The procession leader stepped forward, holding up his hands as if placating a madwoman. “Are you quite well, daughter?”

“Yes,” Corsi said, and barely suppressed a small sneeze. “I apologize for…standing here.”

The man smiled gently. “That is no crime. It is just that most do not wish to be so close to those who’ve gone on.” Closer now, he stopped and glanced at her eyes and nose. “You are clearly ill.” His voice was sympathetic, but the speed with which he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and slapped it over his face startled her.

“It’s nothing.” Corsi was growing concerned. The man looked extremely anxious now, his body tensed as though he were fighting the urge to step back. “It’s just an allergy,” she said, trying to soothe him. Even Corsi realized she wasn’t a soothing presence, even at the best of times. Not surprising that the man didn’t seem at all calmed.

He nodded quickly, but did not remove the handkerchief from his face. He motioned to his followers, who lifted the bier with a single coordinated movement. The covered lump shifted, and a humanoid arm swung down, its blood-covered hand pointing languidly to the earth. The forearm was open from wrist to elbow, revealing mangled sinews and white bone.

Corsi glanced sharply at the man’s face. “What happened to him?”

He swallowed visibly, and for a moment Corsi thought he would turn away without another word. “This man died in the woods,” he said at last. “A wild animal. Pray you do not contract his condition.” He turned his back on her and hurried away, his associates struggling to keep up while carrying their morbid burden.

Contract a death by mangling? thought Corsi, scowling. The phrase might have been the result of a problem with the universal translator, but that was still an odd way of putting it.

“Are you quite well, daughter?”

The soothing voice of the priest dragged Carol’s attention away from the disturbing new window. She smiled at his concerned face. “Yes, I’m well. Thank you, father.”

He smiled back tentatively. “It’s only that you mentioned that your sister was ill, and I was worried.”

Sister? Oh, right, Corsi and her allergies. The Vorta window was flustering her more than she’d like to admit. “I am well,” she repeated.

The priest still hesitated. “Perhaps…?” Carol was surprised to realize that the priest seemed nervous. Had she done something wrong? A newcomer in the community might alarm the locals if she acted strangely, especially if their recent alien “guests” had been cruel or oppressive. Although, she admitted sourly, the window and its implied respect probably meant that aliens and locals had worked out some arrangement. “I wondered if perhaps you had been vouchsafed a vision?” he asked hopefully. “Your eyes were wide in contemplation, your brow furrowed in deep thought.”

Carol looked back at the window as if it had some answers for her. She glanced back at the priest. “No, no visions. Has someone in the community been given visions by…by the god?”

The priest smoothed his robes over his ample belly and stepped forward to stand beside her. “Not as such, I’ll admit, although the community was blessed by the presence, the corporeal presence, of the god and his servants.” His eyes had begun to shine with excitement, and Carol thought she saw the barest hint of a tear. “For three turns he lived near to us. He spoke to us, shared his wisdom, protected us from our enemies, made the crops grow.”

And improved the plumbing, reflected Carol wryly. In the days before the war, the Dominion had always claimed a certain benevolence; perhaps, if unchallenged, the Founders really were inclined to act kindly. “Protected you from your enemies? Why would the God Who Blesses and Condemns choose sides?”

The priest glanced down at her, thoughtful. “Not for our sakes, our sinful selves. No. Our enemies and rivals blasphemed. They did not look to the god for truth. They did not obey. They called Ushpallar a false god.” He waved a hand dismissively. “The people of Ajjem-kuyr were always of the heretical persuasion. They worshipped the gods on the third day, and not the fourth. Can you imagine?”

Abramowitz immediately recognized the pompous statement as a test. She wracked her brain for an appropriate answer. “Do we speak of the month of growing, or the month of sky-seeing, holy father?”

He smiled. “The month of growing.”

She nodded in a manner which she hoped implied humble sagacity. “Then heretics they were.”

The priest chuckled. “You are not from Baldakor, daughter. Have you traveled far?”

Carol could never resist that question. “Far enough. I am delighted to learn I have come to a place in which a god walked. Might I ask where he lived, in his time among you?”

“You may ask.” The priest folded his hands into his sleeves monkishly. “But we do not know for certain. He would appear among us all suddenly, and his guards with him. It is said that they were seen in the forests to the north, but I do not know the truth of this. They were seen in many of the towns and cities, and the god even spoke with humble farmers in their hovels. Imagine! Humble farmers!” His eyes shone with delight.

“It must have been a great honor for those so fortunate.”

The priest smiled softly. “I’ve been unforgivably rude, questioning your faith so. The Siblings should be here to assist faith, not trouble it?”

The Siblings, Carol recalled, were the holy orders, men and women who had dedicated their life to the service of the gods and their villages.

“I am honored by your attention, father.” She repeated the awkward bow.

He nodded in acknowledgment. “I shall make myself available to you for as long as you stay, daughter.” He began to glide across the floor, silent and graceful for a man of such size. Carol imagined he knew the building inside and out. “My name is Dyrvelkada, should you or your sister need me.” He sketched a small bow, a gesture familiar from her own culture but not contained in the Corotican database; either it had never been observed by the outpost’s research team, or the information had been lost in the data purge.

Or it was something new, something introduced since the Starfleet evacuation.

“May I ask,” she called out spontaneously, “what happened to Ajjem-kuyr?”

Dyrvelkada stopped and glanced back at her over his shoulder. “It is not for the weak of heart, or of faith, to delve into the righteous wrath of the gods.”

It seemed to Carol that this was another challenge. She nodded once, as firmly as she could. The priest’s face was solemn as he nodded back, before continuing on his way through the clouds of incense.

“I appreciated his offer of spiritual guidance,” mused Abramowitz. “But what troubled me wasn’t anything he’d understand. Dyrvelkada’s culture has been damaged by Dominion rule, to an extent that I don’t know yet. I’d be asking him to question his gods….” She glanced at the security chief, who had remained silent since Carol had emerged from the temple: no acerbic comments, no interested questions, not even a sneeze. “Are you all right? We could try a Benecian flour/Elaysian tear hypo next?”

Corsi’s look might have stripped the duranium from a shuttlecraft hull.

Every so often I remember why they call her “Core-Breach,” thought Abramowitz. “Forget I offered. You seem distracted.”

“There was a procession while you were inside.” Corsi told Abramowitz about the frightened priest and the mangled body. “I still can’t figure out what he meant by his last comment.”

Carol ducked her head to the side, chewing her lower lip as she thought. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Cultural specialists need to remember that sometimes an errant phrase is just a slip of the tongue, or a speech pattern unique to an individual. Still, Dyrvelkada seemed concerned about your condition, and worried that I might be ill as well. I took it for simple kindness, but I suppose it might have been more.”

“I’d like to get a look at that body.” Corsi grimaced. “If there’s a wild animal out there that isn’t afraid to attack humanoids, my team needs to know.” She sneezed again, this time with an amusing degree of delicacy.

“Fair enough. Baldakorans burn their dead, though. We can try to crash the funeral, but given the priest’s reaction to your sneezing…” Carol shrugged. “We could try that Benecian cocktail, if you like.”

Staring straight ahead with a look best described as annoyed resignation, Corsi rolled up her sleeve and thrust her arm in Abramowitz’s face.

The funeral grounds were outside the community, in a vast field of orange and gray flowers. Small burial mounds dotted the landscape, topped with tall wooden poles adorned with silver flags, some more ragged than others. In the growing breeze, Carol found it difficult to make out the flag’s designs, sewn in black. All she could tell for certain was that each flag seemed different. A small crowd of Coroticans had gathered near a flagless mound, an access door open to the sky.

“There’s the priest I met,” said Corsi. He was standing before the bier, still held by the four followers. He was holding his arms to the sky and chanting.

“Long-winded, isn’t he?” asked Corsi after half an hour.

“I don’t think the shroud is coming off anytime soon,” replied Abramowitz with a sigh. She glanced at Corsi. “You sound better.”

“I feel better.” Corsi’s admission sounded grudging. “Not perfect, but better.”

“We’ll try another orchid combo later.”

Corsi decided not to growl. She was beginning to suspect that Carol was baiting her deliberately. “I think that shroud isn’t coming off anytime soon,” she said.

“I just said that,” moaned Abramowitz. “I don’t think—”

“You’re right,” said a voice behind them. “The shroud doesn’t come off until he’s in the mound.”

Carol’s quick glance at the unconcerned Corsi confirmed that the security chief had been aware of the man’s presence all along, probably the reason for her distracted contributions to their conversation.

“Thank you,” said Corsi calmly. “We’re not from around here.”

The man chuckled softly. He was dressed less colorfully than the average Corotican, in drab browns and grays that did nothing to complement his pale skin and gray eyes. “I gathered that when you stood like a tree in the square upon the approach of the corpse.”

The two humans turned to face their unexpected contact. “You’re the man from the alley.”

He touched his forehead in a polite gesture which, Carol recalled, meant “well-met.” She repeated the gesture, and Corsi followed suit, albeit slightly awkwardly. Carol frowned when Corsi’s gesture was accompanied by a sniffle. If these people were paranoid about illness, they had to find a way to suppress Corsi’s symptoms as soon as possible.

“I am Jarolleka. I, too, am a stranger to Baldakor.”

His smile, Carol noticed, did not extend to his eyes, but she had the impression it wasn’t unfriendliness. It was wariness, perhaps even weariness. A traveler’s eyes. “I am Carolabrama, and this is my sister, Domenica.”

“I am pleased to meet you. You were lucky, Lady Domenica. A few turns ago, and the priests would not have let you stand before them so brazenly.” He held up a dirty hand to stop her protest, a protest Corsi didn’t know to make. “Forgive the word, ‘brazen,’ but it is one that the Siblings of Baldakor had much occasion to use but recently. When their god lived among them.”

“Their god,” Abramowitz repeated. “Not yours?”

Jarolleka smiled bitterly. “Not mine. Never mine.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I am of Ajjem-kuyr.”

“When the god began sending his lizards out to the other cities and villages, farther and farther every turn, only Ajjem-kuyr refused to bend the knee. We were the home of the Academy, a place of reason and philosophy. At the Academy, we had taught that the gods were mere stories, meant to explain natural phenomena. Why did the rains come? What were the stars? Why did people die? There was no reason to believe in the gods. When had they ever shown themselves to mortals? Only in old fables.”

Jarolleka tapped the burning logs of the campfire with a stick. Beside him, Abramowitz and Corsi chewed quietly on their rations. “You didn’t believe in the gods?”

He shrugged. “They might live somewhere, I suppose, but if so they don’t concern themselves with us.” He spat suddenly. “Until the God Who Blesses and Condemns arrived with his lizards, all scales and black armor and horns.”

“And then the Academy began to believe, I imagine?”

The Corotican smiled. “No, not at all,” he said with quiet pride. “At first we asked why the god would come to live among mortals, when the stories say the gods live a life of bliss in paradise? He said he came to bring things to better our lives, and certainly Baldakor prospered. Better medicine. The stench of the city, a stench we never realized was there, disappeared. More food.”

“Sounds good,” offered Corsi.

“Too good, and all explainable through natural laws. There were no miracles. An Academician from a hundred years ago drew many of the same conclusions about farming, and she was no god.” He shook his head. “We still refused to bend the knee, even when Ushpallar threatened to call his fellow gods. More lizards, and shape-changers. Mighty spirits.” Jarolleka’s tone was sarcastic, his shoulders hunched and tense. “Still we refused. Worse, I think, we began to implement many of the ‘miracles’ in Ajjem-kuyr, which the god had brought to Baldakor. That was the last blasphemy, I believe. To think that we mortals could achieve the work of the gods? Unthinkable!” He laughed without humor. “Unallowable.”

“What happened?” asked Carol, spellbound despite herself. A world on the cusp of a renaissance, only to be held in the grip of enforced superstition.

Jarolleka looked into her eyes, and Carol saw a barely concealed pain. “I can’t tell you,” he said at last. “I can only show you. It’s the only way you could ever understand.”