“Korven!” Garak said, with an almost paternal warmth. “Long time, no see!”
Korven did not answer. He did not move, either. He just stared at Garak as if he were looking at a ghost. He stared at him as if Garak had risen up from the dead, and had come back to haunt him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll let myself in.” Garak stepped past him, inside, then looked back at the man still standing on the threshold, to summon him within. “You will join me, won’t you, Korven?”
18
Tired beyond imagining, Keiko sat with her eyes closed and her head dropped a little way down onto her chest. As this hellish day had progressed, and the slow minutes had turned into endless hours, it seemed to her that the whole world had been reduced to just this room. At first she had tried to keep on looking around the hall, to try to reassure people, but many had pulled back into themselves. As the evening drew on, and the buzz of the lights had insinuated itself behind her temples, she had started to feel almost as if she was going into a trance. She had sat and watched the children for a long while, remembering how it had been her idea to encourage people to bring what remained of their families here to Andak. Many of the children had become exhausted from fear and from being forced to sit still for so long. One or two had fallen asleep, leaning upon each other for support. But, when last Keiko had looked, Molly had still been wide awake, still hugging herself, and she had been staring down at the floor.
Now that her eyes were shut, it seemed to Keiko as if the world had shrunk even further. It was down to no more than two voices—one as taut as a cord that was about to snap; the other soft and flowing, like rainfall on a warm spring afternoon.
“I wonder if you have heard very much about Bajor, Nyra,” Yevir said.
There was a dark, brittle silence. “I’ve heard enough,” the girl replied at last.
“What have you heard?” he asked her, almost urging her, although his voice remained soft. “What have you learned about us?”
“I’ve heard all about your superstitions for one thing. And about how you are trying to bring them here. But we don’t want them here! Cardassia doesn’t need them. Cardassia doesn’t need your lies!”
Keiko listened to Nyra’s voice with a sad bewilderment. How could Nyra feel so much hatred? It was beyond Keiko’s comprehension. How could someone so young—and Nyra seemed still to be a child to her—have been twisted so far out of recognition? How could she have come to this point, to want to cause so much chaos and destruction?
Keiko herself had been the kind of child that liked order. She liked to have things settled. In her room, when she was very small, the toys each had their particular place. The books, which rose steadily in number year by year and quickly outnumbered the toys, had all been shelved alphabetically, and her name had been carefully inscribed inside each. A set of little pictures—watercolors, landscapes—that her grandmother had painted as gifts for her had hung on the wall symmetrically on either side of a square mirror.
“It seems to me to be such a shame that’s all you’ve heard about Bajor. Did no one ever tell you what it looked like? How green it is? What the rivers are like, and the waterfalls? That in our cities there are gardens between all the buildings, and that the gardens have pools of water in them?”
“If it’s so perfect on Bajor, then why don’t you go back there?” Sharp, angry, suspicious. Close to breaking. “Why are you here?”
For quite some time in her otherwise ordered youth, one thing had troubled Keiko, had disrupted the sense of definiteness that she preferred. For a long time, longer than she generally admitted, Keiko had had no idea what it was she wanted to do. Whenever people asked her—and people tended to take a great deal of interest in this bright and talkative girl—she would say that, like her grandmother, she wanted to paint pictures. It sounded neat and tidy in her ears, to carry on a family tradition. But, in her heart, Keiko had known that it was not for her. Her grandmother spoke of the pleasure she took from placing the dark lines upon the white page; she spoke of seeing underlying patterns in the world and then describing them. But, when she thought about it, this made Keiko worry, that she might put a line in the wrong place, and then not be able to change it, to put it in its proper setting.
“Why am I here, Nyra? Oh, that’s quite simple—because from far away Cardassia is unfathomable. Close up, perhaps I can find out more about you. And I’m hoping that I might find that we have something in common.”
“We’re nothing like you!”
Keiko was not able to settle to her satisfaction the matter of what she should do with her life until she found herself taken out on a school field trip. She had not been looking forward to the event, suspecting it would be hot (it was the middle of a very humid summer), and that it would leave her so tired it would ruin the rest of her week. She sat and sweltered bad-temperedly for most of the afternoon, until an exasperated teacher (and Keiko understood more of the frustrations of teachers these days) lost patience, and demanded an essay on the life cycle of the lotus. Keiko took on the assignment with the grace to know it was probably deserved and settled down to finish it as quickly as possible.
“Are you so very sure about that, Nyra? Have you heard of the Occupation? I wonder what you know about that?” Yevir murmured, more to himself than to her. “I doubt you’re old enough to remember anything about it.” He sighed, lost for a moment in his own memories. “If you ever came to Bajor, Nyra—and I’d like to think that one day you will—you’d see a lot more than rivers and gardens. You’d see broken buildings too, just like you can here on Cardassia. You’d see monument after monument raised to remember where a hundred people or more were shot by soldiers. You’d see places where the fields will never be green again, because an army once went there and poisoned the land.”
The lotus had captured Keiko’s imagination. As she read more about it, she found herself secretly admiring the flower, which sat in murky water and yet remained delicate and pure, untainted by its surroundings. She drew picture after picture of its fine-hued petals and green stems. She came to love the feel of digging at roots, came to love the sight of soil beneath her fingernails. She found out that flowers had special names, and learnt that these were just part of a larger system of description and designation. She grasped that even if things looked different, they often turned out to have more in common than a superficial glance could tell you. And that was when Keiko understood for the first time fully what her grandmother had meant when she spoke of the patterns that lay behind the everyday world, and the pleasure to be taken from perceiving them, and describing them. The study (by the end you could hardly call it an essay anymore) took away a prize that year, and Keiko’s future was settled. She was going to be a botanist.
“What happened?” Nyra whispered.
A moment or two passed before Yevir began again. “Bajor was occupied, Nyra, just like Cardassia was. And the Car…” He hesitated, bit down upon the word. “These occupiers stayed on Bajor for years. For decades. People were born and grew up on Bajor who could not remember anything else other than that Bajor had been an occupied planet. Can you imagine what that was like?” He paused for breath. “There is one thing that I’m sure that you can imagine. Because these occupiers were there to exploit Bajor, and they were very cruel—as cruel as the Jem’Hadar were here on Cardassia. So—yes, I think we have a lot of things in common, Nyra. But knowing about cruelty isn’t the only thing we share, I think.”
Keiko had lived in many risky places, had found herself in many dangerous situations. But she knew that compared with those of Yevir and Kira, or Feric and Tela, her life had been a safe and a happy one. Compared with theirs, hers could even be called sheltered. She knew that was the difference between them—but how could she wish it any other way? Nyra’s life had been ruined by war, to an extent that Keiko could not really conceive, to an extent that she did not want to conceive. There were some things she didn’t want to come too close to, some things she didn’t want her children to
come too close to. Keiko knew when to look for similarities that were hidden out of sight—but she was enough a product of her training to value diversity, enough a product of her culture to understand how vital different perspectives could be. She knew that she had talents—and not just scientific ones—that were needed on Cardassia. And that if she was given time, then what she was doing here could change things, for the better.
“Some people on Bajor,” said Yevir, “began to lose hope. They started to believe that the occupiers would never leave, that Bajor would be kept prisoner by them forever. But they did leave, Nyra. We made them leave. Do you know how we did that?”
Bajor came through. Cardassia can too.
“How?”
I don’t know if we’re going to survive this. I don’t really know how we can. But I know that if we do—there’s nothing, and no one, that will drive me off Cardassia. Because what we’re doing here is right.
Keiko opened her eyes. And when, at last, Molly looked up too, she saw that her mother was gazing at her and smiling at her radiantly, just as if everything was going to work out fine.
19
The room Korven was inhabiting was ill lit and small, but every surface was covered and every corner was filled. Garak took it all in. He saw books and paintings, pieces of sculpture, piles of padds…. There was even a superbly worked tapestry, framed, and propped up in front of the window, blocking out whatever light there was left to come into the room. Korven seemed to be establishing a one-man museum. Altogether, the dimness of the place and the layers upon layers of cultural detritus gave the room a strange intimacy. Korven stood to one side, stooping slightly, and as close to the wall as he could manage.
There was a viewscreen set into a recess and partly obscured by a small painting. It was a Tarinas: characteristic of her, but a minor work. A passable enough piece of propaganda commemorating the Relief of Rakantha. Tarinas had specialized in depicting the glories of the Occupation but, while the Cultural Conservation Committee had honored her with prize after prize for her efforts, she had always been rather bland for Garak’s tastes. But it fitted well in this place. Even from where he was standing, and without closer inspection, Garak was fairly certain that it was not a reproduction. He imagined Tarinas was dead now. There were other artists he regretted more.
Garak pointed past it, to the screen.
“Switch that on.”
Korven shifted slowly across the room. He picked up the painting and placed it with care to one side, and then pressed a few controls on the console. The device whined and flickered, and then resolved itself into an aerial view of the settlement at Andak. Garak smiled as he realized that Korven had obviously been tracking the day’s events, although he seemed to have kept the sound muted.
The square was floodlit, and something of a crowd had assembled there, all attention focused on a large building at one end which Garak took to be the lecture hall. Expertly, he picked out the dark shadows stationed on the roof of the hall, caught the occasional flash of what he knew was a weapon being shifted to track a target. On the ground, a barrier had been set up to keep people safely away from the building, and a handful of soldiers were stationed along it at intervals. Security at the base was being taken seriously, Garak noticed approvingly—he could see, blending into the crowd, agents moving about, keeping an unobtrusive eye on the civilians there. These themselves seemed to comprise the few people from the settlement not inside the hall, a small group from Yevir’s office, some medical teams, and a large number of reporters.
“…and at least forty reporters, including our own Teris Juze and Lamerat Anjen. A spokesperson from Alon Ghemor’s office has said that the situation is sensitive but currently under control….”
Garak followed the report for a little while, reassuring himself that—for the moment at least—Andak was going nowhere. He found that he was slowly flexing the fingers on his right hand. Korven watched this exercise closely. When Garak finally turned to him, he pointed at one of the two chairs in the room. Korven had still not looked him in the eye, and his stoop had become a little more pronounced.
“Sit down,” Garak told him.
* * *
“Hell of a time for a history lesson,” Miles said through his teeth. “What’s he going to tell her about the resistance, do you reckon? Think he’ll mention how successful they were blowing things up to achieve their political ends?”
“He has already passed on drawing her attention to Cardassian involvement in the Occupation,” Macet noted. “Perhaps he’s a little more skilled at this than Naithe was.”
“He is a priest,” Miles acknowledged. “And a politician. I suppose that somewhere along the way he must have picked up a thing or two about how to inspire belief.”
Macet checked on his troops. The comlink chattered back at him.
“…four-five—target has moved, repeat, target has moved. No shot.”
“…copy, four-five, I got that…”
“…three-seven—target coming into view; repeat, target coming into view—collateral estimated at two…correction, three others…three-seven—I now have a shot. Waiting. I still have a shot. Waiting…. Target has moved. No shot.”
A green light winked at them, drawing attention to one of the smaller screens on the display. There was an incoming transmission, from the capital. Macet reached back to the console, and accepted it. The urgent, military squawk was silenced, making way for the smoother tones of the executive.
“Care to give me some on-the-spot analysis of this turn of events, Macet?”
There was Ghemor, leaning back in his chair, arms folded. It was a good approximation of nonchalance, but the persistent tapping of one fingertip against his forearm gave the lie to it. Standing behind him, only just in view, was Jartek. He had changed jacket, Miles noticed, to one with a much higher collar. Probably to cover up the bruises he’d put there earlier, Miles thought, with a grim satisfaction.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Castellan,” Macet said.
“I was hoping for a little more than that—”
“Well, Yevir has her talking,” Macet replied, then raised his finger. “Correction—Yevir has her listening, which is the next best thing. And if she’s talking—or listening—she’s not blowing anything up.”
“My next question has to be whether the topic of conversation is likely to encourage her to blow something up.”
“Well?” Macet said, turning to Miles, with a twist to his lips. “You’re the expert.”
Miles shook his head. “Don’t look at me!”
Macet stared at Yevir, checked once more on the position of his men, and then turned back to the screen. “He’s Bajoran, sir, and he was the particular target of this attack. I…believe that the longer he’s left talking to her, the more likely it is that she’ll activate the bomb. I’m ready to order them in whenever you want.”
* * *
“How?” Nyra whispered. “How did you make them leave?”
“We fought them, Nyra—we fought them with weapons. We shot them and killed them and blew them up and, in time, we drove them out. And once Bajor was no longer occupied, just like Cardassia is no longer occupied—then we put our weapons down, and we tried to live in peace.”
“But Cardassia is still occupied!” Nyra said, suddenly angry again. “By the Federation, by all kinds of influences—alien influences—that want to destroy the little we have left—”
“Nobody wants to destroy Cardassia, Nyra! Cardassia has seen enough destruction! All that people want to do is help—”
“We don’t want your help!”
“Are you quite sure of that?” Yevir’s voice had clouded, like the sudden change of light on a cool spring day that signals thunder, when the sky becomes heavy, and darkens. “Can you be so certain that you speak for everyone on Cardassia, Nyra? Do you speak for all of the people in the cities fighting off the fever they caught from the water? All those who lost everything and everyone they loved and yet still st
ruggle on to live another terrible day, for the sake of what they’ve lost? All the people in this room who are only here at Andak because they wish to make life on Cardassia better—”
“What I’m doing will make things better—”
“How? By killing more people? By leaving another part of this planet stripped of anything except dust? There’s enough of that already, Nyra. Is that really all you have to offer Cardassia?”
“There’s nothing else left!” Nyra shouted back.
“No,” he answered. “You’re wrong.”
And then, very slowly—very purposefully—Yevir Linjarin stood up.
* * *
Ghemor jerked forward in his seat. Jartek blinked and hissed. Macet cursed. Standing at the back of the security office, Jack Emmett invoked the gods of three different worlds and swore he would give up gambling.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Miles whispered.
* * *
Garak shifted some padds to one side and found what he was looking for—a bottle and a couple of glasses.
Someone—Garak didn’t care to remember who—had once told him that fear of death would always overmaster the desire to serve the state. Which was something of a heresy, actually, now he came to think about it. At any rate—Garak, who had an instinct for the perfect comeback so unerring that many people suspected (or hoped) it would one day get him into serious trouble, had retorted, Maybe, but there’s no reason why the two can’t be aligned.
Garak poured the kanar and set one glass down just within Korven’s grasp. He settled in the chair opposite, swished his own glass round, and then breathed in the scent. It was hardly vintage—Korven’s predilection for preservation obviously didn’t stretch as far as his kanar—but it was sufficient for the task at hand. He took a sip.
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