by S. D. Perry
Dukat was on the Bajoran side of the station when he was called to ops to answer a transmission from Gul Darhe’el. He turned from the Bajoran shopkeeper who had been spewing out empty flattery in an attempt to distract Dukat from the fact that he was most likely selling black-market items to some of the wretches in ore processing. Dukat didn’t care enough about it to pursue it further—at least, not immediately. He walked away from the shop without further acknowledging the merchant, the swarm of dirty Bajorans parting to allow their prefect to pass.
He accepted the call a few minutes later, apologizing to Darhe’el for making him wait, both of them aware that he did not mean it. Gallitep’s overseer didn’t bother with any pleasantries, announcing the reason for his call without ceremony.
“It’s over,” Darhe’el said. “The main vein is played out, and the secondaries aren’t worth the cost of running the AI. Besides which, I’ve had to continue treating the workers for Kalla-Nohra, at considerable expense. I’ll need that Bajoran scientist to come to the camp, to shut down the AI…. And I’ll need your approval for the rest of it.”
Dukat felt his body tense. The news wasn’t unexpected, but he hadn’t thought it would come quite so soon. Gallitep had finally outlived its usefulness to Cardassia.
“The rest of it,” he murmured, thinking of what Kell would say. Dukat had long believed that it would be a worthy venture to drill deeper below the surface, but Kell had consistently refused to supplement Dukat’s resources with the personnel and equipment that would be necessary to delve that far. Dukat could only hope that the retirement of such a productive facility as Gallitep might persuade Kell to rethink his decision.
“The workers,” Darhe’el sneered. “Unless you want them on your station. I’m sure they’d appreciate dying in the very lap of luxury.”
Dukat sighed. “I see no great wrong in treating them with basic civility, Gul.”
“Which is why the filthy creatures continue to run over our ground troops, doing as they please,” Darhe’el said. “If I were prefect—”
“Oh, but you’re not, are you,” Dukat said, enjoying the darkness that swept across Darhe’el’s heavy face. “You’ve done an excellent job at Gallitep overall, I’ll give you that. And I’m sure that Central Command will find further use for you, perhaps heading a prison facility, or leading a squadron at the front lines, for one of the colonies. But I am prefect of Bajor, and that means that for the time being, you still answer to me.”
If looks could kill. Dukat smiled, easing back. “I’ll see to it that the necessary technician is sent promptly to deal with the AI. As to the management of the facility’s closure, I’ll leave that to your discretion. Send me your reports, I’ll sign off on whatever choice you make, assuming it’s not unreasonable.”
Dukat nodded and ended the transmission, wondering if Kell would rethink his position, now that Bajor’s most productive uridium mine had played out. Wondering, indeed, what he could do to rework the numbers, to keep Bajor’s output level within the Union’s very high expectations.
Still, he reflected, he should not overlook the bright side to this turn of events: the end of Gallitep also meant the end of Darhe’el, at least as far as Dukat was concerned. Without the option to elevate him to a higher post on Bajor, Kell would have no choice but to recall Darhe’el to Prime.
“Doctor Mora,” Odo said, from where he was sitting in the corner of the lab. Mora waved him off.
“Not now, Odo,” he told him, clicking away at his keypad. “Can’t you regenerate for a while?”
“My composition only requires me to regenerate every seventeen hours,” Odo replied. His pronunciation was flawless, and he’d even begun to learn to put inflection into his voice, though he exaggerated it sometimes.
“Well, maybe you could practice being an insect or something.”
“Doctor Mora, are you nervous?” Odo asked.
Mora looked up at the shape-shifter, whose “face” was appropriately inquisitive. “Yes, Odo, I am nervous. A very important man is coming to the laboratory soon, and I’ve got to be sure that everything is…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what to do for Dukat, exactly, other than have Odo perform for him. He had to figure out a way to make the prefect understand that his research with Odo was important, but he wasn’t sure how to do it without making it seem like a sideshow of some kind.
Yopal had insisted that Dukat would have no interest in what Mora was doing, that he only wanted to speak to Daul about something, and that he wanted to discuss something about weapons with a few of the others. But Mora remained unconvinced. He feared that as soon as Dukat was introduced to him, the prefect would begin asking a thousand questions that Mora wouldn’t know how to answer, and he would find himself in a labor camp before he knew it. And then what would happen to Odo? Mora looked sideways at the shape-shifter, who watched him with his unique non-expression. It always managed to convey sadness, even if Mora couldn’t be sure that the shape-shifter was capable of actually feeling it.
Mora’s computer chirped, indicating that Doctor Yopal was requesting his presence in her office. He headed down the hallway, absentmindedly smoothing his hair back with his hand. Yopal was not alone in her office.
“Yes, what is it, Doctor?”
“We have a new colleague here at the institute. This is Doctor Kalisi Reyar.”
Given leave to do so, Mora turned to regard the other Cardassian woman in the office, a little shorter in stature than Yopal, possibly a little younger, a little more vain; the spoon-shaped concavity in the center of her forehead was filled in with a bit of decorative blue pigment. Other than that, she was nearly indistinguishable from the other women who worked at the institute. They all wore their hair in those peculiarly arranged plaits and bundles, they all had the same wide-open alertness in their eyes. Mora expected to forget her name almost immediately, for he rarely conversed with anyone but Yopal anymore. He extended his hand, and Doctor Reyar looked at it.
“Some Bajorans greet one another by clasping their forearms together,” Yopal told the other woman.
“Yes, I know,” Reyar said, but she still did not extend her hand, and Mora slowly let his drop.
“I wanted you to meet, because I will be putting the two of you together very soon,” Yopal said.
Mora felt his heart skip a beat.
“Not right away, but probably sometime in the coming months. That will give you time to wrap up your current projects.”
“Even Odo?” Mora spoke without meaning to, unable to help it. “He needs constant observation, he needs guidance, supervision. Nobody knows him as well as I do, nobody else can—”
“You will still be permitted to work with Odo in your spare time,” Yopal told Mora crisply. “Just not as often. I suggest you let him know right away, so that he can become acclimated to the change.”
Mora breathed a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t ideal, but at least Odo was not being assigned to someone else. Of course, there was still the matter of this Doctor Reyar…Mora turned to her again. “I look forward to working with you,” he said, trying to sound genuine. He hoped she was at least as tolerable as Yopal.
“Doctor Mora is one of the good Bajorans,” Yopal told Reyar. “He is cooperative, obedient…”
Reyar smiled. “That reminds me of a little joke I heard on the transport here,” she said. “Someone said that the only good Bajoran is one who is about to be executed.” She laughed out loud, and Yopal chuckled politely. Mora began to cough, and for a moment he could not stop.
Yopal patted Mora’s shoulder. “It’s only a joke, of course.”
“Of course,” Mora replied, still coughing.
“Perhaps you’d like to see Doctor Mora’s pet project,” Yopal suggested to the new scientist.
Reyar did not appear to have an opinion one way or the other, but Yopal nodded briskly and the three began to walk down the hall to Mora’s lab. Yopal stood back while Mora opened the door, and the three entered, revealing that Od
o had been sitting in the same place since Mora had left him. Reyar gasped.
“What is it?” she asked, and took a step in Odo’s direction.
“He is a shape-shifter,” Mora answered, walking protectively toward Odo. “We don’t know where he came from, and we’ve never seen anything like him. He seems to be unrelated to any of the known shape-shifting species, with a morphogenic matrix that is utterly unlike the Antosians, the Chameloids, the Wraith, or the Vendorians. However, I’ve begun to make certain breakthroughs. Odo, this is Doctor Reyar. Why don’t you show Doctor Reyar…something that you can do?”
Without a word, Odo morphed into a cadge lupus, a shaggy, vicious-looking Bajoran animal he’d learned about from the institute’s database. Reyar took a step back and made a frightened noise.
“Something Cardassian,” Mora said quickly, and the lupus changed into a massive, square-headed Cardassian riding hound, similar to the lupus but with longer legs and short, wiry fur.
Reyar seemed no less horrified. “How dreadful!” she exclaimed. Odo changed back into his humanoid form.
“I have upset you,” Odo said. Reyar ignored him, turning back to Mora.
“So, what kind of progress have you made with it?” she inquired.
Mora was taken aback, for he’d thought Odo’s demonstration illustrated his progress well enough. “Well, I’ve learned quite a lot about him in the time since I was assigned to him. His optimal temperature, his mass, which, by the way, can be changed at will. I’ve also taught him the basics of humanoid speech, as you can hear, and he’s beginning to learn many things that will hopefully help him to someday assimilate—”
“Yes, but I mean, what have you learned about him that will contribute to the betterment of Cardassian society? For isn’t that the ultimate goal here at the institute—and in the sciences in general?”
“Yes, of course,” Mora replied. “But I’m learning about a new species, Doctor Reyar. Surely you see the value in that type of research. It is inherently important to learn all we can about—”
“I don’t really see the value,” Reyar said. “I suppose I’m just a traditionalist that way. But I guess you are to be congratulated for teaching it to do…tricks and the like.” Her tone was dry, or maybe Mora just imagined it was. Cardassian mannerisms still eluded him at times.
The two women left him alone with Odo, who wasted no time getting to the inevitable questions.
“Doctor Reyar. This is a man?”
“No, Odo, she is a woman.”
The shape-shifter nodded. “I thought she looked like a woman. But…I thought it was men who did not make good scientists.”
Mora laughed, a little puzzled. “Doctor Reyar is probably a perfectly good scientist, Odo.”
“But, Doctor Mora, I thought that science, the study of science…the study of…me…I thought this was the quest for knowledge, for information and truth about the environment that surrounds us.”
He was probably quoting something from one of the informational padds he’d been given, Mora thought, and felt a surge of pride that his project seemed to have internalized what he was reading. “Yes, well, Odo, not all scientists have the same priorities, I suppose. Doctor Reyar believes science is valuable only if it makes people’s lives quantifiably better in some way.”
“People’s lives,” Odo repeated. “Whose lives? My life? Your life?”
Mora cleared his throat. He wanted to say the Cardassians’ lives, but he said nothing. Odo was so naïve, Mora was well aware that anything he said in the shape-shifter’s presence was likely to be repeated.
“You are learning so quickly, Odo,” Mora finally said. “But it’s time for me to check your liquid mass. If you wouldn’t mind stepping into the tank, please. I need you to revert to your natural form.”
Odo, obedient as always, did as he was told, and Mora shifted his focus to his notes, remembering that he would not be able to devote so much attention to this in the near future. He hoped Odo would understand.
19
It seemed a very long time since Daul had used a transporter. The Bajoran Institute of Science was outfitted with one that was used primarily for equipment and supplies, though occasionally the Cardassian scientists employed it to transport themselves from place to place, but the Bajorans were not allowed access to it. This rule was unspoken, but it was very well understood.
Today, however, an exception was being made. The prefect had strongly implied that Gallitep’s overseer was a notoriously impatient man, and that Daul needed to begin his new task as soon as possible. Daul was quickly authorized for transport and beamed directly into a long, cool corridor with chrome doors on either end. He was met there by a lean Cardassian who introduced himself simply as “Marritza.”
“Gul Dukat recommends you highly for your expertise,” Marritza said as he escorted Daul down the corridor.
Daul had the distinct impression that the other man was nervous. He wondered if he was afraid of Bajorans; there was so much propaganda among Cardassians regarding the resistance that civilians probably expected every Bajoran to be ready to spring up and murder their Cardassian neighbors without a second thought.
“I’m flattered by his confidence,” Daul said. In truth, he was anything but flattered. He was disgusted, and he was terrified to consider what he was about to be confronted with at Gallitep. At least last time, he hadn’t been made to travel to the actual camp; his software had been electronically implemented into the mine’s online system from the institute’s database.
“It has been explained to you what you are expected to do?” Marritza inquired.
Daul nodded. “Yes, I’m to reprogram the system to begin a gradual shutdown. It will have to be done in two sessions, however. I trust Gul Darhe’el is aware of this necessity?”
“I will be sure he is informed,” Marritza said. “My job is to keep the camp’s records and the details of its operation up to date, but I daresay Gul Darhe’el will not wish to be troubled with such minor matters. He has so much else to concern himself with…” The clerk smiled then, with a strange trace of what seemed like bitterness.
Daul found the Cardassian to be very unlike any other he had encountered, his expression difficult to read. Of course, Daul couldn’t purport to have a very broad understanding of the Cardassian psyche in general, but at least most of them seemed to be motivated by the same things. Marritza seemed somewhat more…complicated.
As the two men traveled up the corridor, Daul was made very aware of the intense droning of the mining equipment outside: drills, ore-processing conveyors, smelters, and the rushing water from the great concentrator that delivered slurry to a tailings pond many kellipates away from the site.
But beneath the tremendous grinding, echoing din, there was another sound, one that Marritza seemed to be taking great pains to ignore. To Daul at first it sounded like the faint cries of a tyrfox, or perhaps a pack of faraway cadge lupus; but Daul immediately knew what he was hearing—the cries of the prisoners here, the moans of the dying workers, suffering as they were from Kalla-Nohra. Daul cleared his throat. “Doesn’t Darhe’el see to it that the workers who are ill are properly treated for their condition?”
Marritza gave a quick nod, almost frantic. “Oh yes,” he said. “Productivity is of the utmost importance here. Darhe’el is adamant about the treatment of all victims of the disease—Bajoran…and Cardassian…alike.” In the inflection of his voice, which sounded very much as though Marritza repeated a long-rehearsed falsehood, Daul thought he detected a single truth—that Marritza himself was infected with the disease. Without meaning to, he gave the other man a look of sympathy. Marritza looked away, and Daul decided to avoid further mention of the subject.
They reached the end of the passage and Marritza keyed open a door. Suddenly the narrow, neat corridor was enveloped in a roar of sound; the floor beneath their feet gave way to a trembling catwalk, which opened up over a yawning chasm. The wind whipped fiercely overhead, the narrow footbridge
swinging gently, though it was protected from the relentless gale by the walls of the open-pit mine, which shot up at a kellipate from where they stood. This bridge had been constructed at what was once near the very bottom of the mine, but the hole had plunged far beneath this point in more recent years, and the spindly catwalk was suspended hundreds of linnipates above firm ground.
Daul glanced up, where the burning sun hung motionless in the cloudless sky, beating down heavily on the workers in the massive pit beneath them. Marritza handed him a headset, which would drown out the noise and allow them to talk to each other. Daul stepped gingerly onto the footbridge that spanned the mine.
The vast pit had been gradually but efficiently excavated over the course of many years, crisscrossed with scaffolds and enormous systems of conveyors to remove the chunks of rock and minerals from the ground. This had once been a massive hillside, likely covered over with trees and foliage and wildlife; now it was a bare, steaming crater, surrounded by many tessipates of complete desolation; it was the closest thing Daul could imagine to the myths about the Fire Caves. Before Terok Nor had been constructed, Gallitep was the center of ore processing in the B’hava’el system. Daul thought that Bajorans could never have conceived of a thing so unsightly and terrible as this place.
The steep, spiraling gravel roads that were cut into the sides of the pit were dotted here and there with workers, some of them disappearing into tunnels that had been dug randomly all around the perimeter of the mine. Though Daul could not see clearly most of the workers from where he stood, those nearest to him staggered on thin, bandy legs, their bare chests and backs covered in open sores and blistering sunburns. They wielded traditional shovels and spades and truncheons, hacking away at the exposed rock, slowly but persistently widening and deepening the abyss beneath them to get at the valuable minerals embedded in the ground. Also visible were a number of Cardassian guards, swaggering between the hapless miners and occasionally stopping to shout criticisms or reprimands. Most of the guards did not venture far into the pit, apparently preferring to remain close to their respective stations, well-built corridors like the one from which Daul and Marritza had just come.
