Star Trek: DS9: The Never-Ending Sacrifice

by Una McCormack

  Geleth Pa’Dar was very old, and had always been either too poor or too rich to bother with pity. She received her son’s news with the distaste that usually met anything he brought before her. His talent for science, for example, or the young woman he intended to make his wife. “Of course,” Geleth sighed, when Kotan finished his explanation, “it would be better if the child had never turned up. The scandal will almost certainly finish you. You’ve not endeared yourself to the Central Command in recent months.” She glanced down at the control panel next to the screen, and began to tap at it. “We could always arrange for an accident on the way home.”

  “Mother!”

  “Don’t be childish, Kotan. That sort of thing is to be admired—or it was in my day. Cardassia isn’t what it used to be.”

  “Mother—”

  “Your father had two of his bastards killed for our wedding—or was it three? I forget now, it was a long time ago. Frankly, I would rather he’d dealt with the mistress herself, but then bastards are one thing, aren’t they, and citizens are another, and I suppose one can hardly go about murdering those without expecting some kind of reprisal—”

  “Mother!”

  Geleth barely moved, but disapproval radiated out from the screen. Kotan pressed the corner of the picture frame into his palm. He reminded himself of Geleth’s age and the fact that—until moments ago—she had been his sole surviving relative. “There will be no unfortunate accidents,” he said, clearly and steadily, “no sudden disappearances, and certainly no murders. If this boy is—” Rugal, he thought, but he had not said the name in years, and he did not trust himself to say it out loud, not yet, “—my child, then he will be coming back with me, and he will be living with me. In my house.”

  Geleth’s eye ridges twitched. The house was Kotan’s winning move. It was his, through his father, not hers: Geleth had married money, bringing none with her. He watched her make her eyes go sad—a very fine imitation of frailty. “Of course, you’ll do whatever you want. It’s not as if anything I say ever makes any difference.” She sharpened her tone again. “But you’ll regret this. I give your seat in the Assembly three months at the outside.”

  Kotan was no longer paying attention. Variations on this theme had accompanied him throughout his life, and despite every attempt he had made to please her. For Geleth’s sake, he had abandoned his beloved laboratories for what had been an unfulfilling political career—a career that had taken him to Bajor and cost him his wife and his child. Geleth would not have her own way on this. Family might be all, and Geleth was all he had left (until now...), but if you only listened to family, you would surely end up strangling somebody. Kotan left Cardassia Prime in haste, to take possession of a bewildered and angry young man of sixteen.

  When the time came to say good-bye to Migdal, Rugal made one last attempt to explain what had happened. “This man Pa’Dar is my father—my biological father, I mean. And now he’s found me, he wants to take me back with him to Cardassia. Commander Sisko has decided that he should be allowed to do that.” Rugal looked at his father anxiously. Migdal seemed to have aged in the past few days.

  “But he left you behind,” Migdal said in a plaintive voice. “He didn’t want you—”

  Rugal glanced back over his shoulder bitterly. The big Cardassian was waiting by the door, staring down at his boots. At least he had the decency not to watch. “He didn’t know I was still alive. It’s complicated, but... someone took me away so that when they found me again, it would embarrass him.”

  The intricacies of Cardassian politics were well beyond Migdal’s comprehension. “But what am I going to tell Etra when I turn up without you?” he asked, plucking at his son’s sleeve. “She’s expecting us back, we were going to go down to the temple and light candles to bless the journey and then go and have alva ices to celebrate...” He was close to tears.

  Rugal swallowed. By tomorrow, he would be on his way to Cardassia Prime. No temples, no candles, no mother or father, no fresh start... Only the enemy. He put his arms around his father so that Migdal couldn’t see his face. “It doesn’t have to be forever. It won’t be forever. I’ll come back. We’ll find a way for me to get back.”

  “Yes,” said Migdal, comforted. “We’ll find a way. Etra will know what to do.”

  Rugal was now of an age where he no longer believed his mother was likely to be a match for Starfleet and the Cardassians combined, but he said nothing, only hugged Migdal hard, and then stood up. The big Cardassian—Kotan—took a step forward. He looked eager and pleased, as if he was glad to have devastated their family. Of course, that was what Cardassians did. He reached out to put his hand on Rugal’s arm, and Rugal pulled back as if the man were carrying a deadly weapon, or a plague. “Don’t touch me,” he whispered savagely. “Don’t ever touch me.”

  Kotan, shocked, withdrew. They walked down to the docking bay in silence, Rugal lagging a marked distance behind. Commander Sisko and Chief O’Brien were waiting to see them on their way. “Well, good luck,” O’Brien said, putting his hand on Rugal’s shoulder. He didn’t look entirely happy either. For a moment Rugal had a wild hope that O’Brien might speak up and stop all this from happening, but he didn’t. He gave Kotan and his commanding officer a quick look, and Rugal a worried one, and he leaned in to whisper, “If you need any help, need anything at all, let me know. Yes? Let me know.”

  It was hardly the last-minute reprieve Rugal had been hoping for, but it did make him feel as if somebody was on his side, and for that he remained forever grateful. He nodded his thanks to O’Brien, and then followed the man who was calling himself his father onto the shuttle and away from home.

  It was a long journey home, and during it Kotan suffered the fullest range of emotions possible. Sadly, he soon discovered that the happiest emotions were associated with memories.

  Kotan remembered everything about Rugal’s life that the boy himself could not. He could picture as if it was happening now the quiet Bajoran evening with his wife when Arys had told him that at last they were going to have a child together. He could recall being told that he had a son, and weeping from delight and exhaustion so mingled together that he could not tell where one ended and the other began. He remembered first steps, and first words, and—because he had had so little time to know his son before he had been taken away—each memory had been pored over and preserved, as precious as gemstones and as sharp as black glass.

  Kotan had brought some of his treasures with him: pictures of his dead wife Arys, and of Rugal himself as a baby, and of the family group as they had been in the settlement at Tozhat. A snapshot of their happiness together before the Bajoran Resistance had blown their lives apart. Kotan offered his son these gifts, this inheritance, but Rugal refused it all. He sat glowering at space, a young man boiling with rage. But as the distance between him and Bajor became greater, he seemed to dampen down. He looked younger, and more and more forlorn. Kotan kept close by, wanting to be near his child, stealing occasional hungry looks at him. He was sure that he could see Arys there, in the shape of the boy’s face, in the sudden upsurges of emotion that in her had been so fascinating, so exhilarating. He fancied he saw a little of himself, but suspected this was wishful thinking. He was mortally afraid he had caught a glimpse of Geleth.

  As the journey progressed, and no overture came from Rugal, Kotan began to contemplate the possibility that the boy was lost to him for good. Bitterly, more than ever before, he regretted that Cardassia had ever become entangled with Bajor. Bajor had taken his wife and child, and seemed to be stealing the boy from him all over again. But Bajor was rapidly eclipsed as a focus for his anger. Like all of his generation, Kotan deplored their savagery, but when he thought about his own ravaged family, he almost understood the fury of that fierce, alien people. But Dukat? Dukat was Cardassian. He knew about family. He should have known better. Dukat had stolen his son; he was the one who had created this unnatural distance between them, cold as space but unbridgeable. Dukat was the one w
ho should pay for it.

  Their ship docked. Kotan picked up his bag of unwelcome treasures, and father and son made their way to the elite passengers’ transporters. Rugal walked a few paces ahead, as if to say: Let’s get this over and done with quickly. Kotan cleared his throat and took the plunge. “Rugal.”

  No reply.

  “Rugal, I need to talk to you before we arrive.”

  The boy looked back over his shoulder at him, and Kotan trembled slightly at the sight. Geleth. No doubt. Something tenacious, not easily turned away from its purpose. “I need to talk to you about your grandmother.” Then the transporter captured them both, and they were delivered to Cardassia Prime. End of the line.

  • • •

  They walked out of the public transporter station into the heart of the capital city, the heart of the Union. Rugal stopped dead in his tracks. Everything was gray. The sky, the buildings, the faces... And it was hot. Not unpleasantly so, but hot nonetheless. Rugal felt a hand upon his shoulder. He shook it off, blinked, and saw Cardassia come into focus. He began to make out detail, see nuance. The evening sky, darkening from slate gray to obsidian, had a purplish hue, like the petals of indika flowers, or a bruise. The buildings, at first sight ramrod straight and steely, in fact curved with unexpected elegance, and the setting sun burnished them bronze, silver, and gold. There was nothing green, as far as Rugal could see; none of the lush unconquerable life that blessed Ashalla, but lining the wide street ahead there were tall trees with black branches and long copper leaves, and, jarringly, he could hear birdsong.

  And then there were the people. Hundreds upon hundreds, streaming past him in quick but orderly fashion, all of them Cardassian, more than Rugal had ever imagined possible. He stared at them in disbelief—these strange, alien people—and then he realized that many of them were staring back. When they saw him, they turned their heads to carry on looking as they walked past. Rugal put his hand up to his face, partly to comfort himself, partly in defense. How could they tell? He didn’t look Bajoran! Kotan tapped his shoulder. “You might want to take off that earring.”

  Quickly, awkwardly, Rugal reached up and unclasped it. He regretted doing so at once, and he felt angry, as if Kotan had tricked him into a betrayal. He wrapped his hand around it, until the links of the chain dug into his palm, and shoved his hand deep into his pocket. Would it ever be safe to put it back on? Those looks had been curious, judging, but not outright hostile. Did any of these people know what it meant? Did they even think of Bajor at all?

  “There’s our ride. About time, too.” Kotan pointed across the road at a sleek black skimmer. It seemed there would be no waiting around, space-lagged and weary, for a tram into the city, as there would have been in Ashalla with Migdal. Kotan Pa’Dar—Deputy Commissioner for Public Health and a three-term member of the Civilian Assembly—had long since earned the perk of private transport from the Ministry of Science.

  The skimmer was a beautiful machine, a contemporary reworking of a classic design, and the uniformed driver held open the doors for them. Inside, it was finished in leather and polished wood—lunatic extravagance on this resource-poor world—and crisply, cleanly scented. Under other circumstances, Rugal would have been in awe. But he had decided to hate Cardassia, so he had to dislike the skimmer, and he fumbled around for reasons why. Eventually, he settled on its ostentation and the unfairness of their comfortable journey while ordinary Cardassians were crowding onto the shuttles. The sharp edges of his earring had started hurting his hand.

  Kotan switched on the viewer in the arm of his seat. “Won’t be a moment,” he said apologetically. “Have to catch up.” Ministry business, Rugal guessed. Whatever it was, Kotan was quickly absorbed. Rugal stared out the window at the foreign city. Meaningless buildings went by. Rugal pressed a few of the controls on his own viewer, but nothing worked. He sighed and fell back into his seat. A few moments later, the viewer came on of its own accord, displaying a map of the city. Rugal looked up in surprise. He caught the eye of the driver, looking back at him in the rearview mirror, smiling at him. Thanks, Rugal mouthed. He found the little black dot that showed their skimmer, moving along the map, and began to pick out roads and buildings. Offices, monuments, parade grounds. Few parks or gardens; no temples. He didn’t have long to get the lie of the land. After ten metrics, the skimmer entered the Coranum tunnel, the fastest route out to the north of the city for those wealthy or important enough to hold the permits required to use it.

  Everything went dark, then the skimmer was suffused with pale blue light. Kotan switched off his viewer. “So,” he said. “Your grandmother.”

  Rugal shifted uneasily. He had not given thought to the possibility of grandparents before. Migdal and Etra had been middle-aged when they had adopted him; their own parents had long since been lost to the various hardships of Occupation. He wondered how many other new relatives were lurking around. Weren’t Cardassians supposed to be obsessed with family? There would be aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, fourth cousins twice removed; every wall would be covered with holopics and extravagantly detailed family trees going back generations.... Rugal was so caught up imagining the horror of even more unwanted relations that he almost missed hearing how Kotan was afraid of his own mother.

  “She has a way,” Kotan said, “and it’s not always kindly put or kindly meant.... But she does love family. Well. Family is all, as the saying goes.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Rugal ignored Kotan’s eager, involuntary movement at his voice. “But I don’t understand how it can be true. If family really is all to you Cardassians, then why would you have forced me to leave my mother and father? Don’t Bajoran families count in the same way as Cardassian ones?”

  Kotan recoiled. It was almost too easy, Rugal thought. He was pleased for a few seconds, and then he found there was a strange taste in his mouth, sour and metallic. Sometimes he had been sharp with Migdal, a habit picked up from Etra, but he had never been vicious. He made a rough apology. “So you want me to impress this person?”

  “Your grandmother, Rugal. My mother. It would be a minor miracle if you impressed her, but she is our only other living relative.”

  So there weren’t hordes of cousins to be met—that was a relief, and another Cardassian lie had been unmasked: that they all lived together in huge happy families. It explained some of Kotan’s desperation too. The man might be materially wealthy, but if he lacked blood relatives, then by Cardassian standards he was poor. “What’s her name?”

  Kotan leaned forward, pleased that Rugal was taking an interest. “Geleth. She can be hard work, but she’s everything we have.”

  Rugal shrugged. He wouldn’t be here long and, in the meantime, it wouldn’t do any harm to be polite to one old woman. Kotan was still talking, not wasting the opening that had been given. “I know it won’t be easy, coming to Cardassia after all this time, but I’ll do whatever I can. Whatever you need—ask, and I’ll do it. I promise.”

  You could send me home, Rugal thought. Instead he said, “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “There is one thing...”

  “What is it? What can I do?”

  “I want to speak to my mother and father and let them know that I’m safe.”

  There was a pause. Kotan frowned. Rugal, following a gut instinct, came up with the most petulant tone he could manage. “You said whatever I needed.” He had tried that voice with Etra once and once only.

  Kotan bit his lip, clearly troubled by the request but unwilling to refuse outright.

  “Didn’t you mean it?” Rugal persisted. “That you’d do anything?”

  Kotan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. Rugal’s instinct had been right. Kotan had a guilty streak that stretched all the way back to Bajor, and he had never learned how to say no to children. He had never had the chance.

  “All right,” Kotan said. “I’ll do my best. But you must understand—communicating with Bajor has been a sensitive matter since the Occupation en
ded, and it’s become even more delicate since that fiasco over the Circle and the gunrunning...” Rugal looked at him innocently, and Kotan’s mouth twisted into a smile, as if he realized he had been played. “I suspect you don’t quite understand what you’re asking me to do, but, since I promised, I’ll try to keep my word. It might take some time to arrange. Will that do?”

  Rugal considered this. So far as he knew, Kotan had not told him any lies, not yet. The only reason not to trust him was that he was Cardassian. “Yes. But I want to speak to them as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Kotan turned to stare out of his window, a frown etched around the ridges of his face. What did this all mean? Kotan was a powerful man on Cardassia Prime, a member of the Civilian Assembly, a scientific adviser to their civilian ruling body, the Detapa Council. What could make someone like that afraid? Apart from his mother.

  Suddenly, they shot out of the tunnel. Night had fallen, and the sky was black as glass. There were strange stars above that Rugal could not decipher and, behind them, an orange haze had gathered above the hollow containing the city. Suddenly Rugal understood what made Kotan afraid. Everyone on Bajor knew about the Obsidian Order, but they knew it mainly as a force brought down upon Bajorans. Could it be possible that Cardassians treated each other as badly as they had once treated their slaves? He thought about this for a while and then, because Etra’s training was deeply ingrained, he remembered his manners and said, “Thank you.”

  Kotan sighed. “You are most welcome, Rugal.”

  The Pa’Dar house lay, long and low, in extensive grounds on the side of a hill in the north of the city. It was bigger than any building that Rugal had ever been inside, including the temple that he and Migdal had recently been attending, and it was surrounded by greenery. They went into a large hallway, two stories high and tinted yellow and gold by the colored lamps set into the walls. Standing waiting to meet them were three Cardassian women—two young, the other an older woman whom Rugal realized just in time was the housekeeper and not his grandmother. She was delighted to meet him, however, grasping his hand and holding it tightly to her chest. The other two—they constituted the rest of the household staff—looked faintly bored. Rugal suspected they had been pulled away from something more pressing than welcoming back their employer’s long-lost son.