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He asked at the end of lunch if he could adjust the afternoon to see something new. “What are you the most proud of, here in Cardassia City? Can I see those things?”
Chuhak had lit up like a chandelier. Briel, had with a smaller but still genuine smile, said that for this she could leave him in Chuhak’s capable hands.
Chuhak was old enough to have know life in the Cardassian Empire. He must not be much older than that, Julian realized. He hurried past the art museum and on to massive square that had survived the bombing with its original statuary intact. Now home to a thriving marketplace, he went straight to a sweets stall and refused to let Julian pay when he bought a soft candy called rith that had been his favorite as a child. He did allow Julian to share it with him. Through the marketplace, a kaleidocope of sound and smell and color that he was almost relieved to be away from, Chuhak showed him how to catch what looked a little like the old-fashioned trams in San Fransisco but was propelled primarily by magnets and proudly declared that Cardassia City had been able to rebuild free public transport, cleverly working the few surviving shuttle depots into new lines that were able to cross the city most helpfully, unbound as they were by the architecture of a hundred thousand years.
This was Julian’s first street-level travel in the city, and he enjoyed the relatively slow ride out of the Tarlak Sector and into Akleen. Once home to the military schools and research centers, Chuhak had specifically brought him here to show him a small zoo. It didn’t have more than a dozen different kinds of animals, but the young Cardassian had particularly enthusiasm for it. By the time they reached the children’s section of the zoo, and Chuhak’s rate of speech increased as he listed all the reasons that a petting section was so important for children, Julian found himself reminded of his youth. Chuhak also seemed like the sort of person who would muse on the genius of a man who had engineered a virus while it was actively endangering the lives of the entire station. Maybe for him it would be the describing the cultural importance of a narawak as it flew off in the distance with three of his fingers in its beak.
At his encouragement, Julian did indeed pet the animals. “Were zoos important to you as a child?”
“Oh yes,” the young man sighed, “The fondest of my memories is of going to the zoo with my family. When I was very young,” He did not say ‘before the war’, “I wanted to be a custodian feralman. Excuse me, I don’t think the translator was accurate …” he paused and struggled for a word. Julian really was going to have to learn to speak Kardasi if he was going to be here for any length of time. Which he wasn’t sure yet, if he would. “Animal mother? No … livestock janitor?”
Julian laughed, and Chuhak laughed too. “I think I understand.” Julian liked this. He gave a juvenile riding hound one last skritch, “Show me something else that’s important to you.”