“All right,” she said. She stayed beside him for a moment more without saying anything. Finally, she stood up and moved away.
Quark finished unlocking the compartment, then slid its door open. He reached inside and withdrew a small, unexceptional box. Holding it on his knee, he flipped open the lid, revealing a cache of isolinear optical rods. Quark pulled out a particular rod, then closed the box and set it back inside the compartment. He rose, then instinctively glanced around to make sure that nobody was watching him too closely. Satisfied, he opened a hinged access plate in the companel, pushed the security-breaching rod into a receptacle, then flipped the plate closed. Not wanting anybody to hear what he was doing, Quark chose to key in his query: LOCATE LIEUTENANT RO.
The response came back at once, spelled out on the display: LIEUTENANT RO IS IN THE WARDROOM.
Of course,Quark thought. The gathering tonight would be held in the wardroom. Laren was no doubt securing the area. He entered another command: IDENTIFY PERSONNEL IN WARDROOM. A list of three names appeared, Laren’s and those of two other security officers. Quark wanted to talk to Laren, but he would wait until she was alone.
He deactivated the companel, then removed the orange isolinear rod and slipped it inside a jacket pocket. He would return to his quarters and monitor Laren from there, then go see her when the opportunity arose. First, though, he dropped down to the compartment again, sliding the door closed and locking it.
As Quark stood up, the companel emitted a quaver that signaled an incoming audio message. He touched a control to receive the communication, foolishly hoping it might be from Laren. “Quark’s,” he said.
“I want to use a holosuite,”a rich voice announced. Quark recognized both the words and the tone at once. It was the same message as always, delivered in the same manner—which, despite its lack of courtesy, still worked better than having the Jem’Hadar stalk into the bar before going to one of the holosuites. “ProgramTaran’atar Seven.”
He quickly checked the availability of the holosuites on the companel. “This is Quark. I’ll send somebody with your holoprogram up to holosuite one.” The channel closed without even an acknowledgment from the Jem’Hadar. “Not only are they ugly and nasty,” Quark mumbled to himself, “but they’re also rude.” He turned toward the bar, located the right box of programs on a shelf beneath, and picked out Taran’atar Seven.
Quark peered around, searching for Treir. His gaze found her at the dabo table, delivering drinks to a group even larger than this morning. He looked for Frool and Grimp, and saw them also busy with customers. Actually, now that Quark noticed, the bar had quite a few patrons, at least for this time of day. For any time of day, lately,he thought. And yet the increase in business failed to cheer him.
Deciding just to deliver the holoprogram himself, Quark hurried out from behind the bar and over to the nearer of the spiral staircases. He bounded up, one hand sliding up the outside railing, his footfalls ringing on the metal stairs. At the top, he headed for the holosuites. He found the Jem’Hadar waiting, rigid as a statue. As a gargoyle,Quark thought. He remembered when the soldier had unshrouded in the bar three nights ago, and how unnerving and frightening that had been. Now, though, seeing the Jem’Hadar in this context, wanting to enter a holosuite, Quark felt less threatened—not unthreatened, but less threatened.
“Here,” he said, holding up the isolinear rod. The Jem’Hadar reached forward, delicately plucked it from Quark’s hand, and turned without a word toward the holosuite door. Quark started to go, but them an abrupt chill coursed through the outer ridges of his ears. Anxiety gripped him. He did not know the purpose of Kira’s gathering this evening, but an image came to him of the Jem’Hadar tearing through the wardroom, leaving a slew of mangled bodies in his wake—one of them Laren’s. He turned back to the Jem’Hadar, who was operating the panel in the bulkhead beside the holosuite door. “Why are you here?” Quark asked, startled to hear a note of challenge in his voice.
The Jem’Hadar took his hand off the panel, looked over, and regarded Quark for a moment. “I am here to train,” he finally said. “This program simulates—”
“No,” Quark interrupted, waving off the explanation. “Why are you here,on Deep Space 9?”
Again, the Jem’Hadar looked at him for a few seconds without saying anything, and Quark got the uncomfortable feeling that the soldier was deciding whether to answer his question or break his neck. Very quickly, the fear Quark had felt the other night in the bar returned. It suddenly seemed like a bad idea not only to have asked the question, but to have come up here in the first place. Quark contemplated running, but then the Jem’Hadar spoke. “I am on this station,” he said, “in order to observe life in the Alpha Quadrant.” Quark declined to point out that the Jem’Hadar could not do much observing in a holosuite—well, unless it was a certain type of program, but he chose not to mention that either. “And I am also here to keep an eye on you.”
Quark’s lobes went cold. But then he realized that what the Jem’Hadar had said made no sense. What possible interest could the Founders have in a Ferengi bartender? And then the answer occurred to him. “Odo sent you here,” he said.
“The Founder sent me, yes,” the Jem’Hadar said.
Two things immediately became clear to Quark. First, his concerns about the Jem’Hadar were baseless; Odo would not have allowed the soldier to come to the station if any real chance existed of something bad happening. And two, even ninety thousand lightyears away, the constable still wanted to be a thorn in his side. “Odo told you to keep an eye on me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you believe the Founders are gods,” Quark said.
“The Founders aregods,” the Jem’Hadar insisted. He resumed operating the panel, and the door to the holosuite glided open. Quark could see the holographic emitter system in the walls beyond. The Jem’Hadar walked through the doorway.
“If the Founders are gods,” Quark blurted, “then how could they have lost the war?”
The Jem’Hadar stopped just inside the holosuite and turned back toward Quark. “The Founders did not lose the war. The Jem’Hadar failed them. The Vorta, the Cardassians, and the Breen failed them.”
“Of course, it’s never the leaders’ fault, only their minions’,” Quark said, and he actually took a step forward. “You know, I knew Odo longer than anybody on the station. I knew him betterthan anybody. And I never once thought of him as a god.” It rankled him, he realized, that anybody did.
“That demonstrates nothing about the Founder,” the Jem’Hadar said. “It only demonstrates something about you.”
“It demonstrates that I’m observant,” Quark said.
“It demonstrates that you court death.”
Quark stepped back now, unsure whether to accept the statement as a joke or a threat. Somehow, he did not believe that a genetically engineered soldier would have much of a sense of humor.
“You needn’t worry. I won’t hurt you,” the Jem’Hadar said. He turned toward the panel just inside the door, raised his hand, and slipped the isolinear rod into a slot. “Because the Founder instructed me not to.”
“How nice of him,” Quark said. “What else did Odo say about me?”
“He said you were a lawbreaker, scurrilous, loutish, avaricious, deceitful, devious, and short.” The Jem’Hadar touched a control, and the holosuite transformed from a dim, empty room on a space station into a bright, sprawling beach on the edge of an amethyst lake.
“There, you see?” Quark said. “He was wrong, so how can he be a god?”
“I am sure the Founder was not wrong,” the Jem’Hadar avowed, still peering at the panel.