“Sacrifices,” she hissed, her control escaping like steam from a narrow rift. “What was the name of that book you once gave me? When you first came back from Bamarren. The one you proclaimed as the greatest Cardassian novel ever written and insisted that we read it.” Mila was still on her knees, but now I was the offending spot she vigorously rubbed with her words and eyes. “Generations of one family, each faced with the same choice at a crucial moment. Do they serve their personal needs or do they serve future generations? Do they choose the comfort of their own lives over the life of the state and its mission? I read it, Elim. You told me to and I did.”
“The Never-Ending Sacrifice,” I answered.
“Yes. That’s the one.” She made a sighing sound as she stood up. Mila was heavier now, and moved with greater deliberation. She, too, had grown old. “I suggest you reread it.”
“Tain always came first, didn’t he? I suppose that was your never-ending sacrifice.” I no longer reined in the irony.
“Yes, he did. And if you know anything about sacrifice you’d understand why. The man gave selflessly, constantly. He never asked his people to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself. He never asked for anything but the devotion and loyalty that he gave to his work.”
“How fortunate he had Tolan.”
“Tolan understood and accepted his obligations,” Mila said coldly. “But he was sentimental. Like you. That was the one thing Enabran worried about.”
I smiled in sad recognition. Sentimental. Yes, Tain and Mila had definitely shared their confidences and judgments with each other.
“But I don’t blame Tolan. He was a good man.” Mila watched me as I rose.
“Yes. So you keep saying.” I wanted to leave.
“She’s nothing but trouble for you, Elim. End it now. Do what Enabran says and reclaim your rightful place.”
“My place,” I repeated.
“Now, Elim. Otherwise you’re in real danger,” she warned with a certainty that reminded me of the time she’d brought me to Tain after I’d left Bamarren. Mila always knew what was at the heart of the never-ending sacrifice.
“Thank you for your help,” I said, too weary for irony.
“What did you expect from me?”
“To be honest, I can’t remember,” I answered. “Have a pleasant trip.” I smiled and bowed.
“Let Limor know if you’ll be living here.” I nodded. Yes, I thought, that would be my answer. My choice. She shook out her smock to determine whether or not to put it back on.
“Mila.” She looked at me and took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for my question.
“Who was Tolan?”
“My brother.” She decided to wear the smock, and I left.
It was a clear night; I sat among “Uncle” Tolan’s orchids and watched the Taluvian Constellations pulse with undiminished strength. More than ever, I believed not only that they were sending us subliminal messages containing vital information, but that our ability to decode these messages would determine our fate. At Bamarren, Docent Rilon had passionately maintained that if we were only willing to let go of the busy preoccupations of our conditioned minds and concentrate instead on receiving the energy pulse of any given star configuration, the newest and ever-developing part of our brain would be guided by the creative wisdom of the Primal Plan.
Without any effort, my choice was made; the plan lay before me like a diagram. Whether it was my decision or one inspired by the Taluvian pulse was a question I didn’t ask. At this point I had to accept the givens and take action. The difficult part would be staying away from Palandine; if I could do that, the plan would succeed.
In the weeks that followed, I submitted to my punishment. I informed Limor Prang that I would be living in Tain’s house, and he accepted my decision with the usual absence of reaction. I then reported to Corbin Entek, who had been in the Level above me at Bamarren and one of Lokar’s trusted adjutants, One Drabar. We had worked together very closely during the Competition, and I had enormous respect for him. I once asked him why he hadn’t stayed with Lokar and become a part of the Bajoran Occupation.
“Everyone has their work,” was all he would say. Considering the plan I had set into motion, I had to be extremely careful in my dealings with him.
“You’ve been assigned to a new cell, which meets tonight,” Entek informed me. I had expected the reassignment: a probe begins at the bottom, and up until this moment I’d been the leader of my cell. “I’ve also recalibrated your comm chip. May I have your old one, please?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I replied and gave it to him. It could have been worse. Entek was tough and ambitious, but he was not one of the agents who feared and resented my former status as a “son of Tain.”
“I appreciate your attitude, Elim. This could have been awkward,” he said with honest relief.
“We’re professionals, Corbin. We make our adjustments when necessary.” No one knew the real reason for my humiliation; everyone assumed that Tain had not been pleased with my results, and that I was being used as an example of how failure is punished.
“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask,” he said.
“That’s very kind of you. Some information, if you’re allowed.” My request was disguised as an afterthought. “I assume tonight’s meeting will involve a mission. I don’t want to know what it is, but I’d like to know how much time I have for my personal transition before I’m assigned.” I was as reasonable and unattached to the request as possible, but his answer was vital to my plan. Entek hesitated. It was awkward for him after all, I thought. This was not only a question I would never have asked Limor, but it was complicated by the fact that until this moment I had been Entek’s superior.
“You leave in two days,” he finally replied. My heart sank. Lokar would not be back on Cardassia Prime until the following week for the beginning of the negotiations regarding the Bajoran Occupation.
“Thank you, Corbin.”
“Will that give you enough time?” he asked. His consideration was highly unusual, but I assumed he was going out of his way to make sure I was not unnecessarily humiliated by my demotion to probe status.
“Some adjustments will have to wait.” I inclined my head and started to leave.
“Would it help to know that the assignment is on Bajor?” Corbin asked. At that moment it hit me. Ah yes. I had misread Entek’s awkwardness and consideration. I still felt Tain’s hand on my shoulder.
“Yes, it does, Corbin.” I bowed again and left. On an impulse, instead of leaving immediately, I went down the corridor to Tain’s old office. The door was open, and I stopped at the threshold just as Pythas looked up from a now much cleaner desk. He smiled shyly and stood up.
“Please come in, Elim,” he offered. What surprised me was how pleased I was to see him. Just as I had felt he was the only other person who deserved to be One Lubak, I now believed he was the only other person who deserved to occupy this office.
“Welcome to the visible world, Pythas,” I greeted.
“I didn’t campaign for this,” he said without apology.
“If you had, Tain would never have picked you. He deeply mistrusts politicians. Of course,” I added, “he was a superb politician himself.” Pythas appreciated the paradox.
“I was hoping you’d choose to stay,” he said.
“I had no choice. At my age what was I going to do? Lead wilderness treks in Morfan?” As we stood in the tiny, nondescript office, the planning center of so much activity affecting the lives of all Cardassians, I wondered how much, really, the generation of Tain and Prang had yielded to ours. I looked at Pythas’ kotra board, which was set up to be played on a separate table. As far as I was personally concerned, Tain was still attempting to control the pieces.
“And what makes me happy, Pythas, is that I can continue to dominate you on the kotra board.”
“Ah, we’ll see, Elim. We’ll see.”
“Well. I better be off.”
“Yes,” Pythas nodded. “Be careful, Elim.”
“Thank you. I’ll do my best.” As I walked back down the corridor, the message Tain had sent me when he made Pythas his successor became quite clear.
I waited in the darkness, this time across from Tolan’s orchids, on the other side of the children’s area. Mila and Tain were right about my sentimentality. I hadn’t dared go back to the Coranum grounds after my last meeting with Tain; now I was hiding in these bushes like a naughty boy hoping anxiously to see the object of his forbidden desire. Tain had arranged the mission to Bajor. Once I told Prang I would live in the house, Tain was going to facilitate my move against Lokar. And how elegant it was. My contact was a Bajoran double agent who would help me arrange Lokar’s assassination and make it look like the work of the Bajoran Resistance.
But I couldn’t stay away from Palandine. Yes, I was sentimental. But after Lokar’s death we’d be able to call it something else.
And there she was. The shadowy outline of my desire. My love. She had gotten my message. Palandine was facing toward the Edosian orchids, and I could see she was in a tense state from the way she moved and held herself. As I was about to signal my presence, I sensed faint movement in the shrubbery behind the orchids. It could have been voles, but I don’t think I would have been aware of their movement from this distance. Of course I was under surveillance—that was no surprise. What was surprising was my foolishness. Reluctantly I decided not to signal. It was time to stop behaving like a reckless child. It would have to be enough to watch her shadowy outline and remind myself what was at the other end of my Bajoran mission. Giving up Palandine would not be part of my never-ending sacrifice.
After an unbearably long period of time, during which Palandine grew increasingly agitated, she suddenly stopped her pacing not far from where I was well hidden, and looked sharply in my direction. I was convinced that she could see me, even though it was rationally impossible. But she began to walk toward me, and whether or not she could see me, she somehow knew I was there. She stopped just short of my covering shrub, and the sight of her face shocked me. It was swollen and bruised. One eye was completely closed, and the other contained enough pain for ten. It took every bit of my willpower not to reach out and hold her. Her one eye held mine, I knew she wanted to tell me something so important that she was willing to wait all night if necessary. But I was certain that someone had followed me here, and that any contact would fatally expose us. Not now, my darling. Soon, I signaled. She barely nodded, sadly, and walked away. As I watched her recede into the darkness, every cell of my body was so quickened with hatred and the a desire for revenge that I barely heard the noise behind me.
I could see the light above me. I pushed my way toward the luminous white center surrounded by a rosy corona. The medium was heavier than water, perhaps a liquid gas, warm and buoyant, but miraculously it wasn’t suffocating me. As long as I pushed and stroked and kicked my way up to the center of the light I knew with certainty that I would arrive at my destination. I didn’t dare take my eyes off of my lighted goal for fear of losing it, but I knew there were bodies all around me. They drifted in and out of the edges of my periphery, and I wondered if they were going to the same place. While their presence was strongly felt, it was too dark to see who they were. They never made any physical contact, but we were deeply and pleasurably connected to each other.
The light was growing more and more intense the closer I came to it. Blinding white and painful. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I was afraid to close them. Finally the light shattered as I broke the surface and heard someone scream. The shards of light gathered at several magnetizing points, where they formed shapes.
“If he screams like that again, we’ll all be deaf.” A voice emanated from the shape of a person standing in front of me. A hand flashed out from the body shape and slapped me across the face. A warm feeling of pleasure flowed through me; the liquid medium I had moved through to arrive at this place was now inside me, filling me with its tender nurture.
“He’s conscious now.” Another voice spoke from a body, which moved out of the surrounding darkness into the penumbra at the edge of the pool of light. The hand flashed again and slapped my face. Another release of warm pleasure. The wire, I thought. This is an interrogation. Military interrogators. They have no idea. I wanted to laugh, and it took a concerted effort to gather my disparate parts in order to integrate my will. Was I on Bajor?
“At least the smile’s gone,” the first voice said. I was fully awake now. I let my jaw go slack and my eyes glaze over, but I could make out a good two hundred degrees of the room. Besides the two Cardassian soldiers, I was able to discern a third man standing in the darkness to my left. I sensed he was the focal point of the others. I couldn’t sense anyone behind me. The hands of the closest soldier grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into a more erect sitting position.
“Pay attention now!” he shouted in my face. I cleared my eyes to indicate more awareness.
“He’s ready now, sir,” the soldier confidently reported to his superior. To think that they give these brutes the delicate task of an interrogation.
“Why are you shaking your head, Elim? Regret for the foolishness that brought you here?” I was not surprised to hear his voice. Only surprised that it had taken so long. I had been very careless. Sentimental.
“Leave us,” Lokar ordered the soldiers. They looked at each other.
“He’s not secured, sir,” the one closest to Lokar warned.
“Elim and I are old friends. We’re just going to have a chat,” Lokar said with a pleasant smile. “You may go.” The soldiers left and Lokar studied me in silence. “Quite impressive,” he said. “The amount of punishment you absorbed. I’m afraid, however, that that smile of yours only infuriated the glinn. Do you remember the first time we met? The same smile.” I made no response. Was it coincidence that Lokar had made his move as I was about to make mine? Or was I betrayed? Someone must have known that he had come back from Bajor. That’s what Palandine had wanted to tell me with her battered face. They must have followed her. Where was she now? The wire wasn’t designed to alleviate the anxiety I felt for her safety . . . and my hatred. If I could somehow get to him here. I began to calculate the risk. At that mo ment, Lokar circled around so that he stood directly behind me, but at a distance to easily deal with any move I would be foolish enough to make. I continued to look straight in front of me. I had to channel this hatred along a finely tuned band of intention.
“How is your gardening these days? Or do you get much of a chance in your new profession? You did that very well. I left Romulus feeling sorry for you.”
“Your arrogance made it easy, Barkan.”
“Indeed. I underestimated you. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered you’d been recruited by the Obsidian Order. I’d always assumed you’d . . .”
“You assumed that it was because you gave me a low rating in your Competition evaluation that the Prefect asked me to leave. And then you assumed that I had disappeared into the service class.” I allowed the ancient resentment to color my tone; it was a tacit acknowledgment of his superiority I knew he wouldn’t miss.
“Ah, yes. Still bitter, are we?” And he didn’t. I could feel his initial defense relax. In his mind I was still Elim, the naïve murk. “It’s clear you never learned to build on these lessons. It’s a pity. You’re a clever person, but a petty one; harboring your slights and jealousies, plotting your revenge. And it made you sloppy and self-indulgent. Yes, I underestimated you. I’d lost track of you, I had no idea what you were up to, professionally . . . or personally. Imagine my surprise.” Resentment crept into Barkan’s tone. Here was the opening I wanted.
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“Please, Elim. That’s when you underestimated me. Flaunting your ‘relationship’ in public like infatuated schoolchildren.”
“Yes, I suppose it would have been wiser to behave like experienced adulterer
s,” I replied with a sigh.
“You’re the lowest form of scavenger, Elim. You have no attachments of your own, and so you feed on the emotional vulnerabilities of others.” The resentment gave way to the implacable hatred Tain had anticipated. It wouldn’t be long now.
“What are you going to do with Palandine?” I asked.
“That’s not your concern. I’m sure you’re accustomed to being the one to ask the questions, but I’m afraid that’s no longer your privilege. You are now obligated to answer mine.” His voice hardened and he moved closer to me, a sign that his desire for revenge was outstripping his objective.
“I’ll answer what I can, Barkan.” I tried to sound defeated.
“Who else was involved with the abduction and torture of Procal Dukat?” he demanded.
“Are you implying I was involved?” I asked incredulously.
“Don’t play me for a fool here. I warn you. Perhaps you possess this impressively high threshold for pain, but there are other ways I can hurt you,” he warned.
“Barkan, I would have been proud to have exposed a traitor like Dukat. He deserved his fate.”
“Is that why Pythas Lok was chosen over you to replace Tain?” Lokar had a source within the Order. “It seems everyone is chosen over you. Don’t you grow weary of being bypassed?”
“Only betrayal makes me weary,” I replied.
“But you’re a failure, Elim. You even failed in your attempt to assassinate me.”
“I didn’t fail with Palandine,” I said quietly.
There was a silence. I hadn’t meant to make my move this quickly, but I prepared myself. His footfalls approached me and a tremendous blow to the back of my head sent me sprawling on the floor.
“You did, Elim. You can’t even begin to measure your failure,” he said with murderous chill. He kicked me in the small of the back. Pleasure instead of pain; a strange sensation. I groaned and remained motionless.
“Get up!” I didn’t move. Barkan aimed a kick at my genitals but he was too angry to be accurate and my upper leg absorbed the blow. A harder, better placed kick between my right hip and ribs knocked the air out of me and let loose another flow of endorphins. I groaned louder, and rolled to a position where I could keep Lokar’s legs in my lidded sight. He was breathing hard, not so much from the exertion as from the rage it was releasing. His weight shifted to his left leg, preparing for his right to kick again. My opportunity—a word Lokar had taught me to respect. As his foot came straight along my line of vision toward my face, I shifted slightly away, grabbed his approaching ankle with both hands, twisted with all my strength and brought him down on his face. He struggled for his phaser, but I had him by the throat from behind and cut off his windpipe. He grabbed my forearm, and the strength of his effort to free his breathing rolled us over and over until he began to weaken from the lack of air. Everything turned red as I poured my last ounce of energy into Lokar’s death. And then black.
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