None of which, Rugal thought, biting deeply into the bittersweet fruit, answered the immediate question: What was he going to do now? Bajor was not an option; it had only been home with Etra and Migdal, and they were long since at peace. There was little point in hurrying back to Manea; the Lotos was gone, and it could be weeks or months before another ship came past Ithic that would be willing to take a Cardassian on board. Most likely it would be another refugee ship, and that was not a way of life he would choose willingly again. Manea itself was not an option: like Ellen, he had been uneasy there, unsure why there were no Cardassians to be seen, when the last ship to come to Ithic had reported that there were. Littleport had been deserted, and he didn’t like the idea of haunting it. Besides, at some point, the humans would return, trying to rebuild their homes and livelihoods. Once the humans were back, a single Cardassian would certainly be unwelcome, and probably a target.
A great loneliness washed over him then; a sense of isolation and disconnection that ripped the breath away from him. He slid down to sit with his back supported by the trunk of the tree. There was nowhere to go; there was nobody left to be with. The house behind him was empty, the land around him deserted. All the time on the Lotos, Ellen had kept on saying that he shouldn’t hide away, that it wasn’t good for him—and as he sat there, winded, he understood why. There was nothing else to think about but the losses—Penelya, Tret, Arric, Serna, Tela, Kotan. His whole world. There was nothing to distract him from these absences, nothing to help him forget. He should have stayed on the Lotos, and let himself take comfort in the company of strangers. Or he should have done his duty and stayed with those bewildered refugees from Destiny. Not his duty as an officer of the Second Order, not even his duty as a medic, but something more fundamental—a duty to life, to care for it and not to squander it. He could have done some good there. Now it was too late. He had been set on this futile quest, this belief that he would find his girl and go home in triumph, and it had been a great delusion.
He sat for a while counting the pips at the core of the fruit until his mind was empty once again. Some sense of proportion, of practicality, returned to him. He had expended a great deal of energy to get here, and probably the best thing for him to do now was to stay. There were fences, the wall—he would be safe. This had been a farm. He could work out how to sustain himself over the coming months and then, when the Lotos returned, he would go with it. Perhaps by then he might have worked out what he was supposed to do with himself. That was the great dilemma. What was he supposed to do, now that the world had ended? What were any of them supposed to do?
At first, what he chiefly did was sleep. The upstairs room at the back had been Penelya’s—her clothes were hanging in the closet, and there was a pair of her work boots still crusted in mud. He claimed that room for his own. He found some of his own messages sent after she had come back, and was ashamed to discover the stiff note of reproach that rang through them. No wonder she had stopped replying.
He made a slow, not entirely effective effort to tidy up the house. He picked up the chair that had been kicked over—that was a start, at least. He opened windows so that the cool air of autumn could clear away the mustiness that lingered like gas around the small rooms, and he covered over the cracks of the broken one rather than fix it. Some days it was difficult to do anything, even to get out of bed. He would lie and think about the time he had lived in Torr, busy with work and surrounded by people. It had, on reflection, been the happiest time of his life. One day, when the wind had picked up, he sat on the step watching yellow leaves drift slowly down from the trees to cover the grass. He sat there for hours, until he realized how cold he had become. But he went and sat there most evenings, because there was more to look at outside. For a while, he listened to transmissions picked up on the comm that Ellen had given him. One day he realized he had stopped. He wasn’t listening for survivors anymore.
One evening, about a fortnight after he had arrived at the farm, he was sitting as usual on the step, when he thought he saw movement among the fruit trees. “You’re imagining things,” he said out loud (he had long since started talking to himself). “Still, better take a closer look.”
The light was dimming. He had to strain his eyes to make out anything in the shadows. It was probably an animal, but Rugal didn’t know whether the wildlife on Ithic was large, small, herbivorous, or predatory. He picked up a branch lying by him on the ground and took a few steps closer to the trees.
“Is there somebody there?”
There was a rustle of leaves, and then everything went suspiciously still.
“I’m friendly. I know I don’t look it, but I am. You don’t have to be afraid.”
There was no reply and nothing moved.
“If you were going to kill me, I think you would have done it by now. I don’t mean you any harm. Why not come out and talk to me? If you have news, I’d like to hear it.” He took a step or two forward closer to the trees, and then stopped again. He stretched out his arm to hold the branch away from him, so that he no longer seemed armed. “I’ll put this down if that will make you feel better. I don’t want to fight. Not any longer. I’m guessing you don’t either.”
He inched forward, silently, still holding the branch away from him. In truth, he felt slightly foolish. It would probably turn out to be some small creature foraging in the undergrowth. Catching another slight movement, he took a quick step toward it, reached out, and grabbed whatever it was out of its cover.
It was a human child, female, thin and dirty, with big brown eyes. Rugal stared at her. She stared back. His right hand was full of her shirt; his left hand was clutching the branch like it was his best chance at survival. He felt faintly ridiculous—she was hardly the wild beast of his imagination. He gave a small laugh, more a release of tension than anything else. She gave him a furious look. Then she bit him on the hand.
“Ah!” Rugal let go of her, pulling his hand back to his chest. She seized the opportunity and ran. Rugal didn’t chase her. “It’s all right!” he called after the fleeing shadow. “I don’t like Cardassians much either. But you’re safe with me.”
It didn’t make her come back, but then he hadn’t been expecting it would. Back in the house, he cleaned up the bite—she hadn’t done any damage to speak of—and then made himself some supper. On a whim, he got out a second plate, and piled some food on it. Then he went down to the trees and left it there, in case she came his way again.
The next morning the food had gone, but the plate was there. It had even been washed. Rugal thought that showed scruples, not to mention manners. He left something out the next night, and the next, and so it went on for more than a week. Each morning he got up to find a clean plate left on the step. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, he supposed, perhaps a little too much like leaving out food for a hound. But the nights were getting markedly colder, and he was concerned for this child, out by herself in the wild. He wondered if there was a way of tempting her inside. He certainly meant her no harm, but he was not sure how he could convince her that she was safe around this particular Cardassian.
He was never quite sure when she was nearby, but he decided to work on the assumption that she was there most of the time. He started clearing up the garden so that he had an excuse to be outside talking to her. He told her his name—he had got into the habit of calling himself Pa’Dar now, so he used that—and said that he had come here to find a friend. “Her name’s Penelya. She’s Cardassian, like me. Did you know her? She lived here. She’s clever and funny and her eyes are brown. I wish I could find her. More than anything, I wish I could find her.”
But the girl never answered. Sometimes he thought he heard her moving among the trees, but it could have been the breeze. He kept on talking anyway. “I walked here all the way from Manea. Do you know Manea? Have you been there? I didn’t stay there long. They didn’t like Cardassians much. I don’t know what the Cardassians did to them. I don’t think I want to know—Cardassians can d
o terrible things. I bet Penelya didn’t do anything. I hope they haven’t hurt her. Do you know anything about what happened to her?”
Eventually he gave up asking questions and began describing how he had got here. Now that he had started talking, it was proving difficult to stop. He kept the gorier details of his journeys to a minimum. He didn’t know what she had seen in the last days of the war, but he didn’t want to add to it. “I didn’t come to Ithic until a few weeks ago. Before that I was traveling around on a cargo ship. I don’t know if you’ve ever been off Ithic. It’s hard out there right now, since the war. Our ship traveled around delivering supplies. None of the governments can do it right now, but people still get hungry even if there isn’t a government around to do anything about it. Ithic is one of the prettiest places I’ve seen. At least, it is around here. I didn’t like Manea, and I don’t like the rest of this farm. And some of the other worlds were grim.”
Once again, his mind had wandered back to the horrors.
“Aren’t you cold? I know humans are better with the cold than we are, but I’m freezing out here these days. You can come and sit by the heater whenever you want. I won’t stop you and I won’t hurt you. Of course, you could have an even better heater yourself, as far as I know. You could have a palace on the other side of that hill. I haven’t been that way yet. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. Walk across and take a look at the other side of the hill.”
He didn’t. The next day he was exhausted, not from the work he had been doing in the garden, but because he had dreamt of Tret, lying in the snow. He was worried he had done something wrong when he had left him; worried that he missed some important ritual that he had never had the chance to learn. It seemed to matter very much all of a sudden, in a way it hadn’t when they had gone out to Anaret and buried Geleth’s ashes. The way it had mattered when Darrah Bajin had told him that they had said all the right prayers over Migdal’s body. Rugal didn’t believe in gods or prophets, but he wanted to show respect. There wasn’t much else you could do in this life.
That afternoon, he sat on the step with a blanket around him. “I’m sad today,” he told the girl who might not even be there. “I keep thinking about a friend of mine. He died right at the end of the war. I know, here,” he thumped his fingers too hard against his head, “that it wasn’t my fault, but I can’t help thinking that if I’d only tried harder, I might have got him farther. We might have both made it. He got lied to, he got told he was doing a great thing, an important thing—and then the people who told him that lie left him to die in the cold. That’s why I’m sad today.” Rugal looked over at the spot among the trees where the girl sometimes hid. He couldn’t tell whether or not she was there. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not really. Not after the end of the world. “If there’s anyone left that you love, make sure you tell them that. And if you don’t have anyone left”—he held out his empty hands—“you’re not the only one.”
Rugal stopped talking. He put his arms across his knees and rested his forehead on them. He wanted to be asleep. No, not asleep—he might dream if he were asleep. He wanted to be unconscious. He wanted not to be anywhere any longer. He wanted oblivion. If he could go back to Ogyas now, he would lie down next to Tret and let the snow cover him. It would be better than being alive, because it would not hurt.
“The house was empty when I got here.” A small voice, a girl’s, not much more than a child’s, high and clear in the evening air. “Everyone had already gone.”
Rugal lifted his head. The girl was standing in front of him—out of arm’s reach, and half turned away, ready to make a run for it. “I don’t know what happened to your girlfriend. Everyone had gone by the time I got here.”
Slowly, trying not to startle her, Rugal straightened up. The girl was watching every move he made. He put his hands out flat on his knees so that she could see that they were empty and that he wasn’t a threat. “Thanks for telling me.”
She shifted onto one foot. “Sorry I don’t know what happened.”
“It helps to know you didn’t see her killed. She might still be somewhere.”
The girl pulled a face. Not likely. How old was she? If she had been Bajoran, Rugal would have said twelve or thirteen. She was thin and grimy, and her eyes were huge in a small brown face. Around her head she had a scarf that she was clutching tightly closed at her throat. One or two strands of hair had got loose from their cover and were hanging dark and lank around her cheeks. She was badly in need of a wash.
“My name’s Rugal.”
“I know. Rugal Pa’Dar, although when you lived on Bajor you were called Proka Rugal. My name’s Hulya. Are you going to be staying here?”
“I thought I would, for a while. Is that all right with you?”
She shrugged. “How long is a while?”
“A few months—six, maybe eight. Some friends of mine—the people who brought me here—are meant to be coming back to Ithic then. So I’ll be around at least that long. My friend who lived here wouldn’t mind if I stayed here. Is it all right with you?”
“I suppose so. It isn’t my house.”
“All right then. Thank you.” They stared at each other. “Are you going to stand there all evening or are you going to come inside? I was going to make something to eat.”
She hesitated for a moment longer, and then made her decision and came to join him. Rugal shifted along the step so that there was room for her to sit beside him. “Hello, Hulya,” he said, when she arrived. “It’s good to meet you at last.” He held up his palm. She looked at it, and then grasped hold of it and shook it. So that was how humans greeted each other, he thought, as she pumped his hand up and down. It wasn’t so different after all.
“Hello, Rugal,” she said. Letting go of his hand, she leaned back on the step, propping herself up on her elbows, feet dangling. “So... what’s for supper tonight?”
The first thing he did was insist she take a bath. She didn’t complain and in fact welcomed it; living rough had lost whatever charm it might once have had for her. While she was splashing around, he found clothes for her in Penelya’s closet. They were far too big for her and in a style that had been popular in Cardassia City three or four years ago. They would have looked just fine on Penelya, but on Hulya they were odd, as if she was wearing someone else’s skin on top of her own. But they were clean and dry, and a considerable improvement on her own gear, currently being cleaned to within an inch of its life.
Later, she sat at the kitchen table with a towel wrapped around her wet hair and watched him warm up soup from packets that had he had brought from Littleport. She was less than impressed. “How long are you planning to live off this stuff?” she said. “It’s junk.”
“I know. But the replicator doesn’t work.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s broken.”
“Why haven’t you fixed it? You fixed the generator.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
She looked even less impressed. “You’d better do that first thing in the morning,” she told him. “We’re going to need it over the winter. You don’t look like the kind of person who can get a farm up and running again. You’ve not even picked the fruit. Not properly, anyway. It’s horrible watching it all go to waste.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I don’t want to go hungry, that’s all. Not when it starts getting cold.”
“Oh, it won’t get that cold.”
“Yes, it will!”
“Not as cold as where I was a year ago.”
“Yeah?” That piqued her interest. “Where was that?”
Rugal hesitated with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t meant to talk about Ogyas to this child. But it was always at the forefront of his mind. “A place called Ogyas. It’s a very long way from here.”
“Was that where your friend died?”
He stared across the table at her in dismay. “What?”
“You
r friend. The one you were talking about earlier. You said he died at the end of the war and that’s why you were sad.”
Rugal put down his spoon. “Yes, that’s where he died.”
“What was his name?”
“Tret Khevet. He was a dalin in the Fourth Division, Second Order. We went to school together and we ended up in the military together. He was good at rikot and he had a girlfriend on Cardassia Prime. They were going to be joined as soon as he got leave.”
Tret’s girlfriend. He had forgotten about her. Eretis. Tret had carried a holopicture of her around with him, and the last time he received a message from her, she had been talking about the house she had found for them in Coranum. A house big enough for a real Cardassian family with a hero father and a devoted mother and lots of servants so that everything could be done properly and look right. Would Tret have liked that, after Ogyas? Would it have come as a relief? Or would it have seemed facile after all he had seen? Rugal had forgotten about Eretis. Was there anyone else to remember her, that pretty, bubbly, unmemorable young woman, or was he the only one left who had known her? That would be bad luck for Eretis. Rugal had shed more tears over the Rejals’ dog.
“I suppose she’s dead too,” Rugal said. “Everyone’s dead. Tret got shot on the last day of the war.” He picked up his spoon again and ate mechanically for a while. When he looked up at Hulya, he saw that she had stopped eating and was staring at him with wide, scared eyes. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’ll try not to do it again.”
“Okay.” She relaxed, a little, and carried on eating.
“What happened to your friends and family, Hulya? Why are you by yourself?”
She didn’t answer right away. Perhaps he shouldn’t press her while they had only just made friends. He started to tell her that they didn’t have to talk about it, but she had already started. “Everything was all right for a while. There were people looking after us.” She shot him a quick look. “Maquis, you know?”
Star Trek: DS9: The Never-Ending Sacrifice Page 25