“He’ll probably have to work the fee off,” Nog said. “Actually, the work he’ll have to do will be worth a lot more than the one slip he didn’t have.”
“Do they use those whips?” Ro asked.
“Only if they have to,” Quark said. “C’mon, Rom will have sent an aircar.”
As soon as they stepped out onto the outer walkway, the humidity—no, the sogginess—hit Ro like a phaser blast. A sound like meat sizzling on an open fire assaulted her ears as rain slammed onto a variety of surfaces. The only nearby shelter was a clear enclosure about ten square meters in size, in which stood a few Ferengi and one Vulcan. Quark dropped some slips into a receptacle that hung from one of the enclosure’s sides, after which a door opened up.
Once they got into the blessed dryness of the enclosure, Ro’s uniform was drenched, her hair was plastered to her head, water dripped off her chin in rivulets, and her entire body felt like it had been dunked in a vat of rainwater. Her bones felt wet—and that after less than a minute’s exposure. The air-conditioning system in the enclosure was on full blast, evaporating the surface water, and making her shiver. Wiping some wet hair out of her eyes, she understood why most of the life-forms on this world, including the dominant one, had no body hair—that was not an evolutionary path that would be of much use on this soaked planet.
“Why don’t you guys have any kind of covering to keep you dry?”
Nog looked confused. He was also in his uniform, but he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that he was now soaked to the skin. “What for? It’s only frippering.”
“Only?” Ro wiped the water that was dripping from her eyebrows into her eyes as she asked the question.
Nog nodded. “Oh, yes. You should see it when it’s oolmering—or worse, glebbening.”
Ro stared at Nog. “You mean it gets worse?”
“All the time,” Quark said. Then he gave her a look of incredulity. “You think this is bad rain?”
“Quark,” Ro said, “when I was with the Maquis, we had to hide out in the jungles on the southern continent of Volon VI. Half my cell were bitten all over by these bugs that were just everywhere. The humidity was abominable. My shirt was so wet you could read through it, and it was black. Walking through that jungle was like swimming in brackish, algae-infested waters.” She looked at Quark. “Standing out in that frippering rain for thirty seconds made me realize just how good I had it on Volon VI.”
Before Quark could reply, an aircar pulled up to the enclosure. An opening formed, hitting Ro with another blast of humidity. I’m going to have pneumonia by the time we get to Rom’s place. The aircar’s side door was also open.
The driver said, “I’m here to take Quark, Nog, and their guest to the Grand Nagus.”
That earned all three of them looks of surprise from the others in the enclosure—except for the Vulcan, who remained typically impassive.
Ro started to move toward the opening, but Quark stopped her. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a slip of latinum, and waved it a few times.
Once the driver saw it, he touched a control, and a canopy arced out from the roof of the aircar and butted up against the enclosure, thus providing shelter for the one meter between the enclosure and the inside of the vehicle.
The three of them quickly moved into the aircar—which had even more intense air-conditioning than the enclosure—and sat in the aircar’s amra-skin passenger seats.
Nog was grinning. “Not bad.”
Quark dropped the slip he’d promised in exchange for the shelter into a small receptacle on the back of the driver’s seat—which, Ro noticed, wasn’t amra-skin, but plain vinyl.
“We’ll be at the nagal residence in twenty minutes,” the driver said.
Quark dropped two more slips into the receptacle.
“Make that ten minutes,” the driver said without missing a beat.
Shaking her head, Ro said, “Whoever manufactures those latinum receptacles must have made a fortune.”
“Fram,” Nog said. “The same one who built the spaceport. Those receptacles are the most valuable patent in the entire Ferengi Alliance.”
“And he didn’t even invent them,” Quark said. “Some kid came up with the idea. Fram paid the boy two strips to use the idea, and then made a fortune off it.”
Ro regarded Quark with amazement. “What happened to the boy?”
Quark shrugged. “Who cares? He lost.”
“The Twenty-Fifth Rule,” Nog added.
Leaning back in the chair, Ro said, “I’m starting to understand why you all exploit each other so much—with weather like this all the time, it puts you in an aggressive mood to begin with. For example, I have this tremendous urge to strangle you for talking me into coming along with you.”
Staring at her in shock, Quark asked, “You don’t like it here?”
“Not so far.”
“It’ll grow on you, trust me.”
“Quark, the only thing growing on me is mold.”
Smiling, Quark said, “Food for later, then.”
Ro decided not to speak to Quark for the rest of the trip. It cut down on her nausea.
When they arrived at the nagal residence, Ro got out of the aircar—the parking area was sheltered from the rain—and looked up. The mansion looked to be three stories tall. Then, remembering the differences in Ferengi height, she revised that estimate to four or five. The structure was made of solid duranium, from the looks of it, gilded with enough gold to keep it glowing—as much as anything could glow in this rain—but not enough to compromise the integrity of the walls. It was a wise precaution for the home of a head of state, and Ro admired the security consideration.
A rounded door parted to reveal a Ferengi of about Quark’s age and a middle-aged Ferengi woman. She recognized the former from the signing ceremony on Bajor months ago: Rom. For a Grand Nagus, Rom didn’t look the part—he wasn’t wearing his robe or carrying the staff with the golden head of Grand Nagus Gint, for one thing.
The middle-aged woman was Quark and Rom’s mother, Ishka. She looked more regal than her son, wearing a floral-print skintight outfit that emphasized her shape a little too much, where each flower had a small gem in its center. The gem varied depending on the flower—Ro saw diamonds, rubies, Spican flame gems, and orvats, at least. She also wore a neckframe—the Ferengi version of earrings—made of latinum and as encrusted with jewels as the outfit.
Naturally, Ro had to duck to enter the place, as it was built for Ferengi. Ro was average height for a Bajoran woman, but the doorway came up only to her neck. She recalled that the last Grand Nagus had a Hupyrian servant. He must have had to fold himself in half just to get in the front door.
As soon as they entered, Rom handed each of them a towel and then gave Quark a padd. “Welcome to my home. Please place your imprint on the legal waivers, and deposit your admission fee in the box by the door. Remember—my house is my house.”
After thumbing the padd, Quark handed it back. “As are its contents.”
Rom then broke into a grin. “Brother, it’s so good to see you!” He turned to Nog. “And you too, Nog!” He pulled his son into a warm embarce. Ro heard a squishing sound as the hug squeezed rainwater out of Nog’s uniform jacket.
While father and son were reunited, Quark put three slips into the receptacle. Ro asked, “Do you really have to go through all that nonsense every time you go into someone’s house?”
Quark gave Ro an arch look. “Do I mock your Bajoran traditions?”
Ro laughed. “Quark, I mock Bajoran traditions—so don’t think yours are going to get off easy.”
Ishka then spoke, looking at Ro. “And who is this?”
“Mother, this is Lieutenant Ro Laren, head of security on Deep Space 9,” Quark said formally.
Ro bowed slightly, and put her wrists together in front of her chin and cupped her hands in the traditional Ferengi greeting. “A pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
Returning the gesture, Ishka sai
d, “Likewise, Lieutenant.”
“She’s serving as my bodyguard,” Quark added. “After all, I’m an important diplomat, so Starfleet felt the need to send some protection along.”
Ro managed to hold in a bark of laughter, and she noticed that Nog was rolling his eyes.
So was Ishka as she looked at Rom. “I knew giving your brother a title was a mistake. ‘Make him an ambassador,’ I said, ‘and he’ll start getting delusions of grandeur.’ ”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, ma’am,” Ro said. “Quark already had delusions of grandeur.”
Quark shot her a look. “Hey!”
Ishka laughed. “Oh, I like you.” She leaned in close. Ro—who was by far the tallest person in the room—bent over in order to hear her better. Ishka whispered, “A lot more than the last Bajoran that was brought into this house, believe me. Why Rom couldn’t just find a nice Ferengi female…” She stood upright. “But in any case, it’s good to see all of you. I just wish the news was better.”
“What do you mean?” Nog asked anxiously as they moved into the sitting room. Ro tried not to let her jaw drop at the lavishness—and downright hideousness—of the décor.
“Leeta’s gotten worse,” Rom said in a tone that Ro could describe only as a frantic monotone. “Dr. Orpax will be calling any minute.”
“I’m still not sure you should be using him,” Ishka said. “Remember, he did misdiagnose Quark.”
Ro whirled on Quark. “What?”
Waving dismissively, Quark said, “It was nothing.”
“Nothing?” Ishka sounded outraged as she sat down on a particularly comfortable-looking chair. “Quark, he said you had Dorek syndrome!”
“It wasn’t a misdiagnosis—exactly.” At Ro’s questioning glance, Quark said, “Brunt bribed Orpax to tell me I had Dorek as part of a plot to discredit me. He knew I’d try to sell my vacuum-desiccated remains to offset my debt, and he bought the whole lot.”
Ro saw where this was going. “When you didn’t die, you had to break the contract—that’s why the FCA banned you for, what was it, two years?”
“Only one year, actually—just seemed like two.” He looked at Ishka. “Anyhow, that wasn’t Orpax’s fault. He’s still the most expensive doctor on Ferenginar, and you know that means he’s good.”
Frowning, Ro said, “I don’t see the connection, there.”
Every Ferengi in the room stared at her.
Nog quickly said, “She’s Bajoran.”
Ishka muttered, “We all know how little Bajorans understand Ferengi.”
“Moogie!” Rom cried.
“Well, I’m sorry, Rom, but it’s true. I know you love Leeta very much, and I’m glad that she makes you so happy, but she doesn’t understand commerce at all!”
“What do you expect?” Quark asked. “She’s a dabo girl—and not even that good a dabo girl.”
Rom redirected his outrage to his brother. “She was a great dabo girl!”
Quark grinned. “You haven’t seen Treir in action.”
Shaking her head, Ishka said, “This is why Ferengi females need to take a more active role in society. Tradition has made us so subservient, so limited, so—so uninteresting, that males are turning to other species to find a true life companion.”
A beeping interrupted Rom’s response. “Grand Nagus, Dr. Orpax is contacting you.”
“I’ll take it in here.” Rom got up from his chair and slowly walked over to the gilded piece of abstract art on the wall—which, Ro realized belatedly, was a comm unit.
Rom touched a control, and a big-eared, small-eyed Ferengi with yellow teeth and the oddest nose showed up on the screen.
Before Rom could say anything, the doctor spoke. “I’m sorry to say, Grand Nagus, that the news, it is not good. Your wife, she is deteriorating—her immune system is weakened because the baby is causing so many physical problems. Unfortunately, the best option to fix the physical problems is surgery, but I cannot perform it in her weakened condition.”
“What can you do?” Rom sounded like—well, Ro thought, exactly like someone who fears losing his wife and his child in one shot.
“For now, we wait and see. If her condition improves, operate we can. I will keep you informed—but I would not allow hope to rise too high, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Grand Nagus!”
Ro turned to see that someone else had entered the room. She recognized the pug-nosed Ferengi from the files she’d been re-studying just a couple of days ago: Krax.
Rom didn’t even look at Krax, preferring to stare despondently at the floor. He reminded Ro of a child whose pet had just died, and she had to tamp down a sudden urge to give him a hug. “What is it, Krax?”
“The Economic Congress of Advisors has called an emergency session.”
Continuing to stare at the floor, Rom said, “I can’t. Tell them to postpone until tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.”
“This can’t wait,” Krax said. “That’s why it’s an emergency session. Besides, Brunt is the one who called it.”
Ishka walked over to Rom and put her arm around his shoulder. “Rom, sweetie—you have to go. If Brunt’s up to something, we need to know what it is.”
“I guess you’re right,” Rom said, stretching the “I” out to almost three syllables.
“We’ll go with you,” Nog said.
“Really?” That seemed to perk Rom up.
Ishka said, “We don’t all have to go to the Tower of Commerce.”
“Yeah,” Quark said. “We can just wait here.”
“Well, I’m going,” Nog said, standing up. “He’s my father, and I’m going to be there for him.”
“You’ll just have to sit outside,” Ishka said. “All the congress’s sessions are closed.”
“Closed?” Quark asked. “You don’t sell live broadcasts?”
Ishka shook her head. “Visual records starting the day after. The suspense builds anticipation.”
Quark nodded. “Makes sense.”
Ro stopped herself from saying something snide, and instead turned to Quark. “I’d like to go, too. You did promise to show me the Tower of Commerce.”
Sighing, Quark said, “I did, didn’t I? Fine, we’ll make a trip of it, then.” Quark spoke in his most sarcastic tone, which Ro chose to ignore.
I can’t lose Leeta.
That was all Rom thought as he rode the elevator up the Tower of Commerce to the meeting room on the twenty-fifth floor. He barely noticed Quark complaining about the riding fee, saying he wouldn’t pay it when it was seven strips five years ago, he certainly wasn’t going to pay ten strips now. Ro’s subsequent assurance that there was no way in hell she was walking up twenty-five flights of stairs barely impinged on Rom’s consciousness. Only in the deepest recesses of his brain did he acknowledge the sound of Quark pointing out that Ro’s longer legs made her better suited to take the stairs than any of them. And the fact that Nog offered to pay Ro’s ten-strip fee, prompting Quark to jump in and pay for both him and her to take the elevator, only registered briefly in Rom’s mind.
Mostly, he just thought about Leeta. Thought about how she looked the day Quark hired her to run one of the dabo tables—her big ledger-colored eyes, her lovely rok-jewel-colored hair, her pearl-colored smile, and that amazing curvaceous figure that he imagined every night before he went to bed.
Of course, she immediately made a play for Dr. Bashir. Women always made a play for Dr. Bashir. When it came out later that the doctor had been genetically enhanced, Rom had been convinced that the first adjustment they made was to give him some kind of pheromone that made women go after him.
But then, after that trip to Risa, they broke up. Leeta was single. For weeks, Rom tried to build up the courage to ask her out on a date, to tell her how he felt, but it wasn’t until she was two seconds away from leaving the station with some human or other that he finally was able to tell her he loved her.
They’d been all but inseparabl
e ever since. Even when they were physically apart, as happened more than once during the war, they were always joined at the heart.
And now she’s gonna die.
As the elevator finally arrived at the twenty-fifth floor—amid Quark’s grumbling that for ten strips, the least they could do is make the thing faster than walking would have been—Rom admonished himself. Don’t think like that! I thought Quark was gonna die when he was diagnosed with Dorek. I thought I was gonna die when the Dominion imprisoned me for sabotage. I thought Nog was gonna die a lot of times during the war. Quark lived. I lived. Nog lived. So Leeta will live too!
As Nog, Ro, and Quark took their seats in the waiting area outside the meeting room, Rom entered, trying to sustain the burst of confidence he’d forced upon himself. Leeta will be okay. The words became his mantra. Leeta will be okay.
He entered. The rest of the congress was present, and they all rose at his arrival. Rom set his staff of office up against the meeting-room table, took his seat, and pointedly refused to look at the tapestry of Gint.
All the congressmen sat down once Rom was seated, with one exception: Brunt. The wide-mouthed, small-eared former liquidator was holding a padd in his hand and wore the insincere smile that he always employed when he wasn’t sneering.
Leeta will be okay. Leeta will be okay.
Fal called the meeting to order. “This session was called by Congressman Brunt.” He then nodded to Brunt, who nodded back.
“Thank you all for coming,” Brunt said. “Trust me, this will be brief—but painful. You see, in the course of a routine investigation, a rather shocking fact has come to light. You’re all aware, of course, that the Grand Nagus’s wife is expecting a child. Just two days ago, I purchased a chance in the raffle that the nagus is holding in celebration of the child’s birth.”
One whole chance, Rom thought bitterly. How generous. The other congressmen, who understood the Thirty-Third Rule, all bought at least ten each—even Liph.
“Today, however, I am ashamed to have done so—as you all will be when I reveal what I have learned. An investigator from the new agency that Congressman Nurt has formed came across a fascinating document while investigating a tip from an anonymous informant about a businessman named Dav.”
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 7
