Strange New Worlds IX

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Then he stops doing that, because he cannot bear to not experience the truth. He opens himself up, and the sensory barrage subsides enough for him to begin to take it all in. His mind strives to come up with comparisons in the human need to take something new and make it familiar. That sound, isn’t it like the crashing of the waves on the shore? That smell, couldn’t it be lamb cooking in sage and garlic and a little mustard? That shape in the distance, doesn’t it look a little like Everest peeking through the clouds?

  He knows that these things that surround him—almost inhabit him—are nothing like the memories he links them with. But it makes him feel better to try to label them, to try to fit them into his limited experience.

  “The Sisko sees things clearly. Or more so than before.” Sarah touches him, and the feeling of her hand on his cheek is like coming home. “For some, my son, resting is never easy.”

  “Mother?”

  “I am your mother. And I am not.” She cups his chin, her eyes shining brightly—very brightly, she is turning into pure energy. Her voice is all around him as she says, “You are of us. And you are apart.”

  “I am the Sisko,” he says, understanding for the first time that it is not just his father’s name and his name and Jake’s name. It is a title. An identifier. He is the Sisko. One of them. And apart.

  He is unique. “I am not dead?”

  “The Sisko is not dead.” The Kira Prophet has retained her shape—apparently not all of his hosts feel he is ready for the ambiguity his mother presents him. “The Sisko is resting. When the Sisko is finished resting, the Sisko will begin learning.”

  “You are still needed,” the Sarah energy says to him. “You have a path to walk.”

  He realizes she did not call him the Sisko. He suspects she may have been talking directly to his mind.

  “I’m finished resting.”

  “You are not. But it is good that you think you are. Because there is much to learn.” Sarah pulls her shape back around her, and the Promenade replaces the unknowable.

  Sisko feels a pang.

  “The Sisko will see our home again when you have learned how to find it for yourself.” The Kira Prophet surprises him with a touch, her hand gently settling on his forehead.

  He has an image, a feeling, a snatch of memory, a snippet of song. He feels the way he did when he was obsessed with finding B’hala, the way he did when he went after the Orb of the Emissary. He knows he can find the world he just saw.

  But not now. He can feel the gap between what he knows and what he will have to know to find his mother’s true home. He can feel how tired he is, underneath his resentment and boredom and longing for those he loves.

  The Kira Prophet disappears, and his mother takes his arm and strolls with him on the promenade. She breathes softly, and he realizes that even such a casually human act is a gift to him.

  “Will your friend find us again?” she asks.

  Sisko cannot remember the Prophets ever asking him a question that was not rhetorical. It amuses him that Curzon is the one to mystify them. He is not surprised; if anyone can stump godlike aliens, it’s Curzon Dax.

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Sisko wonders if Jadzia will be moved enough to leave Sto-Vo-Kor and come searching for him. He thinks she probably will not. If Curzon had the pleasures of the Klingon afterlife in front of him, he might not have gotten bored enough to leave the Trill underworld to look for his old friend. “You’re sure I’m not dead?”

  “You are not dead.” Her hand tightens on him, a gesture of support, of comfort.

  Then perhaps Kasidy is not lost to him? And he’ll hold his new child someday, and once again hug Jake close to him to show his oldest that he will always be special in his heart. Sisko’s life beckons, and joy erupts inside him, and he can feel a note of caution coming from his mother, even though she is back in human form.

  “I should not wish for my life back?” he asks.

  “You wish for what was yours; that is understandable. But do not dwell on what you do not have. You will stay with us until you are ready to leave. Do not let longing for what was blind you to what can be.”

  “Spoken like a true prophet.”

  “It is truth. For the Sisko.” She smiles and it is a mysterious smile. It holds secrets and powers that he will probably get only the smallest taste of. Then she leans up and kisses his cheek, her lips lingering on his skin, soft and dry and giving off the faintest tingle.

  He feels infused with energy.

  She pulls away. “And it is a gift. From a mother to her son.”

  The Last Tree on Ferenginar:

  A Ferengi Fable From

  the Future

  Mike McDevitt

  Open your ears, children, and hear a tale from your uncle Grix. Long, long ago, probably more than a thousand fiscal cycles hence, the Ferengi were a great people. I mean, we’re a great people now, too, but back then we were really something. Ferengi are beings of beauty, brains, and strength. Where many species must blunder along at imposing, unwieldy heights, Ferengi are perfectly suited to lope sneakily in where they’re not wanted. No species can boast ears larger than their widespread hands but the Ferengi. Ferengi mouths sport rows of crooked, needle-sharp teeth to take a bite out of the competition. The piercing, beady eyes of a Ferengi can spot a missing wallet or dropped coin at great distances. Their noble faces are twisted in a perpetual sneer of virtue. The rough, orange hands of a Ferengi sport handsome green fingernails; the better to perpetually grasp at the things they desire. And a Ferengi’s desire would encompass the galaxy. Ferengi love to acquire, live to acquire, and love the word “acquire.”

  Now, in this long ago time, there was a wise, just, and exceedingly rich Ferengi Grand Nagus named Rom. He was tall in stature, cunning of mind, and had the lobes for business. This has also been said of his predecessor, the Grand Nagus Zek, and while it was literally true in Zek’s case, it was also true of Rom because Zek had said so. Loudly. And repeatedly. While throwing things.

  Rom had ascended to the nagul throne earlier that drizzly season amid much rejoicing over the abrupt and not at all worrisome transition to democracy and equal rights for females. It was said of Rom in the ancient datafiles that his approval rating was ninety-eight percent. This may even have been true: there were a lot of females and also a lot of weirdos and perverts who liked letting women wear clothes and have opinions. So, in those turbulent times, it was a blessing and a delight to have a strong nagus like Rom. A Ferengi’s Ferengi. His former career had been deobstructing waste extractors on a hu-mon space station, and before that he worked in the food service industry.

  Rom had a young, beautiful, and exceedingly rich wife named Leeta. Some say more exotic than beautiful. I mean, they say her ears were tiny, simply minute, even wee. They weren’t much bigger than her nose, which was sort of cute. Her skin was the color of fresh milk (not the beautiful brownish orange of a fresh bog), she had hair all over her head (not smooth and shiny like a normal female), and her teeth were blunt and pearly white (not in the least bit charmingly chaotic). Still, she was apparently quite a looker otherwise. Suffice it to say that the Nagus considered her a national treasure and, indeed, had her insured for 280 bars of latinum. Her former profession was dabo girl in a gaming establishment. As many of you children may have heard, a lita is a unit of currency on the planet Bajor, where Leeta happened to be from. I merely point it out because it is considered as ironically amusing as when Throk the Pusillanimous of the Ninth Era married an Earth banker whose name was Penny. Or Glint the Rotund who took as mate a Klingon accountant named D’Arsik. Actually this sort of thing happens a lot, but it is not really the point of this story.

  Rom and Leeta spent many hours of their day on giant golden thrones, holding court before various merchants, businessmen, nobles, luminaries, potentates, and bigwigs. Rom and Leeta heard requests, passed judgments, granted favors, and generally tried to keep awake.

  One dreary day, they granted an audience to
the head lumberjack and CEO of Slash-and-Burn Unlimited: Ogger the Logger, son of Bogger.

  Ogger was tall in stature, cunning of mind, and he had the lobes for business. I know I said all of those things about the nagus, too, but if you want to get technical about it, Ogger had them more. Ten times more. Maybe thirty. And he wanted to be sure everybody knew about it. He wore a big headskirt behind his big ears. He pretended to have killed the big furry animal whose pelt he sported in some big furry battle. He had a big plasma whip holstered in his big belt as a symbol of his long service in the Marauders. He even had big purple and orange boots on his big feet, because you know what they say about Ferengi with big feet—they stomp when they enter a room.

  Ogger had one request and he made it very loudly. Ogger loved to sink the huge, vibrating blade of his sonic chainsaw into young virgin wood. He had completed the paperwork required, waded through the extensive bureaucracy, and having been stymied for days by naysayers and buck-passers, he appealed directly to the nagus.

  Ogger wanted permission to cut down the last tree on the planet. It was on government land and apparently Rom owned the rights to it.

  Rom got most of the way through the sentence “Request granted” before Leeta interrupted him and whispered in his ear. Apparently she didn’t think much of the idea.

  Rom got most of the way through the sentence “Request denied” before Ogger interrupted him and offered Rom a vast sum of money.

  Leeta quickly turned it down.

  Ogger offered an even more outrageous sum and company stock as well.

  Leeta turned it down again.

  Ogger offered an absolutely exorbitant amount of cash, stock, and bonds, and also offered to purchase Leeta.

  Rom said he needed time to think about it and that Ogger was to come back the following week.

  Ogger pointedly asked Rom whether his female had forgotten the Second Rule of Acquisition.

  Rom took a guess and incorrectly quoted it as “Waste not lest ye be wasted?”

  Ogger sneered and correctly bellowed the Second Rule was “Money is everything!” loud enough to rattle the Tiburonian sorax sconces in the throne room. He angrily vowed to return with his Board of Underlings in one week’s time. He closed with the observation that Rom seemed to be a wise man who knew which side his bread was buttered on, and a man who enjoyed retaining the physical ability to butter his own bread with an undamaged hand. Then he slammed the extremely heavy door behind him.

  Leeta and Rom sent everyone else away early that day.

  Leeta’s people, the Bajorans, are known for their deeply held spiritual beliefs and devotion to nature. Leeta was not your typical Bajoran. Maybe Bajoran tradition didn’t approve of her former career as hostess in a gambling den, or of her interspecies marriage. I wouldn’t know, I never read about Bajoran traditions.

  But although Leeta was nontraditional for a Bajoran, she was absolutely bizarre as a Ferengi. Although she had a normal, healthy liking for pretty baubles, fine silks, and shiny trinkets, she also had an inexplicable heathen respect for intangibles like generosity. This generally made everyone uncomfortable and caused great gaping lulls in conversation with other Ferengi females.

  Leeta was a charter member of several activist groups. They included the Society to Save the Spotted Spoog (she thought they were cute), the Females for Atmosphere Restoration Today (desperately seeking a better acronym for a serious worldwide catastrophe), and CAIT: the Committee to Abolish Itchy Tweed. Tweed and Sons Clothiers had been forced by government mandate to add female apparel to their line last year, and in a fairly bald attempt to keep women naked, the entire feminine line was unbearably uncomfortable. Leeta had started the committee to protest this, and was terribly confused when her meetings were crashed by a large number of feline tourists from the planet Cait, who came mostly to complain about the rain.

  Suffice it to say Leeta had strong opinions about things when she thought them through. Strong opinions that would not have been tolerated from a female on Ferenginar less than a handful of years earlier. Strong opinions that her husband never went on record as ignoring, possibly because her husband tried to avoid going on record at all, and possibly because he was rumored to base his strong opinions on the opinions of whoever was standing closest to him and talking the loudest.

  Leeta was very loud when she wanted to be.

  She was loud that night with Rom in their sumptuous bed. (This is strictly conjecture, entirely off the record. If they had recording devices in their royal bedroom, such devices were strictly for personal use.) Leeta demanded to know how the Ferengi had managed to cut down every tree on their whole planet.

  Rom yawned and told her of the great big cutting machines, such as the SkumCo Lumber Vanquisher 20XJ-7, which are fifty mog across. He told her his grandfather had driven one, which consumed over thirteen agrosectors a day. He told her of the time he’d been a little tyke and his Grawmpee had hoisted him up, set him on the seat, and let him drive it all day long. Rom went on to tell Leeta how Grawmpee had spent that same day napping in the back seat and complaining about how lazy Rom’s father was. Then Rom waxed rhapsodic about how, for supper, his groogie had made Hupyrian corn bread, and gree worm pie, and nice, juicy tube grubs.

  Leeta patiently interjected that she had meant why every tree, and didn’t anybody want to keep some around to look at?

  Rom pointed out that you could look at them in holosuites if you want to. He added that his brother had written a holosuite program about a beautiful verdant green forest.

  Leeta was dubious because she knew Rom’s brother. She said as much.

  Rom told her it was a program based on old Earth myths, and that the trees all turned into nyads and dryads and nymphs, and they stripped off their leaves to frolic around.

  Leeta coughed loudly, asked him not to explain any more. She begged him to keep the last tree safe. She also suggested he get some new ones, too. She cajoled and suggested that if he brought in some Bajoran trees, flowers, and grass, she might go outside and frolic in them with him.

  She winked broadly at him and told him she’d even wear that dress he liked.

  Rom blinked back and asked if she meant no dress whatsoever.

  Leeta blushed and said, no, the other one.

  They got very little sleep that night and the next day Leeta realized they hadn’t settled the matter of the tree, either.

  So the next night, in bed, Leeta told Rom of a book she had read by a centuries-dead hu-mon named Henry. In the book, he’d talked a lot about birds and flowers and trees. He said things about living in the woods in harmony with nature, and to Leeta this had sounded good. Henry had gone on to indicate that modern life was too complicated and one should try to “simplify, simplify” in order to find the good inside oneself. All the sorts of things you’d expect from a hu-mon.

  Rom tried to understand her for some reason. Obviously, he couldn’t quite manage it. “Simplify” is the opposite of the very heart of “acquire.” But, though confused, Rom told Leeta he loved her and wouldn’t trade her on the black market for her weight in pure latinum.

  This is an example of how Rom was a very strange nagus indeed. A mass of pure latinum equivalent in weight to Leeta would have been enough to buy a holosuite with Leeta’s exact likeness and personality built in, with enough left over to buy most of the continent they lived on.

  Perhaps he said it to flatter her, since he must have known no Ferengi would ever have traded with him.

  In any case, Rom was soon snoring peacefully but Leeta still couldn’t rest. She decided to call in outside consultants.

  A few days later, the consultants flew in from Risa. (One day your uncle Grix will tell you a story about Risa and an all-female parrises squares team he met there one summer. When you’re older.)

  Among the strange choices Leeta made over this stupid tree, she was wise enough to call in the former Grand Nagus and the sharpest mind in history, now slightly past his prime—Zek.

  Zek
traveled with the aged female Ishka, who’d earned derision and fame in equal measure as the mother of Ferengi feminism and the mother (or Moogie, as he called her) of Rom. Some records from the period indicate Ishka wore the pants in that family, but most of the pictures show her in a dress. History can be confusing.

  Leeta related her concerns about the tree the very instant her relatives arrived at the palace. She pointed out that something should be done before Ogger returned at the end of the week. She was met with blank stares.

  Ishka tended to take Leeta’s side on issues of female rights, but she was still a Ferengi. Ishka told Leeta she should let the man have his tree and charge him handsomely for the privilege of cutting it down.

  Leeta was shocked. She thought Ishka had understood the purpose of the call and asked her why she’d flown all the way out there if not to save the tree.

  Ishka responded that she’d come to see her little Rommie-Wommie and went on to ask her little pookie whether Leeta’d been feeding him enough and didn’t he look less pudgy?

  Leeta turned to Zek and politely pled her case to him. She cajoled and begged and appealed to his sense of decency.

  The old Ferengi groused that she should go make him a pie.

  Leeta knew she needed more help.

  Now, the Nagus Rom had a brother…who for some reason liked to live on a space station many light-years away from his family and homeworld. His name was Quark, he ran a bar, and he was not happy to take a call from Leeta at his place of business. He paid little attention and ended the call as quickly as possible.

  Unfortunately for Quark, the space station’s security chief was also Quark’s erstwhile lover. Her name was Ro Laren, and she spent much of her time putting her ridged Bajoran nose in other people’s business. Ro asked who’d called.

  Quark grumbled something about subspace solicitors.

  Ro pointed out that the call had come from the Nagul Palace on Ferenginar. She thought that it had been Quark’s sister-in-law, and asked him why did he always try to lie to her?