by S. D. Perry
“They’d let you leave Bajor?”
“After all I’ve done here? And with the inevitable withdrawal looming? We’re not prisoners, darling. Of course they’d let me go.” He touched her again. “We could go together.”
Kalisi’s thoughts were so far from their relationship that she flinched at his touch. She was thinking that she had to be mad, that she’d finally lost her mind, after all. It was the only way she could account for her sudden decision to act. To rid herself of that small Bajoran face in her mind’s eye.
It won’t hurt a bit, she thought, and let him slide his hands around her waist and up her back, arching to his touch.
15
“Have a seat, Odo.” The prefect gestured to the chair opposite his desk, and Odo looked at it.
“No, thank you,” he said. He preferred to remain standing.
Dukat’s eyeridge rose, an expression that Odo believed conveyed surprise, though he didn’t know why Dukat would be surprised. He decided maybe he’d better sit, after all.
“That’s better,” the prefect said, smiling now. “Would you care for anything to drink?”
Odo shook his head. “My physiology doesn’t require it,” he told Dukat, not for the first time.
“Oh, yes. Of course. My mistake.”
Odo spoke. “My notes regarding the investigation are ready for your review. I still haven’t found a definitively guilty suspect—”
“Forget the investigation. It’s the death of a single Bajoran man. You did your best, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Odo wondered if Dukat meant to dismiss him from the position for his failure to solve the murder. “I wanted to be sure that I had the right person, you understand, and I haven’t satisfactorily—”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Odo.” Dukat shook his head slowly, folded his arms across his chest. “It’s difficult business, running a place like this, and trying to keep order in place on the whole of Bajor at the same time. Sometimes, certain things have to be overlooked, I suppose.”
“Murder?”
Dukat went on as if he hadn’t heard. “My superiors assign more responsibility to me than I believe I can accept. Events I have no control over…especially not with the limited funds and resources I am appropriated.”
“Indeed,” Odo mumbled, wondering why Dukat had called him here.
“If they would only agree to send a new survey team!” Dukat had unfolded his arms, was gesturing with his hands in the air. “There are brilliant profits to be made, Odo!”
“Profits,” Odo repeated. He thought he knew what the word meant, though he couldn’t remember hearing of it from any of the Bajorans he had known.
“Yes,” Dukat said. “Profits. Monetary wealth.”
Odo nodded. “You can exchange these things for goods and services…”
“And power, yes.” Dukat nodded. “Ask the Ferengi if you need a better explanation.” A corner of his mouth curved upward as he said it, apparently amused. “You’ll make an excellent chief of security if you have no motivation for profit for yourself.”
Odo considered this. “Why?”
Dukat continued to smile. “Because profit is what drives men to immorality.”
“Immorality. So. The Bajorans…they fight your soldiers and steal from you—for profit?” Odo already knew that they did not. Although he was still not entirely certain why they did fight the Cardassians, he knew it was not for profit. He was curious to see what Dukat’s estimation of the Bajoran motive amounted to.
Dukat’s smile slipped away. “In a roundabout sort of way,” he said.
Odo noted the lie to himself. He no longer doubted that Dukat had a shifting sense of integrity. He had come to feel, lately, that his attraction to the Bajoran people had much to do with their general lack of facade. He believed them, when they spoke.
“It is topics just as this one that I fear will prevent me from performing my duties to your satisfaction,” he told the prefect. “Though I have lived among humanoids for some time…I still find your motivations to be puzzling on occasion.”
Dukat nodded. “You were, in a sense, raised by a Bajoran,” he observed, “but you are not a Bajoran, and you never will be.”
Odo said nothing, feeling an odd pang of something like regret, and Dukat smiled again.
“Well, Odo,” he said, “if you have questions, you’d do better to ask me than anyone else.”
“Yes,” Odo said, but he thought he’d probably be better off leaving his questions unanswered than to seek Dukat’s advice.
He waited to be dismissed, but the prefect wasn’t done with him, continuing to speak about political matters that held no interest for Odo. It was difficult to remain captive to Dukat’s speech when Odo didn’t understand half of it and couldn’t begin to imagine what would constitute an appropriate reply, but he realized, after a time, that Dukat wasn’t in the least bit interested in Odo’s opinion. He wanted an audience. In his own way, Odo decided, Dukat was just as lonely as he himself sometimes felt.
It took the prefect a long time to finish his diatribe, and when he finally seemed to run out of steam, Odo took his leave of the Cardassian, seeking out the Ferengi bartender. He found him where he expected him to be, tending to his establishment, making animated conversation with the people who frequented the place. Odo regarded the Ferengi with curiosity; here was a humanoid who looked quite distinctly different from the Bajorans or the Cardassians, and yet, Odo knew that Quark was more like the others than he was like Odo. There was nobody on the station even remotely like Odo—not even the Lurian.
“Can I interest you in an image capture?” The Ferengi spoke without quite looking at Odo, wiping glasses and lining them up behind the bar.
“No, thank you,” Odo replied automatically, without fully comprehending what the Ferengi had just asked him. “That is…What do you mean?”
“You’ve been staring at me such a long time, I thought you might like a permanent keepsake of my countenance.”
Odo frowned. He knew that he was supposed to be fostering an atmosphere of authority here, and it wouldn’t do to have this Ferengi speak to him this way, especially not in front of the Cardassian patrons. “I just wanted to let you know…that I’m watching you.” He did his best to sound menacing, though he wasn’t sure if his effort had any effect until the Ferengi responded.
Quark turned and smiled so wide it looked like it must be painful for him. “I invite you to watch away,” he said lightly, spreading his hands. “You’ll find that I’m a law-abiding resident of the station, as eager to maintain order as anyone else.”
Odo narrowed his eyes. “I doubt that very much,” he said, his voice hard. He studied the Ferengi’s expression, looking for indicators of dishonesty. He had watched the Bajorans so carefully that he was learning to distinguish among the subtle nuances of their facial repertoire. The Ferengi was different, but not by much. The alien’s grin quavered, almost imperceptibly, but Odo could see that he was frightened. He turned back to the rows of brightly colored glasses that framed the bar, suddenly very interested in rearranging them.
“I’ve come to ask some advice,” Odo said, hastily changing his tone. “Dukat suggested that you could elaborate something for me.”
“What might that be?” Quark asked him, turning back to face him again.
“Profit.”
This time, the Ferengi’s smile was genuine. “Well! You’ve come to the right place!” Quark insisted. “Have a seat—this could take me awhile.”
Odo didn’t need to sit, but he knew it would make the other man more comfortable, and so he sat, listening intently as Quark launched into a very detailed explanation of interest rates, investments, profit margins, and supply and demand.
“They say the market is driven by an invisible hand,” the Ferengi told Odo in a near whisper, as if he were about to share something very confidential. “But we Ferengi know better than that. The market is driven by greed, pure and simple! Greed is the original r
enewable resource, Constable—may I call you Constable? It is the thing that literally makes the universe expand.”
“The universe expand?”
“Whatever—it’s an expression,” Quark said. “All you need to remember is greed. Greed equals profits, in the long run. You see?”
“Yes,” Odo said, though he actually didn’t. Apparently, greed was the need to…acquire things. Things that humanoids used to…make themselves comfortable. Odo had little perception of the humanoid estimation of “comfort,” though he imagined it was something like what he felt when he was regenerating. Still, humanoids seemed to require a great many things to maintain their comfort. Odo wondered if perhaps Dukat was right about Odo’s own need—or lack of it—for profits. All that Odo required to be comfortable was a suitable vessel for regeneration—and perhaps, the company of at least one agreeable person. As the Ferengi continued to gabble about profits and acquisition and luxury items, Odo thought that it might take him a very long time to understand humaoid motivation, after all.
Kira noted that the Bajoran side of the station seemed a consolidation of the very worst effects of the occupation; the tightly-packed living quarters and strict regulations gave it the appearance of the worst ghettos in the cities planetside, only more desperate, somehow—probably because there was very little chance of escaping. Throngs of people drifted about the darkened Promenade, most of them with a gaunt and miserable set to their features. Kira wondered how long it would be before she started to look just like them—or maybe she already did.
Not much longer, thank the Prophets. A few more days and she’d be slipped onto a transport, and then she’d be home.
Many Bajorans were sitting, or even lying along the Promenade, some of them with rough blankets spread out offering food and wares for sale, some of them simply resting after a hard day’s work in the ore processors. Farther back, a few people had lit cooking fires in old shipping containers, for there were only a handful of replicators on this side of the station, and the mine workers were not allowed to have food in their sleeping quarters, since it was thought to provoke fights and encourage the voles that lived in the maintenance conduits. Kira sidestepped the idle bodies of young and old as she passed.
She walked past several shops, including that of the slain chemist and his wife, and a fairly clean eatery that was primarily patronized by some of the upper-echelon Bajorans who lived here. People who had just received their wages might come here to waste a week’s pay on a single meal, but the clientele was mostly composed of Bajoran merchants, overseers, and probably criminals. Just beyond it was a humbler establishment, a bare room that served weak teas and soups on acceptance of Cardassian-issued ration cards. It was here that Kira was to meet with the constable again. She would have preferred to avoid this encounter, but she had little hope of evading him on this self-contained facility, and to ignore his summons was to invite further attention to herself. It was best to find out what he wanted.
She supposed she should have been afraid that Odo was going to arrest her, but she also supposed he would have done it less ceremoniously than by sending someone to find her and ask if she would meet him at this location. Why not just burst into ore processing with a phaser? No, Kira felt somewhat confident that this meeting concerned something else, though what it was, she could not say.
She spotted him, sitting erect at a table, looking around the room in an unnatural, abrupt manner. He had no food in front of him, which made her feel inexplicably nervous, as though he did not expect this interview to last long. “Don’t you want anything to eat?” she asked him, taking the seat opposite him.
“No,” he said. “I only want to ask you something.”
“I’ve told you all I know about Vaatrik,” she said. “What more do you want with me?”
“My investigation into the chemist’s death is over,” Odo told her, and she felt herself tense further at the welcome news. Was this about the resistance, then? She had admitted her involvement with them, though she had done it to keep his attention from Vaatrik’s death. She believed he would not turn her in, though she was not sure why.
“Go on.”
He blinked. “Were you ever…at the Bajoran Institute of Science?”
Kira was immediately puzzled. “Excuse me?” She scoured her mind for the reference—she had heard of it, of course, but then…
“The Bajoran Institute of Science. Have you ever been there?”
Kira did not know how to answer. She had confirmed to the alien that she was in the resistance movement, so it shouldn’t condemn her any further if she admitted that she had been there once. Many years ago, the Shakaar cell had broken into the facility. They had used the institute’s transporter for the mission to Gallitep. But how could this alien know anything of that incident? She felt fear creep in; perhaps he was about to arrest her.
“Never mind,” the alien said, and stood to go. He nodded politely at her, a kind of stiff bow, and took his leave.
Kira stared after him, not sure what to make of his question. The heavyset Bajoran who operated the eatery approached her, then. He was corpulent, obviously in league with the Cardassians to be so overfed; Kira hated him immediately.
“Only patrons sit here,” he said.
Kira scowled, annoyed at the slight. “What about him?” she asked, tossing her head in the constable’s direction as he went out the door.
The man snorted. “He works for the spoonheads! He can do what he wants.”
Kira stood to go. “So can I,” she said menacingly, staring the man down for a moment, but then recognized the foolish bravado for what it was—fear, masquerading as defiance. She turned from him sharply, heading for the exit. It appeared she’d gotten away with killing one collaborator. Better not to press her luck.
Dukat saw Gil Trakad through the crowd, such as it was, and sighed. There was only a small turnout for Merchant’s Day, a quarterly event on the station in which free samples of food and drink were passed out to the Cardassian populace, but there were enough people around that it was no place to discuss business. And from the eager expression on Trakad’s wide face, it could only be business.
Trakad spotted him and hurried across the Promenade. Dukat started walking as soon as Trakad reached him, steering them toward a quieter spot. They stopped near the entry to Quark’s—the Ferengi bartender did not participate in Merchant’s Days—and Trakad started speaking in a low, quick voice.
“I’ve got information,” he said. “I’ve been monitoring the private channels for transmissions of interest, and—”
“Keep your voice down,” Dukat said, glancing around them. There was no one close, but he disliked having confidential discussions in public. One never knew who might be listening.
Trakad spoke in a stage whisper. “Dalin Russol sent a message to a point outside Cardassian space. To coordinates that are listed as a possible Federation contact.”
Dukat cocked an eye ridge. “Really? When was this?”
“Yesterday, at precisely 2200 hours.”
“What was the message?”
Trakad shook his head. “Encoded. But no code is unbreakable.”
“Indeed not,” Dukat said, starting to smile. In spite of an exemplary record, Dalin Gaten Russol had remained something of an enigma since he’d come to Terok Nor. No matter the conversation, he kept himself removed from it, spouting clichés of patriotism in answer to any direct question. Dukat had half thought him another plant from the Order—they were always dropping their agents clumsily on his station—but perhaps Russol was something else entirely.
“Make an isolinear recording of the transmission and bring it to my office immediately,” Dukat said. He’d had no small experience with code breaking. He would decipher it himself.
“Immediately, Prefect.” He turned his smile to Trakad. “Depending on what the dalin had to say, perhaps we can revisit the idea of upgrading your quarters.”
Trakad bowed as he backed away. “Thank you, sir.�
�
Dukat waited a moment before turning and heading back to operations, reprioritizing the rest of his day as he walked, smiling faintly at the passing familiar faces. He had too much to do; his walk to the Promenade for lunch had been his only break in what felt like days. There was the famine in Hedrikspool Province to manage, thanks to a katterpod weevil infestation that wasn’t discovered until days before harvest. The surface commander summit was coming up, and he was expected to attend, to dispel rumors that a withdrawal was imminent. There were still the daily reports to get to, and a depressingly low weekly ore output to bury in the numbers…
As he stepped into the turbolift, turning to face the door, he saw Dalin Russol walk out of the security office, his head high, his shoulders back. A man with a purpose. He quickly disappeared from sight, but Dukat smiled again as the door slid closed, deciding he’d get to that recording sooner rather than later.
Kalisi considered her options carefully before acting, enjoying the feel of her mind at work again—looking for the best angle, the most propitious path. For the first time since leaving the science institute, she felt like herself, or the self she was before she came to Bajor. Like a woman willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve her goals.
When she felt comfortable with her plan—as comfortable as she could feel, considering the risks she meant to take—she contacted the university representative, double-checking the time difference to be sure she could reach her directly.
Tera Glees was again impeccably dressed, her tastes simple and expensive. Kalisi smiled politely.