V

Father, Can't You See I'm Burning?

'I'm not doing Garak any favours. He doesn't deserve a quick death... I want him to live a long, miserable life. I want him to grow old surrounded by people who hate him, knowing that he'll never come home again.'

Tain in The Wire

April 2396; Onekaka Lodge, Taupo, New Zealand

My dear doctor,

Your letter arrived at a most appropriate time, finding me in low spirits and raising them immensely. For this, another of the many gifts your friendship has brought, I thank you.

As you anticipated in your letter, it has, indeed, been a most disconcerting two weeks. I had not expected the level of media attention which surrounded my release; it is a long time now since the war - and the trial. This proved somewhat naive: what greeted me on stepping outside of Rangipo prison was a blinding flash of lights, a barrage of questions, and the ferocious chanting of a large band of demonstrators. To the demanding reporters, I murmured something fatuous about finding the scenery around Tongariro very reminiscent of Cardassia Prime and that I'd probably settle here, and then I began to flounder quite badly. Peyta, however, had been more perspicacious; she and her husband bundled me into a flyer and brought me here to their home in Taupo on the other side of the lake. After twenty years, it's odd not to be able to look out of my window and see the volcanoes any more, but I am getting used to my new surroundings. I do, however, keep forgetting the bedroom door isn't locked.

It took the press about ten hours to track us down, and Peyta has been resolute in her mission of preventing them from gaining access to me. They have proven a dogged and creative set of individuals. I haven't left the grounds since arriving here, but that isn't always enough. Last week we were taken aback to find a photographer and his hack sidekick had clambered across three miles of wilderness to get into the back of our property, and had made it as far as the garden at the rear of the house. Peyta's husband Nick, a man of few words but much physical presence, removed them promptly, 'accidentally' standing on the recorder as he bundled them out.

I have tremendous respect for my son-in-law, who has been steadfastly and generously loyal, and who has offered me genuine friendship. He is a local man, and we benefit from this; Peyta tells me gleeful stories of how hotels and businesses in the area have been most unhelpful to the visiting journalistic vultures. We have been greatly supported by the community in this respect. I say we, but Peyta has, of course, lived here for nearly fifteen years and is as much a local now as Nick. I do not believe that in general Cardassians find much of a welcome across the Quadrant; it astonishes me that someone related to me can have been made to feel so at home here on Earth.

I spend much of the day reading, a habit I acquired to fill the time as a young boy, and which stood me in  good stead during my sentence. Boredom truly was my worst enemy there, doctor, boredom and isolation. When we were not working (and I still retain enough of a sense of humour to be amused by the fact that I have spent a substantial part of the past two decades sewing - penance indeed), I was effectively ostracized by the other inmates. Those who had been more junior in the regime held the senior officers responsible for their disgrace. My more immediate colleagues could not forgive my treason or, more particularly, my remorse, since it served to highlight their own deficiencies in that respect. Reading, then, helped pass the hours. I also spent a lot of time looking at the view from the window in my cell, which helped my terrible homesickness. The view from Rangipo across Tongariro is very like Cardassia Prime (how odd to end up in a place so similar to home): the ochre tufts of grasses, with rough bits of green battling for life; the hills of grey ash and black stone with threads of sulphur yellow and, looming behind, the volcanoes, three dark cones pushing out from the ground into over-vivid skies, making their own weather, threatening explosion. Most humans find this an oppressive place, doctor, but it reminds me piercingly of home. Only colder - much colder.

My other main pastime now is talking to my daughter. It is my dearest wish that we can build some sort of relationship between us. Of all my regrets, perhaps the one which causes me the most sorrow is my failure as a father. I have been absent for most of her life: first during my exile on Deep Space Nine, then the vagaries of my 'career' in Tain's government - and then twenty years in jail. After she came to New Zealand, she visited me fortnightly, and we were in constant communication by letter. But to spend so much time in her company - it is both exhilarating and terrifying.

I don't think you've heard yet, but Peyta has just received a promotion. She is now Professor of Comparative Political Theory at Otago University, specializing in the ascendancy of liberalism in human culture and that of communitarianism in Cardassian culture. She has a brilliant mind, doctor, and her intelligence is based on compassion and integrity. I marvel that she is my child. But then, whatever she has created from her life has been her own achievement, whatever identity she has forged has been her own construction: it is despite rather than because of me - a damning indictment of any parent. Still, to hear her talk fills my heart with pride.

'Most theoretical innovations in political thought on Earth came from attempts to assert the rights of the individual against those of the collective, and vice versa. But it's not a debate that ever happened on Cardassia: somewhere along the line this whole argument became atrophied. You see templates of Cardassian society in many examples of totalitarianism on Earth, but totalitarianism never became the defining ideology on Earth as it did on Cardassia. How did that happen?'

'Cardassia is a much harsher environment than Earth, Peyta,' I offer. 'Individuality was sacrificed because it didn't lead to survival.' I don't imagine I am ever suggesting anything she has not heard before, and I know that she does not condemn Cardassia; I believe my daughter incapable of being either judgemental or condemnatory. But she loves the thrill of intellectual debate (in this, at any rate, proving herself Cardassian), and it is something, at least, that I can offer.

'Earth went through a similarly disastrous period after atomic war, father. The society which emerged has raised liberalism almost to the status of a religion. What I believe is that the intellectual heritage was already there: like a scientific discovery - the ideas couldn't be lost or unthought. When human society was in a position to think again about such frivolities as political theory, the liberal tradition was waiting in the wings to make a grand comeback. Cardassia never had that option.'

It is difficult to take on an academic on her own ground, but I try my best. Despite all, it pains me to see Cardassia maligned, if only because a criticism of Cardassian society is implicitly a criticism of me. Ours is, or was, a subtle society, layered and intricate, but I still believe that at its heart was love - for the family, for tradition, for a civilization which had endured the test of its environment, and which was all the more precious because of it. We didn't have to look far to see the ruins of a culture which had not survived.

'Peyta, at many points in our history you could characterize Cardassian society as co-operative, as mutually supportive. From that perspective, our culture is one of preservation: of maintaining the integrity of social structures and traditions which were always under threat of annihilation...' I could see her eyes widening and stopped.

'You sound like one of Tain's speeches.'

'That's because I wrote most of them. But the difference is that I believed them.'

This is, of course, unfair to Tain, who loved Cardassia as much as any of us. But for Tain, Cardassia was exemplified by the Obsidian Order, and the Order personified in himself. In Tain's hands, an ideology based on social preservation became the paranoid strategy of a beleaguered ego: it saw the potential for extinction at every turn and it fought back with deadly aggression. Tain's love for Cardassia was narcissistic. Mine was pure.

I have heard nothing from Carissa, which is to be expected, but which remains a source of great grief. Peyta received a letter from her last week, which she did not let me read. Apparently, Carissa has spent much of the time since the war working for an organization which reunites Klingon refugees with members of their families. I understand (obliquely) from Peyta that she has had surgery to remove her Cardassian features, and that she now appears human. I cannot bear to think of the anguish that would drive someone to such an extreme negation of her own identity. I know that I am substantially at the root of it.

One of the psychologists who insisted on bedevilling me throughout my time at Rangipo once said that he believed that a rift between a parent and a child could only ever be the fault of the parent. He got no argument from me. But I didn't see the point either in drawing his attention to the corollary of the remark, that a child who continues to try to please his parent beyond all that is rational has no-one to blame but himself.

I have already received a communication from the Cardassian Embassy here on Earth that they are prepared to meet to discuss the possibility of a pre-arranged, brief, and highly choreographed visit home. The offer terrifies me. More than anything, I want to see my home again, learn what has happened in our twenty year separation, see first-hand the changes about which I have heard so much. I long to replace this cold substitute with the real heat of my home. But - and this has been the hardest decision of all - I shall not go back to Cardassia. I understand now what you forced me to accept so long ago - that Cardassia, my first and fiercest love - is the price I must pay for all I have done. This is not simply an act of contrition: life is crueller than that. The truth is that Cardassia and I destroy each other, doctor. Working for her interests corrupts me - and then I, in turn, corrupt her. I fear for both of us if I go back. Cardassia deserves better. She does not deserve me.

I know that I will have to write. I hold an exceptional place in history - there are not many men whose single decisions altered the course of galactic events. I do not say this out of pride; I am more acutely aware than anyone of the cost of some of those decisions. But my viewpoint is unique: only I am left to tell the story of what it was like at that time, in that place, when Enabran Tain was the most powerful man alive. I have been reading the many, many histories which have emerged: our administration seems to hold a strange fascination for the human mind, doctor, and books on the subject are numerous. Some of them are decent enough. But at the heart you can see the confusion - why did a society gorge on war and murder until it had nothing left to devour but itself? And the reason they fail to understand this is that they do not really grasp the core of our Empire. They cannot comprehend Enabran Tain.

I, of course, made it my life's work to understand Tain. My entire reason for existence was to anticipate and implement his desires. It is no secret now that Tain was my father. The explanations that I read in the history books as to why I was, for so long, Tain's willing lieutenant are entirely accurate. Where they fail is in their conjectures as to why I defected. This is not surprising, as it is something of which I myself have only recently begun to have the barest comprehension. I want to try to explain this to you, doctor, as best I can. Beyond any possibility of personal gain; indeed, I believe, often earning the abuse of many, you have steadfastly continued to offer me friendship. I do feel that I owe you some sort of explanation, or whatever explanation I am capable of giving. There is still, you see, a final story left to be told about Tain and me, a story which I think explains much about us both. It is something I have not yet told anyone else, even Peyta: I always did cling to my secrets, doctor.

The evening before I left Cardassia Prime to meet the Defiant, I received a summons to meet Tain at his office. My immediate thought was that he had discovered my plans. Despite all my careful preparation, there are always weak links in any operation. To remove my daughters from Cardassian space and to manage the escape of Odo and myself was not a small undertaking. I went into Tain's office suspecting that I wouldn't come out alive; or, at least, that I would be dead shortly afterwards. Given what followed in our meeting, I still wonder if, on some level, Tain hadn't sensed my growing disaffection, hadn't also heard the whispering of my conscience, and was trying to prevent me acting on it.

He was standing with his back to the door when I entered his office, looking out across his capital. How typical of Tain to have a vantage point which placed him above his empire. He turned, and smiled when he saw me, but I, so attuned to all his moods, detected an unease in him. 'Garak,' he said warmly. 'Please sit down.'

I did as I was told, trying to stay calm as I waited for the onslaught that would lead to my exposure, again, as a traitor. I noticed that he did not keep eye contact with me, something very unusual for Tain. His gaze was legendary.

'I have something to show you.' He reached onto his desk and handed me a sheet of paper. I started to glance through it, my eyes widening in sheer disbelief.

'This is a draft of a brief which will be going to my lawyer. I intend to formally acknowledge you as my son.'

'Oh...' It was like a physical blow. I do believe I doubled over.

'Come here, Elim.'

I stood up, somewhat shakily, and made my way towards him. He guided me towards the window and we looked out across our glorious, beautiful capital which, together, we had put at the centre of an empire unmatched in the whole of history. 'All this is mine,' he murmured. 'And in time it will be yours.' I bowed my head and leaned in to rest it on his shoulder. His hand touched the back of my hair, almost in a caress. I sighed very deeply, expelling the pent-up frustration of over fifty years of denial. I would be an even greater liar than is commonly believed if I denied that for one second, longer perhaps, my resolve wavered, and I thought that I would stay. I felt the tears start to roll down my face. Tain took it to be joy or gratitude, but really it was sorrow that, against all expectation, I would be adding patricide to the long, long list of my crimes.

Do we all have the luxury of having these choices presented to us in such stark terms, doctor? My choice was very clearly delineated. So why did I reject the one thing I had wanted more than anything for my entire life - to be Tain's son? There's a simple answer. Either I could be what I had always wanted to be - or I could retain the last spark of decency that remained within me, the last piece of myself that Tain had not perverted. His offer could only be rejected. Acceptance would have destroyed me completely. And I am the survivor par excellence.

Like many leaders, Tain could give the impression of strategic ability, but his true genius was in delegation. He could spot those of us who could further his cause and he coaxed us into giving the best of ourselves for him. Everything I did was my own choice - Tain just provided the context for my talents to find full flight. This is what your historians and writers fail to understand, doctor, that for all his stupidity, his bigotry, his bombast and his vanity, Tain inspired people. And he inspired them, because you looked at Tain and you saw power. And those of us who worked for him, who had been sidelined and rejected and dismissed by the rest of society, we wanted a piece of that. Tain would ask and we would do because you knew that his will was such that nothing would stop him from succeeding. And you wanted to be part of that success.

I may have largely blinded myself to Tain's faults, but I was no idiot. Tain saw me as no more than a tool; his best tool, admittedly, but no more than an extension of that indomitable will, to be used and put aside when necessary. His offer to legitimize me was to secure the succession and his empire. It was not a gesture of love. Love between Tain and me could only run one way. It had taken me a terribly long time to learn that, but once I had, there was no going back.

Twice now, I have murdered my way to the peak of Cardassian society - and then voluntarily exiled myself from it. The psychologist at Rangipo did not find this difficult to interpret. Under Tain's tutelage, I learnt that what it meant to be Cardassian was what I could never be; that Cardassian society had no place for me. I was outside of the family, outside marriage. I had constructed a society from which I could only be excluded. Even worse, I had a conscience. And, ultimately, I loved Cardassia more than I loved Tain.

Do you remember borrowing a book called The Never-Ending Sacrifice? You hated it, as I recall, but it contains so much truth about what it means - what it meant - to be Cardassian, to be willing to give up your life on her behalf, generation after generation. Sometimes it seems that my whole life has been the negative image: to love and to sacrifice Cardassia again and again. I would gladly have died for Cardassia, if it had been necessary. Instead, I got to live for her; for her and without her. I don't think it was the easier part.

Often, in the early morning, I watch the sun rise and I reflect on the remarkable ability of natural phenomena to soothe the most troubled thoughts. It is at moments like this that I believe I may, one day, forgive myself; it is when I dream, and I see Brun, and that little Klingon girl, and Cardassia City, my beautiful home, on fire, that I know that this is one lie that, no matter how often it is retold, will never gain the numinous sheen of truth. But I will remain hopeful. Most of all, I will remain, doctor, your most affectionate friend,

Elim Garak.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

Milton, Paradise Lost