7

Keiko pressed her hand against the security panel to unlock the office door, and then stepped back politely to allow Tela to enter first. The older woman hesitated for a moment on the threshold, and then went in ahead. A draught came out through the open door, and Keiko drew in a quiet sigh, relieved to feel the fresh air again upon her face. She always kept the temperature fairly low in her office—it was her haven from the heat of Cardassia. Feric complained about it all the time, amiably, but Tela never had—although, as Keiko stepped past to take her place behind the desk, she thought that she saw a frown briefly trouble the other woman’s cool, set face.

“Please,” Keiko said, gesturing to a chair, “do sit down.”

For one fraction of a second, Tela remained standing—upright, proud, with the apparently instinctive bearing that made so many Cardassians appear overwhelming. Then she nodded slightly and lowered herself into the offered chair, smoothing a nonexistent crease from her skirt and still seeming very tall. Dealing with Tela was like participating in a dance, Keiko thought—a very precise, formal dance…and sometimes Keiko felt as if she were being forced to improvise, making up her moves while Tela sidestepped her, again and again.

We should be friends, Keiko thought, a little sadly. We’re both scientists, both women, both mothers…and yet we shift cautiously around, neither of us able to take a first, real step toward the other.

Tela was casting an eye around the room. Was she imagining herself in this office, behind this desk? Tela had applied for the directorship of the Andak Project, Keiko knew, and the decision not to give the post to a Cardassian had been deliberated long and hard by the I.A.A.C. But if Tela was bitter about Keiko’s appointment—and then Keiko’s choice of Feric as her deputy over Tela—she had never shown it. She had, in fact, kept a thoroughly professional distance. But, nevertheless, whether intentionally or quite unconsciously, Tela contrived to give the impression that she was on the wrong side of the desk, as if she had been somehow dispossessed from what was rightfully hers. This office. My office, Keiko told herself firmly.

After a moment, Tela leaned forward in her chair. She reached out a long, thin hand and, with a cautious finger, tapped the school bell that stood on one side of Keiko’s desk. It made a dull sound.

“What is this?” she asked. It seemed to be genuine curiosity.

We are both scientists, after all.

“That’s my school bell,” Keiko said, and laughed a little. “A relic from my former career!”

Tela looked up at her, an eye ridge raised in surprise. “You taught school?”

“For a while—on Deep Space 9, when Miles was posted there. The children had nothing to keep them occupied and were getting into trouble and…well, there was hardly much call for a botanist on a space station. A happy combination of circumstances.”

Well, not always entirely happy….

Tela’s eyes widened, as if something had suddenly become clear to her. “Ah—now I think I understand better about these classes you’ve asked us all to give.”

“On the station, we found that the school was a good way of bringing very different and diverse communities together,” Keiko explained, deciding that perhaps it would be good politics at this point to pass over some of the difficulties. “So yes—that’s why I’d like us all to take some part in educating the children here at Andak. Not so much that it interferes with the work we have to do, of course,” she said quickly, “but there are some brilliant, gifted people here, and I think it would be a real opportunity for the children on the base to be exposed to their ideas, to learn from them.”

Tela had listened to this speech impassively. Her eye fell upon the bell again. “May I?” she said, touching the handle.

“Please do,” Keiko replied.

We are so very courteous to each other….

Tela picked the bell up, carefully.

“It’s quite solid,” Keiko assured her. “It’s meant to be rung vigorously, over the noise of children playing!”

The bell clanged a little. Tela quickly reached for the hammer. She turned the bell upside down and examined the mechanism, tapping the hammer against the metal, recreating the dull sound. “Did you really use this on the station?”

“Oh no, of course not—it would have deafened everyone! Resounded all along the Promenade. I wouldn’t have been popular if I’d done that first thing every morning!” Keiko smiled in what she hoped would be taken as a friendly manner. “No, it was a joke on Miles’s part, really, when I started the school. I was very nervous about the whole project.”

“Nervous?” Tela gazed up at Keiko, pinning her with an inquisitorial stare. Keiko berated herself inwardly.

That was a little bit too much information. One of us has to take the first step, make the first move forward, yes—but I’d rather have Tela unbend!

“The whole project was a risk,” Keiko replied firmly. “We didn’t know whether the Bajoran parents would accept a school that didn’t teach their faith as an explicit part of the curriculum.”

“And did they?”

“With time, and with effort—yes, they did.”

With a surreptitious glance, Keiko checked the time on the display. It was several hours yet until Yevir was due to arrive, but she still had much of the base to check on. It wasn’t fair to leave it all to Feric—it was her responsibility. Why, Keiko wondered, did Tela have to pick this morning—of all mornings—to indulge in small talk?

Tela set down the bell, brushed away another crease in her skirt that Keiko, at least, couldn’t see, and then folded her hands before her. When she lifted up her gaze again to look at Keiko, she was a study in composure. Plain but perfect clothes; her long dark hair held up in an intricate style which seemed effortlessly achieved—although, when Keiko looked a little closer, she could see the strands of gray flecked among the black. Very few of the Cardassians at Andak other than Feric had spoken to Keiko of their experiences during the war and Tela Maleren most certainly had not. She had a daughter here, Nyra, but had never mentioned a husband or a partner. Keiko didn’t even know if there had been more than one child. And she had to wonder, as she often did, how much of a toll the brutalities of the war had taken upon such a cultured, civilized woman as this.

“I used to love teaching when I was younger,” Tela said, simply. “When I became principal of the Science Academy, I had less and less time for it. I regretted that.” She looked at Keiko coolly. “I’m sure you understand about administrative burdens. Do you miss teaching, Director O’Brien?”

“I do miss it, a great deal,” Keiko said, marking the shift back from first names to titles. “And I’m sure,” she added, doggedly,

“that we love teaching for the same reasons.”

A very small smile, like a fault line, crossed Tela’s face. “Do you think so, Director O’Brien?”

“Well, I love to teach because I love to give children and students new ideas—to see their minds opening. To see them take what I have and to make something new from it, which is their own.”

“Then—as I suspected—we are not in accordance. When I taught, it was to pass on to my students their tradition, their heritage. Everything that made us Cardassian, which had been given to me, which I loved and wished to give to them in turn.” Tela had begun to finger a silver bracelet around her wrist. With a flash of insight, Keiko grasped that she was very distressed.

And confused…. Surely the Oralian Way is all about Cardassia unearthing her lost past…? Shouldn’t she welcome it…?

“Professor Maleren…Tela,” Keiko said carefully, although she could not keep some urgency from creeping into her voice, “we’ve worked alongside each other now for nearly two months, and you’ve never chosen to speak to me like this before. I’m glad that you’re talking to me now but, please, you must tell me what it is that’s brought you here this morning.”

“There is so little left,” Tela said, tracing the filigree and the small red stone on the bracelet and looking beyond Keiko out of the window. “And yet there seems to be no will to protect it; worse, there seems to be a desire to destroy even the little that remains. You say that you taught in a school which did not let belief pass through its doorways. And yet here, in Andak, you allow the open practice of religious faith.”

Suddenly, again, Keiko understood. “You’re talking about the service yesterday, aren’t you? The Oralian Way?”

Tela’s lips thinned. “It has no place in public here at Andak. No other groups or affiliations at this base practice their faith or air their views as openly as the members of the Oralian Way did yesterday. It is not acceptable—”

“Professor Maleren, I’m not going to use my authority to bar any adult here from expressing their beliefs however they choose—privately or publicly!”

“Where there are children watching, Director O’Brien!”

They stared at each other across a desk which now seemed to be cavernously wide.

“I have a daughter, you have a daughter,” Tela said softly. “Can you care so little about what she learns? Do you see so little of worth in your own traditions, your own values, that you have no wish for those to be hers too?”

“Molly has lived most of her life among other cultures. Her own mother and father are from different cultures. Of course I’m happy for her—and for Yoshi—to learn all that they can from everything around them. Those are my values.”

Again, the fault-line smile. “Infinite diversity is a luxury—and one among many that Cardassia has never been able to afford. All that I have left now to give to my own daughter is ruins, Director O’Brien. Perhaps if that was all you had, you might wish to protect it too.” She frowned. “At the very least, if I cannot make an appeal to you on these grounds, let me appeal to your sense of pragmatism. There are many, many people here who are not happy with what took place in the square yesterday. You are serving neither yourself nor the project if you ignore this.”

Keiko had to look down for a moment to collect her thoughts, but when she could face the woman opposite again, it was with determination in her eyes. “Tela, I don’t underestimate your concerns, and I do understand them. I won’t hide away from this, that’s not my style. I want us to find a way to solve this, to everyone’s satisfaction. But, for the moment at least, while the project isn’t yet secure, while—today!—all of Cardassia, and beyond, is going to be watching us, we have to pull together.”

Tela sighed a little. “I must not leave you doubting my commitment to this project,” she said, and then she smiled. But her smile was sad, and it touched only the very edges of her eyes. She looked out of the window. “You know, don’t you,” she said, softly, “that if our work here is successful, it will change Cardassia forever? And not just Cardassia, but its people. We will change the air we breathe, and the land we use to grow the food we eat—and so we will be changed ourselves.”

Keiko did not answer, but waited for Tela to finish.

“You do realize that even if we could return to how we were—that I have committed myself, committed my work, to that change?”

“I know, Tela. I know.”

“But still, there is so little left,” Tela explained again, raising her hands in a hopeless gesture. Then, with a swift and elegant movement, she rose, and made for the door. When she reached it, she stopped before touching the panel, and turned.

“There is one other thing that I have to say—that you will be making a mistake, Keiko, if you try to treat us as if we were Bajorans. We are not superstitious—we are rational; too rational, perhaps. But we are alike in one way, I’ll grant you. Alike because of what they learned from us—to be hard, to be obdurate.”

“I understand that, Tela,” Keiko said. “And I’m not dismissing this, nor underestimating the gravity of your concerns. This is something all of us will have to deal with, if we really want to be a community here at Andak.”

“Ah yes, the community….” Tela gave a dry smile and opened the door. “It’s a worthy vision you have—but I fear you may be building castles in the air.”

“I hope not,” Keiko replied. And I can be adamant too, she thought, as Tela nodded a courteous farewell and left.