Enigma Tales

by Una McCormack

  This evening, however, the castellan did not like what his job entailed, and he was doing all he could to put off the moment when he began work. He wandered around the room, a private office-cum-sitting room on the second story of the castellan’s official residential complex, and located a bottle of kanar. He poured a measure, took a sip or two, then abandoned the drink and resumed his pacing. He flicked through books. He adjusted cushions. Eventually, he came to a rest standing looking out of the window. The sunset was very beautiful and very melancholy.

  Garak fiddled with the curtains. He had chosen the color and the fabric, of course, but he was no longer sure about it. He had not been keen on the move to this new residential complex. His private home was in Coranum, a district up in the hills that had once been the location of the mansions of the wealthiest people in the Union. After the war, Garak had gone there and found the ruins of what had been his father’s home, and he built a sanctuary from the rubble. He had raised memorial stones, too, where history had happened, and grown a garden that made him proud. But the security teams were having none of this sentimental nonsense about attachment to one’s home. Garak was head of state now—head of state of a major power in the quadrant—and a ramshackle set of rooms perched on a hillside was not secure enough in their judgment, no matter how safe Garak felt there.

  He remembered the meeting with the security officer assigned to head the team when the topic of his potential assassination had been broached.

  “Nobody,” said Garak firmly, “wants me dead. Certainly not among our allies. In fact, I doubt you’ll find one of our enemies who wants me dead. I’m not flattering myself when I say that Cardassia would be thrown into chaos. Look where that got us last time. No, I must be the least uneasy head wearing a crown in the whole quadrant.”

  The security officer, give him his due, stuck to his guns. “There is also the matter of personal animosities toward you,” he said. Rather forward, in Garak’s opinion. (Manners were not what they once were, but then one no longer had the weight of the Obsidian Order by which to enforce them. Nobody is rude to the secret police.) But he had to admit it was true. Over the course of his life Garak had met many people who had ended up wanting to kill him, and regretfully most of these had extremely good reason. So, dutifully, Garak had packed his rather slender possessions—books and pictures, mostly—and moved into the new residence. One day, he thought, he would leave it behind—leave the castellanship behind—and go back to his garden, where anyone still alive and desperate enough to take a pot shot at him would at last have their chance. If they’d waited that long, they probably deserved it.

  The sun had almost faded when Parmak came in. With one glance, Parmak took in the situation—the closed comm, the glass of kanar, and the brooding head of state by the window, and said, “You’ve still not started, have you?”

  Garak, who had of course heard him come in and known exactly who it was, said, “By this time of day I would prefer a lighter read. Did you know that Sayak has a new collection of enigma tales? I’ve been sent a copy prior to publication.” He walked over to a nearby table where a slim and handsome dark-green volume lay, picked it up, and began to flick through the pages. “I do like the perks to this job—”

  “Enigma tales are not light reading,” Parmak said, extricating the book from Garak’s hands. “Guilt, more guilt, death. Murders. Trials. Executions. More guilt—”

  “But the settings!” Garak’s eyes sparkled wickedly. “Always so baroque. That’s what makes enigma tales so delicious, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t agree, and I don’t think you believe it either—”

  Garak opened his mouth to protest.

  “I’m prepared to admit that you like reading them,” Parmak said. “You have some strangely lowbrow tastes.”

  “I was not quite as expensively educated as you.”

  “But I’m not prepared to admit their excellence.”

  “Popular culture,” said Garak portentously, “can tell us a great deal about a society. I know that because Natima Lang says so. Said so this very day, in fact.”

  “Perhaps they can. But so can an important report into the actions of the military on Bajor during the Occupation. Which you have not yet read.”

  Garak sighed. Gently, Parmak maneuvered him over to his chair.

  “I already know what’s in it—more or less,” Garak said bitterly.

  “You might know the gist,” said Parmak, “but you don’t know the details.”

  “I don’t need to know the details,” said Garak. “I can imagine them.”

  “You also don’t know the conclusions of the committee,” said Parmak.

  Garak gave him a narrow look. “You think I can’t guess?”

  “You won’t know for sure until you look.”

  “What do you think their conclusion is, Kelas?”

  Parmak rubbed his eyes and sat down opposite him. Quietly, he said, “I think they’re going to say that there should be prosecutions.”

  “That,” said Garak, “is what I both hope and fear.”

  They sat in silence for a while. At last, Parmak said, “It has to be done. It’s the last part of the reconstruction, isn’t it? Everything else—the rebuilding projects, the education and judicial reforms, the work done with the constabularies and the civil service, the Assembly, the press. It’ll all be worth nothing if we don’t confront this and make amends.”

  Garak cradled his kanar glass between his hands. “When you say it altogether like that, it’s quite a legacy, isn’t it? This chapter, in the history book of my life, might not be as appalling as the blood-drenched pages that precede it.”

  “Not if you don’t read that report.” Parmak frowned. “What’s worrying you, Elim? What is it, really? You know what the subject matter will be, and you must be fairly certain that the committee will recommend prosecuting to the full extent of the law. Are you frightened about what the military might do?”

  Garak snorted. “I am in the enviable position of being a rare head of state of this Union not to serve at the pleasure of the guls. No, I’m not afraid of having a few guls or legates come to my office and shout at me.”

  “Don’t underestimate the guls and the legates,” said Parmak. “They might not try a coup d’état, but they can probably marshal significant public opinion against you.”

  Garak narrowed his eyes further. “They can certainly try,” he muttered.

  “So what is your worry?”

  Of all people, Garak owed Kelas Parmak the truth. So he swallowed and took heart. “I know there are political risks. I am concerned that I might not be the man to take them.”

  Parmak frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that to bring prosecutions successfully might require a castellan with significant moral capital. I am the first to admit that I have something of a weak position when it comes to the moral high ground.”

  “Perhaps there is nobody better placed to scrutinize the past,” Parmak said softly.

  Garak picked up the padd and held it lightly between both hands. “Life as an act of atonement? There are worse fates for an ex-spy, I suppose.”

  Suddenly, the specter of another doctor loomed large: Julian Bashir, here, in this very building, but lost; in a catatonic state where not even Elim Garak could reach him. Parmak, eyeing Garak carefully, said, “Will you go and see him this evening, Elim?”

  Garak shook his head.

  “It’s some time since you’ve been to see him,” Parmak said.

  Garak opened the file, but he did not read. The letters swam before his eyes. “There’s no reason to see him, Kelas. There’s no one there.”

  My dear Doctor—

  Let us take a tour of the city. We shall leave your room, which—while pleasant and offering a fine view and designed to be a great balm to you—is ultimately, like any sick room, hardly
the most uplifting of environments.

  So let us leave your room behind. We are still in my official residence, and I should confess that I am not fond of the place. It is quite new, which has benefits in terms of comfort and convenience, but I am afraid that it is increasingly starting to feel rather like a prison cell. You will recall I have some experience of prison cells, and therefore I am placed to make this comparison, although I admit that it could be considered rather fanciful. Still, the walls, at times, feel very close . . .

  At this point, you would no doubt remind me, as Kelas often does, that I chose this role, and that if I do not like it, I can always give up and go back to reading bad books and pottering around my garden. You would no doubt also remind me that the scrutiny under which I have placed myself is crucial to my successful performance in this role. There are brakes on me, checks and balances, which do not allow me . . .

  Do not allow me to indulge my excesses, as I have done in the past, and so many of our leaders have done in the past. Do not allow me to become cruel. Do not allow me to forget that I am not in this role for self-aggrandizement, but to do what I can to make up for the harm that I have done in the past. I, and those who ran Cardassia for generation after generation, repeated in one long blood-drenched repetitive epic.

  I digress.

  I wish you could meet Kelas. I think you would like each other. I think you would admire each other. Besides, you both have—had—a habit of lecturing me.

  I do not mind. Not much. I deserve it. In some respects, I am touched that someone, somewhere, has my spiritual well-being at heart. It is nice to be loved, for what one is.

  I did not mind your lectures. I wish I could hear them again.

  Garak

  [unsent]

  Two

  “Are you ready to see them, sir?”

  Garak rose from his chair. He walked around his desk, and stood, rubbing his palms together. Then he put his hands behind his back and braced himself for what was about to come. “I’m ready.”

  “Then I’ll bring them through.”

  Garak’s aide, Akret, was a small and rather nondescript woman of middle age, whom people had a tendency to overlook. A mistake on their part. Akret had an eye and a memory for detail that even Garak envied, and an ability to read his mind and his mood that he found uncanny. He would often ask for files that were already on his desk, or find himself the recipient of a soothing cup of rokassa juice before the headache had a chance to start. Now she gave him a moment to settle, nodded her satisfaction at his demeanor, gave him a welcome sympathetic look, and went back out to the anteroom. Garak checked that his jacket was smart (of course it was; it always was) and arranged his features into his calmest and blandest expression. Outside his office, he heard the bark of Legate Renel: “About time!”

  Legates, thought Garak. Do they ever change? He noticed the padd on the desk, and mentally reviewed once again the main points arising from the report. A summary of over two years’ work but plain enough in its findings and recommendations. Assembly­person Carnis had proven a meticulous and methodical investigator, as Garak had hoped when he commissioned this inquiry and put Carnis at its head. When he had, at last, at Parmak’s insistence, gone through the report he had asked her to write, he’d found that he approved of her prose style: plain and unadorned, although its sparseness had the unfortunate effect of making the atrocities she described even more appalling.

  The door swung open and Renel marched in, followed by a couple of guls. “Garak!” he cried. “I didn’t expect to be kept waiting!”

  Garak smiled and stood his ground. “My apologies, Legate. Sometimes small crises arise that demand immediate attention. I hope you’ve not been too uncomfortable?”

  “Uncomfortable?” Renel scowled. “What’s that got to do with anything? Now listen to me, Garak, I want to know what you’re intending to do next—”

  Garak turned to his aide. “Some tea, perhaps? Akret?” he said, in measured tones.

  “Already on its way, sir.”

  “Tea?” Renel looked ready to explode.

  Garak turned his bright blue eyes upon the legate. Most of his life he had devoted to keeping himself out of sight, but he could, when he chose, impose himself on a room, and on any gul or legate who happened to pass his way. The Order might be extinct, but the memory remained, and the training had been thorough. Renel stopped talking. One of the guls swayed back.

  Garak smiled brightly. “It’s good to see you, Legate. How is your lovely wife?”

  Renel collected himself. “I’ve not come to talk about my family,” he said, but his tone was now considerably less combative. Garak led him and the guls across the room to an arrangement of comfortable chairs and sofas. He liked the coverings on these: broad vertical stripes in purple, white, and green. Parmak had chosen the colors. Parmak had good taste, although he was a terrible gardener. Garak, as was his custom, sat down in the chair that put his back to the window. This, in turn, put his face somewhat into shadow, which was always an advantage. Renel took the other chair and the two guls, both big men, perched awkwardly together on the sofa. Garak had asked for the sofa’s dimensions to be just slightly too small to comfortably seat two adult males. His cruel streak always found expression somehow.

  “Give her my regards nonetheless,” Garak said. “I remember her as a charming dinner companion.”

  The tea arrived. Garak poured. Renel’s leg bounced up and down with impatience. At last he said, “Garak, what do you intend to do?”

  With great, almost dainty, ceremony, Garak handed Renel a teacup. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

  The three soldiers looked at one another uneasily.

  “Carnis isn’t a friend to the military,” said Gul Telek. Garak reviewed what he knew of the man. Telek hadn’t quite been old enough to serve on Bajor—although his father had. Gul Telek senior had been prefect of Rakantha province. Was the son concerned for the family reputation, perhaps? Garak couldn’t blame him, and indeed he was rather sympathetic. It was hard coming to terms with the fact that one’s progenitor was a monster. Denial was much easier. But it was not Garak’s job to spare the feelings of the powerful, particularly the guls.

  “Carnis is a fine assemblyperson,” Garak said. “Her career as a senior public nestor has made her thorough and scrupulous.”

  “She knows nothing about the military,” Renel said.

  “Right now,” said Garak, “she probably knows more about the military than anyone else in the Union.” He sipped some tea. “It must be clear to you that I intend to accept all her recommendations.”

  The legate and the two guls looked at one another with alarm. “But that means—”

  “Follow-up investigations, yes. Closer work with the Bajoran and, indeed, the Federation legal system.”

  “And?” said Renel.

  “And, if necessary, prosecutions.” Garak lifted his hand to quell Renel’s dismay. “It has to be done, Legate. We’ve waited too long.”

  “It was all a long time ago!” said the other gul, Feris. Now, he had been on Bajor, Garak knew. Perhaps he didn’t want his own record scrutinized? “Sir, I am a great admirer of yours. I voted for you—”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “But I want to know—what is served by all this? Raking over old crimes? We know—we all know—that the military on Bajor did not always act, well, wisely—”

  Garak’s eye ridges shot up. “Wisely?”

  Renel intervened. “What Feris means is that of course there were mistakes on Bajor. Many of those people are dead now—dead defending Cardassia against the Jem’Hadar—”

  “But some are still alive,” said Garak.

  “Having given exemplary service at the end of the war—”

  Garak picked up the padd. “Did you read the whole report?”

  Renel glowered. “Of course I
did.”

  “Forced labor. Torture. Destruction of settlements and towns as punishment for minor infractions. Rape. Shall I carry on?”

  “We all know that terrible things were done on Bajor,” Telek said. “But the past is the past—”

  “Sadly not,” said Garak. “Our continued delay in bringing prosecutions casts a significant shadow over our alliance with the Federation, of which Bajor is now a member—”

  “Ah,” said Renel. “Now we get to it. Your precious alliance. Some people say, Garak, that you went native during your exile. That you’re more than half Federation.”

  Garak laughed out loud. “My dear fellow! I can assure you that I am about as Cardassian as they come!”

  “A true Cardassian would respect what the military has already done to come to terms with its past, and not paint us as monsters,” said Telek.

  “I am doing no such thing. Monstrous behavior speaks for itself.”

  “But what you’re planning does the current military a great injustice,” Feris said. “Not all of us were Dukat’s men, you know. Some of us backed Damar as soon as we could. I was there!”

  “So was I,” said Garak. “I know your record, Feris. Your courage at the end of the Dominion War is not in dispute.”

  “Neither is yours, sir,” Feris said. “And neither is all that you have done since. But, sir, I was on Bajor, at the very start of my career. My first command. I would have allowed nothing like this—”

  Garak believed him. There had been places where the Occupation had been almost transactional. Even then, it would not have worked to the benefit of most of the Bajorans. One or two might have made a small profit; not all. Still, he said, “I don’t doubt you, Feris.”

  “And the work my Order has done since then,” Feris said. “First into Culat after the war. Burial details. Cleanup. The work we did rebuilding towns and cities—”