Kotan’s stoop became more pronounced, as if he was also carrying a weight around with him. Rugal stopped with his hand on the door panel and tried to rein himself back. “Yes, they were. Thank you. And thank you for arranging for me to speak to them. I know it was difficult, and I appreciate that you went to so much trouble.”
Kotan opened his hands, as if to say that he was willing to give anything. “I only want you to be happy.”
But I can’t ever be. I won’t ever be, Rugal thought as he made his way upstairs and past the pictures of his other mother. In his room, he lay on the bed on his stomach, staring out the big window, watching the stark sky fade into darkness. Cardassia, he decided, was a world of contradictions. There were grandmothers who claimed to care for nothing but family, but who would rather you were dead. There were conversations you had to pretend were held in secret, when everyone knew they were spied upon. And then there were fathers who said they loved you, but had taken you away from all that you loved.
With a sigh, Rugal rolled over onto his back. Next to the bed there was a bookshelf, lined with real books, not padds or datarods. He pulled one at random off the shelf, picking it chiefly because he liked the dark cover. “For Cardassia!” it began, unpromisingly. He ploughed on grimly, but after a couple of pages, the combination of the evening’s exhausting events and the book’s leaden prose sent him to sleep. Rugal tried on several occasions over the next few years to get to the end of Ulan Corac’s The Never-Ending Sacrifice, but he failed to make it past the first chapter.
Two
The Pa’Dar family home was situated in the Coranum sector of Cardassia City, a fact that seemed of some significance, since Kotan had mentioned it several times with studied carelessness. Rugal did not want to ask questions that would expose his ignorance or incur any debt to Kotan, so he found himself relying on whatever information he could glean from the comnet, and from working out the subtext of the conversations between Geleth and Kotan. Geleth frequently remarked how the house was too close to the Paldar sector for her taste, and from further exchanges, Rugal was able to work out that while they might live in the most exclusive neighborhood in the entire Union, it was by no means the most prestigious part of it, and that this in turn was—by some undefined but well-recognized process—certainly Kotan’s fault.
As far as Rugal was concerned, the house was good enough for the kai. It stood alone in its own grounds, and there were so many rooms and so few of them living there you could not see anyone else for hours at a time, if you wanted. There was nobody upstairs stomping around or whistling while you were trying to get to sleep, and you didn’t have to spend time and energy pretending you couldn’t hear the minute details of other people’s lives. Still, Rugal missed it—the conversations, the fights, the simple reassurance of knowing that there were others only a wall away. He missed everything about Bajor, and Etra and Migdal most of all.
Kotan had enrolled him in an academy, but Rugal had arrived during a long holiday, and it was several weeks before that would start. With Kotan busy most of the day at the ministry and Geleth hidden away with her enigma tales (he hoped), Rugal had a lot of free time on his hands. Kotan suggested he study in advance of starting schooling, but since Rugal didn’t plan to stay on Cardassia for long, he didn’t see the point. The house couldn’t keep him occupied forever, so eventually he ventured out into Coranum. If he had been only a little younger, he could have treated it as a game—the sole brave Bajoran operative undercover on the Cardassian homeworld—but Rugal was too old now for that kind of play and, besides, the reality was more intimidating than anything imagination could conjure up.
For one thing, although he was lonely, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he wasn’t entirely alone. As he went about Coranum, he could always hear the soft whir of security devices tracking his progress, or he would hear faint voices and turn a corner to come face-to-face with an oval public screen, burbling out news and opinion that he mistrusted simply because a Cardassian was relaying it. It was all very disconcerting, as if someone always knew where he was going and what he was doing, and suggesting to him what he should be thinking.
Then there were the houses. Geleth had been right—the Pa’Dar residence might as well have been a doll’s house compared to the homes farther up the hill. Vast and spacious, they lay within elegantly manicured grounds, presenting grand fronts to the long sweeping avenues that curved through the sector. Rugal hardly ever saw any people: the residents of Coranum moved seamlessly from their palaces to their private skimmers to their businesses and offices in Barvonok and Tarlak, largely untroubled by the wider world. Now and then, he spotted a gardener or laborer at work, but they did not respond to his greetings, and always hurried away. He wondered if Cardassia still had something like the old D’jarra system. It would not have surprised him if it did, and that was another point in Bajor’s favor. The Bajorans had rid themselves of an unjust caste system when it proved to be nothing more than convention, an excuse for the powerful to stay powerful. Etra would not have married Migdal if the old system had been in place.
Yet there were some things that, grudgingly, Rugal had to admit he liked. The different sunlight meant he was getting fewer headaches, and he appreciated the warmth. He kept a close eye on all this, and whenever he caught himself enjoying his surroundings too much, he would press his earring against his palm and let its sharp edges remind him of what and who he really was. But sometimes it felt as if his body was trying to betray him, make him believe it was natural for him to be here. Was it natural? That was what the commander on Deep Space 9 had thought—and so did Kotan, obviously—that it was right for him to be back among his own kind. But Rugal knew these weren’t his kind—he only had to talk to Geleth for a moment to know that. Cardassians were vicious and heartless, and lacked whatever gene carried compassion. They were the complete opposite of Bajorans. Bajorans were the kind of people who would adopt children abandoned by those who had almost ruined their beautiful, benevolent world.
That was what Rugal thought about most as he wandered around Coranum. All this wealth, all this magnificence—it hadn’t come out of thin air. It had come from somewhere else; it had been taken from somewhere else. Rugal had studied hard in his history classes because he felt he owed it to Bajor. All this grandeur, he guessed, had been built on the back of Bajoran sweat and tears, Bajoran labor and loss. It was not right to look at it for too long; you could become accustomed to it, you could forget what you knew. The heart of an empire is often beautiful to behold—and cruel to contemplate.
Three weeks after Rugal arrived on Cardassia Prime, he met Penelya. He had spent the morning walking along one of the great arcs of road that looped around the sector, stopping now and then to study a particularly beautiful mansion, peering through green and scarlet foliage to glimpse cool rich buildings beyond. After an hour or so, he came to a point where another road struck off at a tangent. At the point where the two avenues met, there was a garden tucked away behind a wall of dark green, leafy shrubs which he was fairly certain were called mekla bushes. He would know for sure in the spring, if they flowered scarlet, if he was still here. He had often stopped here on his walks. There was a bench carved in an interesting swirling pattern with bright blue and red stones embedded in it that played tricks with his eyes if he stared too long but that also helped him think. There was also a small oval newsscreen in the wall too, but the sound was set low and he could easily pretend he couldn’t hear it, or he could listen if he had been alone too long.
Rugal slipped through the gate, walked along the short path—and then saw someone sitting on his bench. A Cardassian girl, about his own age, he guessed, although he had not met nearly enough to judge for sure. She was slightly built, all angles, and her dark brown hair was somewhat shorter and arranged in a plainer fashion than Geleth’s. She was hunched over a padd, frowning, and she obviously hadn’t heard him arrive. He didn’t want to startle her, but he did want to sit down. Very politely, he coughe
d.
She looked up in alarm. Her eyes—they were brown too—went wide, and she jumped off the bench, holding the padd in front of her like a piece of armor. Rugal held up both hands to show he was no threat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Her lips pursed; her eyes narrowed beneath their ridges. He gave her what he hoped was an unthreatening smile. “I’m not frightened,” she said. “I didn’t hear you, is all.”
“Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve been walking around all morning.”
Obviously she wanted to refuse, but couldn’t think of a way of doing it that wouldn’t be outright rude. Instead she sighed, tutted, and sat down again at the farthest end of the bench. “If you must.”
Rugal was used to Geleth by now and decided not to take it personally. On this upside-down planet, insults almost counted as gestures of affection. If any Cardassian ever took the trouble to be nice to him, then he would worry. The girl made a show of returning to her reading, but every so often she shot him sharp, angry glares over her padd. Was this some kind of custom he knew nothing about? Did he have to speak first? What did people make small talk about on Cardassia? On Bajor, everyone talked about politics or religion or the grace-hound racing. Since she was unlikely to know anything about the latter, and both the former seemed provocative and possibly seditious, Rugal fell back on something safe.
“It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
The girl abandoned any pretence of reading. She threw her padd on the bench and looked at him as if he were foaming at the mouth. “Are you some kind of idiot?”
So much for playing it safe.
“I mean,” she said furiously, “who in all the Union talks about the weather?”
“I talk about the weather!”
“You could have asked me my name, you could have asked me what I was reading, you could have told me you owned this garden and that I should get out—”
“But I don’t own it! Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you to get out—”
“But, oh no! Instead you sit there and ask me what I think about the weather. There’s not much I can do with that, is there? I have to have something to work with.”
Rugal leaned back into the bench. “We can quarrel if you like,” he said peaceably, “but it’s still a nice day.”
Suddenly, she relaxed. She put the padd down, tucked one leg beneath her, and smiled. “Yes, it is, it’s absolutely glorious. I love being out in late summer, and I love this garden—although it’s prettier in the spring when the mekla is in flower.”
“Oh! So it is called mekla!”
“Of course it’s called mekla, what did you think it was called?”
“I wasn’t sure. I’ve only seen pictures. They didn’t have it where I grew up.”
That grabbed her attention. She leaned in eagerly. “Didn’t you grow up on Prime?”
“No.”
“I didn’t either. I grew up on Ithic—my name’s Penelya, by the way—where did you grow up?”
“On Bajor.” He was pleased when she looked interested and not horrified. “And my name’s Rugal.”
Quickly, they gave each other their stories. Penelya was almost as new to Cardassia Prime as Rugal. Until early the previous year, she had been living on Ithic II, a colony in the DMZ. Her parents had been farmers; Ithic was an agricultural world of the kind that Cardassia Prime depended on for food. Penelya had come to Prime to study agronomy, a well-respected and necessary science. She was extremely anxious that Rugal was clear about that, so he nodded vigorously that he understood. She was now living with her father’s brother and his large family in Coranum. Her uncle, Mikor, had inherited the family home and was something significant at the Ministry of Justice. Her studies had been progressing well, and then, disaster—or, more accurately, the Maquis—had struck Ithic II. Penelya’s parents had been among the dead.
“It was lucky I was here, I suppose.” She ran her fingertip around one of the blue stones in the bench. “Although sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if I’d been killed as well. It’s difficult, sometimes, being... well, you know.”
Being an orphan. “It’s always better to be alive,” Rugal said gently.
“Mm.” Penelya picked up her padd and played with the controls. “What’s your story?”
He gave her a quick sketch: how he had been born on Bajor, adopted by Bajorans, and brought up to think of himself as Bajoran. Then his Cardassian father discovered he was alive and came to collect him. Penelya’s eyes shone at this resolution to his narrative. “It’s like a children’s story!” she said in delight. “He came and found you! Oh, but wasn’t it a scandal? That you’d been left behind?”
Rugal thought better of explaining Dukat’s part in his disappearance and the uneasy standoff between him and Kotan. It might be dangerous for Penelya to be in possession of that kind of information. “Kotan—my biological father—is pretty important too,” he said as a general explanation. “At the Ministry of Science. And he’s a member of the Civilian Assembly too. I think that’s what it’s called. Something in politics, anyway.”
“Everyone around here is something in politics,” Penelya said, with the deep wisdom of fifteen years. “Unless they’re military. Not that there’s much difference sometimes. Is that what you’re going to do? Something in politics?”
Rugal blinked. He hadn’t given the matter any thought. He was going back to Bajor as soon as it could be arranged.
“You don’t look too sure,” Penelya said. “Have you got other plans?”
“Yes...” He chewed at his lip. She was encouraging and warm, and by far the friendliest person he had met on Cardassia Prime. Could he trust her? “I want to go back home.” Seeing her confusion, he explained. “Back to Bajor. That’s my home, where my mother and father are—my real mother and father.”
He watched her struggle with these new ideas. “I suppose...” she said, at last, “that’s how I feel about Ithic. It’s my home, rather than Prime. I mean, it’s where I’d most like to be. I suppose there’s no reason not to feel the same about Bajor. It’s just that it’s, well... it’s Bajor.” She thought a while longer. “Perhaps that shouldn’t make any difference either. What was it like, being a Cardassian there?”
Rugal would defend his adopted planet to all questioners, but because Penelya had gone to the trouble of trying to understand, he gave her question a real answer. “Sometimes it was hard,” he admitted. “People got angry at Mother and Father for adopting me.” They’d been spat at in the street on numerous occasions, particularly in smaller provincial towns, and he had been an easy target at school, until he became able and willing to hit back. “It must have a lot in common with being an orphan here. You don’t fit in with people’s expectations. You’re not quite the same as they are, and because of that you make them feel uncomfortable. But instead of trying to understand what you are, for yourself, they dislike you for making them feel uncomfortable. That’s what it was like, sometimes. But it’s still my home.”
He glanced at her nervously. Her smile had turned wry and knowing. She did understand, he thought, with a rush of relief. They may have had different journeys, but they were both in exile here.
Later, he walked her back to the gates of her uncle’s house. “Let’s meet again,” Penelya said. “You’re much nicer than my cousins. They shout a lot, and as for their friends...” She shuddered. “But I like you. You’re nothing like a Cardassian male.”
“That’s because I’m Bajoran.”
She laughed at that and he didn’t mind. “Of course! I won’t forget, Rugal. I promise.”
As a matter of courtesy, and because he didn’t want to cause Kotan trouble while he was there, Rugal mentioned his meeting with Penelya that evening over dinner. As expected, Kotan knew the family. “Mikor Khevet’s niece—yes, I heard about her. Sad business about the parents.”
“We agreed to meet again. That’s not a problem, is it?”
“No, no, they’re a good family. Th
ank you for asking. You’re not thinking of marrying her, are you?”
Rugal put down his spoon and gaped. “I’ve only met her once!”
“Nevertheless, it’s something to bear in mind. An orphan for a wife would almost certainly bar you from some of the higher positions of state.”
“Based on our single conversation, my impression was that she wouldn’t be interested in coming back to Bajor with me, so—no, I’m not thinking of marrying her.”
Kotan ignored the gibe. “A friendship, however, could be interpreted favorably. It might even get you an invitation from Khevet. You ought to meet his sons, they’re your cohort after all, and that’s likely to be useful, given you’ve missed out on schooling with them for all this time.... No, I can’t see any problems in cultivating a friendship—just save yourself a world of trouble and don’t fall in love with the girl. I imagine Khevet will be shipping her back out to the farm as soon as it’s safe. Generous of him to take her in—not to mention pay for her education—but I suppose he gets a farm manager out of it, and a grateful relative is better than hiring a complete stranger.... Do you know how much money those colony farms bring in? An absolute fortune. It’s true what they say—nobody ever went poor selling food on Cardassia.” His analysis complete, Kotan went back to removing a wing from his petha fowl.
Rugal was speechless. Luckily, Geleth always had something to bring to the conversation. “Thank goodness he did take her in. These stray children, hanging around the streets at all hours, day and night—they’re a disgrace. You should do something about it, Kotan.”
“Strange as it may seem, Mother, the regulation of orphans does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science. It is, thankfully, somebody else’s problem.”
“Then whoever that somebody is ought to get on with the business of dealing with them. Lock them up, or make them join the military—I don’t know! But they should be contributing somehow. They can’t expect to be fed and housed for nothing. Cardassia doesn’t have enough to spare.” She eyed Rugal. “It’s a pity more of them weren’t born on Bajor. Too late to ship them all over there now, I suppose.”
Star Trek: DS9: The Never-Ending Sacrifice Page 4