“What makes you ask that?”
“Weeks undercover on Cardassia Prime? Mixing with some pretty nasty people by all accounts? I can read between the lines.”
Dygan frowned. “I don’t think I want to say. . . .”
“That’s fine too,” she said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I know it’s troubling you, but I think it would be worse if it didn’t trouble you at all. If you didn’t care either way. For what it’s worth, I’m sure you did all you could under the circumstances. You’re good people, Ravel.”
“There was mention of a medal.”
“What, for me?” she said, in mock surprise.
“Not this time,” he said, and it made him laugh a little.
“Thought not. Will you take it?”
“No.”
“There you are then.” She lifted her glass. “To all those Cardassian officers who’ve learned to tell right from wrong.”
He tapped his glass against hers. “To all those Starfleet officers who’ve learned when to bend the rules.”
“Long may we flourish.”
* * *
Arati Mhevet was bending the rules speaking to Fereny without another investigator present, but one more bent rule wouldn’t do any harm. And there was the force field between them.
Fereny was lying flat on his back when she went in, but he shifted into a seating position when he saw her. “Come to gloat, Ari?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. This is a tragedy. You were a fine constable and had the makings of a fine investigator. What possessed you to get involved with people like Velok Dekreny?”
“I could ask you the same about Elim Garak.”
“Perhaps. But I haven’t murdered anyone.”
“You betrayed your own uncle to the Order. Doesn’t that count as murder?”
She didn’t react. Of course he would know about that. It was common knowledge around North Torr why she and her family had left.
“Have you ever thought about what happened to him?” Fereny said. “Have you thought about what the Order did to him, once they had him?”
“Yes,” she said steadily. “I’ve thought about that a great deal. We lived in a different world back then, Tret, one that you’re barely old enough to remember. Choices like that were a part of our daily lives—”
“That’s life under the Order. That’s why I want a better way, a truer way—”
“Oh, Tret!” she said sadly. “Is that how they got you? Do you know who these people are? Really? Do you really get what they stand for?”
“They stand for a better Cardassia!” he burst out. “One that doesn’t humiliate itself by trying to win the favor of humans, Ferengi, and Klingons! One that will be strong again, better for all of us—”
“Look around you,” she said. “Look where you are. You’re going to be locked away for the rest of your life. The people you’ve been working for—they’ve used you for their own ends. They’ve walked free while you pay the penalty.”
“I did it for Cardassia.”
“I’m sure you did. But Cardassia didn’t want it done. Cardassia’s moved on, Tret. That old Cardassia, where people used people for their own ends, to keep themselves in power—that’s dead. We’re not going to let it come back.”
He turned his face away.
She took a step forward, getting closer to the field. “I know you were blackmailing Aleyni over his marriage, but why? What were you after? Were you trying to get into HARF somehow? Was there something planned for them before they left? An attack? A massacre?”
He looked up at her, and then he started to laugh. He lay down again on his back. “Yes, Ari. That’s what it was. We had something special planned. We were going to see them off with a bang.”
Mhevet took another step toward him. Something about this didn’t ring true. “What was it really, Tret? What did you need Aleyni Cam for?”
But he smiled, and closed his eyes, and wouldn’t say anything more. Later, Mhevet got in touch with the people at HARF, but Aleyni’s desk was now empty, they told her. Part of the withdrawal, they said. Anything that might have told her more was gone.
* * *
She couldn’t find Aleyni Zeya either. When she went over to the HARF compound, open again to Cardassian citizens now that the crisis had passed, she found the little house closed and locked up. The neighbor, a young ensign, said that Zeya had packed up and left when the Cardassians had been told to leave the base.
“Surely, Maggie—Commander Fry—would have let her stay?” Mhevet asked. “She was the wife of a Federation citizen—”
“She said she didn’t want to stay. Not without Cam.”
“Any idea where she might have gone?”
The ensign shrugged. “Family?”
But she didn’t have any family. They’d all died in the Fire. This place surely had been her family—HARF, where she could have a Bajoran husband and live among people who wouldn’t judge them for loving each other. Mhevet, heading back to her skimmer, couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Aleyni Zeya had been failed in all of this. Where would she go now? Who would she turn to? While driving her skimmer off the compound, Mhevet sighed. She was ashamed to say that in some ways she was grateful that Zeya wasn’t there. That she wouldn’t have to tell her that her husband had been blackmailed on account of his marriage to her. She was saved from that.
Later, Mhevet drove out to the edge of Coranum, where she found a little girl sitting on the steps outside a well-kept tenement. “Hello,” she said. “How do you like your new place?”
The little girl shrugged. They’d moved her from home, partly for protection, partly away from her father. “It’s all right. Everyone’s a bit posh.”
“Hungry?” Mhevet asked.
“Always. I’m growing, you know.”
Mhevet walked her down the street to the dining house on the corner. “All right,” she said, as the girl sat down. “We’re going to play a game. Tell me who is sitting behind you—no, don’t look! We’ll do this from memory! Tell me what they look like and what they’re wearing.”
* * *
The Enterprise was breaking orbit, leaving behind a world slowly picking up the pieces. Picard pondered all that had happened. There was no escaping the fact that Bacco was dead—and by a Cardassian hand. But what was to be done?
He had received, the previous day, a message from Iravothra sh’Thalis, the former presider of Andoria, with whom he had worked closely in the period leading up to Andor’s secession and her own fall from power.
“I wanted to offer my condolences on the death of Nan Bacco,” she said. “My heart goes out to all of you in the Federation. I hope you are able to remain strong during this terrible time. I hope you do not make the same mistake as Andor and act while in the grip of grief and shock.”
“Computer,” said Picard. “Get me a secure channel direct to Admiral Akaar.”
When the admiral was on the comm, Picard told him about the True Way and the events of the past few days.
“You understand why I did not report this until now?”
“I do.” Akaar sat with his hands covering his face.
“President Ishan is not the kind of man to take this news lightly,” Picard said. “We’ve only just prevented the collapse of our alliance with the Cardassians. To tell him this now may be all it takes to destroy that alliance for good. This would be a grave betrayal of the trust that Garak has put in Starfleet—put in me. As yet there’s no firm evidence—”
“Yes,” said Akaar. “Yes. We need to reflect upon this for a while, Jean-Luc. For the moment, this should go no further.”
“In the meantime, sir, do we have new orders? Our purpose here on Cardassia Prime was to bring President Bacco home. I’m assuming that the sad honor now falls to the flagship to bring home her body?”
Akaar shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Your orders, from the office of the president, are to proceed to Ferenginar.”
“Ferenginar?”
“President Ishan has been impressed by your handling of this crisis and your work keeping the Cardassians in the alliance. He wants to ensure that unfriendly elements among our other allies don’t take this opportunity to force a breakaway.”
“Have we had any suggestion that this might be occurring on Ferenginar?”
“No,” said Akaar, who seemed also to be thinking that these orders were odd, “but President Ishan keeps his own counsel.”
“Then . . . we’ll set course for Ferenginar,” Picard said slowly, puzzled by this mission. The conversation ended, and the Enterprise moved on, away from Cardassia, and away from Earth.
* * *
Returning at last to his office, Garak stood at his desk and looked wearily at the messages that had accumulated while he had been dead. Not even his apparent extinction had stopped them, and the double surprise of his survival and his candidacy for the castellanship meant that they were now coming as thick and fast as a dust storm from the plains. He scanned rapidly through the list of names, trying to determine what was critical and what could wait. One name stood out.
Julian Bashir.
Garak opened the file. He read the message quickly, then a second time more slowly, and then he closed the file. He wondered for a while whether he was angry, and he thought about destroying the letter, and then he realized that he was not angry but grateful, so he stored it instead on a data rod that he tucked away in his pocket. He would read this letter again and again over the coming weeks as Bashir had no doubt intended.
He paced his office for a while, ignoring the gentle but regular chimes from the comm that told him that new messages were arriving, bringing new worries and new trials. Coming to a halt before Ziyal’s picture, he touched the frame, very gently, almost a caress.
“I’ve been trying to do the right thing for a while now,” he said to the air. “And, on the whole, it’s working fairly well! I haven’t murdered anyone in a long time.”
He thought about Ravel Dygan and Rakena Garan. Prynok Crell too, despite his misjudgment, had not deserved such a reward for long service and a terrible loss. And then there was Arati Mhevet, whose limits were yet to be tested . . .
“Although it’s true there’s been collateral damage. Anyway, now it seems I’m going to be castellan. And that concerns me. It’s all very well being an ambassador because nobody gives you any real power. That’s been a frustration, but it’s also been a blessing. But castellans are something different. They have real power.”
The scarlet flowers beneath the painting were fading. He would have to get fresh ones brought.
“On the whole, Ziyal, I haven’t been good with power. On the whole, I’ve tended not to know when to stop.” One of the petals came away in his hand. “I wish you were here,” he said. “You were good at getting me to understand when I ought to stop. You did that for your father too, didn’t you? That would be helpful, now.”
Garak pondered his past and what the future might bring.
“I’ll try not to let you down. I’ll try to think what you’d say, and I’ll stop doing something if I think you wouldn’t like it.”
Garak turned and went back to his desk. The petal was still in his hand. Ignoring the outside world, whose demands would be no doubt all-consuming very soon, he opened Picard’s book and read the quotation at the front:
“Well now—who are you?”
“I am part of that Power that ever wills Evil and always does good.”
“Touché, Captain,” he murmured. Tucking the petal inside to mark his place, he put the book aside to read when he was feeling stronger, and he sought solace instead in sublimity. If he must read about those who insisted on shaping the destinies of others, something more comforting was, for the moment, required.
“Emma Woodhouse,” he read, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her—”
Epilogue
Twilight Kingdoms
During the Fire
Here, in the cellar beneath his father’s house, he could tell himself that he was nowhere, elsewhere, anywhere other than buried beneath a city in flames. He could turn to Preloc and hold in his hands all that was most precious—all that he loved best—about his subtle, brutal, imperishable civilization. He could persuade himself that what he was reading was the truth. He could persuade anyone of anything.
Kira, in the next bed, sighed and put her pillow over her head. It was late, and tomorrow would require great resources, and she needed darkness to sleep. Garak covered the light with his hand but did not stop reading. Damar was long since asleep and snoring softly. They’d joked, when they’d still been trying to pretend that they could be friends with each other, how Damar would sleep through the end of the world. Some joke.
Garak read on. He read of the capture of Qo’noS, and the siege of Paris; he read of firing squads and forced marches, of purges and pogroms, of bonfires of books and buildings, and, at last, in the early hours of the morning, he came to the chapel, where the roses still grew, and a man from a ruined civilization came face-to-face with his conqueror and spoke truth to power.
Softly, silently, Garak began to weep. High above his head, a great empire was burning: his home, and all the people were burning too. We’re finished, he thought, and felt the terror of a man facing the final darkness. And then: Never, never, never! I will never give up on you, my Cardassia! You will endure. I don’t know what can survive this, but something will—something must! Something stronger. Something better. Something else.
Preloc had seen this, he realized, and as the thought took hold of him, the book remade itself within his hands. Yes, she had seen this coming and said as much to power as she dared. But that was not who she was addressing with this book. No, Preloc was speaking to those who would be brought to this pass against their will and would suffer. She had wanted them to remember their resilience, their inability to admit defeat, their capacity to endure even when there was no hope left in the world. She had seen that they might one day come to this, and she had known what people would need to survive this. She had written it down before she went into the darkness, and she had left her words for him to read, here, tonight, at the end of things, so that he could take courage from them and bring something worthwhile out of the Fire.
“For the love of the Prophets, Garak,” Kira whispered hotly from beneath her pillow, “will you please turn off that light?”
Garak touched his fingertips against his lips and then pressed them lightly on the last page of the book. He did not need to read the words. He understood now what mattered about them, and he had taken it to heart.
“I’m done,” he said. He closed the book and turned off the light and lay back in the darkness. “Sleep well, Nerys.”
After the Fall
“Are you going to stop reading?” asked Parmak.
Garak stretched back comfortably in his chair. “Why would I do that?”
“Because voting is about to end, and then we’ll get the exit poll data.”
“We already know what that’s going to say, Kelas. We’ve known for weeks.”
“Still, you might show an interest.”
But Garak read on; not to annoy his companion, whom he loved, but because he was near the end of his book, which he loved too. Breathlessly, he watched Anne Elliot read the letter that Captain Wentworth had written, and, slowly, he began to relax as they put aside their history and escaped the choices of the past. When he came to the end, he closed the book and pressed it between his hands, holding its world to him for as long as he could. She hadn’t written anymore, and he wasn’t sure who to turn to next. His eye fell upon Picard’s gift. It all starts when the Devil arrives in Moscow, he thought. No, not yet. Soon, Captain. But not yet.
“Please, Elim,” Parmak said. “Don’t start another one. Come over here. You’ll want to see thi
s.”
Outside, in the dark garden, they were gathering around the memorials. People had been coming here all day to vote, and Garak himself had, mid-morning, stepped outside amid the whirring of the holo-cameras to cast his own vote in the glare of the public eye. But this was something different. Garak watched, sheltered behind the tinted, transparent aluminum of the window, but they did nothing. They sat down and waited, or stood and waited, and some of them were talking, and some of them were simply waiting, standing amid the silent stones. Nervously, Garak looked around and was much comforted to see the dark figures of his security team moving silently into place.
“I wonder what they’re here for,” he said. “I wonder what they want.”
“Elim,” Parmak said patiently, “they’re here to see you. They want to be here when your name is called. They want to hear what you have to say.”
For a brief, excruciating moment, Garak panicked. The walls seemed to close in on him, and the darkness outside seemed thick and inescapable. He looked around the room for exits and, in desperation, realized that there were none. He pressed his palms against the window and then rested his forehead there too, feeling with relief the cold of the glass. What in the name of all that I hold dear do I think that I am doing?
He felt a hand upon his arm, turning him gently but firmly. Eventually, he was face-to-face with Parmak. “Take a few deep breaths,” the doctor suggested. “That’s it. Nice and steady. Deep and slow.”
Garak leaned his back against the window and did what his doctor ordered. Once he was breathing steadily again, he looked around the room. It was dimly lit, warm, and he was comforted by the sight of his books, his desk, and everything that he had salvaged from the Fire. On the comm, there were messages from friends he hadn’t even realized were friends. A huge bunch of red roses and Edosian orchids had arrived that morning with a message from the O’Briens. There was Ziyal’s picture, his compass. And, in his pocket, on a data rod, there was a letter from Julian Bashir—sent shortly after Garak had told him he was embarking on this folly, when debates and speeches and public appearances and policy statements had not yet become his daily routine—that he had read again and again throughout.
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