Vectors

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “That too,” Quark said. “I’m going to start deducting the price of everything you break from your salary.”

  “But brother—”

  Quark held up a hand. “I’m doing you a lot of favors, Rom. I didn’t have to give you a home and a job when Prindora’s father swindled you out of all your money.”

  “You weren’t going to bring that up again,” Rom said, glancing over his shoulder for Nog. The boy was still wiping the floor. Those Cardassians had poured a lot of liquid on Rom.

  “It’s kind of hard to forget, Rom. What kind of idiot fails to read the fine print in a contract?”

  “It was a marriage contract,” Rom said.

  “So?” Quark asked. “How is that different from a regular contract?”

  “It was even an extension of the marriage contract. I read the first one.”

  “Twelve years ago,” Quark said. “And I’ll bet you forgot the terms, didn’t you?”

  Rom swallowed and looked down.

  “You loved Prindora, so you trusted her.”

  Rom nodded.

  “She’s a female, Rom.”

  “She was my wife,” Rom said miserably.

  “At least she remembered the Sixth Rule of Acquisition.”

  “That’s not fair,” Rom said.

  “What is it?” Quark asked. “Do you even know?”

  Rom straightened his shoulders. “‘Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.’”

  “Good,” Quark said. “Then you should understand why I let the Cardassians pour drinks on you. I made money, and that’s more than I’ve done since you showed up.”

  “I’m sorry, brother,” Rom said.

  “You should be. Now go put on some clean clothes and get back out here. There’s a lot of work to do.” Quark glanced over at Nog. “And your son isn’t a very good substitute.”

  “He’s just a boy,” Rom said.

  “Go,” Quark said, and Rom ran for their quarters. Quark shook his head and returned to the bar. Sometimes even he forgot the Sixth Rule of Acquisition. If he had remembered it, he wouldn’t have allowed Rom here in the first place. But Rom had looked so pathetic when he arrived, dragging Nog behind him. Quark had actually felt sorry for them, although that emotion was quickly fading now. Every time he heard the sound of shattering glass.

  “Nog!” he yelled. “When you finish that, I have some other things for you to clean.”

  The boy looked at him for a long moment. There was something in Nog’s eyes, something a bit too rebellious for Quark, but then it disappeared as if it had never been.

  “Yes, uncle,” Nog said.

  Quark nodded curtly, then leaned back and surveyed the bar. The Cardassian freighter crews were thinning. Drink had forced some of them to leave. The remaining ones weren’t as rowdy as they had been earlier. The muttering pilot at the far end of the bar was still staring at his Gamzian wine. The glass was as full as it had been before the trouble started, but the Cardassian was an odd shade of green.

  “And I thought the gray looked bad,” Quark murmured. He frowned. A few of the Cardassians around the Dabo table were also faintly greenish. He had seen a lot of drunk Cardassians in his day, but he had never seen them turn vaguely green before. He had always thought that a hu-man trait.

  Maybe they were all from the same ship. Or maybe the greenish tinge was being caused by something they’d eaten. Or maybe they were from a part of Cardassia Prime that made them look that way naturally.

  “Or maybe that’s how Cardassians look when they tan.”

  “What, uncle?”

  Quark jumped. He hadn’t realized Nog was beside him. “Do those Cardassians look strange to you?”

  Nog peered at them. “They all look strange to me.”

  Quark nodded. Nog had a point. Maybe Quark had been here so long that everything abnormal was beginning to look normal.

  What a frightening thought. He shuddered one more time, and then went back to work.

  Chapter Three

  THE LIGHTS IN THE MEDICAL LAB seemed dimmer than usual. Gul Dukat stepped inside, hands clasped behind his back. He was used to being here when colleagues and subordinates were wounded, but he felt uncomfortable here in cases like this. Illness. Especially unrecognized illness. The very idea made his skin crawl.

  The displays were flashing, the monitors constantly recording various bits of information. In the main section, the physician assigned to Terok Nor, Narat, sat at his desk studying a screen before him. On beds hooked up to the monitors were two of Dukat’s guards. Their skin was an odd greenish color, almost the color of a body shortly after it begins to decay.

  Dukat raised his head slightly. Through the door of the second, smaller room, he could see the blanket-covered feet of the two Bajoran patients. Their doctor, Kellec Ton, stood beside them studying a Cardassian padd as if it were in a strange language. It looked odd to Dukat to see Bajorans here. They belonged in the medical part of the Bajoran area. It wasn’t as well appointed as this, but then, they were workers. They didn’t need all of this equipment.

  He wouldn’t have allowed them up here if Narat didn’t believe that the disease the Bajoran workers had was related to the disease these two guards seemed to have.

  Dukat took another step into the medical lab. Narat turned. He was slight, and his neck scales were hardly prominent. His eyes almost disappeared into his thin face. They were always bloodshot, but they seemed worse now. His thinning hair was cut short, almost too short, and stood straight up. He wore a lab coat over his uniform, and it gave him a scholarly air.

  “Ah, Gul Dukat. I appreciate you coming here so quickly.”

  Dukat glanced at the patients on the bed. He felt uncomfortable, so he wasn’t going to give any leeway to Narat. “I don’t like to have Bajorans up here.”

  “We have a forcefield at the doors, just as you recommended,” Narat said. “But they’re not going anywhere. They will die here, probably within a few hours.”

  He sounded certain.

  “I’d like you to see them.”

  Dukat frowned, glancing again at the guards. One of them moaned and thrashed, clutching at his stomach. Narat uttered a small curse, then found a hypospray and shut off the quarantine field around the bed. He stepped inside, restarted the quarantine field, and administered hypo to the man’s neck. The guard calmed slightly.

  “What about them?” Dukat asked.

  “In a moment,” Narat said, as he let himself out of the quarantine field. “Let me tell you this in my own way.”

  He led Dukat to the second room. They stopped at the door. The forcefield Dukat had insisted on was more for the Bajoran doctor than it was for the patients, but Dukat didn’t tell Narat that. Dukat wanted Narat and Kellec Ton to work together as best a Cardassian and a Bajoran could. He just wasn’t going to take any chances.

  As if he knew that Dukat was thinking of him, Kellec Ton looked up from his padd. He had the wide dark eyes that Dukat found so compelling in Bajorans. His nose ridge set them off. His face was long, but didn’t give an impression of weakness like Narat’s did. On Kellec, the length accented his bone structure and gave him a suggestion of power.

  Dukat had been careful around this Bajoran doctor, and had limited his access to the Cardassians. Women found him attractive, and Dukat didn’t like that. Kellec Ton had the kind of charisma that could be dangerous if allowed to run free.

  Dukat couldn’t study him any longer. He had to look at the patients.

  The Bajorans on the table were not a strange shade of green. In fact, their color was normal. Better than normal. If he hadn’t known better, Dukat would have thought them the picture of perfect health.

  It was the stench that made their illness clear. The pervasive odor of rot clung to everything, as if there were food spoiling along the floors and walls of the mom—food and unburied bodies decaying in a powerful sun.

  He resisted the urge to bring his hand over his face. Kellec Ton was watching him, as if
measuring Dukat’s response. “Disgusting, isn’t it?” Kellec said. “You should go into the Bajoran section. The smell is so overpowering there I have no idea how anyone can eat.” Then he tilted his head slightly. “Not that there’s much to eat in the first place.”

  Dukat would not get into political discussions with this man. He was on Terok Nor because Dukat cared for his Bajoran workers. He was here because a healthy worker was a strong worker. The more uridium the Bajorans processed, the better for all concerned.

  “What is this disease?” Dukat asked.

  “If I knew, I might be able to help them.” There was a controlled frustration in Kellec’s voice. “So far, we’ve lost twenty Bajorans, and these two aren’t far behind. They look good, don’t they?”

  Dukat nodded, then asked, “What is the odor?”

  Kellec glanced at Narat, who nodded that he should continue. Kellec set the padd down on the instrument table. “Exactly what you think it is. Their bodies are decaying internally. I keep them sedated, but this disease, whatever it is, is incredibly painful. Some of the others broke through the sedatives before they died—I couldn’t give them enough medication to ease the suffering.”

  Somehow, he made that sound like Dukat’s fault. But Dukat had done nothing to cause this disease. Some Bajoran had brought it onto the station. He had left it to the Bajorans to cure. They handled their own health. That was why he allowed them Kellec Ton. If they needed specific supplies, Kellec Ton was supposed to act as liaison with the Cardassians.

  “You should have notified us sooner. Perhaps Narat has something that will—”

  “No, I don’t,” Narat said.

  “Well,” Dukat said, “I don’t like diseases that destroy my workers. You should have brought this to me before it got out of control.”

  “The disease first showed up a day and a half ago,” Kellec said. “I’ve been a bit busy since then.”

  “And it will only get worse,” Narat said.

  Dukat turned to him. Narat’s face looked even more pinched than it had moments ago. “Why is that?”

  He took Dukat’s arm and led him to the edge of the nearest guard’s bed. Up close, the greenish color was mottled. The ridges around the guard’s eyes and down his neck were flaking, and a pale gray liquid lined his mouth and nostrils.

  Dukat kept his distance, even though he knew the guard was surrounded by a quarantine field.

  “This does not look like the same disease to me,” Dukat said. Narat had told him earlier, when asking permission to have Kellec and two Bajorans brought to the medical lab, that the Cardassians were now infected with the disease that was killing the Bajorans.

  “It doesn’t look like the same disease,” Narat said, “because you are looking at the symptoms. If you were looking at the disease itself on microscopic level, you would see that it is the same virus—even though it attacks Cardassians differently than it attacks Bajorans.”

  “So you’ll be able to cure them,” Dukat said.

  Narat shook his head. “Not unless we discover something quickly.”

  “But if you know its cause,” Dukat said, “then you should be able to find a counteragent.”

  “Should,” Narat said, “and probably will.” He glanced at Kellec Ton, who was standing near the door. Neither of them seemed as certain as doctors usually did.

  “But?” Dukat asked.

  “But we don’t have the time,” Kellec said.

  “The disease progresses rapidly,” Narat said. “That’s a trait it shares in both Barjorans and in Cardassians. These guards came in complaining of dizziness and lack of coordination. Now they cannot sit on their own. The mucus that you see—” and he pointed to the grayish fluid leaking out of their eyes, noses, and mouths. Dukat grimaced in spite of himself “—is filling their lungs. They will drown by tomorrow if we do not find a way to stop this.”

  “Drown?” Dukat repeated. He couldn’t imagine anyone drowning on Terok Nor. If he had to predict a way his people might die here, it would not be by drowning.

  “That’s the net effect,” Narat said.

  “This is not possible,” Dukat said. “Bajorans and Cardassians cannot contract the same diseases. We have known that—” he caught himself. Kellec Ton looked at him, eyes sharp. The Bajoran doctor did not need to know how much information the Cardassians had gathered on the Bajorans. “We have known that for a long time.”

  “We have,” Narat said. “But this is something new.”

  “Brand new,” Kellec said.

  There was something in his voice that annoyed Dukat, a faint accusation. Dukat approached the door. The stench seemed to have grown.

  “What are you suggesting?” Dukat asked.

  “I’m not suggesting anything.” Kellec’s expression was mild, but his eyes were not. They were intense, filled with something that Dukat recognized.

  Hatred.

  Good. Let the Bajoran hate him. He wasn’t competing in any popularity contests.

  “But,” Kellec continued, “I have heard rumors that this disease is the result of a Cardassian experiment, designed to rid the universe of Bajorans. What better way to get our planet than to destroy us all?”

  Dukat felt rage rush through him, but he did not move. He waited until the first wave of anger had passed before responding. He didn’t want the Bajoran to know that his comment had hit the mark.

  “If that were the case,” Dukat said, making certain he sounded calm, “then this disease would not be killing Cardassians.”

  “It would if someone made a mistake,” Kellec said.

  Their gazes met for a moment. They both knew the Cardassians were capable of this. Then Dukat said, “Your job is to find a cure for this disease—both versions, Cardassian and Bajoran.”

  “You’re feeling compassion for Bajorans?” Kellec asked, with great sarcasm.

  “I prefer to have my Bajorans alive and working,” Dukat said. “Not straining the medical resources of Terok Nor.”

  He turned away from Kellec, no longer willing to look at the man. “If this disease progresses as rapidly as you say,” he said to Narat, “then we have to isolate it. We don’t want it spreading through the station.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Narat said. “But we have a problem here. We are, essentially, in a floating tin can, sharing the same air. I can have the computers filter for an air-borne version of this virus in the life-support system and neutralize it, but the disease might not be spread that way. We don’t know enough about it.”

  “Isolate anyone who comes in contact with it,” Dukat said. “I don’t want this spreading.”

  “I won’t be able to do that, treat these patients, and find a cure,” Narat said. “You’ll have to issue the order.”

  He had a point. “All right,” Dukat said.

  “It’s probably too late,” Kellec Ton said.

  They turned to him.

  Kellec shrugged. “If this disease has a long incubation period, then it could have been spreading all over the station long before any symptoms appeared.”

  “Then we’d all have it,” Narat said softly.

  Dukat felt his skin crawl again. He couldn’t help himself; he shot another look at the ill guards. He would do anything not to end up like that.

  Then the door to medical lab swished open. Two Cardassians Dukat didn’t recognize entered. They were wearing the uniform of the uridium freighter crews. The woman was hanging on the man, barely able to walk. Her skin was green.

  “You the doctor?” the man asked.

  Dukat took a step backwards even though they hadn’t come near him yet. He was standing near the second door.

  “No,” he said, and he sounded alarmed, even to his own ears. “I’m not the doctor.”

  “I am,” Narat said, walking toward them as if this thing didn’t bother him at all. “Quarantine protocol.”

  The quarantine field went up around the newcomers. Dukat let out a small sigh.

  “Don’t relax yet,”
Kellec said to him softly. “All it takes is a moment to get infected. One small breath of air. A touch.”

  Dukat whirled.

  The Bajoran was watching him, that maddeningly calm expression on his face.

  “Then find the cure,” Dukat said.

  “I plan to,” Kellec said. “For my own people.”

  “I command you to find it for both.” Dukat raised his voice. The new patient and his companion were looking at him, along with Narat.

  “Why should I help your people?” Kellec asked.

  “Why should I help yours?” Dukat asked.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then Kellec said, “You want our services and our planet.”

  “You cannot survive without us,” Dukat said. “Not anymore.”

  “We could survive just fine,” Kellec said.

  There was a crash behind them. Dukat turned. The woman had collapsed. The man who had brought her was clutching the wall as if it gave him strength.

  “I need some help over here,” Narat said.

  Dukat remained where he was.

  “Open the force field,” Kellec said.

  Dukat looked at him.

  “Open it, and I will help them,” Kellec said.

  Dukat brought the force field down. Kellec hurried to the others, demanding that Narat drop the quarantine field on that end as well. Both doctors picked up the female patient, helping her to a bed. Then they helped the male patient. They bent over the patients, lost in their work.

  Dukat watched them for a moment, feeling itchy and cold. He glanced at his hand. The skin was its normal grayish color. Healthy. He was healthy.

  For the moment.

  Kellec wasn’t looking at him, and Dukat didn’t want to go any closer to taunt him. But Dukat knew Kellec, knew his kind. The man was a doctor first. He would heal a patient and then look to see the patient’s race. That was why Dukat had Kellec brought to Terok Nor. For all his Bajoran patriotism, Kellec would save Cardassians if he had to.

  In fact, he had just demanded to be allowed to. They would work together to solve this, Cardassian and Bajoran, because they had no other choice.