The Serpent and the Sculptor (Part 4)

They said the nights still grew cold at this time of the year. Sisko wiped the sweat from his eyes as he and the others carried the stasis chamber to the grave site. If this was spring, he was happy it wasn't summer. The ground crunched beneath his boots, still hard from the late frost only a few days earlier. But the sun overhead was as hot and blinding as any he'd known.

The previous night had been one of quiet discomfort for Sisko. Alixus, after one cold and unforgiving glance at Joseph, had been led to the colony's medical facilities. And Sisko had had the unwelcome honor of balancing Admiral Necheyev's impatience with a group of very concerned colonists. He'd tried to explain what he knew of Alixus's illness to them; unhappily, they understood it more than he did. According to Joseph, the technology introduced by the Red Cross had been mostly for publicity purposes--even the computer games had lost their charm quickly for children raised on more imaginative play. So much loss for the sake of propaganda.

Sisko sighed as he felt the weight of the chamber on the blisters which covered his hands. There were no laser cutters here; they had dug the grave with picks and shovels instead. Sisko had joined in the previous day's effort out of a lingering sense of guilt; Bashir, for reasons known only to him, had also picked up a shovel.

They finally reached the fresh grave, hand-picked by Alixus near a towering evergreen. Alixus stood apart from the other colonists, Tsirrku keeping hawklike vigil at her side. Both women wore inscrutable expressions, Alixus's hard and distant, Tsirrku's reflecting the Terran's. Admiral Necheyev stood a few paces away, a look of bored distaste souring her face. Sisko bit down the bile as he watched her. The least she could do was put her ambition on hold for a few moments out of respect.

Joseph stood at the head of the chamber, a tired look blanching his bearish face. "Friends," he said quietly. "We are here to mark a sad occasion. Vinod Merrill, one of our founders...one of our friends," he added with renewed fervor, "is being laid to rest. Vinod..." He paused for a moment, looking helpless. Shaking his head, he continued. "We all have our own memories of Vinod, and of happier times." Unable to say more, he turned to the pall-bearers, who positioned the stasis chamber over the fresh wound in the ground. There was a long moment before he nodded for them to lower it into the grave.

As he leaned in to disengage the stasis field, though, Alixus sprang to his side, pulling Joseph away hard. The big man made no effort to resist, backing away smoothly to allow her access to the grave. Alixus knelt in the cold dirt above her son's body, holding herself so tight Sisko thought her bones would break from the pressure. Without a word, without a tear, she turned off the field. Vinod's body sank into the world he had tended only a year before. Alixus stared at him for a long moment, then lifted herself to her feet, turned and walked away.

For a moment, no one moved. Then both Tsirrku and Necheyev started to follow the prisoner. Sisko caught the admiral's arm, but Joseph stopped them all.

"I'll go," he said, leaving them all to stand quietly under the evergreens as the colonists began filling the open grave with earth.

Joseph followed the path to where Alixus knelt, her thin pale body barely casting a shadow behind her as she scooped a handful of cool water from the stream and splashed it over her face. He hesitated behind her, disturbed that she had not already heard him. Alixus had always been the sharpest scout in the colony; no one and nothing could surprise her.

But this was not Alixus. At least not the Alixus who had molded a colony of soft, frightened children into survivors. He felt a pang as he remembered her expression at the beam-down point, the look of disgust and betrayal in her ashen face. It had hurt more than he'd expected, more than his anger at discovering their entire life on Orellius had been Alixus's plan, more than the loss of their many friends during those long years outside of Federation contact. Alixus had been willing to sacrifice everything, up to and including her own life, to keep the colony pure.

Joseph watched the curve of her spine as she stared down into the water, saw the play of sunlight against her once beautiful hair. She'd risked everything, and lost everything, for her principles. What could he say? That technology, in small doses, for humanitarian reasons, would not destroy all they had struggled to create? That, unlike her, he was unwilling to sacrifice lives--especially those of the children--for the sake of some intangible philosophy? That the "modern technology" which had flung her and Vinod head first into a well of hopelessness consisted of exactly one medikit and an emergency comm beacon? He knew what her response would be to that.

Quietly, he stepped to the bank of the stream, dropping slowly to his knees beside her. She started slightly, but kept her steady gaze fixed on the glistening water. Joseph placed a single arm around her waist, pulling her gently back against him until her head rested on his shoulder. She wrapped her own arms tightly around his, her hands clinging fervently to muscles made lean and strong by ten years of work. They both stared straight ahead into the icy water winding its way down from the melting snows of the northern mountains to Elisa's River just south of the encampment. Alixus began to relax in his arms, her breath slowing as she allowed him to support her slight weight.

"Dear god, Joseph," she whispered above the sounds of the stream. "What have I done?"

Tsirrku stepped out of the encampment, her eyes blinking as they struggled to make the transition from firelight to moonlight. She pulled into herself slightly, her senses exhausted from so many hours with Alixus. Finally, the Terran woman slept, and Tsirrku could take a moment to breathe in this beautiful night. The moon hung over her, immense and white and so close she thought she could reach up with her hand to grasp it. The tree tops tickled its belly as it rested lazily just out of their reach.

"How is Alixus?"

She had only been marginally aware of Ben Sisko's presence until he spoke. His voice was a beautiful bass, a sound reminiscent of the drums her brothers used to carve from tree trunks so many cycles ago. Sisko sat under a tree, staring up at the moon. Tsirrku joined him, crossing her legs and tucking her feet comfortably under her hips. Drawing in a long breath of the unspoiled air, she released it along with the tension that had been tightening her joints for so many days.

"She's sleeping now," she answered slowly. Sisko said nothing. He twirled a twig between his thumb and forefinger so that the dew on its leaves glinted in the moonlight. "It isn't your fault," Tsirrku added into the silence.

Sisko dropped the twig, leaning back against the tree trunk. "Isn't it?"

"You did not cause her sickness."

"No, but my actions worsened it."

"Benjamin--"

"I didn't have to take her off this world," Sisko argued. "I have first-hand knowledge of this colony's system of justice. I'm sure they would have found a way to make her pay for what she did." He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his hands around them and locking his fingers together. "I didn't take Alixus off this planet because of the laws she broke. I did it because I was angry. Because I hated her. Because I wanted to punish her." He rested his chin on the dusty fabric covering his knees. "Alixus locked me in the punishment box for a full day. I locked her in it forever."

Tsirrku stared at the moon for a long moment before speaking. "In the Lioscosian mountains on Emzari Two, there is an ancient monastery to the thirteenth moon. For twelve hundred generations, the Emzari monks have ritually built and rebuilt their temple, each step carefully executed, the materials chosen according to millennia-old specifications. On the eve of the final moon, the temple is completed and the monks hold an enormous festival. There is music, food, dancing, lovemaking--all of the pleasures of the physical body. And on the night of the final moon, the monks surround the temple...and set it on fire."

"They burn down their own temple?"

Tsirrku nodded. "The next morning, the entire ritual begins again."

Sisko rested his head against the rough bark of the tree. "What does that accomplish?"

"Not much, really. But accomplishment is not their goal." Tsirrku paused for a moment, feeling her way around his language, trying to find the right words to communicate her meaning to him. "The Emzari monks realize that the worship is not in the completed temple, but in the challenge of building it. I believe," she said slowly, "that that is what Alixus has been doing."

"I don't understand."

Tsirrku shrugged, tensing then relaxing her muscles. "She is trying to...evolve. That takes strength."

"She spoke often of her core identity. She argued that modern technology has robbed humans of their most basic power."

Tsirrku shook her head. "That is her mind comforting her soul. She reached a barrier in her development many years ago that she had no idea how to overcome. She became frustrated. She began searching for distractions. Alixus is like a Toreinnei ail'hof, smothering in its own fur while trying to find the sunlight. She is frightened that she might never..."

"She started burning temples," Sisko said gently. "Creating problems to solve so she wouldn't have to deal with the one thing she couldn't figure out."

Tsirrku met his intense gaze and nodded. It was so simple.

I don't want to go there.

You must.

Alixus pulled away from her, anger fueling her motions. "I've been there. We've been there. It doesn't help to go back."

"You cannot leave until you've found what you've lost, Alixus. And you will only find it there." Tsirrku held her close, not daring to lose contact at this point. Alixus was too strong, too confident. It was more than possible that she would close the wound and go right back to where she started. Tsirrku was not about to let that happen. "You've got to go there." With effort, she turned the Terran woman around, physically forcing her to face what she so desperately wanted to avoid.

They stood in Alixus's cell on Darius Three. It was a dismal affair, sterile and unforgiving. Tsirrku had been here twice before, and had failed both times. Alixus was stronger now; perhaps this time...

"It's no use," Alixus argued. "I don't know what I'm supposed to find, but it's not here. We didn't have anything."

"Look in the pocket of your dress."

Alixus hesitated, then reached down into the soft, durable workshift she wore. With shaking hands, she pulled out two lengths of clear gardening twine. "Tsirrku, I--"

"Go on," the Alezai ordered. "You know why you took this," she added. "You cannot change the past."

"But I don't have to live it over and over again," the Terran woman protested.

"You will live it over and over again...until you find what you've lost."

But the Alezai's words fell on deaf ears. Despite her protestations, Alixus fell easily into the well-worn pantomime, a masochistic ritual of self-destruction which was tattooed into her subconscious but almost completely lost to her waking memory. She glided across the cell, sitting in the unadorned chair at the vanity. Darius was a minimum security facility which offered its inmates at least a few measures of civilized living--a mirror, a brush, a private bathroom. Nothing dangerous, nothing extravagant, just a touch here and there to remind them that they were still sentient beings.

Alixus stared sadly into the mirror as she removed the pins from her thick auburn hair. Freed from its restraints, the bun collapsed over her shoulders into waist-length tresses. She ran the brush through it, fascinated by the shimmer of gold mixed in with the red. Slowly, deliberately, she began to braid the length, first one, then another thick, auburn rope. She tied the ends with the gardening twine, wrapping it several times over before knotting it.

Tsirrku watched from the shadows as Alixus looped the ends of the wire into slip knots, then crossed the braids around her throat. Crossing them again behind her back, she pulled the ends forward by the gardening twine. Alixus slipped a hand through one of the slip knots, wincing as the almost-transparent threads cut into her wrist. It was a stretch for her to slip her other hand through. There was barely enough wire to reach, but she persevered, determined to carry out her end of the pact. Determined not to give herself the chance to back out.

Alixus gasped as her hand finally found its mark, slipping clumsily into the tiny noose. Even before she straightened her arms, the braids began to tighten around Alixus's throat. Not settled to let the laws of physics do her work for her, Alixus yanked both arms forward with all her strength. Tsirrku echoed her grunt of pain as the braid did its job. She felt a horrible sensation of drowning, filtered through Alixus's pain and anger and grief. Though her lungs continued to pull air in and out, Tsirrku found herself panting, shaking, echoing Alixus's choked cries as the Terran woman's body collapsed onto the floor.

Tsirrku held herself tightly, fighting the urge to pull them both away from this. She struggled against her own panic, knowing she'd need every bit of strength when Alixus came to. Twice before she'd reached this point, and twice before, Bashir had pulled them out of the trance. Alixus was simply too weak to sustain it, he would say. But Bashir had not pulled them apart; she knew from her own responses that, this time, they would make it through.

Alixus lay on the floor of the cell, nature forcing her body to do what she wanted so badly not to do--breathe. Relax. As her limp body began to regain consciousness, Tsirrku steeled herself for action. Timing was pivotal--in a few moments, the guards would find Alixus and cut her free. That only left a few seconds for--

Alixus jerked awake, fear and confusion distorting her actions. Tsirrku moved closer as the woman struggled to lift herself, to get her bearings. Each movement tightened the braids around Alixus's neck; each struggle for life brought her closer to death. Tsirrku opened herself completely, brushing away the terror and confusion which poured out of Alixus like lava, searching for one thought, one emotion more powerful than any of the others.

The human woman shuddered violently, pulling upward to grasp at the braids around her throat. Oh god.

Tsirrku focused on that thought, feeding it, strengthening it with everything inside of her.

Oh god. Alixus's chest began to heave violently, her eyes bulging. Oh, god! She felt herself losing consciousness.

I don't want to die.

"No farming," Tsirrku scolded. "Being." Then she walked away, leaving the woman to create her own paths.

Alixus woke just before dawn, knowing even before she was fully alert that Tsirrku had broken the bond. The Alezai lay sleeping on the cot next to hers; beside her, Bashir had nodded off in a chair. Alixus felt a rush of...something as she watched the two sleeping healers. They had obviously not left her side through the night. Quietly, she retrieved a pair of blankets from the supply closet, placing them over the two of them. Bashir mumbled incoherently, shifting to find a more comfortable position. Tsirrku remained perfectly still, exhaustion robbing her of even that little strength. Alixus stared for a long time at the Alezai, then brushed the feathers away from her temples. Tsirrku mumbled sleepily at her touch.

Leaving her friends to their rest, Alixus wandered out of the infirmary building. The sun was just beginning to etch shadows on the encampment. She was struck by a hard wave of nostalgia as the ruby, grey, and amber light stretched upwards against the metal of the Cabin. She'd always loved this time of morning, before the work began, when it was still quiet. She'd never been able to sleep until full daylight, a perfect balance to Cassandra, who could sleep until night fall. Alixus laughed silently at the old joke, enjoying the familiar comfort of her own history as she walked about the encampment. Stephen, the camp's other notorious morning person, was already out and about--the same as she remembered. He waved to her and began making his way to her side, but Alixus nodded him away. He shrugged and turned back to his work.

Alixus's eyes lit on the cooking area, curious to see who had drawn breakfast duty. Pamela, who had gotten Tangii fever three years earlier, was yawning next to Brynna, Joseph's younger sister, as they prepared the meal for the colonists. Alixus started over to offer her assistance when she felt a hand on her arm. She turned to find Sisko standing there in full uniform.

"Ben," she greeted softly. "Another morning person, I see."

"Not really. I'm still on ship's time," he admitted.

Alixus felt slightly embarrassed under his intense gaze. He's wondering if I'm still crazy, she thought to herself. Which was perfectly understandable under the circumstances. I'm wondering if I'm still crazy, she added with a rueful sigh. She certainly didn't feel crazy. She felt--

"How do you feel?"

Alixus laughed aloud, startling both Sisko and the women behind them. Quickly ducking away from the encampment, she locked her arm in Sisko's and led him just beyond the site. "I feel wonderful," she said. At Sisko's questioning look, she added, "Tsirrku broke the healing bond last night."

Sisko's response was guarded. "That's...good news."

"I certainly think so." She stood there next to him for a moment, silently watching Orellius's magnificent sunrise. Ben Sisko, on the hand, was silently watching her. She let him for a while, then turned to address his concerns. "You needn't worry, Ben. I'm not going to make any trouble about going back to Darius."

"I didn't think you would." But despite his words, he looked relieved.

"What kind of example would I be setting if I didn't?" she continued. "If a community is to work, there have to be rules. And those rules have got to be enforced." Alixus looked into Sisko's dark face, recognizing something she'd always known she'd find there. And, to her delight, she saw the look of recognition in Sisko's face as he saw it in her. "We both understand that, don't we, Ben?"

"Yes."

"And maybe, if I do what I'm supposed to and don't try anything stupid, I might get another chance at parole." She broke their steady gaze, turning to survey the natural beauty before them. "I'd like to come back here, if they'll allow me. Joseph is a good man; the colony is doing very well under his leadership."

"Could you accept that? Being here, but under someone else's leadership?"

"It's amazing what you can accept when you have the right attitude." She stared pointedly at his Starfleet uniform. "Even that costume is beginning to look good on you. Although," she added, "I still would have liked to have seen you out of uniform."

Sisko raised an eyebrow at the mild flirtation.

"Everything changes, Ben," she said softly. "Even home. I can accept that. All that matters is having a home to return to. Someday," she added wistfully.

"What about technology? Joseph isn't going to budge on the medikit or the communication devices."

"I won't ask him to. It's his choice to make...and the community's. I will go along with their decision." Alixus flashed him a knowing smile. "Besides, we both know there isn't a technology known to mankind that can replace a human being." Her eyes widened in a smugly self-deprecating look. "Even an imperfect human being like me."

To that, Sisko had nothing to say. Instead, he just nodded and helped her appreciate the view.