Second self, p.23
Second Self, page 23
“I… don’t know what happened,” admitted Lafleur later. “There was no power. Really, nothing, those things were not working. And then… There seemed to be a kind of surge and the jammers came back on.”
“Oh good,” said Byrne, “more unexplained phenomena. I’m going to enjoy putting that into the report.”
“I guess we could always show a little gratitude to our hardworking people,” said Lafleur.
“Don’t thank us,” said Kovar. “It definitely wasn’t us. Not that I’m complaining. But I don’t know what happened, and it was nothing that we did.”
“Raffi,” said Byrne. “Any thoughts?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Raffi after a while. “I thought we were done for.” The expressions on her colleagues’ faces were enough to tell her that they had been thinking pretty much the same thing. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“Perhaps your Tal Shiar friend.”
“He’s not a friend.”
“Your Tal Shiar acquaintance,” said Byrne. “Perhaps he was able to exert some influence.”
“That’s the only explanation I can think of,” said Raffi unhappily.
“Well timed if so,” said Lafleur.
“Deus ex machina,” agreed Turan. “What?” he said, when his colleagues stared at him. “I’ve read things.”
“ ‘There are more things,’ ” said Raffi, “ ‘in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”
“That’s good, Raffi,” said Kovar.
“That wasn’t me,” said Raffi. “But I understand the sentiment at last.”
* * *
It seemed unwise to remain exactly where they had been camped, so they moved cautiously a kilometer into the forest, but no farther. Another two days passed, without any flyovers. And then came the sound that they had all been dreading—people coming toward them through the trees. They got the children to the back, armed as many of the civilians as they could, and put them in front of the children, and the Starfleet officers and remaining Cardassian military took position up front.
The trees parted, and Raffi saw an away team—red and yellow shirts—heading toward them. “Damn!” she cried out. “Where the hell have you all been?”
“Nice to see you too,” said the commander heading the team. “What has been going on out here?”
Raffi and Byrne went forward to speak to them. Never had Raffi been so glad to see people in Starfleet uniforms. Despite her opening words, she felt a deep and passionate gratitude for these colleagues—strangers—who were here, with their training, and their professionalism, and their great calm and energy. They looked fit, and rested, and competent, damn them. She surrendered herself willingly to their care. She could only imagine how the Cardassians felt.
They were quickly brought up to speed by Commander Furukawa. They were from Merna, where, earlier in the week, they had received a coded message advising them that Ghenic had fallen to the Romulans, and that the Starfleet personnel and Cardassian civilians were in immediate danger and in need of assistance. So Sokara had come through.
“Then we had a hell of a time locating you,” said Furukawa.
“Signal jammers,” explained Raffi.
“Yeah, well, your engineers are too damn good. The message suggested you were most likely in the Caanta valley, but we didn’t have the resources to come and look.”
“What changed?” said Byrne.
“The Gráinne arrived early this morning, Merna local time,” said Furukawa. “That focused the attention of the Romulans. I understand there’s been a change of commanding officer. Iloba’s been recalled. The new guy is—”
“Let me guess,” said Raffi. “Nuvu Sokara.”
“Yeah, good guess,” said Furukawa. “How did you know?”
“We go back,” said Raffi. Had that been the plan, then? To remove Iloba? Raffi sighed. Who knew what the deeper schemes were? At least they had worked to their advantage.
“He’s pulled the troops back from Ghenic and upriver. The base is open for our use now, I guess, although technically it’s still Cardassian.”
“I think Glinn Tradall will welcome your assistance,” said Byrne.
“I thought Gul Assott was in command here?” said Furukawa.
“We’ve lost a lot of people in the last few weeks,” said Byrne quietly.
“Well, I’m glad we’re here now.” Furukawa looked around. “Look, I hate to be the one to bring bad news, but you guys might be facing some trouble over all this.”
“Trouble?” said Raffi.
“The Romulans aren’t pleased about your intervention.”
“They were going to kill everyone here!” said Raffi.
“They’re claiming there’s been a misunderstanding,” said Furukawa. “That there were divisions among the Cardassian military at Ghenic—a mutiny, in effect—and that one faction was holding the Starfleet officers present hostage. They claim they were trying to take Ghenic to help.” He eyed them. “I’m guessing that wasn’t the case.”
“There was some disagreement among the Cardassians,” said Byrne. “But not by the end. We’re not really going to get stitched up for saving all these lives, are we?”
Furukawa shrugged. “Who knows what the hell is happening these days.”
* * *
After that, Raffi saw little more of Ordeve. She and the rest of the team from Ghenic were transported back to Merna, leaving the evacuation of the civilians to the away team. They were being brought to Merna, where the rest of the surviving Cardassians were waiting to hear whether they were to be taken back to Prime or could remain on Ordeve. She found messages waiting for her too, backed up since she had been out of range. One was from Jae. Dated about a fortnight ago. Telling her that the opening of the show had gone well. Like a message from another world. There was a follow-up, too, about a week later, asking whether she’d gotten his letter. Saying he was starting to worry about her. She replied straightaway.
I’ll be home soon.
Though when, exactly, that would be, she wasn’t sure. Byrne came to find her one evening, saying, “There’s going to be an inquiry.”
“Huh,” said Raffi, “are we going to get keelhauled?”
“I don’t know,” said Byrne. “But a Starfleet officer died.”
“I know,” said Raffi. “I know.”
“I don’t regret what we did,” said Byrne. “We saved a lot of lives.”
“Yeah,” said Raffi. Later that night, she drew out the data rod that Sokara had given her. Time coded, he’d said. When she checked what was there, she found a whole new set of files. Communications between Iloba in Ghenic, and his commanding officer in Merna, and their commanding officer, back on Romulus. All the proof Raffi needed to show that the Romulans had intended to kill everyone at Ghenic—their Starfleet allies included.
* * *
Six months later, it was spring, and Raffi—stiff and upright in her dress uniform—was sitting in front of a board of inquiry into the events surrounding the evacuation of the Cardassian population in Ghenic. There were some questions to be answered, or so Raffi was given to understand, about whether the officers on the ground had exceeded their authority and disobeyed orders to remain neutral.
Raffi watched the whole proceedings with as much detachment as she could muster. Of course they had exceeded their authority. Of course they had disobeyed the orders to remain neutral. There was absolutely no question about that, and she would have been the first to say so—if her legal representative hadn’t issued a stern warning that she was to keep her mouth shut as far as possible. What was fascinating was watching the captains and admirals in charge of the inquiry bending over backward to exonerate everyone stationed at Ghenic. Because what else, really, were they supposed to do, and remain Starfleet? There were some halfhearted suggestions about reprimands, but nobody on the panel could quite bring themselves to commit to this. The fact was a hundred Cardassian civilians were alive who would not otherwise have survived, because of the actions taken by Byrne, Raffi, and their Starfleet colleagues.
“You caused a lot of trouble, Lieutenant,” one of the admirals said to Raffi as they stood side by side waiting for the turbolift. “Try not to make a habit of it.” It was good advice—although Raffi couldn’t, in later years, say that she had followed it.
The inquiry closed with an official statement to the effect that the officers, while deviating from orders, had acted appropriately given their knowledge of the situation on the ground. The subtext was clear: best to exonerate everyone and move on. But there was—as predicted—an uproar from the Romulans. This was a cover-up, their ambassador to the Federation fulminated; an abnegation of commitments made under a treaty and heads should roll… Whereupon Starfleet (courtesy of Raffi) were able to show their treasure trove of incriminating communiques between the Romulan officers concerned. Raffi left the fallout from this in the capable hands of the diplomats, but she was not surprised to hear, a few weeks later, that the Romulans had agreed to drop their territorial claim to Ordeve and were intending to withdraw all troops by the end of the Ordevian year, leaving the world in the hands of the Cardassians. Those that were still alive.
And that, as far as Raffi was concerned, was surely that—apart from an achingly painful conversation with Avarak’s parents, neither of whom showed any outward expression of emotion, but nevertheless seemed to be aging palpably in front of her eyes.
“He joined Starfleet,” said Selkiak, his father, “because he reasoned that it was the place where his actions were most likely to have the greatest beneficial effect upon the greatest possible number of people.”
“He was right,” said Raffi. “There are many, many people alive now because of your son’s presence on Ordeve. The choices that he made directly preserved lives.”
She watched them turn to look at each other. Their forefingers overlapped.
“I wanted to ask…” Raffi went on; this was a difficult subject, a delicate one. “We can arrange for him to be brought home. If you would prefer—”
“No,” said T’Kyl, his mother. “The body is not him. Let that rest.”
Raffi would think of them often over the years, particularly after she had squandered her relationship with her own son. Gabe thought her theories were nothing more than a paranoid fantasy; even when she had been proven right, he could not forgive her. Sometimes, when the sadness over her loss became too much (a double loss, once her grandchild was born), Raffi would find herself remembering Selkiak and T’Kyl, and their son. At least, Raffi would try to remember, she inhabited a universe where Gabe lived, and prospered. Where his life had not ended, young, and all the things he might have thought and said and done were never to be. At least, Raffi thought, sometimes, sitting in her shack in the desert, blowing out her brains with snakeleaf, there was still a chance that something might be salvaged from her ruins.
* * *
There was one brief coda to Raffi’s first visit to Ordeve, its importance only apparent many years later. After the inquiry closed, everyone was sent on their way to continue much as they had done before, or else to pick up the pieces left by the terrible war that had recently concluded. The smoldering Cardassian Union tried to rebuild; the Klingon Empire toasted its triumphs; and the alliance between the Federation and the Romulans acquired a slight frost. Raffi returned to her desk at Romulan Affairs, where her colleagues welcomed her back warmly, and congratulated her on her consummate work at taking that alliance to the brink of extinction without actually ending it. Raffi sank back behind her desk with considerable relief, although the boredom that had originally propelled her to request active duty quickly set in once again, and soon another request was in the works. Jae proved her chief source of entertainment now. Raffi suspected he might be “the one” (although it turned out that not even Jae and their son were enough to keep her on Earth).
During this period Raffi received an invitation to attend a reception to honor the Starfleet officers at Ghenic. She called Jae straightaway.
“It’s in Paris,” she said.
“Paris?”
“Invitation says bring a guest. Wanna be my guest?”
“Can’t resist an offer like that, Raffi,” he said, with that gorgeous smile that in later years she would no longer be able to summon, that would turn into sadness, and sorrow, and resignation, and—in the end, and most heartbreakingly—indifference. “Let’s go to the ball.”
They visited Paris together, and while it was autumn, not spring (perhaps she should have read the signs much earlier), everything was otherwise perfect. They were young and in love. Raffi had lately escaped death, and they had a tendency—she and Jae—to push each other into taking risks. They were both stoned, maybe, when they arrived at the reception. At first everything seemed hilarious—the grandeur of the building, the formality of the welcome. Byrne sized up the state of them both immediately, her eyebrows lifting as she watched Jae pile food upon his plate.
“Raffi,” said Jae. “What the hell is all this? You never told me this part of the job. Why would you hide that this was part of the job? I totally approve of your job.”
Dimly, Raffi began to sense that perhaps their behavior was a little out of line, so she pulled Jae to one corner, where he continued to eat, but at least wasn’t talking so much, and she could catch her breath and watch the proceedings. Not long after this, it became clear that their host intended to address the gathering. Conversation died down, until there was complete quiet. The Cardassian ambassador to the United Federation of Planets stepped forward, but Raffi, from her corner of the room, could not see him clearly. She was standing at the wrong angle, and in the wrong place, with too many people in the way. His voice was clear, however, and he spoke eloquently and with what seemed to be complete honesty about his gratitude to all present for their assistance on Ordeve. Then he asked a representative of the Cardassian military to speak. He gestured across the room, and a young man in uniform came to stand beside him.
It was Tradall. Raffi hadn’t seen him since leaving Ghenic. He looked much better—he wasn’t shaking, for one thing—and he seemed fitter too. He spoke, rather haltingly, about his gratefulness to be here this evening, thanking their old friends and new allies in the Federation, and then he recounted his memories of the events. When he said Avarak’s name out loud, his voice cracked.
“I’d be dead,” he said, “if not for him. If not for what he did. What he chose to do, on behalf of a Cardassian.” He took a moment to collect himself. “I’m not sure what I did to deserve that. My life for his life. I think about that every day…”
As Raffi listened to him speak, the crash came, and suddenly nothing that was going on around her felt funny at all. Jae was now an irritation. The reception room seemed hot and crowded. Tradall was recounting the last few hours, before Starfleet arrived, their terror when they realized that their jammers were no longer working; the moment when the power surged, and the jammers came online once again. Raffi looked around at her colleagues and saw on their faces that complex mixture of gratitude and fear at the strange events of that day. The gratitude that they had made it through; the fear—still unspoken, even to each other—that something inexplicable had happened in the forest of the Caanta valley. That some power had acted to save them… Lafleur had her hands pressed together, tapping the tips of her forefingers against her mouth. Byrne was shielding her eyes. All of them knew something had happened; none of them could say what, or even admit that this had been the case.
Tradall finished speaking, and the ambassador took the floor again. And then Raffi had what she could later only call an “experience.” The room around her, and the people, seemed to fade away. She was in a nowhere-place, neither here nor there, but it reminded her of the ruined town, with its burned stones and buried bones. Three figures emerged from the light: the same three she had dreamed about, relentlessly, on Ordeve—familiar, but not yet known.
We’re not finished, said the woman with the implant.
We’ve not even begun, said the young man with close-cropped hair.
We are in between, said the Romulan with the staff.
“Raffi,” whispered Jae. “Are you okay?”
“Mm,” she said, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She gritted her teeth until the ambassador finished and the applause was done. When the conversations started up again, she said, “I’m gonna get some air.”
“Want me to come with?” said Jae.
“Nuh-huh.” Raffi nodded at the canapes. “Mind the shop.”
She stumbled through the room toward some huge glass doors that led out onto a terrace. Behind her, she heard Byrne say, “Is she all right?” Jae replied, “Sure, yeah, no worries.”
Outside, it was still quiet, the guests having come indoors to listen to the speeches. There were lanterns in the garden, so she wandered onto the grass, and stood in their half-light, sucking in breaths of air. The night was chilly; yes, this was definitely the fall. The trees were dark shapes, but where the lamplight hit the leaves, she could see their variegated colors, half green, half yellow. She stood under the nearest tree, pulling a leaf from its branch and studying its intricacies. Did this help? A little. Something upon which to focus.
“Lieutenant Musiker?”
She looked up. There was a Cardassian a meter away. She hadn’t heard him approach; he must be light on his feet. The way he was standing, with the room behind him, she couldn’t see his features very well. She reached to move the lantern hanging on the tree until she was better able to see him. The insanely well-cut suit. The precise flamboyance of his movements. The distinct contours of his face. The bright blue eyes.
“I wanted to thank you in particular,” said Elim Garak, “for everything that you did on behalf of our people on Ordeve.”
“You’re welcome,” said Raffi.
“Also, to express to you my deep regrets for the death of your colleague.”
She did not repeat herself since that would have been a lie. He was not welcome. Avarak should not have died. And, to give the man his credit, he heard her silence, and understood its meaning. He nodded slowly.
