HollowMen Read online

  My father…meeting Garak?

  Just beside him, Garak was waiting—and smiling, benignly.

  “Could you excuse me for a little while, Garak?” he said.

  “By all means.”

  They stared at each other.

  “I mean,” Sisko said, pointedly, “that I’d like some privacy.”

  “Oh, I see…of course.” He stood up, and Sisko watched him amble toward the back of the runabout, and then look back. “You seem a little distracted again, Captain? Are you sure that everything is quite all right?”

  Go to hell, Garak.

  “It will be,” Sisko muttered, turning away and taking his frustration out on the console in front of him. “I just need to speak to somebody on Earth.”

  Having escaped from Dax, Odo arrived back in his office with exactly half a minute to spare, walked the four paces across the room to his desk, pulled out his chair, and sat down. He shifted slightly to one side two padds that seemed to him to be out of alignment, and then folded his hands before him and waited.

  And waited.

  Forty-three seconds later, “Incoming transmission from the freighter Ariadne,” the computer told him.

  “Receive transmission,” Odo replied, promptly, and with a mild degree of annoyance. Steyn appeared on the viewscreen, half-awake, brushing her hair flat.

  “Captain,” Odo said, “is there anything the matter?”

  Steyn looked at him in confusion. “No. Why?” She leaned forward, tense. “Has something come up at your end?”

  “You were a little late in placing this call.”

  “Was I?” She looked puzzled, and then shrugged. “Well, sorry about that. No, everything’s fine—all on schedule.”

  All on schedule? Odo checked the time, surreptitiously. Forty-three seconds late, twenty seconds spent disentangling the ensuing misunderstanding—more than a whole minute wasted now because Steyn had not taken the trouble to put through her call when she had said she would. Even after all these years living among them, Odo was certain that he would never understand the flexibility with which humanoids treated time.

  “Never mind,” he replied, resigned to it. “All on schedule, as you said.” He reached for the nearer of the two padds he had set ready near his hand. “I’ve read through the security arrangements surrounding the latinum shipment that you have on board the Ariadne, particularly concerning these biometric procedures you have in place—”

  At the mention of them, Steyn came to life. “It’s a great technology, Mr. Odo,” she gushed. “Foolproof.”

  “Unfortunately, Captain, it has been my experience that successful crimes are very rarely committed by fools. Consequently, there are a number of details which I would like us to go through before your arrival at the station.” He thumbed at the padd. “If you look at the material which I sent to you in advance—shall we begin with point one-dot-A…?”

  His attention now firmly on the information before him, Odo neither saw nor heard Steyn give a very deep sigh.

  The image on the viewscreen resolved itself into the familiar sight of the kitchen back home. Sisko saw the pots and the pans hanging all about, heard the noise and clatter in the background of someone busy at work, could almost convince himself he could feel the warmth and catch a breath of the heavy, spicy air. The old man leaning before the console sat up and looked straight at him.

  “Hey Dad,” Sisko said, guiltily.

  His father, in return, bestowed upon him something between a frown and a smile. “Well,” Joseph said, “I was wondering when I would hear from you. So tell me, were you planning to come all this way and not mention it at all?”

  Sisko looked at him in frank astonishment. “And just how did you hear I was coming back—?” So much for security in wartime.

  “That grandson of mine,” Joseph said, “now, he’s a nice young man. Takes a little time out of his day now and again to speak to his old grandfather. I have to wonder where he could have learned good manners like that. Although they do say that kind of thing can skip a generation…”

  So that was how he’d found out. Jake Sisko, double agent. Looked like there was another father-son conversation to be had when he got back to the station….

  “Dad…” Sisko said, shaking his head, but now that he had started, Joseph was unstoppable.

  “Other people, though, they’re just so important. Too busy. Just can’t find the time—”

  “All right, all right—I surrender!” Sisko laughed, admitting defeat in the face of this intergenerational pincer movement. “I’m sorry—I should have spoken to you much sooner than from the runabout!”

  The frown disappeared entirely from Joseph’s face. He smiled at his son. “So you’re on your way home then.”

  “I am.”

  “Well, it’s about time! It’s…what, two years since you were last here?”

  “You know how it is, Dad, especially now….” The war. That all-encompassing excuse. He left it unsaid.

  “I know.” Joseph nodded slowly. “And I know you’re going to be busy while you’re here, Ben—they’ve been talking about this conference for a few weeks now on the news, and I guess it’s got to be pretty serious to bring you all this way back, with things as they are right now.” His voice took on an almost plaintive edge. “Will I get the chance to see you at all?”

  Sisko did not answer.

  “Ben?”

  Sisko jumped. “What was that, Dad?”

  “Will I get the chance to see you while you’re here?” Joseph said again. The frown was coming back again.

  “Of course you will.”

  Joseph gave him a long, hard look. And then a smile lit up his face. “Your sister, now, she’s not bad at keeping in touch. Too good, sometimes.” Back to the usual. No awkward questions. Thank you, Dad.

  “Portland is a little closer than DS9—”

  “Doesn’t seem to stop Jake.”

  “That’s a fair point!” Sisko had to admit it.

  “She’ll be here herself from tomorrow.”

  “Judith will be there? I thought she was touring right now.”

  “She got back the day before yesterday. Said she wanted a bit of time at home, and then she’d be coming over.” Joseph gave a dry smile. “I seem to see a lot of that girl these days.”

  For the first time since their conversation had started, Sisko took a proper look at his father. It was difficult to be certain—these screens were never as good as being face-to-face—but could it be that he was looking a little older? Were there a few more lines there? It was strange, Sisko thought, how you took so much for granted, relied on it, and then when you came and looked at it again, it was different. Not how you remembered it. Not how it should be. Frailer.

  “How are you, Dad?” Sisko asked, softly.

  “Well, it’s nice of you to ask, Ben. I’m doing just fine.”

  “Not doing too much?”

  Joseph’s mouth set in a thin line. “I’m doing just as much as I want—no more, no less.”

  Sisko snorted. Stubborn old man. Some things never changed.

  “You know, son—you don’t seem quite yourself to me. Something on your mind?” Joseph was watching him closely, and with kindness.

  Sisko looked away, around the runabout. “I’m just a little tired, Dad. There was a lot to get done before I left.” He risked another look at his father, smiled the strained smile.

  “You sure there’s nothing else?” Joseph frowned once more. “Not like last time?”

  Last time Sisko had been on Earth there had almost been a military coup. He sure as hell hoped that wasn’t going to be the case this time.

  Sisko shook his head. “I can’t really say very much about the details, Dad,” hearing himself giving the same old excuse he used with Odo: the war, you see—the war. “But there’s nothing you need to worry about.” He was about to say I promise, but stopped himself in time.

  “Well, that’s good. You get yourself here just as soon as you
can, Ben. Your sister and I will be glad to see you. Be a bit like old times.”

  “Can’t wait, Dad. See you soon.”

  His father smiled at him again, and then he was gone, and the UFP symbol filled the place where he had just been. Sisko sat and stared at it for a little while. Dinner with the family—good food, old jokes, the best company…It was something to look forward to. He thought of the new lines on his father’s face and worried about it all. Maybe he should have brought Jake along after all. These were uncertain times, and everything seemed to be shifting, changing, on the move. You could never know for sure who would be next to go.

  He put his elbows on the console, propping up his head in his hands. He heard a sound coming from the back of the runabout and gave a short laugh. As if he would ever allow Jake on the same runabout as Garak.

  Somewhere, Sisko thought, you just have to draw a line.

  At Starbase 375, Sisko and Garak transferred from the Rubicon to a personnel carrier taking people back to Earth from all along the front line. During this last leg of the trip, Garak began to feel an increasing sense of dislocation. The others on the carrier were surprised, to say the least, to see a Cardassian journeying with them, and they kept a wary distance. It reminded Garak a little of how it had been on Deep Space 9 just after the Federation had taken over. Although there was none of the overt hostility he had encountered in those early days, many of his fellow travelers were clearly uncomfortable around him. Hardly surprising, he supposed, given where most of them had lately been. As he contemplated this change in his circumstances, it struck him how much, as the years had gone by on the station, he had come to take for granted seeing familiar faces, being a familiar face. Exile, of course, was as much about mind as about place.

  In all of this, Sisko proved to have very limited use as a distraction. If the captain had been distant before, he was now verging on the inaccessible. Sisko spent most of his time either plowing through reports or watching the starscape. It was, Garak had to allow, an improvement on the open hostility that had broken out in the confined space of the runabout, but Sisko’s heavy silence made Garak uneasy too. He had to wonder what it was prefiguring, what kind of eruption was coming, and how ferocious it was likely to be. As a result, he watched the captain closely; if only, he told himself, so that he might see the explosion before it happened, and thus be ready to get out of its way.

  When Garak had been invited to attend this conference, he had taken a little innocent pleasure in failing to mention his forthcoming absence to most of the people he had dealings with on the station. He had, however, chosen to tell Bashir that he was going to be visiting the doctor’s home planet. And before Garak had set out, Bashir had given him a padd which, the doctor told him, contained everything that any visitor to Earth should have read before going there. As the carrier inched closer to its destination, Garak fell back on this gift. A lot of it turned out to be Shakespeare. Bashir, Garak thought, as he thumbed through the texts, had a persistent streak; hope really did spring eternal in him. Still, he was grateful for it, since it filled the time. As did watching Sisko, shifting his attention between news of the war and the void of space, as if he were trying to force them to fit.

  Kira grabbed some lunch from the replicator in ops, and went straight back to her station. She took bites automatically, all of her attention directed toward her work. The Ariadne’s imminent arrival was throwing many of the station’s routines into disarray; someone had to bring a little order back, and Kira was going to be the one to do it.

  “I’m receiving a communication from a shuttle requesting docking clearance,” Dax said from her station.

  Kira did not look up. “Is it on the roster?”

  “Yes, although it’s gotten here a little early.”

  “Where’s it come in from?”

  “Hamexi space.” Jadzia sounded interested by that. “We don’t often hear from that part of the quadrant,” she added.

  “Well, if we’re expecting it, you’d better give it permission,” Kira said. “Let the pilot know that the station’s on a heightened security alert. He can expect restrictions on moving around here.”

  She pressed on with her work, but it was not long before she was interrupted again, this time by Odo’s voice, coming through the com.

  “Major,” he said, “Lieutenant Commander Worf and I have drawn up a preliminary outline of the sections of the Promenade that will need to be closed while the Ariadne is here. It needs your approval before I can confirm it with Captain Steyn.”

  “Send it over, Odo.” Kira scanned through her backlog of files and gave a smile. “It just so happens that I felt like doing some reading.”

  “Also the procedure I have devised for bringing the shipment on to the station.”

  “I’ll be glad to have a look at that too.”

  The data began streaming onto her console, and Kira started skimming through it.

  “Shuttle’s docking,” Dax said and then added, in a thoughtful voice, “You know, I’m sure that Odo would normally make the effort to come down here with that kind of thing.”

  Kira had become engrossed in the files and was only half-listening. “Yeah?”

  “And given,” Dax continued calmly, “that he’s no longer avoiding you—”

  Kira did look up from her station then, for just long enough to give Jadzia a very dry look.

  Jadzia smiled back blandly. “Given that,” she said, “I’m starting to get the strangest feeling that he’s avoiding me.”

  Kira reached out for her lunch and took another mechanical bite. “Well,” she said, “I wonder what you could possibly have been doing to annoy him?”

  Earth hung ahead, blue-white and unspeakably fragile. Sisko stood at an observation point and squinted at the vision, staring through the swirling clouds, trying to pick out patterns. He found the bulge of the coast of South America, upside down and a bit to one side, and he leaned his head a little so that the shape became more familiar. Then he closed one eye, raised his thumb and, twisting it up, blotted out the whole planet. He did this several times, and then he became aware that someone had come to stand beside him. He turned to look.

  It was Garak, watching him with frank curiosity. “Whatever are you doing, Captain?” he said.

  “It’s something I read about the first human astronauts,” Sisko replied. He blocked out the Earth again, then dropped his thumb so that it came back into sight.

  “They did this on the first trips to space—I’ve never forgotten how they described what it felt like when the planet was so small that you could just hide it away.” He went through the motions again, and Earth slid in and out of sight. It was something he had done many times before, and it was always an odd feeling. Alienating.

  “And why, I wonder, would they want to do that?”

  Sisko sighed, and put his hand back down at his side. “It’s a story about perspective, Garak, about something that once loomed very large suddenly seeming very small—”

  “I believe I understand the metaphor, Captain,” Garak said dryly. “I just don’t see the point of it.”

  “Didn’t your early space explorers tell the same story?” Sisko said. “About what it was like to see Cardassia from space for the first time? About how they could hide it away?”

  “I shouldn’t imagine they even thought of doing it,” Garak replied. “Not an imaginative bunch, on the whole, the Cardassian military. It wasn’t encouraged. And, anyway, it would hardly be worth doing, would it? Nothing can put Cardassia out of mind. Not space, not time…” He halted. Sisko glanced over at him, staring out at the alien planet that was fast approaching. “Not distance,” he finished, regretfully. Then he lifted his hand, shut one eye, and tried blotting out Earth for himself.

  “It’s because you only have one moon,” Garak declared, after a moment or two.

  Sisko frowned. “What?”

  “Earth only has one moon—am I correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right…. What�
��s that got to do with it?”

  “Then people will have done this for centuries.” Garak waved his thumb up and down. “Only they’ll have been standing on Earth, and blocking out the moon. It would be natural to try it in reverse, once people got into space. Now, Cardassia Prime has three moons. So which one would you choose to hide away? One of them is called the Blind Moon,” Garak went on. “It’s never alone in the sky—there’s always another moon up there with it. As if it has to have a companion. There’s a children’s story, about how even the Blind Moon can see.” Garak’s voice trailed away and then he began to laugh. “Isn’t it strange, what comes back to mind?” he said. “I haven’t thought about that story in years.”

  “There’s a children’s story on Earth too,” Sisko mused, “about a man in the moon, looking down.” He carried out the little ritual again. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe it’s not about hiding something after all. Maybe it’s more about hiding away from something.”

  “And on Cardassia,” Garak said, with a smile, “it’s always best to assume that there’s someone watching.”

  Sisko did not answer. He tried one more time, but they had come too close now for him to hide it away entirely. He abandoned the attempt. “Is this the first time you’ve ever seen Earth, Garak?”

  Garak roused himself from his thoughts. “Yes,” he said. “But for some reason it feels very familiar.”

  Sisko could not help but smile. He looked back at the planet and felt a little warmth. “Perhaps you’ve spent too much time around humans,” he suggested.

  “Captain,” Garak sighed, “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

  Once, in an anonymous room, anonymous men met to debate the fate of nations, met to wage a private little war. One of these men is angry, and believes himself betrayed. The other is placatory, still seeking to persuade.