STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  Gradually, and with great difficulty, my eyes adjusted and I found myself standing in the middle of an immense glass atrium filled with exotic plants and flowers, surrounded by countless groups of people engaged in earnest conversation. The openness of the space, the different levels, the soft, diffused light was a welcome relief after my confined and dark journey. The sight of artfully arranged Edosian orchids in the middle of the room lifted my heart and almost made me cry. The people were attractive and animated; I wanted to hear what they were saying.

  “Go ahead, Elim. Feel free.” Kel was standing next to me. Had I voiced my desire to mingle and be a part of this pleasant, civilized gathering? As I scanned the room, looking for a group to join, a thin figure caught my attention in an alcove bordered with vines. His back was turned to me and he was laughing at something someone in his group has said. At the exact moment of my recognition, he turned and looked directly at me. Julian! He nodded to me and indicated that I should join him and his group. He’s not a Cardassian, I thought, what’s he doing here? I immediately began to make my way through the crowd, but my progress was impeded by the thick groupings. I desperately tried to keep Dr. Bashir in my sightline, but the increasing number of people made it almost impossible.

  “Julian!” I cried, but my voice couldn’t rise above the din of the room. I found myself wedged in between several groups and unable to move. All requests to pass through were ignored, and I began to feel that I was invisible to these people. No one reacted or paid the slightest bit of attention to me. My breath came in shorter gasps and the familiar panic was constricting me with its icy grip. The room was becoming darker and the bright, intelligent people fading to shadows. My head was spinning and I suddenly wondered why I had come to this place to die.

  “Elim. What a pleasure to see you again.”

  The voice shot through me like an electric charge. I turned and a shadowy, shimmering Tolan Garak was standing in front of me. He was dressed in an archaic robe worn by people engaged in Oralian ceremonies, and his appearance, although incomplete, suggested a man in his prime. Kel was standing behind him, her solid figure in contrast to his wavering shadow. Everyone had disappeared and we were standing in a smaller space that resembled the Lakarian City room where I had encountered Kel and Cronal Gys.

  “Father,” I whispered. The sight of him transported me to a simpler time, when I believed that Tolan was my father and that I would follow in his footsteps and become a gardener. “I’ve missed you.”

  Tolan studied me with his appraising kindness, and as he was about to say something, his body began to break up and fade like a faulty transmission. I looked at Kel, who was studying the walls of the room. The Hebitian frieze, celebrating the cycles of life, that I had first seen with her mother, Palandine, so long ago was beginning to appear at the bottom of one corner and move continuously around the walls, higher and higher on a diagonal, until the beginning began to disappear at the top of the same corner. The frieze was growing into a proud processional of ancient Hebitians displaying their prowess in every activity that sustains life. One of the dominant figures was Tolan, dressed in the same robe and cultivating a field of his beloved Edosian orchids.

  “If they are able to understand how connected they are ...” I realized that Tolan was speaking to me. “... if they can accept the connection, then the tribes can come together, they can celebrate ...” His words wavered and faded with his body, but the frieze was now fully energized and moving more rapidly along the walls. New figures entered from the bottom and joined the half-naked Hebitians engaged in their traditional arts, trades, and crafts. These new arrivals were the survivors of modern Cardassia; the same farmers and herders, soldiers and mercenaries, fundamentalists and imperialists—even the surviving plague victims—that gathered in the Imperial Parade Grounds of the Tarlak Sector to hear me speak. They all joined in the procession that now filled the walls with metadimensional activity.

  To accommodate this explosion of life, representing the entire history of Cardassia, the walls of the room expanded to the point where the three of us were dwarfed by the immensity and fullness of the spectacle. Nothing was left out. Creation was balanced by destruction, compassion by greed, love by hate. All acts were depicted, sublime and depraved. Heroes and sages appeared with despots and murderers. Nothing was left out.

  The people who had filled the room when I first entered this place with Kel began to appear and join this stream of life. These charming and attractive people were the souls of the dead, I realized, who had been waiting for their place in the processional. And was it for my benefit that certain individuals were thrown into sharp relief? At first I experienced a great heaviness when I recognized Maladek and flashed to when we were probes on Tohvun III ... then Toran and Entek, men I had murdered after I was exiled to Terok Nor ... Barkan, who I once worshipped ... and many more Cardassian souls I had dispatched to this place. But they marched in the procession with such pride of place, in the fullness of their youth and power, and with a dignity that’s traveled far beyond my murderous acts.

  My heart lightened when I saw Alon Ghernor, a great patriot and founder of the Reunion Project; Damar, the enemy who became my friend; Ziyal, the daughter of another enemy, who touched me in a way I didn’t think was possible again. My feelings were more mixed when I saw Tain, my real father (even in death he seemed so sure of himself and his legacy), and Mila, the mother who pushed me to follow Tain’s path. And while the path was lonely and painful, somehow she possessed the magic, and the will, to appear in many forms and to guide me at crucial moments.

  And Palandine ... so open and alive. The great empty place in my heart. Even now, I want to join you and walk together. Even now ...

  I can’t hear Tolan’s words, but I can see them in the unity of the frieze. Everyone is included, everyone is connected in the “great summing up” that Hebitians speak of as part of their daily life. Everyone is connected to his or her action and to each other. Cardassians—and I suddenly looked at my hands and my arms and felt my chest and groin and remembered that I was a Cardassian again—moving ahead, accepting the summing up, and at the same time returning to a desire to be awake and responsible for the choices that collect and form a civilization. There are no separations here, no breaks in the continuity.

  In the minds of the living, we think we can interrupt the flow of life with acts of alienation that we justify and rationalize. War is a logical extension of diplomacy, someone once suggested. One can argue that murder is a moral act, even an extreme form of friendship. After all, I killed a person I loved. But here, in this Vinculum, as I watch all the souls who have gone before, it’s clear that this separation, this alienation from the continuum, is our greatest illusion. It’s simply a choice: We can live and die as separate beings, pain and suffering guaranteed—or we can merge and unify. Either way, it’s all part of the procession, the living and the dead flowing together, collapsing time and unifying experience. Spiraling up, we move inexorably to recycle on another level.

  “Are you still working with the orchids, Elim?” Tolan’s apparition is barely visible.

  “Not for a long time,” I reply. He nods and smiles.

  “Cultivate what’s left. And teach someone else the method.”

  “I will,” I say.

  “Do you still have the mask?” he asks. Tolan means the recitation mask he gave me just before he died. Hebitian poets wore these masks at the festivals that celebrated Oralius, the spiritual entity that guided their community.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “Wear it the next time you speak, Elim. It will help remind them.” Tolan reaches out his hand and holds it over my forehead. Slowly, he disappears completely. A suffusing glow radiates from directly overhead. The winged creature is suspended above us in a great domed space and is turned toward a sun disc from which the light emanates. Extending down from the creature’s body are countless tendrils that enter all the bodies of the now-halted processional as well as Kel’s bo
dy and mine. My last image is Tolan and Tain standing together with all the others spiraling up into infinity, contemplating the sun disc and the creature whose face is covered by the recitation mask.

  “Are you alright, Elim?” Dr. Parmak’s concerned eyes are peering into mine. “Elim? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Doctor, no need to shout.” I’m stretched out on a pallet in a room I don’t recognize. “Where am I?”

  “An old family home. What happened to you, Elim? And how did they know to bring you here?” Parmak is relieved by my response, but his confusion remains.

  “ ‘They’?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Who brought me here?” As I raised myself from the pallet, I felt a stabbing pain between my eyes.

  “I have no idea. A person I had never seen before told me that there was a ... a situation involving you, and somehow he knew that the house was uninhabited.” Parmak cocks his head to his left shoulder when he doesn’t know something. “He made it very clear that I wasn’t to tell anyone about your return. What happened on Earth, Elim?”

  “Yes, Earth,” I murmured, and I recalled how Dr. Bashir had once spoken those words. It was another lifetime. Another mission. Parmak studied me as I stood up and stretched my tight and aching body—somehow it had returned to its Cardassian form. And I’m not upset that it’s older than I remember. “But I’m here now, Doctor. At long last. And there’s much work to do.”

  “Indeed, there is,” he agreed.

  I looked at him, wondering how I could ever explain. Parmak was a scientist; he believed that we can reconstruct a society based solely on a rational model. He had no idea that before he could even get to that point, we had to surrender everything. Only then could we begin to move toward the unified vision Tolan unfolded for me in the Vinculum.

  “... where the pain of one is felt by all,” I spoke aloud. Parmak was clearly unnerved by my behavior.

  “All very mysterious, I must say. Perhaps I should contact Pythas.”

  “No!” I responded immediately. “Don’t tell anyone that I’m here. Not even your Federation contact.”

  Parmak is shocked. His mouth opens, but words won’t follow.

  “Yes, I know,” I replied gently. “Dr. Bashir told me during our first meeting in the Vinculum.”

  “You understand ...” he stammered. “I meant no ...”

  “I do understand, Doctor. When you sent me to the Vinculum to find a plague cure, you also meant for me to encounter Dr. Bashir so that I would make an accommodation with the Federation.”

  “Did you find him?” Parmak asked.

  “On that first trip, yes. Since then, we’ve lost all contact. But now it’s vital that you tell no one that I’ve returned.”

  “But surely Pythas—”

  “No one,” I interrupted. “It is also vital that I find a way of getting to Lakarian City as soon as possible.”

  “Lakarian City,” Parmak repeats. I knew how desperately he wants to ask why.

  “There’s much work to do, yes. But more important, it’s work that we’ve never done before ... or, not for a long time,” I corrected myself.

  Parmak nodded. He’s a good man, I thought. I just didn’t know if he was strong enough to take the next step of this journey.

  I didn’t know if I was.

  Epilogue

  You see, my dear Julian, the ancient Hebitians not only had access to the Vinculum, but the Vinculum was an integral part of their living reality. Everything was connected ... and it still is, despite the fact, that many of us deny it.

  If you have any need to contact me, you know how. In the meantime, I send you my warmest regards.

  Elim

  Revisited, Part Two

  Anonymous

  Daylight poured through the window, casting shadows that moved restlessly across the rug—a dance of leaves caught in the morning breeze.

  Melanie looked up at Jake, her eyes moist. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Jake smiled. “You’re a good listener. That’s important in a writer.”

  She looked away. “I’m not a writer yet.”

  “Sounds like you’re waiting for something to happen that’s going to turn you into one,” Jake observed.

  “I’m not waiting,” she protested, then shrugged. “I’m doing a lot of reading. You know, to see how it’s done. And ... I’m still trying to figure out what I want to write about.”

  “I see,” Jake said. He watched her for a moment, then made a decision. “I want you to see something. Go over to my desk.”

  Melanie hesitated, but then did as he instructed. When she saw what was on top of the desk, she looked up at him.

  “Go ahead,” he encouraged. “It’s a collection of new stories.”

  Melanie picked up the manuscript and looked at the title page. “Prophecy and Change. Is this ... is this about ... ?”

  “The people I knew on Deep Space 9,” Jake confirmed. “Some of them anyway. I guess you could say it’s part of the ‘unofficial record.’ I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to publish it. Now I think perhaps I will, after all. I want you to have a copy. Let me get you one ...” Jake rose from the couch.

  “Can I have these instead?”

  Jake stopped and shrugged. “If you want, but they have handwritten notes all over them.”

  “I know,” Melanie said. “I want to study them. So I can see the changes you made ...”

  “Because you want to be a writer someday,” Jake said with a smile. “Thank you, Melanie.”

  She looked surprised. “For what?”

  “For helping me to remember that the last page isn’t necessarily the end of a story, and that there’s still a lot that can happen in between, and before, and after.”

  “Because every chapter of our lives is formative,” Melanie quoted. “And every moment is crucial.”

  “Keep that in mind until your next visit.”

  “Next visit?” Melanie repeated. “You’re inviting me back?”

  “Of course. And next time, I’ll want to read your stories.”

  Tears streaked down Melanie’s cheeks. Clutching Jake’s stories to her breast, she went to him, kissed his cheek, and then was gone.

  Jake stared at the door for a long time after she departed. He was still smiling when he finally moved to his desk and sat, resting his hands on the smooth wood surface. Almost without thinking, he reached for the baseball, gnarled fingers brushing its old worn hide, tracing the path of its stitching before his hand closed around it. It felt good against his palm. As it always did.

  You really should get some sleep, he told himself. You’re too old to be staying up all night, much less all night and the following day.

  Jake returned the baseball to its pedestal.

  Then he opened his desk, took out pen and paper, and began to write.

  About the e-Book

  (JAN, 2004)—Scanned, proofed, and formatted by Bibliophile.