Another morning, and another sunrise over the vast agricultural plain that was one of Cardassia’s “bread baskets.” Jake suspected he knew the morning routine now, and he was right.

The Gemelen children were already awake and busy. Togga was working the ancient manual water pump, silently pushing and pulling the handle to draw up water from the old well, a half-gallon at a time. Jeila set out four plates and cups at the bench, shyly smiling at Jake as he came out of the back room. Herem brought two bowls from somewhere outside, presumably holding their breakfast.

“Good morning,” Jake said pleasantly, concealing a yawn. Yesterday’s long walk to and from the city, and carrying Jeila most of the way home, had drained him physically, and he’d stayed up several hours into the night working on his follow-up report. He stretched his arms and rubbed his shoulder to work out the kinks.

“Good morning,” Herem and Jeila each murmured. Togga paused briefly at his chore, but said nothing.

“We’re lucky this morning,” Herem said, holding up one of the bowls. “Togga found a taspar nest. We have an egg!”

Jake looked into the bowl. The unappetizing appearance and smell of the large cooked taspar egg, boiled and neatly quartered, turned his stomach. “Uh, that’s a special treat, isn’t it? I couldn’t take that from you—“ He quickly looked at Jeila, and found an excuse. Smiling widely, he said, “Jeila, I want you to have my part of the egg.”

The girl brightened; she obviously liked taspar egg, which Jake had learned was considered a delicacy, to Cardassians.

“But you’re our guest, we must share,” Herem objected, sounding a little uncertain.

“It’s all right,” Jake assured him. “I mean, she needs it more than I do. She needs her strength. I’ll be fine. I’ll have some yeltorin root. And I thought maybe I could contribute some supplement bars to breakfast, if that’s all right.” He held out the handful of sealed pouches.

Togga and Jeila turned to Herem; he looked ready to reject the offer.

“It’s common for my people, when we’re guests somewhere, to bring something as a thank you gift for the hospitality,” he said quickly, hoping he could convince Herem to accept the food as something other than charity.

“It would be inhospitable of us to refuse,” the teenager finally acknowledged, accepting the bars.

The family took their usual places on the floor around the bench. Togga brought a pitcher of water and poured each of them a cup. Herem divided the bowl of mashed yeltorin root between them all, then set a section of the egg on his plate and Togga’s, giving the remaining half to their sister. Meanwhile, Jeila neatly opened the supplement packets, adding one of the enriched fruit-grain-vitamin bars to each plate.

“Are you going back to the hospital today?” Jake asked, shifting to make his long legs more comfortable under the low bench.

“Yes,” Herem replied. “Maybe today they’ll have time to see Jeila.”

Herem took another small bite — even now, when food was scarce and of limited variety, the Cardassian children ate slowly, savoring every morsel, though it was the same bland root, prepared in the same way, that they’d eaten at almost every meal for the past two months. Jake was glad the younger boy had found the egg; it was not merely something different, it was much-needed protein. He was also glad he was able to add something more to their monotonous diet.

“What will you do today?” Jeila asked, her bright blue eyes fixed on Jake. She picked a sliver of fruit from the supplement bar and slowly began to chew it.

“I thought I’d go back to Cardassia City,” he replied.

Her face fell.

“But I’ll be back,” he promised her. “I’ll only be gone two or three days. I just have to take my stories in, and I have to see how things are going with my friends ... and talk with my stepmother,” he added. Cardassian family ties superseded just about everything else.

Herem nodded sagely. “That’s very important.” He nibbled at a spoonful of egg.

“Maybe I’ll be better when you come back,” Jeila offered.

“I bet you will be,” he replied with a grin. But just in case you aren’t, I’m gonna make sure and talk to Julian about you....

Twice a day, every day, the underling brought in vids of all news reports sent from Cardassia, or about Cardassia. It was his job to monitor what information the Federation was hearing or generating about their world, and to provide his superior with summaries of all of it, and full copies of anything that seemed particularly interesting or potentially useful.

And twice a day, every day, Legate Parn reviewed those reports.

Reading the latest stories sent by the human Jake Sisko, Parn’s expression changed from forbidding, to thoughtful.

“Madred!” he called.

The day-long trip back to Cardassia City, cross-country, didn’t seem to take that long. Jake’s mind kept turning over the Gemelen situation, and wondering what he could do to help the children to get their lives back together, as a family, in the home they’d known all their lives.

The first priority, of course, was medical care for Jeila, to figure out what illness or condition was causing her bronchial congestion and apparently resultant coughing. Several times that day, while taking a break for water, to confirm his course across the plain, or for brief walks to stretch his legs and cough the dust from his throat, Jake double-checked that he still had the medical tricorder, with the record of its readings of the young girl’s physical condition. He hoped the information would be useful.

He also worried how she was getting through the day, considering how exhausted she had been with the walk the day before, after the coughing fit.

The terrain seemed to stretch forever, at times, as his landtram sped through the miles as though it were as eager to get back as he was. A trail of gray dust followed him all the way, settling slowly back on the local vegetation, a continuing reminder of the extent of the environmental problems. The planet’s sun gradually climbed the hazy sky before him, then began to drop behind him as morning turned to afternoon.

It was a hot trip. To conserve power, Jake kept the internal air conditioning at a minimum. He supposed it was a sign that he’d become somewhat acclimated to the place, that he was handling the dust and heat in the cabin pretty well, merely shedding his shirt for a sleeveless undershirt and occasionally wiping the sweat from his face, arms, and neck. From the labored sounds the landtram occasionally made, he suspected the heavy level of air particulates was starting to impact on the equipment. Considering the last week and the areas he’d been traversing, it didn’t surprise him too much. Since he was going to be back with the relief team for a day or so, he’d have somebody check out the machine.

Jake reached Cardassia City as long evening shadows spread across the ground. He checked in with the comm station when he came in view of the city.

Dr. Bashir was waiting for him at the relief team camp, looking as weary as Jake always remembered him being, here on Cardassia..

None-the-less, “Hello, Jake!” the doctor called with a broad smile as he hopped out of the landtram cabin.

“Hi, Julian!” The smells and sounds of the bustling relief camp were familiar, but seemed louder and more invasive, after the ten days spent mostly alone and out in more desolate, less populated provinces.

“Good to see you back.” They hugged briefly. “Are you enjoying your travels?”

“Have you been reading my reports?” he countered.

“Yes — it sounds like you’ve taken on quite a project.”

“Just reporting the news,” Jake waved off the comment.

A pair of the maintenance staff technicians showed up to reclaim the landtram and take it to the vehicle garage for refueling, restocking, and security for the evening. Jake interrupted himself to grab his cast-off shirt and the medkit, then fell into step with Bashir.

Seeing the dark circles of fatigue under his friend’s eyes, he almost reconsidered what he was about to ask, but the thought of a bright-eyed Cardassian girl kept him talking.

“Say, Julian, I’ve got a favor to ask you.”

“Another favor?” Bashir teased. “At the rate you’re asking favors, you’re gonna owe me your first-born child by the time we leave here!”

Jake laughed in return, then eagerly continued. “Remember Jeila Gemelen, the youngest of the family I’ve been reporting on, the one they keep going to the hospital for?”

“Yes? What about her?”

“You know they haven’t been able to get her admitted for treatment because Herem won’t register them, for fear of the local bureaucracy separating the kids?”

“I remember.” Bashir’s expression turned more somber. “The Cardassians are trying to set up orphanages and alternate care, but they’re simply not equipped to deal with the sheer number of children left without families. And orphans have been all but invisible in their society until now, with no status and very few people who cared, among their military or civilian leadership. In most areas, they’re segregating age and gender groups for convenience of care. Frankly, I don’t think they understand how important it can be for children who’ve lost everything else, to stay with their siblings.”

“Exactly!” Jake agreed. “But since Jeila can’t get care at Pa’rem’tir City, I was wondering if you could take a look at the readings I took of her, and see if maybe it’s something you can help with? I know you’re pushing yourself and everybody else here to the limits, but maybe it’s nothing too serious, and it would mean a lot to the kids and to me—“ He held up the medical tricorder.

“Of course I can look into it.” Julian took the equipment without hesitation, tired as he looked. “But in the meantime, Jake, there’s somebody who’s been wanting to talk to you.”

“Oh?” he asked, becoming concerned. “Something up with Kasidy? Is it the baby?”

Bashir broke into another smile. “No baby, not yet. But why don’t you just go see? I saved his comm code, and let him know you expected to be back this evening. I’m sure he’s expecting your call. Then maybe we can have dinner, and catch up?”

“See you at the replicator station!”

A face formed on the monitor. It was an older human male, white-haired, heavy-jowled, with thick eyebrows that seemed perpetually arched halfway up his high forehead in curiosity at the universe.

“Well, well, Jake Sisko.”

“Mr. Vonderhaar?”

It was Pohl Vonderhaar himself. The most senior editor of the Federation News Service. The man who’d begun his career covering the Khitomer Accords, and scooping every other reporting service at the conference, over eighty years before. The human whose face had meant integrity in current news and information for over forty years, until he retired from field reporting and took over the editing desk, where he’d been for the past thirty-five years, along with serving as an honorary chair in the journalism departments of universities and academies on half a dozen planets.

For all public intents and purposes, Pohl Vonderhaar was the Federation News Service.

And he was smiling broadly.

“Jake Sisko, do you have any idea how many people are accessing your stories?”

He couldn’t help grinning giddily. “They like them?”

“They love them! We’re getting more and more hits every day — and requests for more information. These farm children are putting a whole new face on Cardassia, a face that our citizens can empathize with and want to help. How fast can you get us another follow-up?”

“I started working on one today — I can have it to you by morning.”

“Good.” The elderly editor nodded sharply in satisfaction. “Quick turnaround time. That’s a valuable talent in our profession. With your writing skills, that’ll take you far. I’ll be looking forward to seeing your report.” Vonderhaar signed off.

Jake rocked back on his heels, still a little in shock.

Vonderhaar himself. The legend of the Federation News Service. Talking directly to him. Praising his stories. Telling him that he was making an impact. Looking forward to his follow -up reports.

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing your report.” Not, “We’re looking forward to your report,” but “I’m looking forward to your report.” With my skill and talent. He’s looking forward to hearing from me about what’s happening here....

Awed and walking a little on air, Jake decided to forgo dinner and finish that follow-up report right away.

Cardassian Profile: The Needs of the Few

Jake Sisko
Federation News Service

PA’REM’TIR CITY, CARDASSIA PRIME — There is a saying in the Federation that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one. Despite this axiom, the Federation prides itself on ensuring that in every possible case, the needs of the few are met just as surely as are the needs of the many.

On Cardassia, now, it is simply not possible. Here, the needs of the many are overwhelming, and the resources aren’t available — or, if they are available, they rest in the control of those who may put their own needs and desires before those of their people.

In Cardassia City and the other cities where Federation relief teams are operating, every effort is being made to ensure that as many people as possible are reached. In the outer areas, those without voices or status are often overlooked, or are forced to comply with the burdensome rules of bureaucracies before they receive so much as a cup of water or a medical scan to determine their health.

The most overlooked are the Cardassian children, the orphans, who, if they are assisted at all, are being shunted into situations more convenient for the rules than for their own healing and health....

Bashir ran into Ptacek in the clinic that next morning, on his way to the lab.

“Hello, Ptacek. Is everything under control here?”

“As much as it can be, considering we’ve got thirteen more cases of the bad one this morning,” she informed him pessimistically. “And more suspected cases being checked in the camp.”

Bashir took a deep breath. “How about our staff? How are they holding out?”

Her expression turned more grim, if that was possible. “Parmak is confirmed. He has the plague. I’ve pulled him off rounds and put him in isolation, and I’m running scans on all his patients. Three of our Cardassian nurses didn’t show up this morning. We haven’t been able to reach them to find out if they’re ill or too scared to show up. And we’re still not absolutely certain how it’s contracted or passed along.” She blew a soft whisper of a breath. “On the plus side, none of our non-Cardassian staff have shown any symptoms. It appears to be confined to Cardassians.”

He shook his head. “There’s no way around it, is there? We’ve got an epidemic on our hands.”

“We do,” she agreed. “And with a shortage of staff likely to become an urgent problem in the next few days, I think we should ask the relief vessels if more of the crew are willing to come to the surface and assist in the medical stations.”

“I’ll contact Captain Westfall. We’ll send a request to Starfleet for more personnel, too. And we’ve got to come up with something better to call it than ‘the bad plague’,” he observed. “For psychological reasons if nothing else, to give us some feeling of control over this thing.”

The Andorian tapped at her lower lip for a second. “Julian, can we talk?”

“Just for a moment, certainly. What is it?” He assumed from her hesitation and the jerky way her antennae were shifting around, that she wanted to discuss something non-medical and probably personal.

She fell into step with him.

“I’ve been reading Jake’s stories about those children. They’re really orphans?”

“That’s what they told Jake,” he responded gravely.

“But they won’t register because the local relief team would split them up?”

“That’s correct.”

“That’s the way the Cardassians handle orphans?”

“Their government has no idea how to handle orphans, I’m afraid. That’s why surviving families are being separated the way they are, handled differently all over the planet, sometimes differently from one day to the next. They don’t know how to deal with the current situation and every province or town is bungling through its decisions on its own.”

“Somehow I assumed Ibis and Kehin were anomalies. I wish I’d known sooner.... They really have no set procedures or laws? No facilities or emergency plans?” Ptacek was appalled.

Bashir shook his head. “No. It’s just ... never been part of Cardassian culture. They’ve had some facilities for orphaned children, little more than school and labor training camps, from what I’ve been given to understand. But for the most part, a child without family of some kind has no status, and no place on Cardassia. They often were left on their own, or were automatically relegated to servant status in any household that would take them in and feed them. On Cardassia, it has traditionally not been a good thing for parents to die before their children were grown,” he finished with understated distaste.

“That’s barbaric!”

“And adoption, well, it’s practically unheard of. Families would take in children of their deceased relatives, of course, as part of their family obligation, but that’s about as far as it went.”

Ptacek hadn’t gotten past her outrage. “That explains why those Ferengi beasts were able to get by with kidnaping children without anyone caring, until we became involved.”

Bashir somberly agreed. “Yes. They were taking what would have historically been considered valueless members of their society. Nobody deigned to notice.” He paused. “In my experience, concern for orphans on Cardassia generally came as part of a political package of some other kind. It was only under the shock of the Dominion attack, I think, along with the Ferengi stealing their cultural past as well as the children, and the fact that we stepped in, that made it matter.” Another moment of thought. “That, I suppose, and the fear for many people that undiscovered surviving children of their own families could be taken. That would have been a greater personal humiliation, to learn that they’d allowed a niece or nephew or grandchild to be kidnaped and sold into slavery.”

Ptacek shuddered. “So the orphans on this world will likely wind up as ... laborers and servants in the homes of the survivors. They didn’t need the Ferengi — the Cardassians enslave their own children!”

He couldn’t dispute it; he’d been trying not to reach that conclusion himself almost since the day he arrived. “I suspect the current situation will change a few things, but it’s hard to say how much, or how soon. And in the meantime,” he finished with determination, “we’ve got to find an answer to this plague.”

“Yes ... yes, that’s our priority. I’ll be in the ward.” The Andorian set her teeth grimly and went her way.

The relief station was already bustling by the time Jake got up. Grabbing a raktajino, he went in search of Bashir. He found the doctor with Kato at the biomed lab, talking so intently together that they didn’t notice him enter.

“Morning, Julian, Aya.” He sipped from the mug. “Sorry about dinner last night, Julian, I was working on another story and lost track of time....”

“Good morning, Jake,” Aya murmured back, smiling briefly, but obviously preoccupied.

Dr. Bashir wore a disturbed expression, and didn’t even seem to have noticed the apology. “Jake, do you know if anybody else in the family or in the area was showing the same symptoms as this little girl?”

Now worried, Jake replied, “Neither of her brothers were — I don’t know about anybody else living in the area....” He thought for a moment about the people he’d seen at the makeshift hospital, then shook his head. “I don’t know what illnesses are common in the area. There were other people in the hospital with coughs and such, but I couldn’t say if it was the same.”

Julian pursed his lips somberly. “I see.” He looked at the young woman again. “I think we need to investigate this.”

“Yes. These scans don’t have enough information for a conclusion.”

“Jake, I’d like to see Jeila personally. Can you bring her here?”

“I doubt she’d come,” Jake admitted. “I offered to bring them here when I was at the house. Herem refused, said he wasn’t leaving the farm.”

Bashir and Kato exchanged glances, then nodded at the same moment.

“That might be for the better,” the doctor replied quietly. “We can analyze the environment there for toxins, bacteria, viruses, what-have-you, and evaluate her condition before reaching a conclusion.”

“I’ll requisition the necessary equipment,” she said efficiently.

“Good. I’ll let Tejral know we’re going. I think this warrants the energy expenditure, though we won’t be able to stay long. Jake, we’re transporting in ten minutes. Be ready.”

He was surprised. “For Pa’rem’tir City?”

“Yes.”

Jake glanced at Aya’s retreating form. “You must think this is important. Do you have some idea what’s wrong with Jeila? Or how to treat it?”

“No, I’m afraid we don’t know what’s wrong with her, and we don’t know how to treat it, at this point. And we won’t, until we know more about it.” Bashir sighed. “But if this is the beginning of another disease, I’d like to catch it before it becomes the kind of epidemic we’re dealing with here.”