STAR TREK: DS9 - Prophecy and Change

by Marco Palmieri, Editor

  “And he failed to win it. Perhaps all he cares for now is vengeance,” she growled.

  “Ow. Hey, relax those fingers, sweetheart. I’m pretty attached to that lobe.”

  “Sorry.” But then she sighed in frustration. “Oh, Quark, I detest the timing of this virus of yours. All this lying around and talking, when your presence makes me burn for action!”

  “Oh, I couldn’t agree more, my dear—it’s an awful shame,” he said with a weariness that wasn’t entirely feigned.

  She poked him teasingly. “The symptoms don’t seem so horrible. Sweat, sore muscles, fatigue ... I endure worse in my daily exercise.”

  “Oh, so do I, of course.” Rule 270: A near-truth is an economical lie. “But those are just the side effects of battling a viral foe that would do far worse if my body let it. I need to focus my energies on the, uh, the battle within!”

  “But for how much longer?” she groaned in a way that sent a shudder through him.

  He stroked her muscular arm. “Just a few more days, and then we’ll battle side-by-side once more, my Lukara.” That satisfied her, and what she did in response more than satisfied him. “Oh-h-h-h, yes. Uh, but keep in mind I’ll be a bit slow getting back into the, ah, swing of things.”

  “I’ll try to be gentle. But no promises.”

  “I can live with that. I hope.”

  They spent a few minutes on other things, but his mind refused to let go of one niggling thing. “It just doesn’t make any sense! Destroying precious artifacts ... gemstones ... all that latinum destroyed forever. ...” His shudder had nothing to do with Grilka’s attentions this time.

  Grilka sighed and stopped what she was doing, recognizing that he couldn’t let this go. “D’Ghor must simply wish to ruin me, as we ruined him.”

  “But he was doing that before, in a sensible way. Not just ... wasting all that wealth, but acquiring it for himself. It’s the nature of the Great Material Continuum—wealth isn’t created or destroyed, just transferred from one owner or source to another. One man’s loss is another man’s gain. D’Ghor is violating the Law of Conservation of Property! It’s just not natural!”

  Grilka tried to settle him down, but Quark was just too distraught at the tragic loss. “To understand D’Ghor’s actions, Quark, you must forget all this Ferengi superstition and think like a Klingon!”

  “But—”

  “Quark.” She silenced him with a kiss. “You are the only Ferengi I have ever known who could do this. Who could transcend his beginnings and find the warrior’s heart within, make himself worthy of a Klingon lady’s love. It is what makes you the noblest, most exciting male I have ever known. Do not doubt yourself, my par’machkai. You mastered our ways of fighting, and of loving ... you can master our way of thinking, too.”

  Quark’s spirit soared. The caress of her hands, her eyes, her voice made him feel ten times his size, filling him with confidence and pride even beyond what the return of his business license had done. He felt he could lift DS9 with one arm and battle Fek’lhr’s hordes with the other, while his feet amassed a fortune that would make Bilgat the Monopolistic look like a beggar. “Yes, Grilka, yes! And you’re the only Klingon I’ve ever known who could see the worth of a Ferengi spirit. I don’t normally do this with females, but I’d love to discuss The Exploits of the Nagi with you, teach you to play tongo ... maybe even show you some of the advantages to living like a Ferengi female,” he leered. “You’d save a fortune on armor polish. ...”

  Grilka laughed. “You say the funniest things, Quark. But seriously—why don’t we try a mok’bara session? That shouldn’t be too hard on your poor ravaged body. And the meditative focus will help your body battle its invader. And then I’ll have Tumek bake you a rokeg blood pie; there’s nothing better for fortifying the immune defenses. ...”

  Quark was surprised, but he let the matter drop, happy to accept her eager ministrations. Getting her interested in Ferengi culture could wait ... they had plenty of time.

  Rom was helping out at the bar when he heard his brother calling him, in the irate tone that usually accompanied that action. He looked up to see Quark limping down the stairs from the holosuites, still dressed in Klingon-styled workout gear—a sight which caused Chief O’Brien’s throw to miss the dartboard altogether. Dr. Bashir was torn between teasing the chief and coming to Quark’s aid, but Quark waved him off irritably. “Are you all right, brother?” Rom asked as the chief began arguing with Bashir about whether the throw should count.

  “I’ll live, no thanks to you. I think I twisted my ankle,” Quark went on, glaring at Rom. “But I know I had the safeties on. Are you sure you installed those upgrades right?” When Quark had let Cousin Gaila lure him into arms dealing, using the holosuites to simulate demo models of powerful weapons, he’d insisted that. Rom enhance the safeties first.

  Looking over his brother apologetically, Rom said, “Uhh, the safeties can keep a holographic weapon from hurting you, or ... catch you if you fall off a holographic cliff—but they can’t stop you from hurting yourself if you’re not ... uh, not careful.”

  “You mean all that stuff we tell the customers about not being liable for this kind of thing applies to me, too?” Rom nodded sheepishly. “Now, that’s just not fair.”

  “I’m sure the doctor would be happy to fix your ankle.”

  “That’s not the point. I can handle a little pain,” he asserted, straightening with dignity (and with difficulty). “Pain is just another obstacle to overcome—it flees before a true warrior spirit.” He planted his fists on his hips ... then winced and rubbed his shoulder. “Well, maybe not flees exactly ... but I’ve still got the upper hand! Ohh, I need to sit down,” Quark groaned, plopping himself wearily on a barstool.

  Rom was proud of his brother’s determination, and had complete faith in his ability to triumph ... but still he didn’t look too good. And his approach didn’t seem to match up with the things Leeta had been teaching Rom about physical fitness. “Maybe you’re pushing yourself too hard,” he suggested. “You’ve been spending every free moment in that holosuite—you really ought to pace yourself more.”

  “Believe me, Rom, I’d love to. But Grilka’s patience isn’t eternal. She’s a very passionate female,” he laughed—then broke off in pain. “Ahh—even my lungs ache.”

  “Uhh, speaking of patience, brother—or rather, people who don’t have it—I’ve had to take several calls from the Alraki warlords. They say they’re getting tired of waiting for your answer.”

  “Ohh, that’s just typical warlord bluster. They’ll keep. Besides, I wanted to see if I could get that arcybite mining contract first.”

  “I-I don’t understand,” Rom said.

  “I explained that to you already,” his brother sighed. “Before deciding on their offer of industrial disrupters, I need to know if I have any use for them.”

  “Oh, I remember that, brother. But the bidding on that contract already closed.”

  “What? But I thought that wasn’t until Stardate 50780.”

  “That was yesterday,” Rom said apologetically. He realized that the forward progression of time in response to the increase of cosmic entropy wasn’t something he could personally be blamed for, but he figured he should be apologetic anyway, just in case. If Quark got angry enough, he’d undoubtedly find some way to hold him responsible for it.

  But Quark just frowned a bit and shrugged it off. “Oh, well. Never mind. Plenty of other suckerfish in the River.”

  “Like who?” Rom prodded.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I-if you let this deal fall through, then you must have an even better one lined up ... right?”

  Quark had picked up the Klingon dictionary he’d been carrying around lately and begun muttering gutturally to himself. He interrupted this briefly to say, “Not particularly.”

  “Oh.” Rom processed that for a moment, and came to the conclusion that he was confused. “Now I’m confused.”

  “Qui
ck—call the news services. Rom is confused. Rom mIS-moHlu’taH.”

  “I’m serious, brother. Just a few days ago you were so excited about all the new deals you had lined up. Now you’re hardly even bothering with them. You’re letting deals fall through ... passing up investments ... you’ve barely even looked at the stock reports lately.”

  “Don’t worry, Rom, I’m not losing money.”

  “Maybe not, brother ... but you aren’t making it either. How can you reestablish yourself in the Ferengi business community if you aren’t aggressively pursuing profit?” Rom knew he didn’t understand business all that well, but he felt pretty clear on this point. He’d never accumulated much profit, even before he’d given it all away for love, and other Ferengi generally didn’t think much of him. On reflection, he was glad Leeta was Bajoran and not Ferengi, or she wouldn’t have appreciated him giving up his profits to prove he was happy with her not being Ferengi. Or ... wait a minute ...

  “Rom, there is more to the universe than the Ferengi business community,” Quark said, mercifully distracting him. “And there are other things worth aggressively pursuing. Like the love of a lady from a noble Klingon house,” he finished with a proud tilt to his head.

  “A noble broke Klingon house,” said Chief O’Brien as he bellied up to the bar. “Two pints, Rom—on Bashir’s tab,” he added smugly. Rom could understand why—since the doctor had admitted his genetic enhancements and stopped holding back, O’Brien’s victories had been few and far between, even with a handicap. Of course, Rom had even more reason to be smug—he hadn’t just won a dart game from the genetic superman, he’d won Leeta. But he wasn’t the smug type, so he decided to let the chief be smug for both of them.

  “She’s not broke yet, Chief,” Quark countered. “And she won’t be if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Well, she can’t be too well off,” Bashir observed between glares at O’Brien. “She only ever comes to see you when she has money trouble.”

  “How little you understand our relationship, Doctor,” Quark said, unfazed.

  “Well, she does have money trouble, doesn’t she?” the doctor pressed. “Didn’t I hear you just the other day, lamenting how all those precious heirlooms were ‘gone, gone forever’?”

  “Don’t remind me.” Quark was lost in thought for a moment, reflecting on the tragedy, but then he shook himself. “But that’s beside the point. She doesn’t care about the losses. It’s the wages of battle.”

  “So it’s just coincidence that she came to see you now. And happened to bring along a copy of her financial records.”

  But Rom’s mind had caught on an earlier statement. “Gone where?” he asked.

  “What?” Bashir asked.

  “The heirlooms. Where did they go?”

  “They were disintegrated, you idiot,” said Quark.

  “I knew that.”

  “So be quiet.” He turned back to Bashir. “Of course she brought her financial records—she knows I enjoy helping her with them.”

  “She’s using you, Quark,” O’Brien sighed.

  “Well, of course she is.”

  The chief did a take. “You mean you realize it?”

  “What you hew-mons don’t realize is, every relationship is about using. Sometimes we use each other for profit or lust, sometimes to give us children, sometimes for companionship, or to make us happy. It’s all using.”

  Rom was still frowning. “But where did they go then?”

  Nobody listened. “What about love?” O’Brien demanded. “Real, selfless love, I mean?”

  “Even ‘selflessness’ is fundamentally selfish. Think about it—why do you do nice things for your wife?”

  “Because it makes her happy!”

  “And that makes you happy, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So ultimately, you’re acting out of self-interest. If it didn’t make you feel good, you wouldn’t do it.”

  “So what you’re telling us,” Bashir said, “is that everything you’re doing for Grilka is ultimately for your own gratification.”

  “Of course.”

  “And exactly how much pain are you in right now?”

  In the lull that followed, Rom tried again. “Where did they go then?”

  “Where did who go?” O’Brien asked.

  “The heirlooms.”

  “You mean ... after they were disintegrated?” Rom nodded.

  Now he had everyone’s attention. “Rom, have you been sampling the drinks again?” Quark asked. “When something’s disintegrated, it’s just ... gone. Foosh.”

  “Maybe—but what about the particles that made it up? Matter can’t be destroyed, brother. You can change its form, but all the mass still exists.”

  “So I guess it gets vaporized.”

  “But that can’t be! That means the particles would gain massive amounts of thermal energy and expand to fill a much larger volume. That would cause an explosion!”

  “He’s right,” O’Brien said. “That’s how chemical explosives work—sudden vaporization and expansion.”

  Rom nodded. “But when something’s disintegrated by a disruptor, it just ... glows and disappears. No boom, just foosh. So it can’t be vaporized.”

  “Then obviously it’s turned into energy,” Quark said impatiently.

  “Oh, no, brother!” Rom said, taken aback. “With the amount of raw energy contained in matter ... if it were all released at once, it would be like a photon torpedo exploding! That’s why transporters don’t really turn matter to energy like people think, just into a particle stream.”

  “Okay, so it isn’t turned into energy.” Quark clearly didn’t care one way or the other.

  “So what does happen to the particles?”

  “Don’t they transition out of the continuum?” Bashir asked, much more politely than Quark. He was a good loser. That was why it was hard for Rom to be smug.

  “That’s right,” the chief said. “With a disrupter or an old-style phaser on disintegrate, at least half the matter undergoes a quantum phase shift. It’s effectively gone from our universe.”

  “But where does it go then?”

  O’Brien shrugged. “Another dimension ... some kind of interphase space ... never really thought about it.”

  Rom turned it over in his head. “So ... all those valuables Grilka lost ... they haven’t ceased to exist, just gone to another place.”

  “No, Rom, they’re completely disintegrated. Only, maybe, fifty to ninety percent of their mass would’ve phase-shifted—the rest would just be ordinary vapor here in our dimension. And even if there were some way to, say, lock a transporter onto that other phase space, the pattern information is completely lost. It’s just random atoms. And I assume they’d disperse throughout the phase space as a fine mist—wait more than a few hours, and you’d never be able to widen the beam enough to lock onto more than a few milligrams’ worth.”

  “Bu-ut there is a way to lock onto them. The Reletek sensors, brother! They scan other phase spaces. Maybe we could use them to find ... what’s left of Grilka’s property. Some of it, anyway.”

  “A bunch of atoms?” Quark scoffed.

  “Atoms of latinum. Or gold. Or indurite.” The acquisitive light began shining in Quark’s eyes again, cheering Rom up. “Wouldn’t D’Ghor be surprised, brother?” he chuckled. “He thinks he’s destroying Grilka’s valuables, but we might be able to recoup some of her losses!” But Quark’s growing smile had frozen and was now turning into a look of dread. “What is it, brother?”

  “D’Ghor ... he’s one of the Reletek’s buyers! He already has the transphasic sensors!”

  “Wow. Isn’t that ironic.”

  “No, you idiot! Don’t you get it? This explains everything! Why D’Ghor is attacking with disrupters, going out of his way to disintegrate Grilka’s valuables. He’s not just destroying them out of revenge—he’s stealing them!”

  O’Brien leaned forward. “You mean ... he disintegrates an
object, then locks on with the transphasic sensors and beams its atoms back from interphase before they dissipate too much?”

  “Right! He ... what you said.” He shook his head. “It’s brilliant. He gets to acquire her property, like before, but now he can make it look like he’s waging honorable combat. On top of which, all the precious metals are automatically ‘melted down,’ so to speak, so they’re totally untraceable.”

  “Awful lot of trouble to go to, though,” O’Brien said. “Mining transphasic space for lost atoms? It’s a clever idea, sure, but incredibly inefficient. It’d never be practical.”

  “Since when are Klingons practical? They’ll do anything to look honorable, even when they’re robbing you blind. And it’s the only explanation for what D’Ghor’s been doing, the way he’s singling out Grilka’s most valuable objects for disintegration.” He grabbed a padd, brought up some figures. “Look here—valuables like paintings and stonework aren’t getting hit as much as the precious-metal items. And look at D’Ghor’s recent economic activity—an increased trade in refined metals. I’m telling you, Chief, it all fits.”

  Rom was impressed as always with his brother’s keen insights.

  “So ... D’Ghor’s able to do all this because he’s in business with the Reletek.”

  “Right.”

  “But you’re in business with the Reletek too.”

  “Well ... yeah.”

  O’Brien and Bashir exchanged a look. “Uh-oh,” the chief said. “I wouldn’t want to be you when Grilka finds out, Quark.”

  “I don’t see the problem,” Quark said defensively. “I can’t be blamed for how some other client of theirs misuses their technology. Even by Federation law, I’m not doing anything wrong. Grilka will certainly understand that.”

  “Who are these Reletek?” Grilka shrieked. “Where can I find them? I’ll rip their lungs out!”

  “All right, that’s one option,” Quark said in a reasonable tone. So far she hadn’t been taking the news as well as he’d hoped. She hadn’t even apologized after vilifying D’Ghor for plotting and scheming “like a Ferengi,” but Quark had chalked it up to her understandable distress. “Although I’m not sure how feasible it is to do it to an entire species. Besides, we really can’t blame the Reletek. All they did was build a perfectly innocuous sensor system that has many legitimate, peaceful applications. And ... provide D’Ghor with technicians to install and operate the system,” he added in a small voice, striving for nonchalance. “But they’re just giving the customer what he pays them for, so there’s really no reason to hold it against them ... or ... against anyone else who might have their own, entirely unrelated marketing arrangements with the Reletek.”