“Not entirely. Speaking from my perspective, and reading between the lines of the rather frosty communication I received from the castellan’s office, I have to say that it’s something of a pity that you familiarized yourself only with the intricacies of the hound-racing.”
So the castellan hadn’t liked hearing the truth? That was his own damn problem. “Even if I was up to speed with every damn story happening right now across the whole damn Union, I would’ve said the same thing,” said Pulaski. “War crimes should be prosecuted and their perpetrators punished. I don’t think I’m saying anything too outré here. I bet the Cardassian people agree with me.”
“Many do,” conceded T’Rena. “Although there is some considerable opposition from parts of the military.”
“I bet,” Pulaski muttered.
“And may I remind you as a Starfleet officer you are bound by the Prime Directive, which forbids involvement in the affairs of other civilizations?”
“Rubbish,” said Pulaski firmly. “These crimes were committed on Bajor. Bajor is a member of the Federation. We’re already involved.”
T’Rena barely raised an eyebrow. Pulaski had the distinct impression that the ambassador didn’t particularly disagree with anything she was saying. But diplomacy was a tricky business, or so diplomats liked to tell her. Well, someone had to eat all those canapés and live in all those grand official houses. “Perhaps,” said T’Rena, “keep your upcoming speech away from current affairs.” Dryly, she added, “Feel free to discuss the hounds in as much detail as you like.”
Fair enough, thought Pulaski. She didn’t want to cause these damn diplomatic incidents. They just seemed to happen. “I’ll say sorry, if you like,” Pulaski offered. “I’ll say sorry to whoever you like. Particularly the castellan. If that would help.”
Did she see a faint blanching of the other woman’s impassive face? “I will deal with the castellan,” T’Rena said. “There’s something else over which I’d like you to exercise some discretion.”
“Fire,” said Pulaski.
“The post of chief academician.”
Pulaski looked at her in amazement. “What? Don’t tell me I said something wrong there? Surely Lang is a given?”
“One would imagine so,” said T’Rena. “And yet it’s quite clear that the castellan doesn’t want her.”
“Doesn’t want Lang? Why ever not? She’s surely the most experienced, most capable, and most respected senior academic at the U of U?”
T’Rena lifted up her hands. “And yet here we are.”
Pulaski thought for a while. “Are you sure you’ve got this right? I know sometimes Cardassians don’t always say what they’re thinking. All the damn subtext, all the time.”
“I am quite sure. When the castellan says to me, ‘I have a younger candidate in mind,’ as he did at your reception last night, I am inclined to take him at face value.”
Pulaski snorted. “Age, huh? Ain’t that always the way? She’s older, she’s a woman—”
T’Rena shook her head. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with that. But he has a clear preference.”
“Who’s the lucky boy? I’m guessing it’s a he?”
“As it happens, yes.”
Pulaski gave a hard laugh. “Color me unsurprised.”
“He’s a surgeon. More to your liking, I would have thought. His name is Vetrek. I spoke to him at the reception last night. He’s talented, clever . . . is what I think one could call likeable.”
“I surely think the world could do with more medics in charge,” said Pulaski. “But why not Lang?”
T’Rena leaned back in her chair. “The castellan does not make his thinking clear to me in all things,” she said, “but I can offer some conjecture. Vetrek is part of a generation that did not hold power during the last days of the Occupation or during the last days of the war. This generation has grown to prominence entirely in the postwar era—by which I mean, under the push for democracy. Many of them already hold significant posts—the current head of the city constabulary, for example, is really quite a young woman. Part of this is because there were so few people left that many were promoted early. And it’s clear to me that the castellan is keen to see them advance further.”
“Oh, I see,” said Pulaski. “Time to nudge the old guys toward retirement.”
“I believe that’s the message the castellan hopes to send. That the balance of power between the generations is beginning to shift.” There was the faintest glimmer of a smile. “But as yet to nothing more significant than the administration of a university.”
“I guess they’ve got to start somewhere. Seems a shame for Lang, though. Can’t say I approve, to be honest. We older women have a lot to give, don’t you think?”
T’Rena inclined her head.
“So much intrigue over a university appointment of all things!” Pulaski said with a laugh. “Could the stakes be any lower?”
T’Rena looked up sharply. “Here, I think, lies your misunderstanding. The University of the Union holds a special place in the hearts of the people of this city.” She glanced down at a padd on her desk. “I’ve seen your itinerary. You have a visit to the campus massacre memorial scheduled for later in the week. I’ll send you our briefing about that. You’ll find it instructive. Lang is important. To many Cardassians, she’s a rare uncorrupted figure from their history. They hold her very dear. If Garak doesn’t want her to become chief academician, for whatever purpose, then I imagine he wants to tread carefully. It would assist me greatly, Doctor, if you were scrupulous about following the Prime Directive. The Federation has no official interest in who is appointed, and, as a new ambassador, I would prefer not to offend my hosts so early on.”
Pulaski understood. If T’Rena—or anyone from the Federation—was seen to take sides on this, the ambassador stood to lose negotiating power with the castellan, power she might need for more important battles. Pulaski shook her head. Damn diplomacy. It stank. “Still not fair to Lang, is it?”
T’Rena pondered this. “On the surface, no. But, as you say, this is Cardassia, and there will be subtext here.” Her brow furrowed. “I would like to be able to work out what that is, mind you.”
“I am sorry about all this,” Pulaski said. “I’ll run the acceptance speech for the medal past your office too, if that would help.”
“That,” said T’Rena, “would certainly set my mind at rest.”
My dear Doctor—
So at last we have escaped the residence, and, if we can only slip away from my security detail for a little while, we will find ourselves walking through the streets of Tarlak. Here, under the old dispensation, stood the government buildings from which our great Union was administrated. And, because we are creatures of habit, and because we did not wish to detach ourselves entirely from our past, we have built many of these places again; but, because we do not wish to smother ourselves entirely with our past, we have retooled them. Here you will find the Assembly Hall, where the old Council Chamber stood. The Detapa Council, in our so-called glory days, did nothing more than rubber-stamp the decisions of the military, but our Assembly forms policy, debates policy, and legislates. You will find the offices of our new Intelligence Bureau here; the Obsidian Order was, of course, more dispersed, inhabiting dark corners, and operating primarily through the fear it instilled in the hearts of our citizens. The old city shaped the contours of the new, but has not directed its operations.
When I was serving as our ambassador to the Federation, I took the time to visit as much of your beautiful world as I could, Doctor. As you know, I made my home in Paris, but I saw many of your cities, particularly in that blood-soaked continent of Europe. In London, I wished the stones could talk, as each one seemed to weigh heavy with history. In Rome, I glimpsed the origins of your dark and violent past, in the laws that made some people citizens and other people slaves. And in Berlin, I saw a cit
y that had redeemed itself. I walked through a district that had at one point been the administrative center of a vile regime, and which had been laid low at the end of a great and bitter war.
I loved Paris, Doctor, but I knew Berlin. I pass through a city like that every day.
Before we leave, let me show you a place that matters to me greatly. Here before the Assembly is a little stone garden. As you know, Doctor, water has always been scarce here, and our gardens could easily be poor things, sad plants struggling for life. In our stone gardens, however, we turned this scarcity into a virtue, making the rock itself a source of beauty and variety, their natural geological patterns coaxed into formal and abstract mosaics. And, here and there, the fragile flowers, clinging on. This garden was built to remember Alon Ghemor. He was my friend from boyhood and, later, my Castellan, and he died. He died. So many have died.
And I live to grieve another day.
Garak
[unsent]
Four
Throughout the long day, Elima Antok worked, bringing all her careful and methodical skill to the task at hand and, slowly, under her patient and forensic glare, Project Enigma began to surrender its secrets.
Antok knew from her own family history that the story of the Bajoran-Cardassian children was a great stain on the Union’s history, and that there were few happy endings to be found. Some of these children—a very few, she would say, and she was the expert—might have been products of love, but even then the disparity in power between the Cardassian soldiers and the Bajoran women they had taken to their beds made it hard to see the liaisons as consensual. Take her own grandmother, for example—brought to Cardassia Prime by her lover, but kept secluded on a distant country estate, passed off as a housekeeper, and rarely seeing her son. Had it been worth it to buy that child’s safety? From where Antok was sitting, alive and free and in no danger, yes, it had been worth it, because that was the reason she was alive. But what had that poor woman’s life been like? Antok grieved to think about that. Had there been family back on Bajor? A husband? Other children? She had been unable to find out much about her grandmother’s life on Bajor. Despite the Bajorans’ best efforts, the Cardassians had not cared enough to document their subjects’ lives in detail. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.
Antok’s grandmother had been one of the lucky ones; her son had thrived. They had been unusual. More common was the story of the orphans abandoned on Bajor, the products of rape, most likely, whose mothers had died or did not want them, and had left them as double outcasts—unwanted reminders of a cruel past. Antok had worked with several charities on Bajor that helped such children. All were adults now—those who had made it—and life had eased considerably since Bajor’s admission to the Federation. Many had left Bajor, where they were still not readily accepted, and had moved to other worlds. Some had found homes, and happiness, but almost all of them still carried scars. None had come to Cardassia.
And now there was Project Enigma, and learning its secrets only brought her more grief. There had been twelve children involved, of varying ages, taken from Bajor to Cardassia Prime. This Antok had learned early on—but what she had not yet been able to establish was why. So she read on, through file after file detailing their ages, their health, their attainment levels. The documentation had been meticulous but unrevealing. And then she found the medical files, and she began to understand.
They were wanted, these children, and they were wanted because they looked Cardassian—as her own father had. Family had been everything in the old Cardassia, raised to a moral imperative, and powerful families lost status if, for whatever reason, they could not or did not produce large families. Adoption within families was a time-honored way around this; adoption outside of the family sometimes happened, but rarely, because it was the bloodlines that counted. Why these children? What did they have to offer?
Antok read on through the medical files. That fear of exposure that her own grandfather had risked—that his son’s children might look Bajoran—was exactly what Enigma had been set up to address. The twelve children—half male, half female, mostly toddlers and babies—had been treated with experimental gene therapy to remove the Bajoran part of them. For three of the children, this had not been a happy experience. Their health was already poor, even before the therapy. One had died; two had been left infertile and therefore useless for the purpose for which they were being retooled. She saw records of their removal to a state orphanage—but those, in the old Cardassia, did not have a good reputation. Orphans were considered superfluous, a drain upon family resources. Children from these institutions usually progressed straight to some of the worst work details in the Union. She doubted that they had lived very long. Still, Antok took note of their names, and swore to them that she would move mountains to discover their fates, and, if need be, say the right words over them, the right prayers.
That left nine other children. On these the treatment had worked, apparently—Antok drew the line at calling it a “success”—and, as a result, the children had been adopted, all by well-to-do families. Presumably, therefore, they had gone on to live as Cardassians, and given the kinds of families they had joined, they had most likely enjoyed the best of what the old Cardassia had to offer. No grubbing around dirty fields in remote provinces for them, or hoping that the water ration would not run out before the next one arrived, or rifling through garbage for scraps. There would have been good food, good schools, and the promise of busy, fulfilling lives. Much better lives than they would ever have lived as mixed-species children on Bajor. Antok could hear the justifications for the project running through her head already. If they had survived the Fire, these children were no doubt living as Cardassians now, with no idea of what had been done to them—for Cardassia.
At this point, Antok had to stop for a while. She left her desk, but she could not bring herself to sit with colleagues in the staff room and trade gossip. Instead she went for a walk and tried to clear her head. This was the downside of her chosen field of study, she thought as she sat by the lake and watched the waterfowl. You thought you had come to the end of the horrors of the Occupation, and then something else was revealed to you, some new depravity that sickened you to the core. Under different circumstances, her father could have been one of those children—taken from his mother, forced through treatment (and who knew if and how that had hurt), and then handed out like a prize. He had spoken to her about his past, their heritage, once and once only, just before the age of emergence.
“I know that your grandfather hoped that I would become Cardassian,” he said. “But I never forgot her, you know. I never forgot where I came from. Don’t forget, Elima. Don’t forget the other part of you. Keep it alive, somehow, even if you have to keep it silent.”
The afternoon was settling in. Antok went back to her desk, promising herself she would read to the end of the files today. She almost regretted this decision by the time she was done. With the medical files read, she moved on to some of the official documentation related to the project.
Over the course of its life, the medics behind Project Enigma (and Antok had made a note of their names too, in order to see whether they had survived the Fire) had come three times to the Administrative Committee of the Office of the Academy to ask for funding. The committee members were all familiar names from her research into the university. Most of them were long dead; some had died well before the Fire, and a few during. On the third agreement for an extension to funding, a new committee member had joined, and her name was tragically familiar.
Doctor Natima Lang.
At first, Antok thought she had made a mistake. But there it was: plain as day. She checked the dates against what she knew of Lang’s career; yes, this was around the time that Lang had taken up several senior appointments at U of U, including acting as a member of this committee. At this point Antok stopped reading, because she couldn’t bear to read any more. Her heart was broken. She pac
ked up her files, left the archive, and tried not to cry.
It was Mikor’s turn to pick up the children, so she went back to her office for a little while, and wondered what she should do. Her first thought had been sorrow that Lang, of all people, had agreed to this horror, but the more she reflected upon what she had learned, the more she saw the ramifications. This material was explosive; if true, it could destroy the career of one of the most respected public figures in the Union. Antok felt queasy. She, like everyone else, had deeply admired Natima Lang. As a girl, before Lang had defected, she’d harbored ambitions of studying with the professor. She, like many others, had run considerable risk to get her hands on Lang’s writing and read what the clearest and most trenchant critic of Central Command had to say. There wasn’t an academic of her generation who didn’t mention Lang as an inspiration and a model for intellectual fearlessness and personal courage. Antok was not naïve, and she knew that in the old days many people had made accommodations with the authorities in order to survive. She had no doubt that Lang must have done the same. But to give consent to a project like this . . .
Again, Antok had to work to quell her nausea. She shouldn’t be shocked, not really, she thought. In the old Cardassia, everyone had been guilty of something, like in the enigma tales that Lang had so recently spoken about so eloquently and so learnedly. But some part of Antok, some idealistic part of her, had hoped that this was not the case for everyone who had lived through the old days. Who could have believed it of Natima Lang?
She took a swig of tea. It settled her stomach, a little, and helped clear her mind. She had decisions to make. She was a historian, and judging the truth or otherwise of historical documents was her trade, and she intended to study them in more detail to be sure. Perhaps these files had been corrupted in some way; perhaps the page with the names had come from another set of files, been detached and then somehow attached to these . . .
Enigma Tales Page 8
