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

picked his way down the narrow stone steps, wary of falling. Soon he was approaching the neat, green rows that had called to him from the kitchen window. Looking closely, he could see that all was not well in the garden today. Ropy, hairy strands of grape-scented kudzu vine had wormed their way through the neatly manicured rows of squash, cayenne peppers, and new potatoes, like some implacable Jem’Hadar road-building project. We can send starships to the ends of the galaxy. But we still can’t do a blessed thing about these damned weeds.

There was something oddly reassuring about that.

Donning his gloves, he knelt on aching knees, pausing as his heart began to race disconcertingly. Minutes later, after he was satisfied that the worst of the discomfort had passed, he thrust his gnarled fingers into the black earth and got to work.

Gabrielle Vicente let herself into the house with the emergency key that Judith Sisko had surreptitiously given her during her visit last Easter. That day, Mr. Sisko’s daughter had asked every member of the Creole Kitchen’s staff—out of earshot of her father, of course—to keep a particularly close eye on Joseph. Gabrielle had been among the first to notice the old man’s gradual deterioration since he had learned of his son’s disappearance last Thanksgiving. Then, some four months later, when his grandson Jake had also gone missing, Mr. Sisko’s decline had grown precipitous.

She stepped into the foyer, fearing the worst. “Mr. Sisko?”

There was no reply. Other than the clicking of her flat shoes on the ancient hardwood floor, the house was as silent as a tomb. The thought made her wince, and she banished it.

She continued calling out as she made her way through the large living room and entered the kitchen. A cup of coffee sat on the countertop beside the sink. She touched it, noting that it was still warm.

She heaved a sigh of relief.

Then she raised her eyes to the kitchen window and looked out across the vegetable garden.

Joseph Sisko lay sprawled in the dirt, silent and unmoving.

27

Captain’s Log, stardate 53581.0

The Defiant has finally passed the apex of its mission of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant. As we loop past the mysterious alien artifact—whose precise status as either a cathedral or a religious anathema I leave for better minds than mine to determine—our new heading will take us beyond System GQ-12475, bringing the Gamma Quadrant mouth of the wormhole ever nearer. At last we are homeward bound.

But our investigations of this still largely unknown quarter of the galaxy are far from finished; the Defiant’s new trajectory will carry us through dozens of sectors into which no Alpha Quadrant humanoid has ever ventured before. The wonders and terrors of these past weeks haven’t blunted the desire of the crew to see what lies over the next hill, and the one after that. The feeling of anticipation I sense from everyone aboard remains nothing short of exhilarating. Even—or perhaps especially —among those whose lives were most profoundly affected by our encounter with the alien cathedral: the Defiant’s first officer, Lieutenant Ezri Dax; chief medical officer Julian Bashir; and Lieutenant Nog, my chief engineer.

The readings, measurements, and holorecordings the crew has taken of the cathedral ought to keep the Federation’s best physicists and architects—and maybe even the psychiatrists as well—busy for decades, if not longer. I find myself almost wishing it were possible to tow the thing home—until I stop to consider the havoc the artifact wrought among my crew.

Since sovereign jurisdiction over the object has been claimed by both the D’Naali and the Nyazen—two local sentient species who have for millennia used armed spacefleets to enforce their conflicting claims—it is my judgment that any further visitation by Starfleet personnel would be inappropriate. Certainly, neither group wants us around, at least at present. Perhaps one day the D’Naali and the Nyazen will reach an accord and invite us to investigate the object further. But until that time, my official recommendation to Starfleet Command and the Federation Council is to enforce a strict hands-off policy. And gods help any other alien crew that should happen to blunder into it.

Julian Bashir stood on the Defiant’ s bridge as Vaughn finished recording his log entry. On the viewer, a recorded image of the alien artifact hovered, its infinitely shifting, eye-deceiving surfaces still stubbornly guarding its secrets.

Most of them, anyway.

Across the bridge, Nog paced back and forth before the engineering console, examining data on a padd he held and periodically comparing them to the console’s readouts. He was no doubt doing his best to evaluate and expedite the repairs made necessary throughout the ship by the weapons of the Nyazen and D’Naali fleets. Although it had been only hours since Bashir had reattached the engineer’s biosynthetic left leg, Nog was already moving about with a surprising degree of confidence, refusing to use the cane he’d been offered in the medical bay. He had yet to speak in any great detail about his personal experiences inside the artifact, at least to Bashir. But judging from the spring in Nog’s step, it was hard to tell that the events of the last couple of days had ever happened.

You have to look into his eyes to see that, Bashir thought, feeling a surge of sympathy for his young friend’s renewed physical loss, as well as a twinge of guilt. Ezri and I obviously got the better part of whatever bargains we struck with the multiverse. At least we’re both whole.

The turbolift doors slid open, and Bowers strode onto the bridge, right beside Ezri.

Ezri Dax once again, now that the symbiont had been restored to her. It had been a near thing, so weakened had Ezri become because of her lengthy separation from the symbiont. But once Bashir had realized that the alien artifact had somehow restored his talents, he had become immovably determined to save the woman he loved. Of course, her own