Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Lengends of the Ferengi
Page 6
Soon bottle after bottle of this natural treat was rolling off the assembly line, all featuring the smiling faces of Vorp and Sluggo, pond scum dripping from their chins.
And so it went, for forty years. The two Ferengi bought a huge mansion and lived there with their only companions, a menagerie of albino fangcats (all of whom developed a taste for Eelwasser). People shook their heads in confusion at their unconventional life-style, but one thing was certain…. Vorp and Sluggo were friends.
That is, until Slug-o-Cola. A consortium of beverage makers, brought to the brink of bankruptcy by the perennial boom market for Eelwasser, finally came up with a new drink that beat Eelwasser in hundreds of clandestine taste tests. But the beverage makers knew they needed a marketing gimmick to overcome Eelwasser’s media domination. And so, in one of the most cunning coups in Ferengi business history, they secretly offered Sluggo sixty-five percent of the profits from their new beverage in exchange for being allowed to name it after him. The thought of only one algae-stained grin on a beverage label appealed to Sluggo. As he so succinctly put it, “Sixty-five percent beats fifty percent any day.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Sluggo moved out of the mansion. Slug-o-Cola grabbed a seventy-one percent share of the beverage market, and Vorp died alone and heartbroken, devoured by a horde of ravenous albino fangcats (which he had grown too despondent to feed).
Vorp had learned a hard lesson. And he ordered it inscribed on his Memorial. So if you ever visit the Bowog Bog, put on your wading boots and slog your way to the Vorp Memorial. There you will find, carved for all to see, Vorp’s immortal last words.
Words of wisdom which soon became the One Hundred Twenty-First Rule of Acquisition:
“Everything is for sale. Even friendship.”
Always remember: Merchandise is your friend (Terry Farrell).
RULE
#123
Fragments from the diary of Rauplop of Rangahorn:
DAY ONE: Today, after long preparation, we have started our descent. The words that Professor Dverl, in his heavy Shploonish Mountain Accent, spoke those many weeks ago still ring in my ears, “Come mit me on a churney to der zenter of Ferenginar!” At least, that’s what I think he said. Who can tell with that accent?
DAY FIVE: Still going down.
DAY SIXTEEN: Reached the shore of an underground sea. Built a boat of buoyant pumice stone and set sail. Got violently seasick. Threw up all over Professor Dverl. He shouted something at me which I couldn’t understand.
DAY EIGHTEEN: Left sea behind. Found a cave full of never-before-seen wild fungi. Said Professor Dverl, “Behold der myzteriez of der unterverlt!” Took samples.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR: Ate fungi samples. Yummy.
DAY THIRTY: Fungi poisoning subsiding. Feel much better.
DAY FORTY-SIX: Professor Dverl has finally reached a decision. We will take the “looft pazzagevey!” Personally, I would have gone right. But he’s the Professor.
DAY FIFTY-ONE: Still hopelessly lost. Professor now claims to have said “richt pazzagevey” but I’m sure he said “looft.”
DAY FIFTY-NINE: Where the hell are we? Food running low. Professor going blind.
DAY SEVENTY-FOUR: Stumbled upon skeleton of a large non-Ferengi humanoid. Rotting nametag on underwear said “Saknussen.” What could it mean?
DAY EIGHTY-THREE: Professor Dverl, though blind, believes he sees the “glow of licht” coming from one of the many tunnels. Maybe he’s right. Will wait another day before eating him.
DAY EIGHTY-FOUR: Professor Dverl was right. There was a glow. But it wasn’t a way out. It was a vast deposit of pure latinum. I am rich. And very hungry.
DAY NINETY: Professor Dverl picked clean. He vuz goot! Still hungry.
DAY ONE HUNDRED TWENTY THREE: Weak. Starving. Still rich. Haunted by obscure Saknussen reference. Can’t go on.
Thus ends the sad tale of Rauplop of Rangahorn. Perhaps you know it from the famous holosuite drama starring Flynk as Professor Dverl and Gormie Gormatop as Rauplop. But trust me, the holodrama’s good, but the Rule of Acquisition is even better.
Scribbled under day eighty-five in Rauplop’s journal, we see the first mention of the One Hundred Twenty-Third Rule of Acquisition:
“Even a blind man can recognize the glow of latinum.”
Latinum isn’t just a way of life. It’s food for avarice.
RULE
#139
Okay, time for a little Ferengi language lesson. “Wife” in Ferengi is booplop, from boop, which means “to serve,” and lop, which means “one who does a certain thing.” “Brother” in Ferengi is dooplop, from doop, which means “to get,” and, of course, lop.
So, to Ferengi, there is no more obvious Rule than “Booplop boop, dooplop doop.”
Or, in your less poetic human dialect, the One Hundred Thirty-Ninth Rule of Acquisition:
“Wives serve, brothers inherit.”
Why is this Ferengi smiling? Three words: Next of Kin.
RULE
#141
Don’t take this personally, but …
Chances are you paid full price for this book. This makes me very happy. This makes Behr and Wolfe very happy. And this makes our publisher especially happy. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, it shows once again just how ignorant you hew-mons can be. If only you had looked at this page first. If only you had absorbed its profound wisdom before …
Hey … come to think of it … some of you might not have bought this book yet. Some of you might be reading it in the store. Stop that! What are you? Fatheads? I warned you about this in my last book. No reading in bookstores! Go pay for this right now, then come back and read the rest of this rule.
Okay. Have you paid now?
Yes?
Good.
Read on.
And the next time you buy something, remember the One Hundred Forty-First Rule of Acquisition:
“Only fools pay retail.”
Ferengi can smell an easy mark a kilometer away.
RULE
#144
Annual report of the Ferengi Society for the Care and Feeding of Bajoran War Orphans
Submitted for FCA approval
Statement 157-B-878/THX-1138
Gross revenue collected: 117,259,000 sgpl
Expenditures:
Solicitations: 27,903,000 sgpl
Advertising: 31,822,000 sgpl
Monthly Fund-Raising Dinner 12 months at 121,000 sgpl/month = 1,452,000 sgpl
Royalties Paid on Success’s song, “One for the Children and a Dozen for Me,” theme song of the FSCFBWO: 9,222,000 sgpl
Office Supplies: 11,035,000 sgpl
Logo Design for T-Shirts: 4,871,000 sgpl
Telethon Expenditures, including rental of Tower of Commerce assembly hall: 17,008,000 sgpl
Salary of Telethon MC, Grymi, lead windsqueezer of Success: 3,500,000 sgpl
Hotel bill for Telethon MC: 1,253,648 sgpl
Misc. Administrative Expenses: 4,957,000 sgpl
Salary of Board Members FSCFBWO: 57,871,000 sgpl
Total Expenditures: 170,894,648 sgpl
Net Profits
Number of Bajoran Orphans: 235,956
Amount of money owed to the FSCFBWO per War Orphan: 227 sgpl
Figures don’t lie. And neither does the One Hundred Forty-Fourth Rule of Acquisition:
“There’s nothing wrong with charity … as long as it winds up in your pocket.”
A Ferengi feeling charitable need look no further than his own mirror.
RULE
#162
When my father, Keldar, as you hew-mons would say, “bit the dust,” I was bereft. I was still a relatively young Ferengi, and I was concerned that I would not have anyone to instruct me in the finer points of Ferengi philosophy. Then I remembered that my father and latinum were never exactly on a first-name basis, and I didn’t feel so bad. After all, I was no worse off without him than I was with him.
Needless to say, I didn’t have much hope when it came to the opening of my Legacy Chest, the gift every Ferengi father leaves behind for his son. Sure enough, when I opened the Chest what did I find? Incriminating documents that would allow me to blackmail the Grand Nagus? No. Deeds to tracts of lands containing rich mineral deposits? Not a chance. Star charts indicating the location of the lost latinum mine of Chimera P.? Not even close. A snailosaurus-bone beetle snuff case, hand-carved by the finest Lissepian artisans and encrusted with fabulous jewels and latinum filigree spelling out the name “Keldar?” Yeah, right. My father never even used beetle snuff. So what did he leave behind? One word … Headskirts. Dozens and dozens of headskirts. And I don’t even wear headskirts. Fafa knew that.
My first thought was to throw myself onto the floor and kick and scream until the Blessed Exchequer descended from the Divine Treasury and gave me my heart’s desire. So I kicked and I screamed, but no one came. Finally, hoarse and exhausted, I grabbed one of the headskirts to dry my tears. And then I noticed something. There was writing on that headskirt. “I survived the Bowog Flood!” The Bowog flood? I’d learned about that in school. In 17998, the Bowog Dam mysteriously burst, only days after its warranty expired, and thousands of Ferengi drowned. Had my father really been at Bowog? Then I noticed another skirt, an ancient threadbare garment bearing the motto, “I Stood Tall During the Great Earthquake of 12023!” Soon I realized that all of the skirts bore witness to one great disaster or another: “I Stayed Cool During the Eruption of Mount Tubatuba!” “I Kept Solvent Despite the Financial Collapse of 15799!” “I Dodged the Timber Weevil Stampede! Weevilville, 9183.” A cold shiver went down my spine. Could my father have been some kind of foul specter, moving from one disaster to another throughout Ferengi history? Or did he just have bad taste in clothes?
But then it hit me like a head butt from a Klingon. My father was trying to teach me one final lesson. Because each headskirt had a price tag attached. Which meant someone had bought them. And more important, someone had sold them. In the midst of all that suffering and death, someone had been racking their brains to come up with a nice catchy slogan to put on a headskirt.
My father had passed on to me a vivid illustration of the One Hundred Sixty-Second Rule of Acquisition:
“Even in the worst of times, someone makes a profit.”
At times like this, you have to wonder if there’s any profit in, say, the extermination business…?
RULE
#177
It’s no secret that the Tholians hate us. They consider us, and I quote, “A foul blight on the face of the universe. A pernicious infestation that must be eliminated.” And although we don’t have many catchy slogans about it, we don’t like them either. But what we do like is Tholian silk. And the Tholians … well, they have an absolute mania for Ferengi bog moss. Maybe they eat it. Maybe they line their nests with it. Frankly, we don’t know, and we don’t care. We just know they can’t get enough of the stuff. So the trade routes between Tholis and Ferenginar swarm with ships hauling bog moss one direction and silk the other. It’s been this way for centuries. The Tholians claim they will bury us. And maybe one day they will. Or maybe one day the Ferengi will tire of their crystalline insults and launch a vast armada of Marauders to reduce their homeworld to a cinder. (Hey, it could happen.) But in the meantime, I want my suits made of Tholian silk and they can have all the bog moss they want.
After all, the One Hundred Seventy-Seventh Rule of Acquisition clearly states:
“Know your enemies … but do business with them always.”
Hew-mons have devils. Ferengi have FCA liquidators.
RULE
#181
Every Ferengi schoolboy knows the story of Milch the Wanderer. How he traveled the spaceways, meeting primitive aliens and selling them Ferengi beads and trinkets in exchange for … well, whatever they had. Who can forget how he purchased the entire planet of Wohoken for a single crate of Ferengi tooth sharpeners? Yes, when it came to shafting the natives, Milch had the magic touch.
Needless to say, Milch was one of Ferenginars greatest heroes. Even to this day, every Ferengi hopes to make the pilgrimage to Crullus Prime, to climb the Stairs of Gilfoyle, and to stand on the Stone of Deaver, where the Crullers, realizing they’d just sold their entire female population for a fruit basket, finally ended Milch’s glorious career (not to mention his life). It’s a long journey to Crullus. But it’s worth it. Because it was there, on that holy spot, before the flames consumed him, that Milch uttered his famous last words (aside, that is, from “Yooowwwch!”).
And my eyes tear and my breast swells with pride as I recall Milch’s final defiant cry, as recorded in the One Hundred Eighty-First Rule of Acquisition:
“Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.”
Hew-mons used to talk about “an honest buck.” Hew-mons are funny.
RULE
#189
TO: CADET FIRST CLASS NOG
STARFLEET ACADEMY
PIKE HALL, ROOM 714
SAN FRANCISCO, CA941165F8911
NORTH AMERICAN ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT
EARTH, SECTOR 001
UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS
Dear Nog,
Just heard the news from your father I have to admit. I was more than a little concerned that attending Starfleet Academy would dull your instincts for profit. But to find out that you’ve been implicated as the leader of a dom-jot gambling ring among the cadets…. I am SO PROUD.
Now Rom seems to think that you’re concerned about how this might affect your Starfleet career. I hope he has as usual misread the situation. But on the slim chance you may actually be a bit worried … let me put things in perspective. Sure, you may have lost some status among the other cadets. And, yes, this incident will undoubtedly go down on your permanent record. And perhaps in some not-so-far-distant future, human-o-centric powers-that-be may use this as an excuse to prevent you from achieving that Captaincy you have your heart set on. But believe me when I tell you … It’s worth it.
At least. I certainly hope it was worth it. I’m told you can make a lot of money hustling dom-jot. If you need investment counseling, you know who to call.
Your loving uncle,
Quark
That nephew of mine may have been corrupted by Federation values, but at least he apparently still remembers the One Hundred Eighty-Ninth Rule of Acquisition:
“Let others keep their reputation … you keep their latinum.”
There’s nothing like a little youthful exuberance.
RULE
#192
More correspondence from my files:
TO: KALAW, SON OF LORKA
C/O KALAW’S KLINGON KITCHEN
THE PROMENADE, LEVEL 1, SECTION D
DEEP SPACE 9
FROM: QUARK, SON OF KELDAR
PROPRIETOR, QUARK’S BAR AND GRILL (ETC.)
THE PROMENADE, LEVEL 1, SECTION A
DEEP SPACE 9
RE: LOST PROPERTY
Kalaw, I have searched high and low throughout the bar, and I still cannot find the jeweled Klingon dagger that you allege to have lost in my establishment. I feel compelled to remind you of our strict “no liability” policy in regard to such circumstances. If you wish to avoid such incidents in the future, I suggest you refrain from carrying such expensive items with you when you go out drinking. You might also consider not imbibing quite so much bloodwine. You were unconscious for at least two hours before I was able to convince Morn to carry you home. Personally, I prefer to be awake when I’m around Morn, but he was the only one strong enough for the job. Rest assured, however, that if the dagger shows up, you will be the first to know.
TO: STOL, SON OF PROMP
STOL’S HOUSE OF COLLECTIBLES
1515 SPLORPLOP CIRCLE
MEYUPYUP DISTRICT
ROPLERMOOP CITY RC11 98C F29
FERENGINAR
FROM: QUARK, SON OF KELDAR
PROPRIET
OR, QUARK’S BAR AND GRILLE (ETC.)
THE PROMENADE, LEVEL 1, SECTION A
DEEP SPACE 9
RE: NEW MERCHANDISE
Cousin! All sorts of good stuff for you this week. Five Bajoran earrings, one combadge, a tricorder, a gross of self-sealing stem bolts, and best of all … a genuine jeweled Klingon dagger. And the best part is, it’s in perfect condition! It was owned by a chef, and he never used it for anything except cutting gagh! The jewels alone must be worth a dozen strips of latinum. I await your offer.
Best.
Quark
P.S. Still keeping an eye out for those Jem’Hadar breastplates you’re looking for. I’ll let you know.
There’s nothing quite so satisfying as the proper application of the One Hundred Ninety-Second Rule of Acquisition:
“Never cheat a Klingon … unless you can get away with it.”
Business with a Klingon invariably involves a minor misunderstanding or two along the way.
RULE
#194
Friends, now that you’ve almost finished reading The Legends of the Ferengi, I’m sure you’re eager to pay Quark’s a personal visit. In order to better serve you when you arrive, please complete the following form, and send it to:
QUARK’S
c/o Starbase Deep Space 9
Bajor Sector, Alpha Quadrant
You’ll be glad you did.
NAME:
SPECIES:
OCCUPATION:
EXPECTED DATES OF VISIT:
FAVORITE FOOD:
FAVORITE DRINK:
ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10 (10 BEING HIGHEST) HOW MUCH DO YOU LIKE:
GAMBLING:
DABO GIRLS: