Strange New Worlds 2016

by Various

  “He’s gone.”

  “When he returns, then.”

  “He’s gone from the station.” Rokor’s head jerked a little. “He took a job on a Lissepian freighter.”

  As good a story as any. With a shrug, Garak strolled closer. “You’re already displaying animals.”

  Rokor’s eyes remained centered on him. “I disliked leaving them in stasis pods.”

  Ignoring the hostile stare, Garak poked his finger into the lemur cage. “I’m surprised you’re selling Cardassian pets.” The creature hopped off its wheel and scurried over to sniff. Lifting its head, it inspected its admirer.

  “They’re loyal, clever beasts,” Rokor said. “They became popular on Bajor during the Occupation.”

  Unlike us. “When I was a boy, I had a lemur. But my—the man who employed my mother—he decided I was too attached.”

  “So he made you give it away?”

  “Something like that.” Garak inhaled slowly. He knew how he’d obtain the information he needed: with a story. “Vlatvlat was a bit wild. She hunted all around the neighborhood, but she always came home to me. One day, she climbed the civil defense spire near our house. That’s a device atop a pole that can send out a pulse that—”

  Rokor’s eyes narrowed. “I know what a concussion shaft is.”

  “Quite.” Garak cleared his throat. “At the top of the spire, Vlatvlat caught her hind leg in a loose wire. Her squeals could be heard for a block. When I began shinnying up the pole, the neighbors screamed at me to stop, but I wouldn’t. After I untangled her and brought her down, they cheered.”

  “Heartwarming.”

  Garak shrugged. “When my mother’s employer came home, he didn’t cheer. He locked me in my closet for one hour every day for a week to meditate on how I’d disregarded my duty to Cardassia by risking my life to save a beast.”

  “Harsh, but I understand. You’d worried him.”

  “So much so that he added one more punishment.” Garak moistened his lips. “He ordered me to kill Vlatvlat.”

  Shocked, Rokor backed up a step. “Is this a roundabout threat?”

  “Not at all. It’s not even the end of my story.” Glancing behind him, Garak dropped his voice. “I hid Vlatvlat in a bag and took a tube to the end of the line. I walked for kilometers until I reached the wilderness preserve. After I returned home without Vlatvlat, I spent two hours in my closet every day for a month.”

  The frown relaxed from Rokor’s face. “You really are the Cardassian who set Tres free.”

  Garak nodded. “But that’s not the point of my story. I parted from little Vlatvlat for her safety. If somehow we’d been reunited, I’d never have let her out of my care again.”

  Rokor’s mouth quivered. Turning, he straightened a rack of decorative collars. “Thanks for the welcome. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “I know your brother was abducted.”

  The collar stand swayed crazily. “Preposterous. My brother took a job—”

  “Not for a promise of timeless bliss in the Celestial Temple would you ever have let him do that. Trestan was abducted by the same Obsidian Order operative who assassinated Doctor Dal. She wanted to coerce you into assassinating Doctor Lubaar, but you botched it.”

  Rokor gripped the edge of the counter. “You know who I am. You know that if I wanted to kill him, I’d succeed.”

  Garak smiled. Nothing like professional pride to make someone slip up with the truth. “But your purpose wasn’t to succeed. It was to buy time—time to rescue your brother.” He glanced at the lemur, racing around her wheel. “And I know how we can find him.”

  Within two hours of receiving antitoxin, Lubarr Pem began to stir. Odo watched him twist on the infirmary bed. His eyelids fluttered, then opened. “You’re here.”

  Odo nodded. “Now that you’re conscious, I’ll resume my investigation. You won’t be safe until the murderer is caught. But no questions. You need to rest.”

  “I’m sorry we fought. Sometimes, I can’t help myself.” Lubarr swallowed. “I’m sure you remember.”

  “Yes.” Odo made a throat-clearing noise. “I remember you fought with Doctor Mora to allow me outside the laboratory. You insisted I needed not just trials but experience. Those parties . . .”

  Lubarr grimaced. “Cerys said you hated playing jester.”

  Odo jiggled his head. “It wasn’t all bad. Remember when your brothers dared me to mimic an Algorian mammoth? When I broke your ceiling, they called me extraordinary.”

  Unexpectedly, Lubarr released a sob. “Odo, they’re dead. Ren and Falor helped colonize New Bajor. The Jem’Hadar . . .”

  “I . . . I didn’t know.”

  Lubarr clasped Odo’s hands. “The irony . . . finally booting out the Cardassians, only to face a worse threat . . .”

  “Shapeshifters.”

  “I’ve never blamed you.” Squeezing Odo’s hands, Lubarr stared into his eyes. “Please don’t blame me. It’s survival.”

  Garak secured the tracker-equipped collar around the lemur’s neck.

  Rokor returned from the back room with a jumja stick. “Tres ate the bar last night.”

  “And he licked up every drop.” Garak held the DNA-laden object under the lemur’s nose. The creature cooed. “Perfect. Your brother already made friends with her.”

  “Animals trust him.” Rokor inhaled sharply. “To think I kept my eye on Tres when he ran over to the jumja stand, then didn’t when he used the restroom at the Replimat.”

  “If Thebroca hadn’t taken him there, she’d have done it elsewhere.” Garak pulled out the tissue she’d discarded in his sizing chamber. The lemur sniffed the smudge of green makeup the operative used in her forehead circle to dramatize her unusual eyes. “Good,” he said, and pinched its tail.

  When the creature squealed, Rokor frowned. “Won’t that make her avoid that smell?”

  “Not at all. There are three reasons a lemur will track—to hunt, to find a friend, or to locate a friend’s enemy. I’ve just informed her how to categorize Thebroca.”

  “Amazing. I’d thought lemurs were just . . . warm and cuddly.”

  “Glad the Order kept one secret.”

  “The Order.” Rokor rubbed his ridged nose. “Why didn’t Thebroca just kill Lubaar herself?”

  “Splitting the two assassinations split her risk. Odo can’t prove she was directing a hunter probe while she was out of sensor range in my sizing chamber, but he suspects. When you shot the second target this morning, the Horvens were brunching with Kai Winn. Now they’re above suspicion.” Garak cocked an eyebrow. “What I’m wondering is why Thebroca was so impractical.”

  “Impractical?”

  “Going to the trouble of coercing you when she could have asked me. I have more free time than I know what to do with. I could easily have fit one little assassination in between pleating skirts and hemming pants.”

  Rokor stroked the lemur. “I heard a rumor—how Natima Lang and her pupils escaped Central Command on this very station. If you wouldn’t eliminate three Cardassians they considered traitors, I can see why they’d have doubts about how you’d handle a harmless scientist.”

  “Well, every case has its own merits.” Garak attached a leash to the lemur’s collar. “But one does like to be asked.” He pursed his lips at Rokor’s breathy chuckle. For a moment, they watched Trestan’s-best-hope-of-being-rescued struggle against the restraint.

  Rokor looked at him. “If you’d known Tres had an older brother in the Resistance, would you have released him?”

  “I’d have used him as Thebroca is doing now.”

  Rokor nodded. Obviously, the answer didn’t surprise him.

  “But we never knew your identity—not until we retreated and Bajor lauded you as a hero. When I processed Trestan and
his friends, I ran the usual checks on DNA, retinal scan, and facial structure. When they revealed no personal or familial links to matters of interest, I let them go. They had no value.”

  “Perhaps. But that wouldn’t have stopped others in your position from having their fun.”

  Garak shrugged. “I’m a professional.”

  Bashir sat at Odo’s desk studying the mishmash of data Dal had collected on the tribe from the moon of Tasadae. He’d gotten so used to the insults the Yridian con man was yelling from the holding cell that he ignored them.

  Running his gaze down the columns of tricorder readings, Bashir confirmed that blood chemistry, endocrinology, and tissue composition identified a humanoid species—the same as nearly all known sapient entities across the galaxy. To a scientist, the curiosity that such a multitude of beings exhibited only fractional differences in their DNA suggested the inevitability of evolution. To religionists like the Bajorans, it bespoke the miracle of creation.

  Scanning a hundred images of the most recently discovered humanoid, Bashir thought it a good thing the doctors had kept their interactions low key. Best that memory of their visit didn’t survive even as a legend. From the simplicity of domiciles, costumes and tools, he surmised the first-contact evaluation would decree nonaccess.

  But after the doctor began perusing the neurocognitive findings, he began to wonder.

  When a patrol officer reported Garak walking a lemur on level seven, Odo assured him that was acceptable so long as the pet was leashed. When several dignitaries called in sightings of a strange Cardassian lurking in the vicinity of the guest quarters on level nine, Odo downplayed their concerns. He had more pressing matters than appeasing Bajoran prejudices. But when an alert beeped on his padd that life-forms registering as Cardassian and lemur were wandering around level twenty-one, the head of security resigned himself to taking a look. The supposedly simple tailor had infiltrated an area where no civilian could conceivably have business: the corridor leading to the abandoned ore-processing facility.

  Odo preferred patrolling the station on his imitation humanoid feet. Today he didn’t have the time. Tapping his combadge, he contacted the transporter room. As requested, he materialized facing the wily Cardassian.

  Garak didn’t flinch. “Odo, you should visit the pet shop. Shaloza Rokor carries the most darling beasts.”

  “Really? Then where’s yours?”

  Garak flicked his glance to the leash dangling from his hand. “Fletflet heard something down this open vent. Probably a vole. Lemurs love hunting them.”

  “Among other things.”

  Garak flashed Odo a dazzling smile. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”

  “She can’t be off her leash. Not outside your quarters.”

  Garak widened his eyes. “Lemurs need to run around something besides a wheel in a cage. But no one has to tell you how depressing it is to be cooped up.”

  Odo glowered. While he practiced humanoid expressions to improve communication, Garak did it for obfuscation. He slapped his combadge. “Beam me and this colossal waste of my time to security.”

  Bashir propped his head on his fingertips while he read Dal’s extensive testing protocol. He’d set the screen to roll at a pace that would have made most people dizzy, but his genetic enhancements allowed him to absorb the information quickly. He just wasn’t sure what it meant.

  The notions that the tribal people spouted about their everyday life were consistent with their simple appearance. They shared animist beliefs about the blue-and-green planet that crossed their sky and the ball of fire beyond. But when Dal proceeded from interviews to tests, she discovered their spatial-temporal concepts suggested they’d grown up in a more complex society.

  Bashir was so engrossed in the curious case of the sophisticated primitives that he didn’t realize two people had joined him until he heard Garak’s irritable, “Unhand me, Constable.”

  The doctor bit his lip. As the only Cardassian resident, his friend was a natural usual suspect, but when Odo pointed to a chair, then turned his back, he relaxed. Whatever Odo suspected Garak of, it wasn’t murder.

  Still seething, Garak pulled out a personal communicator and muttered, “Our Changeling gul saw fit to detain me in security.” After listening a moment, his mood lightened. “Ah. When she’s finished, you know where to come.”

  Odo scowled. “Who was that?”

  “My dinner date. They needed to know I’d be late.” Garak raised his eyebrows as if noticing Bashir for the first time. “A pleasant surprise, Doctor. What’s that on your viewscreen? You’re studying data forms, medical reports, and ethnographic photos simultaneously? One would think you’re Cardassian.”

  Bashir leaned back. “I’m helping Odo make sense of Dal’s research.”

  Garak’s eyes glimmered with interest. He rose from his chair and drew closer. “What a charming outfit that fellow is wearing—mostly furs and skins, but what an unexpected scarf.”

  The doctor shrugged. “The animals they live on include wild sheep.”

  “How clever of them to shear, spin, and knit the wool despite their subsistence lifestyle. And look at the clarity of blue they achieved.”

  Frowning, Bashir pulled up Dal’s entire album. “What else do you see?”

  Garak cast his gaze up and down the columns. “A rawhide collar but what a crisply rendered decoration. That crude loom achieved that uniform, tight weave? Remarkable. This crimson is particularly rich.”

  Odo coughed. When Bashir and Garak turned their heads, he glared. “Commander Sisko assigned the doctor a task. Leave him to it.”

  Garak waved a placating hand. “I’m just offering my expertise—as a clothier.”

  Or an intelligence agent. “Odo, I need to check on Lubaar.” Without further explanation, Bashir hurried out of the security office and on to the infirmary. Hastily, he assessed his patient’s physical state—adequate—then blurted out, “I know what your wife was planning to announce. The tribe on the moon of Tasadae—it’s a fake!”

  When Odo pointed him toward a chair, Garak complied. Soon, he’d start up a one-sided banter so annoying that the constable would give up and release him. He was too busy puzzling over Doctor Dal’s research to really care why a tailor had been walking a pet in a restricted area.

  Right now, Garak was glad to spend a moment marveling at the convoluted mind that had produced the moon of Tasadae hoax. No other scheme could have circumvented the deal between the planet and the Ferengi. Unless otherwise occupied, satellites belonged to the worlds they orbited.

  Yet Garak was puzzled. The intricacy of the scheme was classic Obsidian Order, but the sheer arrogance smacked of Central Command. Who else would credit themselves with the ability to contrive a sham people that would cheat expert evaluation? Well, they did have a history of underestimating Bajorans.

  But what was their long-term plan? If the moon was declared off limits, the Federation would enforce it. Deuterium couldn’t be mined inconspicuously enough to fool a starship scan. But then, their plot involving Chief O’Brien had been shaky too.

  No matter. The immediate task was learning how Rokor was getting on with tracing the lemur’s progress via viewscreen.

  “Your furniture is torture, Odo. I’m filing a formal complaint with Commander Sisko. But I’ve heard you make an excellent chair. Care to show me?”

  Clearly aggravated at Bashir’s statement, Lubaar glowered. “The Federation—or some section of it—set up the bogus tribe.”

  “Why would we?” Bashir rolled his eyes. “That’s not how we operate.”

  “When I tell you the why, you’ll believe the how.”

  Yesterday’s lunch squabble flashed in Bashir’s mind. “I’m listening.”

  Looking professorial despite his hospital gown, Lubaar stuck out his chin. “Today the Alpha Quadr
ant faces a threat not seen since the Borg. How can humanoids handle an enemy that constantly changes shape? That may be among us already?”

  Bashir leaned forward. “By learning to understand them so we can negotiate. As different as Changelings are, we know from Odo they’re not mindless cyborgs. They’re capable of principles, feelings, attachments, even nobility.”

  “And of genetically engineering slave races to wreak their will.” Lubaar clutched his sheet. “I lost the last family I had to their Jem’Hadar butchers.”

  Bashir chewed his lip. He had no answer to that one. “Well, I can’t see how preventing Ferengi from mining deuterium protects the Alpha Quadrant.”

  “Deuterium? The moon of Tasadae holds something far more important: a tiny pool of shapeshifters surrounded by rock that can arrest their transformation.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes. When the creatures emerge from regeneration, they form rudimentary shapes. As the rock absorbs the sun’s energy, it emits a quantum stasis field that prevents them from shifting. When the sun sets, the energy drains, the shapes release, and the cycle repeats.” Lubaar smiled. “You’re interested.”

  Bashir coughed. “As a scientist. But that doesn’t excuse fraud.”

  “Maybe not the gall of thinking Cerys and I would fall for it.” Lubaar sighed. “She did her due diligence—performed every required test and noted the results. I didn’t. The reason I kept my findings from Odo is that they consist of one observation.”

  “Which is?”

  “ ‘The Tasadae-Ferengi contract has been in place longer than this moon has been inhabited. Insufficient garbage.’ ”

  A smile twitched Bashir’s lips.

  “When the fakers realized we knew, they came clean and showed us the pool. Immediately, I saw the overriding value of keeping their investigation of the quantum stasis field secret. Changeling spies could be anywhere.”

  “And your wife?”

  “She waffled.” Lubaar’s forehead creased. “Poor ethical Cerys. She denied the larger principle: survival.”