Read Lost Time for Free Online

sir, a quantum twin,” said Gomez. She was about to say more when she took a second to really think about what she’d just said. A quantum twin…and if this twin is Soloman before he became unbonded, then… “Oh, my God.”
    “What?”
    She said, very carefully, “Maybe, sir, it’s that he can’t terminate the connection, or maybe…he doesn’t want to. Or both.”
    A fizz of static. Then, Gold said, “Come again?”

    “A coma?” Gold frowned across 110’s body at Dax and Kane. The Bynar had been moved to a biobed, and 111 had been sedated. “What do you mean a coma? ”
    Dr. Tori Kane was a small woman, a strawberry blonde with freckles and green-gray eyes, and a head shorter than Gomez. She gave Gold a fierce, moderately contemptuous look: an expression that screamed nu, what, I’m speaking Swahili? “I mean,” she said with the type of enunciation a teacher might use on an exceptionally slow student, “that 110 is unresponsive. His autonomic functions—blood pressure, pulse, respiration, temperature control—they’re fine. But he won’t come out of it. Or, maybe, he can’t.”
    Salek stood at Gold’s left elbow. “Do we know why, Doctor?”
    “It’s his chip. He’s…latched on to something the Bynars found when they communed with that device you brought on board.” Her head jerked left to a cylindrical object made of shiny metal and bristling with nasty-looking quills. “I still say this is one cockeyed plan.”
    To Kane’s right, Dax stiffened. “It’s necessary.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Kane waved Dax’s comment away. “And I’m just the hired help.”
    “Kane,” Gold warned.
    “Fine, okay.” Kane gave a noisy exhale. “Captain, for all you know the Androssi hid something inside, like a computer virus.”
    “Then why wasn’t 111 affected?”
    “Beats me. Maybe the plan was to knock out one of them. Just as effective; neither one can function without the other.”
    “Then why don’t we just shut it down?” asked Gold.
    “Because I don’t know what that would do to 110, and if I understand the mission right, you need the Bynars.”
    This was, unfortunately, true. Gold said, “But another Bynar? In the datastream? How? I didn’t think Bynars could exist as singletons.”
    “What I don’t understand is how a singleton could interface with this device at all,” said Dax. Her long, dark brown hair was pulled into the ponytail she habitually sported, but errant strands straggled here and there, giving her a frayed look. Backhanding hair from her forehead, she sighed, and the cuffed earring in her right lobe jingled. “For that matter, where is he?”
    “Perhaps,” said Salek, “this device is contaminated with something that can mimic a Bynar’s neural patterns. We know that the Androssi are exceptionally skilled at developing booby traps. Although one fails to understand how sabotage equates to the capture of an unintelligent bird.”
    Dax ignored the Vulcan. Her eyes were that color of intense, concentrated brown that bordered on black, and now she drilled Gold with a look. “This is our last chance. The Bajor Assembly formalizes its treaty with Cardassia in less than a day. We have to find the wormhole before then. If we can’t access this device with the Bynars, then we have to go back to Terok Nor and find another way.”
    Gold shook his head. “Not on your life, or mine for that matter. Treaties can be broken. You find this wormhole, and the religious faction is as big as you say? Then Bajor’ll come around. Now either the Bynars can access these…these Prophets with this device, or they can’t. That’d be tough from your end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t adapt the technology for ourselves. You’ll find another way.”
    “But too late to be of any practical benefit.” Dax pulled herself to her full height and looked down at Gold, who was shorter by half a head. “Once that treaty is formalized, then the Cardassians have every excuse to round up the