Then both stopped, again in unison, and turned to glance at each other.
From opposite ends of the bar, they shared a warm, brotherly smile.
Chapter 23
I wonder if this species has a name, Odo thought. He waved his wide pectoral fins up, then down, less to propel than as a guiding force, as he sailed through the surrounding void. He’d first encountered a flock—herd?—school?—of this spaceborne life-form in the Alpha Omicron system, on an earlier trip across the cosmos. The creatures, with their horny carapace of silicates, actinides, and carbonaceous chondrites, resembled the theoretical offspring of a gigantic Terran horseshoe crab and a craggy asteroid. Despite this one’s bulk, it could move at a rapid clip, just shy of warp speed, which made it the perfect choice for what he hoped would be a quick round-trip to Ferenginar.
Once he reached the planet’s atmosphere, Odo transformed himself into a pale blue Ferengi scavenger stork and soared, unnoticed, over the capital city. At last he arrived at the lavish nagal residence and slipped unseen through a window into Zek and Ishka’s spacious suite in the building’s east wing.
Landing gracefully, Odo craned his long avian neck and bobbed his head in quick jerky movements as he analyzed his surroundings. He was in a somewhat musty sitting room filled with expensive but rather worn furniture. Not particularly impressive, he reflected, until he happened to glance at the high ceiling to see a beautiful fresco depicting a bevy of unclothed Ferengi females clustered around a handsomely garbed Ferengi male.
Is that Zek? Odo thought, despite not really wanting to know. He was so absorbed looking at the ceiling that he almost missed a sudden movement in the periphery of his vision: the business end of a large broom, wielded by Zek’s servant Maihar’du, headed straight toward him!
The Changeling quickly transformed into his more familiar humanoid appearance just before the broom came down.
“Maihar’du—it’s Odo!” he said, holding up a hand to prevent the impending swat. “Didn’t Zek tell you I was coming?”
The Hupyrian straightened, blinking rapidly, then bowed his head and raised his hands, palms upward, in a supplicating gesture.
“You weren’t expecting a big bird, is that it?” Odo interpreted.
Maihar’du nodded, wincing as though the movement irritated his swaddled throat. He mimed pouring a cup of tea for Odo, but the Changeling shook his head. “That’s very kind, but unnecessary,” he said. “You know why I’m here. Please take me to the scroll.”
He followed Maihar’du up a flight of stairs, down a long corridor, through a large anteroom, and finally into a tiny bedroom. Judging by the spartan decor and a few Hupyrian family holos, it was clearly the prune-faced servant’s quarters.
This room is hardly big enough for him to do anything other than sleep, Odo thought. He fully expected Maihar’du to activate a secret panel in the wall, or to open a locked cupboard, or even to pull a hidden box from under his bed. Instead, the Hupyrian pulled open a drawer in a wooden cabinet. Odo stepped forward to look—and saw a neatly folded stack of . . . socks.
The “safe place” that Zek had spoken of was, apparently, Maihar’du’s socks drawer. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be the first place anyone was likely to look, Odo thought.
Maihar’du reached in among dozens of pairs of footwear—socks of all stripes and colors, some clearly in better shape than others. He slowly moved pair after pair aside, until Odo noticed a glint of gold amidst the worsted. A second later Maihar’du unearthed a burnished metallic cylinder. He handed it to Odo, who examined the case very carefully, opened it, and slowly extracted what he’d been seeking. After a moment, he looked around the room but did not see what he needed. “Scanner?” he said. Maihar’du nodded and walked out of the room, Odo at his heels.
The pair walked back through the anteroom, back through the long corridor, back down the stairs, and then through another even longer corridor, at last reaching Zek’s messy office. From the looks of the room, the ex-Nagus hadn’t stopped by for some time. The Hupyrian retrieved something from the top of Zek’s desk and handed it to Odo, who looked at it skeptically, then shrugged and blew off what might have been weeks, months, or years of dust. He ran it over the scroll.
“I need to contact Deep Space 9,” he told Maihar’du. The silent man leaned forward and pressed a button on the side of the desk. The desk blotter slid back, and a communications screen rose, somewhat shakily, from the kneehole area. Odo noted that it was an ancient model, but he was able to activate it and, after a little manipulation, put through his call to Quark.
Chapter 24
“A fake? What do you mean it’s a fake? It can’t be a fake!”
From Odo and Maihar’du’s perspective, Quark’s horrified face sat in the center of a collage of horrified faces. The entire family, with the exception of Bena, was tightly crowded around the bartender in front of Quark’s office communications screen, mouths agape after hearing what they had assumed would be good news.
“I scanned it, Quark,” Odo explained calmly. “The latinum is pure. It’s clearly another forgery.”
Squeezed into the bottom of the transmitted collage, Zek wailed, “This is a disaster!”
“Yes, Zek,” Odo assured him, leaning closer to Zek’s antique. “And it’s your disaster. You gave someone the original scroll, and apparently you got back not one, but two forgeries. The question is, who did you give the original to?”
Now all those faces tilted downward, toward Zek. As they waited for his answer, their expressions became disturbingly accusative. The wizened little man seemed to shrink before Odo’s eyes. It was obvious that he wished he could disappear altogether.
Finally, he murmured exactly what everyone anticipated: “I don’t remember.”
Despite the fact that he had just fulfilled everyone’s expectations, the entire group moaned, even Maihar’du, despite the discomfort to his throat.
Ishka put her arm around her dear one. “Zekkie, listen to me. You remember doing it, right?”
He nodded, looking up at her with some trepidation, as if he expected her to cuff his ears.
Instead, Ishka smiled encouragingly. “You just don’t remember his name?”
“That’s right,” he responded. “I remember talking to someone but . . . I don’t remember his name. I met him during one of those times I was on the station. Here, at the bar. He was always at the bar. Very popular with the ladies.”
On the other end of the conversation, Odo listened carefully. “What did he look like?” he prompted.
“Big fellow,” Zek mumbled. “He was a big fellow . . . with freakishly little ears. Always talking. Yammer, yammer, yammer. And always bragging about the people he knew.” A thought popped into his head, and he turned it around for a moment before speaking again. Then he lifted his gnarled hand to point a knobby finger at the door leading out of Quark’s office. “And he always sat on a stool near the end of the bar.”
Leeta gasped. “That sounds like—”
“Morn!” Quark, Rom, Leeta, and Odo all said in unison.
“He told me he knew the best forger in the quadrant,” Zek said, smiling faintly. “So I asked him to do me a little favor.”
Chapter 25
On the backwater planet of Enterol VI, Fred calculated the long list of numbers for the third time. The sum remained the same. “You’re sure I can’t convince you to hang around a while longer?” he said. “Spring is coming. Lots of really good mud wallows, if you’re into that kind of thing.” He wiggled his antennae suggestively. But the big guy just shook his massive head.
“Suit yourself,” Fred said. He turned the padd around so that it was visible to his fleshy friend. “Six hundred and eighty-two credits,” the bartender said. “I gave you the ‘friends and family’ discount.”
The customer nodded appreciatively and reached into his pocket, pulling out a few slips of g
old-pressed latinum and some other odds and ends of alien currency. Grunting impatiently, he requested an empty shot glass.
“A what?” said Fred, thinking he’d misunderstood some colloquialism that originated in a different region of space.
The customer repeated his request.
“Okay, okay,” said Fred with a shrug. He retrieved a tiny glass and set it on the bar, then watched in fascination as the big guy closed his eyes, took a few shallow breaths, and regurgitated a tiny amount of liquid into the glass.
Fred picked up the glass and held it close to one of his multifaceted eyes. “That . . . that’s latinum. Pure liquid latinum. Looks like—yup—right on the money! To the millicredit!”
His customer laughed heartily, then asked a question.
“Nah, I’m not grossed out,” said Fred, transferring the latinum to a flask he kept behind the counter. “I have customers with worse liquids coming out of their mouths, if you know what I mean. This one guy—”
But his friend’s attention had drifted to the big screen over the bar, where the familiar interlocking polygon logo of the Federation News Service was once again in view. Fred saw the familiar female humanoid reporter and automatically turned up the volume.
“—Darvis for FNS. Yet another shocking twist in the saga of the missing priceless scroll of Gint, the first Ferengi Nagus. FNS has learned that a second forgery has been found! This one was in the possession of former Grand Nagus Zek, who is believed to have commissioned both forgeries over fourteen years ago! Where the real scroll is today is a question that no one seems able to answer. But that’s not stopping certain interested parties from making guesses.”
Eisla’s feed segued to an interview she’d conducted earlier on the docking ring, where a shuttle was about to depart from the station. “I understand you have firsthand knowledge of what went on the night of the embassy dedication,” she addressed a young Ferengi. “Do you believe that former Nagus Zek and current Nagus Rom collaborated in this scheme to defraud the Ferengi people?”
“Oh, no—Zek can barely find his way out of the turbolift,” said the Ferengi. “And Rom doesn’t have the lobes to plan something like this. I’d lay odds that the real culprit is Ambassador Quark.”
Eisla nodded, as if she’d suspected that all along. “The Ferengi Board of Liquidators is meeting in special session this evening,” she noted. “And I’ve heard that the Ferengi Commerce Authority is forming a special task force to get to the bottom of this.”
“That’s right,” the young Ferengi said enthusiastically. “And when I get back to Ferenginar, I’m going straight to them, to tell them everything I know.”
Eisla smiled. “Well, thank you very much, Mister . . .”
“Shmenge, FCA,” he said with a huge grin. “Well . . . future FCA, that is.”
The feed returned to Eisla, live on the Plaza. “At this time, the status of the two Nagi is unclear. They remain on Space Station Deep Space 9, but whether they—or Ambassador Quark—will be permitted to remain here or be extradited has yet to be announced. We’ll continue reporting as further details become known.”
Abruptly, the big man watching the newsbreak slammed his meaty fist against the countertop and launched into a blazing litany of profanities. He talked too fast for Fred to discern exactly what he was so worked up about, but the Enteroli did manage to parse one sentence:
That larcenous little rat kept the original!
And before Fred could wish him a pleasant journey, his former favorite customer raced out the door.
Chapter 26
Bartleby laid the dainty brush of drakoulias hair on an oily cleaning cloth and leaned back on his stool to examine his work. To his right, the ancient Halkan still life looked beautiful, but he knew that the copy in front of him far surpassed the original. Still, his job was not to surpass but simply to match. He reached among his paint supplies, picked up his alterizing beacon, and carefully focused its rays on the damp oils. As the colors transformed, the forger yawned, already disinterested in the project. The job complete, he grabbed his cane, limped over to his desktop comm, and opened a signal to the client to let him know that his special order was ready.
He was just about to go into the kitchen to brew a cup of Bajoran deka tea when the bell at his front door sounded. Bartleby didn’t get many walk-in clients, so he pressed a button on the monitor and took a cautious peek at his visitor. A smile came to his face as he recognized the large figure. He remembered him as a storyteller who would make the sharing of his deka tea a lively repast. Leaning heavily on his cane, Bartleby made his way through his hovel and opened the stout wooden door.
“Come in, Morn,” the elderly Kalpazan said happily. “It’s been a long time. Do you have some business for me?”
Morn had to walk carefully, stooped over, in order to fit his ample body under the low ceiling. But once the pair was settled at Bartleby’s kitchen table, he felt comfortable enough. Of course, he hadn’t come here for tea, or for comfort. As the old gentleman set a plate of torpla tarts on the table, the Lurian pulled a padd out of his pocket and thrust it in front of Bartleby’s face. Activating the padd, he ran the FNS newsfeed that mentioned Zek’s forged scroll—the one that, years earlier, Bartleby had told Morn was the original.
“Oh, my,” the Kalpazan said. “That’s terrible. You must have given him the wrong one.”
Morn then called up the earlier FNS feed about the first forgery discovery. When it ended, the Lurian leaned toward the tiny creature, looked him straight in the eye, and held up two fingers. It was impossible to mistake his meaning. He’d received two forgeries from Bartleby, rather than one original scroll and one forgery.
Bartleby’s smile soured a bit. “Well, I certainly can’t explain this,” he said, hemming and hawing while his fingers toyed with the handle of his tea mug. “Someone must have gotten into the Nagus’s palace and taken the original sacred scroll. You know, you just can’t trust—”
Morn got to his feet, ducking to make sure he didn’t hit his head on the beam above. He wrapped the thick fingers of his heavy hand across Bartleby’s scrawny shoulder. He didn’t squeeze; he didn’t lift; he didn’t threaten. He just left his hand there. Heavy. And that was enough.
“Okay, you got me.” The Kalpazan sighed. “I suppose you want to know where it is. I didn’t sell it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
As Bartleby attempted to stand, Morn released the grip on his shoulder. The forger led Morn to the far end of his studio and stopped in front of a secure-looking door—a very short door, suitable only for beings under four feet tall. “You’ll have to lower your head,” Bartleby said, deactivating a number of locks. At last, the door opened and he stepped in.
The Lurian discovered that he had to lower more than his head. He had to hunch over, practically crawling, to follow. When the automatic lights flashed on, Morn gasped.
Works of antiquity covered the walls and the floor, some piled carefully, others strewn helter-skelter on top of the piles. Morn recognized an urn of Bolian crystal steel that he knew would be considered priceless outside of this room. Other items he’d never seen before, but something told him that they all were of extreme value or rarity. Bartleby shifted a number of pieces so that they could move deeper into the room. Finally, he stopped before a beautiful rolltop desk.
“Here we are,” he said, tugging open a drawer. “Legend has it that this desk once belonged to Kiri-kin-tha, the Vulcan scholar. Of course, that legend might be unreal.” He chuckled at his own wit, but, when he saw that Morn didn’t seem amused, briefly fell silent.
The tiny Kalpazan began pulling artifacts out of the drawer, but with no clean surface to lay them on, he turned to Morn. “Here, you have big hands—hold this,” he said, thrusting into the Lurian’s open palms a small marble bust of an Andorian woman, a golden dagger inlaid with Klingon jewels, and a necklace made of Spican flame g
ems.
Morn stared at Bartleby quizzically. The Kalpazan shrugged and stated, “Because they’re pretty. So I felt compelled to keep them. Collecting pretty things is in my species’ nature. I suppose that’s why there aren’t many of us left.” He cast a look at Morn and sighed. “Most advanced civilizations frown upon our proclivities.”
At last he said, “Here it is, safe and sound.” He lifted up a cylinder elaborately decorated in ancient Ferengi motifs and cradled it in his arms. “Why should such beauty be locked away in a vault forever?” he asked quietly, as though talking to the artifact rather than the Lurian.
Morn glanced around at the veritable warehouse of beautiful objects that Bartleby was hoarding, thinking that being stored in this room wasn’t much different than being locked in a vault. But when he voiced that feeling aloud, Bartleby just looked at him blankly, unaware of the irony.
Reluctantly, the Kalpazan offered the cylinder to Morn—who immediately accepted it, dropping the antiquities he’d been holding onto a pile of folded tapestries. Pulling the scroll out of the container, he unrolled it a few inches. Then he examined it with a small scanner from his pocket.
“Really?” Bartleby said, clearly offended. “You think I’d hide another forgery in here, with all my treasures?”
Morn grunted and concentrated on studying the information that appeared on the scanner. At last he nodded, satisfied. After placing the scroll back into the protective cylinder, he gestured toward the other items in the room and, unable to bypass a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, asked a question.
“Yes,” Bartleby answered, always the businessman. “I’m willing to consider offers. I love each and every piece in here, but . . .” He sighed. “I’m getting old. Do you see anything of interest?”
Rules of Accusation Page 11
