STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE ®

by Andrew J. Robinson

“My . . . source says they have a suspect, but before they make a move they want to uncover the suspect’s contact as well.”

  “Contact . . . you mean . . . ?” I gave him my best puzzled expression.

  “Whoever’s taking the information and passing it on,” he explained as if I were a child.

  “And quite right they are,” I replied. Quark leered at me. I thought he was going to tout me on one of his more salacious holosuite programs.

  “What have you heard?” He brought his face even closer to mine. Any interaction with Quark was always a quid pro quo exchange.

  “In my shop?” I finished my tea. “My dear Quark, all I hear is the sound of footfalls that drift in from the Promenade.” I smiled and nodded, and made my way to the door.

  “Very poetic!” he yelled after me. I’m afraid Quark was as disappointed with my response as I was disturbed by his information.

  Entry:

  For the second night in a row I didn’t sleep. On my way to the shop that morning I felt a tension in the atmosphere. Was it just me, or was the Promenade in a remarkably unsettled—even agitated—state? It was certainly swarming with people and creatures of all sorts. At the Replimat I debated whether or not to stop for what passed there as food. However, my favorite table—ideally placed directly opposite the airlock doors that lead to the docking ring—was empty, and I decided to indulge myself and order an Idanian spice pudding. I enjoyed sitting there, watching the comings and goings of every traveler to and from the station. It’s very relaxing . . . and sometimes very rewarding, when people appear whose whereabouts are valuable information.

  I had no sooner settled into my seat with my pudding when I heard the sounds of a commotion coming from the middle of the Promenade. It was still crowded, and I couldn’t tell what was creating the disturbance. I took a bite of pudding and turned back to the source of the noise—and there she was. The pudding turned to chalk. The crowd had momentarily separated her from her escort, the two investigators and Constable Odo, and she stood there, looking at me with an expression that froze my blood. Not angry, not reproachful. . . . not even disappointed. An even expression, relaxed, clouded by that tinge of sadness I had first noticed when we discussed Gul Dukat and the expected morality of Cardassian men. My first thought was that she must be a formidable negotiator. My second was that she was about to expose her “contact.” But she just continued to look at me with her intelligent, gray eyes as if my skin were transparent and she could see all the way down to the bottom of my soul.

  The investigators caught up with her, and she turned away from me as Odo led them through the airlock. I realized that I had stopped breathing.

  I left my pudding, stopped at Quark’s to buy a bottle of kanar, and retired to my quarters. It took half of the bottle before I began to breathe again; and only when it was empty did I finally ask myself the question: Why hadn’t she betrayed me as I had betrayed her?

  4

  A deep sadness I had not felt in a long time reemerged as I walked through the Coranum Sector to my meeting with Madred and the group he referred to as the Directorate. Not one of the old, stately buildings had been spared by Dominion revenge. Perhaps there was a cruel justice at work here, Doctor, since these were the families that had initially agreed to the alliance with the Dominion. But if anything marked the end of Cardassia as we remember it and symbolized the stripped and naked state of our civilization, it was the devastation of this first settlement, the “birthplace” of the Union.

  The sadness was most keenly felt when I passed the Coranum Grounds. Every bit of vegetation had been engulfed by the firestorm, and any evidence of that soft and protected place of assignation had been reduced to ashes. I quickened my pace.

  As I stood in front of the building debris I tried to locate the entrance to the basement Madred had described. Judging from the enormous amount of rubble that had already been cleared, this had been an impressive home. Finally, I made out a path that led to the rear of what would have been the ground floor, and followed it to a temporary structure that functioned as both an entrance and a cover for the staircase. The darkness swallowed me as I carefully made my way down the stairs and into a makeshift anteroom. At that moment a door opened and Madred appeared.

  “Ah, good. I was concerned that you weren’t coming,” he said with some irritation. I realized that I had gotten lost in my thoughts as I’d walked through the sector. In a sense, Doctor, my new world has become timeless, especially in the absence of all my old routines and landmarks.

  “I wanted to make sure no one was following me,” I lied. At our previous meeting, when I’d suggested that I might be able to provide some helpful intelligence about the Reunion Project, Madred warned me to maintain absolute secrecy about the meeting and its whereabouts.

  “Did you notice anyone?” he asked with concern.

  “No,” I replied. Actually I could have been followed by an army and I wouldn’t have noticed. I’m afraid I’ve become careless as well as timeless, Doctor. Madred led me down a short corridor that had formerly been much longer but truncated now to adjust to the new living circumstances.

  “Is this your home?” I asked as I followed him.

  “What’s left of it,” he replied. A door opened, and we entered a large room badly lit by several emergency lamps. The city had to live with intermittent blackouts as the power grid was being realigned. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to discern the shapes of seven people arranged around a table in the center of the room. Most of them looked familiar, and I wasn’t surprised to see them here. One person, however, did surprise me. Two people I didn’t know. My “schoolmate” wasn’t here.

  “This is Elim Garak. Some of you may know him,” Madred said as introduction. He offered me a seat and took his place to my right.

  “Elim Garak,” the person to my left repeated with amused wonder. “How are your tailoring skills these days?” he asked. It was Gul Hadar, who had been one of Dukat’s aides on Terok Nor; a man of weak character who easily participated in the worst excesses of the occupation.

  “Under the present circumstances, Hadar, they come in quite handy,” I replied. He nodded, studying me in his diffident manner. He also came from one of the old families.

  “I wonder if that’s why Madred invited you here.” He turned to the others. “Because Skrain Dukat claimed Garak was a dangerous traitor who was responsible for the deaths of his father and Barkan Lokar. Are we in need of a tailor?”

  “Skrain Dukat was the traitor,” said the voice across from me. It was Gul Evek, a blunt, unsmiling soldier who I’d thought had been killed pursuing the Maquis in the Badlands. “I think we can safely say that anyone who was his enemy has a right to be here. Especially anyone who fought with Damar.” He looked at me with his stern face, and I acknowledged his support. I heard Hadar sigh, and understood that the “Directorate” was far from unified.

  “The issue is not Dukat. It’s the future of the Union!” the man next to Evek maintained. This was Legate Parn. He challenged the group with a look that made me believe that he was the leader in this room. Parn had administered the Cardassian colonies in the demilitarized zone after the treaty with the Federation, a treaty he and Evek had believed was the beginning of the end when Cardassia signed it. They were outspoken in their view that accommodation with the Federation had fatally compromised our resolve.

  “The dead are dead. Those of us left—who believe in the ideals that have guided our race for millennia—are faced with the threat of utter annihilation by the very disease that has brought us to this sad place. Federation ideas will finish the work the Dominion began.” Again he challenged each of us. I followed his look. On the other side of Madred was Nal Dejar, a sharp-faced, saturnine woman who had been a member of my last cell at the Order. She once came to Deep Space 9 on an as signment with two scientists, and refused to make any contact with me. Judging from her averted look, she was still refusing. Next to her was a man with a severely disfigured face that was still
recovering from what appeared to be burns. One eye was completely covered, and I was careful not to be rude in my inspection. He and an attractive woman sitting on the other side of Evek were the two people who weren’t familiar to me.

  The surprise guest, Korbath Mondrig, sat between this woman and Hadar. Considering that Madred believed he was nothing more than a demagogue stirring up the service class with old resentments and divisive rhetoric, I wondered how this group planned to use Mondrig.

  “Let us be clear about what unites us,” Parn warned. “We have our differences. We’ve even had our troubles in the past,” he said, looking directly at me. “But they can’t be allowed to deter us from our main purpose.”

  “Which is?” I asked, returning his look.

  “To crush any attempt by any group to espouse Federation ideals as we rebuild our society,” he answered.

  “Rebuild it to where it was before we doomed ourselves with that treaty,” Evek added.

  “And I believe that’s why you’ve joined us today, Garak,” Parn said, never taking his eyes off me.

  “If I may,” the woman next to Evek spoke up. I was grateful for her interruption; I needed more time to orient myself. She signaled to Madred for recognition; he appeared to be the moderator.

  “Of course, Gul Ocett,” he replied. So this was Malyn Ocett, I realized; the only resistance leader who had survived when the cells were betrayed by Gul Revok. Her courage and resourceful tactics had not only inspired her followers, but her call to the military after the Lakarian City massacre was largely responsible for our soldiers turning against the Dominion at the crucial moment.

  “I share Legate Parn’s concern that the Federation wants to ‘absorb us,’ ” she said. “All of us here know their strategy has never been a military one; it’s political. At this point, we’re weakened, vulnerable. The Federation recognizes that the current dislocation is the moment to inject us with their democratic ideas, because there are people like Natima Lang and Alon Ghemor who would gladly carry them to the rest of us.” Natima Lang, Quark’s old paramour, was obviously back on Cardassia along with every other political opportunist. “We’re deeply wounded now, and if we’re not careful we could end up with a political system that would not only place us firmly within Federation hegemony, but would destroy our identity.”

  Gul Ocett was persuasive in her quiet and reasoned strength. Indeed, the irony, Doctor, is that she was espousing the very argument I had made to you any number of times. Even now there was a part of me that accepted the logic of her argument, especially when coming from someone who was neither a fool nor an opportunist. Gul Madred saw his opening.

  “I think this is the moment to let Korbath Mondrig speak and explain what we have in mind as a strategy.” Madred nodded to Mondrig, a physically small man who had been listening very carefully.

  “Thank you,” Mondrig said with a smile his closely set eyes didn’t share. “Unless, of course, others wish to express their views,” he graciously offered. The only people who hadn’t spoken were Nal Dejar and the disfigured man. Because of her training and naturally closed face, Dejar was hard to read. Not a flicker of recognition registered when she saw me. And the man’s face was so damaged and his body so still, he had almost no presence. Both of them remained silent.

  Mondrig nodded. “It is an honor to be among people I consider heroes of the Empire,” he said.

  “What little is left of it,” Evek muttered. Hadar sighed again, and Evek gave him a hard look but held his tongue.

  “Yes, unfortunately, as Gul Ocett has said, we have been deeply wounded.” Mondrig’s tone was deferential, almost obsequious, but there was a mannered quality I didn’t trust. At that moment he looked right at me. “And I must confess that the presence of this gentleman surprises me as well. Forgive me,” he nodded in my direction, “but in our Paldar Sector he is associated with Ghemor and Parmak. If I’m not mistaken, you even held a rally for their Unity Project at your . . . memorial?” It was phrased as a question, but the intent was clear. The attention of the others now shifted to me.

  “Reunion Project,” I corrected.

  “Yes, of course,” he accepted the correction.

  “How chummy,” Hadar commented.

  “Yes, I hosted the rally,” I admitted.

  “Why?” Hadar asked.

  “I admire Dr. Parmak. I’d been working with him on a med unit, and when he asked if he could use my home for a rally, I agreed.”

  “Why?” Hadar repeated with the satisfied look of a clever interrogator.

  “Because I wanted to hear his point of view,” I replied.

  “You’ve lived on a Federation outpost for how many years?” Hadar asked pointedly.

  “I also went to school with Alon Ghemor, and I’ve always found him to be an honorable man.”

  “A family of traitors!” Hadar concluded, looking at the others as if he’d made some damaging point about my character. I simply smiled at him, genuinely amused by his amateur attempts to discredit me. I was surprised by my responses. I was here to play the role of double agent, and I found that as the meeting went on I didn’t have the energy for the requisite guile and misdirection.

  “What are you telling us, Garak?” Parn challenged. I smiled at him. It was so transparent, what they were doing. So predictable. Each sector was planning to choose a leader. A council would then be formed from the “elected” leaders of each sector, which would lead the city and most likely a reorganized union. Public sentiment for this democratic process was too strong to oppose, especially when there was no longer an army to throw against the heretics. The Directorate wouldn’t oppose the vote, but they would get around it by backing their candidate in each election, thus creating a council that would then become an instrument of their will.

  “What are you telling us?” Parn repeated the challenge.

  And then a strange sensation went through me, Doctor. I looked at the faces of these people. Here we are, I thought, sitting in the basement of a ruined civilization and conducting business as if nothing significant had changed. The enemies were still the same, somewhere “out there,” plotting how to “destroy our character” and colonize us with their political system. And we were down in the basement with our own plots and shifting alliances, tenaciously holding on to the very ideas that had brought us here. But what ideas, Doctor? There’s nothing left. Only fantasies of power. These faces with their masks. With the ironic exception of the disfigured face, the masks hadn’t changed. They reflected the usual range of hidden agendas, each competing for dominance and ascendancy with an energy commensurate to the amount of fear and self-loathing that fueled and motivated that person. I started to laugh.

  “Does my question amuse you, Garak?” Parn asked, his mask revealing the anger and the lust for power that fueled his agenda. He didn’t even try to disguise his impatience with me. The ideology, the patchwork of old ideas and mythology was in place; the boundaries that determined what was sacred and received “truth” and what was heresy were set: all that remained was for him to arrange the power structure and assign each person his or her role in it. He was the deal maker, the broker—and he wanted to get on with the business of satisfying his lust.

  I looked around the table, from face to face, mask to mask. Evek and Ocett were honorable soldiers who had dedicated themselves to the old ideals of Cardassian purity and superiority. But the failure of the system that had contained these ideals, and the ensuing devastation, had left them deeply troubled and confused. What was their responsibility in the breakdown? Who was this man Parn hastily reassembling these ideals into a system they both knew could never be the same? But their education, their conditioning, their having been bred to a society that answered all problems with a received set of answers enabled them to question only so far. Parn had skillfully used limits set long ago; beyond them was the demonized void dominated by Federation ideas waiting for the right moment to attack.

  Unlike Evek and Ocett, Mondrig was a little ma
n without a center, Parn’s propagandist and puppet, whose job was to stand in front of the people with a mask that would mirror our beliefs, our prejudices, our hopes, and our fears. He was the consummate politician who would deliver the message in a way that would never threaten or challenge us. He desperately aspired to belong to this group, the repository of Cardassian power, and the group only wanted to use him for the demagoguery that would further entrench its power.

  Hadar was a degenerate. His mask, like the features of his face, was without the definition of a life that was lived and thought and felt. He accepted his privilege without question or gratitude to those forebears who had passionately struggled for their beliefs. He believed in nothing but his appetites. The ultimate parasite.

  Madred had the same forebears, but his mask was sharper than Hadar’s because he still had the passion of his beliefs: he desired to maintain the old ways at all costs because anything else was inconceivable. He would even associate himself with Mondrig, a man he’d said he wouldn’t let “clean his shoes,” if it meant the old order could be restored. There was fear in his mask: the fear of change.

  Nal Dejar’s mask was closer to home; she reflected my own religious dedication to the “secrets of the state.” We lived in the shadows, and our masks played with light and darkness, like the regnar’s skin. We passed through life like Tain’s “night people,” with no allegiances except to the secrets. And the more successful we were, the slighter and more invisible we became, until we easily occupied space the way a shadow falls across light.

  And the disfigured mask, the most honest one in the room. . . . The one good eye, peering out at me from an interior prison of pain and bitter disillusionment, gave me permission to study his mask—and we made contact.

  It was him, Doctor. It was Pythas.

  “My friend,” I whispered. I think only Madred and Nal Dejar heard me.

  “Are you willing to help us?” Parn asked harshly, his attention still focused on my loyalty to his cause. I remembered my conversation with Tolan about the price of “status.” “Or are you sympathetic with these people?”