“I can cope. And the S.C.E.’s recommendations are perfectly clear, after all.” O’Brien had taken care to lower his own voice, Garak noticed. Well, he’d done covert ops too, of course. “Starfleet won’t be pleased if funding is diverted from Andak into a project like the one at Setekh.”
“Well, don’t expect Entor to roll over and agree just because Starfleet says so. And…” Garak hesitated, lowered his voice further, “don’t be surprised if he gets in a few shots about your wife being director of the Andak research.”
O’Brien nearly spluttered his coffee over the table. “He wouldn’t dare—”
“Be prepared—I mean it. Ghemor’s staked a lot of political capital on getting the Andak Project funded, and Entor won’t shy away from using anything at his disposal to undermine him. He’ll count blackening your name and that of your lovely lady wife as a good day’s work.” Garak shifted in his chair, leaned forward again to emphasize his point. “This man is hardly committed to the cause of Cardassian democracy, O’Brien. He sees quick solutions as the most desirable solutions, and he sees the military as the ones to deliver them. So have your answer to that one ready.”
O’Brien nodded. “You’re the expert, Garak.”
“Indeed I am.” And will he spot that lie? Garak wondered. This game is new to me, although I seem to recognize many of its rules…. Or am I just mapping the old city onto the new one, hoping to find something familiar? That could be a mistake….
“Anyone else I need to watch out for?” O’Brien asked, dragging Garak’s attention back to him.
“For the moment, no. Ghemor wants to talk to you after your presentation—you’re not hurrying back to Andak, are you?”
“No particular rush. Keiko’s got everything under control—well, I hope she has, it’s her job, after all.”
They stood up, paid, left. Outside, the rain and the queue had settled in for the day. A Federation patrol passed by, four young officers, peacekeeper forces. They eyed the queue warily. The queue eyed them back, balefully.
“I thought Cardassia was meant to be hot,” O’Brien mused, as they hurried back round the corner to the offices, trying to keep dry. “Like up at Andak. But it’s barely stopped raining since I got here.”
“It’s all the dust,” Garak replied, shortly. “Our Cardassian heritage. This rain contains much of what was once our art, our architecture, our books…much of what was once our population, too, come to that.”
“Bit ghoulish.” O’Brien shuddered. “You are getting morbid, Garak.”
“Like many of us,” Garak replied, shouldering open a door and letting O’Brien duck inside first away from the rain, “I’m just a product of my environment.”
4
“Now, don’t run away screaming, Keiko,” Feric said under his breath, “but I think Naithe has just spotted you.”
“Oh no…” Keiko groaned, putting a hand up and pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s all I need this morning….” She drew in a deep and steadying breath, put on her best I am always here for my team smile, and looked up to see the little Bolian huffing toward them. Once he started talking, Naithe had a tendency not to stop—and Keiko still had most of the base left to check over this morning.
“Good morning, Director, good morning!” Naithe said cheerily. “A fine morning, is it not? And I am assuming, based on the evidence presented to us each day, that this means it will continue to be a fine afternoon, which surely must alleviate some of your concerns—”
“Thank you, Naithe, yes it does. It’s always good to know that the weather at least is going to be supportive—”
“Rest assured that we are all of us one hundred per cent behind you, Director, one hundred per cent. All of us here are very proud of Andak and the work that we’re doing, led by your good self, and each one of us knows just how important the vedek’s visit is to the future of the project. I myself am looking forward to discovering what effects this important day will have on our blossoming little community—”
Keiko and Feric glanced at each other, and both of them suppressed smiles. Naithe had a tendency to think the entire project at Andak had been set up just for the purposes of his studies.
“—particularly whether such a high-profile event throws up any fractures between senior staff—and, of course, whether the presence of such a controversial figure—and a Bajoran at that!—as the good vedek might even put stresses on the relationships between the Cardassian and Federation staff members here—”
Feric coughed slightly. “I’m sure, Dr. Naithe, as you say, that we’re all one hundred per cent behind Keiko today.”
“Undoubtedly! Undoubtedly!” Naithe looked at them both, and then blinked. “Well, I’ve no doubt that you’ve plenty to do this morning, Director, plenty to do.” He smiled brightly. “Carry on! Carry on!” He trotted off back across the square.
“Did he say anything helpful at all then?” Feric asked, looking after Naithe in complete bewilderment.
“No, although he did make me slightly more anxious about this afternoon.” Keiko sighed. “I’m sure he meant well.”
“Isn’t he supposed to understand people?”
“He must, he’s written books about them.”
Feric shook his head. “It’s a strange idea for a subject—what does he call it? Xeno-sol…”
“Xenosociology,” Keiko said automatically. “The study of alien social systems.”
“Here on Cardassia, that was called military intelligence.”
She laughed, and they carried on walking, companionably, toward the east side of the square, where the accommodation blocks were to be found. They walked alongside them for a while and then turned into the makeshift street that ran between the lines of small gray units. Outside one or two of them she saw that some plants had been put in. There was even a little girl digging away, turning over the dry soil in front of her home. Keiko smiled and waved, and the girl grinned back. So that class she had given was having an effect on one of the kids at least—although Keiko didn’t expect to see many more running out to take up gardening. She doubted she’d ever catch Molly doing it, for one. This part of the settlement was as new and bare as the rest of it, the soil thin and powdery from the lack of moisture—but those little bits of brave green hinted how there could be something here, given what it needed to grow.
There’s so much we could do here—so much we could all learn from each other.
She felt the press of the mountains behind her, and thought that perhaps next year she and Yoshi could try to make a water garden. He would still be too small to understand much of the principles behind the design of efficient irrigation systems—but she was fairly certain that he would like the mud.
“Tell me about the service you held last night,” she said to Feric.
He frowned. “I was wondering when we’d come round to that.” He rubbed a finger along the ridge below his eye, a gesture she had come to recognize meant that something was worrying him. “Did you mind that we met in the square?”
“Did I mind?” The question puzzled her. “Why on earth would I mind?”
That response seemed to surprise him. “The Oralian Way is not an entirely popular group on Cardassia at the moment, Keiko. Not even all that popular here at Andak. But the evening was so beautiful, and not to be a part of it seemed so wrong….” He frowned. “It’s not our way, really, to make such a public display of our beliefs. I was afraid that you might be worried about the ramifications of that. Given what some people here think of the Way.”
“Feric, you can believe what you want wherever you want! When I asked you to tell me about the service, it was as your friend, not as your boss!”
He laughed a little. “Of course,” he said. “You’re Federation.” He gave her a dry, sidelong look. “You know, Keiko, when you’re brought up to think carefully before you dare to utter even a single word, suddenly being free to say what you like is…” He had to grope for the right words to express himself here. “We
ll, it’s terrifying,” he said, at last.
“I don’t think you’ve once shied away from that in your life,” she replied. He smiled, looked down at the ground, seeming to want to evade the compliment. Keiko knew that he would have been unusual on Cardassia in choosing to pursue a scientific career—most men went into the military, or into politics (or both, this was Cardassia after all). And Cardassia had hardly been the kind of place that encouraged or rewarded individuality.
“Tell me about the Way,” she said. “What it means. What it means to you.”
“Start with the small questions, why don’t you!” he grinned. They had turned to head back to the square, and when they reached the edge of it, he stopped and looked at the mountains, vast and black.
“Botany, Keiko,” he said, with a perhaps just a hint of humor lingering in his eyes, “is in quick time. Two seasons—and you’re done. But geology…” He wagged a finger at her. “Geology is in slow time. If you spend long enough looking at rocks, you get a different perspective on things.” He stared back at the mountains. “A different perspective on people, on how they fit into the world.”
He stopped for a moment, and when he began to speak again, his voice was quiet. “My mother was a geologist. She used to bring me here, when I was a child. I’d sit and watch her working—sifting through her samples, cleaning off the dust, listing, cataloguing…it’s slow work, it needs patience. Anyway, I remember once, she told me that those mountains had been there long enough to see one civilization fall and another rise. I thought that was an amazing idea, the most exciting thing I’d ever heard—that the land was older than the people who lived upon it.”
He bent down and excavated a stone from the soil. Then he examined it closely, and began to polish away the dust between his fingers. The stone had flat smooth planes that came to jagged edges, and beneath the dirt the color was turning out to be a glossy black.
“Because that means we’re not at the center,” he continued. “We’re just part of something much older, something much bigger. That’s what the Way is about, Keiko; about how everything connects—across time, across place. About how we change when we can no longer see ourselves at the center.” He twisted the little rock expertly, and its edges caught sharply in the white sunlight.
“And that’s what the work we’re doing here is about too, isn’t it? What we want Cardassia to be. What we as Cardassians want to be. If we’re brave enough to change our land and so change ourselves with it—or if we just want to keep on fighting it, and fighting each other, and anyone else unlucky enough to find themselves in our path. Those mountains have seen two civilizations rise and fall now.” He put the stone in his pocket and then sighed. “I brought my son here once. He was bored before the end of the first day. We ended up hiding behind the rocks and playing soldiers—”
He came to a sudden halt. Keiko glanced away from the mountains and back at him. He was looking across the square and frowning. When she turned to look she understood why it was he had stopped.
Crossing the square was a tall Cardassian woman, moving with grace and purpose toward them. Feric straightened himself up and tensed, folding his arms behind his back—almost, Keiko thought, as if he was preparing for battle.
“Don’t worry,” she murmured to him. “I know Tela’s difficult, but she doesn’t mean any harm….”
“She may not mean harm, but I fear she does not mean well, Keiko….”
The woman was practically within earshot now. They’d have to leave the rest of this conversation for later. Tomorrow, Keiko thought. We’ll talk about this tomorrow. I don’t need anything else on my plate today, although given Tela’s expression, I’m afraid that’s going to turn out to be wishful thinking….
Tela looked at Feric first. “Dr. Lakhat.” She acknowledged him with a precisely measured tilt of the head. Just enough respect, but not too much of it. Cardassians, Keiko thought, were so precise with their courtesy it was as if they were wielding just another weapon.
“Professor Maleren,” he replied, quietly, politely—but as steadfast as the objects of his study.
She turned her attention to Keiko. “Director O’Brien—”
“Please, it’s been almost two months now—call me Keiko.”
“Very well…Keiko.” She sounded almost unhappy saying it. “I appreciate that you are particularly busy today, but I would like—if I may—to speak to you on a matter of some urgency.” She flicked her gaze over at Feric. “In private.”
Feric gave a wry smile. “How about,” he said, turning to address Keiko, “I carry on checking everything’s in order for this afternoon, and you come and join me when you’re ready?”
Keiko smiled back him—her deputy, her friend. “Thanks, Feric,” she said warmly, and then she turned to the other woman, feeling her heart sink.
“Let’s go to my office,” she said—and so they went off, walking side by side across the square, in silence.
This really is all I need this morning….
5
There were very few office towers left standing in the capital; most of those had been occupied by organs of government, the various aid agencies, and those fortunate individuals whose wealth seemed miraculously unaffected—perhaps even increased—by war. Of those that remained, even fewer had not been touched by the rioting. Wealth drew resentment, and resentment focused into fear and hate and fire and death.
In one of the quieter parts of the capital, a single building stood strangely untroubled by anarchy. Four or five men had made their way to the place that morning, arriving at intervals—five minutes, ten, seventeen. No regularity. The routes they had taken were planned with care. A pause at a particular pile of rubble to check for a chalk mark; a momentary halt as if a thought once forgotten had been suddenly remembered, and a reversal of direction. The routine that was no routine, well practiced, instinctive, safe.
There were two ways into the building—front and back. The larger, double doors at the front had admitted two men, over thirty minutes apart. The first was younger. He pulled both doors open—one in each hand—and strode in swiftly, resisting the giveaway temptation to cast a furtive glance about himself. The second was older. He had adopted the half-hunched walk of the average citizen, picking his way unsteadily over the rubble, and sliding through a single doorway. A third had, perhaps, entered via the rear—shifting a pile of garbage cans to make his way through, spilling some liquefying detritus. It poured over his well-made shoe, and he cursed. Two never even approached the anonymous façade. The remains of a bakery stood at the end of the street, twisted, metal reinforcements reaching naked from the crumbling concrete. They had passed into its dusty interior, and made their way through newly connecting cellars to join their colleagues.
They met rarely, these men. They would normally contact one another through more covert means: an encrypted data rod left in some innocuous location, for an untraceable lackey to collect. (One amused himself by using a safe-deposit box in the bombed-out ruins of the old central post office.) But occasionally, if events threatened to run out of control, for example, or they wished to propel them forward, they would feel the need to convene.
The first to arrive had surveyed the room in which they were to meet and, with a curl to his lips, had set to work beating dust from well-stuffed if shabby chairs and pulling them into place around an ancient, scarred table. He timed the operation to perfection and was seated comfortably, with a good view of all the entrances and with all his padds laid out neatly before him, by the time the second made his way in. This man only nodded a quick greeting and then shuffled into place, aiming for inconspicuousness at one dim corner of the table. The next two arrived in quick succession. When the first of these came, he was already thumbing his way through the files, and simply took his place without acknowledging his associates’ presence; the other took his seat and began to fuss over his shoe. A wayward elbow dislodged the items that had been fastidiously arranged by his more timely colleague. Having taken
the trouble to arrive early, he favored the new man with a distempered look.
When the fifth at last made his entrance, the four were settled in their seats, waiting. Not a word had passed between them. This man, the last, took his time to walk across the room, each footfall measured out with care. With slow and scrupulous attention, he made his way to the head of the table, drew out the chair, brushed some invisible dust from the seat, and then took his place. Whereupon, with the same meticulousness, he drew out from inside his jacket pocket a single padd, which he laid down before him and straightened until he was apparently satisfied that it sat in perfect alignment with the edge of the table. Only then did he look up to consider his colleagues.
“Well, gentlemen. Let’s begin.”
6
“The trouble with democracy,” Garak murmured into Miles’s ear, “is that it takes up too many mornings.”
Miles grunted, but gave no further answer. After a while, you got to be able to tell when Garak wanted a reply, and when he just wanted an audience. Anyway, Miles was finding out that he had more than a little sympathy with his point of view.
The session of the grandly titled Technological Appropriations Committee was taking place in a considerably less than grand meeting room in the temporary buildings that currently housed the offices and staff of Castellan Ghemor’s administration. An administration which Miles, and most of the quadrant with him, most fervently hoped was not as temporary as its surroundings. An administration for which Miles was hoping to provide support in his presentation later today. When he finally got the chance to speak. He rubbed at the back of his neck. Stationed on Deep Space 9, he’d forgotten just how long committee meetings like this could take, as everyone made sure they had as much say as they possibly could. Which they frequently mistook for saying as much as they possibly could. Sisko had had no patience for these kinds of lengthy proceedings, Miles thought, with a certain wistfulness.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine Page 3