Kira took a little more time to ask her own quiet question, and when she spoke, she was still staring down at the space before her feet.
“What about ... what about the body?” She was trying hard, he could tell, but she could not quite keep the distaste out of her voice. Garak forgave her, since he knew she was making an effort and, anyway, he felt much the same way. For although he had throughout the years never lost sight of necessity, or expediency, it was a very long time since Garak had had a taste for killing.
“Mila will take care of it,” he said gently. She nodded slowly, and then all three of them lapsed back into silence.
Garak thought for a little while about the sunset, and then pondered his arm. The pain, at least, had subsided. “Well,” he said at last, and the other two looked up at him quickly, startled out of their thoughts, “at least the past few days have proven we really do all have something in common.”
“Which is?” asked Damar, and something close to a smile touched his eyes.
Garak smiled back unreservedly, and lifted up his arm. “All three of us are perfectly capable of making some really stupid mistakes.”
He watched as Kira and Damar exchanged a long and searching look. They made a curious picture, he reflected—the terrorist who seemed to him more and more like a freedom fighter, the soldier who seemed more and more like a savior. ...
“I think,” said Kira, slowly but deliberately, her eyes still on Damar’s face, “that that’s not all we have in common.”
Epilogue
They buried Trelar at dawn, in the shade of a moba tree that was just beginning to come into blossom. They each spoke a few awkward words, and even Furel had been in tears, but Kira had remained dry-eyed. A disrupter blast had taken Trelar full in the face, but he had lingered on for the rest of the day and into the night, until his soft pleas had at last become too much, and Shakaar took him by the hand and finished it.
“The last thing he saw was a friend,” Shakaar had said to Kira afterward, but at the time it had not been a consolation.
Now, seeing Damar lie dead in Garak’s arms, she understood.
She glanced up at Garak. The mask had finally slipped. His eyes were wide, his jaw slack; he looked as if he had just watched the death of the future, or of hope.
We have no time for this, no time, she thought, listening to the disruptor fire closing in around them, raging inwardly at the injustice. Damar had become—had been—a good man. He did not deserve to die such a squalid death. But we have no time. ... We can end this war now! Later we can grieve, but now we have work to do—his work to do.
“Remember his orders,” she said firmly. “We stop for nothing.” She watched as Garak took his shock and turned it into rage.
“For Cardassia!” he cried.
“For Cardassia!” Kira shouted back—and meant it.
The Calling
Andrew J. Robinson
Historian’s note: This story is set after the events of the novel A Stitch in Time and the stage play “The Dream Box,” both of which follow the story of Garak beyond the events of the television series.
Andrew J. Robinson
Andrew J. Robinson comes by his knowledge of Garak from having played him on the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for seven years. In 2000, Pocket Books published his novel about Garak, A Stitch in Time. He was born in New York City where he received his B.A. from The New School For Social Research and a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. He has written poetry and his plays have been produced here and in Europe. As an actor and director he has worked in theaters all over the country as well as in film and television. He is currently at work on Masks, a memoir chronicling his life in theater and film, and he and his wife, Irene, divide their time between Los Angeles and Paris.
Prologue
My dear Doctor:
I have had to send this communication through a rather circuitous route to prevent it from being exposed to anyone but you. If some unfortunate soul does manage to get his hands on this, it will be the last thing he’ll ever hold. All this sounds extreme, I know, but I assure you, I’m not sending a poison-pen letter because I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Actually, I count myself fortunate to have gotten out of bed at all, but more about that later.
Despite the fact that you have disappeared without a word, I’m hopeful you’re still alive and have a good reason for breaking off all contact. Yet, while I’m aware that you are swimming in murky waters these days, my friend, you’ll forgive me if I say that I am somewhat piqued. My request for a rendezvous in the Vinculum many months ago was urgent, and when you didn’t appear ... well, let’s just say that my life has changed radically, and in light of our agreement when we last met, I think it only fair that I let you know where this change has led me.
And it’s not a question of blame, Doctor. Such a childish word. No, it’s more an issue of responsibility, wouldn’t you agree? If one is encouraged by a dear friend to undertake a dangerous, indeed, life-changing course of action, and is promised support for this action (without which, success is surely unattainable), how is one to react when that dear friend and his promised support disappear? No, we can only be responsible for our own choices, not for the actions of others.
There are those who have argued that our encounter in the Vinculum was a dream, or that your image was a projection of my own overactive imagination. But if one has never been in the Vinculum, how can one understand a place where past, present, and future, each with several layered and intertwined veils, dance with the imagery of life in its total and terrifying expression? You and I know that it’s a shadow world that exists beneath and behind every manifestation of this world; and in that shadow world all those neat distinctions that we make between dream and reality, truth and fabrication, the living and the dead have no more meaning than spices in a karalian stew. I believe it was you I encountered in that place, and that’s why, once again, I’m writing to you.
When I was unexpectedly reunited with you in the Vinculum, I was a man on an errand. I needed to bring back a cure that would stem the plague that was destroying Cardassia. You provided me with that cure ... and with something else. When I left the Vinculum, I was a man on a mission, a mission I embraced the way a lost traveler hurries toward a distant light in the darkness. I was determined to step out of the shadows, leave the ranks of the “night people,” an identity that had been imposed upon me since I was a child, and guide Cardassia back to the fold of civilized community.
But that light disappeared, and I needed your help. The reality of trying to bring order out of Cardassian chaos brought me back to the Vinculum on two subsequent occasions, but I found nothing that suggested a vision of healing or relief. No Federation support ... and no Dr. Bashir. Perhaps the constant travails of our planet and its never-ending degradation became tiresome to you and unworthy of your effort. Well, you wouldn’t be the first to feel that way. Or, perhaps, making a rendezvous in such a place is not as simple as entering the coordinates of a destination on a shuttle flight. Dr. Parmak cobbled together a way to get there and return, but he’d be the first to admit that it’s not an exact technology. But whatever has happened to you, my friend, my mission has changed, and I hope you won’t be offended when I tell you that the agreement we made has been superceded by another.
I’ve had to go underground for a period (“silence, exile, and cunning”), but here I am, popping up again, like an irrepressible protagonist (Punch?) in one of those puppet shows for children I saw in Paris. Please bear with me as I attempt to describe what has happened in the intervening months since we last met. My fervent hope is that this communication finds its way to you.
1
They came from all over Cardassia. The Sabutahim, callused and sturdy farmers from the southern provinces; the gaunt and ghostlike Kasmoc, herders and breeders from the north; renegade soldiers and mercenaries who have formed primitive tribes in the Mekar and Morfan provinces;
ragged, half-mad fundamentalists from Lakarian City, rebuilding among the Hebitian ruins in a desperate effort to return to simpler times; and, of course, those diehard Imperialists (the base support of the Directorate) from their protected enclaves in Rogarin and Brakk. All survivors: most exhausted by the destruction and disease of the civil wars, looking for some kind of resolution; many demented and haunted by loss and grief, looking for a scapegoat to direct their rage. Cardassia is now divided among countless tribes, each one ferociously defending the borders of its pathetic realm. Our Reunion Project to establish a Cardassian democracy is like making a suit of clothes from grains of sand.
I stood on the dais crudely erected from the rubble of the Assembly building that once dominated the Tarlok Sector, the seat of Cardassian power. I watched as thousands streamed into the clearing that was once the majestic and elegant Imperial Parade Grounds. This was the place that commemorated the heroes and triumphs of the Union with martial music underscoring great rhetoric as it echoed throughout the monuments. Now it serves as the gathering place for the volatile remnants of Cardassian civilization.
“No! No! He’s blind!” a woman’s voice screamed. I looked to my right toward the rubble of what was once the Hall of Records and saw two men beating another as a woman feebly attempted to deter them.
“He fought against us at Begata,” one of the attackers growled.
“And I’m proud of it!” gasped the blind man between blows.
Dr. Parmak dispatched two of the dozen or so men providing a thin line of defense around the dais to stop the beating. Thin indeed. Conflicts flared up throughout the crowd, and if any one of them expanded and connected to any of the other conflicts, nothing would be able to stop the chaos from engulfing the city.
Spontaneous combustion.
Violence has a mysterious life that feeds on our despair and desire for revenge, and destruction is its legacy. The desperation of each of these tribes makes it a calculated risk to bring them together in this open forum. So many people in one place looking for the cause, the source of their despair and rage. Their grudges seem to energize them and keep them alive. Of all the emotions, revenge is the one that rules the Cardassian psyche. An eye for an eye, I thought as I watched the blind man being tended to by the woman.
“I wonder ...” I spoke aloud, my words amplified throughout the Grounds by the crude sound system Dr. Parmak had devised. “I wonder what would happen if we all went blind.” The words hung in the dry, hot air as the crowd roar subsided to a rolling murmur.
“What?”
“What did he say?”
“Quiet!”
A shoving match broke out to my left at the place where the entrance to the Obsidian Order had once stood.
“How do they exact revenge in the land of the blind?” I asked. “What do they take next?”
“You take until there’s nothing left!” a deep voice bellowed.
“ ‘Until there’s nothing left,’ ” I repeated. “Then let me ask you all this. How do they exact revenge in the land of the dead?”
The question was greeted with the first silence of the morning. The shrill and mocking call of the narawak could be heard overhead.
“Because if there’s nothing left, how do we go on?” I asked. The narawak’s shriek faded and the silence was now complete. I moved to the front of the dais and scanned the faces in front of me. I imagined what I must look like to them. A graying man, trying to stand tall against exhaustion and the gravity of the situation. My eyes, however, were still strong enough to hold their collective gaze, and at the same time, study individual faces, the way I had learned in the Vinculum when I was being urged to take on the mantle of leadership. But that was another time and another reality. In this place, the pain and the sorrow of the lives of these people standing in front of me began to bleed through their rage as my last question came to ground. How, indeed, do we go on?
It was nearly a year since Alon Ghemor, the democratically elected leader of the Reunion Project, was assassinated, and since then nearly as many people had died in the civil war and plague as during the Dominion occupation. Cardassia was so degraded it was nearly uninhabitable, and most survivors already had “nothing left.” In order to find some kind of protection, each person pledged his or her support to a collective and surrendered their autonomy to that group and its leader. Even the devoutly religious Neo-Hebitians had to surrender to the military discipline of the Lakarian City collective to protect themselves against the marauding predators of other collectives. The democratic order that Ghemor and the Reunion, Project had attempted to institute had dissolved into anarchy and cruel self-interest. Cardassia had lost its civilization ... and its soul was now up for grabs.
I had always believed that the planet could be rebuilt and restructured, that the survivors could identify the underlying causes that had brought them to the brink of annihilation, that a just and open society could be created. I had not fully reckoned with the tenacious strength of those who would not let go of the old structure, no matter how discredited and degraded it had become.
The Reunion Project had won the elections by a two-to-one margin, but soon after the new group of leaders attempted to realign governance along more democratic lines, the resistance led by the Directorate and its so-called Restoration Cadres dug in. The battles were fierce and cruel, and the needless loss of life sapped the strength of both sides. The young, democratically elected political structure was mortally wounded. Those who believed that power was their hereditary entitlement saw the will of the people as something to be destroyed; and those who were willing to submit to the will of the people did whatever was necessary to survive.
Ghemor adamantly refused the offer of Federation help that was made to me by Julian Bashir during our meeting in the Vinculum. He believed that any outside interference would be construed by many in the Project as a Federation ploy and an attempt by Ghemor to grab power. What would prevent the Directorate, he asked, from making a similar alliance with the Klingons and Romulans? What’s to prevent them from doing it now? I countered. In the end, Ghemor came around to my way of thinking, but sadly, the argument had splintered the Reunion Project ... and Ghemor was the one who paid the ultimate price. The cruel joke was that we had become the Disunion Project because many believe that Ghemor was assassinated by one of his own followers and not by some Directorate thug.
As I scanned the crowd, I noticed members of another tribe; hooded figures off to the side and isolated from the others by empty space. These were the survivors of the plague hiding their disfigurement under full-length robes. How brave of these people to come here today. The others in the crowd resented their presence, but pretended that they didn’t exist. We had never anticipated the plague and its virulence. One day it appeared, a virus as mysterious as the evil that had enveloped the planet, and one out of every three Cardassians died in agony. The plague brought us to the edge of oblivion, and yet it was the reason I was standing in front of this ragged and motley assembly.
When I returned from my first visit to the Vinculum with the plague cure Dr. Bashir had provided, I knew that my trip to that place was no dream. Dr. Parmak was eager to hear of my adventures, but it took me days before I could make sense of it. Not that we had much time to chat. We worked tirelessly to disseminate the curative substance that quickly stemmed any further mutations of the virus, as well as the preventative techniques Dr. Bashir had wisely included. When it was later confirmed that Palandine was indeed among the dead, I went into an emotional tailspin. I tried to believe that her disfigured appearance in the Vinculum was some kind of hallucination, a hoax my mind was perpetrating in the heat of the moment, but I couldn’t deny the fact that she was not the only dead soul I had encountered in that place. Nor could I deny the truth of Palandine’s statement, once I had returned to this world and made an investigation, that her daughter, Kel, was missing without a trace. Ironically, this bit of news rallied my spirits, and I dedicated whatever time and energy I could
spare from my plague work to finding her.
“Ereket, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Excuse me, Decent?” The young man preparing to administer the plague antidote to his patient was as surprised by the sharpness of my tone as I was. Behind them, a long line of people waited in the late afternoon shadows of the old Imperial Parade Grounds of Lakarian City. We had been working since early morning and the pace of the work had slowed considerably.
“These people need your help, they don’t need to be impressed by your wisdom and expertise.”
“But, Decent, I was just trying to explain ...”
“Ereket, just administer the protocol as you’ve been taught to do. We have to finish this group before we lose the light. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Docent,” he replied, hiding the hurt and shame he felt at being called out in front of all these people. The old man receiving the injection maintained his stoic demeanor, but his eyes thoroughly studied me. He was clearly more interested in me than in Ereket’s childish abuse of authority. I nodded to him and moved away to supervise the other probes.
On the surface, my reaction appeared extreme and unjust, but Ereket liked to demonstrate his authority with pedantic behavior and there was no time for that. Ever since I returned from the Vinculum after the first meeting with Dr. Bashir, I felt like someone who had awakened from a deep sleep after an evening of too much kanar. But it was more than just disorientation; my perception of people and the motives that drive their actions now had a clarity that often made me wince. I had to take more care with my reactions. This new perception, and the obligation to back it up with action, could be a problem if I let it get out of hand. To correct the behavior of a probe like Ereket, especially if I’m his decent and we’re working day and night to defeat this plague, is clearly an acceptable situation. But if my peers and those in positions of real power need correction ...
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