CHAPTER
11

THE BUBBLING PANIC HAD BEGUN.

The main floor of the Promenade was a surging mass of people shouting, vying for attention, trying desperately not to let alarm overtake them, and not succeeding all that well.

Sisko stood on the upper level, looking down upon the crowd and feeling for all the world like some sort of planetary overseer, speaking from on high.

He would have been unable to make himself heard under ordinary circumstances. But he had keyed his voice through his comm badge, so that his words echoed throughout the station’s intraship public address system.

“The matter,” he was saying, his voice rolling like waves, “is under investigation!”

“Investigate it on your own time!” someone shouted. “I want to get the hell off this station!”

“Me too!”

That refrain was rapidly taken up throughout the Promenade. Sisko put up his hands, trying to bring them under control. “That is not possible.”

“Why not?”

And then, before Sisko could respond, someone else shouted, “They say the murderer is a shapeshifter like Odo! Is it true?”

Sisko paused. He saw Odo in the crowd, his security crew trying to restore some semblance of order. Odo had heard the shouted question, too, and he was looking up at Sisko with interest, clearly curious as to how the commander was going to answer it.

“That is a working theory,” said Sisko.

Immediately the area around Odo began to widen a bit. People pulled back from him, as if he’d suddenly become infected with some hideous disease.

Each word that Sisko spoke was slow and loaded with anger. “I will not,” he said, “stand still for another wave of accusations against the constable. We went through this after the faked murder of Ibudan. I will not see a repeat. Security Chief Odo is not a suspect. Far too many witnesses, including myself, can place him elsewhere at the time of the murders. Furthermore, if you treat him like a suspect, you will simply prolong this matter, because it is his job to solve these murders. We need full cooperation from all of you. Besides, there are several known shapeshifting species throughout the galaxy. There is no reason for suspicion to fall automatically on Chief Odo, and every reason for it not to.”

He paused a moment, taking a breath, and in that time, someone called out, “We still want to get off this station! You can’t make us stay here! We’re at risk every moment we’re here!”

“You’re forcing us to stick our heads into the dragon’s mouth,” shouted another.

“I’m forcing you to stay,” said Sisko, “for two reasons. First, we have no desire to allow the murderer to leave DS-Nine during a mass emigration—”

“That’s your problem, Sisko,” someone shouted.

Sisko noticed that the people seemed a lot braver and more likely to mouth off when they were together in one large crowd. Security in numbers.

“No,” countered Sisko, “it’s your problem. Because that brings me to the second reason. Let us say, for argument’s sake, that we are indeed dealing with a shapeshifter. That means that it could be disguised as one of you. Your copilot or a crew member. It could be among your cargo or your personal belongings.”

This caused a great deal of unease among the crowd.

They started looking apprehensively at each other and even at their own clothing as if waiting for their shoes to make a false move.

“If I allow you people to leave,” continued Sisko, “there’s a perfectly good chance that the killer will leave with you. In your endeavor to escape, you might very well take the murderer along with you for the ride. Here on the station there’s safety in numbers. Out in the depths of space—particularly for you one- and two-man cargo runners—there will be no one and nothing except a real possibility of a very lonely death.”

Not a word was being spoken.

“Now,” said Sisko serenely, “who is interested in bucking those odds? Hmm? Show of hands, please.”

No one seemed particularly anxious to volunteer.

“Good,” Sisko said. “That will be all. If any of you have further questions, feel free to pose them in an orderly manner. If Security Chief Odo wants to talk with you, kindly give him your full cooperation. Thank you.”

He then turned away, headed for the turbolift shaft, and moments later was being whisked away to Ops. The moment the lift doors had closed, he leaned against the turbolift walls and let out a long sigh.

“There’s got to be an easier way to earn a living,” he muttered.

As soon as he stepped out onto the bridge, he went straight to O’Brien. “Chief,” he said, “can you order a systems-wide shutdown of the airlock doors to all docked ships?”

“Are you kidding?” asked O’Brien. “The way these systems are set up, it’s a miracle the airlocks work at all. Shutting them down is no problem. What’s tough is keeping them operational.”

“Good. Do it.”

“Taking no chances, Commander?” asked Kira.

“Exactly right, Major. I’m not going to risk another near-disaster like the one we had with Captain Jaheel. If we hadn’t been lucky, we would have lost half the docking ring that time he tried to take off without clearance. We learn from our mistakes, Major.”

“Yes, sir.” She looked, though, as if she wanted to say something else.

“Yes, Major?” he prompted.

She shook her head. “It’s . . . well, Old Kelsi was one of the first people I met when I arrived here. I . . . She deserved better, that’s all.”

“I don’t know of anyone who deserves what has happened in the past several days,” Sisko replied.

But he could tell from Kira’s look that she knew who deserved such a death. Oh, yes, she knew. Definitely.

Cardassians.

He did not, however, pursue the subject. Instead he went to his station to study the reports and information being routed through his command computer.

He gazed around Ops and reflected bleakly on the fact that the creature might be right here. Right in front of him. It could be one of his people. It could be a piece of equipment. Anything. Anywhere.

He headed for his office, but it seemed as if he’d barely sat down when O’Brien appeared in the doorway. “Sir,” he said, “I hate to intrude, but with school letting out soon, I was hoping that—”

Angrier than he wanted to be, Sisko slammed a fist down on his desk. “Is this going to be a regular thing with you, Chief? What next? If your wife feels like going shopping along the Promenade, are you going to request time off to serve as her bodyguard? Did you do this on the Enterprise, too?”

“No, sir,” O’Brien shot back. “We felt safe on the Enterprise.”

“Oh, really? When, Chief? During the Borg attack? During the skirmishes along the Neutral Zone? Fighting Cardassians? When precisely did you feel at ease?”

O’Brien, who lately had been picturing a hideous scenario—coming home to find his wife and child splattered all over their grungy quarters—came perilously close to blowing his top.

“When? When we were off duty,” he snapped, “and I wasn’t constantly being called away because some other bloody thing had broken. When we were with our friends, back when we had friends. When we had time to breathe, and our lungs weren’t filled with stale air because the atmosphere regulators were designed for Cardassians and I haven’t managed to convert them all over yet. When we always had more than enough of whatever we needed. Back when we had a life!”

There was dead silence.

They realized that all talk had ceased in Ops. Sisko glanced out through his door and saw that every eye was upon them. Quickly all of the crew members went back to what they were doing.

Except for Dax, who was still looking at Sisko.

And Sisko remembered the times in the past when he had poured out his anger and frustration to her. He could hear his own voice saying, “If only I’d been with Jennifer. I could have saved her. If only I hadn’t dragged her out into space. If only . . . ”

And Jake’s eyes, looking at him in that same accusatory manner . . . 

O’Brien looked down. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “It’s just that . . . well, when there’s an emergency—if we’re fighting to keep the station from blowing up or being sucked into the wormhole or some such—I’m right in there up to my elbows. I’m able to put everything out of my mind except getting the job done. But with something like this . . . with this madman running around, there’s nothing for me to do except dwell on the danger and imagine the worst. And from what I’ve heard, the worst can be pretty bad. Molly, she’ll soon have her third birthday. I want her to live to see it . . . you know?”

Sisko nodded. “Tell you what, Chief,” he said softly. “I’ll make you a deal.”

“A deal, sir?”

“Cut yourself loose for the fifteen minutes or so it takes to get your wife and child safely squared away after school, and you don’t have to keep running it past me . . . as long as you make sure that Jake gets home as well.”

O’Brien smiled gamely at that. “Done, sir.”

“Then get to it, Chief,” said Sisko firmly. “That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

O’Brien walked out quickly, and Sisko smiled to himself. If only all of his difficulties could be solved that easily.

In the infirmary, Julian Bashir swung the cellular scanner away from the tissue samples that had been taken from Kelsi—although he rather bleakly speculated that there wasn’t much left of her except tissue samples.

Nurse Latasa was looking over his shoulder. She saw the fatigued look on his face, and said, “Doctor . . . it’s none of my business, but when was the last time you slept?”

“Oh. Sleep.” He made a great show of searching his memory. “Yes . . . I remember now. That’s what you do when you’re not working. When you’re not hoping to find some clue . . . anything that will help Security nail this homicidal maniac.” He looked at Latasa closely.

“Doctor, is everything all right?” she asked.

He cleared the file on the bioscanner and said, “Nurse, place your hand here, please.”

She was puzzled, but did as he asked, putting her hand flat on the counter. He ran a quick scan over it and quickly checked the readings against Latasa’s files. “Yes, it’s you, all right.”

“Doctor . . .?”

Realizing how odd his behavior must have seemed just then, he said, “We’re dealing with something that changes its appearance. That’s a good way to turn people into raving paranoids. Nurse, we have to develop a code phrase.”

Latasa laughed uncertainly. “Doctor, I hardly think we need a—”

“Yes, we do,” he said firmly. “I hope some of my research will lead somewhere. But when I ask you for reports and such, I have to know that you’re the genuine item and not a shapeshifter who’s trying to cover his tracks by feeding me false information.”

“If you say so, Doctor,” she said. Her tone made it clear that she thought his request was odd. Then again, she knew what was happening around the station, and she was willing to take precautions.

“Okay. So our code word will be . . . ” He gave it a moment’s thought and then said, “Preganglionic. You got that, Nurse? If I say, ‘What’s the word?’ you reply, ‘Preganglionic.’” He paused and saw that she was smiling. “What’s so funny?”

“I have to admit,” she said, “for a moment there, I thought you were going to say that the code phrase should be something like—I don’t know—‘Kiss me, you fool.’ You say, ‘What’s the word?’ And I say, ‘Kiss me, you fool.’ ”

Despite the horrific situation that had led to their current difficulties, Bashir actually laughed. “Now, Nurse, that has got to be one of the most juvenile notions I’ve ever heard, beyond question. Although . . . you know, I almost wish I’d thought of it. But,” he sighed, “it’s too late now, I suppose.”

The tissue samples were still there, and Bashir rather reluctantly went back to them, hoping that something had grown there in the meantime. Something that he could actually put to use.

“It’s terrible about Kelsi,” said Latasa.

“About all of them,” Bashir agreed. He’d discharged Bena and Dina some hours before. Odo had posted a full-time guard to them; it was the only way that Bena would leave the infirmary. Even the survivors, mused Bashir, were victims.

“I was thinking about Kelsi in particular,” she said. “I mean, I’d met her. Gotten to know her. I . . . I hate to admit it, but I’m relieved that I wasn’t assisting at her autopsy. I’d much rather remember her the way she was, rather than . . . than what they say she looked like when that maniac was finished with her.”

“I know,” said Bashir. “You have a picture in your mind of people. You don’t think about . . . ”

His voice trailed off as he looked up from the bioscanner.

“You know,” he said. “That . . . just might do it.”

“Do what, Doctor? Doctor . . . do you have some sort of clue about the killer?”

“No. No, not yet. But I have a thought about something else that’s bothering me. Nurse . . . thank you. You may have been extremely helpful just now . . . more than you know.”

“Oh . . . ”Latasa was confused, but said gamely, “Glad I could be of help, Doctor.” And as he started to head out of the infirmary, she called after him, “Preganglionic.”

He smiled, replied, “Kiss me, you fool,” and walked out.