The room was silent for a moment. Ozla’s rear end was starting to ache from sitting exposed on the crate. She was sure she was going to catch something from being in this room.
Ihazs then stood up. “That is all. My guards will escort you back to your hotel. You have been given the terms. If you follow those terms, you will be able to write quite a story. If you don’t follow those terms, you’ll be dead less than twenty-four hours after you violate them.” He walked toward the door, stopped, and turned around. “You really are quite lovely. A pity about all those spots.”
Then he left.
If I didn’t need a shower before, I do now, Ozla thought as the Balduks grabbed her by each arm and started to carry her forcibly up the stairs. This time she didn’t resist, figuring it would just be easier this way.
I shouldn’t have bothered interviewing Tawna….
“Aleph, what’s happening here?”
Smiling at Ashanté from across the table in the dining hall on the second floor of the Palais, the chief aide to Councillor Nea of Bolarus said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ashanté.”
Ashanté resisted the urge to throw her salami sandwich in Aleph’s face. “Don’t play games, I’m not in the mood.”
The smile dropped. “Neither am I.” Aleph took a bit of her grakizh salad. “How long are we supposed to keep pouring water into a sinking boat? Cardassia’s a lost cause.”
“So what, we should just let the Cardassian government fall apart?”
“One could make the argument that it already has.”
Biting down on her sandwich, Ashanté paused to chew, swallow, and collect her thoughts. “Yeah, okay, you can make that argument. But you know how I’d argue back? With facts. Fact number one: The last time the Cardassian government fell apart, they had a big revolution, followed two seconds later by a Klingon invasion and over a year’s worth of war against them. Fact number two: They were so demoralized by this that they jumped into the waiting arms of the Dominion. Fact number three: The only reason the war happened was because the Dominion had that foothold in the Alpha Quadrant. Do we really want to tempt the odds on history repeating itself?”
Aleph gnawed on one of the yellow leaves of her salad. After a moment, she said, “Look, Nea’s never been hot on aid to Cardassia in the first place. It’s a security risk. Pirates have been raiding the aid ships—if anything, that’s gotten worse.”
“What about the security risk of not helping them? I can guarantee that as soon as we stop helping, they’ll close their borders. Then we won’t know what’s happening on Cardassia Prime until it’s too late. Remember what happened the last time—”
Waving her arms back and forth, Aleph said, “Yes, I heard you the first time.” She let out a breath.
Ashanté had saved the biggest for last. “The president’s prepared to throw her support behind Nea’s infrastructure bill.”
Aleph shot Ashanté a suspicious look. “The president’s come out against it.”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“She hinted at it very strongly in the speech she gave to the Gatilili Society.”
“Hints aren’t commitments. What I’m giving you now is one. If Nea votes for aid, President Bacco will endorse infrastructure at next week’s session.”
“Why next week’s?”
“Because this week is pretty crowded, don’t you think?”
Aleph smiled again. “And you want to make sure she keeps her end—and to make sure that little promise can also bring in Sanaht, Corvix, Beltane, and Nerramibus.”
“If that’s possible, I think we’d all be very happy.” Ashanté covered a large grin with a sip of her Altair water.
“What is it you want?”
Dogayn had sat in Je’er’s office dozens of times as a fellow councillor aide. This was hir first time doing so when s/he was a deputy COS. S/he attributed hir new position to Je’er’s reduced enthusiasm for having hir in the office today.
“Doh, I have a lot of work to do, and I—”
“Come on, Je’er, Nitram’s never given a targ’s ass about aid to Cardassia. Why’s he got the urge to kill it now?”
“He doesn’t.”
That surprised Dogayn. “He doesn’t?”
“No. But he does have the urge to grant the Falric—”
“Oh no,” Dogayn said with a wince.
“To grant the Falric—”
“It’s not gonna happen,” Dogayn said, not letting Je’er finish her sentence.
Je’er was, however, determined. “To grant the Falric Institute’s study on demiurgical phenomena.”
“It’s a crackpot study.”
Frowning, Je’er said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s a human word, it means the notion’s insane.”
The folds of Je’er’s skin tightened. “Why, Doh, I’m shocked that you would say such a thing about a Federation councillor.”
Dogayn rolled hir eyes. “Don’t even try that, Je’er, you and I have said worse in our day.”
“In the old days, when we were equals. Now we’re not, and you’re not getting anything unless the president supports the Falric Institute grant.”
“She’s never gonna do that. She’s come out against it.”
Je’er looked down at her workstation and started studying whatever was on its screen with great interest. “Then I guess you don’t want Cardassian aid that badly, do you?”
Dogayn sighed and got up from Je’er’s guest chair. “You’re no fun anymore, you know that?”
“You switched sides, Doh,” Je’er said without looking up from her workstation.
Throwing up hir hands, Dogayn cried, “No, dammit, I didn’t ‘switch’ anything. We’re on the same side, I’m just on a different part of it. This isn’t about ‘sides,’ anyhow—it’s not a game, it’s government. We’re supposed to serve the people, not—”
Now Je’er looked up. “The people of Bre’el IV would be best served by allowing the Falric Institute to study demiurgical phenomena.”
“I gotta tell you, Je’er—I don’t even know what that means.”
“Then you’ve got no business calling it insane. Now get out of my office, please, I have real work to do.”
Dogayn stared at a woman s/he would have counted as a friend not a day earlier. Hell, not an hour earlier.
Shaking hir head, s/he departed the office without a word.
“It’s not gonna work.”
At Dogayn’s words, Esperanza looked up in annoyance at hir and Ashanté. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We couldn’t turn enough people,” Ashanté said. “We’ve committed to Nea’s infrastructure bill, but it wasn’t enough.”
Appalled, Esperanza said, “Tell me that wasn’t all you offered?”
“That’s all anyone took,” Ashanté said. “A couple people bought a general plea of sanity without concessions.”
“Nice to know common sense occasionally prevails.” Esperanza got up and walked over to her replicator to get an iced tea. “You guys want anything?”
Ashanté shook her head, but Dogayn said, “A frimlike, if you could.”
“Tea, raspberry, iced, and a frimlike, mildly heated.”
Dogayn smiled as the replicator glowed, hummed, and provided the two drinks; the Hermat seemed suitably impressed that hir boss knew how s/he preferred hir frimlike. Then hir expression grew more serious. “We made plenty of offers, but several people wouldn’t budge.”
“Or they asked for crazy stuff,” Ashanté added.
“Like what?” Esperanza asked as she handed Dogayn hir drink.
Shuddering slightly, Dogayn said, “You don’t wanna know.”
Esperanza closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “Nitram wanted the demiurgical study?”
Dogayn nodded.
“And Gleer’s called in a lot of markers,” Ashanté said. “He’s made this even more his personal mission than Enaren has. I told Strovos we’d lift the t
ariffs on zenite, and he still wouldn’t go for it.”
Esperanza sat back down at her desk and sipped her iced tea. “That’s been Strovos’s pet cause since he got elected.”
“It’s been every Ardanan councillor’s pet cause for the last hundred years,” Ashanté said. “I don’t know what Gleer has on Strovos, but it must be pretty good. And he’s not the only one Gleer’s got in a headlock.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Ashanté folded her arms. “Assuming Ontail continues to not show up—and five’ll get you ten they’d vote no anyhow—we’ve only got seventy.”
Slamming a fist on her desk hard enough to almost spill her iced tea, Esperanza said, “Dammit! Where are we gonna get seven more votes?”
“Well, I’ve got a crazy idea,” Ashanté said, now unfolding her arms.
Grasping at straws, Esperanza said, “Shoot.”
“I was able to convince zh’Faila and C29 Green, and Dogayn was able to turn Govrin, just by the argument that voting no would be bad for the Federation.”
Not sure where Ashanté was going with this, Esperanza said, “Right.”
“So why not try that trick on Enaren? He’s always been fairly reasonable. Maybe he can be convinced.”
Esperanza considered the matter. “Yeah, okay, go talk to—”
“It shouldn’t be either of us—or you,” Ashanté said. “It has to be the president.”
“No,” Esperanza said emphatically. “It’ll be me, but the president doesn’t hear about this. Not with Trinni/ek and the Romulans and the Klingons and the Pioneers losing today.”
Dogayn frowned. “What does baseball have to do with it?”
“In a perfect world, baseball’s the president’s safety valve—it’s what she uses to distract herself when the nonsense threatens to overwhelm her.”
“The problem,” Ashanté said, “is that there’s too much nonsense there, too. Her favorite team’s screwing up.”
Dogayn smirked. “Maybe she should find a different hobby.”
“Be sure to suggest that,” Esperanza said, “and then update your résumé.” She hit the intercom. “Zachary, track down Councillor Enaren. Tell him the chief of staff needs to talk to him right away.”
“Sure thing.”
She looked up at two of her deputies. “You’re sure you can’t get the seven anywhere else?”
“We’ll keep working it,” Dogayn said, “but I don’t think it’ll work. Some people are throwing the argument right back at us.”
“What do you mean?”
Dogayn frowned. “Cardassia’s already proven they can’t be trusted. So why should we even give them the chance?”
“Right,” Ashanté said with a sigh, “because the kick-them-while-they’re-down theory worked so well in Germany.”
“Where’s Germany?” Dogayn asked.
Before she could answer, Zachary said over the intercom, “Esperanza, the councillor can talk to you now—he’s en route from Betazed for tomorrow’s session.”
Esperanza’s eyes widened. “Uh, okay. Get him on standby—I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”
“You want us to help out?” Ashanté asked.
About to say no, Esperanza held back. “Yeah—just you. Dogayn, keep working the councillors, in case this doesn’t work.”
Dogayn nodded again and left Esperanza’s office.
Esperanza looked up at Ashanté. “Ready?”
After taking a very deep breath, Ashanté said, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” She walked around to stand just behind Esperanza and to her right.
Esperanza opened the intercom. “Put him through, Zachary.”
A moment later, the screen on Esperanza’s workstation lit up with the bland features of Cort Enaren. He had surprised her when they’d first met a few years earlier. She had heard stories of the member of Betazed’s parliament who’d become the leader of the Betazoid resistance after the planet had fallen to the Dominion, and so she had expected someone more—well, impressive. But then, with a telepathic species, physical characteristics are really the least important.
“Councillor, thanks for talking to us. You remember my deputy, Ashanté Phiri?”
“Of course.” Enaren nodded. “It’s good to see you both. I assume this is about Cardassia.”
Unable to contain a cheeky grin, Esperanza asked, “Your finely honed Betazoid senses tell you that, Councillor?”
Enaren did smile back, though the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “My transport is several light-years from Earth, Esperanza—my telepathy isn’t that good. No, I simply heard from my aides. Your deputies aren’t exactly being subtle.”
“We don’t have time for subtle, Councillor,” Ashanté said. “And this aid is too important to lose.”
“Important to the Cardassians, perhaps, but I’m more concerned with the people of Betazed. What’s left of us, anyhow.”
“Sir,” Esperanza said, leaning forward in her chair, “I’m aware of Betazed’s losses during the war, but—”
“Are you? Fifteen percent of our population died, Esperanza. They died when the planet was attacked, they died when we drove the Dominion offworld, and they died when they were taken by that Cardassian scientist for genetic experiments.”
Esperanza winced. She had forgotten that part of the reason for the Dominion’s interest in Betazed, as opposed to other Federation planets in that sector. It had been related to the native species’ innate telepathy: A Cardassian scientist named Crell Moset had been performing experiments on the Betazoids in an attempt to engineer telepathic Jem’Hadar.
She was also starting to understand a bit of Enaren’s motivation. “Councillor, I appreciate what your world went through, but—”
“I don’t think you do, Esperanza.”
“And I don’t think you appreciate what’s happening on Cardassia right now, sir.”
“I know their government can’t hold it together. I know that we’ve been propping them up for four years and that most of our relief doesn’t even get where it’s supposed to go.”
Ashanté said, “The solution to that problem is to improve the delivery methods, not to cut it off altogether. That’s like amputating an arm because the pinky finger is infected.”
“I disagree. And a majority of the council agrees with me.”
Desperately, Esperanza wanted to answer that. No, Gleer wants to help you give us a hard time, and he’s got enough support to make it work. But it wouldn’t be politic to say so. “Councillor, I’ve been to Cardassia Prime. The ship I served on at the end of the war was part of Captain Sisko’s task force that took the planet. Do you have any idea what the Dominion did to that world?”
“Yes—because I was in the capital city of Betazed when the Dominion invaded. I know all about the devastation, about the smoke in the air that chokes you, about people trapped in rubble, about—”
Esperanza could feel her temper starting to fray, so she was grateful when Ashanté interrupted, “Councillor, we can’t let our outrage at recent history blind us to the lessons history teaches us.”
“Ashanté, I don’t need homilies.” Enaren then turned back to Esperanza. “And I don’t need to play a childish game of my-trauma-is-better-than-yours. What I know is this: Cardassia Prime had three cities rebuilt before one city on Betazed was back to full working operation. Offworld tourism has plummeted, offworld support has been all but nonexistent. My predecessor lost her last election because she had done nothing to get Betazed to become a priority with the Federation. The people have spoken to me, and I am doing their bidding, as is my duty as councillor for Betazed. This conversation is over.”
“So what happens to Cardassia now?” Ashanté asked.
“Who knows? And who cares?”
“I can give you a clue. Here on Earth, before the planet was united, we had hundreds of nation-states. One of them, about four hundred and seventy-five years ago, was called Germany. They were at the forefront of one of the world’s biggest
wars. When they lost, their enemies hit them with massive reparations. They had already lost the war, but then they were considered third-class citizens of the world. A particularly charismatic leader was able to use that to rally the people. He rebuilt them into a superpower within a decade, and that led to an even bigger war. It was one that could’ve been avoided if the retribution against them hadn’t been so harsh the first time.”
This time Enaren’s smile was genuine—and also one of amused irritation. “Why is it that humans have the need to analogize someone they disagree with to the most extreme example from their own history? I don’t appreciate being compared to Adolf Hitler.”
“I’m not doing that, sir,” Ashanté said tightly, “I’m comparing you to David Lloyd George.”
“Who?” Enaren asked, his confusion matching Esperanza’s.
“He was the British prime minister at the end of that war and was one of those who imposed the reparations on Germany.”
Esperanza nodded. “Councillor, this can’t be about revenge.”
“Why can’t it? Do you know what they did, Esperanza? The Jem’Hadar were absolutely brutal, and ruthless, and brooked no resistance. But they were never cruel. They were soldiers, they were doing their duty, but it was never personal. Not so with the Cardassians. They beat people, they raped women, they tortured children—for the fun of it! I have sat by for the last year since I was elected to the council and said nothing, because the aid was already in place, but now—now, when I’m in a position to do something about it, I will not stand by and help those—”
“Children?” Esperanza spoke in a quiet voice. “Elderly? Sick, infirm people whose only crime was to be unlucky enough to be born at a time that would leave them alive during the worst period in Cardassian history? Those soldiers did horrible things to your world, yes—and they did it under orders from a government that we drove away. The ones paying the price aren’t the soldiers who ravaged your world, Councillor, they’re helpless people who need our help.” Esperanza winced at the way that sentence sounded, but there was no taking it back now. “If we abandon them—”
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