Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 062 - The Missing

by Una McCormack

  “I am thinking about home,” she said simply.

  “Ah,” he said, and looked out the porthole by which she was sitting, contemplating the emptiness of space.

  She lifted her hand to her breast—but his hand was there, stopping any motion she might make. (And not for the first time, Cory wondered whether it was right for him to constrain her in this way—to take her hand and stop her showing how she felt because he didn’t like to see it.)

  “Don’t,” Alden said gently. “You’re free now. You don’t have to placate anyone.”

  Except you, Cory thought.

  “Not even me,” he said.

  Carefully, she retrieved her hand. “Peteh,” she said, and stopped.

  “Please tell me what’s worrying you.” He looked at her earnestly, honestly. Could she open up to him?

  “You know that this one . . . that I am grateful for all the opportunities you have given me.” She watched him repress his irritation at this and she pressed on. “But I miss my home.” That brought a gleam of pity to his eyes, so she risked continuing. “I know how much you despise my civilization—”

  “Cory, it’s more complicated than that—”

  “Please, Peteh, let me finish. I know that it is contrary to all that you hold dear.”

  He was listening carefully, sympathetically. He was not a bad man. He wanted her to be happy. But how could she?

  “But it is what made me,” she said. “It is all that I knew for my whole life—until the past year. For which I am grateful.”

  He thought for a moment. Then, bluntly: “Do you want to go home?”

  Her skin tone dulled sadly. “They will destroy me if I go home. I have told you almost everything I know.”

  “But if there was no danger . . . if somehow I could send you back . . . a different person . . . not Cory . . .”

  She thought about this for a while. She knew enough now about Peter Alden’s world to know that this was possible. Yes, it was tempting, but what she missed at least as much as the sight of home were the familiarities of her old life: the quiet camaraderie of her workmates; the comforting small space of her billet; the gentle, lulling rhythms of her old way of life. She could not return to those. But to get a glimpse of home again? Would he be able to persuade his superiors that this was a worthwhile use of her?

  “Could you do that? Send me back?”

  “Probably.” He rubbed a hand against his eye. Something was troubling him. The thought of her going? The thought of sending her back? When he spoke again, his words came quickly, tumbling from him. “But you don’t have to. You can do what you want. You can stay here with me. You can go wherever you like. There’s a whole universe out there! You’ve barely even started. You can seize the opportunity—see it all!”

  “Is that what you have done with your life, Peteh?”

  He looked at her, startled. Then he smiled ruefully. “I’m not sure . . . I did explore—I explored your home.”

  “Only long enough to find that you did not like it. That you liked your home better.”

  “You’re right.” He smiled. “You know, you often are.”

  She folded her hands on her lap and looked out again at the stars. “Perhaps that is what I am discovering. That I like home better.” But how could this one go back? Peter Alden had returned home, yes, but if this conversation had made one thing clear, there was no going back for Corazame Ret Ata-E. If this one returned to Ab-Tzenketh, it would be as a different person—and one serving new masters. Was that freedom? Cory did not think so. But perhaps it was a price worth paying.

  * * *

  Whatever she privately thought of Katherine Pulaski, there were their public personae to consider, and Beverly Crusher couldn’t think of a good reason not to agree to see the other woman when her message came asking if they could meet. She wondered whether Pulaski would have extended her the same courtesy. Katherine Pulaski, Crusher suspected, wouldn’t bother seeing anyone she didn’t like, unless she felt in the mood to insult her.

  Pulaski made herself at home in the new medical unit. She examined workstations, quizzed nurses, and generally poked around until, with a satisfied grunt, she pronounced the facility “excellent.”

  Crusher bore the intrusion with surface cheer. With stern quelling glances at her staff, who were all silently signaling, Who the hell is this? she shepherded Pulaski into her private office. “Take a seat,” she said. “Let’s shoot the breeze for a while.” But not for too long.

  “Glad to.” Pulaski settled herself comfortably into the nearest chair—not Crusher’s, at least. “This really is a first-rate facility. But are you getting any work done?”

  “Bits and pieces,” Crusher said, not eager to give anything away.

  “I guess Starfleet Medical has you slaving away over that blasted Shedai meta-genome data, making sure no more of it gets loose.”

  “It’s taking up a fair amount of my time,” Crusher said evasively. “But what are you up to? I’ve read about the Athene Donald. It’s an exciting project.”

  Pulaski beamed. “Isn’t it? Exploration and research. Follow our curiosity and see where it leads us. Taking us back to what Starfleet is really about.”

  “Yes,” Crusher said softly, “I think we’re all tired of war. It’s long past time to see what adventures peace can offer us. So what are you working on while you travel?”

  Pulaski smiled. “The secret of eternal life.”

  Despite herself, Crusher burst out laughing. “Setting your sights low, as ever?”

  “I like a challenge.”

  “So you’ve switched from medicine to alchemy?”

  “I think that was about making gold. Perhaps I’ll try that after I’ve cracked this. But I’m serious, Beverly. Our species grows older than it ever has in human history. Why can’t we grow older still? And what do we need to do, on a genetic level, to make that extended period of life as healthy and fulfilling as possible?”

  At the back of her mind, Crusher remembered Jean-Luc telling her about events that had happened during Pulaski’s tour on the Enterprise, when the ship had visited the Darwin Genetic Research Station, and Pulaski had contracted a virus that aged her rapidly. It had been a near miss for her, apparently; they had only by chance been able to reverse the effects. Crusher wondered whether this preyed on the other woman’s mind and was directing her current path of research.

  “Hold back aging but keep the quality of life high throughout?” Crusher thought about this. “A noble endeavor. There’ll be some pretty significant ethical and social consequences, of course—”

  “We’re already seeing those with our current levels of longevity. Look at you, starting a second family this late in the day. For most of human history that wouldn’t have been possible.”

  “For most of human history I would have run the distinct risk of dying during childbirth,” Crusher said tartly, irritated at the personal turn the conversation was taking.

  “Hooray for medicine,” Pulaski deadpanned.

  Again, despite herself, Crusher laughed. “Yes indeed. Hooray for us.”

  Pulaski smiled. “But you’re right. There’ll be consequences. But then, there are always consequences.”

  “What will it mean for our civilization,” Crusher mused, “if the old don’t die, or their deaths are delayed even longer than they are now?” She glanced at the other woman. “How long are you thinking?”

  “Three hundred years? Four?”

  Crusher whistled quietly. “You know, I visited a place like that recently. The Venette Convention.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No, they keep themselves quiet. But the old were very old. Lifetimes in our terms.”

  Pulaski was interested. “And were there problems?”

  “Not that I observed,” Crusher said. “In fact, it all seemed to work rather well.” She reflected again on her brief time among the Venetans, whose homeworld she had visited as part of an attempt to stop this ancient civilizati
on, which was making its first steps into the politics of the quadrant, from getting too close to the Tzenkethi.

  “So what worked?” Pulaski said. “What did they get right?”

  “I think the danger would be that the old would crush the young,” Crusher said. “Not intentionally, but because they’d seen it all before. You’d always be surrounded by people who knew best. The worst case would be if the needs of the older people were put ahead of the young—or vice versa, for that matter, although I think the former has the potential to be more injurious.”

  “Sending the young to fight old men’s wars?”

  Crusher nodded. “That kind of thing. But it didn’t work that way among the Venetans. The older people guided the young, but they didn’t serve them or prevent them from learning. And the younger people respected the old but weren’t in thrall to them or awed by their knowledge. They added, well, freshness to what could easily have been a stagnated society. Yes, it all seemed to work very well.”

  “Can I take a look at your files?” Pulaski said.

  One good thing about Pulaski was that she wouldn’t ask if she wasn’t genuinely interested. She wouldn’t bother to be polite. “They’re on their way.”

  “I’ll enjoy them. I’ll come back to you with questions, if I may.”

  “Of course. They made a real impression on me. There was some delicate diplomatic business going on . . .”

  Crusher stopped speaking. Pulaski had taken out a padd and was already skim-reading the files. Crusher sighed quietly. No, Pulaski didn’t bother to be polite.

  “And some spy business, I see,” Pulaski said after a few moments scanning the files.

  “Oh, inevitably. That was interesting in itself as far as the Venetans were concerned. The older people were simultaneously deeply naïve about all the scheming and yet were able to wrong-foot us in ways we didn’t expect, because their assumptions about what counted in life and what constituted sensible behavior were so different. They couldn’t see the point of our rules and regulations—”

  Pulaski guffawed. “Good for them!”

  “And they certainly couldn’t see the point of spy games.”

  “I may have to retire there when the time comes,” said Pulaski. “But, you know, it strikes me that it could easily have gone the other way: live too long, and you get into habits, don’t you? You acquire funny little ways.”

  “Speak for yourself, Katherine.”

  “I wouldn’t dare speak for anyone else,” Pulaski said. “But imagine a whole society like that. Rule-bound, baroque, serving only those who’ve been alive long enough to master the intricacies.”

  “Like a Mervyn Peake novel.”

  “Huh?”

  “Gormenghast. Never mind,” said Crusher, seeing Pulaski’s blank look. “I wonder which way the Federation would go, if we became as long-lived as the Venetans.”

  Pulaski was still flicking through the files. “Jury’s out on that one,” she said offhandedly.

  “You’d have liked it there,” said Crusher. “They were straight talkers. No nonsense and no pussyfooting about.”

  Pulaski laughed. Tucking her padd under her arm, she stood up easily from her chair. “When are you coming over to the ship?”

  Crusher smiled. Of course Pulaski would assume that Crusher would have nothing better to do than to interest herself in Pulaski’s work. And, in fact, she was interested. “I’ll schedule something for tomorrow, if you’re available.”

  “I’ll make myself available. Thanks for the tour, Beverly.” Pulaski headed for the door. “Superb facility. You deserve it.”

  If Pulaski knew that Crusher didn’t like her, she certainly didn’t care. But Crusher had the distinct impression she hadn’t even noticed. Perhaps this way was better, skipping the animosities and getting on with learning from each other. It was refreshing. Crusher opened her appointment schedule and cleared the whole of the following morning.

  * * *

  Sadness lay heavily upon Mhevita Pa’Dan, like fog on a winter morning without any hope of spring. It was there in the slight stoop, in the wiry gray streaks in her thick dark hair, in the slow way she stood when Ro and Odo entered the room. She raised her palm gravely in greeting to them.

  “Thank you for your time, Captain Ro,” she said. “I know that you have a busy schedule and more on your mind than my troubles. Even if there is nothing that you can do, I’m grateful simply to have this meeting with you. It makes me believe that people are still listening.”

  Ro gestured to the other woman to sit down. “If I can help, I will,” she said. She sat down opposite Pa’Dan across a low table set with tea and cups. She poured from the pot, handing a cup of hot tea to Pa’Dan in a near-universal ritual of comfort and courtesy. Odo, she noted, had quietly created his own cup. “But it would help if you explained more about your situation and what you think I can do. Odo has given me the basics, but there’s more I’d like to know. For example, how do you two come to know each other?”

  Pa’Dan gave Odo a slight smile that leavened her weary sadness a little. “We met during the Occupation,” she said. “I was a nestor in Ashalla.” She stared down into her tea. “Forgive me for mentioning the Occupation. I know that a Bajoran has no reason to help a Cardassian in need.”

  Ro’s hand clenched instinctively around the handle of her cup. A Cardassian lawyer in the Bajoran capital? What atrocities had this woman allowed?

  “Mhevita is doing herself an injustice,” Odo said softly. “I came to know her as the nestor who could always be relied upon to take on cases defending Bajorans.”

  “Bajorans had fewer rights in Cardassian courts than even their own citizens,” Ro pointed out bitterly.

  “Nevertheless,” said Odo, “if there was a case that I thought surpassed even the Occupation’s standards of inequity, it was Mhevita I would approach. And she always came. Even to DS9; even to offer a defense for Bajorans to Dukat himself, on two or three memorable occasions.”

  “Attracting Dukat’s attention was my big mistake,” Mhevita said sadly. “When he came to power, after the Dominion occupied Cardassia, he settled a lot of old scores. Who would have thought he would remember the nestor who came his way once upon a time?”

  “You nearly got Eris Juze freed on a technicality,” Odo growled. “He wouldn’t have forgotten that.

  Pa’Dan had been one of the good guys—insofar as anyone had been able to be good during that time. “What exactly did Dukat do?” Ro said.

  “After he took power,” Pa’Dan said, “there was a period of intense national pride. A lot of young people joined up to serve the Union in the war against the rest of the quadrant. Once the losses began piling up, however, that fervor quickly died away. But there was still a war to be fought. And what came next . . .”

  “They call it Dukat’s Draft,” Odo said grimly. “Conscription. But too often of a targeted kind—forcing the relatives of his enemies into the army and sending them to the most dangerous places.”

  “My son was drafted. Sent to the Romulan front.” Pa’Dan closed her eyes. “My son, Terek, was—is—an artist. The least warlike young man you could hope to find. Dukat sent him to fight Romulans.”

  Ro breathed out slowly. The Cardassian-Romulan front had been the epitome of brutality during the Dominion War. It would have been a cruel awakening for a sensitive young man. Dukat’s malice was always finely honed. “I’m sorry,” Ro said. “But if I understand correctly, your son survived?”

  “That’s right,” said Pa’Dan. “When so many others didn’t, on either side. But he didn’t come home.”

  “They took him prisoner,” said Ro.

  “On Sekula, shortly before our government switched sides. And they’ve kept him prisoner ever since. It’s been ten years since the war ended, and Terek has been in Romulan hands all that time.”

  “Have you heard nothing?” Ro said.

  “A few messages, early on. Telling us he was alive.”

  “Treated well?�
��

  “Treated fairly, he said.”

  “You said ‘early on,’ ” Ro noted. “Have the messages stopped?”

  “They stopped four and a half years ago,” Pa’Dan said. “Suddenly there was nothing.”

  Ro paused to think. “Nestor,” she said after a moment, “I have to ask—”

  “Do I think it’s possible that Terek may be dead?” Pa’Dan smiled back at her sadly. “Of course I’ve thought of that. But if that is the case I would like his body or his ashes. And if there is nothing left of him, then I would like to know the circumstances of his death. I gave up on the dream of bringing him home years ago. But I would like this uncertainty to end. To know for sure one way or another, and to know how it happened.”

  Ro nodded. “Thank you. I know that can’t have been easy to say. May I ask, has your government been unable to help?”

  Pa’Dan snorted.

  “That’ll be a no, then,” said Ro.

  “Why would they help?” Pa’Dan said bitterly. “After the war, people had other worries on their minds. Nobody wanted to remember the war or our part in it. They wanted to make peace with the Federation and the allies as quickly as possible.”

  Ro sighed. “And these days nobody wants to rock the boat with the Romulans if there’s the slightest chance of peace between them and the Khitomer powers.”

  “A handful of soldiers left behind on the Romulan front ten years ago are not worth a diplomatic incident,” Pa’Dan said.

  “They’ve been forgotten,” Odo said softly. “Either unintentionally or on purpose, nobody wants to help.”

  Ro put down her cup. “I’m sympathetic,” she said after a while. “I genuinely am.” And she was, Ro found. The war was a long time ago—the Occupation even longer—and Pa’Dan had not deserved this treatment in exchange for her courage during the Occupation.

  Pa’Dan looked at her ruefully. “You’re sympathetic—but. I imagine you’re about to tell me why you can’t help.”

  “Not quite that,” Ro said. “I’ll help if I can. But I can’t see how. I don’t have any contacts within the Romulan government—”

  “I have a name,” Pa’Dan said quickly. “A contact in their War Office. There’s a repatriation committee before which prisoners of war have to appear.”