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The Elim and Elmo Show

By Cardie-ologist

"Scholars, face front." At this command from Third Form Lector Makal Lenor, the twenty-five boys put down their PADDs and stared expectantly at their teacher. Rumors had been rife throughout every barracks of the Central Command Preparatory Academy that the participants in the school's annual Kabar'net Exhibition were to be announced today. (And indeed the comm-tapping and cryptography instructors would have been mightily displeased if the boys had not anticipated the release of the news.)

The Kabar'net was a ritual performance before the assembled Academy faculty, student body, and proud parents. It had five acts, each representing one of the five grade levels at the Academy and one of the five components of its curriculum. First Form, the fourteen-year olds, demonstrated weaponry skills, Second Form interrogation, Third Form rhetoric, and Fourth Form mathematics. Fifth Form, retribution, always provided the grand finale by restaging the trial of some infamous Cardassian criminal of yore.

"As you know, scholars, verbal facility, both written and oral is a prized heritage of every Cardassian. While other races have wasted their time on such fripperies as music, painting, sculpture, and sports, we have perfected the art of putting words together for maximum effect. Our literature is the envy of the galaxy, our politicians can persuade the people to unimaginable sacrifice by virtue of their words alone. Where would our interrogators, our diplomats, our, um, information specialists be without this elegant rhetorical tradition to draw from?

On Cardassia . ."

"the word is the foundation, the sword the roof." Yes, they'd heard that a thousand times before. A few boys stirred restlessly. Come on lenner-penner, no one's used swords on Cardassia in five hundred years--just tell us who it's going to be.

"As you know," Lenor continued, "it is my honor to give rhetoric instruction to the Form that is called upon to exhibit its rhetorical skills during Kabar'net. This year's exhibition calls for two scholars to participate. They have been selected by a committee of Guls from the faculty at Central Command War College after an exhaustive review of their formal presentations and written work for this class, their overall academic records in rhetoric, their level 6 personality scans, their verbal facility indexes, and the transcripts from their barracks audio monitoring recorders. I am pleased to announce that the two boys who will represent our class are Elmor Dukat--

That figured, of course. Dukat had also represented the class as a First-Former and had just missed qualifying for the interrogation team the year before. Tall, handsome, and physically powerful, he was also well known for his withering verbal put-downs of any boy who appeared to challenge his rightful position as head scholar. His team had triumphed in all its intramural debates, and he was sure to qualify for the varsity debate squad next year. He was odds-on favorite to take first place in the political oratory trials coming up in two weeks. As if that weren't enough, his father, Palmor Dukat, was a powerful Gul who had been decorated for heroism in a number of border skirmishes with the Klingons. Most of the Third Form boys admired Dukat immensely, although a few nursed resentments compounded of one part envy and two parts disdain for his overpowering ego.

"--and Elim Garak." An audible gasp traversed the room. Elim Garak had only this year transferred to Central Command Academy from a civilian school on Cardassia Tertia. He was an orphan, although Rumor Central claimed that he had "connections" somewhere. A slight boy who had skipped directly from First to Third Form, he had not even tried out for debate or oratory. His primary rhetorical skills seemed to be in spinning tall tales and in occasional straight-faced tongue-in-cheek responses to the Lector that left the others struggling to suppress laughter. And then there were his infamous practical jokes, that always fell the hardest on anyone who believed the newcomer to be a ripe target for bullying.

The gasps were stilled by two simultaneous sharp sounds, the Lector striking the podium with his fist and a non-standard issue PADD clattering to the floor from the grasp of the astonished, just-named Elim Garak.

"Mr. Garak, despite the high honor you have just received," said Lenor sternly, "I will require an explanation of why you are reading something other than the assigned material."

Any momentary loss of composure Garak had suffered could no longer be discerned. "I apologize, Lector, but I had completed the assigned reading and did not want to appear idle. This is a most intriguing collection of writings by an ancient human named Os-Car Wildee. He was famed for his wit, and wit can be an invaluable rhetorical tool."

"Indeed," Lenor agreed, "but I'm sure that Cardassian sources can provide all the necessary instruction."

"Really?" the boy replied, his face all innocence. "I hadn't heard that our classics were renowned for their comic genius."

"Then you clearly have much more to learn; I'll take the PADD." Lenor lamented that he had never learned to do intimidation in the way that a Lectorship demanded, and though Garak obeyed he hardly looked chastened. Lenor tried to sound stern. "You'd better devote your spare time to preparing for the Kabar'net from now on. You and Mr. Dukat should go immediately to pick up your scripts from the Commandant's office; you are excused from the rest of your classes for the next three days. You should meet in the arena to rehearse at the third hour on Glinnday." Lenor's tone then lightened, "Congratulations to both of you, and trip on your tongues for all of us."

***

The last of the Third Formers had run off to the replimat at the sound of the sixth hour tone when Dukat re-entered and strode forcefully to within ten centimeters of the Lector's nose.

"There has to have been some mistake!" he protested. "I can't perform with that clown. He might win a comparative literature prize, but he's no orator."

"The selection criteria are based entirely on empirical evidence, matching students' demonstrated capabilities to the specific demands of the material. And I know for a fact that his verbal facility index is the highest we've ever seen at Central Command, a 47.6--even better than yours Elmor."

As Dukat made a mental note to eliminate mention of his vaunted 45.3 VFI from future conversations with those he wished to impress, the Lector continued, "I think you may be pleasantly surprised by Elim's talents."

"But he's nobody--his lineage is a joke," Elmor protested. "He's told everyone that his father was killed in the initial invasion of Bajor and that his mother was the daughter of a Detepa council member whose home was blown up by a political enemy while she was visiting. I heard from Makot, however, that he told the boys at his last school, where Makot's brother goes, that his parents died last year in a transport crash and that his grandfather was the great novelist Preloc. None of his stories are true. Everyone knows that what he really is a --- g'reakh."

"Mr. Dukat! Watch your language. Whatever the circumstances of Mr. Garak's birth"--here Lenor averted his eyes discreetly--"some very powerful people take an interest in him. You do not want to gain their attention."

"Well, my father is--

"No match for Mr. Garak's friends, I assure you," Lenor cautioned.

Finally impressed, Elmor still could not give up his indignation. "But he's a buffoon, Lector. We'll be laughed off the stage!"

"I wouldn't worry about that. This year's rhetoric performance is called 'Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard.'"

***

Elim walked warily into the arena. He and Elmor Dukat had barely exchanged ten words in the months he had been at the Academy, but among the very small group of his friends in Elim's barracks, his impersonations of Dukat, always ending with the refrain "Can I help it if I'm so damned charming?" were a celebrated crowd-pleaser. He hoped that his fame had not spread to Dukat's barracks.

Neither boy was feeling very upbeat. The script provided scope neither for Elmor's skills at bombastic demagoguery nor Elim's gift for spontaneously improvised repartee. Instead, verbal dexterity in performing a series of classic Cardassian kanar-house comedy routines was the goal. The assigned roles alternated the function of comic and straight man between the two boys in fairly equal proportions. After each set, a measurement of the laughter generated by each performer was to be tallied. The performer who elicited less hilarity would then sit on a shock cushion for one minute before the pair moved on to the next routine.

Dukat was already sitting in the front row, pondering his script. "This promises to be a painful little exercise," he observed as Garak entered.

"Have you ever heard of a Kabar'net performance that wasn't painful?" Garak responded.

"True enough. Still perhaps you should try to beg off, being new to the Academy and a youngster."

"I daresay I can take anything you can."

"We'll see Mr. G'reakh, we'll see."

It was hardly the first time Elim had heard that joke made of his surname. "My name is Garak," he stated evenly.

"No, you've been mispronouncing it," Elmor countered. "G'reakh suits you much better. I'm sure if you asked most people, they'd agree."

Like my own father, Elim said ruefully to himself, remembering the day that he had overheard Enabran Tain laughing over the pun at his seventh birthday party.

"Perhaps," he said aloud. "We'd better start rehearsing."

***

Cardassian humor depending as it did on insult and aggression, the boys soon realized that they made quite a team. Tired jokes that had outlived their laughs in their grandparents' day suddenly sounded so funny that Elim and Elmor could barely keep from breaking up. When Garak had pointed out the comical coincidence of consonants in their given names, they had decided to preface each line in the venerable--and ribald--"Klingon pain stick" patter number with "Did you know, Elim?" or "I did know, Elmor." By the time they reached the famous punchline, "To a Cardassian, a Klingon pain stick is just a novel way to say I love you," they could no longer contain their laughter. Both collapsed helplessly on opposite sides of the stage.

"I think we definitely have the timing right," Garak gasped out. "Now we need to work on the choreography."

"The what?" Dukat's smile faded.

"The movement, the gestures; comedy is a lot more than just saying words."

"When did you become such an expert on comedy?" Dukat felt a suspicion growing.

Garak caught the inference. "Well, I had heard something to the effect that comedy might figure in the Kabar'net this year. And it never hurts to be prepared."

"Those scripts are hand-carried to all the Academies by Obsidian Order couriers in triple-encoded security pouches. How could you have heard what was in them?!!"

"I can't be responsible for where people get their information. It's just something I heard, and it turned out to be correct. Anyway let's get back to the choreography. On old Earth they had a tradition called vaudeville, and they used to punch up their comedy. Sometimes they included a dance. This one's called 'the old soft shoe'" Garak demonstrated the steps, ending with a flourish in which he tossed the piece of conduit pipe they'd been using in the pain stick skit into the air and deftly caught it behind his back.

Dukat looked absolutely horrified. "We will not be dancing, G'reakh." The younger boy started to protest, then thought better of it. "You know, the one thing that would 'punch up' our act is to have a more convincing KPS," mused the elder.

"Oh, don't worry," said Garak "I can mock it up nicely to look like the real thing."

"It would cause quite a sensation if we actually had the real thing," Dukat offered slyly.

"And where do you propose that we get one?"

"As a matter of fact, I have one in my room." Garak gaped, as Dukat continued, "My father confiscated several during his adventures in the Klingon skirmishes. He presented this one to me when I qualified for entrance to the Academy."

"Is it charged?"

"Of course, but don't worry. Father put on a password-protected safety lock, and only he knows the access code." Dukat saw skepticism in the younger boy's face, "You have obviously misjudged our family's character if you think any of us would actually use such a device outside an interrogation chamber."

It's your character I'm worried about, and I think I've judged it fairly well, Garak mused. Aloud he said, "Well, given the familiarity of the KPS routine, a live prop will certainly help--if you're sure we can't add any dance steps?"

"I am definitely sure," Dukat growled. "But you're right, the material they've saddled us with is quite unpromising. By all my ancestors! they've even included the one about the vole who walks into the bar and orders a glass of kanar."

"On Vulcan it's a sehlat, on Earth a kangaroo, on Bajor--"

"What are you babbling about now?"

"The vole-in-the-bar story is a variant on one of the most prevalent jokes in the galaxy. Each culture simply substitutes its own unlikely animal tippler." Secure in his expertise, Garak was unconsciously imitating Lector Lenor.

"I cannot imagine how you come up with this stuff," Dukat snorted dismissively.

"One of my schools was located only three light years from a Federation outpost. I hacked into their low-level computer systems and downloaded the entire cultural database. We only meet other species soldier to soldier, but there's so much more. It's fascinating to discover what else they're up to. The varieties of merchandising for instance, creating new products, planning optimum vending environments, increasing demand. We Cardassians are woefully undeveloped as a commercial power."

"I should hope so! You sound like a grasping Ferengi, G'reakh."

"The Ferengi have vulgarized the practice, it's true," Garak responded urgently. "Yet the Vulcans, with their ascetic devotion to logic, have also been a great race of traders, and those above-it-all Earthlings could have outsold the Ferengi any day of the week if they hadn't gone so noble when they developed warp technology. In the past their sales promotions--it was called 'advertising'-- were virtual art objects. I have a file of 5,716 Earth 'ads,' dating back to their 19th century--400 years ago.

"And the literature of the Federation worlds, such variety and originality. Why, they produce versions of Enigma Novels in which most of the suspects aren't guilty, and the authorities sometimes arrest innocent people" Garak caught himself just in time "--quite scandalous of course." Why oh why had he been so foolish? To run on about his private enthusiasms to this pompous bully.

"The Lector is right; you should stick to Cardassian authors." Dukat's tone was not as mocking as Garak had expected.

"I've already read every Cardassian novel, poem, treatise, and play in the Academy database. Twice." Dukat had furrowed his forehead ridges, but said nothing. "I spend most of my free time reading, " Garak hurried on to fill the silence.

"You should join some of the intramural teams, get involved in traditional Cardassian group activities," Dukat said, not unkindly. "When you spend too much time alone, you come up with these unhealthy interests of yours."

"I .. um .. I'm not ... I don't do well in group situations."

It was the first time Elmor had ever heard Elim at a loss for words. He probably means that on division day, all the team leaders try to trade him away. Yet something stopped the older boy from expressing the insult out loud.

Garak noted the opportunity his classmate had let slide and felt his desperation growing. He was used to contempt from boys like Dukat, but he was damned if he'd suffer their pity.

"Well, we have certainly strayed from the task at hand," he purred at last. "Let's see: no dancing, real props. Ah, what about the costumes?"

"Costumes?" growled Dukat. "We'll wear our uniforms, of course."

"Our uniforms?" Garak returned archly. "But they are so drab--all that black. It does nothing for gray skin tones. If you want to see suitable Cardassian elegance in fashion, you need to go back to the days of the First Republic--clean lines, natural fabrics, muted lavenders and greens, attractive scarves draped flatteringly on the neck-bones."

"The First Republic is celebrated for its poetry, not its fashion sense." Dukat seethed at being mocked by this peculiar misfit.

"'Reputation and truth are not always one.'" Garak quoted the famous serialist line with a flourish. "All right. If you don't want to look to our illustrious past for inspiration, we could always try something more exotic: the top hat, white tie and tails from Earth, the intricate weavings of the Tholian rehemeters, the three-foot head-dress of the Klingon opera divas--"

"By all the rooms of the House of Dukat!" Elmor exploded, "You're not just g'reakh, you're uh'nat!"

It was the worst slur any Cardassian could hurl at another, in a culture where siring the next generation and nurturing it within the laws of joining meant everything. Garak swallowed hard. He'd endured plenty of taunts in his time, but no one had ever called him THAT, not within his hearing at least. Yet when he spoke his tone was the same one of urbane mockery: "My dear Dukat, surely, were I uh'nat, I couldn't help but be attracted to a handsome specimen such as yourself. And since I am in no way attracted to you, I am clearly not uh'nat." He flashed his most disarming smile.

Dukat crossed the space between them in seconds. "No one talks to me like that--no one," he screamed as he shoved Garak roughly to the floor.

Garak's first impulse was to jump up, fists flying. He instantly controlled it, however. **Don't be a fool, Elim. You're no match for him in a brawl. There will be other times and other means to have your revenge.** He scrambled to a sitting position, folding his hands over his knees. "Look, Elmor," he risked using the given name, "you don't like me. I don't like you. But the Kabar'net is important, not just to us but to the Lector and the whole Third Form. Let's just stick to giving a superior performance and afterwards we'll stay out of each other's way."

Despite his appearance of having a colossal lack of self-awareness, Elmor Dukat was no fool. He had known for years that the violent personal antipathies he was prone to, and the attacks of temper they provoked, could derail what otherwise promised to be a glorious military career. The g'reakh was right; performing in the Kabar'net was a priceless opportunity not to be squandered. He extended his hand to help his co-star up. "All right, G'rea-- uh, Elim. Let's do another run-through." He attempted to sound conciliatory, "Perhaps the spirit of your ancient human Wildee will transform these tired old jokes into wit."

"My dear Elmor, we hardly need Mr. Wildee's intervention. Today's conversation has convinced me that you and I could improvise an hilarious routine on the spot."

Dukat burst forth in genuine laughter. "You're damned right we could Elim." And he gave the younger boy a friendly slap on the back before he could remind himself how thoroughly he detested the little sissy bastard.

***

Watching from the wings, Lector Tamak Relat, the Second Form mathematics teacher in charge of the Academy's Kabar'net this year, was pleased. Things were going swimmingly. The First Form laser rifle squad had succeeded in firing bursts at three second intervals into a line of acrobatic classmates and had caused injury on only three occasions during the entire quarter hour demonstration. The audience had appreciatively applauded the ingenuity of the three Second Form interrogators who got their "prisoners" to cry mercy and were on their feet to praise the bravery and endurance of the fourth prisoner, who held out until the tone sounded. And now Elim and Elmor had the crowd laughing so hard it could barely breathe. Elim was clearly the more talented one. His gestures and facial expressions seemed always to gain him greater approbation than his partner, even when the other boy was delivering the punchlines. Elmor wouldn't want to sit down for several days when this was over. And when Elim did earn the cushion, he sprang up with such aplomb that several audience members broke out in spontaneous applause. Yes, as Relat leaned back against the stage right wall, he could count the evening a success.

***

It was time for KPS, the final routine. Garak and Dukat stood side by side, their backs to the house, awaiting the music cue. Without turning his head, Dukat whispered, "Just what do you think you've been doing out there? The idea is for us to share the laughs--and the punishment."

"It's called upstaging," Garak whispered back. "You're so stiff it's impossible for an actor of my talents to avoid getting your laughs. I am sorry about the workout your ass is getting."

"I just bet you are," Dukat shot back as the music began.

They stepped forward into the spotlight. "Did you know G'reakh about all the wonderful uses a Klingon has for his pain stick?" Dukat began, tossing the KPS to Garak, as they had rehearsed. Relat was suddenly bolt upright and tense--what were they saying? Murmurs could be heard from the audience as they asked themselves the same thing. Garak, however, was unfazed. These bullies were so predictable. "I did know, El-Mo, that their young use them for pacifiers." Garak tossed the stick back to Dukat with a little bow.

More murmurs went through the onlookers. G'reakh was an insult, but El-Mo wasn't even a word or a name in Cardassian. It must be part of the act, leading up to some eventual punchline. Relat had arrived at the same conclusion and allowed his body to relax. Dukat had counted on drawing more blood, but he wasn't finished. He'd just wait a little longer to deliver the coup de grace.

For several more exchanges both boys followed the script, except for using G'reakh and El-Mo as sobriquets in place of the planned Elim and Elmor. Then they arrived at the line that was supposed to read "Do you know that when a Klingon sucks on his pain stick he calls it Daddy?" Dukat, however, substituted "Do you know, G'reakh, that when your Daddy kisses a pain stick, he calls it Sonny?" Garak felt his color rise; he had miscalculated Dukat's recklessness. The little surprise he had planned for their curtain call would clearly not suffice to compensate him for this degree of humiliation. Still his timing was off only for a few seconds as he decided to ignore the slight and deliver his line as written: "Yes, El-Mo, and I do know that when a Klingon female mounts a pain stick, she says, 'Darling, I've missed you.'"

Dukat moved in for the kill: "Did you know, G'reakh, that after your Mommy mounted your Daddy's stick, he ran double-time away from the house of joining?" He slammed the stick to the floor at Garak's feet.

Relat rushed to the backstage comm station to ask the Commandant what he should do. The audience collectively held its breath. Everyone now realized that this was no act. Rhetoric had given way to interrogation. And the essential cruelty bred into the Cardassian character was inexorably turning their sympathy away from the charming young Elim and toward his tormentor.

Garak's mind was racing, fighting down the shame. At least retrieving the prop gave him some time. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fathers of a Second and a Fifth Former move to the back of the hall to speak into their communicators. Doubtless Obsidian Order flunkies who, through a complex and untraceable network of intermediaries, were conveying the events of the evening to Tain. By morning word would come down through that same network to have Garak transferred to still another school. Well, he'd give them plenty to report.

"I did know El-Mo," he replied with deadly calm "that Daddy wasn't running away from Mommy, he was pursuing your Daddy, who had forgotten the way to Bajor." Once more he tossed the stick back lightly to his partner.

Elmor and Palmor Dukat went pale at precisely the same instant. How could this youngster know of the heated top secret briefings at Central Command in which Gul Dukat had insisted that repeatedly raiding Bajor for its resources was well and good, but that an extended occupation would be far more costly than beneficial? Palmor had of course lost the argument, and nearly lost his rank.

Elmor appeared paralyzed; the stick fell to the floor without his even raising a hand to catch it. Garak neatly launched it into the air with his foot and caught it behind his back. A few scattered giggles came up from the audience.

"And I also know, El-Mo, that the House of Dukat has had some strange contributors to its lineage." Garak produced from his pocket a hand-held holo-generator and projected an image downstage in the space between Dukat and himself. It showed a large, vaguely humanoid creature with shaggy red fur and bulbous features, apparently some kind of doll. Over its head were a series of letters and numbers in Federation Standard script; Garak had helpfully translated them into Cardassian in a crawl at the bottom of the image: Tickle Me Elmo, 1253 groats.

Garak next launched into a few steps of "the old soft shoe," flicked off the hologram, and with pain stick outstretched like the canes that ancient Earth dancers used, queried his partner, "Shall I tickle you, El-Mo?" Then he poked Dukat in a particularly vulnerable spot between his ribs.

Lots of things happened at once. Dukat furiously snatched the pain stick out of Garak's hands. Most of the boys were lost in uncontrollable hysterics, and the faculty were working to quiet them, except for Lector Lenor, who had fainted.. Palmor Dukat rose stiffly from his seat and headed for the exit, wondering just how many favors he would have to call in to rescue his and his son's futures from this evening's ruins. The Obsidian Order men were grinning broadly. The Commandant went to a control panel on the wall at the end of the first row and brought down the curtain.

Enjoying the pandemonium, Garak too late saw Dukat's fingers flying across the safety lock keypad. The bigger boy struck him again and again with the instrument at its highest setting and had him pinned to the ground with the point against his throat before Relat mustered the five-man mathematics team waiting in the wings stage left to pull Elmor away from his victim. Relat himself put his arms around Garak, trying to soothe him and check the severity of his injuries. Elim angrily pushed the Lector aside: "Don't touch me, I'm not hurt." He was furious with himself for crying out in pain during the assault. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he looked the struggling Dukat squarely in the eye and said sweetly, "To a Cardassian a Klingon pain stick is just a novel way to say I love you."

It was all the five older boys could do to contain Dukat within their collective grasp. As they pulled him offstage at Relat's command he hissed over his shoulder to Garak, "Some day I will kill you, uh'nat." "I wouldn't count on it," Garak shouted into the wings as he weakly sank back to the floor.

He was dimly aware that Relat was in front of the curtain, trying to convince the crowd that the conflict they had just witnessed had been part of the show and inviting them to go out to the lobby for intermission, where the special Kabar'net vintage wine and larish pie with yamok sauce were being served. Realizing that he was alone, Garak, for the first time in fifteen years of knowing that he was everything his people spat upon, began to sob violently without holding anything back.

The tears proved a much-needed release. His body, which had been clenched like a giant fist, relaxed; his mind cleared. He had an amazing revelation. No matter how grimly precarious his life had been up to now, no matter how grimly precarious it promised always to be, he was a survivor. He actually laughed aloud. "No, I would definitely not count on that . . . El-Mo!"