DS9 In a Stone City New posted for author
Stephen Ratliff
Title: In a Stone City
Series: DS9
Author: Liz Williams (arc...@fastnet.co.uk)
Rating: G
Part: New all
I'm posting this at the request of Liz Williams, replies have been set
to her address.
From: E. H. Williams, my email address is: arc...@fastnet.co.uk
Disclaimer: all characters are the property of Paramount television, and I
acknowledge that Paramount has exclusive rights to the Star Trek universe.
This is set in the 4th season; and connects to the episode which, if memory
serves me correctly, is called 'For the Cause.' It's a Garak/Ziyal story;
however, there's no sex ( although I have to say, practically the only
thing that has stretched my credulity to breaking point in the whole ST
canon is that two people would spend hours in a sauna without removing at
least SOME of their clothes). This is basically a mood piece, based on
what might reasonably be expected to go through Garak's mind during a date
with the child of his worst enemy. The quote's taken from a poem by
Lawrence Durrell; I liked it, so hope you'll forgive me a moment of
pretension. Hope, too, that you enjoy the story; write and let me know.
//Liz Williams
Here alone in a stone city
I sing the rock, the sea quill,
Over Greece the one punctual star.
To be king of the clock -
I know, I know - to share
Boundaries with the bird...
To be the owner of stones
To be a king of islands,
Share a bed with a star,
Be a subject of sails.
*Lawrence Durrell 1940 (Exile in Athens)*
In a Stone City
'Aren't you going to take your clothes off?' she asked him. Elim Garak
smiled. Dukat's daughter played the innocent well, but he had never been
one to take an easy bait. He said
'In a minute. Give me a chance to get comfortable; warm up a little.'
He could feel the heat beating up from the surface of the rock, through the
fabric of his jacket. Ziyal was right: the station was a chilly place for
his people, and Garak was continually tensed against the cold. Sometimes,
he sat in his quarters and stared out into the darkness, wondering if it
could be any colder out there, among the distant stars, than it was
enclosed in this resented haven. The Order had chosen the location of his
exile with their customary precise cruelty: a place where it was always
night, and always cold. He sighed and lay back against the ledge.
'Well,' Ziyal said, echoing his earlier question. 'What shall we talk
about first?'
He wanted to ask: *what do you know of your grandfather?* He must be
getting old; the urge to reminisce was strong and there was no-one outside
Cardassia who shared his memories, now that Tain was gone. The closest
link was this girl, his enemy's daughter, and her knowledge was only second
hand. Her grandfather had died long before she was born, and now Garak
wondered whether they had been wrong, to insist on his execution. Dukat
Tarac had protested his innocence at the last; retracting his confession a
moment before the poison took effect, and Garak did not think he had
imagined the flash of triumph in the old man's eyes.
'We can talk about anything,' she said, a little hesitantly. 'Whatever
you want.'
*I want you to stop treating this like a game*, Garak had told Julian
Bashir in that engaging holosuite program of the doctor's, but the truth of
the matter was that it had all been a game; of no more consequence than the
chess the humans played. Pawns moved into place, kings deposed and all of
it empty and soon forgotten. He thought: *how could I, who understand so
well the falsity of truth and the reality of lies, have believed the
greatest lie of all; that power is something you can hold in your hand and
keep.* Does it always come to this in the end; dreaming by the fire,
telling stories about the old days to the pretty child at your side? He
turned his head to look at her.
'What would you like to hear?'
'Oh, anything,' she said again. 'Tell me about anything.'
She rested her head on her arm and her blue gaze held his own. They had
not managed to knock that out of her in that prison camp, then.
'Anything, mm?'
Should he describe the look on her father's face when her grandfather died?
Or the smell of smoke and burning metal on the bridge of the Romulan ship,
just before Enabran Tain let go forever? Instead he said, lightly
'Did your father ever take you up to Sessara?'
'No, never.'
'No? I'm surprised. That's something you really should see. They've
preserved the old Hebitian remains, and the aqueduct was restored a long
time ago. There's a walkway, beside the canal, and you can look down and
see the whole city. And it's very quiet. Even when there are hordes of
people up there, you still feel that you're alone. Voices seem to vanish
in the air. I remember, I went up there one evening, just to walk in the
gardens, and the whole place seemed occupied by ghosts. The groves were
full of shadows.'
'We meant to go,' she said. 'But there was never time.'
'Ah, there never is.' - and then it's too late. The sand runs out through
the bottom of the glass and if you try to grasp it slips through your
fingers and away. It seemed to be sliding from him as he talked. *It must
be the heat,* he thought, *relaxing me*. It crossed his mind that she
might have poisoned him; how, he
could not have said. The memories of his past drifted by with a
hallucinatory clarity; one image after another, but perhaps it was not
poison after all, but only the heat and age. He could feel her watching
him.
'If you don't feel like talking, that's all right,' she said, anxiously.
He laughed, genuinely amused.
'If Doctor Bashir could hear you now. No-one's said that to me for a
long time.'
'The Doctor likes listening to you,' Ziyal said, 'Nerys told me. She
said he looks up to you.'
'I'm sure she added that she can't imagine why,' Garak remarked. Ziyal
said nothing. He wondered if Kira had shared all of her speculations about
his friendship with Bashir. He could envisage the Major's tart tongue
having a good many things to say on that subject. He smiled. Ziyal said,
coaxing
'Tell me.'
'No, it's nothing. Just a thought that occurred to me, that's all.'
He stretched, lazy with the heat, and closed his eyes. Across the room, he
heard the rustle of silk against scales.
'Well, I think I'll follow your example,' he said. Sitting up, he took
off his own garments and folded them into a neat pile by the side of the
ledge. The surface of the simulated rock was smooth, baking with the heat
and comforting against his skin. Nonetheless, he shivered as he lay back.
He said
'How much did your father tell you about me?'
'I told you before. That you were in the Obsidian Order. That you were
Enabran Tain's right hand man before you turned against him.'
He almost uttered the automatic denial, but what did it matter, now? These
people could mean little to her: Enabran Tain, old lizard; her grandfather:
tales told to a child at bedtime, and no more real than the heroes of the
old Hebitian sagas.
'My father said you were right,' Ziyal whispered. 'What you did, to Tain.'
He felt his breath catch in his throat. After a long moment she said,
uncertainly
'Garak?'
'You know, very few people have had the privilege of rendering me
speechless.' Then he added, making sure 'He knew?'
'Yes, he knew. He started making enquiries, before your trial.' She
gave a soft little laugh. 'He was afraid they would commute your sentence
from death to exile. He wanted to make sure that they exacted
the maximum penalty, so that you would pay for what you did to my
grandfather. Then he found out the facts of the matter, which Tain had
tried so hard to conceal. I know the truth,' she added.
Garak said
'No. You can never know. It's like the view from the Sessara gardens.
There is no single view; it changes, depending on where you stand.' His
mouth was dry. He swallowed, then asked
'And your father wasn't tempted, after everything that had passed between
himself and me, to adjust the existing evidence a little, so that they
would put me to death?'
'But he thought you were right. He's more fair minded than you give him
credit for. Even though you had my grandfather killed all those years
before, he still thought you were right to betray Tain. He didn't say what
he had discovered, because he still wanted his revenge, and so he let the
charges Tain had falsified against you stand, but he didn't press for a
death sentence after that. And he was in a position to do so. His vote
swung the balance for your exile, did you know that?'
'So your father saved my life, but didn't spare me my sojourn here. I'm
not sure whether I should thank him for that or not.'
'He told me what Tain had been planning. He said that it would have been
political suicide for Tain, and that he would have brought everyone down
with him - the Central Command, the Order, everyone. How could he argue
with what you did? You sacrificed everything for them. You took the blame
for Tain's actions. You saved my father's career, and you saved Tain from
himself.'
Garak said
'My dear, you're a romantic. It wasn't quite as simple as that.' He
sighed. 'Tain always had a fatal weakness for the grand gesture. He wasn't
altogether misguided. If his plan had worked, the Empire would be in a far
stronger position today. But the chances of it succeeding were so slight.
I tried to explain this to him, but he wouldn't listen. I spent a whole
night pleading with him, but he was adamant. I came all the way back from
Romulus to argue with him. I should have stayed there. They would have
welcomed me, under the circumstances. Ironic,' he mused 'Tain died -
perhaps - betrayed by a Romulan official who wasn't what Tain thought he
was. They never are. He didn't learn from his past mistakes. I believe,
Ziyal, that you always get a second chance. It's yours to take if you have
the wit to perceive it.'
'And you?' she asked. 'Will you?'
'Recognise my second chance, when it comes? I don't know.'
They lay in silence for a few moments. Then the girl said
'I'm going into the inner chambers for a while. If you'll excuse me...'
'Go ahead.'
He watched her with covert appreciation as she slipped off the ledge and
disappeared through the doorway. She was tall; muscular from the years of
breaking stones in the prison camp, and her hair fell down her back like
rain.
He thought: *you are more Cardassian than Bajoran, I think. You enjoy
playing dangerous games*. He had recognised that when she had stepped
through the door of the shop and invited him with apparent artlessness to
share her holosuite program. *Oh, you are your father's daughter,* Garak
thought; *no wonder he risked so much for you.* One never knew which way
Dukat would jump, and it was a quality that Ziyal seemed to have inherited.
She certainly had a thorough understanding of her own allure, and how best
to use it. He imagined that this had been her principal form of defence,
back in the camp. *And will you turn that weapon against me, daughter of
Dukat, who hates me and owes me so much?* He wondered which Dukat resented
more: the old man's death or his own preservation by the man he so
detested. Garak was inclined to favour the latter possibility.
He raised himself on his elbows and looked towards the doorway through
which Ziyal had gone. Clearly he was expected to follow her through into
the inner chambers, and he thought: *no. No, I don't think I'll do that.
I am not an old man, but I'm not young, either, and I've no intention of
becoming entranced, except so far as it amuses me*. Wryly, he thought
back to her original invitation. Share the heat, indeed. Would that be
the furnace of sexual desire or the torch of romantic love? He needed
both, and she knew it, but there was still a part of his soul that remained
untouched by the promise of warmth: the cold and bitter light of reason.
He wondered what she would do, if they became lovers and her father
returned. Would she indeed hand over his head as a birthday present
("Foolishly, he fell in love with me; I have him trapped; he's at your
mercy, Father")? Or would she nobly protect him from Dukat's wrath ("No,
you mustn't! I love him!") and incur a debt of gratitude that would tie
him to her forever? Neither prospect was appealing. Garak had never had a
taste for melodrama, and there was a strong possibility here of both
tragedy and farce. Then again, the moment might be worth it: to lie again
in young arms, confide everything, exchange the dusty memories and the
petty intrigues for the pleasure of sexual surrender. He'd had the
inclination before, many times; looking into someone's eyes and seeing
there the prospect of absolution ("You can talk to me, Elim, now we're
alone. You know you can trust me."). Voices from the past echoed in his
head. Confession had often proved more seductive than the flesh, but a
greater enjoyment even than that had been power, and the maintaining of
delicate balances. Now, he had stepped out onto the tightrope again. His
enemy's daughter stalked him; the disrupter lay beyond his reach on the
ledge, and she was quick, Ziyal, he had noticed that. The old excitement
ran electric through him; the exhilaration of taking a chance. He could
afford to indulge himself a little, now that it was only his own life at
stake. He turned his cheek to the warmth of the ledge and shut his eyes.
He must have dozed, for he dreamed of Sessara. It was evening; the light
falling from the sky and the shadows running long and green across the
gardens. He rested his hands on the balustrade and looked out over the
city. The lamps were coming on along the Iket, and above the sharp edge of
the mountains hung a single star: Aress, the brightest star of all, that
only rises when summer is almost gone. Dreaming, he watched the city for a
while and then turned to walk back through the gardens. Someone was
waiting
for him in the hamath grove and he saw without surprise that it was Dukat
Tarac. The ghost greeted Garak with a nod.
'You're looking very well, considering,' Elim Garak told him.
'Look closer,' the dead man said.
Garak did so and he could see the poison, now; tracing a landscape beneath
the Gul's skin.
'It burns,' the Gul said, and smiled with Ziyal's smile. 'Well, no need
to apologise, Elim. What's done is done.' He sighed and it rattled in his
throat. From the depths of the grove, a procession of shadows stepped out.
Each held a light between their hands; each looked Elim Garak in the face
as they passed. He recognised them all. He turned back to Dukat, but he
was gone and Ziyal stood there instead. She said in concern
'You're bleeding.' He looked down at his hands and there was, indeed,
blood upon them.
'You mustn't worry,' he said, to comfort her. 'It's not my own.'
She reached out and took his hands. He tried to draw away, but they seemed
locked together.
'Don't you see?' she said. 'It's the blood that binds us.' and then she
pulled him forward and he was falling, down into night and beyond.
He awoke with a start. Ziyal was sitting beside him on the ledge. He was
holding her hand in his own and his grip must have hurt her, but she was
silent. She was looking at him with her grandfather's eyes and there was
no sign of the schemes that he had been fearing, nothing there but pity.
'It was just a dream,' he murmured. She leaned down and abruptly kissed
his cheek.
'It's time to go,' she said. They dressed in silence, but just before
they left the holosuite he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to
face him.
'There are a great many things I could teach you,' he said. 'And I think
you'd prove to be an apt pupil, but you should also remember that the young
can be wise, wiser than their elders, sometimes.'
She nodded, seriously. He was not sure that she understood and, obscurely,
he found this reassuring.
'Remember that,' he said again, and stepped out into the chilly
brightness of the corridor.
--
Stephen Ratliff CS Major, Radford University.
srat...@runet.edu Marrissa Stories Author
homepage: http://www.cs.runet.edu/~sratliff/
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ASC Awards run from 2/02/97 to 3/19/97 see alt.startrek.creative for
details.
"If his words hold wisdom, and his philosphy is honorable, then what
does it matter if he returns. Perhaps the words are more important than
the man." -Ka'less II ST:TNG "Rightful Heir"