SUMMARY: The final story in the DS9 novel, JEU-PARTI, sequel to "Orfeo"
and "Eye of the Storm."  Eleven years after his abrupt, late-night 
departure, Salene reappears in Jake's life.  He finds a twenty-nine-
year-old Jake whose writing career is beginning to blossom even while 
his private life is falling apart.  This story is rated [PG-13] for 
allusive sexual description; those who object to gay fiction should read 
no further.

Obviously, we've tried to project a *likely* future, but equally
obviously, the show may render some of our assumptions obsolete.  When
reading, please take into account that this was penned during the
fifth season of DS9.  Assume Jadzia never died, although she is 
mentioned only in passing.  Also, despite Picard's comments in "First
Contact," we have assumed there is some form of financial compensation
in the Federation.  Frankly, anything else makes no economic sense.

Additional author's note:  This story was conceived at the same time
as "Eye of the Storm"--months before the theater release of "Shine." 
Similarities are coincidental.

Acknowledgements to Margaret Wander Bonanno for her novel, DWELLERS IN
THE CRUCIBLE, from which we have borrowed certain details.  "The Road
Less Taken" is the work of Robert Frost, and "Ozymandias" the work of
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns all rights to DS9 series characters herein;
Margaret Wander Bonanno has rights to the character of Sethan; all
original characters are the property of the authors.  Resemblance to
any individual, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  This is a
nonprofit work of fanfiction.  Distribution is free, but please retain
this disclaimer and ask the authors' permission before archiving to
web pages or sites other than the a.s.c archive.




                               ANSLEM
                          J & Macedon, c1997



     Snow whispered where it touched.  If he listened hard enough, he
could hear it tell him secrets.  Flakes clung to his cloak: delicate
white stars making obscure constellations on a black void of wool. 
They fell in his hair, on his eyelashes, tickled his nose and cheeks. 
He had long ago lost any sensation in fingers and toes and the tips of
his ears.
     On the horizon, the sun rose.  Yellow-white G2 star.  He had
always found the quality of Earth's sunlight all wrong.  It fell too
bright on eyes--desert-evolved or not--which were accustomed to the
orange cast of a K1 star.  Shadows cut sharp.
     There were no shadows now.  The sky was slate grey, snow grey. 
Like his thoughts.
     He clutched the book--a real book of paper and cardboard backing
--more tightly under his arm.  The plastic in which he had wrapped it
made a crinkling sound.  His attention centered on a child swaddled in
pink like a stuffed pillow; she waded knee-deep in drifts and squealed
in delight, mittened hands threw up puffs to scatter down around her. 
She was coming dangerously close to a cord of wood stacked beside the
house.
     "Jenny Gwen!"
     Her father set aside the snow shovel with which he had been
shoveling the walkway, retrieved her and raised her high on one
shoulder to carry her back with him.  She was small.  The watcher in
the street knew she would be three years old with the next Earth
month.  Her father went back to shoveling.  The child returned to
waddling in his wake, pouncing on snow mounds and pulling them down,
obliterating the path he had just made neat.  He turned, saw what she
had done and set down the shovel with a solid plunk.  "Jenny!  No!"
     She just laughed, grinning up at him defiantly from the opening
of her parka hood.
     It was the child who saw the watcher first.


     He had been observing for twenty-seven minutes.  Having come this
far, he now stood irresolute fifteen meters away in the middle of the
street.  Two words on the inside of a book cover had brought him:
                           "To Salene"
To be dedicatee of a book was a singular honor.  But for him to be
dedicatee of a book by this particular author with whom he shared such
a painful past was a bafflement.  A puzzle.  It demanded an answer. 
Maybe the author had known that.  But why now?  After eleven years,
why bait the trap now?  Not that he had responded immediately.  The
book under his arm had been in print six Terran months, seven days.  A
series of events in his own life had been necessary before he could
bring himself to make this journey.
     Now he stood fifteen meters from Jake Sisko, who had squatted
down to speak to his daughter.  He wondered for perhaps the hundredth
time how to approach this remeeting.
     The child solved the problem.  Pointing directly at him over her
father's shoulder, he heard her say clearly, "Somebody's watching us,
Daddy!"  And she waved at him, little mittened hand wobbling up and
down rapidly.  "Hi!"
     Not knowing what else to do, he raised his own hand in return. 
At that moment, Jake twisted to look.  Letting go of his daughter, he
stood slowly--or perhaps Salene's mind just cast everything over the
next few seconds in slow motion.  Jake walked down the path toward the
street, stopped an arm's length away as if not trusting himself to
come within striking range.  For a long moment, they stared.
     Age had defined the lines of Jake's face, reminding Salene how
brief ran the span of human years.  Jake was a man, his height finally
grown into, the roundness gone from his shoulders, his chest filled
out.  He was big, bigger than his father.  He did not slouch where he
stood any longer.  Yet he was still beautiful: that rare purity of
profile which carried no false feature, no blemish but the small
freckle on his right eyelid.  Salene had always thought that freckle
saved him from insipidity.
     Yet what shocked Salene more than any physical change in Jake,
what nearly sent him reeling back, was the sudden pulsing sense of
Jake's presence.  The bond.  It was still there.
     Well, what did you expect?, he asked himself sarcastically.
     He thought even Jake might have felt something because he frowned
slightly and shook his head, then looked back up at Salene, opened his
mouth, shut it.
     The child picked that moment to interrupt.  She had waddled down
the path while the two of them had stood staring stupidly at one
another; now she walked right up to Salene, tugged on his cloak.  He
glanced down into the little face, into eyes that muddy-green color
which sometimes turned up in children of mixed parentage.  She asked,
"Who're you?"  
     "Jenny Gwen--let him go!"
     He looked back at her father.  Jake had come a few steps forward. 
"I will not have her for breakfast."
     "I didn't think you would."  Jake's tone ran cold with all the
unspoken accusations of eleven years.  "I just didn't want her to
force any unwanted human feelings on you."
     Such bitterness!  Not undeserved.  Salene met Jake's eyes for a
moment, then squatted down to face Jake's daughter.  "My name is
Salene."
     "Sa-lene," she repeated and smiled at him.  She had her father's
sweet smile and probably his fine bone structure, though under cheeks
still plump with baby-fat, it was hard to tell.  Her skin was Vulcan
teak, a little darker than his.  The hazel eyes were her most striking
feature.  He wondered what her mother looked like.  Sarah Fernandez.
It was only a name from the About the Author note in Jake's book:
"Jake Sisko lives in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Earth, with his wife,
Sarah Fernandez, their daughter Jennifer Gwendolyn, three cats and one
newt."
     The wind blew his hair and the child noticed his ears, walked
around his side to inspect them more closely, then reached up a
mittened finger to touch the left one.  Salene saw Jake tense.  "They
are supposed to be that way," he told her.
     Though her hands had a child's awkwardness, she was very careful
as she explore the ear, then moved around to touch his eyebrow.  Like
all children, the differences fascinated her.  Her little face was
pinched with perplexity.  "I am a Vulcan," he said.
     She repeated that, too.  "Vul-can."  Then she grinned, as if
delighted by something.  "Pointy ears!"  And she broke into giggles.
     "Jenny Gwen!" Jake snapped.
     Salene raised a hand, shook his head.  "It is all right.  She
means no insult by it."
     "I like them!" she said as if agreeing, though he doubted her
vocabulary included 'insult' yet.  She looked up at her father,
smiled.  Jake sighed and let it go.  Salene suspected the child had
already learned that her smile could excuse a multitude of sins.  She
was utterly charming; it devastated him.  Here was what he could never
have given Jake Sisko.
     "What are you doing here?" Jake asked him then.
     Salene stood, pulled the book out from under his arm.  The title
showed clearly through the transparent plastic.  ANSLEM.  "This."
     Jake glanced from book cover to Salene's face.  "It's been out a
while."
     "Indeed.  And to great critical acclaim--as it deserves.  I
understand that it was nominated for the Baytaw Prize?  You finally
discovered what to do with the characters."
     "I had help.  Somebody pointed me in the right direction eleven
years ago."
     Salene removed the book, opened it to the dedication page, read:
"'In loving memory of my mother, Jennifer Martin Sisko; and to Salene,
for a clear eye, tactful honesty, and no compromises.'  I am...deeply
honored, Jake."  Closing the book, he looked up.  "But this was
undeserved by me.  It was a long time ago.  You have matured greatly
as a writer, and this story has changed profoundly from the version I
read.  I do not believe I contributed much to it, in its final form. 
So--I must confess myself perplexed by the dedication."
     Jake had listened quietly while his daughter wound round and
round his legs, as if he were a living Maypole.  The adults might have
their conversation but she would be sure she was noticed.  Now, Jake
smiled bitterly--an expression new to his face since Salene had known
him--and said, "It's a writer's prerogative to dedicate his book to
who he wants."
     "Agreed.  But is it not equally the prerogative of the dedicatee
to inquire as to the reasons?"
     "You came a long way to ask why."
     I had ghosts to face, Salene almost said, but closed his lips on
it: a metaphor more suited to Jake than to him.  Instead, he replied,
"I did not think a letter would do."
     "You thought a letter was good enough for goodbye."
     Only thirty-three years of ingrained control saved Salene from
wincing visibly.  "That was...one of the more short-sighted acts of my
life."
     Before Jake could reply, the child piped up.  "I'm cold!  We go
*in* now!"
     Jake lifted her onto his hip, then turn back to Salene.  "If you
came sixteen lightyears to ask why, I guess I can give you coffee. 
Come on."  Turning, he started up the walk.  Salene followed, snow
swirling around him.


     The house smelled of pine from a tree in one corner.  A tree in
the house?  Ah.  He had forgotten the month: late December.  Christmas
had just passed in most of Western and parts of Eastern Earth.
     Red and blue decorations enlivened a dark wood sitting-room.  The
place had a rustic air.  A fire burned in an archaic cast-iron stove. 
Salene moved towards it, felt his extremities tingle as they revived. 
A pot of water sat steaming on top.  "Why is there water on top of
your stove?" he asked, turning.  Jake's daughter had gone tearing off
up the staircase while Jake stood in the kitchen, pouring real-brewed
coffee into two cups on the breakfast bar.  The kitchen was fully-
appointed.  Jake must still cook.
     "The water humidifies the air.  Otherwise it gets dry in here
with the stove going."
     "Where did you find such an antique?"
     "I didn't.  Sarah did.  Antiques are her hobby, though she took
most of the smaller ones with her."
     Salene blinked.  "Took them with her?"
     Jake brought over the coffee, set it in front of Salene.  "Take
off your cloak.  There are hooks on the wall by the door."  Salene did
so, hung it beside the tiny pink coat which belonged to the child.
     He turned back then, let his eyes take in his surroundings with
more care: a sofa, a chair with a cat sprawled in it, a pair of lamps,
a bookshelf with real books beside the staircase, a half-full fishtank
with algae all over the sides.  The newt?  Otherwise, the room was
strangely bare.  Christmas decorations, shoes, and scattered toys had
initially hidden that fact.  He saw a man's things; he saw a child's
things.  He did not see anything recognizably a woman's.  "Where is
your wife, Jake?"
     A long pause.  Jake wasn't looking at Salene.  "We've separated."
     At the base of his spine, Salene experienced a shivery burst that
flashed weakness down his legs and spread out low in his abdomen.  He
did not have a name to put to the sensation.  It kept him silent for
ten breaths, then he asked, "How long?"
     "Four months."
     Salene sat down across from the man who had once been--and still
was in his own heart--his dearest friend.  "I am sorry."
     Jake looked up.  "Really?"  His tone made the question sardonic,
not curious.
     "Yes.  Really."
     The child's return interrupted any reply Jake might have made. 
She gallumped down the stairs, a large stuffed animal in her arms--
some marine mammal.  Salene was not well-versed in Earth's flora and
fauna.  Coming over to him, she pushed the nose of the animal right up
against his face.  "She kiss you!"  The timing was bad; he twisted
away almost violently.
     "Jenny!" Jake said.  "Come here!"
     "Jake, forgive--"
     "Shut up, Salene."  But Jake was looking at his daughter; she
glared back, then reluctantly approached.  He caught her between his
knees, took the stuffed animal out of her hands and set it on the
floor.  She reached for it but he had scooted it well out of reach. 
"Jenny.  Jenny Gwen, look at me.  Do you have your listening ears on?" 
Giving up on the toy, she raised her face and made an odd popping
sound with her mouth.  "Use person talk, Jenny, not newt noises.  Do
you have your listening hears on?"
     Dropping her chin, she said sullenly, "Yes."
     "It's not considered polite to touch Vulcans.  Mr. Salene has
been very patient with you, but it's time now for you to stop.  Why
don't you go upstairs and play for a while?  Daddy wants to have a
grownup conversation, okay?"
     "No!"
     "Jenny Gwen--!"
     "No!"
     "Jenny, go upstairs.  I'm going to count to three.  One...."
     She did nothing.
     "Two...."
     She skipped out from between his knees, darted in to snatch the
stuffed animal, then backed up a dozen steps, stopped, as if to see if
he would make good his threat.
     "Two and a half...."
     "I go!"  And she dashed up the stairs.
     When she had disappeared, Salene said, "She lives with you?"
     "For the time being.  Sarah's on assignment to a new space
station.  That's what she does: station architecture."
     "Then you met on DS9?"
     "We met here in Pennsylvania.  I was visiting my grandparents. 
They told me about a local professor who was interviewing people who'd
grown up on space stations, for planning research.  She wanted to make
stations more kid-friendly."  Jake shrugged.  "I agreed to talk to
her.  Turned out, she'd grown up on one, too.  We had some things in
common.  She asked me out and we started seeing each other.  After a
while, I asked her to marry me."  Jake looked off.  "It's not the
stuff of exciting novels, I'm afraid."
     Salene wanted to ask what had happened to Jake's marriage, but
did not feel it his place.  Eleven years ago he had given up all right
to know about Jake's private life.  He sipped his coffee instead and
stared at the black iron stove.
     Silence stretched.  Finally, Jake shifted.  "So.  How about you? 
What've you been up to for eleven years?"
     It was not sarcastic, or bitter.  Just a question posed offhand--
like one might ask at a casual meeting between acquaintances.  Yet
what he and Jake had been to one another....  Salene had come here
prepared for anger, for abrupt dismissal, even for cold refusal on
Jake's part to acknowledge him.  But to be reduced to a mere
acquaintance!
     It was the perfect cruelty, of course.  The perfect revenge. 
What better way to humiliate a Vulcan than to care less?
     Standing, Salene walked away a few steps, moving like a man drunk
or disoriented.  Finally he looked back at Jake, whose face was nearly
blank.  He did not even have the good grace to look victorious, which
made his victory unassailable.
     "What have I been 'up to'?  I have eaten out my heart over you. 
Does it please you to hear it?"
     Jake blinked.  Salene watched the full impact of his admission
register.  Blankness disappeared, the eyebrow twitched--almost Vulcan
that.  There was a pinched look about Jake's mouth.  Then he bowed his
head and stared hard at the carpet under his feet.  "Damn you.  You
had to push it, didn't you?"
     "If the other option was to be treated as if I did not matter--
yes."
     Jake stood, stalked over to face Salene.  "You could have come
six months ago.  Why didn't you?"
     Salene sidestepped that question to re-ask his own.  "Why did you
dedicate a book to me after eleven years?"
     Jake threw up his hands, turned half away.  "I don't know!  But
if you came now, why didn't you come before?"  He turned his head to
glare.  "You want to be treated like you matter, but you don't treat
me as if I matter to you!"
     "You matter."
     "Then why didn't you come?"
     It was an accusation, not a question.
     "I...did not want to be manipulated."
     That shut Jake up.  There were tears in his eyes; he had always
been emotional.  Once, Salene had prized that.  "I *needed* you," Jake
said finally.
     "I am here."  What other response could he have given?
     Jake started to move forward, hesitated, faltered, cooled.  He
waved a hand and turned away again, all the way around.  "It doesn't
matter.  It was a dumb thing to do, the dedication.  I didn't have any
business doing it; I was just confused.  My marriage was falling
apart.  I don't know what I thought that dedication would accomplish."
     The answer seemed obvious to Salene.  "You did something you knew
I would have to respond to, either to express gratitude or curiosity." 
He paused, added, "That was why I initially refused to come."
     "So why did you, finally?  You didn't have to; you made it clear
once that you didn't want me around."
     Salene paused, thought how to answer.  He could sidestep the
truth and preserve his pride, but had he wanted to preserve his pride,
he would not have come here at all.  "It was never a matter of not
wanting.  It was a matter of choosing between two things I wanted too
much."
     For a moment, Jake said nothing, clearly taken aback.  Then his
face shut.  "I didn't think Vulcans ever wanted; that's a *feeling*."
     Salene looked around himself, anywhere but at Jake.  "I feel."
     "You said that once, too.  I was stupid enough to believe you."
     "I did not lie!"  It was a snap, no other description for it. 
Reining his temper, he walked back to the stove.  It was hot, like
this feeling in his chest.  It made his skin tight, made his heart
tight.  "When I left you, I left my soul."
     Behind him he heard clapping, slow and mocking, and spun around. 
"How *poetic*," Jake said.
     To admit to emotion was bad enough.  To admit to it and not be
taken seriously--  He was moving almost before he knew what he was
doing.  He grabbed Jake by the wrist, jerked him close...and had
nothing to say.  At the root of it, this wasn't about declarations. 
Jake had no reasons to believe him.  So he leaned in the rest of the
way and kissed him.  It was brutal.  Teeth bruised lips.  He had Jake
by the nape of the neck.  Jake had both hands on his upper arms, to
draw him close or shove him away.  A wrestling match: each trying to
dominate the other on grounds neither had expected but perhaps both
had wanted too much.  Salene could feel the bond pulsing in his own
mind, the wish to link with Jake almost overwhelming--as overwhelming
as this intense desire reawakened after long dormancy.  They pushed
against each other like a pair of phalanxes at the clash of shields.
     Jake broke off abruptly, jerked his head around to the stairs. 
Salene remembered then, too: the child.  She was not there.  Jake let
out a breath, let Salene go.  "What in hell was that?" he muttered.
     Salene stepped forward again, back into the circle of Jake's
personal space--but he kept one eye on the stairs.  "Which part?  The
anger or the desire?"
     Jake set a hand on Salene's hip--very carefully, as if he thought
Salene might break.  "This is insane.  It was eleven years ago.  I'm
not attracted to men.  I have a daughter, and a wife, if we can work
it out.  You have a career, and a family that doesn't want to hear
about me."
     "All true, if not precisely accurate on the details.  Only part
of my family would not wish to hear about you."
     "Which part?"
     "My elder brother."
     "You said your family would disown you."
     "I was young."  And foolish.  But he did not add that.
     Jake backed up, raised his hands.  "This is going too fast.  What
did you come here for?  To disrupt my life again?"
     "I told you--I wished an answer regarding the dedication."
     "And you got one.  My marriage was falling apart.  I guess it
reminded me of you!"
     "You said you needed me."
     "I did.  Then."
     "And now?"
     Jake made a helpless gesture.  "I don't know!  I don't understand
any of this!  You just...drop back into my life and expect me to take
you on faith."
     "No, I do not."  He wanted to touch Jake again, knew it would be
unwise.  "I did not intend what just occurred--but I cannot say no
part of me had hoped for it."
     "What did you think was going to happen if you came here?"
     "Honestly?  I thought you would not talk to me."
     "Despite the dedication?"
     "Yes.  I simply felt compelled to see you again."  He let a
faint, bitter smile touch his lips.  "The dedication provided an
excuse."
     "So now what?" Jake asked.
     Salene shrugged by way of answer.  He really had no idea.  He had
not thought to get this far.  Jake picked up their cups, went back
into the kitchen and poured more coffee.  He did not look at Salene. 
"Do you want to stay for lunch?  It's still snowing out there."
     "Do you wish me to stay?"
     "I wouldn't ask otherwise!"
     "Then I will stay."


     It was a strange afternoon.  Not comfortable.  After lunch, the
child was put down for a nap.  She went reluctantly, might not have
gone at all had Salene not promised a song.  She was fascinated by
him.  And he was fascinated by her, by the sheer fact of her.  Jake's
child.  That she was charming and apparently clever for her age only
added to the effect.  When she was finally asleep, he came back
downstairs.  Jake sat in the near-empty dining room on the other side
of the kitchen, staring out the front bay window at the snow coming
down in the street.  His feet were up on the sill and he had a
steaming cup of coffee in his hands.  There was a second chair for
Salene.  "I did not think you particularly cared for coffee," Salene
said by way of greeting, took the chair.
     "Started drinking it at the Pennington Academy in New Zealand, but
I didn't actually get to like coffee till I lived in Rome a few years.  
They know how to make real coffee in Italy; they roast the beans, not 
burn them."
     "What were you doing there?"
     "Going to school."
     "In Italy, not New Zealand?"
     "I stayed at Pennington two years.  I guess I learned something." 
He took a sip of coffee.  "That's not fair.  I did learn something,
but I learned more outside classes than in them.  I decided I'd do
better with a degree in something else.  If all you study is writing,
you have nothing to write *about*.  So I travelled for a few years--
all Earth's important old cities left standing after the Third Word
War.  I went to Leningrad, Calcutta, Nairobi, Istanbul, Mexico City,
Cairo, Athens, Barcelona, Venice, Casablanca.  Quite a list, huh?  And
those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head."  He
grinned.  "Finally settled in Rome.  Took comparative literature
there, with a year at Cambridge after.  I think I lived in their
library--a real one, with real books.  It's wonderfully Gothic.  Nog
thought I was nuts."
     "You are still friends with the Ferengi?"
     "Nog didn't walk out on me."
     Salene rose, stalked away through the kitchen.  Behind him, he
heard Jake rise also.  "Don't leave.  I'm sorry."
     He stopped but remained turned away towards the sitting room with
its stove and denuded Christmas tree.  "There is nothing for which you
need apologize.  You are correct.  Nog did not betray his friendship
with you.  I did."
     "I never understood why.  I read the note you left, but couldn't
you just have *told* me those things?  Did you really think I'd be so
selfish I wouldn't let you set whatever limits you needed to?"  A
hesitation.  "I'd have taken you on any grounds you named.  You were
my friend first."
     "You still do not understand, do you?  It was never you I did not
trust!  It was myself."  He turned a little to stare at a neat line of
canisters on the cabinet until his eyes went out of focus.  "You were
the unwitting victim of my own weaknesses.  That is why I left.  I
would not victimize you further."
     "Couldn't you let me decide for myself?  If you'd talked to me--"
     "I'd never have been able to leave you."
     "That was the idea, dammit!"  Frustrated, Jake threw his coffee
cup.  It crashed against the wall, the last dregs of coffee streaking
brown on white.  Being plastic, the cup itself did not break but the
sound startled them both.
     "You're going to wake your daughter."
     "No, I won't.  A Klingon bird of prey could go screaming through
her room at warp nine and it wouldn't wake her."  Jake came into the
kitchen to grab a rag, dampen it and go back out to wipe up the coffee.
Salene followed, picking up the cup where it had bounced away against a
baseboard.  Jake had finished cleaning up but remained squatting,
staring at the wall.  "If you had to leave then to 'protect' me, why
show up again now?  Do you think it's going to hurt less when you leave
this time?"
     Salene frowned down at the blue plastic of the cup.  "Do you wish
me to leave?"
     "That wasn't what I asked."
     "No, but it is what I asked."  He walked over to stand next to
Jake.
     Jake did not look up at him.  "You got what you came for--a
reason for the dedication."
     "Ostensibly."
     Jake finally turned up his head.  "What are you trying to say?"
     Squatting down as well, Salene frowned at the wood floor between
his knees.  "If you wish me to stay, I will.  If you wish me to leave,
I will.  I did not come intending to cause you pain.  I came because I
could no longer stay away.  My own weaknesses again.  But I will not
victimize you twice."
     "Why don't you show me the respect of letting me decide this time
when I'm a victim?"
     That made Salene glance up.  There was anger in Jake's face, and
something else.  "I want you to stay," Jake said.  "But only if I can
trust that you won't disappear on me again.  If you can't give me your
word, then yeah, I want you to go, and not come back."
     "I can give you my word," Salene said solemnly.



                                  II.


     Jake was working.  Again.  He had forgotten that it was time to
eat.  That was a common enough occurrence.  Salene set Jenny in her
booster seat at the breakfast bar and gave her wheat crackers to keep
her busy, walked down the hall to bang on Jake's office door.  Again. 
"Jake."
     "Yeah, yeah--I'm coming.  Just let me finish this thought."
     "You said that five minutes ago."
     "I'll be there in a minute!"
     Snorting softly, Salene went back to the kitchen.  After three
months, he knew the routine: he would feed Jenny, eat something, then
Jake himself would finally appear half an hour from now, looking
shamefaced and offering apologetic variants on, "I got involved." 
Sometimes Salene wondered how Jake had survived alone with Jenny
before he had arrived.  When writing, Jake lived in his own world--
especially now as he fought to complete his second novel.  But Salene
understood that kind of obsession.
     "At least you don't yell at me," Jake had said, a month after
Salene had moved in.  "Sarah thought marrying a writer would be
romantic, but she never understood.  Since I was home all day, why
couldn't I run errands for her, watch Jenny, whatever?  Then she
bitched when I wrote at night because I was busy all day.  'You never
spend any time with me!'"  It was one of the few times Jake had said
anything about the reasons for his separation from Sarah.  Salene had
never asked more.
     His current arrangement with Jake was ephemeral.  It continued to
exist because they refrained from imposing the past or future on it. 
After that first day, Jake never again asked Salene if he was staying,
or for how long, or what had become of his career.  Once, he had asked
--almost casually--when Salene's next tour was scheduled.  "I am on
indefinite leave," Salene had replied.  That had ended it.  Yet Salene
never left the house without telling Jake precisely when he would
return and then keeping to that even if it meant cutting short a trip.
     They did not sleep together, nor touch at all except by accident. 
Jake appeared unaware of the bond between them; Salene was too aware
of it, and reluctant to tell Jake.  Eleven years ago, it had seemed
the right thing to do: his private gift.  Now he saw it differently: a
violation, a link put there unasked.  And so for the moment, their
unofficial arrangement continued.  Jenny had accepted his presence in
their lives; Jake had come to rely on him, if not completely forgive
him; one of the cats had adopted his feet at night.  His package mail
was being forwarded here, and his younger brother Solymi was gradually
shipping items from his apartment in T'lingShar.  Even the neighbors
had gathered that he was more than a mere visitor.
     He also knew it could not last much longer.  They were living in
Never-Neverland--but that morning, he had seen Jake flipping through
his financial record, and frowning.  Jake was not wealthy.  In fact,
Salene had been appalled by how little Jake was paid for his efforts. 
Though they lived frugally enough, the advance for Jake's second book
was nearly gone, that for a third still in negotiation.  Sarah paid
the mortgage.  The house had been Jake's idea--"I never had a house,
growing up"--but he could not afford it.  Sarah was continuing the
mortgage payments until she returned and they could decide what to do
about the future.  Jake seemed to be preparing himself to lose the
place; he had spoken of fixing this or that in preparation for putting
it on the market.
     Salene wondered how he might convince Jake to let him help with
expenses; he had more private resources than he knew what to do with. 
It was illogical to be forbidden to contribute, particularly in light
of the fact that he now more or less lived here.  In fact, he could
buy Jake the house outright, present it as a gift...but did not think
that wise.  Jake's pride would be wounded.  Nevertheless it troubled
him deeply to live here at Jake's expense.  Sometimes he simply bought
things and did not tell Jake.
     He fetched peanut-butter-and-banana squares from the replicator,
set them in front of Jenny as the comm rang.  Without thinking, he
walked out into the dining area and flipped the receive.  "Yes?"
     A woman's face on the screen--startled.  He knew instinctively
who she was: Sarah Fernandez.  Jake's wife.  "Who are you?" she
demanded.  "Where's Jake?"
     "Jake is here, writing.  Shall I call him?"
     She frowned.  She was, he supposed, a pretty woman.  He might
have been jealous, but he was the one standing in her dining room, not
her.  "Who *are* you?" she asked again.
     "I am a friend.  My name is Salene."
     "Sal--  Not *that* Salene!"
     He wondered what 'that Salene' signified, and how much she knew
about him.  He was saved from answering by the child.  Having heard
her mother's voice on the comm, she had abandoned her meal to come
screaming out into the dining area.  "Mommeee!"
     Fernandez' face altered entirely.  "Hi, sweetie.  Where's daddy?"
     "In his office," Jenny said, even as the office door opened and
Jake came down the hall.  He was frowning.  His eyes still had that
distracted look he got when he was working.
     Salene had stepped back from the comm.  Now, he watched Jake
confront his wife.  "Sarah?"
     There was a long pause while they studied each other.  "The
project is done," she said.  "I'm coming home."
     "When?" Jenny shouted, gripping the edge of the comm desk and
bouncing up and down in uncontrollable excitement.
     "I'll be there in two weeks."
     "Jenny'll be glad to see you."
     "Politic phrasing, Jake.  I notice you didn't say you would be."
     "Sarah--not in front of her."  He glanced around for Salene,
nodded to his daughter.
     Coming forward, Salene knelt beside her.  "Come."
     "But Mommy--!"
     "I'll call you before we disconnect," Jake said.  "You can talk
to Mommy then."
     Salene took her upstairs to work on a puzzle.  In the distance,
he could hear the rise and fall of Jake's voice, harsh with anger.  He
was glad human hearing was less accute; the child seemed oblivious. 
After twenty-two minutes, Jake appeared at the door to Jenny's room. 
"Jenny Gwen, Mommy wants to say goodbye."
     She leapt up and was gone on the instant.  She had only been
biding her time with Salene anyway, awaiting the chance to talk to her
mother.  Why did it hurt so much inside, to see how fast she went?  He
looked at Jake.  His friend had been crying but not, Salene thought,
in sorrow.  "You know," Jake said, "Every time we talk, I remember why
she's out there and I'm back here."  Salene stood, shyly set a hand on
Jake's shoulder.  It was the first time they had touched in weeks but
Jake turned away.  "I need to go; Jenny doesn't know how to disconnect
the comm."  And he left Salene standing alone in the child's room.


     They did not talk again until Jenny was put to bed, bathed and
teeth brushed.  She had done nothing but chatter about her mother's
imminent return.  Salene sang her a lullaby and tried not to allow her
chatter to affect him.  His reactions were illogical and absurd.  She
was not his child; it was perfectly natural that she be excited to see
her mother again.  Nevertheless he stood for a long while in her
doorway and watched her sleep.  Inside, he was hollow.
     Jake came up the stairs, stood beside him.  "They're sweet like
that, aren't they?  Nature's way of making sure their parents don't
throttle them for being holy terrors when they're awake, I guess."
     Salene shook his head.  "She is not a 'holy terror.'  She is only
a child."
     He could feel Jake study him from where he had leaned against the
opposite doorjamb.  "You love her."
     "Her welfare is of concern to me.  If you wish to label that
'love', it is your prerogative."
     Jake made a sound somewhere between disgust and amusement.  "Well
the 'concern' is reciprocated.  She's very fond of you."
     Salene turned away.  "Perhaps--the same as she is fond of the
cats and the newt and her collection of stuffed animals.  She is not
my child."  And he stamped down the stairs, irritated with himself for
being so transparent.
     He headed for his room.  He would read before he composed himself
for meditation and then sleep.  Jake followed him, caught him in the
hallway.  "Hey!  What is wrong with you?"
     His turn now to jerk an arm free.  "Nothing!"  He turned away. 
If he did not, he would shame himself.  Jake let him be.  Finally he
said, "She is not mine.  I know this.  I do not wish to impose, nor
would I ever ask that she chose between her mother and myself."
     "Why do you assume she has to?"  The unexpected comment brought
Salene's head around.  Jake continued, "When Sarah and I separated, we
promised each other we wouldn't tear Jenny apart between us.  If I
thought you were trying to turn my daughter against her mother, I'd
kick you out of my house.  But kids have big hearts, Salene.  And as
far as she's concerned, you hung the stars."
     "Her mother may have other ideas."
     Jake did not reply; Salene began to move back towards his room
but Jake's hand on his arm stopped him.  "We need to talk."  Salene
halted, kept his face averted but nodded.  They did indeed.  "Let's go
out by the stove.  It's cold back here."
     Jake heated cider for Salene--real cider made from local apples--
then made espresso for himself.  Two of the three cats had come over
to bump Salene's legs; the grey leapt up into his lap.  Absently, he
scratched her cheeks and ears.
     Putting the cider mug on a table by Salene's chair, Jake said,
"Cats and Vulcans are the antithesis of Klingons and tribbles.  If
there's a Vulcan around, every cat inside a mile comes running."
     It was an attempt at small talk to avoid the larger issue. 
Vulcans were just as prone to it, though they liked to call it
something else.  "It is our body heat," Salene said.
     "Maybe."  Jake snorted.  "But even Nancy likes you and she's half
wild."  He nodded to the cat in Salene's lap.  "It's more than just
higher body temperature."
     Salene shrugged.  Jake might be correct; he really did not know
why Terran cats gravitated to Vulcans--and the reverse.  Salene had
read somewhere that the Terran domestic cat had recently superseded
the sehlat as the most preferred house pet on Vulcan: the only example
in the Federation of an introduced animal replacing a native one in
popularity.  And it had happened in only a hundred Vulcan years.  Now,
Salene let Nancy's subsonic purr lull him while he waited for Jake to
broach more serious matters.  But Jake's announcement still caught him
by surprise: "Sarah wants marriage counselling."
     Salene sat up.
     "She seems to think we can fix things," Jake went on, "that we
should try for Jenny's sake."
     "Indeed, you should try."
     Jake stared.  "I can't believe you want me to go back to her."
     Picking up his mug, Salene turned it in his hands.  "Jake, your
commitment to Sarah has precedence.  You exchanged vows with her, not
me.  It is your duty not to give up on those vows unless it proves
impossible to keep them."
     "What if I prefer you?"
     Salene set down the mug and stood abruptly, dropping Nancy onto
the floor.  He stalked over to the sliding glass door which opened
onto the back porch, looked out.  The back light illumined a line of
yellow daffodils in a flower bed by the house.  They were just beginning
to open their buds.  "That is not a reason," he said to Jake.
     "Not for a Vulcan maybe--"
     Salene spun.  "It is not a reason!  And you do not prefer me."
     "How do you know who I prefer!"
     "You are not attracted to men--as you told me yourself."
     Jake rose, too, came over to stand in front of Salene.  "I'm not
attracted to most men, no.  But to you?"  His eyes flicked over
Salene's face.  "I don't know.  I'd forgotten...."  He did not finish
the thought.  Instead, he said, "Sarah and I ended up in bed the first
time we went out.  Chemistry.  I was drunk on it for over a year.  We
had great sex.  Then I woke up one day and realized I was married to
someone I didn't *like* half the time."  He paused, glanced down.  "I
probably should've asked for a divorce then.  I didn't.  No Sisko has
gotten a divorce in five generations.  I thought I was expecting too
much, wanting too much in one person, and should settle for something
more realistic.  Instead, I settled for the wrong things."  He looked
back up.  "Being with you again reminded me what it's like to be
understood.  I want someone who understands me."
     "And so you would sacrifice attraction for understanding.  What
makes you think the trade would prove more satisfying to you in the
end?  Choose me because you want me, or let us remain friends."
     Jake eyed him.  "You told me once that Vulcans didn't marry for
love or desire, but now that's what you want from me."
     "I could not marry you in any case; that has not changed.  Nor
does it matter why Vulcans marry--it matters why *humans* do.  You are
human.  You must choose a mate for human reasons."
     "Salene, whatever Vulcans may think, humans aren't slaves to
emotion--and chemistry isn't what makes a good marriage.  I married
Sarah for chemistry, and it wasn't enough.  Humans can be as pragmatic
as any Vulcan."  He grinned.  "I *like* you; that matters more.  I
enjoy your company, I value your opinion--"
     "But you do not desire me.  We may as well be roommates."
     Jake threw up his hands.  "*Why* are you stuck on that?  As for
desiring you--you're wrong.  I do feel...something.  I'm not sure
'desire' is the best word for it, but for eleven years I haven't been
able to get you out of my head!"
     Jake's phrasing cut off Salene's initial reply.  After a moment,
Salene asked, "What do you mean you have not been able to get me out
of your head?"  Surely mind-blind Jake was unaware...?  But Jake
shrugged, looked embarrassed--as if he had said more than he had meant
to.  "Explain," Salene prompted.
     Jake took a breath, glanced quickly at Salene, then away again. 
"I've thought of you, off and on, ever since you left--sometimes every
day, sometimes not for months.  At Pennington, it was bad.  Maybe
that's why I left school to travel.  Dad thought traveling was a good
idea.  I'd seen so much of other planets, but didn't know squat about
my own.  But to me, traveling kept me too busy to remember.  It worked
mostly, till I settled in Rome.  Italy reminded me of you, so I left
and went to England.  Then on a visit to my mother's parents, I met
Sarah.  She was the first person since you who I felt serious about."
     Jake was not answering the question in quite the way Salene had
meant, but it was the first time since the day of Salene's arrival
that Jake had talked about his past.  Occasionally, he had related
anecdotes but anecdotes made for spotty illumination.  So, fascinated,
Salene did not try to redirect him.
     "Like I said before, there's really not much to the story."  Jake
shrugged.  "We had good sex, and a similar background; I thought that
was enough.  So I finished up at Cambridge and we got married.  Dad
was happy for me; I think Kassidy was less sure, but they've both been
pretty good about not trying to run my life."  His shoulders sagged. 
"Everything was fine for a year or so, then I woke up one day and
realized I wasn't in love with Sarah, probably never had been.  We
started fighting--little things at first.  Then out of the blue, she
suggested that we have a kid; she must have sensed she was losing me. 
I don't know why I agreed.  Maybe I thought a baby would give us more
in common, and our parents were ecstatic, so we bought this house and
had Jenny.  For a while, it did help.  But Jenny took a lot of time,
and I was the one who bore the brunt of it."
     Sighing, he went back over to sit down by the fire.  Still silent
and listening, Salene followed.  "I love my daughter; I wouldn't send
her back even if I could.  But having a child is supposed to be a
partnership, and Sarah always had some project due, or some conference
to attend, or had to stay late in the lab.  I did the work, though
having a baby hadn't been my idea in the first place.  I was tired all
the time, and resentful."
     He picked up a piece of cardboard and fed it to the stove.  It
was late March and the weather still ran chill enough at night to
light a fire.  "About a month after Jenny's second birthday, Sarah
came home all excited because she had an opportunity not just to
design a space station, but actually to oversee the building.  Station
architects don't always or even often have that chance.  To be invited
meant a leap in her status in the field.
     "But it also meant she wanted to pack us up and go off for six or
eight months to live on the edge of Romulan space, half of it spent in
pre-station contractor housing.  Not very pleasant."  He threw another
bit of cardboard into the fire.  It blazed.  "I'd spent enough time on
ships and stations, growing up.  When we first married, I'd told Sarah
I wasn't going to raise a family on a station and she'd agreed.  But
when this project came up, she kept saying, 'It's only a few months.' 
Maybe so.  A few months this time, a few months next time...and how
often would Jenny get to see a real sky and breathe real air?  Pretty
soon, we'd be bouncing from project to project: building stations or
fixing them, or updating old ones.  I told her I didn't want to live
like that.  We had...quite a fight.  The only thing we settled was
that we needed some time apart.  So we decided she'd go alone to the
project and I'd stay here with Jenny.  I'd just finished ANSLEM.  I
thought of you all the time then, so I dedicated the book to you.  I
wasn't sure you'd ever see it, but hoped if you did, you'd come.  I
needed your logic, or maybe I just needed to see you again and realize
you weren't any more perfect than Sarah, so I could forget about you."
     Smiling wryly, he looked up.  "Trouble is, when you did come, it
just convinced me that I'd been right all along: marrying Sarah was a
mistake."  He shook his head.  "I don't want to stay married to her,
Salene--and marriage counselling isn't going to change that.  The only
thing we have in common anymore is Jenny.  We haven't even had sex in
over a year.  There's just...*nothing there* to save."
     Salene slumped back in his chair, tapped fingers on the arm. 
When Jake had first said that he had not been able to get Salene out
of his head, Salene had feared that the bond he had set between them
eleven years ago had somehow interfered with Jake's marriage.  He was
still not entirely sure it hadn't, but after Jake's recitation, he
felt somewhat less concerned.  Now, he tilted his head slightly.  "How
much does Sarah know about me?  When I answered the comm and gave her
my name, she said, 'Not *that* Salene.'"
     Jake appeared amused.  "She's jealous because you got a book
dedication and she didn't.  She doesn't know about New Orleans, if
that's what you're asking."
     "So what does she know?"
     "I told her you were an old friend, and that you'd helped me a
lot when I first started writing.  She knows 'Orfeo' was written for
you, and that you're a famous singer.  That's about it."
     "And she never asked why we were no longer in contact?"
     "I told her we'd drifted apart over the years and I'd lost track
of you."
     "So you lied.  Why?"
     Jake shrugged.  "I don't know.  I never even told my father what
happened in New Orleans.  He figured out after a while that we weren't
writing any more, but he never asked why and I never told.  Believe it
or not, the only person I ever confided in was Dax.  My grandfather
guessed, and I think Jillian did, too, but I didn't tell them."
     "Jillian knew."  Salene flicked his eyes to the fire, narrowed
them.  "She saw me leaving, informed me I was being 'melodramatic.'"
     "Jill never had much patience for anything she considered silly."
     "She is wiser than I."  He turned back to Jake.  "Why did you not
tell Sarah?"
     Sighing, Jake said, "Embarrassment.  I felt like I'd...I don't
know...like I'd *failed*."
     "But you did not.  I told you, it was my--"
     Jake held up a hand to cut him off.  "It doesn't matter what was
going on in your head.  It *felt* like a failure to me, like I'd done
something wrong, or been something wrong.  I was the one who got left. 
And I wasn't too sure what to make of what had happened in the first
place.  It's the only time I've ever been with a guy, the only time I
ever wanted to.  So on the one hand, it was totally out of character. 
On the other--"  He shrugged.  "You were the most *right* lover I've
ever had.  Wrong species, wrong gender, but absolutely the right
person.  I don't think I ever got over you leaving me."  He looked up. 
"How was I supposed to explain that to my *wife*?  So I didn't tell
her the whole truth."
     Frustrated past his ability to suppress, Salene walked over to
pick up his cider mug, carry it into the kitchen and set it in the
reclaimant.  "I never intended you to fixate on me."
     Jake rose, too.  "Whether you intended it or not, it happened."
     Salene was abruptly reminded of Jillian's rebuke, all those years
ago:  '*Consequences* are what you're trying to avoid...But life is
full of consequences, whether or not you're around to see them.'  Had
he really thought the only consequences would be to his life?  He and
Jake had shared something profound, built on a fragile trust which he
had then broken.  Bond or no bond, he did bear some responsibility for
Jake's divorce; it was not merely inflated self-importance.  Had he
stayed with Jake eleven years ago, their relationship might have
failed--but it would have been an honest failure.  Instead, he had
left Jake with a torn memory healed over by idealization.  All Jake's
future relationships had been weighed against his perception of what
might have been...a might-have-been untarnished by mundane reality.
Salene had become Jake's ne plus ultra, and remained the only one who
could prove that image false.  Ironically, he might do Sarah more
good by giving Jake what he thought he wanted.
     And how much of that, he asked himself, is mere rationalization
for what *you* want?
     He came back into the family room, back to where Jake had risen
from his chair, and held out two fingers of his right hand.  Clearly
baffled, Jake stared.  Taking Jake's hand in his free one, Salene
folded it into the proper form, then raised Jake's fingers to his own. 
Shock of contact, physical and mental.  Through hooded eyes, he
watched Jake draw startled breath.  "You would have me as a partner? 
I am far from perfect."
     "I didn't ask for perfect," Jake said.  "I asked for you."
     "Perhaps, but I fear you have conflated the two."
     Jake closed his whole hand over Salene's: not a proper touch, but
a very human one.  "No, I haven't," he said.  "I know your faults,
maybe better than you do.  You always say you don't have a temper, but
if I interrupt you when you're working, you get short with me.  Or, if
I try to talk to you when you're playing gadulka, you look right at me
and never answer--like you didn't even hear."
     "Asking me questions when I am endeavoring to practice is not
conducive to--"
     Jake held up his free hand.  "I'm making a point, not starting an
argument.  You wonder why I don't cook much any more, but cooking two
meals--one veggie and one not--isn't easy.  I won't quit eating meat
for you."
     "I never asked you to.  And," he added dryly, "you don't cook
because you tend to get involved *writing*."
     Jake ignored the correction, went on, "You fuss if I leave things
laying around, but when you clean up, I can't *find* anything; you
start laundry when I'm in the shower so all I get is hot or cold
water; and you turn the heat way up because you're cold all the time,
but you don't have to pay the power bill."
     "Only because you will not permit it."
     Waving a hand, Jake said, "I told you, I don't want to argue. 
That's not the point; we can fight about it later if you insist."  But
he was grinning as if he had already won the quarrel.
     That insouciance annoyed Salene.  "I could make a list of your
less than sterling qualities, too."
     Jake grinned harder.  "No doubt.  But you seem to think I don't
see you, or know what I'm asking for when I say I want you.  But I do. 
I know your virtues *and* your faults."
     Yet Salene had faults--and weaknesses--Jake did not know, might
not want any part of.  He started to turn away.  Jake, hand still
clasped tight around his, did not let him.  "Don't play games with me,
Salene.  You started this; you made that crack about having you for a
partner.  Okay--I'm taking you up on it."
     Salene's eyes widened.  Jake stepped closer; they were still
almost exactly the same height.  Salene could feel Jake's breath;
Jake's gaze had dropped to focus on Salene's mouth.  Perhaps five
inches separated their faces.  This was the fork in the road.  It had
taken them three months to get here--three months to move back eleven
years.  Salene stared down the path not taken.  "'Two roads diverged
in a yellow wood,'" he whispered, "'and sorry I could not travel both,
and be one traveler, long I stood, and looked down one as far as I
could to where it bent in the undergrowth--'"
     Jake snorted.  "Do me a favor--don't quote old, overworn poetry
to writer."  And he leaned in to press his lips to Salene's.



                                 III.


     Jake Sisko might be a night owl, but his daughter was a morning
bird--so Salene had set his internal clock to wake before she did. 
She had a habit of crawling into bed to cuddle with her father of the
morning.  Salene did not think discovering him there would be the
optimal way for her to learn about his altered relationship with Jake.
     So he rose early, opened the stove flue and put a new log on the
fire, then called her down to him when she woke, made them pancakes
from the replicator.  After, she sat on his lap and let him read her a
Vulcan story.  Jake had asked him to teach her Vulcan:  "I think it'd
be good for her to learn a second language this young."  So, when they
were alone together, he spoke to her only in Vulcan.  And when they
were alone together, her head on his chest while she listened to him
read, he could forget for a time that she was not his child.  He let
one hand stroke her shoulder while he thumbed holobook frames with the
other.  She would lean against him, completely trusting, innocently
assuming that she was the center of his world.  She was, she and her
father.  They might be the only family he had now.
     He stopped that train of thought; over the years, he had come to
recognize his own exaggerations.  He would not be here at all had
Solymi not insisted.  He had not lost his family, not entirely.  He
had done something worse: he had divided them.  It might have been
easier had they all been able to reject him.  Or to accept him.  But
perhaps accepting him was asking too much.
     There was a crash upstairs and a started shout.  "Salene!"
     Lulled and warm by the stove, Salene and Jenny both jumped. 
Salene swung her down--"Stay here"--and took the stairs three at a
time.  "Jake?  Are you injured?"
     Jake was in the master bedroom at the hall end.  Apparently, he
had come scrambling out of the bed, tugging bed sheets with him, and
knocking over the end table in the process.  Only half-awake, stark
naked with a panicked look on his face, he was trying to right the
table, pick up things from the floor.  Seeing Salene in the doorway,
he let out a breath and knelt down, as if to regain his balance.  "You
are still here."
     Salene understood then.
     Jake had woken alone--just as he had eleven years ago.
     Shutting the door firmly behind, Salene came over to kneel on the
floor by Jake, twitch a corner of blanket over Jake's lap.  Jenny was
not good yet at obeying a command for more than a few minutes.  She
would come trailing up here soon.  Then he set a palm on Jake's chest
roughly where he knew the human heart to lie.  He looked at his hand--
tan skin against brown--not at Jake's face.  "I am not going anywhere. 
That first day, you asked if I could give you my word on that, and I
did.  I will not leave you unless you ask me to."  He paused, then
added, "I did not wish Jenny to find me in her mother's place this
morning.  So I rose before she did."
     Turning, still not looking at Jake, he set the table back on its
legs, replaced the lamp and communi and the bookPADD which Jake had
been reading--though not last night.  On the floor under the table
were three discarded tissues, dry now and stiff.  He threw these into
the reclaimer as Jenny shoved the door open.
     "Daddy?"
     "I'm okay, honey.  I just tried to get out of bed before I was
awake."
     She climbed onto his lap, wrapped arms around his neck and kissed
him good morning: a sloppy, imprecise child-kiss.  She gave these out
frequently and with profligate abandon--to her father, the cats, her
stuffed animals, probably the newt if Jake did not watch carefully,
and even to Salene.  He had never told her not to.
     "Why don't you go back downstairs for a bit," Jake was saying to
her.  "Daddy needs to dress."
     She grabbed Salene's hand and tugged at him.  "Come back and tell
me stories!"
     "I will in a moment."  He pulled his hand free and turned her
towards the door, gave her a gentle push.  "Go."  And he shut the door
behind her.  Jake was already calling up clean underwear from the
repli-dresser, hopping from bare foot to bare foot on the wooden
planks.  Cold air had goosepimpled his flesh and he hurried into his
clothing.  Salene leaned against the door and watched.
     "What're you staring at?" Jake asked.  His teeth were chattering.
     "We have to tell her."
     "Yeah, I know," Jake said from inside a sweater.  His head popped
out the top and he tugged at the hem.  "At least she likes you."
     "That is not necessarily advantageous.  She has grown accustomed
to me in one role: that of family friend.  She may feel...betrayed...
if I assume a place that belonged to her mother."
     Jake was shaking his head as he sat to put on slippers.  "I doubt
it.  I'm not sure she remembers enough.  Sarah hasn't been around for
almost eight months now, and for half a year before that, we kept to
separate rooms.  I was down where you've been sleeping; Sarah was up
here.  Jenny sensed there was something wrong, but I'm not sure she
realized what, or that parents are *supposed* to sleep together."
     Salene crossed his arms.  "Terran parents, you mean.  Vulcan
parents would not."
     Grinning, Jake stood.  "Touche, my friend.  Maybe someday I'll
get used to thinking to make the distinction.  But I hope you don't
plan to keep that particular Vulcan custom."
     Smiling ever so slightly, Salene pushed himself away from the
door, opened it.  "Not at the present--no."
     As Jake passed, he touched Salene's arm.  It would have been
insignificant had Salene not been Vulcan.  But he was.  To touch so
casually was something only a mate would presume to do.  Salene
wondered if Jake understood that, or if he did it instinctively.  In
any case, he followed his friend downstairs.


     But they did not attempt to explain things to Jenny that morning. 
Jake went back to his office to work and Salene took her outside to
decide where to plant a garden when the weather turned seasonable.  He
wondered if, with a greenhouse, Vulcan plants might be coaxed to grow
on Earth.  When he had mentioned the garden earlier, Jake had given
him a double-take, but said nothing.  Salene could guess what Jake was
thinking: they would not be in this house long enough to harvest
anything, perhaps not long enough even to plant.  But that was one of
several matters about which Salene intended to talk to Jake when they
put Jenny down for her nap.
     Last night, this relationship had stopped being ephemeral and
become very, very real.  There had been none of the fey feeling of
those two long-ago encounters in New Orleans.  It had been as concrete
as the cool black Pennsylvania soil Salene rubbed in his fingers. 
Jenny watched, then copied the gesture--less neatly.  She grabbed a
fistful, dropped it, then immediately itched her nose with the dirty
hand.  "Ela," he said, gesturing her to him.  Wetting his thumb with
saliva, he rubbed her face clean.  The hand would require water.  "vo-
lae'en kha."  Let's go in.
     He washed her hands in the bathroom sink, then made her try to
urinate, though she insisted she did not need to.  He knew perfectly
well that it was time.  She would say she did not need to go even
while in the very process of doing so.  She resisted toilet training
violently, and now sat on the little plastic seat, glaring at him in
sullen defiance.  "Dwe-ack friend!"  You're not my friend.
     "Tel'hy," he corrected placidly.  "Dwe-ack tel'hy."
     She crossed her arms and humphed.  Behind him, someone chuckled. 
Jake had come out of his office and stood watching.  "She hates it
that she can't get a rise out of you."
     "There is not much point," Salene said.  "In half an hour, I will
be her friend again."
     Jake just grinned, stepped past to take care of his daughter. 
"How did the gardening go?"
     "The soil near the water"--a small creek ran along the back of
the property--"is the richest, although given your report of the
creek's tendency to flood in the spring, perhaps not the best choice. 
The soil by the shed will do."
     Jake pulled up Jenny's training pants, dumped the contents of
the child's toilet into the adult one and flushed.  Such a profligate
waste of water.  But this was Earth.  Jenny dashed out past Salene's
legs, glad to escape the bathroom and return to play--for now, alone. 
It would be some minutes before she forgave the adults for subjecting
her to the onerous interruption of waste elimination.
     "The house will have to be sold, you know," Jake was saying while
he washed his hands.
     "Is that what you want?" Salene asked.  "I was under the contrary
impression."
     "Lights off."  Jake stepped back into the hall; They faced one
another across the width of it.  "I can't keep this place, Salene.  I
can't afford it."
     "I can."
     Jake turned his head away, frowned at the half-open door to his
office.  Salene stood in the entrance to the guest room in which he
had slept until last night.
     "Jake," Salene said, "if we are to be partners, then we are to be
partners in all things--including expenses."
     "I don't intend to live off you."
     "So instead, you have insisted on the reverse.  As a guest, I was
willing to accede, although remaining your 'guest' for three months,
ten days was something of an absurdity.  But I am not a guest now, and
you are not 'living off' of me.  You have a vocation as well.  That
the compensation for it is less than what I receive is an unfortunate
reflection of Terran attitudes toward the arts.  Nevertheless, if we
are partners, then we share resources as well as a bed."  Salene
paused.  Jake still stared at his office door.  "That means we may
remain in this house, if it is your wish."
     "Sarah's name is on the deed, and on the mortgage.  Besides"--
Jake finally turned his eyes back to Salene--"what about your music? 
Once you said that choosing me would mean you had to give up your
career.  I can't let you do that."
     "My perceptions then were...immature.  I was young.  I understand
things now which I did not understand then."  For one thing, he
understood what Seltor had tried to tell him all those years ago when
he had first become chi`pain:  'Companionship can be found in other
quarters...do not turn aside the chance for companionship even if it
is not embodied in the traditional mate.'
     Salene tilted his head, listening.  In the family room, Jenny
talked to herself or, more likely, to and for one of her toys.  She
was a remarkably *verbal* child.  In any case, she was sufficiently
distracted for the moment.  "Come," he said, and gestured Jake into
the room which he had made his own.  Picking up his gadulka from its
stand, he threw the strap over his shoulder and ran fingers over the
strings.  Jake sprawled in the Vulcan musnud in the corner and
listened to him.  The musnud was one of the pieces of furniture which
Solymi had shipped to him.  "I cannot marry you," Salene said after a
moment.
     "You told me that last night.  I guess I'm not too sure what you
mean then, when you say we're 'partners.'"
     "I mean precisely that: we are partners."  He played a chord
progression, as if he could find his courage in the notes.  "The
Vulcan word is t'hy'la.  It is related to the word for friend."
     "Tel'hy."
     "You were listening."
     Jake smiled.  "I've been known to listen now and then.  So what
does it mean, 't'hy'la'?"
     "Friend and more-than-friend, alter-ego, lover, life-partner...." 
Salene let the chords take him into a bit of very old melody.  "Its
meaning depends on context.  It is a deep word, a hidden word--one you
will not find in a Vulcan dictionary."
     Jake's eyebrow went up.  "What?  Vulcans have secrets?"  His
voice was heavy with irony.
     Head lowered to watch his hands, Salene did not bother to reply.
     "So," Jake said after a minute, "what happens with your singing?"
     "It continues.  Or will, when I inform the concertmaster that I
am prepared to return to performing."
     "When will that be?"
     "When this matter between us is settled.  I never set a date on
my returning.  At the time, it was not possible."  He hoped Jake would
not ask why just at the moment.
     Instead, Jake said, "They won't forbid you to sing, when they
find out about us?  Or will you tell them?"
     Salene looked up finally, stilled the strings with his hand. 
"They would not have 'forbidden' me in any case; I would simply have
received no invitations from a Vulcan source.  And...there is telling
and there is telling.  This is what I have learned, in the intervening
years.  So long as the two of us maintain certain...illusions...I may
make whatever arrangements I please."
     Jake laughed without humor.  "Vulcans and secrets!  What you're
saying is that Vulcans have affairs all the time, they just call them
something else?"  His voice sounded vaguely incredulous.
     "Perhaps not 'all the time,'" Salene corrected, "but essentially
...yes."
     Before Jake could reply to that, a startled shriek and a crash
interrupted.  Jake was out the door in an instant, Salene on his heels
as soon as he could set down the instrument.  A terrified cat nearly
tripped him on its way to the sanctuary of Jake's office.
     "Jennifer Gwendolyn!" Jake was shouting.  Salene rounded the
corner into the kitchen, stopped cold.
     Water soaked the sitting room carpet around broken glass.  Jenny
had pulled down the newt aquarium onto herself.  She lay unmoving in
the midst of the mess.


     Jake had an unfortunate tendency to panic.  Perhaps one thing
which had drawn Salene to him in the first place was the fact that his
emotionalism made Salene feel controlled in comparison.  Now, Salene
set a hand on his shoulder to keep him out of the pediatrician's way
as she ran the regenerator over Jenny's shoulder.  "The cuts and
breaks aren't as serious as they might have been," the woman said. 
"She was lucky."
     "How could I have been so stupid?" Jake muttered for perhaps the
twentieth time.  "I shouldn't have left her alone that long."
     The pediatrician snapped the regenerator shut and patted Jenny's
cheek, smiled.  "You're a brave girl!"  Then she turned to Jenny's
father.  "Maybe you shouldn't.  But kids have a remarkable ability to
get into trouble, whether you leave them for five minutes or fifteen. 
You can't watch them constantly.  I take it you didn't have the
aquarium put where she could easily reach it?"
     "I didn't think so--" Jake began.
     "He did not," Salene interrupted, then added somewhat dryly, "It
required no little ingenuity on her part to reach it at all."  He
caught Jenny's eyes.  "She used a chair to climb onto the table in
order to get to the shelf.  She knew very well that she was not
supposed to be up there."
     The pediatrician looked Salene up and down, unsure as to his
place in this family triangle, then she turned back to Jenny.  "So
somebody learned a lesson today, didn't she?  When Daddy says not to
touch something unless he's there to help, smart little girls listen. 
From now on, you'll be a smart little girl, won't you?"
     Wide-eyed still from her scare, Jenny nodded dutifully.  Her
small brown face was stark.  The pediatrician lifted her off the exam
table and handed her to her father.  "She'll be fine.  Maybe a little
shaky for the rest of today, but fine."


     The newt, unfortunately, would not be.  How long it might have
survived outside the aquarium, they would never know.  Jake had
stepped on it in his rush to get to Jenny.
     The whole mess was still waiting to be cleaned up when they
returned to the house.  They had taken Jenny straight to the hospital. 
Salene applied himself to the task while Jake carried a sleeping Jenny
upstairs to her room.  She had missed her normal naptime but the
pediatrician had given her antibiotics, a relaxant, and a mild
painkiller, so she was groggy and had gone to sleep in her flitterseat.
     Now Salene cleaned up shattered glass and algae-covered gravel,
wondering why Jake had purchased an aquarium of breakable glass.  He
did not realize he was shaking until he dumped the last of the wet
sponges into the reclaimant.  Delayed reaction.  Now that the crisis
was past, it had caught up with him.  Jenny could have died; the
falling aquarium could have hit her skull, instead of just breaking
her shoulder.  He sat down at the breakfast bar and put his head in
his hands, struggled for control.  Jake found him that way a few
minutes later, set palms on his shoulders, squeezed.  They said
nothing.  Jake put on water for tea, set out crumpets.  Tea was a
habit he had picked up at Cambridge.  Italian espresso in the morning,
English tea at mid-afternoon.
     "I've had that newt almost ten years," Jake said after a while. 
"I got it at Pennington.  It was the only kind of pet we could keep in
the dorms."
     Salene looked up finally, took the tea cup which Jake handed him. 
"You *traveled* with a newt?"
     "No, grandpa kept it till I settled in Rome."  He sat down on the
stool opposite Salene.  "I *stepped* on it.  I kept it alive for ten
years, then killed it by *stepping* on it."
     It was like Jake to mourn even an amphibian.
     "You were somewhat distracted at the time."
     "Yeah."  Jake poured milk into his tea, did not appear consoled.
     "There is a Vulcan word: kaiidth.  'What is, is.'"  Although he
had to admit, he had never thought to apply it to the demise of a
newt.  "Guilt cannot bring it back; thus, guilt serves no purpose."
     Jake just eyed at him.  "Telling me it's illogical to feel guilty
doesn't change the fact, Salene."
     Salene dropped his eyes.  They sat in silence again until Jake
broke it.  "Thanks for keeping me calm, at the hospital."
     If Jake considered his behavior at the hospital to be 'calm,'
Salene feared to see him distressed.
     "I could sense you almost," Jake went on now.  "Like you were
inside my head, like some of your control bled over into me."  He
looked up at Salene.  "Was that because of last night?"
     Frowning at the surface of the brown liquid in his cup, Salene
shook his head.  "Not entirely."
     Jake sipped tea.  "I didn't think so."  Remarkably, he did not
appear upset.  "I've sensed it, off and on, since you got here.  I
wasn't sure what it was at first--or if I was just imagining it--but
it was like I could *feel* what you did, the same as in the mindmeld
back in New Orleans.  It's a result of that mindmeld, isn't it?"
     "No."  Salene looked up, met Jake's eye, spoke the truth he had
kept to himself until now:  "I set a bond between us."
     Very slowly, Jake put down his cup and straightened.  "What?" 
Now, there was anger.  He had been willing to forgive their connection
as an accidental side effect of the mindmeld.  He was not willing to
forgive it as a deliberate act.
     Salene dropped his eyes to the cup.  "Before I left you, in New
Orleans, I set a bond between us.  Since I could not give you my
presence, I gave you my soul."
     Jake had risen, taken a step back.  His skin had gone grey.  "You
mean you did it on purpose *and never told me*?"
     "You are mind-blind.  I did not believe it would affect you."
     "How the hell would you know?  How the hell would you know *what*
it'd do to me?"
     Salene did not answer.  It was a fair question.
     "No wonder I couldn't ever stop thinking about you!  I've had
this...*thing*...in my head!  And no wonder I've never been able to
maintain a relationship with anybody else!  You made sure I wouldn't!"
     "Jake, that was never my intention--"
     "Shut up!  How can I trust what you say?  You did something to my
head without my permission!"
     Salene lowered his eyes again.  He was guilty as charged.  "I did
not set the bond to interfere in your life.  I swear it on my honor. 
At the time, I truly saw it as a gift.  My secret gift.  I was young;
it was a foolish act, but I meant no imposition.  Had I thought it
might bind you, I would never have put it there.  But you are mind-
blind.  It bound only me."
     "But you didn't *know* that for sure!"
     "Given what I know of bonds, it should not--"
     "But you didn't *know*.  And you didn't ask me!"
     There was a long silence.  Finally, in a low hard voice, Jake
said, "Get out of my house.  Break this bond, pack your things, and
get out of my house."
     For a long moment, Salene sat numb: he could not think, could not
feel, could not react in any way.  Finally, he said only, "I cannot
break the bond.  Only a healer can.  Or my death."
     Another long silence, then Jake whispered, "Damn you."
     Indeed I am, Salene thought to himself as he stood, wobbly with
shock.  His stomach roiled.  "I will...go pack."  He moved past Jake
without looking at him.
     It did not take long to order what he had in the two large carry-
cases which he had brought with him initially, along with his gadulka. 
The larger objects like the musnud, he would leave.  Perhaps he would
retrieve them later.  Perhaps he would not.  He kept glancing at the
door, hoping Jake would come in to stop him, but the door remained shut.
     When he exited the room, Jake was nowhere to be seen.  The door
to the back office was closed.  Salene used the comm to call for
private transport, though he had no idea where to go.  Then he waited
in a chair by the front bay window, looking out at the street as he
had done the first day he had arrived here.  After a few minutes, he
heard the office door open.  He did not turn.  Behind him, Jake spoke,
"Do you have to be present, to break the bond?"
     "No."
     "Any Vulcan healer can do it?"
     "Yes."
     Footsteps receded back down the hall and the door closed.  On
the street outside, a small silver cab set down in front of the house. 
Salene picked up his luggage and left by the front door.


     He did not know what day it was, or where he was.  Nor did he
care.  White Terran sunlight came and went.  Sometimes he remembered
to eat.  He did not really sleep, but dozed, immobile on thin yellow
bed sheets in a room he had rented...somewhere, during the time he
could still think.
     His bags and his gadulka sat unpacked by the dresser.  Sometimes
he stared at them and thought that he should probably get up and do
something with them.  But he never did.  He rose only when his body
demanded that he feed it, or that he void himself.  Something in him
still cared enough to resist soiling the bed.  In a little while, that
part would stop caring, too, he knew.  It had happened before.


     Someone outside knocked on the door, called something in a
language he knew he should recognize but did not.  He ignored the
voice.  After a while, it went away.
     People in uniforms came some time after that; he did not know how
long.  They talked at him.  He could not understand them.  After a
while, they quit talking at him and talked to each other.  More people
came, put him on a floating cot and took him away.  He should have
told them not to forget his luggage, but did not care enough.  Let it
be forgotten.  Perhaps he could sleep where they took him, sleep and
forget.



                                 IV.


     A gentle chime announced a visitor.  Jake Sisko left off edits to
his latest novel, rose to answer the door to the little three-room
efficiency he'd rented in one of the renovated Victorian-style
buildings of downtown Bellefonte.  His front window overlooked the
main street with its awful neo-Mussolini courthouse squatting on the
hill at one end.
     Bellefonte had been an important stop on the iron railway in the
1800s, eclipsed entirely by the urbanizing trend of the late 1900s,
then resurrected in the 2200s as a retreat for crafters and artists,
as well as for stray faculty--like Sarah--from the big university-
center twenty miles to the south.  As with most state universities and
colleges after the collapse of the old United States, the university
in central Pennsylvania had been transformed into one in a series of
academic centers, each specializing in a particular discipline. 
Students might have a class in Texas in the morning, then hop the
bullet-train to Pennsylvania for their afternoon session, then take a
quick-stop shuttle to Brasilia for an evening seminar.
     Ostensibly, the collection of specialists in a field was designed
to foster greater advances through ease of communication and a little
healthy competition.  Jake thought it fostered greater insularity;
Pennington had suffered from something similar.  He preferred the old
fashioned European university with its multidisclipline approach, even
if many thought it archaic--his wife among them.  Sarah Fernandez had
bought thoroughly into the Academic Center System of the Americas. 
She had used to introduce him to her colleagues as, "My husband, the
Cambridge graduate," with an unkind emphasis on 'Cambridge' and there
would be smiles all around.
     She wouldn't introduce him that way any longer.
     Now, he triggered the door open and, for just an instant, thought
Salene stood on the other side.  Then he realized his visitor was too
short and too young and too...something.  Mature in the face, perhaps. 
Despite Salene's sharp features, he would always have a boyish look. 
Jake was staring at how Salene might have appeared, had he been
allowed to mature normally, and he knew who his visitor was without
being told.  "Solymi."
     The other nodded.
     Jake stood aside in unspoken invitation and Solymi stepped past
him, into the sitting room.  Small and slight, Salene's younger
brother came only to Jake's chin and Jake thought about what Salene
had said all those years ago: that his height was a function of his
eunuchism, not genetics.  Solymi was duskier than Salene, too, wavy
black hair cut short in a variation on the usual Vulcan style: parted
to the right with bangs swept sideways.  His face was narrower, and
his cheeks had a dark shadow of beard.  But the gypsy eyes were the
same, the fleshy prominent nose, the unusually straight brows, the
petulant curve of mouth.  He and Salene had clearly been cast from the
same mold and, ears aside, Jake had seen their human cousins among the
Romani Rai in the historic quarter of Budapest.
     He waited for Solymi to explain his arrival, but Solymi merely
surveyed the sparsely furnished room.  "Given your current location, I
may assume that you and your wife have permanently separated?"
     "Yes."  Jake said nothing else.  Neither did Solymi, and Jake's
patience was not equal to a Vulcan's.  Finally, he asked, "Did you
want something?"
     Turning, Solymi tucked his hands behind his back.  Jake had seen
Salene use the same posture at times.  "It has been nearly three weeks
since you sent away my brother--yet you still maintain the link which
was the cause for your dismissal of him.  Why?"
     Jake didn't like being under inquisition on his own turf.  "I've
been busy.  My wife just got back; we had things to settle."
     "Your wife returned only seven days ago; twelve passed between
Salene's departure and her arrival...sufficient time to seek a healer
and break the bond.  If you were unable to locate a healer in such
time"--his tone said how unlikely he found that--"let me offer myself. 
I will break it."
     "You?"
     "I am a healer."
     So, Salene's long-ago predictions had turned out to be wrong. 
His little brother was not a writer; he was a doctor.
     Jake turned away, walked to the front window.  "Does he want it?"
     "I was under the impression that you did."
     "I was mad at him.  He didn't have any *right* to set that bond!"
     "No, he did not."
     "I needed some time, to think it over."
     "And your conclusions?"
     Jake stared at the flitter traffic in the street below.  Spring
had sprung early this year.  Tulips made a riot of red and orange and
violet in flowerbeds, and the wind blew pink and white petals from the
dogwoods, dusting the sidewalk like April snow.
     "I didn't expect him to *leave*--not really," Jake said.  It
wasn't an answer to Solymi's question.
     "Yet you demanded that he vacate your house."
     Turning his head, Jake glared.  "I told you; I was angry.  I
figured he'd go get a motel room for the night, give me a chance to
cool down, then we could talk about it in the morning.  Instead he
took off...God knows where.  I couldn't find him."
     Solymi pulled out the rolling chair from Jake's desk and seated
himself.  Folding hands in his lap, he said, "My brother boarded a
MagLev, which he perhaps intended to take to San Francisco but rode
only as far as Fargo, North Dakota.  In Fargo, he left the train and
checked into an inn; he does not remember why and his motivation is
probably irrelevant.  After his departure from your house, he quit
taking his medication, so his reasoning would have been questionable
in any case.  When the inn owner realized that she had not seen him
for fourteen days, and received no replies to knocks on his door, she
contacted the local authorities, who took him to a hospital in San
Francisco.  The doctors there contacted me."
     Alarm ruffled wings in the pit of Jake's belly and he frowned. 
"Medication?  What do you mean, he quit taking his medication?  I
didn't know he was sick!"
     Solymi cocked his head.  "My brother has been ill for most of his
life, to a greater or lesser degree.  His medication permits him to 
function normally.  If he fails to take it--by accident or deliberate 
choice--he quickly begins to present severe pathological symptoms."
     Stunned, Jake pulled around a dining room chair to face Solymi,
sat down.  "What are you trying to tell me?  What kind of pathological
symptoms?"
     "Salene has a condition which Terrans term 'recurrent major
depressive disorder'; it is a noradrenergic dysfunction.  Put simply,
his brain chemistry is abnormal.  He requires medication to correct
it."
     Jake blinked, sat back a little, too surprised to react yet.
     Solymi continued, "You see, I am not only Salene's brother, Jake
Sisko.  I am also his psychiatrist."


     "What do you mean you can't watch her tomorrow?"  Sarah glared at
him from the other end of comm.  "Jake, it's after nine o'clock and I
teach a class at nine in the morning.  You know perfectly well I can't
find a sitter now!  And I can hardly take her with me."
     Jake sighed.  "Call my grandparents, Sarah."
     "Then I'd have to drive her all the way south of Boalsburg before
class!  That'll take almost an hour in morning traffic even on the
high lane.  And just when do you plan to be *back*?"
     Jake glanced up at Solymi, who stood out of sight behind the comm
screen.  "I'm going to San Francisco; I don't know when I'll be back."
     "This is absurd--you have responsibilities.  You can't just run
off at the drop of a hat!"
     Irritated, Jake turned his eyes back to the screen.  "That's
right, I have responsibilities!  To a friend.  He came once when I
needed him.  It's my turn to do the same for him.  Emergencies happen. 
You just don't like anything that inconveniences you!"
     "Jake, that's unfair."
     "Then how would you explain it?"
     She threw up her hands.  "You act like this is some minor little
annoyance!  It's not; it's a major headache!  You know that we decided
you'd have her during the day and I'd take her at night--"
     "Again for *your* convenience!" Jake snapped.
     "I *work* during the day!"
     "Of course you do, so of course I have to work at night."
     "It doesn't matter when you work!  You're a writer!"
     "I'm also your free childcare."
     "She's your child!  I didn't think you found it such a hardship!"
     Jake collapsed in a chair and rubbed his eyes.  "Of course not. 
But the point remains that the arrangement is convenient for you--more
for you than for me--"
     "Oh, yes!  *You* get her in the morning when you're rested; I get
her at night after I've put in a whole day at work!"
     "Sarah, shut up.  Just...shut up.  I didn't call to argue about
our arrangements for Jenny.  It wouldn't even have come up except that
you're being unreasonable."
     "You're asking the unreasonable!"
     "Look--  Do you want me to call my grandparents, or can you find
someone else to babysit while I'm gone?  This is an emergency; my
leaving is not up for debate.  You teach *one* class tomorrow."
     Sarah's expression could best be described as full reverse, but
she said only, "I'll call Isabelle," and cut the connection.
     Jake practically slammed down the comm screen into its holder. 
Solymi had watched the entire exchange silently.  Now, he said, "When
will you be prepared to leave?"
     Rubbing a hand over his face, Jake answered, "Half an hour."


     They were beamed to San Francisco.  As a doctor, Solymi could
commandeer an unscheduled emergency transport; beaming in was how he
had reached Bellefonte, too.  In the waiting area to the psych ward of
the Federation Interstellar Hospital, Solymi left Jake, who collapsed
on a couch and put his head in his hands.  Up to this point, there had
been no time to think.  Solymi had explained Salene's condition, then
Jake had packed to leave.  Now, he couldn't avoid thinking.
     Why had Salene never told him about the depression?  Jake had
seen Salene take pills every evening, had even asked once if they were
vitamins or something; Salene had not gainsaid it.  He had not lied
outright, but he may as well have.  Why hadn't he been honest?  What
had he been afraid of?
     "He dislikes anything he perceives to be special treatment,"
Solymi had said.  "Even more, he dislikes pity."  Jake knew that, had
discovered it the first time they had met, all those years ago.  But
it was pity for his castration which he had refused then and, when
Jake had learned that his castration had been his own choice, Jake had
given him none.  This was different, and yes, Jake felt sorry for him. 
But more, he felt angry and betrayed--again.  Every time he thought he
knew Salene, something else popped up.  What more was Salene hiding? 
They'd been discussing a permanent partnership, for pete's sake!
     "I did warn him to tell you," Solymi had said earlier.  "I do not
know why he ignored my advice."
     Jake didn't know either, except that they had only just begun
discussing the future when Jenny had pulled over the fishtank on
herself and, almost immediately after returning from the emergency
room, Jake had learned of the bond...and thrown Salene out of the
house.  But why hadn't Salene said something earlier?
     "The bond Salene set didn't have any effect on Sarah and me, did
it?" he had asked Solymi.
     "No," Solymi had answered.  "You would have been aware of it only
if Salene were in physical proximity to you--a range of perhaps six
meters, for the mind-blind."
     Suspicions confirmed, Jake had just nodded.  He had given a lot
of thought to the bond and his marriage, after Salene had left.  He
had come to realize the marriage had collapsed under the stress of its 
own defects, not the pull of some unknown bond.  That didn't make what 
Salene had done right, but Jake couldn't blame him for the divorce.
     Footsteps announced Solymi's return.  Jake raised his head. 
Solymi sat on the tan plastic couch opposite, folded his hands loosely
between his knees.  "He says he is too ashamed to see you."
     "You told him I was here?"  That surprised Jake; he had just
assumed Solymi planned to spring him on Salene.
     "Of course I told him," Solymi replied now, voice sharp.  "It
would have been a breach of trust for me not to.  He is mentally ill,
not simple, or incapable of making some decisions for himself.
     "Sorry," Jake said and frowned at his hands.  "But I didn't come
all this way for nothing.  Tell him I said that.  And tell him I'm
still a little mad about the bond, but I'm madder that he didn't come
back so we could just have it out in a regular fight, and I'm really
mad that he ran off and did this to himself.  Tell him also that I
said he'd better not do it again or I'll come after him next time."
     Solymi blinked, thrown for a moment, then he nodded gravely.  "I
shall relay your message."  He rose to leave, paused, added, "You do
understand him, I see.  Sometimes he must be...'knocked over the head
with the obvious'--to use a Terran phrasing."
     Jake laughed.  He could get to like Salene's little brother.


     Salene looked like shit.  There was no other term for it.  His
long hair was a tangled mess, he had circles under his eyes from lack
of sleep, and his face was gaunt and haunted with that fragile,
distracted look which characterized mental patients.  Dressed in loose
hospital grey, he sat on the floor, knees up and back to a wall.  When
Jake entered, he glanced up dully but otherwise did not react.  If
this was 'improved', Jake wondered what he'd looked like when they had
found him in Fargo five days ago.
     "Hi," Jake said, feeling awkward and unsure of himself and
wishing Solymi had come in with him after all.  Though he had been
warned, he'd unconsciously expected Salene to look like he always did:
neat and composed--Vulcan.  Instead, he looked like shit.
     Salene did not speak, though he did not glance away, either.  At
a loss, Jake made his way over to sit down by him.  "Your brother says
you haven't eaten dinner yet.  What would you like?  I'll program for
us both."  Though Jake had left Bellefonte at ten o'clock, he had not
eaten either.  After hearing Solymi's news, he'd clean forgotten.
     But Salene just shook his head, leaned it back against the wall
and closed his eyes.
     Jake sighed.  Now what did he say?  He had never before been
around someone suffering a psychotic episode.  It was relatively rare,
psychopharmacology being finely tuned by the twenty-fourth century.
Most conditions were diagnosed and treated quickly, easily and
precisely, and while Jake knew a significant mental illness like
depression could bar one from service in Starfleet, most chronic
sufferers took their medication and went about their lives with
little interruption...and with few people any the wiser.  That Jake
had never guessed about Salene was evidence enough of that.
     He had wanted to yell at Salene: for having kept his condition to
himself, for having set a secret bond between them, even for having
obeyed Jake's expressed wish that he leave instead of Jake's real one
that he remain and apologize.  But in the face of Salene's current
condition, he could not be angry.  It was too evident in Salene's face
that he already hated himself enough for them both, hated himself more
than he deserved, more than any being deserved.
     "Among the symptoms of Salene's disorder," Solymi had explained,
"are delusions that the patient is innately evil and responsible for
all adversity that he faces.  Reality is distorted, and any sense of
proportion is lost.  For a variety of reasons, some personal, some
cultural, my brother is particularly susceptible to this tendency."
     Reaching out--carefully, lest he startle Salene--Jake took his
friend's hand.  Salene tried to worm the hand free but Jake would not
let him.  "Stop it; listen to me!  I didn't really want you to leave. 
I know I said I did, but I didn't.  I was angry, and I have a temper."
     Salene was silent.
     "All I wanted, I think, was an apology.  You gave me protests,
explanations, even a blunt admission of guilt--but you never actually
said you were *sorry*.  Maybe I should've assumed it, but I wanted to
hear it.  I didn't want you to leave, even if I told you to.  Humans
don't always say what they mean.  You should know that by now."
     Still Salene said nothing, though he had quit trying to take back
the hand.  It lay limp in Jake's; Jake rubbed his thumb back and forth
over the back of it.
     "I left Sarah--for good.  I'm living in a little apartment about
ten blocks from our house.  I walk there in the morning to stay with
Jenny while Sarah's teaching, then walk back when she comes home. 
It's a temporary arrangement, but works for now.  We've applied for a
formal divorce.  I don't blame the bond for that; I'm not sure I ever
really did.  I was just upset when I said those things.  As soon as I
had time to think about it, I knew better.  I've never been able to
maintain a long-term relationship because I get too wrapped up in my
writing.  That's my peculiar failing, not the result of anything you
did.  Most people don't understand that; Sarah certainly didn't.  She
wanted more of me."
     "But being a writer *is* who you are."
     Jake almost jumped.  It was the first thing Salene had said, the
first indication he'd given that Jake wasn't just talking to the wall. 
"Yes," Jake said now, trying not to sound too eager.  "And you always
understood that--understood the part of me that mattered.  The rest
was just miscommunication across cultures; it didn't seem all that
important...though it does seem to keep tripping us up, doesn't it? 
Maybe we'll get better at it, with time."
     Salene did not reply again and inwardly, Jake cursed himself. 
Too fast.  He was moving too fast.  Salene had started trying to twist
his hand free once more, but half-heartedly, as if a part of him did
not really want free.  Or so Jake chose to interpret it.
     He squeezed the hand once, tightly, then let go and pushed
himself up.  "I'm hungry.  How about some pesto over pasta?  You like
pesto."  Salene did not reply but did not refuse so Jake walked over
to the replicator and called up two servings, and iced tea.  He was a
little surprised to find a personal replicator here, but the room was
quite nice: a privacy screen hid the bed, there was a couch and chair,
a small dining table, the replicator, a desk with a terminal, a
private bathroom.  The decor was muted mauve and grey.  For patients
neither violent nor dangerous to themselves, rooms were designed for
comfort and dignity: more hotel than hospital.  Only a single sensor
panel in the wall near the door, and another above the bed, gave away
that Salene was under observation and treatment.
     Jake set his bowl on the table, and Salene's in front of the
chair opposite.  He pulled out that chair and waited.  Salene was
frowning at his hands.  Finally he got up and, still without comment,
sat down.  Jake did the same.  They ate.  Solymi entered as they were
finishing and, for just a moment, his expression was startled--as if
Jake had unexpectedly succeeded in teaching his dog new tricks.  Then
the expression was gone, replaced by that placid approval which Jake
had come to realize substituted among Vulcans for a huge grin.  He sat
down in a third chair at the table and watched his brother.  Seeing
them together like this, the family resemblance was striking.  Jake
wondered if Saserna shared it.  Three peas in a pod.  An only child,
Jake had always been just a little bit jealous of Salene for having
not just one brother, but two.
     When Salene had finished the last of his pesto, Solymi set a
little plastic cup on the table and pushed it across to him.  The cup
held one white pill and one pink-and-yellow one.  Salene eyed the cup
with distaste, poured out the pills into his hand.  The white one
showed up stark against his tan skin.  "My 'normalcy.'"
     "So would a different sort of medication be," Solymi said calmly,
"had you been born with T'Bet's syndrome.  You have a physiological
dysfunction, not a moral defect."
     Salene ignored that, swallowed the pills, then turned to Jake and
said, "My brother understates the matter.  I should wear bells or
clappers, to alert the sane of my approach.  We mentally ill are the
lepers of Vulcan."
     Unsure how to respond, Jake pulled in his chin and raised an
eyebrow.
     Solymi snorted.  "And my brother has always been given to
dramatic exaggeration.  Never assume malice until ignorance is
disproved.  We have discussed this before, Salene; the average Vulcan
is simply ignorant."
     "Even Saserna?"
     Solymi did not reply to that, but he looked irritated.
     A good deal was going on here which Jake didn't understand: a
conversation conducted--or a war fought--with him used for dumb cover. 
Before he could think how to object, Solymi stood.  "Come, Jake.  We
should leave for the evening.  He needs to sleep."
     "Meaning that I am not behaving myself, so he will send me to
bed--though not without my supper, in this case."
     Solymi's lips thinned.  "You should be improved by morning," he
told his brother.
     "Indeed!  The magic pill will make it all better!"
     "Salene--  Your attitude is illogical."
     "Of course it is!  I am insane, remember?"  Salene shoved himself
away from the table.  The chair fell with a crash.  It made Jake jump. 
"The insane are not *logical*, brother-healer."
     "You are not insane.  You are recovering from a major depressive
episode and, as ironic as it may sound, your hostility is an indicator
of improvement.  You know this; you have been through it before.  You
will feel better tomorrow."
     "Notice the emphasis he places on 'feel,'" Salene said to Jake. 
Jake kept his mouth shut, afraid to say the wrong thing.  "I am
somewhat more than you bargained for, am I not?" Salene asked wryly. 
"Perhaps you will change your mind about me."
     Goaded, Jake blurted back, "I won't.  We're in this together. 
Your brother's right.  You're ill.  I don't blame you for it any more
than I would if you'd caught Tarkalian fever.  You'll get better."
     "But I shall never get *well*."
     "You don't know that!"  Jake paused, caught his breath and
dropped his eyes from Salene's, added, "I'll see you in the morning." 
He followed Solymi out.
     Without speaking, Solymi led him to a conference room with a
table in the middle of it and a bank of replicators on the wall. 
Solymi ordered hot tea for himself, glanced at Jake.  "Espresso," Jake
said.  "I need the caffeine."
     Solymi brought over both cups.  "Do you still wish to remain?"
     "Like I told him, we're in this together.  I'm staying."
     "You saw him at his worst."
     It occurred to Jake that perhaps Solymi had been testing him.  He
took a sip of bitter drink to wash away bitter memory.  "How much of
what he said is true?  Do Vulcans treat him like a leper?"
     Solymi leaned back in his chair, studied Jake's face.  "Most are
completely unaware that he is ill; nor do the few who do know speak of
it.  It would be a breach of his privacy.  But yes, it is true that
many Vulcans are ignorant of and made uncomfortable by mental illness,
and occasionally say something unfortunate, even if not aimed at him. 
But then, so do many humans."
     Jake was forced to nod; it was true.  *He* had been uncomfortable
with Salene, just now.  "We don't know what to do, what to say--what
not to say."
     "Understandable.  Dealing with those who do not react rationally
can be disquieting.  Because my brother's disorder is an affective one
--that is, related to his emotions and his ability to control them--it
is additionally distressing to Vulcans."  He glanced away abruptly. 
"I fear they are inclined to see it as a fault, a weakness.  But my
brother *cannot* control his depression, and not from lack of trying. 
To expect him to is as...idiotic...as expecting someone with defective
optical nerves to be able to see without corrective surgery.  He did
manage without medication for nine years--from his seventeenth year to
his twenty-sixth.  We had hoped him recovered."
     So--when Jake had first met him, he had not been on medication. 
That knowledge made Jake feel a little better, as if he had missed
less.  "Why'd he have to go back on it?"
     Solymi continued to keep his eyes averted; blankness settled over
his features: an expression Jake recognized as extreme discomfort. 
"He...underwent a hormonal shift; all Vulcans in their late-twenties
do.  You could perhaps say that we suffer two puberties.  As a eunuch,
Salene was spared the more...distasteful...manifestation of the second
but he still retains his suprarenal glands which secrete sufficient
androgens to alter his brain chemistry.  It is a dangerous time for
chi`pain.  Some few lose their voices.  My brother lost his control. 
Again.  He has been in and out of hospitals since; his illness is now
worse than when he was a child.  Last year, he was forced to take an
indefinite leave of absence from performing.  He collapsed before a
concert."
     Salene hadn't told Jake that.  More selective truth.  Vulcans had
it honed to an art form.  They might avoid lying if at all possible,
but they sure as hell didn't always tell the truth.
     After a long silence, Solymi added, "When I received my license
last year, my brother was my first patient.  He was, in some ways, my
reason for pursing the branch of medicine which I did.  To a human, it
might seem peculiar for me to have my brother as a patient: a conflict 
of interests.  But the Vulcan is expected to separate the personal from 
the professional.  Indeed, our kinship is an advantage most of the time, 
particularly when I must meld with him--but occasionally, it obstructs.  
I may be his psychiatrist, yet I remain his younger brother.  He does 
not always take me seriously."  His voice was wry.  "In any case"--he 
turned back to Jake--"since learning of the bond between you, I have 
endeavored to convince him to seek you out again.  For Vulcans, an 
active bond can be as effective a stabilizing force as antidepressants, 
and preferable to high dosages."
     Several things clicked together in Jake's mind then.  Solymi had
not come to Bellefonte just to reconcile the two of them.  Of course,
Jake should have guessed as much; Vulcans weren't sentimental.  Solymi
viewed Jake pragmatically: a source of healing for Salene.  But Jake
also understood why Salene had *not* said anything about his condition
earlier, or even about the bond until Jake had asked.  He had not
wanted Jake to feel pressured into a decision simply for his sake.
     Sitting up, Jake wrapped his hands around his little demitasse,
frowned at the black liquid.  "You think our bond can help him."
     "Certainly.  Your arrival inspired him to eat without excessive
persuasion, then sparked him to react, not simply accept.  As I told
him, and as ironic as it may seem, his behavior tonight was a positive
sign.  For five days, he has done little but lie in bed or sit on the
floor and stare at a wall.  He would not speak at all until yesterday,
or I would have had you sent for sooner.  Today he quarreled with me:
a definite improvement."
     Jake was mildly amused to hear a Vulcan call a quarrel an
improvement but, "You think my presence caused that?"
     "Your presence and his medication."
     "But if this bond has been there all along, why didn't it help
him before?"
     "Because it was dormant.  That is why it had no effect on you. 
You would have been wholly unaware of it, unless he was near.  For
him, a dormant bond to an absent bondmate has been detrimental--part
of the reason we have been unable to completely stabilize him.  Yet I
understand that since coming here, until three weeks ago, he has been
perfectly functional.  Your presence"--he paused, as if searching for
the best word--"*centers* him.  When the bond is activated, it should
be more effective yet.  Tomorrow, I wish to attempt a mindmeld in
order to activate it."
     Jake stiffened; Solymi noticed.  "It will not be invasive," he
assured Jake.  "I will not even be present unless you both wish it. 
It is usually a private matter, and Salene is more than capable even
now of activating the bond himself."
     A private matter....  Something abruptly occurred to Jake; he
grinned.  "I don't think it'll be necessary to activate it.  I think
it's probably active already.  Maybe that's why my presence affected
him so much today."
     Solymi's eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, hand outstretched,
fingers splayed slightly in preparation for a mind touch.  "May I?" 
Jake hesitated.  "This will be only momentary, and I will not examine
your thoughts.  I am a healer.  My brothers inherited a talent for
music.  I inherited one for telepathy."
     Jake nodded then, and Solymi's fingers connected with the side of
his face.  As promised, Jake barely felt the touch.  Then Solymi was
pulling his hand back, his face flushed dark bronze.  "Of course," he
muttered.  "I have been obtuse.  That...would have been sufficient,
and you are correct.  The bond is active."



                                  V.


     Jake was waked in the middle of the night by a pounding on his
hotel door.  He grabbed a robe and answered.  Solymi, looking slightly
ruffled, stood on the other side.  "Hurry and dress.  We are needed." 
And he turned back to his own room before Jake could ask questions.
     While pulling on slacks and a shirt, Jake checked his chrono:
three a.m., local time.  Seven, his.  Of course, he hadn't gotten to
bed until after two his time in the first place.
     Solymi was waiting for him in the hotel hallway and, without
speaking, led Jake to the lift.  Jake tried to ask questions, but
Solymi raised a hand in objection, said only, "He is having a negative
reaction to his medication."
     They walked quickly; the hotel was not far from the hospital--
three blocks.  Jake said nothing lest he annoy Solymi with fretting. 
"You have a writer's imagination," Sarah had used to tell him.  If he
got the sniffles, he feared pneumonia; if he had an ache, he feared a
tumor.  But no catastrophes awaited their arrival at the hospital,
though in some ways, what did await them was worse.
     Salene was wandering the ward hallway, refusing to be led back to
his room and casually shoving aside nurses and aids who tried to herd
him in that direction.  No one currently on duty had anywhere near his
strength.  He was talking a blue streak--in Vulcan--and appeared to be
downright *cheerful*, in a manic kind of way: his eyes were bright,
his cheeks and nose flushed, like a man tipsy on wine.  When he saw
Solymi, he called out his brother's name and came over to grip him by
both arms.  He was still talking but Jake couldn't understand a word,
as much due to the speed of it as to the fact he spoke a foreign
language and Jake had no universal translator.  When he caught sight
of Jake, he let go of his brother to hug Jake hard--in front of
everyone.  For a human, his actions would have been excessive.  For a
Vulcan, they were *bizarre*.
     One of the nurses, a big strapping fellow whom Jake had just seen
Salene shove casually into a cart, called out, "Dr. Solymi!  Are we
glad to see you."  He came over to them.  "He slept about three hours,
then woke up, thought it was morning and started singing scales.  We
had a hell of a time convincing him it was still the middle of the
night.  He had to come out of his room to see...and now we can't get
him back in there."
     Solymi listened even while scanning his brother--who continued
talking at Jake in Vulcan, gesturing emphatically.  Jake shot Solymi a
helpless glance.  "What's he saying?"
     Solymi's lips were thin.  "He is discussing the woods used in
ka'athyra construction."  Snapping the scanner shut, he spoke to the
nurse in a string of medicalese as indecipherable to Jake as Salene's
Vulcan, then gripped his brother by the arm and said, "Let us try to
return him to his room."  Jake nodded.  Salene seemed oblivious except
to shift his attention from Jake--who wasn't answering him--back to
Solymi.  Solymi spoke to him, also in Vulcan, and pointed toward the
room.  Salene shook his head.  Solymi said something else and Salene
shrugged, then permitted Solymi to lead him back inside.  The nurse
and an aide followed, shut the door.  The aide, Jake noticed, held a
restrainer.  Solymi had noticed as well.
     "*That* will not be necessary," he said, distaste in his voice. 
"He is merely over-stimulated."
     "He bruised my arm," the nurse said.
     "He did not do so intentionally.  He has forgotten his strength."
     For a wonder, Salene had stopped talking.  Solymi maneuvered him
to sit on the sofa and then took the hypo the nurse held out to him. 
Salene even bent his neck obligingly for the shot in the juguler.  He
definitely wasn't trying to be difficult; he was just confused and, as
Solymi had said, over-stimulated.  His behavior might have been rather
amusing, had Jake been less embarrassed for him.
     The hypo took almost immediate effect; Salene's eyelids drooped
and he calmed.  But whatever Solymi had given him did not knock him
out.  "Salene," his brother said, still kneeling in front of him.  "Do
you know where you are?  Can you tell me the day and the time?"
     Salene blinked, slowly.  "Earth," he said, in English.  He
glanced at Jake, frowned.  "I...don't know the time, or the day."  He
shook his head, as if to clear it.  "I should know them, shouldn't I?" 
Then he sat up, glanced around.  "Why can I not remember the time!"
     "The time is three forty-six, a.m.  You had a negative reaction
to the perfluoxetine; I just administered a neutralizing agent and
tranquilizer.  Your senses will clear in another two minutes.  We'll
start over on your medication until we find a level that does not
launch you into a manic episode."
     Not knowing what else to do, Jake had moved into the background. 
Now, Solymi dismissed the nurse and the aide, then gestured Jake over. 
"Sit beside him and take his hand."  Jake did so.  Salene's skin was
very, very warm--much more even than usual--and he was still flushed
olive, but the wild look had faded from his eyes.  He was back to that
faint bewilderment Jake had seen earlier in the day.  Jake reached up
to smooth his hair; it was horribly tangled.  "Doesn't someone around
here comb this for him?"
     "He has not, heretofore, permitted it," Solymi replied.  He had
risen to fetch a brush from the bathroom, handed it to Jake.
     Salene closed his eyes while Jake began detangling the thick
mass.  Lamplight glittered on his cheeks; they were wet.  He was 
*crying*.  "Hey," Jake said, wiping at the tears.  "It's okay now."
     "It is not 'okay'!"  Salene struck the brush out of Jake's hand. 
"It will never be 'okay'!  I shamed myself yet again!"
     "Salene--"  His brother gestured for Jake to move, leaned in to
set fingers on Salene's face.  They were as still as statues for
fifteen breaths; Jake picked up the brush.  When they opened their
eyes, Solymi nodded for Jake to continue combing Salene's hair.
     Calmer now, Salene asked, "What did I do this time?" like a man
who is not sure he wants the gory details.
     "Not much," Solymi replied, an edge of humor in his voice.  "You
serenaded the floor for a while with scales, then wandered about the
ward, arguing--in Vulcan--against the exclusive use of shaforr wood in
ka'athyra construction."
     Salene actually winced; Jake wondered if it was due to Solymi's
recitation or if Jake had pulled his hair too hard.  Solymi's teasing
made Jake angry, but perhaps that subtle teasing was the way they had
come to deal with it over the years.  It was probably better, Jake
conceded, than permitting Salene to get weepy.  That would just mortify
him later.  "How much do you remember?" he asked his friend, thinking
of the hug.
     Salene shook his head.  "Only flashes.  When an episode is past,
my memory of it runs together, and sometimes I hallucinate during them,
and so am uncertain what is memory and what is fantasy."  He glanced
at Jake, then dropped his eyes.  "I should apologize for my behavior
earlier this evening, too.  It was unduly hostile."
     Jake gestured to Solymi.  "Apologize to him, not me.  It was him
you were mean to."
     Solymi settled himself on the carpet, shook his head.  "There is
no need for an apology to me, Jake; he knows it.  We have been through
this before."
     Salene just nodded.  "Solymi is...very tolerant of me."
     "You are my brother."
     And that, Jake thought, was as close as Vulcan siblings would
come to saying, 'I love you.'  It seemed to be understood.  Jake saw
Salene tap Solymi's foot lightly with the side of his own.  Rising,
Jake moved around to the back of the couch so he could better reach
Salene's hair.  Brushing it calmed Salene and gave Jake something
constructive to do.  Maybe that was why Solymi had brought him the
brush in the first place.  Solymi was, after all, a psychiatrist. 
Now, Solymi ran his scanner over his brother again.  "The tranquilizer
has taken effect; how do you feel?"
     The use of 'feel' was, Jake thought, quite deliberate.
     Salene seemed to consider.  "Rather...blank, actually."
     Solymi's eyebrow hopped; Jake wasn't sure if it was an expression
of surprise or disappointment.  Standing, he glanced at Jake.  "Under
the circumstances, I believe it would be optimal if you remained with
my brother for the rest of the night.  Is this agreeable to you?"
     Jake shrugged.  "I'll do whatever you think best."
     Solymi nodded, looked down at Salene.  "It will be necessary to
take you back to Vulcan.  We must re-evaluate your treatment."
     "I know."  Salene's voice sounded dull.  "And you have other
patients, as well."
     Solymi glanced at Jake.  Jake could feel him waiting, knew what
he wanted.  He would not ask; that would be imposition--but Jake
recalled very well a long-ago conversation in his grandfather's
restaurant in New Orleans, a conversation about duty and friendship. 
"I'll have to talk to Sarah," he said.  "I have to make arrangements
for Jenny."
     "Jake," Salene began, "if you have obligations--"
     "Shut up, t'hy'la."  He used that word as deliberately as Solymi
had used 'feel' earlier.  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught
Solymi start.  "You need me."
     "So does your daughter."
     "She has a mother.  I took care of her for eight months; I think
Sarah owes me a week or two, to go to Vulcan."
     "It may be somewhat more than that," Solymi warned.
     Jake shrugged; he had suspected as much, but thought it best to
take things one day at a time.  "I'll talk to Sarah."
     Solymi left them alone then.  They did not speak more than a word
or two after he was gone.  Jake pulled around a chair and brushed
Salene's hair until the tangles were gone and it flowed like cashmere
through his fingers.  Even then, he continued.  It was hypnotic. 
Salene, he noticed, had fallen asleep, head back against the couch.


     "Daaaaaddy!"
     Jake's daughter came running, trailing hair and sound, and threw
herself into his arms.  He lifted her up, swung her around, kissed her
forehead.  "How's my girl?"
     "You're back."  Her mother approached more slowly, descending the
stairs to the family room one step at a time, like a debutante making
an entrance.  Standing just inside the back door, Jake looked up at
her and, for a moment, his body forgot that he wasn't married to her
any more, that he didn't even like her much of the time.  She had
always been able to do that to him, wrench and twist him inside until
he couldn't think straight.
     They must have just gotten home; she was wearing her drafters
jumpsuit.  He could still remember the first time he had met her,
dressed in that tight-fitting blue.  He had come to her office for an
interview on station living-conditions, had expected a middle-aged
professor.  She had walked in, introduced herself, perched her perfect
body on a stool and started asking questions, making notations on her
PADD.  He had spent the next half hour weirdly hypnotized by the slip
and slide of three gold bangles against her brown wrist; by the way
blue fabric pulled taut over her breasts, hinting at nipples hardened
by air-conditioning; by the way her pageboy had kept sliding into her
face until she would sweep it back with a toss of her chin.  He had
wanted to put his hand up, touch that hair, brush it off her forehead. 
He had left convinced she must think him a total idiot.  Three days
later, she had called to ask if she could see him again.  For a date,
not an interview.
     Now, she came forward to take Jenny from him.  "We were just
sitting down to eat.  Do you want dinner?"
     The question and the unexpected effect of her presence threw him
off-stride.  He took a breath, looked around.  No need to rush into
it.  "Yeah, sure.  What'd you program?"  Sarah never cooked.
     "Chirrasquiles and rice."  She set Jenny in her high chair at the
breakfast bar and gave her plain saffron rice wrapped in a tortilla. 
Jake sat beside his daughter.  Sarah ordered two plates from the
replicator, set one in front of him then sat down to her own.
     It was strange-familiar, eating dinner as they had so many times
before and listening to Jenny chatter--delighted to have her mommy and
daddy at the same table again--but knowing he would get up at the end
of it, put his plate in the replicator, and leave.  Part of him did
not want to.  Part of him wanted to forget about obligations to a sick
Vulcan who waited a continent away, just stay here, help Sarah get
Jenny ready for bed, then follow her upstairs to the room they had
once shared.  Maybe they could repair this marriage.  Sarah reached
for the salt; three gold bangles slid down her wrist in a delicate
jingle.  It brought such a wave of poignant memory that his eyes
darkened and, for a moment, he could neither see nor think.  His body
went hot, then cold; his fingers clinched on his fork.
     He must have made some sound.  "Jake?" she asked, studying him
with that appraising look, as cold as ice-water on fevered flesh.  It
froze any whisper of old lust.  For all Salene's cool control, he had
never looked at Jake like that.  His eyes were never cold like that.
     "I'm fine," Jake said brusquely, took the salt when she was done
with it.  "I'm fine."
     "So."  She spoke into a pause in Jenny's chatter.  "I assume
you'll be by at your usual time tomorrow?"
     Her question drove out the last remembered fondness lingering in
the corners of his body.  All business, his Sarah.  She couldn't even
be bothered to ask how Salene was.
     "No," he replied, "I won't."
     Taken by surprise, she dropped her fork.  The sound made Jenny
jump.  They both glanced at their daughter.  "Let's finish eating," he
said.  "I'll help you get her ready for bed, then we'll talk."
     Scraping back her stool, Sarah stood.  "No.  We'll talk about it
now.  This is not going to become a habit, Jake Sisko.  If you can't
be responsible for our daughter--"
     "I was responsible for our daughter for eight damn months!"
     "Don't swear in front of Jenny Gwen."
     "I didn't start this conversation!  I suggested that we wait."
     "Wait till when?  Till it's too late--again--for me to find a
babysitter for tomorrow?"
     "I assumed you had one!  I told you I didn't know for sure when
I'd be back."
     A crash of plate interrupted them; Jenny had pushed her dinner
onto the floor.  Rice went everywhere.  "Mommy, Daddy don't yell! 
Mommy, Daddy don't yell!"
     "Jenny!" Sarah screamed at her, then pulled at her own hair in
frustration.  "Oh, please, stop it!  I can't take this!"
     Chagrinned, Jake had knelt to pick up the plate, start cleaning
up the mess.  "Sit down, Sarah.  We're upsetting her."
     "I can't take this!" Sarah said again.
     He looked up at her from the floor.  "Sit down."  Standing and
stepping carefully over scattered yellow rice, he put the plate in the
replicator, then came back to pick up his daughter, who was still
wailing.  He patted her back; she clung to him, face pressed into his
neck.  Sarah had sat and, elbows on the table, put her own face in her
hands.  The gold bangles on her arm winked in the kitchen overheads.
     "Jake," she said, voice level, "I cannot take care of her alone--
not any more than you could.  You had your grandparents, and your
friend, here to help you.  I don't have anyone.  She's your daughter,
too.  You can't foist all the work off on me.  I'm the one who pays
the bills.  You have to do your share, too."
     Sarah's little speech infuriated Jake as much as it humiliated
him, but he clamped his mouth shut.  Jenny had quit her loud crying
but was still deeply upset, her little body shaking against him.  He
kissed her temple, smoothed her hair.  "Shhh.  Mommy and Daddy aren't
mad at you, honey."  He glared at his soon-to-be-ex-wife, said to her
in as level a voice as he could manage.  "When I left two days ago, I
told you I didn't know when I'd be back and, knowing you, I'm sure you
have someone lined up to watch Jenny tomorrow.  You're nothing if not
efficient, Sarah, so don't hand me the 'I can't find a sitter by
tomorrow' line; I don't buy it.  Now, we're going to put our daughter
to bed, then talk about this like two rational people."
     She dropped her hands, glared back at him, but nodded.  It took a
while to calm Jenny down; Jake gave her a bath and Sarah read to her. 
Finally, she was asleep and Sarah and Jake squared off in front of the
old stove in the family room.  Sensing tension, the cats had traded
warmth for peace and fled.
     Fists on hips, Sarah said, "Now--what is this all about?"  She
was a tall woman and did not have to look up at him much.
     Jake frowned at his nails.  "I need to go to Vulcan."
     "*What*?"
     "I need to go to Vulcan.  Salene is very ill.  I have to go back
with him."
     "Why does he need *you*?" she snapped.
     This was where it got complicated; he didn't want to explain
about the bond, or say precisely how Salene was sick.  Luckily, Sarah
was too self-focused to ask questions that didn't have to do with her. 
"I'm his friend and I owe him," Jake said.
     "Until just recently, you hadn't *talked* to this guy in how many
years?  When I called to find him here, you said it was the first time
you'd seen him since before you'd gone to college!  Now you say you
owe him?"
     "As you pointed out yourself, he came to help with Jenny when I
needed it."  So it was a lie, but Salene *had* helped with Jenny.  "I
do owe him."
     "Doesn't he have a wife to take care of him?"
     "No, he doesn't."
     Her look was skeptical.  "I thought all Vulcans married."
     "Not chi`pain, not often."
     "Well what about his family?  Don't tell me he's an orphan, too."
     "Of course he has a family.  But they're not all on the best of
terms."  He shifted.  Why was he standing here trying to convince her
he was right?  She always did this to him: put him on the defense,
made him feel like he had to justify himself.  Just once, he wished
she'd have said, 'Yes, Jake, of course you should....  I'm behind you
one hundred percent.'  He might not have divorced her, then.  But she
had always tried to run her affairs and his, too.  At first, he'd put
up with it because she had given his life direction and her drive had
made her successful.  He'd always admired her success.  Still did. 
But now, her bossiness grated.  "I'm going to Vulcan.  He needs me;
I'm going.  I don't know how long it'll take--a month, maybe more."
     "So you leave me holding the bag with Jenny!"
     "I had her for eight months."
     "You offered to keep her because you didn't want to come with me. 
I didn't ask you to do it!"
     He frowned at the old black stove.  "I didn't want Jenny to be
stuck in contractor housing for half a year.  You know how I feel
about that."  He turned his eyes back to her.  "But the fact remains
that I kept her for eight months while you were off at the edge of
Romulan space, doing your thing.  Now I need a month or so, to go to
Vulcan to care for a friend.  I didn't come here to debate that with
you; I came to tell you I'd be gone."
     Sarah had turned away to sit down on one of the love seats, stare
at the stove.  "What am I supposed to do with Jenny?"
     "What'd you do with her for the past two days?"
     "I had Isabelle or Larry keep her in their offices while I was
teaching."
     "What about daycare?  I know the university offers it to staff. 
And there're my grandparents; you keep forgetting them."
     "They're too old, Jake!  And I don't want her in daycare.  Not
any more than you want her on space stations.  But I can't--"  She
stopped, raised splayed hands and shook them in frustration, clenched
them again.  "Jake, I can't do this!  You know I can't!  For a few
days--all right.  But a month?"
     He seated himself, tapped fingers on the arm of his old reading
chair.  He'd known Sarah would react badly to the notion of caring for
Jenny alone for weeks, possibly months.  She may have been the one to
suggest having a baby in the first place, but her patience was finite. 
Day-in, day-out childcare overwhelmed her.  He had always been the one
to handle that.
     "The other option," he said now, "is that I take her with me."
     "To *Vulcan*?  You won't take her to a human-made space station,
but you'll take her to an alien world with high gravity, low oxygen
and heat like that?"
     He snorted.  "Sarah, don't be dense.  I've never insisted that
Jenny be raised on *Earth*, but I don't want her to grow up like I
did: bounced around from ship to ship, station to station.  I loved my
parents, but I hated growing up that way.  Spending a month or two on
Vulcan won't hurt her at this age."
     "Spending half a year on a space station wouldn't have hurt her,
either, at this age!"
     He clenched his jaw and looked off.  "And what about the next
station?  And the one after that?"
     "How do you know there would be a next one?  You assume a lot."
     "I don't want to argue about it; it's past."
     "No, you don't want to admit that you don't see this matter
rationally.  How do you know Jenny wouldn't like growing up on a space
station?  I did.  You judge what you think's right for her based on
what *you* wanted.  Vulcan is okay because it's a planet; Deep Space
Seventeen wasn't because it's a station.  My, that's logical!"
     He stood up, paced around.  "Look, do you want me to take her
with me, or do you want to make arrangements yourself?"
     "You're quick with the ultimatums lately, aren't you?"
     "I'm sick of you always arguing with me about *every little damn
detail*!"
     "Oh, so I'm not allowed to protest if I don't like something?  I
should shut my mouth and meekly accept the dictates of my husband? 
This isn't Ferenginar, Jake!  You listen to Nog too much."
     He glared at her.  The only way to avoid arguing with Sarah was
just to refuse to argue.  "Do you want me to take her or not?"
     She sighed explosively.  "No, I don't!  I just got back after
months of being without my daughter!"  She stood up herself, stalked
about restlessly, her back half to him.  "But I can't take care of her
by myself, either."  She paused; the pause stretched.  "If you took
her, how long would you be gone?"
     "I don't know.  It could be a while--a month, two, maybe more--
but if it's going to be long, I'll need to come back anyway to get
things, and you can see her then."
     "When are you leaving?"
     "As soon as possible; Solymi--Salene's brother--has to get back. 
But I have to make arrangements to be gone.  I told him it would take
two or three days."
     He saw her swipe at her eyes.  "Give me the weekend.  Then you
can pick her up Monday morning.  I'll have her things packed."
     He nodded once, shortly.  It would take him the extra day to make
arrangements for Jenny, in any case.  He wondered what Solymi would
say about the unexpected addition of a three year old.


     "What is necessary, is necessary."  Solymi's image on the comm
screen appeared thoughtful.  "It may in fact prove therapeutic for my
brother.  He appears to be...very fond...of your daughter."
     "She's very fond of him, too.  She was upset when he left."  In
fact, she'd been inconsolable for three days--a long time for her.  "I
just wasn't sure what you'd think about it, having her along, I mean."
     Solymi shrugged; it was Salene's gesture.  "It is not the optimal
circumstance, perhaps, but as I said: what is necessary, is necessary. 
I recognize that you have obligations aside from those to my brother." 
He frowned slightly.  "The family will make arrangements for her care,
when you are unavailable."
     Jake let out a breath and did not immediately reply.  Solymi's
response was so totally different from Sarah's that it momentarily
threw him; he'd forgotten families could work together to solve
problems instead of just complain when they cropped up.  "Thanks," he
said finally.  "She's actually a pretty easy kid, and well-behaved,
despite the disruption to her life lately."
     Solymi's dark eyes studied him.  "Children are resilient when
they know they are cared for--and her father would appear to make an
effort that she know she is."
     The Vulcan version of a high compliment.  "Thanks," he whispered,
though after erupting at Sarah at dinner in front of Jenny, he wasn't
sure he deserved it.  "We'll return on Monday morning.  I need to get
a ticket for her as well as myself and--"
     "It is taken care of."
     "What?"
     "Your passage has been arranged; I shall see to the child's as
well."
     Anger burned.  "Solymi, I--"
     "Salene said that you might prove difficult on this matter and,
if that were the case, to remind you of a certain conversation
regarding partnership?"
     Jake snorted.
     "Permit him this," Solymi added.  "His pride is in need of it."
     Put that way, Jake couldn't arg