“It’s over,”Darhe’el said. “The main vein is played out, and the secondaries aren’t worth the cost of running the AI. Besides which, I’ve had to continue treating the workers for Kalla-Nohra, at considerable expense. I’ll need that Bajoran scientist to come to the camp, to shut down the AI…. And I’ll need your approval for the rest of it.”
Dukat felt his body tense. The news wasn’t unexpected, but he hadn’t thought it would come quite so soon. Gallitep had finally outlived its usefulness to Cardassia.
“The rest of it,” he murmured, thinking of what Kell would say. Dukat had long believed that it would be a worthy venture to drill deeper below the surface, but Kell had consistently refused to supplement Dukat’s resources with the personnel and equipment that would be necessary to delve that far. Dukat could only hope that the retirement of such a productive facility as Gallitep might persuade Kell to rethink his decision.
“The workers,”Darhe’el sneered. “Unless you want them on your station. I’m sure they’d appreciate dying in the very lap of luxury.”
Dukat sighed. “I see no great wrong in treating them with basic civility, Gul.”
“Which is why the filthy creatures continue to run over our ground troops, doing as they please,”Darhe’el said. “If I were prefect—”
“Oh, but you’re not, are you,” Dukat said, enjoying the darkness that swept across Darhe’el’s heavy face. “You’ve done an excellent job at Gallitep overall, I’ll give you that. And I’m sure that Central Command will find further use for you, perhaps heading a prison facility, or leading a squadron at the front lines, for one of the colonies. But Iam prefect of Bajor, and that means that for the time being, you still answer to me.”
If looks could kill. Dukat smiled, easing back. “I’ll see to it that the necessary technician is sent promptly to deal with the AI. As to the management of the facility’s closure, I’ll leave that to your discretion. Send me your reports, I’ll sign off on whatever choice you make, assuming it’s not unreasonable.”
Dukat nodded and ended the transmission, wondering if Kell would rethink his position, now that Bajor’s most productive uridium mine had played out. Wondering, indeed, what he could do to rework the numbers, to keep Bajor’s output level within the Union’s very high expectations.
Still, he reflected, he should not overlook the bright side to this turn of events: the end of Gallitep also meant the end of Darhe’el, at least as far as Dukat was concerned. Without the option to elevate him to a higher post on Bajor, Kell would have no choice but to recall Darhe’el to Prime.
“Doctor Mora,” Odo said, from where he was sitting in the corner of the lab. Mora waved him off.
“Not now, Odo,” he told him, clicking away at his keypad. “Can’t you regenerate for a while?”
“My composition only requires me to regenerate every seventeen hours,” Odo replied. His pronunciation was flawless, and he’d even begun to learn to put inflection into his voice, though he exaggerated it sometimes.
“Well, maybe you could practice being an insect or something.”
“Doctor Mora, are you nervous?” Odo asked.
Mora looked up at the shape-shifter, whose “face” was appropriately inquisitive. “Yes, Odo, I am nervous. A very important man is coming to the laboratory soon, and I’ve got to be sure that everything is…” He trailed off. He didn’t know what to do for Dukat, exactly, other than have Odo perform for him. He had to figure out a way to make the prefect understand that his research with Odo was important, but he wasn’t sure how to do it without making it seem like a sideshow of some kind.
Yopal had insisted that Dukat would have no interest in what Mora was doing, that he only wanted to speak to Daul about something, and that he wanted to discuss something about weapons with a few of the others. But Mora remained unconvinced. He feared that as soon as Dukat was introduced to him, the prefect would begin asking a thousand questions that Mora wouldn’t know how to answer, and he would find himself in a labor camp before he knew it. And then what would happen to Odo? Mora looked sideways at the shape-shifter, who watched him with his unique non-expression. It always managed to convey sadness, even if Mora couldn’t be sure that the shape-shifter was capable of actually feeling it.
Mora’s computer chirped, indicating that Doctor Yopal was requesting his presence in her office. He headed down the hallway, absentmindedly smoothing his hair back with his hand. Yopal was not alone in her office.
“Yes, what is it, Doctor?”
“We have a new colleague here at the institute. This is Doctor Kalisi Reyar.”
Given leave to do so, Mora turned to regard the other Cardassian woman in the office, a little shorter in stature than Yopal, possibly a little younger, a little more vain; the spoon-shaped concavity in the center of her forehead was filled in with a bit of decorative blue pigment. Other than that, she was nearly indistinguishable from the other women who worked at the institute. They all wore their hair in those peculiarly arranged plaits and bundles, they all had the same wide-open alertness in their eyes. Mora expected to forget her name almost immediately, for he rarely conversed with anyone but Yopal anymore. He extended his hand, and Doctor Reyar looked at it.
“Some Bajorans greet one another by clasping their forearms together,” Yopal told the other woman.
“Yes, I know,” Reyar said, but she still did not extend her hand, and Mora slowly let his drop.
“I wanted you to meet, because I will be putting the two of you together very soon,” Yopal said.
Mora felt his heart skip a beat.
“Not right away, but probably sometime in the coming months. That will give you time to wrap up your current projects.”
“Even Odo?” Mora spoke without meaning to, unable to help it. “He needs constant observation, he needs guidance, supervision. Nobody knows him as well as I do, nobody else can—”
“You will still be permitted to work with Odo in your spare time,” Yopal told Mora crisply. “Just not as often. I suggest you let him know right away, so that he can become acclimated to the change.”
Mora breathed a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t ideal, but at least Odo was not being assigned to someone else. Of course, there was still the matter of this Doctor Reyar…Mora turned to her again. “I look forward to working with you,” he said, trying to sound genuine. He hoped she was at least as tolerable as Yopal.
“Doctor Mora is one of the good Bajorans,” Yopal told Reyar. “He is cooperative, obedient…”
Reyar smiled. “That reminds me of a little joke I heard on the transport here,” she said. “Someone said that the only good Bajoran is one who is about to be executed.” She laughed out loud, and Yopal chuckled politely. Mora began to cough, and for a moment he could not stop.
Yopal patted Mora’s shoulder. “It’s only a joke, of course.”
“Of course,” Mora replied, still coughing.
“Perhaps you’d like to see Doctor Mora’s pet project,” Yopal suggested to the new scientist.
Reyar did not appear to have an opinion one way or the other, but Yopal nodded briskly and the three began to walk down the hall to Mora’s lab. Yopal stood back while Mora opened the door, and the three entered, revealing that Odo had been sitting in the same place since Mora had left him. Reyar gasped.
“What is it?” she asked, and took a step in Odo’s direction.
“He is a shape-shifter,” Mora answered, walking protectively toward Odo. “We don’t know where he came from, and we’ve never seen anything like him. He seems to be unrelated to any of the known shape-shifting species, with a morphogenic matrix that is utterly unlike the Antosians, the Chameloids, the Wraith, or the Vendorians. However, I’ve begun to make certain breakthroughs. Odo, this is Doctor Reyar. Why don’t you show Doctor Reyar…something that you can do?”