ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  You’re saying that an Undine infiltrator had somehow managed to worm its way onto Castellan Lang’s security detail—even though the Undine were no longer at war with any of the Alpha or Beta Quadrant powers?

  GARAK: No longer formally at war, perhaps. But at war nevertheless. And there I was, all alone but for him—or rather it—in one of the most inhospitable places on Cardassia Prime, and under some of the worst weather conditions imaginable. Needless to say, it was a highly inconvenient situation.

  Do you think Krota had intended to reveal his Undine identity to you then and there?

  GARAK: I’m almost certain that he didn’t. His “unmasking,” as it were, had to be inadvertent. Really, can you think of a less commodious place for a thing like that to happen? I can’t. So I must have been witnessing that accidental “reversion” process that Undine spies have been known to undergo on occasion—especially during times of stress or injury, according to certain Federation intelligence reports on the subject that had… come into my possession.

  I almost feel foolish for asking this, Mister Garak, but how did you get hold of Federation intelligence reports about the Undine?

  GARAK: It’s never foolish for you to do your journalistic duty, Mister Sisko. But it would definitely be foolish of me to furnish you with a forthright answer. Besides, I don’t want to waste your time with material that Starfleet Intelligence is almost certain to redact from your project anyway.

  All right, then. Let’s go back to Krota. Do you think his plan was to assassinate the castellan?

  GARAK: He must have had a much longer-term agenda than that, though if killing Natima Lang had suited his purposes I’m sure he wouldn’t have hesitated to do so. After all, if his principal goal had been to assassinate the castellan, he had already gotten close enough to her to have had many previous opportunities—none of which he’d acted upon as yet. Of course, if he wanted to preserve such opportunities for the future, he would have had to prevent me from revealing his secret to anyone else.

  Then I take it the next thing he did was to try to kill you.

  GARAK: You may find this surprising, but that isn’t at all what happened. Instead, his body changed again; after expending considerable effort, he transformed back into the likeness of Krota. The entire metamorphosis, from man into monster and back again, took only one or two of your minutes. It also appeared to be exceedingly painful for him. Despite their occasional slipups—most notably and spectacularly their so-called reversions to their natural forms—Undine operatives are obviously highly dedicated professionals, devoted to maintaining their cover identities at all costs.

  So he didn’t try to kill you. What did he do instead?

  GARAK: Believe it or not, Krota—or whoever he really was—actually took a far more audacious tack than violence: he tried to deny the evidence of my eyes. He knew as well as I did what I had seen, no doubt because my injuries had compromised my ability to conceal my surprise at his transformations. Expecting an immediate attack, I wasted no time drawing my disruptor and training it straight at his head. Understandably, this put him into a fairly cautious frame of mind.

  I didn’t realize anybody outside the security contingent was allowed to carry arms in the castellan’s presence. I thought you were a diplomatic adviser.

  GARAK: That’s correct, Mister Sisko. But since my advice frequently concerns matters of state security, I’d been granted a certain amount of leeway regarding the official sidearms policy. This was merely one of a distressingly large number of occasions when this leeway proved invaluable.

  So you confronted Krota at disruptor-point and accused him of being an Undine spy.

  GARAK: Indeed I did, since there was no way he could believe I hadn’t seen his metamorphoses. It’s probably at this point you’d expect him to risk everything by lunging at me in a desperate bid to silence the only living witness to his ongoing crimes. Instead, he flatly denied that anything had happened. He said that my eyes must have been playing tricks on me. I was hallucinating because of the combined effects of injury, fatigue, and dehydration. We’d been out in the raging elements for several hours by then, so what he was saying actually had a certain… credibility about it.

  As you said, you were injured, tired, and dehydrated. Were you beginning to doubt what you’d seen—or what you thought you’d seen?

  GARAK: I knew what he was telling me wasn’t true, Mister Sisko. I know what I saw.

  As confident as you are by nature, Mister Garak, even you have to admit that you can’t be one hundred percent certain of that. After all, you’ve already conceded that you weren’t at your best at that time. “Compromised” is the word I believe you used. And add to that your history—please pardon my being indelicate here, but I feel my duty requires me to bring up certain facts. Your history of psychiatric conditions. Your chronic claustrophobia. Your psychological issues related to years of exposure to the artificial endorphins generated by a device implanted in your body by the Obsidian Order. The post-traumatic stress of your protracted years of exile, which ended at the same time your homeworld was being laid waste by the Dominion.… Taking all of these things into consideration, isn’t it at least possible that you really did imagine this alleged Undine encounter?

  GARAK: Certainly, I acknowledge the possibility, though I utterly reject its likelihood, just as I do the notion of the castellan’s transport sustaining an “accidental” lightning strike. After all, isn’t it also technically possible that you are hallucinating our exchange, Mister Sisko, and that neither Mister Drake nor myself are even here? As I said, I know what I saw.

  I’m sorry, Mister Garak. I didn’t mean to offend you.

  GARAK: I’m not offended in the least, Mister Sisko. As you said, you are merely doing your duty to history. Just as I am doing my duty to Cardassia by trying to get my recollection embedded in the wet concrete of galactic history—before that concrete cures and hardens into something impermeable and static. Now, where was I?

  You were in a standoff with Krota, or whoever he was.

  GARAK: Oh, yes. A rescue party interrupted our little tableau, picked us up, and finally rescued the castellan. My debriefers asked me many of the very same questions after I leveled espionage charges at the alien creature that had called itself Krota.

  Regarding your rescue, did your debriefers believe what you told them about Krota?

  GARAK: Not to the extent that they were willing to risk allowing Krota to be shot down in cold blood. Therefore, they disarmed me during the rescue. However, they also took my word that Krota needed to be restrained, at least until the matter of his identity could be sorted out once and for all. Krota, or whatever the thing that wore his form really called itself, was intelligent enough to keep up his charade of innocence while the matter was still subject to some justifiable doubt in the minds of those who hadn’t seen his transformations with their own eyes.

  It was only then that I realized how very, very dangerous these Undine could really be. These were no mere shape-shifting monsters to be sniffed out and destroyed, like the Founders of the Dominion. No, the Undine were something far more clever and sophisticated than that. For under the right circumstances, they can maintain their cover even after they’ve been sniffed out, merely by remaining calm and appearing reasonable—and by casting a mere dusting of doubt over the sanity of any lone accuser. Their most fearsome attribute is not their physical strength, their ability to infuse an adversary with parasitic life-forms, or even their talent for making themselves into DNA-perfect doppelgängers of their enemies.

  No. Their most frightening talent is their persuasiveness. From behind the barrier of their disguises, they exude the slickness of master politicians. They can insinuate themselves inextricably into our civilizations. And no amount of vigilance can completely safeguard even the topmost levels of our leadership hierarchies.

  DRAKE: If you don’t mind my saying so, Mister Garak, you’re starting to sound paranoid again.

  GARAK: But appropr
iately so, I should think, under the present circumstances.

  I have to agree with Liaison Drake, Mister Garak. Cardassia is the civilization that produced the Obsidian Order, one of the most feared intelligence bureaus in two quadrants. Even granted that the Undine were formidable adversaries, how could a civilization like yours be such easy pickings for them—especially so long after the Long War’s generally agreed-upon end?

  GARAK: I can point to two main reasons. For one, the Undine study each of their target societies with painstaking care before they begin their infiltration ops. For another, the Obsidian Order—which might have stood as a sentinel against Undine incursions—was never reconstituted under any of Cardassia’s post–Dominion War governments. Not even the best efforts of such hard-line reactionaries as Gul Madred, not to mention the rump Parliament his so-called True Way party now represents, were sufficient to get the late Enabran Tain’s old spy bureau restored and operational again.

  The True Way. What are their main objectives?

  GARAK: What you probably imagine them to be. They started with an only barely failed attempt to quash Cardassia’s nascent democracy. Now they’re all about the restoration of Cardassia’s former “greatness,” which presumably includes reconstituting the intelligence bureau that everyone feared so deeply.

  The very same Obsidian Order that you served for so many years.

  GARAK: Which is perhaps why I now channel so much of my energies into atoning for my misspent youth.

  You played a major role in the Ghemor government’s decision to kill and bury the Obsidian Order. It’s not always easy to slough off the past. Do you ever have any regrets about leaving behind your former life as a spy—especially in light of the Undine War?

  GARAK: I’m afraid that much has changed since the carefree days of my service as an intelligence operative. And regrets serve little purpose, especially given the limited palette of choices the Ghemor government had in founding a viable democratic system on post–Dominion War Cardassia. For most people, the Obsidian Order was too painful a reminder of the bad old days of Dukat’s sellout to the Dominion and all the indignities that followed. Do I regret Ghemor’s decision not to exhume the Obsidian Order once he was in power? Only when I imagine the bureau being used to protect Cardassia from alien infiltration. But the practical reality is that Ghemor would never have been allowed to govern had he decided not to leave the Order moldering in its grave, so to speak.

  Of course, even a fully operational Obsidian Order might well have failed to stop a foe as wily as the Undine.

  I’m surprised to hear you speak that way about the Obsidian Order. In years past, you’ve described their reach and abilities as almost limitless.

  GARAK: If I ever left you with that impression, please allow me to disabuse you of it now. Nothing is limitless. Take the example of our only peers in the intelligence business, the Romulans. I mean to offer no offense to the many fine intelligence professionals who protect your Federation, Mister Liaison.

  DRAKE: None taken. Besides, what would I know about the intelligence business?

  What about the Romulans, Mister Garak?

  GARAK: Although their Tal Shiar spy organization has weathered the storms of Romulan politics for decades, and has survived relatively intact, even the Romulans have suffered Undine infiltration. And I’m told that much of it has occurred recently, though only a few Romulan intel veterans are inclined to speak of it, even in the gentlest of whispers. Mind you, that’s an example of Undine relations with only one non-Cardassian power. If you had access to as many of my outworlder colleagues as I do—and I’m talking about members of species that aren’t commonly regarded as prone to panic, like the Klingons and even the Gorn—then you’d hear substantially similar stories. The Undine may be keeping a low profile in comparison to the time of the Long War, but they’re busy—and they’re gradually getting busier.

  DRAKE: I’ve heard such things as well, on Earth. Just stories, mind you. Nothing to panic about. It all could amount to nothing more than tall tales of mermaids and sea monsters.

  GARAK: We’ll see, I suppose.

  Let’s go back to your standoff in the desert for a moment, Mister Garak. Didn’t your rescuers try to test your story against Krota’s, right then and there? Didn’t they at least scan him to try to get at the truth?

  GARAK: They did indeed, Mister Sisko. Our rescuers were soldiers of the New Cardassia, which means that they were methodical, careful people. Unfortunately, they were limited both by the resolution of their instruments and by the DNA-duplication talents of the Undine.

  So either Krota was an Undine capable of fooling a tricorder, or his story was on the level.

  GARAK: I have never been one to place more faith in a scanning device than I will in my own instincts. That predilection has saved my life on any number of occasions.

  I know that you and the castellan quickly resumed your duties once you were both released from your doctors’ care a short time after the crash. What became of Krota?

  GARAK: Why, he disappeared shortly after our postcrash debriefings. It happened a day or two after the scans I had asked to be performed on him had proved inconclusive. I regard his disappearance as at least circumstantial corroboration of my story; it seems that in accusing him, I had indeed compromised his usefulness as an Undine spy.

  Was Krota ever found?

  GARAK: If by “Krota” you’re referring to his Undine doppelgänger, that creature was gone without a trace, and has remained that way ever since. If you mean the genuine Cardassian article, his body turned up a few weeks later, in a badly decomposed state. This discovery tends to support my contention that an Undine operative had murdered and replaced the real Krota several months prior to our desert sojourn.

  Or it might just mean that Krota had fallen victim to a terrible but completely ordinary crime of violence. According to the public records my padd has just accessed, the Detapa Council’s special investigative panel seemed satisfied with that explanation.

  GARAK: You are more than welcome to believe their findings as well, if you find them as comforting as the Detapa Council did. But I stand by my story, Mister Sisko. I know what I saw out in the desert.

  DRAKE: I hate to admit it, but the Federation Council seems no more eager to consider the possibility of renewed Undine hostilities than the Cardassian government has been. I suppose we’ll have to leave it to history to make the final judgment on the matter.

  Before history can do that, it will have to tie up a few loose ends about that desert crash landing. Mister Garak, you insist that both the lightning that caused the crash and the subsequent magnetic storm stemmed from deliberate acts of sabotage.

  GARAK: Even the Detapa Council had to concede that as the likeliest explanation, given the astronomical odds against such weather anomalies occurring by pure chance. However, the Council’s investigative panel was somewhat less categorical in identifying the likely perpetrator or perpetrators.

  Do you think this weather manipulation was an attempt by the Undine to assassinate Castellan Lang?

  GARAK: I don’t. The Undine already had one of their operatives positioned a mere knife-thrust away from the castellan. Why should they go to all the trouble of hijacking the weather—risking the life of a difficult-to-replace operative in the process—when they already had a far simpler alternative placed within easy striking distance?

  DRAKE: The saboteurs could have been allied with Gul Madred and his True Way movement. Madred and his followers have been dead set against every progressive leader in recent Cardassian history, going back to Castellan Alon Ghemor.

  GARAK: But they’re also hopeless narcissists who would have insisted on issuing announcements, delivering speeches, and taking credit—even for an assassination attempt that ultimately failed. No, it seems likelier that the responsible party was actually a Cardassian patriot who had somehow gotten wind of the Undine penetration of the chancellor’s office. This person, or group of persons, seized control of
the weather station remotely and used it as a weapon to take down the infiltrator.

  But they would have sacrificed the castellan in the process.

  GARAK: An unfortunate choice on the perpetrator’s part, and one with which I must vehemently disagree, since I worked so hard on behalf of the castellan on the campaign that ultimately put her in office. Perhaps the perpetrator had been an equally vehement supporter of one of Castellan Lang’s electoral opponents.

  Or maybe this perpetrator was actually gunning for you, Garak, and wasn’t all that concerned about causing a little additional mayhem.

  GARAK: Mister Sisko, you flatter me! Some of Doctor Bashir’s vivid imagination must have rubbed off on you during all those years aboard Deep Space 9. No. I feel confident that I was beneath the notice of any self-respecting assassin then, just as I am now. The short answer is that I simply don’t know who was responsible for using that weather station to attack our transport. At least I haven’t determined the perpetrator’s identity yet.

  What about whoever was supposed to be running the weather station you and Krota were trying to reach?

  GARAK: The station turned out to be one of the fully automated ones after all. There hadn’t been a living soul in that facility for more than a year. It seems that the Undine simulacrum of Krota lied to me about having reached anyone there on his com unit. Isn’t that strange?

  But why would he make something like that up?

  GARAK: Perhaps to lure me out of the transport with him. To convince me that the weather station had a comm system with which he might summon help—but only if he could obtain some technical assistance from me.

  And you think his plan might have been to steal your identity next.

  GARAK: Or perhaps, eventually, that of the castellan herself. The storm could have covered up any act of murder and replacement well enough to satisfy anyone else who might have happened by. But whatever the creature’s real agenda may have been, its apparently accidental “reversion” disrupted it.