“It’s cozy.”
“You mean it’s small.”
Bashir could see the playful look in her eyes, but did he see something else too? As much as he knew she intended her comments only in a joking manner, he perceived something in her tone that suggested that she genuinely didn’t want to be there. Of course, all of the surviving crew continued to deal with the emotional repercussions of what had happened at DS9. He almost asked Sarina about how she felt, but then opted to try a different tack. “Would you prefer to be on different ships?” he asked.
“No, of course not,” she said with a sigh, swatting him gently on the shoulder as they walked. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like this.”
“I know there’s not much to the town, but at least we’re together,” Bashir said, though even he had to admit that their accommodations could have been more satisfying. To house the crew, the Bajorans had provided them access to the largest building in Aljuli, a three-story, multi-unit brick building on the edge of town. Bashir and Sarina had just come from there, after he’d been assigned a place to stay. It had been constructed at the same time as the control center, specifically for the purpose of housing the people who would serve there. Small, with just a bed, a computer station, and no cooking facilities—the complex contained its own mess hall—each room had been designed for an individual, not for a couple or a family. Captain Ro had temporarily assigned people like Phillipa Matthias, DS9’s lead counselor, to one of the starships in the system, simply so that she could live with her husband and two children.
“We’re not even in the same room,” Sarina complained.
“But we’re right next to each other,” Bashir said, donning his optimist’s hat. “And you can come visit me any time you like.” He leaned in and playfully nuzzled her neck. Sarina smiled, but again, Bashir sensed something amiss—something different, he thought, than post-traumatic stress. Trying to lighten her mood, he said, “Come on, where’s your spirit of adventure?”
“Adventure?” Sarina said, and again, she exaggerated her movements as she craned her neck to look around. “Kind of slow for an adventure, wouldn’t you say?”
Bashir shrugged. “It’ll get us rested up for our brand-new space station.”
“We’ll have to rest for . . . what? Two years?” Sarina said. “Living here, I’ll grow old in that time.”
“Ah, but with each gray hair, you will become a very handsome old woman.”
“Handsome!” Sarina said, her voice rising. Instead of a swat, she punched him in the shoulder. “How dare you,” she went on, and even though she protested, whatever she’d been holding on to seemed to disappear. “That’s like me saying that you’re a lovely man.”
Bashir stopped and turned to face Sarina, adopting an air of offense. “I’ll thank you to know that I am a lovely man.”
“Oh, brother.” Sarina rolled her eyes and resumed walking. Her lightheartedness pleased Bashir, who trotted to catch up with her. He took her hand again as they approached an intersection.
Arranged more or less on a grid, Aljuli comprised six streets running east to west, and four north to south. A park filled the southwestern block of the city, a pond at its center. Beyond the paved streets, farmland decorated the landscape in tones of green and brown and gold. The town and the surrounding areas, before the influx of Starfleet, supported a population of about two thousand.
As they reached the intersection, the Bajoran sun dipped below the horizon, sending a vibrant pink and orange glow against the clouds. “Now that’s lovely,” Bashir said. They stopped to admire the sunset.
As they stood gazing at the sky, Bashir heard a loud voice in the distance, though he could make out no words. He turned his head and strained to hear. Other voices reached him, swelled, fell away. Then a familiar chirp played through the gathering dusk. “I think that’s where we’re headed,” he said.
“I think so,” Sarina agreed. “Maybe that—and you—will make this place bearable.”
They made their way down the side street. They passed a number of professional buildings—the town hall, constabulary, transporter station, the office of public works—most of which sat dark. Halfway to the next street, light shined onto the walkway from two sets of double doors, both flung open to the evening, as well as from a large window between them. As they neared, the light from within fluttered, throwing a series of colors onto the brick pavers. A rowdy chorus of voices followed a moment later: “Dabo!”
Bashir led Sarina through the first set of doors into a place they’d never been, but that seemed familiar. What might once have been a theater had been transformed into something different. On the far side of the large space, a stage marched along the wall, and it amused Bashir to see two women and a man—each of them scantily clad, all of them members of Quark’s waitstaff—swaying to jazzy music playing in the background. Where seats might once have been anchored to the floor facing the stage, dozens of circular tables sat, all filled to capacity. In the very center, Hetik and M’Pella—one of the rare Bajorans born with no rhinal ridges—worked the dabo wheel, surrounded by a noisy throng. A stairway ran up the wall to the left, though it had been roped off. On the right-hand wall stretched a massive mahogany bar, in no way resembling any style Bashir had ever seen on Bajor; more than anything, he thought it belonged in a nineteenth-century pub in the United Kingdom. Quark, Treir, and Aluura worked behind the bar, making and passing drinks to customers, as well as to a waitstaff that, at first glance, included more than a few faces Bashir did not know.
“Seems like this is the place,” Sarina said, loudly enough to be heard over the clink of gold-pressed latinum, the whir of the dabo wheel, the music, and the chatter of two hundred or more people.
“Would you like a drink?” Bashir asked, leaning in toward Sarina.
“At least,” she said.
Bashir pointed, and they headed for the bar. They waded through a sea of customers—only about half of them in Starfleet uniforms—and dodged around Frool carrying an overloaded tray. When they reached the bar, the green-skinned Treir looked up from mixing a cocktail and spotted them.
“Doctor, Lieutenant,” she said with a generous smile. “You made it.”
Bashir understood that Treir had intended her remark lightly, referring only to his and Sarina’s first visit there, but he saw a shadow pass over Sarina’s face. He felt the emotion too. Treir saying that they’d made it could have been interpreted in a serious vein to mean that they’d managed to escape the destruction of Deep Space 9—something so many others had not. Bashir forced himself to say, “Yes, we’re here.”
Treir must have realized her inadvertent indiscretion, because she suddenly looked stricken. She leaned forward on the bar and said, “I mean, it’s good to see you two here in our new place.”
While Bashir tried to figure out how to respond in a way that would allow them all to escape the terrible undertones that had developed, Sarina bent toward the bar. “It’s good to be here,” she said, “and it’s good to see you.” She reached forward to the inside edge of the bar and patted Treir’s hand. Treir looked sad and grateful at the same time, her eyes beginning to gleam.
Before tears could run down her face, though, a boisterous voice proclaimed, “Well, if it isn’t the most charming couple in Wyntara Mas.” Quark, dressed in a patchwork jacket that might have contained more colors than actually existed, sidled up beside Treir and threw an arm around her. “Chatting it up with my most charming employee.”
“Try partner,” Treir said, jabbing her fist softly into Quark’s stomach.
Quark lowered his voice, as though speaking conspiratorially, to tell Bashir and Sarina, “Look what happens when you take the slave out of Orion slave girl.”
Treir scoffed and pinched the back of Quark’s ear. “Fine,” she told him, then said to Bashir and Sarina, “I’ll see you two later.”
As Quark reached up to massage his ear, Bashir pondered his sudden appearance before them. Some people who knew
the barkeep—a lot of people who knew the barkeep—often considered him a fool, but not only a fool. Many judged him crass, ill-mannered, and insensitive. Oftentimes, Quark took no action to dispel such views, and Bashir wondered—not for the first time—if perhaps the Ferengi cultivated such an image for some reason. Over the nearly fifteen years that the doctor had known him, Quark had certainly behaved in all sorts of boorish ways, in all sorts of circumstances. But then he’d also done things that people either didn’t know about—such as selflessly helping Bajoran orphans during the Occupation—or didn’t notice—such as what he’d just done.
Strangely, people often seemed to forget about the superiority of Quark’s hearing, despite the very noticeable size of his ears. Bashir had no doubt that the barkeep had heard Treir’s comment and the muted reaction it had elicited. And his reaction had been to swoop in to free the three of them from an awkward situation. But Bashir suspected that if he shared that observation, plenty of people would characterize Quark’s behavior either as coincidentally helpful or as driven by an ulterior motive. Bashir believed neither of those things.
“So: welcome to Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor,” he said. “Wyntara Mas branch.”
“I didn’t hear holosuite in there,” said Bashir, disappointed but not surprised.
“Not yet,” Quark said, his grin filled with sharp, misaligned teeth. “But there’s room upstairs. I’m working on it.”
Something suddenly occurred to Bashir, something he hadn’t thought about since the attack on the station. “I guess having a holosuite wouldn’t matter anyway,” he said, “considering that we lost Vic.”
Beside him, Sarina gave a small nod in agreement; since transferring to the station, she too had enjoyed spending time at Vic’s Las Vegas lounge. Bashir considered contacting his friend Felix—who had created the self-aware, 1960s-era Vic Fontaine hologram—to see if he might be willing to design a replacement. The thought immediately soured. That would be like trying to have a friend replaced, he realized. And it’s not like I can replace Jeannette Chao or Jason Senkowski or Jang Si Naran.
“Actually, Doctor,” Quark said, “I have something to show you.” He bent behind the bar and disappeared from view.
“Quark, whatever it is, I’m not really interested in—” Bashir began, but then the barkeep popped back up, holding a device. “What is that?” Quark set the object down on the bar. A gray metal cube standing elegantly on one corner atop a black base, it had chaser lights along several edges, and what looked like input slots for isolinear optical rods. Bashir felt a thread of hope.
“This, my good doctor,” Quark said, waving his hand over the device with a flourish, “is Vic.”
Bashir saw Sarina brighten, and knew that the expression on her face mirrored his own. “You saved him?”
Quark shrugged. “What can I say? He was good for business, and I plan on making that true again.”
“What is this machine, though?” Sarina asked. “I thought Vic’s program was on an isolinear rod.”
“It is,” Quark said, and he turned the device around. On the newly visible side, Bashir saw a rod sticking out of a slot.
“Is that . . . ?” Bashir asked, pointing.
“That’s Vic,” Quark said. “This is a holosuite simulation tester. I usually use it to run new holoprograms to check them for bugs and to make sure they don’t crash. Before we left the station, I figured that, if I just stuck Vic’s program in here, he’d keep singing.”
“So Vic is still—” Bashir had been about to say alive, but even as strongly as he felt about the lounge singer, as much as he’d interacted with him through the years, and even as much as he considered him a friend, it seemed wrong to use that word after everything that had happened. “—still running?”
“He’s still running,” Quark said. “Of course, I don’t have a functioning holosuite yet, but I’ve got my lobes to the wind.”
“Quark, if you don’t mind my asking,” Sarina said, “how did you get this off Deep Space Nine? When we were evacuating, we didn’t allow people to take their belongings. That would have increased the amount of time to get people off the station, and we needed as much room as possible so that we could rescue as many people as we could.”
“I didn’t take any extra time,” Quark said. “I loaded Vic into my carryall as soon as I heard about the bombs, which was before the evacuation started.” Bashir realized that, with the Ferengi’s connections on the station—both living and technological—he’d probably known about the sabotage before most of the crew. “As for taking up extra room . . .” Quark picked up the simulator and held it above his head. “You see this? I’m taking up exactly as much space as somebody who’s tall. Less space, even.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you held a carryall over your head during the entire evacuation?” Sarina asked, her tone disbelieving.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Quark said. “I paid Morn to hold it over his head.” He nodded to one side, and Bashir glanced in that direction. It did not surprise him in the slightest to see the loquacious Lurian at the end of the bar, a tankard raised to his shriveled lips.
“You paid Morn?” Bashir asked suspiciously.
“Well, I took a few slips of latinum off his tab,” Quark said. He crouched down and set the simulator back behind the bar. When he reappeared, Sarina apparently chose to let him off the hook.
“So did I hear you say ‘Quark’s Bar and Grill’?”
“There’s a kitchen in back,” Quark said. “Not a large one . . . I should really think about knocking out a wall and expanding—”
“‘Expand or die,’” Bashir quoted.
“The Ninety-fifth Rule of Acquisition,” Quark said. “Very good, Doctor. So what can I get you two lovebirds?”
“How about something local in honor of our new home?” Sarina said.
“I’ve got a nice springwine from the Ovarani Valley,” Quark said. “That’s in northeastern Wyntara Mas.”
“Perfect,” Sarina said.
“And for you, Doctor?”
“I’ll have a Finagle’s Folly.”
“Both fine choices,” Quark said as he settled a pair of glasses on the bar before them, then turned toward the bottles on the wall. He pulled a tall, curvy bottle from where it lay horizontally on a shelf, then poured its pale blue contents for Sarina. As he restocked the bottle and retrieved ingredients for Bashir’s drink, the doctor asked him a question.
“How did you manage to get this place together so quickly?”
Quark set a couple of bottles down behind the bar, then began preparing Bashir’s drink. “The Fifty-fourth Rule of Acquisition,” he said.
The doctor had read through the Rules years ago, but he knew that one, though he didn’t see how it applied as an answer to his question. “‘Never trust anybody taller than you’?”
“That’s the Fifty-third Rule.” Quark finished pouring, then dunked a silver stirrer in the glass and swirled it around until the Finagle’s Folly achieved a deep green color.
Bashir tried again. “‘Take joy from profit, and profit from joy’?”
“That’s the Fifty-fifth Rule,” Quark said. As he returned the bottles to their places, he said, “The Fifty-fourth Rule is, ‘Rate divided by time equals profit.’”
Bashir nodded. “Also known as the ‘velocity of wealth.’”
“That’s right,” Quark said. “I lost everything on the station, notwithstanding Vic Fontaine. Fortunately, since I run the Ferengi Embassy to Bajor, the Congress of Economic Advisors automatically insures me.”
“So this is all from an insurance disbursement?” Sarina asked.
“This?” Quark said, looking around. “No. This came from a little account I have at the Bank of Luria. I’m still waiting for the insurance payoff. I’ll need it if I’m ever going to be able to install those holosuites . . . which I’m definitely going to need.”
“I don’t know,” Bashir said, turning to obse
rve the place. “You look pretty busy to me.”
Quark waved the idea away. “A lot of these people are locals.”
“I didn’t even know the town had this many people in it,” Sarina said, and she gave Bashir a playful push.
“The problem is that there are already a few places to eat and drink in Aljuli, so once the newness of my place wears off, I’ll need the holosuites to keep them coming back.”
“That’s okay, Quark,” said another voice. “I have faith in you to turn a profit.”
Bashir recognized the voice, and he turned toward the speaker. For a moment, he felt incapable of identifying the man because of the context, and because he hadn’t seen him in so long. Finally, he managed to say, “Miles?”
“How are you, Julian?” O’Brien asked, slapping his hands down on Bashir’s shoulders.
“Miles!” the doctor repeated. He reached out and the two men hugged. When they stepped back, Bashir asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Say hello to your new chief engineer,” O’Brien said.
“Miles, that’s fantastic,” Bashir said. “That calls for a drink.”
“Quark,” O’Brien said, “I don’t suppose you have any Irish whiskey back there?”
The Ferengi reached down and held up a bottle.
“That’s amazing,” Sarina said.
Quark shrugged. “I knew he was coming three days ago.”
“That’s impossible,” O’Brien said. “I didn’t even know I was coming three days ago.”
“Whatever you say, Chief.” Quark pulled the stopper from the bottle, poured O’Brien his drink, then headed to the other end of the bar.
Bashir turned so that he faced both O’Brien and Sarina. “Miles, you remember Sarina Douglas, don’t you?”
“Of course,” O’Brien said, but as he reached to shake her hand, he stopped. “Wait. I saw you yesterday at the control center, didn’t I? Captain Ro wanted to talk with you in her office.”
“That was me,” Sarina said.
“I’m sorry,” O’Brien said. “I didn’t recognize you. I guess with the uniform . . . I mean, Julian told me that you joined Starfleet, and that you transferred to Deep Space Nine, but . . .”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 24