Toward the end, once Captain Ro had begun to read the names on her padd, Bashir glanced at Sarina. Though she had not uttered a sound during the service, her eyes were rimmed in red, the curves of her cheeks wet from her tears. His heart both heavy and full, he could only cheer his great fortune that he and Sarina had survived the destruction of Deep Space 9 so that they could continue spending their lives together.
When Sarina gazed up at Bashir, she looked so sad, and yet the side of her mouth ticked up. He felt their connection. He didn’t even realize that he’d been crying until Sarina reached up to his face and dried his tears with her fingertips.
It took well over an hour to complete the reading of the names of people who would never again be held by a parent, or a child, or a friend, or a lover.
Eight
The timepiece ticked the afternoon away, its hands sweeping incessantly around its plain face. Keev had pulled it from the pocket of the gray cover-up she wore over her blue dress and looked at it again—For what? The hundredth time? She thought it might as well have been a timer wired to an improvised bomb. Because I’m going to explode soon. It took all of her willpower not to uncover the trapdoor and crawl back out through the hidden tunnel that ran beneath the dooryard at the back of the house.
I knew he couldn’t be trusted, Keev thought as she hunkered in the dirt-floored root cellar of the Ranga House. In the three months since Altek Dans had joined her gild, she’d had the same thought about him on more than one occasion. She recalled how he had introduced himself to her and Veralla and the others, by chasing her through the wood to their encampment. That should have made everybody skeptical of him.
In truth, it had. As Altek began working with the gild, providing another operative within the city, Keev spoke with the others about him. From young Jennica to old man Renet, everybody expressed reservations about adding the doctor to their gild. Everybody except Veralla, Keev thought in frustration.
In the dim illumination of the small gas lamp in the corner, she peered around the cellar—more a crawl space, really, since she couldn’t stand up fully without hitting her head on the joists that supported the floor above. As small as the house was—little more than a bungalow, it had two small rooms in the front, with an antiquated kitchen and bathroom in the rear—the cellar managed to be even smaller. In addition to its low ceiling, it occupied only the area beneath the kitchen, and the rickety plank steps that led down into it consumed some of that space. Stacks of old crates filled up much of what remained. Some of those wooden boxes contained bunches of root vegetables, while others had been packed with preserves and canned goods. Still others held empty jars.
Pushed up against the whitewashed brick wall opposite the steps and piled atop each other, each of the crates had a purpose. Heaped to overflowing with potatoes and kava roots and katterpods, the boxes with the vegetables proved unwieldy when handled. The ones containing preserved foodstuffs in jars and cans weighed a great deal, and those holding empty jars rattled noisily when moved. All that would make a thorough inspection of the basement time-consuming, difficult, and loud. Ideally, the stacked crates would prevent the trapdoor buried under the dirt beneath them from being found; at worst, they would slow a search and announce it to anybody down in the tunnel.
Keev shifted on her haunches and stood up—stood up as much as she could, anyway. She threw her hands up to a support beam, both to prevent herself from slamming her head into it and to lean against it, easing the burden of bending over while on her feet. She’d already stayed in the basement for two hours longer than planned, and later in the day than would be safe. As though anything we do can be labeled safe.
Keev looked down and kicked the toe of her shoe into the hardpan, sending a few crumbs of dirt skittering away. She straightened her blue patterned dress, as uncomfortable as always in her Aleiran attire, which she always donned as camouflage whenever she entered Joradell. Of course, if she ever needed her disguise while in the city, then something had gone wrong.
Something is going wrong, Keev thought. Where is Altek? And why does Veralla trust him?
Keev and Veralla had known each other—had operated together in the Bajoran gilds around Joradell—for five years. During the first two years, they ran in a gild led by a woman named Salan Ral, but the Aleira killed her in a raid on one of the houses they used as a hideout for escaped Bajora. The fiasco resulted from an undercover action, an Aleiran security officer posing as a fleeing Bajoran slave. The deaths of six members of their gild, including Salan, should have been a high enough price to pay, but an additional cost followed: the Aleiran authorities in Joradell increased security throughout the city, ramping up patrols and conducting random house searches.
The impact on the various gilds had been immediate and severe. Keev’s own disbanded, and the others put all their operations on hold until they could determine how best to thwart the new Aleiran security procedures. Figuring that out became more expensive, costing more lives along the way. Ultimately, though, the gilds—reconstituted to smaller, more independent cells—resumed their work. Veralla started his own gild, into which he recruited Keev.
For the nearly three years their gild had operated, they’d been a tight, successful band. Veralla didn’t talk much, and never about himself, but he led well. They started out with seven members and lost only one, not to the Aleira, but to an arboreal emerald snake. That happened two years earlier, and Veralla recruited Synder Nogar as a replacement.
Seven members, Keev thought. Seven members, and two Aleiran contacts within the city. Until Altek made a third contact. They hadn’t needed another Aleiran contact for their gild, not in Keev’s opinion, and taking another one on posed tremendous risks. Beyond even the issue of Altek’s true allegiance—ever since what had happened to Salan, the gilds feared other Aleiran spies—they should have questioned his competence, his ability to act without further endangering their people or the operation.
But Veralla didn’t do that, Keev thought. Veralla trusted Altek, and since everybody trusted Veralla, they all lived with their doubts. Even Keev.
She consulted her timepiece again and couldn’t believe how late in the day it had gotten. The sun would set soon, meaning that evening patrols would begin before long. In the summer, in the heat of the afternoon, Aleiran security mostly stayed off the streets, assuming less need for it during daylight hours. As evening approached and the temperature cooled, patrols and searches increased. Keev knew that she should shift the crates—she knew the proper few to move for a quick getaway—dig through the dirt to the trapdoor, and make her way through the tunnel, out beyond Joradell’s security perimeter.
If I wait here, I’m putting myself at risk, Keev thought. She carried false identification with her, but it wouldn’t stand up to more than a cursory look. If Altek had abandoned his mission, for whatever reason, Keev stood nothing to gain by staying. If something had happened and he merely ran late, he faced a greater prospect of running into a patrol. Whether loyal to the cause or not, he could end up sinking them all.
Keev reached for one of the upper crates. She would haul it and a few others away from the stack so that she could get to the tunnel. After nightfall, out beyond the security perimeter, she could make good her escape.
But this isn’t just about me, Keev thought. It’s about the girl. Then, with some reluctance, she added, It’s even about Altek.
Keev released her grip on the crate, turned, and headed for the stairway. In the corner, she quickly extinguished the lamp. She then rushed up the steps.
At the top, Keev listened at the door and heard the sounds of somebody working in the kitchen. She pushed the door slowly open and looked in that direction. An elderly but still vital woman placed a large pot on the stove, then turned and saw Keev standing there. The woman’s eyes went wide.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Keev.
“He’s late.”
“I know he’s late—too late. That’s why I expected you to be gone.�
�� Ranga Hoon, an Aleira and secretly an abolitionist, owned the house. She picked up a towel from the small kitchen table and wiped her hands. “I was just about to go down to the cellar and get some kava roots and katterpods.”
Keev understood that Ranga meant not only that she would retrieve food for her dinner, but that she would also fill in the dirt over the trapdoor and then restack all the crates atop it. Keev always worried that the old woman would be unable to physically manage the boxes, particularly the heavier ones, but that had yet to happen. Ranga promised to let the gild know if the task became too much for her to handle. Keev didn’t know how Veralla would resolve the situation if that happened, but they certainly couldn’t allow their tunnel to be found by the Aleira. Ranga’s house had already been searched several times during the prior months—always in the mornings or evenings—so they all understood the continual danger they faced.
“Have you seen him?” Keev asked.
“No,” Ranga said. “But I don’t look often. We don’t need anybody noticing me staring out my window at the street. Not in these days.”
Keev nodded. She’d been working with Ranga for two years, but Ranga had been helping smuggle slaves out of Joradell far longer than that. As long as she could keep the entrance to the tunnel hidden, the woman knew how to avoid getting caught.
“I have to go see,” Keev said. She turned and darted into the front room. The shadows had grown long as the setting sun angled low through the sheer curtains drawn over the single window. Furnished with a ratty stuffed chair and standing lamp in one corner, a pair of mismatched wooden seats against the far wall, and an empty crate standing in as a table, the small space couldn’t have fit anything more. Keev moved to the front wall, to the window, and pulled the curtain aside so that she could look down the street.
“You should leave,” Ranga said. Keev hadn’t heard her walk the few paces from the kitchen. For a woman of advanced years, Ranga retained not only her strength, but also a surprising lightness on her feet. “This is the time they usually start the house searches.”
“I have my papers,” Keev said.
“And how long will they convince them for?” Ranga asked. “With you here, they’ll search this place twice as hard, and there’s just not all that much to look at before they start moving crates.”
“I know,” Keev said. “There are already two patrol officers out there.” She saw the two uniformed men in the middle of the intersection just down the street, one of them busy checking the documents of a pedestrian.
“Then go,” Ranga insisted. “Either he’s not coming or he is, and if he is, then he’s going to get stopped. Whichever the case, there’s nothing you can do to help him.”
Keev let the curtain drift back to the window and peered over at Ranga. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” the old woman said. “Now go on. Get out of here.”
Keev nodded, then lifted the curtain and took one last look outside. She immediately saw Altek, and he had the girl—Ahleen—with him. “They’re coming,” Keev said, her voice falling to a whisper, as though the patrol outside might hear her. But it didn’t matter anyway: Altek and the girl had already been stopped.
Ranga said something, but Keev didn’t hear her words—didn’t listen to them. She needed to think, and she needed to do so quickly. Keev had her fraudulent identification with her, and Altek surely had his genuine documentation, but because everything had happened so quickly, they had none for the girl. Late last night, the gild received an urgent message from Altek explaining the girl’s story. A twelve-year-old Bajora, Ahleen had worked with her mother as a slave in an Aleiran industrial laundry. In an accident the day before, the mother had fallen into a vat of boiling water. After being recovered and taken to a hospital, she died.
With no other living relatives, Ahleen normally would have been assigned as the responsibility of some other adult slave—or, at the age of twelve, simply treated like an adult slave herself. One of the nurses at the hospital—an Aleiran nurse—took pity on the girl and cleaned her up, bathing her and finding her fresh clothes to wear. When the gild read Altek’s account, they cheered the example of kindness.
According to Altek, it had been a ghastly error. A high-ranking Aleiran official visiting the hospital saw the fresh-faced Ahleen, tall for her age and already developing into a young woman. The official ordered the girl medically examined and then brought to his home. Altek knew that the life Ahleen would endure there would have made slaving in an industrial laundry until her premature death seem idyllic.
Altek had been the doctor charged with conducting the girl’s physical exam. He considered falsifying her test results, making her undesirable to the official, but beyond the difficulty of doing so without any of the lab technicians or nurses finding out, he worried about condemning Ahleen to an inescapable fate. Bajora classed as physically deficient were often just killed, particularly those who in some way disappointed a prominent official.
Altek had taken the only action he reasonably felt he could: he prolonged Ahleen’s medical tests so that she would have to remain in the hospital overnight. In getting his message to the gild, he made it clear that they would have only the next day to smuggle Ahleen out of the city. Keev volunteered to make the attempt.
“I have to do something,” she told Ranga. She couldn’t allow the Aleira to consign a twelve-year-old girl either to death or to a fate that could be considered perhaps even more horrible.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Ranga said. “Not without getting yourself killed.”
Keev watched as Altek produced his identification for the patrol officers, both of whom looked like all the men in Aleiran security: large and well muscled in their crisp gray uniforms. One of them—with a broader back than his leaner fellow officer—gestured toward Ahleen.
Keev released the curtain from her fingertips and pushed away from the wall. She glanced at the front door for only an instant, knowing that she could not put Ranga—and the tunnel—at risk. Instead, she raced through the kitchen and out the back door. Just three steps took her across what passed for a yard—a patch of dirt sprinkled with pallid stalks of dead grass—to a rotting board fence. She yanked free two slats already hanging loose, then pushed through into the equally small—and empty—yard of the house behind Ranga’s.
Without stopping, Keev hurried along the side of the house—she could barely squeeze through the gap between it and the house next door—and out into the street. She immediately spied another patrol in the intersection to her left, and so she moved in the opposite direction, forcing herself to slow to a walk, not wanting to draw attention to herself. She made her way down two short blocks before turning to her right into an alley. When she saw nobody there, she broke into a sprint—a bit awkwardly in the dress she had donned as part of her cover, but at least she wore flat-soled shoes.
Keev exited the alley on the street that Ranga’s house fronted and walked quickly in that direction. Up ahead, Altek was patting the jacket he wore and checking its pockets, doubtless searching—or pretending to search—for Ahleen’s identification. As Keev passed in front of Ranga’s house, drawing within a block of the group, she saw the broad-backed patrol officer turn the doctor toward the wall of a building, forcing his hands up onto its brick facing. Even as Broad Back began running a portable metal detector up and down Altek’s body, Keev started to run.
“Dans, Dans,” she called out. As the two officers turned toward Keev, Altek’s head whipped around in surprise, and she wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake. She remained unconvinced of the doctor’s loyalty and his ability, and she was about to test them both. “Dans,” she said again as she got closer. She slowed to a walk, making sure to exaggerate her breathing, avoiding the suggestion that she regularly ran.
“Dans,” she said again as she arrived before the group. It pleased her to see that the expression of surprise on Altek’s face had shifted to one of recognition and relief. It impressed Keev to s
ee Ahleen offer a similar look. “I’ve been worried, my love,” she went on. “You two are so late.”
Altek turned from the wall and moved as though to hug her, and Keev stepped forward and opened her arms. One of the officers, the leaner of the two, shifted sideways to block her way. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to step back.”
“What?” Keev asked, acting confused. Then, as though coming to a realization, she said, “Oh, no, this is my husband and our niece.” She flipped her hand through the air before her face, trying to wave away the officer’s concern.
Leaner looked doubtful, as did Broad Back behind him. Keev noted, though, that the latter had stopped searching Altek. Perhaps not the best and brightest in Aleiran security, she thought, hopeful.
“Do you have your papers, ma’am?” Leaner asked.
“Yes, of course,” Keev said. She reached into a pocket in her cover-up and extracted her fabricated identity documents. “I’m Aven Meru.” She handed the papers to Leaner, who gave them only a perfunctory glance before passing them to his partner. Broad Back examined them more carefully. Keev waited, making sure to appear as though she felt impatient and inconvenienced, but not anxious. She knew that her documentation would bear up to some measure of inspection, but if the patrol officers looked beyond the surface and tried to verify her existence within the city, her cover would unravel quickly.
Keev could feel Ahleen’s gaze on her. She glanced at the girl and offered her a smile of familiarity. Keev could only hope that Altek had spoken with the girl and that she understood enough not to give them all away.
Broad Back gave Keev’s papers back to Leaner, who didn’t even look at them again before handing them back to her. She noted that Leaner had the look of a man who didn’t particularly care for his job, which she hoped she could turn to her advantage. Broad Back, though, might be more difficult to convince. Past the officers, Keev saw, a couple of pedestrians had queued up so that they could be validated and pass.
Star Trek: The Fall: Revelation and Dust Page 15
