Enigma Tales

by Una McCormack

  Pulaski shifted in her chair.

  “Nor,” concluded T’Rena, “will there be any more unscheduled interruptions of your working day.”

  If Garak had any decency, Pulaski thought, he’d be looking pretty damn chagrined right about now. Instead he simply said, “And how is Doctor Alden?”

  Not coming anywhere near you again, thought Pulaski. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’s gone to an exhibition over in Torr. Bajoran-Cardassian art.”

  “I wondered if he might,” said Garak. “He’ll see some fine work over there. Well!” he said, and beamed at them both. “I am so glad that we have normalized relations between us once again.”

  “I’d like to know who had the knives out for Lang,” said Pulaski. “That guy you’ve got in custody—did he say why he got Servek to try to frame her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Garak. “And I don’t like not knowing.”

  “Hate it when someone gets one over on you?” said Pulaski.

  “I most certainly do,” said Garak. “Because that means that there is an agenda at work that is not plain to me. I do not like surprises. Surprises are never good.”

  “Nobody ever threw you a birthday party, huh?”

  Garak looked appalled. “Thankfully not. But I’ll be frank with you, Doctor Pulaski, since you do me the courtesy. I didn’t see this business with Lang coming. You know I am keen for someone else to take up the appointment at U of U.”

  “I know,” said Pulaski, “and I just don’t understand why. Lang’s marvelous—”

  “I don’t disagree,” Garak replied. “Natima Lang is an exceptional candidate of great merit. She seems an ideal choice.”

  “But?” said Pulaski. “The ambassador said that she thought you wanted someone younger to take over. That you wanted to put people in appointments like this before sending them on to bigger jobs.”

  “That’s part of it,” Garak said.

  “Well, what more are you after?” Pulaski said with rough impatience.

  Garak gave a rather canny smile. “Doctor Pulaski, do you really think that I would reveal all of my secrets to you?”

  “Huh,” said Pulaski. She didn’t think much of that as an answer. “But you don’t believe she had anything to do with it? You know,” she said, “the more I think about it, the less I believe there was even such a thing as Project Enigma. That the whole business was cooked up by this guy you’re holding.”

  So she’d gotten that far, Garak thought. The jury was still out on that, as far as he was concerned, and he could not forget Lang’s own quiet fear that she could not with perfect certainty deny that she had signed the minutes put before her. He sighed quietly to himself. With so much lost, and records so sparse, he doubted they would ever get to the bottom of it. They could try to trace the children, he supposed, but what would be gained by that? They had been very small when they had been taken, some no more than babies. Why force upon them a history they had never known, a sorrow they had never felt? Cardassian history was enough to bear already.

  “We know that these files were tampered with recently,” he said. “There’s very little we can say about their truth. But Natima Lang?” He shook his head. “She was the only innocent one among us at the top on Cardassia Prime. Even her prose style is faultless.” He smiled. “Perhaps we should not be surprised by that. All the workings of her mind are revealed to us. She has nothing to hide.”

  And if she does? Garak wondered. Then I might be about to make a big mistake. But I must trust my instincts here. Lang did not do this thing. She has nothing to fear from the past—unlike many of us. He bit the inside of his lip. Still, something here does not yet add up . . .

  The gentle clatter of a teacup brought him back to himself. He looked at Pulaski. “You wanted to see Julian.”

  She leaned forward in her chair, ready to fight her case. “I know you don’t want me to see him,” she said. “But I’m his colleague. A fellow doctor. I’d even go so far as to claim him as a friend. Sure, we weren’t bosom buddies, but I still want to see him—”

  Garak raised his hand in gentle rebuke. “If you’ll let me finish,” he said, “I was going to say that I have arranged a visit for later today.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s great. Thank you.”

  He smiled at her. “Picard was right about you,” he said. “Completely right.”

  She laughed out loud. “I dread to think!”

  * * *

  No university skimmer took Pulaski over to the castellan’s residence that afternoon: instead a great dark official skimmer arrived, courtesy of the castellan himself. She laughed when she saw it, and decided to take it as a gesture from Garak that while they might never be friends, they were no longer enemies.

  “Hey, Metok,” she said. He was goggling at the sight of the huge skimmer, and she knew he was desperate for a ride and a peek inside the residence. “You coming?”

  He looked at her with undying love. She could get used to that.

  “Come on,” she said. “I don’t know if the invitation said plus one, but I’m willing to push my luck one more time.”

  He didn’t need telling twice and jumped inside the skimmer. They spent a happy few minutes playing with all the buttons and watching the screens shoot up and down, and then, at the driver’s insistence, making free with the small stash of refreshments. They quickly left the campus behind, but as they wove out toward Tarlak, they became snarled in traffic coming up from the river. Eventually, they ground to a halt. Pulaski, peering out of the tinted window, saw streams of pedestrians coming past.

  “I wonder what’s going on. Was there anything on the ’casts this morning, Metok?”

  Efheny, rather shamefacedly, had to admit he hadn’t been watching. Pulaski was delighted. “Keep at it!” she cried. “You’ll soon break the habit! And you’ll be a happier man all around.”

  Their pace continued to be slow, but the driver made steady enough progress. They got their answer to what was causing the delay when at last they pulled into Assembly Square. They could hear amplified voices making speeches, and the skimmer had to halt again, very suddenly, to allow a parade to pass by. But this was no celebration—it was somber, and steady, and the men and women were marching with great pride and dignity. They were all in uniform.

  “Now this isn’t something I’ve seen a while,” the driver muttered. Pulaski, lowering the window and poking her head out for a better look, saw that many of the people marching were carrying banners and placards:

  WE SUPPORT OUR MILITARY

  VETERANS OF THE FOURTH ORDER

  AGAINST PROSECUTIONS

  TO PROTECT AND SERVE!!! NOT IMPRISONED!!

  And on and on in this vein. This was a demonstration against potential prosecutions for war crimes, Pulaski realized, and, more generally, in support of the Cardassian military. She had to admit that it gave her the shivers. The uniform had changed significantly since the days of the Dominion War, but there was still something unnerving about seeing so many Cardassians marching together.

  She glanced at Efheny, still and alert beside her. It was bad enough watching as a human, but what must this sight be like for the average Cardassian? It was—what?—fifteen years since Dukat had seized control, and the Jem’Hadar had been marching through the streets of the city. Efheny must remember that. He must remember what came after, and he can’t have been very old.

  “Hell of a show, huh?” she said.

  He nodded.

  She peered out of the window. Someone was passing out scarlet flowers. “What are they, Metok?”

  “They’re called perek,” he said. “We send them when people have died. They’re used in our burials.”

  “What a crowd. A reminder of bad times?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “The sad thing is that we were all excited when Dukat cam
e back. It seemed like one great party. Parades and banners. Bigger than this—there were a lot more of us then, of course. You know, I wasn’t really very old. I remember being excited to go along to one of the parades. And the other thing I remember was that the shops were full of things to eat again—Dominion goods, flooding in because we were now members. There’d been pretty thin pickings before then—did you know that?”

  Pulaski nodded. She’d known about the human­itarian crisis on Cardassia Prime in the last days of Meya Rejal’s rule, and had even looked into how she could help, but the borders had been firmly closed.

  “I remember thinking how great it was,” Efheny said. “My oldest brother signed up—Dukat’s Draft, they called it. I thought he looked grand in his uniform . . .” His voice trailed away.

  He surely would have died, Pulaski thought. There had been a huge rate of attrition among the soldiers serving alongside the Jem’Hadar: they had been easy targets when the Founder gave her order to exterminate the Cardassians. She hoped it had at least been quick.

  “How did you escape, Metok? Can I ask that? Is it okay to ask that?”

  “Yes, it’s fine. We all did that, once upon a time. Particularly here in the city. ‘However did you escape?’ Like we wanted to touch each other’s luck.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t very complicated. I was quite small for my age. My mother realized what was happening and told me to run. There was a big public screen at the end of the road, and there was a space behind it for maintenance. The door had broken off, so I climbed inside and hid. When everything went quiet, I came out again.” He had a distant look in his eye. “That was the easy part, really. Everything that came after was harder.”

  She pondered all that must lie behind that. She imagined that his mother hadn’t been there when he went back home. She suspected his home hadn’t been there. She knew what life had been like here after the Fire, as they called it: the privation; the lack of food, water, and shelter; the disease. She reached out, with great tenderness, and squeezed his hand.

  He smiled at her fondly. “A few years ago, I think I would have been frightened by this,” he said, nodding out at the parade. “Soldiers out on the street again. But I’m not afraid. They have a right to be here, don’t they? They have a right to stand in public and let us know what they think. The difference is—I have that right too. And the other difference is—they’re not going to try and force their beliefs on me.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve caused so much trouble for you, Metok,” she said.

  “Trouble?”

  “Wrecking your itinerary. Dragging you off into a dust storm to get shot at and arrested.”

  “When you put it like that, I suppose it has been rather chaotic,” said Efheny. “But I’ve loved every moment of it, Doctor Pulaski. It’s all been huge fun. I hope you’ll come and visit us again.”

  She smiled at him. “I’d like that.”

  “But really, there’s no need to say sorry to me. I’ve had the time of my life. Besides,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning in toward her, “I took your tip on Riddle Runner on the 10:52 at Orlehny. I’ve made a small fortune.”

  Pulaski roared with laughter. “Oh, good man!”

  He grinned back at her. “There is a favor that you could do for me.”

  “Name it. Anything.”

  “There’s going to be a vigil later, at the campus memorial. For the victims of the Occupation. For the victims of all wars. Could you come along?”

  She leaned over and offered him her palm. He pressed his young hand against her older one, and then she wrapped her fingers around his. “I’d be honored.”

  * * *

  Bashir was sitting in a chair by the window, staring out, unmoving. Damn, Pulaski thought, crossing the room and kneeling down beside him, this is even worse than I imagined.

  She was a doctor, and she was there to offer hope when none could be seen. Despair was not in her nature. Pulaski was one of nature’s battlers, and she used her intelligence to find solutions. But most of all, she was here to see her friend, and she was here to see what she could do for him.

  She leaned back on her heels. “Hey, Julian,” she said. “It’s Kate Pulaski. Sorry to be your first visitor. But I was passing this way, and I thought I’d come by and say hello.”

  She lifted up his hand, but it was limp within her grasp, and it fell back down upon his lap when she let go. She pulled out her medical tricorder and did a few tests—shone a light in his eyes, which stayed unblinking; tested a few reflexes, which were dulled—and then she sighed and sat down in the chair beside him. She shook her head.

  Bashir had been special. Pulaski knew that this was in part an effect of his genetic enhancements, but it had not simply been that. The intelligence, the grace, the physical beauty, perhaps, but that had not been the sum of Julian Bashir. What had impressed itself most upon Pulaski was his moral core, and that was Bashir’s own. It owed nothing to any creator; it was a system of considered ethics and a deep well of personal courage that had informed all his choices. Do no harm was a good rule to live by, but Do good with everything you have? That was a great deal better, particularly when you had the gifts of Julian Bashir.

  None of that was there now. It had all gone. Julian Bashir was a hollow man.

  So now they had to fill him up again.

  She cleared her throat, and then began to talk in a conversational tone. The idea was to give him stimulus, to make him feel secure enough to return. The voices of friends helped, and she would do in lieu of anyone else. She’d bet her medal that he would recognize the voice of Kate Pulaski. “You won’t believe why I’m here,” she said. “They’re pinning a medal on me. Distinguished Impact Medal. Well, you know me. I like to make an impact. I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”

  She observed him for a moment. Nothing. She hadn’t expected anything, to be honest; she’d only been here two minutes and, besides, she wasn’t really the person for the job. But she was friendly, and familiar, and they had to start somewhere if they were ever going to claw anything back.

  “I’ll tell you something, Julian, this is an amazing planet. Don’t tell your friend the castellan I said that, mind you—we haven’t exactly taken to each other. No, that’s not quite true. I think we’ve taken to each other very well. But I think he’s a crook, and he thinks I’m a pest. Which is fair enough. I am a pest. Still, he’s sharp as a laser, isn’t he? I wonder what he’ll do next. He can’t stay castellan forever.”

  Nothing. But this was only the start. There was a great deal of work to be done here, and she may as well be the one to get going.

  “So I met the castellan, and I’ve been wined and dined, and I’ve watched a lot of hound-racing. Altogether, I’ve been having a fine old time. Well, apart from the kidnap—I’ll come back to that. It got kind of hairy at one point. But this city! This world! I wish I’d known. I wish I’d come here during the reconstruction. There would have been good work to do here. I have to say that I’m surprised you didn’t come here sooner. Still, you’re here now, and you should know what a fine place is it. The people are gutsy, they’re funny, they’re strong and brave, and they’re doing their damnedest to put behind them some of the worst mistakes I’ve seen a culture make, and one of the worse comeuppances it’s been a people’s misfortune to suffer. The dust is up now, Julian, but you should see this place in the spring. You should see what they’ve built already, and what they’re building. They could have given up, Julian, but they didn’t. They were down to nothing, absolutely nothing, and they got back up again.”

  She went on in this vein for some time, just talking to him, telling him her observations of this strange and inspirational world, hoping that something would get through. She told him the sights she’d seen; the facilities she’d visited; she told him about her exploits across the past few days, making them funny, a kind of escapade. She told him about Natima Lang, a
nd Elima Antok, and her admiration for both women. She told him about the hound-­racing, and the food, and the dust, and her encounter with the fourth estate. She told him about flowers she’d noticed, and fashions she’d seen, and about the sound the trams made rattling their way down to Torr.

  “You should see it all, Julian,” she said. “You should see it all.”

  The door to the room opened. Pulaski looked around to see Efheny, an apologetic look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s time to go.”

  “Two more minutes,” she said. He nodded and went back out.

  She picked up the parcel she had brought with her. “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got to go now. I hope it’s been good to see me. But I brought you a present. Well, it’s not really from me. Several of your friends got together and found this, and when they heard I was coming they asked me to bring it with me. I hope there’s no injunction on importing livestock. I think I got away with it.”

  He was hardly going to unwrap the gift, so she pulled at the paper, revealing the small brown bear inside. She reached for Bashir’s hand again, lifting it and pressing it against the toy, in case the touch stirred some memory. She pressed it against his cheek too, so he could catch the scent. Smell and memory were closely intertwined; smells took you back to places more than anything else. Then she put the bear upon the windowsill, half looking out at the city, half looking back at Bashir. She smiled at it; this little guy had been loved, she saw, and someone had done some stitching that would make a surgeon proud. She reached out and rubbed its ears.

  “He’s an old soldier, isn’t he?” she said. “He’s been through some wars. We’ve all been through some wars.” She stooped and kissed her lost friend gently on the brow. “Come back, Julian,” she said. “We miss you.”

  * * *

  Pulaski stood in the garden, holding a candle, and looked around. Efheny had explained the campus memorial in some detail, and the ambassador’s briefing document had supplied the rest. At Efheny’s instigation, they had gotten here early, and she was glad that they had: the garden was small, and people were backed up beyond the hedge into the spaces all around.