TITLE: Clay AUTHOR: Emptyfox PAIRING: G/B, B/m RATING: NC17 WARNINGS: sex, violence, bad language. SPOILERS: None, apart from the obvious DBIP one. FEEDBACK: Yes, please, it would be very much appreciated. SUMMERY: My late 5th round GBFF challenge response, to thanatos's challenge to have Dr. Bashir transformed into a Cardassian. DISCLAIMER: Not mine, and no profits being made. THANKS: to Elizabeth Helena for the unofficial beta. NOTES: The first person sections are Garak speaking in Cardassian. When he says 'shit' he's not saying s-h-i-t shit, he's saying the Cardassian equivalent to 'shit'. Words spoken in English I have emphasised with /these/, to differentiate from italics, which are _these_. ===== His transformation bears little resemblance to Kira's. That had to be a physical change good enough only to fool Kira herself from the inside. It was barely more advanced than the basic job done on spies sent out to infiltrate Bajoran resistance cells. Bashir, on the other hand, has to infiltrate the Cardassian military; he has to bypass the most sophisticated security. He has been genetically re-engineered to _be_ a Cardassian. Blood tests are a certainty, but there is also the possibility of tissue biopsies, as there is suspicion that the Founders have found a way to hold real blood within their forms. His bone marrow, skin, muscle, organs, have all been altered. Only his brain is left untouched, disguised by a small transmitter. The technology for that comes not from Cardassia, but from the Federation, from a positronic android that had been successfully passing for human. When told of the extent of the procedure he had simply shrugged and said: "nothing I haven't been through before." Once he has recovered fully from the surgery he has the privacy to look at himself properly in the mirror for the first time. He is covered with an intricate pattern of ridges: primary, secondary, tertiary. Then scales, then simply skin; smooth delicate skin is found only in a few places: the face, the palms of the hands, inner thighs . . . He feels so different, hot and cold is experienced differently, pressure and pain seem almost reversed. His neck, his neck is amazing. Primary ridges: erogenous tissue over protective cartilage, covering the major nerves, tendons, veins and arteries running between head and body. He has another primary ridge protecting his spine, then two secondary ridges, like the primaries only smaller, running down at an angle from the point where shoulder joins arm, to taper out at the small of the back just before they would have converged with the spine to form a perfect isosceles triangle. There are two more secondaries on his chest, starting under the collarbone and running down the length of his ribcage, bisecting the point where, as a human, his nipples would be. Two more secondary ridges bracket his hipbones, and then it is a complicated pattern over the rest of his body of tertiary ridges, smaller still and lacking the protective cartilage, and a multitude of scales. The ridges are something of a throwback to Cardassian's aquatic ancestors, like the lateral lines of fish, to sense the changes in water currents, to enable navigation and hunting in murky water. He has no nipples, or body hair, and too many ribs. But the strangest thing of all has to be his genitalia. His testicles are internal, due to a lower core body temperature, leaving a vast expanse of perineum. The penis itself is smooth, dry, tapered, and exactly the same shade of grey as the rest of his body. It has six evenly spaced lines of scales running down its length. He touches himself, allows himself to become aroused, watching both himself and his reflection. The scales swell into ridges as they fill with blood and he becomes erect, then, as they become fully saturated, they seem to split open, revealing the delicate pink mucus membranes they were protecting. The thick liquid spills over his hand and drips onto the floor. ===== You look amazing, absolutely amazing. How does it feel? Still can't talk yet? I hear the drugs hit you pretty bad. Our new friend tells me you were hallucinating so much you lost all grip on reality. ===== He wakes up and slithers from the biobed to the floor. His eyes cannot focus properly, things are unnaturally, painfully sharp at the centre of his vision, and blurred around the edges. He cannot stand up. He walks on all fours: hips, knees, ankles twisting unnaturally, his spine oscillates like a crocodile's. He reaches the conjunction of floor and wall and begins to climb. When wall meets ceiling he stops to rest. There is movement, someone enters the room. He twists his head one-eighty degrees to look at them. They scream and scream and scream. ===== Oh well, you'll just have to listen to me talk then; I've got a lot to tell you over the next few weeks. It's not a lot of time, to get a cover in place, especially given the fact that we are not just changing who you are, but fundamentally _what_ you are. I can't believe how pretty you are! -- Oh don't look at me like that! In fact don't look at anyone like that, it's completely human and will give you away in an instant. I'm not saying you weren't pretty before; it's just that before you were pretty the way an exotic animal is pretty, now you look like a person. That's more like it! Self-righteous indignation, very Cardassian. I can't censor what I say any more; I have to start being _honest_ about these things. You need to know them, to understand the Cardassian mindset. But they got you just right. Any prettier and your mother would never have let you out of her house, or she would have sold you to a brothel. But you weren't that poor growing up. And don't hold yourself like that, at least not in public. I know right now all you want to do is curl up, or find a nice warm stone to bask on -- that's good, that means you're thinking like a Cardassian, or at least physically _feeling_ like a Cardassian. We are much more closely related to our primate ancestors than humans, not so long out of the trees, or the swamps they grew in. Not that we'll admit it, generally, to ourselves. The instinctive urge to drop down and walk on all fours, even though our spine no longer allows it, is still there. That's why our clothes are the way they are, to hold us up, hold us in place, to keep us restrained and civilised. You'll see it all the time; go to the record-keeping district of any major city on Cardassia at the end of the working day and you'll see them all, held up by their suits alone, day-dreaming of places that no longer exist. ~ Record keeping is a basic fact of everyday life; there are forms to be filled in and filed for every transaction that occurs outside of the family. One hundred and seventy three years ago, to counter-act dangerously high levels of unemployment, the government dismantled the computerised database that had only been in existence for thirty-six years, and replaced it with a paper-based system. ===== Before he can officially begin work at the hospital Bashir has to register down in the record-keeping department. The department takes up the whole sub-sub-basement floor of the largest wing of the hospital. It is poorly air-conditioned and too brightly lit. He has brought with him a thick briefcase full of papers. Faking these was harder than faking his electronic records; it took some expert trickery with the replicator to get the composition of all the materials exactly right. His birth certificate is printed on hand made paper and filled in with hand made ink, both of which the clerk will analyse before contacting a central office which contains hand written records of every batch of paper and ink used in every district at every time. This as well as closely examining the complex border designs and the equally complex signature. He has similar certificates for every year spent in primary and continued education. His medical school certificate is printed on cured animal hide; this will be DNA tested, as they know which animals were used for his graduating year at his university. Other certificates have wax seals, and others metal inlays. He has certificates for every possible interaction; just renting a room in the city took hours of complicated paper work. But there is one single flaw to the system, which they have been able to take advantage of to create Kamota out of thin air. While the make-up of all the certificates and papers is hand-recorded, the names of the people to actually be given those certificates are recorded electronically. Without this loop hole the whole mission would be impossible. After finishing in the sub-sub-basement, Bashir dreads having to request someone's medical records. ===== This, along with some cleaver financial manipulations, solved the economic crisis. It also destroyed what little was left of Cardassia's natural forests; after that, they no longer burnt books, they pulped them. The outcome of this is a monolithic record keeping system, which takes up a huge amount of space and employs more people overall than the military. At the moment efforts are still underway to transfer everything _back_ onto computer. Only the Order has a fully electronic database. The project has been set up in such a way that there is no chance of ever catching up; otherwise the loss of jobs would be a disaster. ~ Your name -- which with your new mouth and throat, once you're over the trauma of the operation, you will now be able to pronounce properly -- is Augala Kamota, your family name, Kamota, is integrated from an earlier aboriginal name, and Augala means 'hard working', or 'obedient'. Gul Lythan should get a kick out of that. ===== He is summoned to share a meal with Gul Lythan. The table is intricately set and the many courses served to them by a young Cardassian man. The food is real, of course, not replicated, and certainly not the vat-grown swill the government hands out to its poorest citizens. Lythan talks, he doesn't hold conversations. His talk is rabid: Bajoran scum, human scum, Cardassian scum. Bashir wants to poke him in the eye with a chopstick, but keeps his eyes respectfully lowered. He feels horribly trapped, as if the whole weight of Cardassia is bearing down on him through this one man. ===== You are a descendant of one of Cardassia's several hundred assimilated tribes, displaced and absorbed during one of Cardassia's many, many cultural purges. Your ancestors lost their land, their culture and their language, but gained their survival. Not everything was lost, only officially destroyed; the language you know as Cardassian is one of only two authorized languages; the other is an Hibitian dialect we use in much the same way /humans/ use /Latin/. We were supposed to be clamping down on that kind of thing in the Obsidian Order, but we never really managed. You mustn't believe all that hype about us knowing what every individual had for breakfast -- propaganda, the lot of it; until we annexed Bajor we didn't have the resources to feed and house our entire population. The propaganda wing of the Order was always the most active. Not that the rest of us did all that badly, just not that well. ===== This is Bashir's first meeting with the Cardassian doctor who is going to perform the transformation on him. Since it is far easier to destroy than it is to build, his work on Kira is of no consequence now. Her name is Taran-Talar Daurant and she defected from the Obsidian Order. She also managed to get thirty-seven members of her extended family out of Cardassian space and into Federation asylum. What Bashir finds even more amazing than this is the fact that he has never heard about it. He used to believe that as a Federation citizen his government never lied to him, never kept things from him. But after Section 31 he no longer believes these things. It took a while to organise this meeting. To begin with they -- Sisko, Bashir, and Garak together, even Odo was kept out of the loop -- had suspected a trick, suspected section 31 again. But he is here now, shaking hands with this Cardassian doctor. She is about Garak's age, thin, with dark green eyes and hair manipulated into glossy corkscrew curls. ===== But you don't need inside information on the Order, you're a civilian doctor, and don't worry about only being able to speak Cardassian and Hibitian, you won't get close enough to anyone who'll know any other language themselves. Language is definitely something we'll have to work on though. At the moment you speak Cardassian the way I speak /English/, formally, we need to get a few colloquialisms in there, y'know what I mean? Hmm, where to start . . . ? I know, the phrase 'full of it'. When humans say someone is /full of it/ they mean they're talking shit -- that's another one for you, means . . . now what is the /English/ . . .? /Crap/, that's it. The phrase in Cardassian has a very different, though equally derogative, meaning. As you are already well aware, male Cardassians produce a lubricating secretion from certain mucous membranes. This not only acts as a lubricant; it also contains a sex hormone that, when absorbed by the female through the vaginal wall and into the blood, induces ovulation. It takes many exposures to this hormone to make a woman fertile, so she can either have sex with one man many times, or lots of men once. That's why you're much more likely to be sexually assaulted by a group of Cardassian males than by one individual, it offers him no evolutionary advantage. Anyway, this means that any woman who can count can potentially control her own fertility; a woman has to be very stupid, or very abused, to fall pregnant against her will. When someone refers to a woman as being 'full of it' it means she's been pumped so full of sex hormones she's become pregnant by accident, or behaving in such a way that it is likely to happen. It doesn't mean promiscuous, just incredibly stupid and reckless. When someone refers to a male as being 'full of it', it just means he takes it in the arse. I'm guessing from your expression that you've worked out what that one means by yourself. There are urban myths about men being exposed to so much sex hormone that they undergo sex changes, but that's just a load of shit. So if you happen to catch anyone talking about you like that you'll know you're on the right track. ===== Lythan runs a finger down Bashir's spine, picking up Bashir's sweat and his own sexual secretions. "Much more of this," he says, "and you'll start growing tits." Bashir, playing the role of Kamota perfectly, cringes in shame, while silently screaming at him, calling him a self-deluded, dried up old man. ===== All Cardassian morality basically boils down to economics. If you are poor, or from a small family, you get married in order to be able to afford to have children. If you are rich, or from a family which is large enough to support you and your offspring, a woman doesn't need to get married. Rich people, people with names, can do what they want. They get married for political reasons, or even, on very rare occasions, for love. Sex, as and of itself, is not seen as immoral, only its consequences, which usually only amount to wasted time and energy. It's seen as healthy, and even necessary for proper development, for young adults -- /teenagers/ humans would call them -- to experiment sexually. We don't equate purity with virginity either. Losing one's virginity is not seen as an on-off switch, merely one point among many others on the growth curve of maturation. Not to say that there haven't been many attempts throughout our history to control sexuality, although we never came up with anything as horrendous as /human/ methods: foot-binding, genital mutilation. To be cynical about it, those in charge realise that sex is a very good distraction from what is really going on. ===== He needs to be experienced, he needs to know about sex, to have tried everything, twice, from every angle. Garak does his best, within the limited time available. Things start out nice, full of wonder, care and excitement, an imitation of a young adult's first explorations. Then things turn ugly. Sex becomes cruel, a power struggle, a fight for survival. Sexuality begins defused throughout the entire body, then becomes more and more concentrated in the genitals, in penetration. This is in preparation for Gul Lythan. In the last few weeks, before Bashir is to be smuggled onto Cardassia, Garak is beginning to show the strain, both physical and emotional. He falls asleep in Bashir's arms and Bashir strokes his hair and wonders how things will be when he is turned back into a human. ===== The people who object to Cardassians fucking non-Cardassians fall into two camps; puritans who see it as no better than bestiality, and moralists who see it as a form of abuse akin to paedophilia. But don't confuse xenophilia with miscegenation, _everybody_ objects to that. After all, how can we claim to be the superior race when we are capable of interbreeding with inferior species? ~ You'll have to behave in a certain way to pass as a Cardassian. Never back down from an argument if you are wrong, it's up to the person in the right to end an argument. Once you have proven you are right, to whatever kind of an audience there may be, to continue arguing is beneath you, so you walk away. Unless of course you are arguing to show off to a potential mate, and if it is them you are arguing with, then it's an opportunity to show off your endurance. Your body language is important. You're thin and vulnerable compared to other males, you'll have to be charming to survive. Conventionally only children are charming, to avoid provoking adult violence, especially little boys, who are most at risk of being seen as rivals by their fathers. Expect not to be taken seriously, expect to be ignored. You'll be getting it right if you are. He'll see, he'll see you. He'll know what to look for and he'll know how to exploit it. Other people won't see what's going on, those that do will pretend not to. You're an adult, and expected to take care of your self . . . I know it's contradictory, but you can't tell me /human/ society hasn't been the same. You'll have to behave differently with Lythan in private, to let him know you're interested in accepting his advances. Cardassian women may be tough and belligerent, but the rules are different here. Certain delicate young men are known to put up with all kinds of outrageous behaviour at the hands of other men; the type of thing no sane woman would put up with. ===== Bashir walks into the bedroom and, as he knows Lythan expects it of him without asking, strips. He sees that Lythan, sitting in a chair near the bed, is holding something in his hands. He realises too late what it is. Lythan has already moved, he throws Bashir to the floor and starts beating him with the belt he was holding. He screams at Bashir, calling him weak, filthy, worthless. When he has finished, Lythan sits on the bed, breathing heavily from the physical effort. Bashir stays on the floor. "Aren't you going to thank me," asks Lythan, "for trying to make a real man out of you?" "No," Bashir spits, before he has a chance to consider if that is the best answer to give. Lythan laughs. "It looks like you're not such a hopeless cause after all." ===== Of course it's all a social construct, a woman in a relationship with a man has an accepted place in society, and an extended family to fall back on for support. Men like you tend to be on their own. Which is good, in the sense that it explains why you are not in close contact with your family, you can say they live on another continent and no one will need to ask why. ===== Cardassia is severely overcrowded, Bashir, without Kamota's family to rely on, can only afford a small rented room. He shares a bathroom with three others on his floor; he doesn't have a kitchen or even a replicator. The owner of the house takes pity on him and cooks him meals in her kitchen in the basement of the building, leaving the others to the noodle bars and fish grills of the city. She barely recognises him as an adult, she keeps asking him what school he is attending, and laughs when he tells her he is a qualified doctor. She burnt out during her primary education, but fortunately had a large family to support her. Theirs is a minor name, but they own a lot of property like this. She never needed to marry, and both her children have grown up and moved away to start their own families. Bashir likes her, she reminds him a little of his own mother, and she makes him feel less lonely. ===== The Cardassian mind, trained from an early age, is a precise instrument. Everything is neatly compartmentalised and categorised. This is how we can hold different, contradictory, pieces of information to be True; and to a Cardassian there is only ever The Truth, and Lies. It is a deliberate outcome of our Universal Primary Education and Indoctrination System, we are not taught how to think, just to memorise someone else's answers. In fact we were taught how _not_ to think. So you see we now exist in a state where the word 'indoctrination' can be used without anyone noticing. The language, and the emotional impact of words, is controlled. How can a person get angry at something they cannot find a name for? This way of thinking means no stream of consciousness, no intuitive leaps; in the Order we had to be re-taught these things. Suppressing that, I think, will be hardest for you. The need for a perfect recall won't be a problem; your genetically engineered brain will be able to handle it. As for perfect recall, you won't need to remember _everything_ that happens, it's not expected. I can remember almost every report I have ever read, but I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch eight days ago. We are also taught how not to commit the detritus of everyday life to memory in the first place, and how to remember things only temporarily. But don't think that means there is a way to beat the system, there are ways to test a person, to make sure something has been committed to memory correctly. An individual's ability to remember varies as much as intelligence does. In fact _too_ perfect a recall can be a problem; an individual who perfects their recall but not their ability to forget can go insane, also if an individual has a high ability to recall, but a low intellect, the information can be overwhelming. If they're lucky their family will be able to take care of them, or to afford private medical care; otherwise they are likely to end up on the streets or in a government run asylum. This state of affairs helps explain why alcohol is so popular a drug. It may make us mean, stupid, and self destructive, but it provides a momentary respite from memory, from self, that's why a lot of Cardassians can't get by without it. ~ The Detappa council is a civilian council, which is voted for, but not something you would recognise as democratic. It is made up of representatives of all the professions: medicine, business, architecture, various other sciences. To be eligible for nomination to the council you have to be at the top of your profession, and to get to the top of your profession you have to have a name. These are families that have dominated their chosen fields for centuries, since before the military took control. In reality the council is a less accessible power than that of the military. But the military is still very much dominated by old families from the original caste, like Lythan for example, or Dukat. The Order is the only place in Cardassian society where an individual can get by on merit alone. ===== The other doctors and medical workers look down on him at first, but it doesn't take long for his ability to earn their respect. He doesn't make any friends, that's not the way Cardassians work; family connections are far more important, and then there are the complicated, unspoken pressures of class and caste. It is a first tier hospital, of course. How else arrange a chance meeting with Gul Lythan? The lack of resources in the Cardassian Union is not felt here, all the equipment is new and the supply cupboards well stocked. The whole hospital is set within parkland, each patient gets their own room, the children's ward is stuffed with toys and games and even has a wompat enclosure. ===== Poverty on Cardassia is something the government is working hard to eradicate, officially it has achieved this. Those living on the streets are there by choice, that choice makes them criminals. When you can no longer afford to pay your rent, and if you have nowhere to go, you end up in a workhouse. These are run as a business; basically the company gives you food, shelter, clothing, education and medical care in return for all your potential earnings. Unless you can get a very good job you end up indebted to the company for life; not only that, they have the same contract with your living and unborn children. Some people would rather risk living on the streets than end up in a workhouse, they would rather become malnourished than miss paying their rent. The workhouses are not nice, they cover all the basics but nothing more. Your movements are controlled, and you lose the only privacy you ever had, which was within the family home. My mother was born in a workhouse on Cardassia Prime, her mother was an economic migrant from one of the colonies, and her father a soldier who was killed just after her conception, at a time when the military could not afford benefits for war-widows. My mother worked as a maid in the Tain household. When Enabran became head of the household he bought out her contract. The Federation would regard it as slavery, but it was a huge step upwards from the workhouse for her. Tain understood the importance of an hair, but also appreciated the vulnerability of a legitimate family. He found the solution in Mila. Nobody cared about her, she was irrelevant, invisible, and so was her child. It is an old custom in the part of the world I grew up in for masters to pay for the education of their servant's offspring, as a way of displaying their wealth. It was perfect for Tain because he had more rights over me than Mila did. I think it must have been heartbreaking for her, losing me to him. ~ You may have to be on Cardassia for a long time. Don't forget your mission, don't let any abuse you suffer drag you down into your role, don't forget yourself. Believe me it does happen, you'd be surprised how many Cardassians-disguised-as-Bajorans there are still loose on Bajor, /going native/ is the /human/ phrase I believe. What I mean to say is: I want _you_ back in one piece. ===== He turns the tables, flips Lythan over, twists and pins him with every anatomical trick he knows. He mounts him and rides him off the edge of the planet. He wrings every last drop of pleasure/pain out of him like moisture from a rag. He remoulds him like clay until he has him completely within his power. "I need you to tell me a few little things," he says. ===== [end]