nog said, shaking his head. “We need a different approach. I don’t think brute force is going to work this time.”

Whatever the solution was, it was bound to involve something subtle. Or perhaps several subtle somethings. A four-cushion bank shot on the dom-jot table, involving both luck and skill.

Shar nodded dreamily, his eyes still fixed on the artifact.

Nog had never seen his friend appear so…haunted. Or so quiet. He was used to Shar’s reticence about discussing his personal life, of course, but his moody silence over the past several days was extreme, even for an Andorian.

Nog set his own padd down. “Shar, what’s wrong?”

Shar sat mutely for a long time before speaking. “You are one of my most valued friends, Nog. I wonder if I have ever taken the time to tell you that before.”

Nog wasn’t sure what to say. “Thanks, Shar. The feeling’s mutual. Now, what are you trying to tell me?”

“Just that the people in our lives are irreplaceable. Once they’re gone, there are no more opportunities to repair our relationships with them. There are no second chances.”

Nog was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Clearly, something cataclysmic was going on in his friend’s life. And just as clearly, Shar didn’t know how to begin talking about it.

“Has something happened back home?” Nog asked quietly after ordering the computer to silence the background music.

Nog found Shar’s sudden burst of brittle laughter surprising. He couldn’t have been more shocked if his friend had suddenly sprouted a second head.

“Tell me, Shar,” Nog said, after his friend had again subsided into silence. “Tell me what’s happened.”

Almost a minute elapsed before Shar spoke again. “It isn’t easy…. We Andorians do not confide easily withone another, let alone with…outworlders.”

“Ouch, Shar, I thought we had more in common than that. Aren’t we both the sons of Very Influential People? And aren’t we both always trying to keep that fact from swallowing us whole?”

Shar only nodded, looking miserable.

“So we’re both outworlders,” Nog said. “Anywhere we happen to be. No matter where you go, there you are.”

Shar nodded again, but continued to remain silent.

“All right,” Nog said. “I’ll get confessional first, if that’s what it’s going to take to get you to talk.”

Shar’s antennae stood up quizzically, illuminated by the artifact’s glow. “I have nothing to confess.”

“Well, I do,” Nog said, gesturing toward the artifact. “And do you know what I want to confess? I want to confess not being sure I’m really doing everything I possibly can to crack this mystery.” He pushed his chair back and placed his new left leg on the tabletop with a loud thunk. His bowl of tube grubs arced onto the deck with an audible splat, but he ignored it.

Shar blinked in evident incomprehension, and Nog felt his frustrations begin to tear at their fetters.

“Don’t you understand?” Nog said, pointing at his regenerated leg. “That alien thing hurt Dr. Bashir and Lieutenant Dax pretty badly. But I actually got some good luck out of it.”

“That is fortunate for you,” Shar said.

“No! It’s terrible! If we reverse whatever that artifact did to the three of us who were on the Sagan, I’ll probably go back to…the way I was before. Right after the Jem’Hadar took my leg at AR-558.”

Shar’s eyes widened with understanding. “Forgive me. I hadn’t considered that.”

Nog felt oddly relieved to finally begin articulating his thoughts on the matter. “I’ve had a tough time thinking about anything else.”

“Perhaps,” Shar said, steepling his fingers thoughtfully, “you could remain aboard the Defiant when we insert the away team onto the artifact. Dr. Bashir and Ezri could take the symbiont inside without you and seek a means of reversing their own conditions without altering yours.”

“I already asked Sacagawea about that,” Nog admitted, feeling a surge of shame. He wondered if he was reverting to type—becoming a stereotypical cowardly Ferengi, who’d always opt to hide rather than stand and fight. “As near as I can tell from his answer, everybody who was aboard the Sagan when we found the artifact is somehow linked. He says that if I don’t go along, whatever Ezri and Dr. Bashir have lost will stay lost.”

“Of course we have no objective proof that anything Sacagawea says is true,” Shar said.

“Fair enough. But he’s all we’ve got.”

Shar’s expression grew distant. “I have noticed that you often seem to see the world in terms of things lost or things acquired.”

“Ezri would probably call it a cultural predisposition,” Nog said, pushing his chair back and withdrawing his new left leg from the table. He wasn’t sure where his friend was going with this.

Shar nodded. “True enough. Perhaps it makes it difficult to recognize that the gains we make in life often come with certain losses built into them. That we are defined by our debits as much as by our credits.”

Nog began suspecting that Shar’s words were as much for Shar as for him. He smiled. “You’d make a terrible Ferengi.”

Shar answered with a small wry smile of his own. “And your emotional transparency would not make you very popular on Andor.”

Nog wondered if Shar was still trying to deflect attention from whatever secrets he was guarding. He decided that the time had come to confront the matter directly. “Okay. I’ve made my ugly confession. Now will you finally tell me what’s been bothering you?”

Shar paused to gather his thoughts, then raised his gray eyes to Nog’s. The science officer’s jaw was set, as though he had just made a major decision. “When you first learned that you were going to lose your leg, and that the loss was to be permanent, how did it make