Hauling people out of their rightful past has always been a ST staple. This is a story about a visit from Garak's historical alter ego - who's always seemed to me to have had something of a bad press - and whose own story reflects Garak's to a remarkable degree. Readers should note, however, that the political sentiments expressed in this story are definitely not those of the author!

Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that Paramount has exclusive rights to the Star Trek universe, and that all characters are the property of Paramount television (with the exception of the people in the holosuite program, and Garak's guest, who as a historical personage is presumably the property of no-one but himself). (9/3/97)

Thou shalt by sharp experience be aware

How salt the bread of strangers is,

how hard

The up and down of someone else's stair...

Well it shall be for thee to have preferred

Making a party of thyself alone.

Paradise XVII 58 -69.

There are remarkably few places where one can truly be on one's own. Looking back, I seem to have spent a sizeable part of my youth in finding them; it became almost a hobby. It seems ironic, now that isolation is the only thing I have in abundance. Everything else - influence, friendship, respect - has been stripped away and now, up here in my starlight eyrie, I have at last the solitude I used to crave. The humans, it seems, have a saying to the effect that if the gods wish to destroy you, they give you what you ask for. From a species not given to cynicism, I find this remarkably apt. One can, of course, always purchase one's friends. I'm not referring to the sort of people who hang around the infinite variety of bars which add so much colour to the monochrome landscape of this station; anyone will talk to you for the price of a drink. With the possible exception of the Romulans, of course. Or the Bajorans, naturally. And even some of my long term customers can be a little reticent once they've left the privacy of my tailor's shop. In fact, on my darker days, it sometimes seems to me that our good doctor is practically the only person who doesn't appear nervous or revolted at the prospect of socialising with me in public - but I digress. When I remarked that friends are easily bought, I was referring to the Holodeck.

It's always seemed an odd form of diversion to me. I used to enjoy the theatre, but I can't say that I ever felt moved to leave my seat and join the cast. When one acts for a profession, as we in the intelligence services are obliged to do so much of the time, it makes a pleasant change to watch other people putting in the effort. The participation in some holographically generated world lacks the spontaneity of concourse with real people; there's little savour in predictability. And although the images may look real enough, they don't have the sensory texture of a living being. They don't smell of anything, and - if I may lapse into morbidity for a moment - they feel uncannily similar to dead flesh. As for more intimate relationships with these simulacra, well, I've never found necrophilia a particularly appetising prospect.

The result of all these prejudices is that I don't go into the holosuites very often. Other people seem less discerning, or perhaps are even more desperate than I. One sees individuals vanishing practically for weeks into their favourite scenario and emerging wan-faced and hollow eyed only for the occasional meal. Perhaps that's something of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. I've only ever really enjoyed myself when I was in a program with someone else; you get some interesting behaviour once people are removed from their familiar context.

However, I did find one particular program a little diverting. I took part in the program by a convoluted route. I believe that the elegant Lieutenant Dax originally hired it, since she has something of a leaning towards the historical (natural, I suppose, since she remembers more of history than the rest of us). She got it at a discount rate, it seems; it was one of those cut price melodramas in which people who never actually met are crammed into the same setting and left to get on with it. Anyway, her duty period was re-arranged, or something, and so she passed the booking on to Julian Bashir. Since it apparently offered relatively few opportunities for saving worlds, he was less than keen.

. 'You go along,' he urged me. 'It's your sort of thing.'

'*Which* period is it?' I asked again. He had told me already, but I'm lamentably ill versed in human history.

'Sixteenth century.'

'Ah, a Shakespearean romance, perhaps?' I hazarded.

. 'No, Shakespeare's later. This,' he said with a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire promenade 'is Renaissance Italy. You'll love it. Political intrigue, scandal, everyone trying to assassinate everybody else.' '

A sort of home from home?'

'Well...I thought it might appeal to you...' At least he had the grace to blush.

'It's kind of you to think of me,' I told him. 'But are you sure you won't join me?'

'No, I really should finish off this last batch of samples. And besides,' he added, avoiding my gaze 'Our last outing, that secret agent thing, was a bit - a little too dramatic, actually.'

Well, he had nearly blown my head off, I recollected, but I didn't hold it against him. I like surprises.

'My dear doctor,' I said, not without irony, 'You should know by now that I can forgive you anything.' I ventured a smile that started out as paternal and ended, I hoped, as inviting, but he didn't seem to notice. I might just as well have fluttered my eyelashes at Morn; a patron of such permanence that even Quark's less inebriated clients occasionally mistook him for part of the furniture. I picked up the program clip and made a graceful exit, leaving the object of my unrequited affections staring moodily at the floor.

I will admit, I enjoyed that program. I've never been to Earth, and though, as I've said, the program lacked a certain historical accuracy, the scenario stirred in me a quite unexpected nostalgia. The palace of the de Medicis was magnificently de trop; much more appalling in its opulence than anything the twentieth century had to offer. No wonder the Federation had finally settled for blandness, after a thousand years of such indescribable vulgarity. The atmosphere of the court was as astringently refreshing as a bath of vitriol. Catherine de Medici herself (in her own time, the Queen of France) was the possessor of a remarkable décolletage and a glacial green gaze; I've seen kinder eyes in the face of a Biranian bonecat, prior to pouncing. I took to her immediately. Her successor, Guilano, had the sort of sleek good looks and languid manner that one always associates with an appetite for private depravity. I liked him, too. The rest of the court was composed of the usual assortment of sycophants, cynics, whores and servants trying to remain invisible and thus last another day. It reminded me of Romulus, without the prevailing asceticism.

My principal interactions were with the de Medici family, Catherine and Guilano; Piero Soderini, the brief ruler of Florence in between Medicis, and the visiting Borgia family: another set of charmers. Amusing though the protagonists undoubtedly were, my attention was caught by a subsidiary character in the drama. He seemed to have no real part in any of the plots, but hung around the edges of the court. He was a slight, dark man, and he wore an expression of frustrated misery. I recognised the look at once; I've seen it in the mirror often enough. I tried to talk to him as the drama unfolded, but whenever I made to do so, either he vanished or I became distracted by the events around me. It was a little irritating.

Catherine let it be known that my presence at court, in the guise of the visiting Genoese ambassador, might be celebrated in more personal ways, removed from the tiresome pomp and show. She had a tendency to narrow her icy eyes and take deep, shuddering breaths whenever she looked in my direction. I realise that such gratification is a primary function of the holosuites, but nonetheless, I was here on business. The two hours passed swiftly and entertainingly enough. I contrived to foil one assassination and two minor poisonings, and averted the brutal murder of Catherine herself, immediately prior to her bath.

'I am indebted to you, Signore,' she breathed (the dialogue was dreadful). If it is possible to recline when standing, she did so. She gave a smouldering sigh and her brocade night robe slipped an inch or two.

'How can I ever repay you?' she added. A number of options were immediately apparent.

'Your safety, madam, is reward enough,' I told her, adroitly returning her to a more upright position. It was nearly time to go. I terminated the program and left the holosuite.

The promenade was quiet. Julian had gone. I contemplated looking him up, but thought better of it. Increasingly, these days, I found myself forced to exert conscious control over my demeanour with regard to that young man, and it annoyed me. I don't enjoy falling in love, even when it's reciprocated; it's too much like being assaulted, suddenly and without warning. I returned to my quarters alone, and retrieved the kanaar from the bathroom cabinet before finally falling into an uneasy sleep.

At some point close to midnight, I awoke abruptly, and lay for a bemused moment in the darkness. There was someone in the room with me. I am ashamed to admit that for a minute I thought, and hoped, that it was Bashir. That this should be my initial conclusion, and not that the unknown should be some assassin sent to slay me as I slept, showed me how far I had fallen. How easy it is, after all, to dull the razor's edge.

Lights!' I ordered, blearily. Even when fully illuminated, the room seemed curiously imprecise. The dark, unhappy man from the Medici's court and I stared at one another in stupefaction. I don't mind being haunted by the shades of those who I may have hastened into the darkness, but I really don't see why I should be plagued by some character I've never met outside a computer game. I spoke firmly to him.

'Go back to your program at once!' I commanded, rather as one might send an errant pet to its basket. An inane thing to say, I know, but it was still the middle of the night and the pounding in my head reminded me of the inadvisability of drinking alone.

'What?' my guest said.

'I saw you at the court,' I told him. '

Yes,' he said, wonderingly. 'I saw you, too. What manner of man are you? From what level of Hell?' It was said with a smile.

'I - I come from a long way away. A far country. I'm nothing supernatural.'

He gave a sour little laugh. 'Hell or the court of Florence, what difference is there these days? There's little enough to choose between Guilano or Satan.'

'I see you know him well.' Stepping across the room, he sat down on the end of the bed. The cover remained undisturbed by his weight, I noticed, and he cast no shadow. He said, with bitterness

'I was close to the court, once. Now - you should have let them all die. It would have been a kindness.' It crossed my mind that this was some spurned lover of Guilano's or Catherine's, but I sensed something other.

'What were you to them?' I asked, and received the answer I expected.

'I was Piero Soderini's principal adviser. He sent me to the four corners of the world. To Louis' court, to Rome.' He laughed. ' I had a hand in every intrigue and scheme between Paris and Padua. I was ambitious, in those days.' He leaned towards me and his dark eyes burned. 'I did it for love, you understand, not simply for myself. I believed in the state. I thought that Florence could become great again, that I would be instrumental in its rise. I conversed with the greatest minds of my day; I accompanied Cesare Borgia on campaign. I watched him closely - now there was a strategist! A phenomenon indeed. I knew da Vinci, too; got him one of his principal commissions. He was a good man, you know. Not naive, but a moral man; a humanist. I knew all of them,' he repeated. 'Can you imagine what it was like, to be a part of history; an agent of change?'

'I can imagine.' I studied his downcast face as he sat so improbably at the end of my bed. 'What happened? They threw you out, didn't they?'

He nodded. 'Yes, they cast me out. The Spanish invaded. I warned Piero what was about to happen - I had my sources, after all - but he didn't believe me. When the Spanish swept in, we were entirely unprepared. Piero fled, and left me to face the music. I barely escaped with my life. And then the dust died down and the Medicis came back, and Guilano took control of Florence. In November I was dismissed from my post at the Chancery; in February they arrested me, on charges of conspiracy.' He winced. 'They subjected me to the persuasion of the strappado - I'd prefer not to give you a detailed description of what that does to a man. And then they exiled me, to Sant'Andrea, where my family had a house. I used to look out across the muddy fields, the rows of cabbages and beets, all the way to the gilded roofs of the city. They denied me Florence, but more than that, they denied me a voice. I used to go down to the inn every evening, and hold forth to anyone who would listen. The peasants laughed at me. 'There goes old Niccolo, ranting on again,' they'd say. Then I'd go home and do you know what I'd do?'

He was far away now, his gaze fixed on a horizon that I could not see.

'Tell me,' I murmured.

'I would lock the door, put on my best clothes, and then I would address those personages whom I thought would best profit from my counsel. Caesar, Alexander, Aristotle - I could almost see them, through the empty air. And there were others, too, whose names I did not know, but still they came to me: Gramsci, Lenin, Baikan. The only audience left to me were those long dead, or yet to come. I honed my ideas on these chimerae, and then I wrote it all down, in my little book. I based it on Cesare Borgia - oh, I know he was a wicked man, a tyrant born, but states need a strong man to lead them, and brutality is sometimes necessary - ' he broke off, and gave me a sharp look. 'You understand, don't you? You don't think I am wrong?' '

No,' I said, with care. 'I don't think you're wrong. But one must be careful to draw a fine line between firmness and oppression.'

'Yes, that's it exactly. A leader must avoid being hated by his subjects. He should set a commander to undertake the bloody exigencies of government, then have that commander executed when he becomes too greatly detested. Then the leader himself is loved for his mercy.'

'And, above all, the leader must avoid alienating his close advisers, who are liable to turn against him.' I supplied, with perhaps a little bitterness of my own.

He said, as if quoting 'The Prince should restrain himself from inflicting grave injury on anyone in his service whom he has close to him in his affairs of state.'

'Your Piero didn't learn that lesson, did he?'

*Not the only one*, I thought. I remembered Enabran Tain, that last night, casually saying to me 'Well, someone's got to pay, Elim. Who do you think it should be?'

'No, he did not learn. I see you know something of statesmen,' my guest added, wryly. We exchanged a look of sudden complicity. He said

'And now there's you. Who are you, I wonder? Someone from my future or my past, who seeks to benefit from my poor opinion? Some august minister, perhaps, in some distant land?'

'No,' I said. 'Only an exile like yourself, who once had power and now sits at the window and watches an empire pass by without him. Who wanted to serve the state and his master, and who is now reduced to dissembling to those who neither care nor understand.'

'Well,' he said, sighing. 'There'll always be those like you and me, eh? We think we comprehend the realities of power, but we never do, until it's too late. We're a little surprised, aren't we, when it twists around and bites our hand? As it always does.'

'As it must, perhaps.' He smiled. 'Do you know what I see, when I look at myself in the glass?'

'No,' I told him, but nonetheless, I thought I knew.

'I used to see the face of influence, but now it seems to me that I look more like some old travelling conjuror. I've got the same furtive gaze that I've seen a dozen times in the eyes of the carnival showmen, plucking doves out of a shabby sleeve or making beans vanish underneath a cup, just to beguile and cozen a few gullible locals. Politics, popularity, power: all that's no different from the travelling show. It's all cheap magic in the end.'

'Ah,' I said. 'But wasn't it a good illusion while it lasted?'

'While it lasted,' my guest echoed. 'Yes. Yes, it was. What do they say? "Time waits for no-one, goodness is not enough, fortune varies and malice receives no gift that placates her." '

'That would seem to sum it up, yes.'

He reached across and grasped my wrist. His grip was warm and real.

'You must visit me again,' he said.

'I will, if I can.' He seemed to be growing transparent before my eyes; fragile upon the air. '

One last thing,' I said, before he was quite gone. 'Your book. What was it called?' '

Oh, the book. I dedicated it to Guilano. Its title is 'The Prince.' ' he said, a shadow, and then only the stars remained, shining through the place where he had been.

'Niccolo Machiavelli,' the doctor said, rolling the words on his tongue. 'Horrible man, apparently. A scheming, manipulative professional cynic.'

'I see.'

'Fell from grace in - ' he checked the padd ' - 1513. They exiled him. Apparently he wrote 'The Prince' during his exile to worm his way back into Guilano de Medici's favour. It must have worked - he got reinstated, for a brief spell, to work for the Medicis, and soon after that, he died. 'The Prince' was quite a famous work at one time; it refers to it here as 'the Bible of realpolitik.' Thank God the politics of Earth have moved on from such callous attempts at social engineering.'

'Indeed.'

'What's your interest in this, all of a sudden? Did Machiavelli put in an appearence in that holosuite program?'

'Yes, he showed up, briefly. Just caught my attention, I suppose,' I said, dismissively.

For some reason, I did not want to tell him about my midnight visitor. I had no idea what had conjured this long-dead spirit to my bedside, but the mechanics of his visitation seemed oddly irrelevant. I sometimes feel that we are subject to forces that exceed in capacity those that are merely physical, that can accomplish feats held impossible by science. Love is certainly one of them, but so, I believe now, is sympathy: a compulsion which transcends both time and space.

'No particular reason,' I told Bashir.

'Stick to Shakespeare,' the doctor advised, between mouthfuls. 'Inspirational literature, that's the thing...Anyway, look, I've got to rush. Thank you for your company, Garak; an enjoyable lunch, as always.'

I finished my meal slowly, reading with care as the text of 'The Prince' unscrolled down the screen. A lively work, with a thorough understanding of certain universal principles. It was admirable in its brevity and sound in its conclusions. Yet as a theoretical exercise it was limited, no doubt by the restrictions of its time and context. The contemporary political realities called for a revision. The only problem with Machiavelli's little book, I decided, was that it did not go far enough. Thoughtfully, I took the padd back to my quarters. Sitting down at my desk, I looked out for a moment at the turning stars, and then I began to write.

THE END

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