“You think you’re the only one with his ass on the line? Julian, I need you to understand just how dangerous things are for you now, and me. Blate’s serious. This isn’t just an idle threat.”

“Oh, believe me, I understand,” said Bashir. He stood at a solitary table in a room that was, essentially, a big off-white box: no window, bright overhead fluorescents; a small bathroom off-center along the far wall that contained a toilet, a sink, a shower. A bed he kept neat, the blanket tucked because Bashir knew that morale depended on the little things. A muted vidscreen hung on one wall; Bashir had tuned it to a news station—the only one, government-run—and some newsperson chattered in antic silence through a story that Bashir gathered was about those rebel fighters these people were so obsessed with. There was a straight-back chair and the table strewn with medical texts—anatomy, emergency medicine, physiology, and other books, history principally, that Kahayn had provided at his request, and that he’d devoured and thank the Lord, he could read the language. So he knew about the Cataclysm and what he was up against.

“Let this security man and his people come.” He gave his tunic a little tug for emphasis the way he’d seen Captain Picard do once. The long-sleeved tunic fit well but felt odd because it was so loose: some kind of beige cotton with a Nehru neck and a pair of olive trousers. A pair of brown leather shoes with laces. “But I don’t know how many times we need to go through this. I’m from another country—”

“But really far away and so, of course, all your people have escaped the Cataclysm and only wish to remain anonymous and, oh and by the way, technologically advanced enough to equip a pressure suit that withstands vacuum and can fly.” Kahayn snorted. “You think I swallow that? I’m trying to help you. Anything you want, I got. Books, news…”

“And guards,” said Bashir. “Don’t forget my locked door, and just in case I find a way out, my lovely guards at the end of that long corridor and on the other side of a door that’s very thick and very locked. Yes, how can one not feel positively pampered?”

“Would you do any differently? In that amazing…country of yours?”

Of course, the answer to that was yes, after a fashion. “Doctor, you’ve been good to me—more, perhaps, than I could expect, given how I was dropped on your proverbial doorstep.”

“Considering your suit…yes, that’s probably accurate.”

And touché, Doctor. Bashir put on his most winning smile. “But I don’t know what will convince you that I’ve told the truth.”

“Oh, don’t be insulting. Fine, you’re a doctor. I believe that. But this fantastic, wonderful country no one’s heard of? Please.”

“Right. Well, I see your point.” Bashir debated, then snapped his fingers. “I know. Let’s just say I’ve told you what I can.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I have a better idea. What say we play a game called Trust. Here are the rules. You tell me the truth; I tell you the truth. See, in my land, that’s what we call trust…and don’t you say it, Julian, don’t you dare. Because I know you don’t trust me.”

Bashir closed his mouth. He’d been about to say just that. Only it would have been another lie.

“Yah,” she said after a pause. “Now let me tell you another, very important truth. You remember Blate?”

“Ah. Yes. Very unpleasant fellow. Those goggle-eyes. He really should have them attended to.”

“My sentiments, exactly.” The ghost of a smile brushed her lips. “But that’s the way he likes them, and you will have an excellent opportunity to study them right up close. He’ll be here in about four days.”

“Ah.” Bashir’s stomach churned. “More interrogation? You weren’t thorough enough?”

“Not for him. And this time, it won’t be just talk. You’ll be hooked up to an fMRI. You know the theory?”

Bashir was silent. Oh, he understood it. The machine was something out of the twenty-second…no, no, twenty-first century. fMRI: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a primitive system dependent upon alternations in magnetic susceptibility and designed to measure, in the brain at least and very crudely, areas of neural activation.

In humans, oxygenated arterial blood contained oxygenated hemoglobin, which because of its iron matrix was diamagnetic and had, therefore, a small magnetic susceptibility effect. Deoxygenated blood was more highly paramagnetic and, therefore, the machine detected a larger observed magnetic susceptibility effect. In essence, fMRI allowed a window into the brain: a sort of watch-while-you-work.

He wondered how well that technology served this particular species. His gaze skipped over Kahayn’s features. That bluish cast to her skin…he knew what it was. Her blood, as well as that of everyone native to this world, already possessed huge quantities of methemoglobin: hemoglobin whose iron was ferric, not ferrous, and quite poor at binding oxygen. Still, if they were going to use the fMRI on him, the technology must work pretty well on their species, and that was bad because it meant the machine was very sensitive indeed.

“I understand the principle,” he said finally. “A lie detector test, right?”

“Yup. Virtually foolproof.” She gave him a tight, humorless smile. “Lying causes a very characteristic pattern of brain activation in seven different regions.”

“In other words, lying is hard work.”

“That’s right. By contrast, telling the truth is much easier. Truth only requires four neural pathways. Pretty characteristic pattern.”

“Ah. So you’ve concluded that we share enough commonality that my brain will tell the truth even if I lie.”

“You lie? I guarantee that screen will light up.”

“Mmmm.” Bashir nodded, his neutral expression—the one he’d practiced in that Dominion prison—firmly screwed in place. But a bolt of panic shuddered into his chest. Their just catching him out in a lie probably wasn’t the end of it. Maybe they’d take his conscious mind out of the equation. Use truth serum, perhaps, or some other way of cracking his resistance. Or just plain torture.

And—bugger it all—for what? Yes, yes, of course, his oath, but was that important now? Elizabeth was dead, and Ezri lost to him before he’d ever set foot on that runabout—and his heart with her. His suit, uniform, and combadge had been confiscated. Picking apart the suit’s guts and the combadge would take time, but these people would likely manage. So, if everything he’d ever known was gone; if he were tortured to death or left as some sort of mental vegetable, what did a theoretical abstraction like the Prime Directive, the product of a universe that wasn’t perfect but liked to pretend that it was, count for now?

Maybe not very much.

He looked up and met her eyes—compassion there, sympathy; and sadness, too; why is she helping me, why does she care?—and said nothing.

She nodded, though, as if he had. “Our world’s dying, Julian. We compensate but we can’t change things back, not in time to save ourselves.”

“What about your children?”

Pain arrowed across her face. “Can’t have any. Most of us can’t. So we switch out parts; rebuild ourselves. Keep staving off the inevitable as long as possible.”

“And then I show up.”

“And then you show up. You’re the same, sort of. A close match but still very different in some very important ways. For example, I know that you come from a place where there’s more oxygen in the air. I know for a fact that the amount in silica and copper and arsenicals in your body is only a fraction of what it is in ours and that’s because there aren’t industrial pollutants in your air or water. Your heart is simpler and still very efficient. You have less surface area in your lungs, and your immunological status is much less reactive than ours. I know because I finally had to give you a transfusion; you’d just lost too much blood.”

“Oh,” he said, with a dry smile. “I’m sure my system loved that.”

“Not to worry; I added a reducing enzyme to convert the iron from ferric to ferrous so you’d bind more oxygen. But the point is you didn’t have a transfusion reaction. You didn’t go into anaphylactic shock. Your system seems remarkably antigenically neutral, at least to our tissues.”

“That’s important?”

“As you’d say, quite. Because there’s one more thing about you that’s very different: your brain. It works really, really well. Is that the way it is with all your people?”

He said nothing. Her lips quirked into a half-smile. “Right. I forgot. You’re one of us. But do you know I’ve never heard an accent like yours either?”

“Oh, that. Well, my accent’s very common where I come from.”

“Then I’m glad I’ve never visited. I might get a headache. Oh, and there’s this other thing that just won’t go away: your remarkable suit that resists vacuum, and flies.” She paused. “You see what I’m driving at.”

“Even if your scan says that I’m lying, nothing changes the fact that I can’t tell you more than I have already.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Would you believe both?”

“No, because one’s predicated on ignorance and the other on will. But that little distinction won’t matter, not when this is over.”

He tried to be jolly about it, a bit gay, the way he imagined a debonair agent caught in a thorny situation might. “What, torture, Doctor? Thumbscrews? Bamboo under the fingernails?”

“What’s bamboo?” Then she waved that away. “Never mind. This isn’t a joke, Julian. Because the horrible part is you won’t have a choice.”

He forced a devil-may-care grin. “I’m sorry. For the life of me, I can’t fathom that.”

“Yah, for the life of you,” she said. “I’d say that’s about right.”

No idle threat there. His eyes wandered to the room’s vidscreen again, and he watched as a soldier—clearly, Kornak—aimed a rifle at the back of a prisoner’s head. He turned away. Any fool knew what came next. “So what are my options?”

“I’ll show you. And take a good hard look, Julian. Then, you choose.”

He took her in: her blue skin and that left eye and her left hand. “What if I still choose my way?”

“Then heaven help you,” she said, keying in the code that opened his door. “Because I won’t be able to.”