Ptacek hadn’t realized how empty she would feel at being rebuffed, at knowing she would leave this world as alone as she had come to it. With the first rays of the morning sun, she rose from her cold, sleepless bed, and listlessly pulled on her clothing. Not bothering with breakfast, she headed for the clinic.

She ran into Dr. Bashir. He looked like he hadn’t slept either.

“You look troubled.”

She was physically and emotionally weary enough to shed her usual calm. “I told Ibis and Kehin that I wanted to adopt them,” she burst out.

“Why do I get the feeling congratulations aren’t in order?” he asked.

“They turned me down. They refused it.”

He blinked once, but after a second, he appeared resigned.

“I think someone made them do it. Someone in their government, or someone they know and trust.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I talked to them, the children said they would think about it. They were surprised, but I think they were pleased with the opportunity. But then a soldier showed up to tell me they weren’t interested. And then, your friend Garak told me the same thing — he was part of this, wasn’t he?” she accused flatly.

“I wouldn’t know,” Bashir replied. “He and I haven’t spoken in a few days.”

“Why would they change their minds like that?”

“Did they actually say yes, at first?”

“No...,” Ptacek admitted.

“Maybe you misunderstood their reaction?”

“Impossible. How could they not want to leave here? Why would adults step in like that and interfere, refuse to let them have a home? It isn’t fair. Not to me, not to them. What hope do they have?” Ptacek asked, still upset. “Children, alone like this, on a world that has no place for them?”

“They’re Cardassians,” was all Julian said. “Maybe that’s the greatest hope they have, no matter where they go.”

“Cardassians,” she spat. “I’m sick of hearing that being Cardassian is reason enough for anything! They’re as bad as the fergrelten Klingons!”

She shook off his comforting hand and headed back to the clinic. Another morning. Another job to do.

Jeila’s body was already gone. Jake wound up searching the clinic and the makeshift morgue for nearly an hour before somebody recalled seeing the other Gemelens out behind the clustered tents of the relief team. He hurried out that direction.

Just beyond the tents, he finally found Herem and Togga, with a box that must contain the small body of their five-year-old sister. Herem had also located a bag of rations and a flask of water from somewhere, and had both slung over his shoulders. They were obviously preparing to leave the city.

He couldn’t just let them go. “Herem, wait,” he called.

Neither looked back at the human.

“Stay here, Herem. There’s more hope here.” He caught up to them.

“I promised my father, my family,” the youth finally said quietly. Was it Jake’s imagination, or was that fatalism in his voice? “We have to bury Jeila. Back home. With the rest of our family.”

“What about Togga?” Jake urged. “He needs help too. A different kind, but he needs it. You could come back here—“

“He’ll talk when he’s ready. Or he won’t.” The dead tones in Herem’s voice hurt.

“What if you get the plague too? You were all together, who’ll—“

“There is no cure here. What difference would it make, if we are here or at home? No.” Herem shook his head. “We’ll go home. We’ll manage. Somehow. We have to.” Pause. “It’s time to harvest the yeltorin.”

Slinging the casket between them, Herem and Togga trudged away without looking back.

“Wait!” He ran after the boys again. “I don’t know if we’ve got the power to transport you back, with everything that’s been going on.”

“We’ll walk. We’re not afraid to walk.”

“I’ll take you in a landtram.”

Silence.

“It would take you weeks to get home otherwise, through places where you won’t be able to get water or food. Places where looters and scavengers would take everything you’ve got. You’ll never make it. And even if you did, by the time you get halfway there, in this heat....” He couldn’t say any more; he didn’t have to. These boys knew what the stench of a days-dead body would be. “Let me ... let me take you home.”

After a long moment, Herem nodded briefly, but said nothing more to anyone as they waited for Jake to requisition and load a landtram.

Jake returned to Cardassia City two days later. He was exhausted, drained to the point of numbness.

“Hello, Jake.”

He met Bashir’s somber greeting. “Hello, Julian.”

Silence.

“How was the trip?”

“They hardly talked to me. They wouldn’t let me help bury her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I had to wait in the landtram. They wouldn’t let me see the family cemetery.” He ducked his head. “They didn’t even want me to come out of the landtram. The only reason Herem let me stay is because it was almost dark, and he thought it was his duty to offer hospitality.”

Bashir put an arm around the young man’s shoulder, offering comfort and inviting him to keep talking. Jake followed docilely as the doctor guided him into a tent for privacy.

“They don’t have a chance, Julian. They don’t have a chance! Those two boys, alone on that farm, no other family.... Even if they don’t get the plague and die too, they can’t make it alone.”

Julian sighed deeply. “We can only hope they last long enough for the region to get back on its feet and figure out how to help children like them.”

“If their authorities even care enough to try!”

“We do what we can, Jake.” The doctor shook his head. “This planet is full of tragedies like theirs, and much as we’d like to make it all right ... we can’t. For all that we do or try to do, ultimately, there are things we can’t fix. And there are decisions that Cardassia will have to make and carry out — and one of them is deciding how they’re going to handle their orphans and displaced, and how they’re going to rebuild.”

Jake slumped into a chair. “Could she have lived, if I hadn’t tried to prove we were better than the Directorate? If I’d let Madred’s doctor treat her?” he asked miserably.

Bashir was silent for a moment, a war of emotions and memories crossing his face. “No, Jake, I don’t think so,” he said sadly. “As far as we know, the Cardassians don’t have a cure for her condition, any more than we do. They’d be using it, if they did. And I don’t think they have the medical resources, at this point, to come up with a cure independently. As much as we’d both love a simple answer or a magic miracle cure, I don’t think there is one. Not for Jeila, and not for the others dying from the same plague.”

Jake stared at the dusty floor.

“In any event, they weren’t concerned with helping her — they wanted those children for propaganda, to demonstrate just how valuable the Directorate would be to the common person, and to prove to the Federation and anyone else who listened, that they aren’t the self-seeking militarists that we’ve seen them to be in the past.” Bashir touched his shoulder.

“Isn’t that what I did too? Use them for my own purposes —- my story?”

“Was that the first thing you thought of when you brought them here?”

“No, I thought we could help her. But I wanted to be the one who told the story of how we did it....”

“For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing, coming to me, bringing her here. You tried to get her the help she needed.”

“No, it wasn’t the right thing — not for the right reasons. I should’ve been more objective. I shouldn’t have gotten personally involved—“

“Because it would be easier to accept her death, if it wasn’t personal to you?” the doctor pressed gently.

“No, but then maybe ... maybe I wouldn’t have messed everything up for her. For them. They only had each other, the three of them ... but now there’s only two of them.”

“There would have been only two of them, no matter what you did.”

“They wouldn’t have had false hope built up.”

“Jake, if you hadn’t brought them here,” Bashir reminded him somberly, “Jeila would have died anyway, without anyone knowing or caring or trying to help her — and it’s very, very probable that her brothers would have fallen ill as well, and probably died too.”

“Ya know what hurts more?” Jake continued, looking away. “I got involved because it gave me a story, and once I had a story, I didn’t know when to shut up and back off. I pushed Herem to do what I wanted him to. I was convinced I could report a miracle and that ... that I’d win praise for it. Not even for you, but for me, because I was the one telling the story. You said the Directorate just wanted them for propaganda, well, isn’t that what I was doing too? Setting up the little media darlings for the Federation? And when Vonderhaar told me I was great, it went to my head, and....” He shook his head helplessly.

“What the hell kind of reporter am I going to be if I pick my stories because of the way they make me look, and I get so involved I don’t know when to let other people live their lives and make their own choices? I don’t belong in this job.”

Bashir sat down on the other chair in the tent. “Compassion and objectivity can be bitter enemies, and finding the balance between them isn’t easy. But there is a balance, I promise you. And I know you have it in you.”

“I wasn’t acting on compassion or objectivity, I was acting on ego.”

“No you weren’t, Jake,” the doctor said with quiet assurance. He clasped his hands, resting his elbows on his knees to lean close. “Your first goal was to save a child’s life, and then to tell her story to a galaxy so there would be more help to save millions of other lives.”

“As long as I could take credit for getting that help—“

“That’s not true and you know it. Don’t beat yourself up over this, Jake. It’s not going to bring Jeila back or change anything here if you quit doing what you love doing.”

“It’s not making any difference, my being here—“

“Yes it is, Jake. Yes, it is.”

Silence.

“I guess I know that,” he admitted reluctantly. “But how am I ever going to forget that little girl?”

“I hope you never do,” Julian told him.

“I’ve got a lot to think about.”

“Before you do, Jake, there’s a message waiting for you in the comm center. I think you’d better see it.”

“A message? From who?”

Bashir shook his head gravely. “You’d better hear it.”

That sounded serious. Great. Just what I need. More bad news. He headed for the comm center.

Jake stared at the message code. It was from the Federation News Service. Pohl Vonderhaar. The senior editor. Oh, no.... Jake flinched, then reluctantly toggled the view command.

“Jake Sisko.” His face was nearly split by the wide smile.

How could he be smiling, Jake wondered. Didn’t Vonderhaar realize just how badly he, Jake Sisko, had messed up here on Cardassia? How he’d gotten personally involved and let that interfere with his judgment and the way he told the story? And how a little girl was dead?

But Vonderhaar continued. “I’m leaving a message because I know how much this will mean to you.

“Your report on Cheiron IV and the motivations of the Nightingale mutineers was provided to a special session of the Federation Council and the Starfleet Judicial Committee. It was very effective. The Council is sending a special envoy to personally assess the needs of the colonies that directly suffered Dominion aggression. The Committee has also taken the question of amnesty under special advisement, given the circumstances.

“Of more immediate interest to you and some of your team there, I’m sure, additional emergency assistance has already been dispatched to Cheiron IV from Earth and Vulcan, with more anticipated from several other worlds. There’s another mission on the way to Cardassia, too.

“Congratulations. I look forward to talking with you soon.” Vonderhaar actually winked, then his image faded.

Jake had to listen to the message three times before it fully sank in.

More help was on the way to Cheiron IV and to Cardassia. Thanks to his report.

Where was the elation he should have felt?

He sat in front of the monitor for a long time.

Sighing, he finally keyed in a command. After a long moment, he got a response, but the “automatic receipt” said he’d have to leave a message.

“Kasidy? Hi. It’s Jake....”

Cardassian Profile: The Death of a Child

Jake Sisko
Federation News Service

PA’REM’TIR CITY, CARDASSIA PRIME — A Cardassian child died this week. One of the plagues that now ravages this planet claimed her life. The contaminants in the soil, air, and water weakened her, and made her more susceptible to illness. A poor diet, no medical care, and work too hard for her years since the Dominion devastation, left her without the strength to fight off the plague or the contaminants.

She was only five years old.

She was taken home to be buried by her two brothers, age twelve and nine.

Jeila Gemelen was not the only one to die. She will not be the last. Sometimes our best efforts are not enough.

But unless a cure for the plague is found, unless a way to counteract the contaminants is discovered, unless good food, clean water, safe shelter, and energy can be provided, her brothers may well sicken and die too, along with untold thousands of others.

And if the children are gone, there will be no one left to bury them in their family grounds. Without the children, there will be no next generation to rebuild Cardassia....

THE END