Strange New Worlds 2016 (24 page)

Unexpectedly, Lubarr released a sob. “Odo, they’re dead. Ren and Falor helped colonize
New Bajor. The Jem’Hadar . . .”

“I . . . I didn’t know.”

Lubarr clasped Odo’s hands. “The irony . . . finally booting out the Cardassians,
only to face a worse threat . . .”

“Shapeshifters.”

“I’ve never blamed you.” Squeezing Odo’s hands, Lubarr stared into his eyes. “Please
don’t blame me. It’s survival.”

Garak secured the tracker-equipped collar around the lemur’s neck.

Rokor returned from the back room with a
jumja
stick. “Tres ate the bar last night.”

“And he licked up every drop.” Garak held the DNA-laden object under the lemur’s nose.
The creature cooed. “Perfect. Your brother already made friends with her.”

“Animals trust him.” Rokor inhaled sharply. “To think I kept my eye on Tres when he
ran over to the
jumja
stand, then didn’t when he used the restroom at the Replimat.”

“If Thebroca hadn’t taken him there, she’d have done it elsewhere.” Garak pulled out
the tissue she’d discarded in his sizing chamber. The lemur sniffed the smudge of
green makeup the operative used in her forehead circle to dramatize her unusual eyes.
“Good,” he said, and pinched its tail.

When the creature squealed, Rokor frowned. “Won’t that make her avoid that smell?”

“Not at all. There are three reasons a lemur will track—to hunt, to find a friend,
or to locate a friend’s enemy. I’ve just informed her how to categorize Thebroca.”

“Amazing. I’d thought lemurs were just . . . warm and cuddly.”

“Glad the Order kept one secret.”

“The Order.” Rokor rubbed his ridged nose. “Why didn’t Thebroca just kill Lubaar herself?”

“Splitting the two assassinations split her risk. Odo can’t prove she was directing
a hunter probe while she was out of sensor range in my sizing chamber, but he suspects.
When you shot the second target this morning, the Horvens were brunching with Kai
Winn. Now they’re above suspicion.” Garak cocked an eyebrow. “What I’m wondering is
why Thebroca was so impractical.”

“Impractical?”

“Going to the trouble of coercing you when she could have asked me. I have more free
time than I know what to do with. I could easily have fit one little assassination
in between pleating skirts and hemming pants.”

Rokor stroked the lemur. “I heard a rumor—how Natima Lang and her pupils escaped Central
Command on this very station. If you wouldn’t eliminate three Cardassians they considered
traitors, I can see why they’d have doubts about how you’d handle a harmless scientist.”

“Well, every case has its own merits.” Garak attached a leash to the lemur’s collar.
“But one does like to be asked.” He pursed his lips at Rokor’s breathy chuckle. For
a moment, they watched Trestan’s-best-hope-of-being-rescued struggle against the restraint.

Rokor looked at him. “If you’d known Tres had an older brother in the Resistance,
would you have released him?”

“I’d have used him as Thebroca is doing now.”

Rokor nodded. Obviously, the answer didn’t surprise him.

“But we never knew your identity—not until we retreated and Bajor lauded you as a
hero. When I processed Trestan and his friends, I ran the usual checks on DNA, retinal
scan, and facial structure. When they revealed no personal or familial links to matters
of interest, I let them go. They had no value.”

“Perhaps. But that wouldn’t have stopped others in your position from having their
fun.”

Garak shrugged. “I’m a professional.”

Bashir sat at Odo’s desk studying the mishmash of data Dal had collected on the tribe
from the moon of Tasadae. He’d gotten so used to the insults the Yridian con man was
yelling from the holding cell that he ignored them.

Running his gaze down the columns of tricorder readings, Bashir confirmed that blood
chemistry, endocrinology, and tissue composition identified a humanoid species—the
same as nearly all known sapient entities across the galaxy. To a scientist, the curiosity
that such a multitude of beings exhibited only fractional differences in their DNA
suggested the inevitability of evolution. To religionists like the Bajorans, it bespoke
the miracle of creation.

Scanning a hundred images of the most recently discovered humanoid, Bashir thought
it a good thing the doctors had kept their interactions low key. Best that memory
of their visit didn’t survive even as a legend. From the simplicity of domiciles,
costumes and tools, he surmised the first-contact evaluation would decree nonaccess.

But after the doctor began perusing the neurocognitive findings, he began to wonder.

When a patrol officer reported Garak walking a lemur on level seven, Odo assured him
that was acceptable so long as the pet was leashed. When several dignitaries called
in sightings of a strange Cardassian lurking in the vicinity of the guest quarters
on level nine, Odo downplayed their concerns. He had more pressing matters than appeasing
Bajoran prejudices. But when an alert beeped on his padd that life-forms registering
as Cardassian and lemur were wandering around level twenty-one, the head of security
resigned himself to taking a look. The supposedly simple tailor had infiltrated an
area where no civilian could conceivably have business: the corridor leading to the
abandoned ore-processing facility.

Odo preferred patrolling the station on his imitation humanoid feet. Today he didn’t
have the time. Tapping his combadge, he contacted the transporter room. As requested,
he materialized facing the wily Cardassian.

Garak didn’t flinch. “Odo, you should visit the pet shop. Shaloza Rokor carries the
most darling beasts.”

“Really? Then where’s yours?”

Garak flicked his glance to the leash dangling from his hand. “Fletflet heard something
down this open vent. Probably a vole. Lemurs love hunting them.”

“Among other things.”

Garak flashed Odo a dazzling smile. “Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”

“She can’t be off her leash. Not outside your quarters.”

Garak widened his eyes. “Lemurs need to run around something besides a wheel in a
cage. But no one has to tell you how depressing it is to be cooped up.”

Odo glowered. While he practiced humanoid expressions to improve communication, Garak
did it for obfuscation. He slapped his combadge. “Beam me and this colossal waste
of my time to security.”

Bashir propped his head on his fingertips while he read Dal’s extensive testing protocol.
He’d set the screen to roll at a pace that would have made most people dizzy, but
his genetic enhancements allowed him to absorb the information quickly. He just wasn’t
sure what it meant.

The notions that the tribal people spouted about their everyday life were consistent
with their simple appearance. They shared animist beliefs about the blue-and-green
planet that crossed their sky and the ball of fire beyond. But when Dal proceeded
from interviews to tests, she discovered their spatial-temporal concepts suggested
they’d grown up in a more complex society.

Bashir was so engrossed in the curious case of the sophisticated primitives that he
didn’t realize two people had joined him until he heard Garak’s irritable, “Unhand
me, Constable.”

The doctor bit his lip. As the only Cardassian resident, his friend was a natural
usual suspect, but when Odo pointed to a chair, then turned his back, he relaxed.
Whatever Odo suspected Garak of, it wasn’t murder.

Still seething, Garak pulled out a personal communicator and muttered, “Our Changeling
gul saw fit to detain me in security.” After listening a moment, his mood lightened.
“Ah. When she’s finished, you know where to come.”

Odo scowled. “Who was that?”

“My dinner date. They needed to know I’d be late.” Garak raised his eyebrows as if
noticing Bashir for the first time. “A pleasant surprise, Doctor. What’s that on your
viewscreen? You’re studying data forms, medical reports, and ethnographic photos simultaneously?
One would think you’re Cardassian.”

Bashir leaned back. “I’m helping Odo make sense of Dal’s research.”

Garak’s eyes glimmered with interest. He rose from his chair and drew closer. “What
a charming outfit that fellow is wearing—mostly furs and skins, but what an unexpected
scarf.”

The doctor shrugged. “The animals they live on include wild sheep.”

“How clever of them to shear, spin, and knit the wool despite their subsistence lifestyle.
And look at the clarity of blue they achieved.”

Frowning, Bashir pulled up Dal’s entire album. “What else do you see?”

Garak cast his gaze up and down the columns. “A rawhide collar but what a crisply
rendered decoration. That crude loom achieved that uniform, tight weave? Remarkable.
This crimson is particularly rich.”

Odo coughed. When Bashir and Garak turned their heads, he glared. “Commander Sisko
assigned the doctor a task. Leave him to it.”

Garak waved a placating hand. “I’m just offering my expertise—as a clothier.”

Or an intelligence agent
. “Odo, I need to check on Lubaar.” Without further explanation, Bashir hurried out
of the security office and on to the infirmary. Hastily, he assessed his patient’s
physical state—adequate—then blurted out, “I know what your wife was planning to announce.
The tribe on the moon of Tasadae—it’s a fake!”